I'm getting ready to leave early for the drive to LA, so won't be getting to K in the poetry series until Monday or so. I can't think of anything major I want to write about, so just a couple little random points.
Yesterday, I got the strangest s p @ m comment here. It was a real comment, with lots of detail about a specific book I'd written about, but with interpolated links for some damn site or other that I have have no interest in. Yet it was obvious the writer had actually read the book I was discussing and it's not even that famous a book. I hope the %#^%# creators of that stuff have not figured out how to inset it in legitimate comments now.
On the way to work, I heard an NPR piece by a former journalist about the atrocities he'd seen in Rwanda and how hard it was and how shameful he felt at shaking the hand of some of the perpetrators of that genocide, in pursuit of interviews from them. He spoke of his interpreter, who had had to watch his own wife killed before his eyes, and who had actually paid her killers to shoot her instead of hacking at her with a machete. (The interpreter himself had been spared because he was Congolese.) I was thinking how it awful it must be when all you can do for someone you love is to give her an easier death. Then I got to thinking of a local rower, who can only wish he'd been abler to pay someone to give his wife a painless death. He has no one to blame, because she died of disease rather than murder. I forget the specifics of her disease, but I will never forget his description, "like Lou Gehrig's disease, only painful". I suppose in a way he did give her the easiest death he could, putting her into a hospice where I'm sure they did all they could with morphine and such, but it was still long and painful. So yeah, there are worse things. Or maybe this is why orderings and comparisons are silly in some cases. Some things are just awful, period.
I have no idea why I wanted to share all of that. Sorry for the downer.
On the upside, I was pleased to see that the Vatican does still remember St. Augustine's teachings, though I wish they'd managed to say so without phrasing it as a slur on other wings of Christianity.
Once again, I am annoyed at my clothing. My jeans are a little tight, fresh from the wash, but otherwise fit except for being too tight in the thighs. My sweater sleeves are so tight that the sleeves of the T-shirt I'm wearing show through. This is just silly. I even went and looked to see if Athleta or Title Nine had some cords cut in a more athletic fit, but I have some trouble getting past the fact that their pants are not only in a very casual cut, but $30 or $40 more than the basic cords that are really all I want. On the other hand, the Levis I tried on the other day were no only too long (no petites offered) but were so tight in the legs that they're not really suitable for work wear.
I'll be back here Monday, after the race. Maybe I'll be able to write about something more interesting then.
Posted by dichroic at November 4, 2005 12:04 PM