Political Correctness and Knitting

I should be working on my Writing Portfolio right now. But, joyous news: I finished Jaclyn's hat! It's beautiful. And I'm making a couple more for friends using variations on the same pattern.

It's supposed to be a beret. The

 thing supporting it is my drawing model, Luigi, in case you were wondering. He's pretty stylish.

I have one more day before I go back to school to start the second semester. Today, as everyone knows, is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I think he was a great and inspiring guy. One specific thing pisses me off about us lovely Americans with regards to political correctness and half of our population: the rabid political correctness and, by association, the term "African-American" (by ancestry African, but by many brutal centuries of naturalization, American. Not like they have much to show for the years of torment... but I digress). On a day such as today, I recall an especially annoying moment in my life. I was on vacation in Tanzania, and a family of plastic surgeons living in a gated community in Florida was on the same tour as my family. I specifically recall hearing the father say, "These African-Americans have it tough." We were in Africa. Not America. And I'm pretty sure he was referring to the impoverished and tsetse fly-ridden school children we were visiting. I'm not saying blacks in america don't have tough times, but life is a lot easier when you don't have to worry about malaria and bacterial meningitis on a daily basis. Stupid fuck.

All in all, I look forward to Obama's inaugural speech tomorrow (as some of my friends would say, the "Obamarama"). And I hope these next four years will be a hell of a lot better than the past eight. As Stephen Colbert said, "he's just what we've been waiting for--a Hawaiian president!"