Ginormously Craptastic
Those are my two new favorite bogus words. I hadn't even SEEN "ginormous" before blogdom and "craptastic" just speaks for itself.
They sum up This War Mess pretty well too, don't they? This was the Sunday I completely lost it over THAT whole sorry state of affairs...started going on about "Sin of Pride" as badly as Al Pacino in that movie. Me, the atheist. Why? Because it's PRIDE that's keeping us Over There.
The current argument is that we can't pull out now because we'll leave civil war in our wake. Look around: there ALREADY IS civil war, people! The current argument is also that we can't pull out now because we will look weak or wishy-washy in the eyes of The Rest of the World. Look around: we ALREADY HAVE the hatred of huge parts of the planet! Do we really care if we might look a bit worse? This part of "we" sure doesn't.
We already broke the region. Smashed it into bits and made a mess even worse than the Brits did back in the days of Lawrence of Arabia when they divvied up the land in the first place. That's NOT going to change...and neither is the fact that we've managed to break our own empire in the process. Never more will the United States have hegemony; those days are as over for us as they've been for Britain (and for no good reason but I digress.)
We can either leave now or stay with ineffectual attempts to clean up the mess we've made till we CAN'T stay any more....and I believe we will have exactly the same bad outcome either way. Therefore I think we should get the hell out NOW before we get any more of our young people KILLED (You South Park fans may here insert the voice of Mrs. Marsh as she was yelling at Shelia Broslowski in the movie) but that our pride is keeping us from doing so. We as a nation and the leaders who represent us should just -admit- this whole war thing was a terrible idea, suck it up and get our troops HOME.
I was a lot noisier yesterday morning.
-------------------------
Moving to more trivial and less important issues...
I'm letting my subscription to Details magazine expire. I subscribed back a year or so ago when I discovered Augusten Burroughs and fell so in love with his writing--he's the only writer I know who had a childhood even more fucked up than mine which (like mine) also involved no physical abuse. After discovering he had a monthly column there was no stopping my signing up...and I figured a magazine aimed at gay men would have plenty of agreeable eye candy too. Learning that Carrie Fisher was also a regular was like the icing on the cake--she's the one who led me to realize that what my autistic brother-in-law became when he was off ALL meds was MANIC thanks to her wonderful portrayal of same in The Best Awful.
For a while it was wonderful but like everything else in life, that too passed. Carrie became next to nonexistent, Augusten's column became more and more infrequent and I discovered that the fellows who make good Details eye candy don't do a thing for MY eyes...which I suppose isn't as illogical as I first thought. I brushed aside the family sarcasm "your gay men's magazine--SURE you get it for the articles!" but the thing I couldn't brush aside was Possible Side Effects . Great book but I found out the hard way I'd already read most of it in column form. Bummer...but I've fixed the problem. Next year or the year after I'll just wait for the book in the first place.
-----------------------
This weekend was stressful in other ways too: my mother's birthday was Saturday as was a baby shower given by a former co-worker at which I was one of the very few non-family members. You're all intelligent readers; you can connect those dots with the ones in the above paragraphs yourselves. There was also conflict among the seven human members in House of Chaos...fancy that! One bit of good news: the house in the Burbs DID finally get some tenants.
-----------------------
I swear, if it weren't for two-color knitting I'd be on a three-day psych hold right now. No seriously, it's true. I finally finished up all my "designated projects for others" knitting and rummaged through the stash to see what I might actually want to knit just for the sake of wanting to knit it...and found my Holiday Sweater which I put down at about this time last year. Right in the middle of a set of white Scandinavian stars on a maroon background.
Picked up needles, wrapped white yarn around one set of fingers and red yarn around the other set of fingers, started up...and the klaxons in my head subsided to a dull roar for the first time in a week. It was a wonderful feeling. Somehow keeping BOTH hands occupied is far more soothing, don't ask me why. Also as Gary Jenkins used to say on The Joy of Floral Painting, color is the big turn-on.
Speaking of turn-on I've been seduced by Dale of Norway. Oh yes, completely. I first noticed an amazing sweater in its larval form over at Den of Chaos (see sidebar) and the more it grew, the more obsessed I got...particularly with the amazing white-on-blue edging around the bottom. Okay not JUST the white-on-blue edging but also the incredible way the colors and designs went together in a way that my own designs just couldn't muster. Every day I looked at that sweater at least twice, sometimes three or four times, and I spent an entire afternoon clicking every googled "Dale of Norway" link on my screen seeking that pattern.
Finally I did what any sane knitter would've done ages ago and just asked....whereupon Mother of Chaos gave me the fix I so badly needed in the form of the words "Book 136" and a link (http://www.kidsknits.com/book136.html) From one obsessed knitter to another--thanks again! Funny thing is that I had been looking at that website for just AGES and it was indeed that very place which got me thinking "Hmm...if the yarn came from KnitPicks the pattern MUST have come from a book like this but there's no telling WHICH book...maybe I should just screw up my courage and ASK." Small world.
Anyhow the book is on its way even as I type but once I was at the website I found THIS:http://www.kidsknits.com/wintergarden.html
I have to knit it.
HAVE. To. Knit. It.
For ME, too... me-me-me-me-ME and not anyone else. Toldja I was completely under the spell. I ordered the pattern first thing this morning. I've already determined that I want it out of cotton, not wool, so I can wear it more/better/longer.
(Perhaps it will make up for my most recent "You Knit WHAT?!?" disaster of a top-down stash sweater too...)
The cotton I want is the sportweight Shine Cotton from KnitPicks after which I've been lusting for no short while (love to work with wool; do not love to wear it so much) but my new love affair has reached its first hurdle and I need help to get past it: I know I want "cream" for the motif but WHICH background color should I use??
http://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/itemid_5420122/yarn_display
I'm torn between Cherry, Orchid, Crocus and Violet. Violet is the closest to the Dale of Norway "aubergine" which was my second favorite after the "dark plum" and would provide excellent contrast...but I think I just plain LIKE the orchid better...and EVERYone is always telling me how good I look in red and how I should wear more of it. I've also toyed with the idea of "grass" and "butter" together.
What do YOU all think?
(Yes, I can even handle "...that it's a ginormously craptastic idea, that's what!")
They sum up This War Mess pretty well too, don't they? This was the Sunday I completely lost it over THAT whole sorry state of affairs...started going on about "Sin of Pride" as badly as Al Pacino in that movie. Me, the atheist. Why? Because it's PRIDE that's keeping us Over There.
The current argument is that we can't pull out now because we'll leave civil war in our wake. Look around: there ALREADY IS civil war, people! The current argument is also that we can't pull out now because we will look weak or wishy-washy in the eyes of The Rest of the World. Look around: we ALREADY HAVE the hatred of huge parts of the planet! Do we really care if we might look a bit worse? This part of "we" sure doesn't.
We already broke the region. Smashed it into bits and made a mess even worse than the Brits did back in the days of Lawrence of Arabia when they divvied up the land in the first place. That's NOT going to change...and neither is the fact that we've managed to break our own empire in the process. Never more will the United States have hegemony; those days are as over for us as they've been for Britain (and for no good reason but I digress.)
We can either leave now or stay with ineffectual attempts to clean up the mess we've made till we CAN'T stay any more....and I believe we will have exactly the same bad outcome either way. Therefore I think we should get the hell out NOW before we get any more of our young people KILLED (You South Park fans may here insert the voice of Mrs. Marsh as she was yelling at Shelia Broslowski in the movie) but that our pride is keeping us from doing so. We as a nation and the leaders who represent us should just -admit- this whole war thing was a terrible idea, suck it up and get our troops HOME.
I was a lot noisier yesterday morning.
-------------------------
Moving to more trivial and less important issues...
I'm letting my subscription to Details magazine expire. I subscribed back a year or so ago when I discovered Augusten Burroughs and fell so in love with his writing--he's the only writer I know who had a childhood even more fucked up than mine which (like mine) also involved no physical abuse. After discovering he had a monthly column there was no stopping my signing up...and I figured a magazine aimed at gay men would have plenty of agreeable eye candy too. Learning that Carrie Fisher was also a regular was like the icing on the cake--she's the one who led me to realize that what my autistic brother-in-law became when he was off ALL meds was MANIC thanks to her wonderful portrayal of same in The Best Awful.
For a while it was wonderful but like everything else in life, that too passed. Carrie became next to nonexistent, Augusten's column became more and more infrequent and I discovered that the fellows who make good Details eye candy don't do a thing for MY eyes...which I suppose isn't as illogical as I first thought. I brushed aside the family sarcasm "your gay men's magazine--SURE you get it for the articles!" but the thing I couldn't brush aside was Possible Side Effects . Great book but I found out the hard way I'd already read most of it in column form. Bummer...but I've fixed the problem. Next year or the year after I'll just wait for the book in the first place.
-----------------------
This weekend was stressful in other ways too: my mother's birthday was Saturday as was a baby shower given by a former co-worker at which I was one of the very few non-family members. You're all intelligent readers; you can connect those dots with the ones in the above paragraphs yourselves. There was also conflict among the seven human members in House of Chaos...fancy that! One bit of good news: the house in the Burbs DID finally get some tenants.
-----------------------
I swear, if it weren't for two-color knitting I'd be on a three-day psych hold right now. No seriously, it's true. I finally finished up all my "designated projects for others" knitting and rummaged through the stash to see what I might actually want to knit just for the sake of wanting to knit it...and found my Holiday Sweater which I put down at about this time last year. Right in the middle of a set of white Scandinavian stars on a maroon background.
Picked up needles, wrapped white yarn around one set of fingers and red yarn around the other set of fingers, started up...and the klaxons in my head subsided to a dull roar for the first time in a week. It was a wonderful feeling. Somehow keeping BOTH hands occupied is far more soothing, don't ask me why. Also as Gary Jenkins used to say on The Joy of Floral Painting, color is the big turn-on.
Speaking of turn-on I've been seduced by Dale of Norway. Oh yes, completely. I first noticed an amazing sweater in its larval form over at Den of Chaos (see sidebar) and the more it grew, the more obsessed I got...particularly with the amazing white-on-blue edging around the bottom. Okay not JUST the white-on-blue edging but also the incredible way the colors and designs went together in a way that my own designs just couldn't muster. Every day I looked at that sweater at least twice, sometimes three or four times, and I spent an entire afternoon clicking every googled "Dale of Norway" link on my screen seeking that pattern.
Finally I did what any sane knitter would've done ages ago and just asked....whereupon Mother of Chaos gave me the fix I so badly needed in the form of the words "Book 136" and a link (http://www.kidsknits.com/book136.html) From one obsessed knitter to another--thanks again! Funny thing is that I had been looking at that website for just AGES and it was indeed that very place which got me thinking "Hmm...if the yarn came from KnitPicks the pattern MUST have come from a book like this but there's no telling WHICH book...maybe I should just screw up my courage and ASK." Small world.
Anyhow the book is on its way even as I type but once I was at the website I found THIS:http://www.kidsknits.com/wintergarden.html
I have to knit it.
HAVE. To. Knit. It.
For ME, too... me-me-me-me-ME and not anyone else. Toldja I was completely under the spell. I ordered the pattern first thing this morning. I've already determined that I want it out of cotton, not wool, so I can wear it more/better/longer.
(Perhaps it will make up for my most recent "You Knit WHAT?!?" disaster of a top-down stash sweater too...)
The cotton I want is the sportweight Shine Cotton from KnitPicks after which I've been lusting for no short while (love to work with wool; do not love to wear it so much) but my new love affair has reached its first hurdle and I need help to get past it: I know I want "cream" for the motif but WHICH background color should I use??
http://www.knitpicks.com/yarns/itemid_5420122/yarn_display
I'm torn between Cherry, Orchid, Crocus and Violet. Violet is the closest to the Dale of Norway "aubergine" which was my second favorite after the "dark plum" and would provide excellent contrast...but I think I just plain LIKE the orchid better...and EVERYone is always telling me how good I look in red and how I should wear more of it. I've also toyed with the idea of "grass" and "butter" together.
What do YOU all think?
(Yes, I can even handle "...that it's a ginormously craptastic idea, that's what!")
posted by SamD | 7:35 AM
1 Comments:
One vote for cherry noted. Also one vote against the war...and one vote FOR commenting, which we bloggers always appreciate.
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