Two Steps Ahead

The Guardian is running a series of semi-humourous columns called This Column Will Change Your Life and I hit upon It's Not Easy Always Being Right the other night. I don't think I'm always right - I live in  shades of grey - but I know that I often feel like I'm outsmarting people (mostly myself) which is a bastardised form of Always Being Right, of course. Unfortunately this "outsmarting people" is not particularly useful. I am not outsmarting bankers in order to make hefty profits, for instance. My brain is far more useless than that: I'm always two steps ahead of whatever I am supposed to be doing. A typical example of a telephone conversation would be: "Yes, you have misspelled my name, but I would like to address the legal issues surrounding .. okay, it's K. A. .. can we just look at section 7 befo .. yes, K.A. R..." and when I type I miss out words because my brain is always three or four sentences ahead of whatever I'm typing.

Now imagine how I read. I read very fast and can wolf down a book in a couple of hours. About ten years ago I decided that I needed to start poetry because you cannot wolf down poetry. You have to work at making meaning. You have to be patient with a quiet mind or the poem will not open up. I spent years working with poetry before I felt ready to go back to reading prose. And I still wolf down prose instead of savouring every little punctuation mark. I cannot remember characters' names nor minor details, but I can tell you if I enjoyed the read or not in very fancy terms.

I am not a New Agey person but I do wish I could live more in the present and focus on what is Right Now. Instead I'm always two steps ahead and outsmarting myself while I'm at it.

A few links that have grabbed me over the last few days: + Madeleine Albright: Read My Pins. When costume jewellery went political. + The $3,000 Scarf - or why crafting isn't necessarily a cheap hobby. + Cross-dressing in the 20th Century - a series of photos. Thanks, Alex. + The Ultimate Bauhaus Dog House - or how to produce a quintessential Ms Bookish link. + Take A Weird Break - some very odd headlines from a British women's magazine. "Spirit Mum Sends Me Elastic Bands" sums it all up. + Lady Gaga - Bad Romance (youtube). I love her forthcoming single - it's exquisitely poptastic in a super-cheesy Eurovision-goes-gay-bar-circa-1986 way. I could see Sweden offering this in a perfect Eurovision world. Other Half hates the song. Pffft.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

.. and they lived happily ever after - they being the knitter and her own Liesl. I frogged a scarf I knitted last year but only wore twice and miraculously I got an entire top out of my three re-purposed skeins of Noro Iro. Liesl is a magical pattern, I think.

Right now I'm really using knitting as means of escape from a very, very busy life. I cannot write about the things that are happening as I have vowed to keep certain aspects of my life separate from this blog, but I am currently facing a workload which is causing me to a) freak out slightly, b) stress and worry a lot and c) have brain-freezes. I wish I could pick up a book and escape, but my head is not in that sort of space at the moment.

So I knit. I knit a lot.

Earlier this year I was told to relax by watching trashy TV and reading crap books. I've finally taken those words on board and so I'm watching a lot more TV - whilst knitting, of course - than I usually do. This has lead me to conclude that FlashForward is very bad; that True Blood is very interesting; that Merlin is very silly, has pretty art direction and occasionally sports hidden depths; and that I have very little patience for reality TV (bar BBC's MasterChef which Other Half watches religiously).

In other news, the most despicable "newspaper" in the UK - the Daily Mail which does not deserve a link - has published a poisonous article on the death of boyband singer Stephen Gately of Boyzone (BBC link). I read the homophobic article itself earlier today before the Daily Mail found it necessary to edit it. In the words of the Guardian's Charlie Brooker (and his entire column is magnificent):

The funeral of Stephen Gately has not yet taken place. The man hasn't been buried yet. Nevertheless, Jan Moir of the Daily Mail has already managed to dance on his grave. For money.

It has been 20 minutes since I've read her now-notorious column, and I'm still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.

I hope Gately's husband and family sues the hell of Daily Mail. And I hope that other advertisers follow Marks & Spencer's example and withdraw their advertising money from the Mail. It is not the first time the Daily Mail angers me (in fact, you could set your clock by how often I feel personally insulted) but this is truly gobsmacking vicious.

Ah, a blog entry which is all over the place. And all I meant to say was that I really do love my new top and that I'm knitting a lot at the moment. The fact that this turned into a bit of a rant should give you a clue as to how stressed I am.

Pax.

Wednesday Linkage

An assortment of various links for your pleasure.

• Dicey knitting - for the ones among us who like to throw dice when we need to make a decision. "Start with the Ivory Cube -- it will tell if you you knit, purl, slip, increase, decrease, or cable/twist. This is where you Impose Chaos". Thanks, L.
• Golden silk from golden orb spiders: "A unique piece of golden yellow silk brocade cloth, woven from spiderwebs, is on display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. To harvest enough silk to make the cloth, more than a million female golden orb spiders were collected in Madagascar, "milked" for silk, and released back into the wild." The links are not for the faint-hearted, but they are incredibly interesting. I say this as a arachnophobe.
• This has been mentioned a lot on various literary blogs, but it bears repeating: An Open Letter to the Federal Trade Comission. There is a difference between being a lit blogger receiving freebies which may/may not be reviewed and a corporate shrill. The FTC has apparently not noticed the difference.
• Most of my adult life I have been looking for the perfect Bauhaus teapot. I now know why it'll never be mine.
• Glasgow Guerilla Gardening. What it says on the tin. Sometimes they include knitting.
• The house of my nightmares. And probably also of the assigned estate agent..
• The 56 Geeks. Which one are you? And yes, you will be one because you are reading a blog. Brownie points for guessing which one I am. (thanks, Emme)
• The continuing saga of Amazon, their Kindle and the concept of "Fail".
• Hilary Mantel won this year's Man Booker. I can't even pretend to be mildly interested. Sorry.
• One of Dave's online buddies have started a parenting blog. Normally the words "parenting blog" strikes fear into my heart, but when it's called When Should They See Die Hard and the first post made my day: "The first stage is what I'll call "The Minion Stage". Essentially having a little tiny henchman who does as their told and will make Manhattans for you."

Enjoy.

Little Women & Werewolves

Yes, the classic "Little Women" has fallen prey to the publishing trend that started with "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". Joy. I never read the Austen-goes-supernatural novel.  I mean, I still have issues with casting Colin Firth as Darcy in that BBC mini-series, so imagine what issues I'd have suddenly encountering zombies in the midst of Pemberley! Anyway, the synopsis of "Little Women" reads thusly:

In this retelling of Louisa May Alcott's classic, the beloved little women must keep not just the wolf, but the werewolves, from the door...and the kindly old gentlemen next door and his grandson may have some secrets to hide — or share with the March girls.

There is a silver lining, though. On io9, commentators have fun trying to come up with the next installments in this classics-goes-monstrous trend and they're really quite funny:

• A Sentimental Education of Vampires
• Canterbury Tales from the Crypt
• Uncle Tom's Kraken
• Love in the Time of Cthulu
• The Barchester Martian Chronicles
• The Handmaid's Tail

Can anyone come up with a synopsis for any of these?

Why Neil Gaiman is Like a Toffee-Coated Banana

Want to feel jealous in a bookish manner? Go look at Neil Gaiman's library. The colours, the layout, the view from the windows and the mind-boggling amount of books.. I hardly ever covet anybody else's possessions but I do covet that room. On the topic of Neil Gaiman, people tend to assume that he is one of my favourite authors and I am at loss to explain why this is so. I have received emails from dear friends with subject lines like "Neil in Edinburgh!!!" (at which point I flailed happily around the house until Other Half pointed out that the email referred to Neil Gaiman and not Neil (yes, in Casa Bookish there is only one Neil and he needs no surname)). Other friends have assured me that if I run out of reading material, they have plenty of Gaiman books  they'll put at my disposal. And yet other friends approach me asking if I've read the latest Gaiman novel?

I've read two and three-quarters Gaiman books: American Gods, Neverwhere, Good Omens (co-written with Terry Prachett) and Odd and Frost Giants. None of these clicked with me - Neverwhere came closest, I think. American Gods is said to be Gaiman's finest and most complex work so far and it left me completely cold. I did like the film adaptation of Stardust.

I understand that people are passionate about their favourite author and I get that  people want to share their passion, but once I have read a couple of books by an author I am able to make my mind up about an author and decide that, nah, that guy isn't really for me. In that respect, Neil Gaiman is a bit like Ian McEwan. I read Amsterdam (still the worst Booker prize winner, in my opinion) and Atonement (horrid), listened to people going into raptures over McEwan, read a chapter of Black Dogs, and decided to choose Life over reading another page.

I suspect the "you must love Neil Gaiman' thing has to do with demography: I am in my early thirties, like geekery, am a Firefly and Doctor Who affectionado - and Gaiman just sort of goes with that territory. I still consider Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials one of my favourite reads this past decade, so sometimes I do find books within that niche that I really like. Gaiman just doesn't do it, though.

Have you ever experienced something similar? Have you read, listened to or watched something you knew you were meant to be Just Your Thing, but you just couldn't get into it? Other examples of mine include Bjørk, Tori Amos, Jonathan Safran Foer, and, well .. banoffee pie.

Saturday Link Dump

I haven't done one of these in ages. Also: insomnia has struck.

• This is my new favourite cartoon. Strong words lurk within, beware.
• Robert Barclay Allardice - The Celebrated Pedestrian: "His most famous feat was the walking of 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in 1000 hours for 1000 guineas in 1809."
• Fancy Fast Food: "Yeah, it's still bad for you, but see how good it can look!" This one is particularly disturbing.
• How To Speak With A British Accent (youtube) is a series of educational videos teaching non-Brits how to perfect their British accent. Well, except that the videos are unintentionally hilarious. I've linked the "Unique Words" video but there are several other gems.
• My mum's local paper had a "best summer photo" competition. This is my absolute favourite entry. Nothing says "Danish summer" like a wheelie bin.
• Via John, the Armenians may be taking Eurovision a tad too seriously..
• The Beauty of Accidents. When a potentially ruined photograph turns out to be strangely beautiful and even better than what you had in mind. Something to keep in mind in these Photoshop days..
• Finally, it took a long time while for Casa Bookish inhabitants to notice but now we're all about Plants vs. Zombies. Pole-vaulting zombies! Dolphin zombies! Pea-shoots! It's maddeningly addictive.