Huh?

We were discussing electronics at work, and one of my coworkers came up with the following gem:

"So if I get a DVD player, I can transfer cassette tape recordings to CD?"

We don't watch the parade...

Or put on carols. Our holiday tradition is to watch hours and hours of James Bond.

I got to see one I haven't seen before, License to Kill. It's one of the Timothy Dalton movies, dark and wildly uneven, but it features an amazing female lead, Carey Lowell.

Lowell is the butchest Bond Girl that ever wore evening dress. She's a pilot which as we all know, is Bondspeak for lesbian. In full makeup, she has the stark beauty of a Nagel print, in casual clothes she looks like the all-American tomboy next door.

She not only knew how to fly and had short hair, she also was ex-military, cocky and snarky. Her evening dress was designed to highlight her shoulders and the smooth muscles of her back, not her cleavage. Even for the epicine eighties, she was a stretch as a Bond Girl.

In most Bond films, the pretty women are gradually eliminated, like branches being trimmed from a tree. At the end of the film, we finally get down to the final woman that Bond ends up with.

In this film, we have two women competing for this position. Besides Carey Lowell, we have the villian's mistress played by Talisa Soto. Soto is doe-eyed and rounded and round-lipped and retro-feminine in all the ways that Lowell isn't. There seems to have been some delibarate lifting of the 1950s aesthetic in her selection. You could label this image as Marilyn Monroe's Latina sidekick in her South of the Border movie without anyone being the wiser.

Not only does the competition between the two remain open until the final two minutes of the movie, but both of them survive the contest. I'm going to guess that the producers of License to Kill wanted to hedge their bets and provide two types of wank material. Just in case a few boys couldn't take their Bond ending up with Lowell, they provided Soto as a consolation prize. And of course, the implied sexual dimorphism between Soto and Lowell only highlights the lesbian subtext and provides further wank material.

LINCOLN MEMORIAL VIDEO REMOVED

Washington, DC — Without notice or explanation, the National Park Service (NPS) has removed from public display the videotape containing footage of demonstrations and other events that took place at the Lincoln Memorial. The agency took down the video the day after Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) publicly released agency records showing that the Bush Administration has spent nearly $200,000 in an effort to edit out filmed scenes of gay rights and pro-choice demonstrations that occurred at the Lincoln Memorial.

Don't Know What to Think

I learned someone I dislike is in the middle of a vicious custody battle.

I dislike her because she was horrid and patronizing at a difficult time in my life.

I suspect her nasty personal traits fueled the viciousness of her divorce.

I know her current problems aren't a judgement for being a horrid person.

I doubt she'll be a better person for having experienced something really rotten in her life.

I don't find knowing about her troubles all that satisfying.

Goodridge celebrates its paper anniversary

Although some people are still threatened by the sight of two men kissing,

Despite the fact that thousands of same-sex couples across the Commonwealth have now legally tied the knot, the Goodridge decision's promise of equality is by no means set in stone.

One of the cases, filed by C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts and several conservative advocacy organizations, is currently on appeal to the full Supreme Judicial Court. The suit, originally filed in April, sought a stay of the Goodridge ruling until the constitutional amendment process was complete and was dismissed by a single justice of the SJC on May 3. According to GLAD attorney Karen Loewy, Doyle is now seeking to stop the further issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples pending the outcome of the amendment process. The case has been fully briefed but the SJC has yet to schedule oral arguments. Loewy expects a date either this month or next.

Cape & Islands Knitting Meetup Tonight

When: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 at 7:00 PM
Where: Barnes & Noble Booksellers (at the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis)

What are you waiting for?

Go read Lefty.

Wow.

The spinning kit came a couple of days ago, and tonight after dinner I finally got up the nerve to try it.

I was told how difficult it was to learn to spin with a drop spindle. I was prepared for a long and steep learning curve.

I won't say it was easy, but holy shit, I have yarn.

I am in awe of my yarn.

Okay, it's really ugly, nasty lumpy yarn and there's maybe two feet of it, but I'm still excited.

I've been running after the Spousal Unit all night and saying, "LOOK AT MY YARN! THERE'S TWO MORE INCHES SINCE I LAST SHOWED IT TO YOU!".

The poor Spousal Unit just wants to play Everquest.

It's okay, game all you want. I'm SPINNING over here.

Look, look!

An impressionistic picture of my half-completed sock from this afternoon:

A slightly better picture of the completed pair:

Next, socks for the Spousal Unit.

It's going to be a jungle of a day and I'll never make it if I start growling now.

Co-worker: Remember when I told you yesterday that I deleted some messages that I didn't intend to delete and then emptied my trash so I couldn't get them back? I still have those messages.

Me: You do? That's great, but how?

Co-worker: I thought I deleted my trash because it disappeared, but it was just my Inbox that disappeared.

Me: So when you thought you were emptying your trash, you were just deleting messages out of your Inbox? When you say "emptying trash", what exactly are you doing?

Co-worker: I select all the messages and delete them.

Me: You know there's a command in Eudora called "Empty Trash" that allows you to empty your trash without going through all that?

Co-worker: Yeah, that's what I did.

Actually, that's not at all what you did. But, why confuse you with the facts?

More coffee. Stat.

Revolting Development

I had to do some frantic running around today because paychecks were bouncing. I haven't had to worry about a paycheck bouncing since I worked in a sleazy stripclub.

If I called the temp agency back and told them, think that would make them understand that I'm ready to move to a different job?

Misinformation Campaign

Women seeking abortions in Mississippi must first sign a form indicating they've been told abortion can increase their risk of breast cancer. They aren't told that scientific reviews have concluded there is no such risk.

Similar information suggesting a cancer link is given to women considering abortion in Texas, Louisiana and Kansas, and legislation to require such notification has been introduced in 14 other states.

The entire article can be read here.

Useless and Surreal

I talked to a temp agency today. They got all goosey when I mentioned that I couldn't come in for a longer interview the first week of December because the Spousal Unit is having surgery.

Why don't you give us a call when everything's settled? Huh? I don't get it. What's to settle?

Meanwhile, they suggested I read the paper or browse Monster. Gosh golly gee, why didn't I think of that? Arrrgggghhh.

If I wait to give them a call when everything is "settled", that's the middle of December. When no one is hiring and everything is shit until February. Oh, that's useful.

I pointed out that no one is hiring in December. "You never know." Oh, bullshit.

Did I really just waste an hour of my life talking to you? Yes, I think that's exactly what I just did. Charming.

Why, why, why?

This place is so close to where I went to school. Why wasn't I interested in fiber arts then instead of now?

I want to move out to Northampton just so I can live near this place.

But meanwhile, we just got a Trader Joe's. Whee! I am easily distracted by the thought of tasty gyozas.

Group Seeks 'Born-On' Dates for Tires

"Born on"? Since when are tires born? Is this some irrational language use intended to please the Fundamentalist voting bloc?

Recent Order

Learn to Spin Kit

I've heard that it's difficult to learn with a drop spindle, but I have hopes. Unlike most people, I've actually seen a drop spindle being used. And, there's no way I can shell out several hundred dollars for a spinning wheel that will not fit in my house.

And, if I produce a lot of short lengths of shitty yard, there's always this craft:

Nalbinding Instructions

Nalbinding Needles

Nalbinding is a sort of proto-knitting, practiced by the Vikings and other people. It primarily survives in rugmaking.

It involves working with short lengths of yarn. There's a lot of trial and error with spinning and the yarn you make first isn't that great, so a craft that seems designed to use up bits and pieces of irregular yarn is perfect.

In fact, it probably was designed exactly for that.

There's a significant learning curve to many crafts that used to be mandatory. In most cultures where knitting was essential, girls learned how to knit around the age of five.

I'm sure people then didn't just toss out badly spun yarn and they probably didn't have time to always reknit badly knitted items, they just made do.

So, off I go. Spinning on the level of a five-year old. I'm sure it would only take me a century or two to outfit the crew of a longship.

Tend To Your Knitting

I have been working up some of the curiously green yarn I purchased at the Dennis Wool Festival into socks. It's very bright and irregularly dyed and I've nicknamed it the Absinthe Yarn, which would make the socks made out of it the Absinthe Socks.

I'm at the nervous point where I'm not really sure I have enough yarn to finish them off, but we shall see.

I'm getting a lot of knitting books out of the library. I am especially impressed with one called Knit Socks!. I have not yet tried any of the patterns, but it has a lot of detail that would have been useful earlier in my sock making endeavors. Also, each pattern has detailed instructions for two variations, which is very nice.

The one drawback is that the book itself is shaped like a big sock and there's a reason books are generally shaped like books. It's hard to flip through and the size of the book means that even a simple sock pattern can take eight pages of directions. But overall, it's exactly what I would expect from Storey Books. Useful, earthy and a tiny bit whimsical.

How soon is now?

When you say it's gonna happen "now"
Well, when exactly do you mean ?
See I've already waited too long
And all my hope is gone

Christ-on-a-stick, you know you're in a deep funk when you're quoting the Smiths.

Stick a fork in me, call me cliched eighties girl and call me done.

To quote Lefty,

Here comes a military draft, the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the elimination of gay rights, the further alienation of the international community, more of the same in Iraq, the supreme court becoming a blatantly Christian entity and another thousand soldiers dead. You've made your own noose, America. Time to string up.

Yep. Sounds about right.

I pretended today when anyone asked me about the election that I didn't really care. Because that's what you do when your heart is breaking.

The one bright spot I see is that the coalescing of different wings of the Republican party into the agreement that led to Bush's election is almost certainly temporary. I'm hoping there are enough people advocating fiscal responsibility and personal freedom to gum up the works of the people who want to spend us into oblivion and get Big Brother involved with our personal lives.

Meanwhile, I'm checking out French language CDs from the library. Canada is a bilingual nation and if I end up there, I really need to learn some French.