Best Quote I Heard All Day"
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger.
Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."--Mel Brooks

When IS Mel going to make another movie again? He's needed...

Fanaticism Amok
You know, maybe I don't get it. I find fanatics of any persuasion suspect, not worth my time, and always huge bores. But the Knit Flame list has been home of late to a religious fanatic who's been burning up the list with dire threats of hell and damnation. And has engendered a ton of flambays. Considering that probably 45% of all the major knitting lists consist of religious freaks, the KFers should consider themselves fortunate with only one.

There's some very sharp people on that list, and it's the only list whose posts I really read consistently. I wonder that they're wasting their time trying to explain the real world to a nut.

Blog Me
But there was one interesting question posed amid the flying brimstone this week on this list. Why do people read knitting blogs?

Good question. And then there's its corollary, why do people write them?

I know why I write mine. I've been writing since I was eight and it's what I am. I've spent the better part of 30 years in the fucking "knitting universe," as an insider and an outsider, and knitting is also what I am. I figure longevity has its rewards. I care enough about the craft to say what I think. I care little enough about what others think about me to do that publicly.

I know why I read other people's. There's some very interesting people out there knitting, creating, and generally thumbing their collective noses at the knitting establishment. And I've met some true soulmates through blogging--QueerJoe, Annie Modesitt, StaceyJoy, Jen Tocker (although I've known Jen for eons, since the good KL days), and a bunch more.

But in truth, the KnitDweebs have discovered the world of blogging. It was inevitable. You'd think that blogging would keep them from posting on the knitting lists. Hardly. Everyone's a fucking writer. So now the KnitDweebs not only clutter up the lists, they're sucking up bandwidth. What's even worse--not only do they ask idiotic questions on the knitting lists, they're now posing the same genre of questions on lists devoted to the technical aspects of blogging. Holy crap.

They can't manage anything past the Einstein coat, so now they're going to try some code and then post more stupid questions to other lists?

O happy dance.

Simple Shit
Thanks for all the generous comments on the QAL. But I realized that I'm getting numbed out with it and that I have no stupid knitting to do.

So I'm making a pair of Traveling Wilburys. This must be my 20th pair. But I have the pattern memorized.

So handy. You can't always be rare all the time.