Best Quote I Heard All Day
The desire for self-expression afflicts people when they feel there is something of themselves which is not getting through to the outside world.--Fay Weldon

It's always been my belief that I write because in many instances I believe I am incapable of expressing what I'm thinking verbally.

Speech is ephemeral. Writing, to the writer, is not. Speech reaches a few. Writing can reach many.

On July 25th, I will have been writing this blog for four years. I went back and started reading some of my early entries. Gads. I must have been manic or something when I wrote them because they made me cringe, for the most part.

The longer I write this blog, the more serious I've gotten. What does this mean?

I think it means that there's only so much ranting about the lousy mags, Tiny Diva (although always a figure worth poking fun at), and the crap yarns that anyone can do.

Ya gotta move on. Unless, of course, the X-men put out an even worse issue than before.

That's entirely possible and highly likely.

Socked In
Summer is traditionally my time to knit up a pile of stoopidly simple socks. And although I'm a bit late this year, I found a pair of socks I had been working on for Corinne, so I'm finishing #2.

Yes, totally insipid colors. But that's what she wants. As opposed to her ma, who likes these:

This is just a small sample of the sock yarn that I own. I collect sock yarn like some people collect stamps.

Junk
I'm pretty busy and I don't always get time to read the lists these days.

Must have been about three weeks before it dawned on me that I hadn't seen a mailing list digest in quite some time. I was getting Wolverina mail, though. Could it be the vagaries of Yahoogroups?

No. I found all of my mailing lists in my Norton Spam folder. Heh.

Read into that what you will. I salvaged a few and marked them as Not Spam. Somehow, Knit U managed to escape the Spam mill. Go figure.

The KC Mailbox
I get e-mail from people who seem to think that I might give them free exposure on the blog.

Yeah, I'll expose ya.

Here's some lace gone bad:

Never mind the Ann-Margaret Viva Las Vegas look and the unhemmed pants. What are those growths on the bottom? Bobbles?

It never ceases to amaze me that PR people and knitting "designers" don't bother to read this blog before they send off their press releases or "exciting news about our new Stinkle yarn in fabulous fashion-hip colors."

Get bent, willya?

How Pissed Off Am I?
Completely. Besides New Jersey's little budget debacle this week, which I more or less ignored, since I give not a rat's ass as to whether anyone can gamble in AC, I was totally horrified that the New York courts voted down gay marriage. Un-fucking-believable.

I have a number of gay friends, two of whom live in New York. But that's not the point. The point is, I am gravely sick and tired of this country's governments, Federal and state, who seemingly do what the fuck they want and ignore the majority's wishes. Whether you are straight or gay, it matters not. What matters is that you and I are cut out of the process and don't count. I've never considered myself an activist, per se, but I think it's time to get back into my 1968 mindset.

The Proust Questionnaire
Some interesting comments ensued. I will explain some of my answers.

I identify with Elizabeth I, not because her father executed her mother but because I understand what it's like trying to be a competent woman in a man's world. Perhaps not on her level but it's a quality of hers to which I have always related.

If you have never read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, you are missing arguably one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century. Sadly, Toole committed suicide in 1969, so this is the only work he ever completed. His mother, after going to countless publishers, managed to get one to take it. It won the Pulitzer Prize. Besides being incredibly funny and quirky, the characters are so richly portrayed that it makes your head spin. And then there's the New Orleans setting. Read it. You'll learn a lot about pyloric valves.

Blog Updates
You may have noticed that I restored the Haloscan comments and shut down Blogger's. I hated to lose all the wonderful (and not-so) comments from the past four years. So last night, I made the fix, added some stuff to the sidebar, and finally got around to doing July's Bizarro Link.

Loop had sent me the Diet Coke and Mentos clip but since everyone's probably seen it already, I opted for something else.

I can't think of anything more rare and handy than re-creating the Bellagio Fountains.