i just wanted to say, merry christmas. by which i mean, the White Sox are going to reap a harvest of sorrow at some point in the next three months, and i’d like to be on the congressional record as firmly in support of that harvest of sorrow. like they’re going to open what they think is a box of cereal for breakfast and bees will swarm out of the box and go straight for their eyes.
more on other things later when i don’t have weird crippling back stiffness and it isnt 4:03 am and i am not much more interested in sleeping.
I don’t have the necessary academic libido or capacity for self-degradation to actually navigate the entirety of the O.C. but I got worked up by hagen’s being smarter than me emile zola thing. After getting worked up by the first thing, i got caught up in writing about my relationship to the idea of being an english major and lost whatever trace amounts of argumentative yeast i have going on.
My sins against God and country
1. I was not an English major. The last, and actually only, college-leveal critical reading course in regarding English literature was “Introduction to Short Fiction” with the Don Wilfredo Veeder, who is somehow reminiscent of one of those middle school football teams where the entire D-line stands and claps in unison before the snap count to throw off the offensive line. the equivalent of that, if you are an english prof, is to announce that A&P by John Updike is about the number three or that Katherine Mansfield is the best writer in american history. Prior to that the last English class I took was 12th grade AP English Lit with Msz. Strawser at Berea Senior High School. what i got out of AP Enlish was not much — i read Song of Solomon and quietly liked it a great deal but ragged on in class, as part of some well-curated program to be a dick from ages 14-18. Fairly often I wonder if i might not have been happier as an English major, but i wonder that in the same way that you wonder if you’d be happier if you were black or had a different sexual orientation; maybe you would be, but i don’t like reading critical theory, so, i’m not black, is my point.
2. I had to look up ‘alterity.’ by which I mean I meant to look up alterity and did not. Other words I have had to look up today include ‘percipient’ and i can’t remember the other one.
Back to the OC:
So the whole theory of the OC being good is that there are poor people on it? Can I get some kind of grant to explore these and other questions. Furthermore, why is Vinny Castilla still good at baseball despite not playing 51% of games at eight miles above sea level. And can somebody please get the Nationals new jerseys.
Back to the thing that wasn’t really about the OC:
I have this seven-year-old copy of The American Scholar (may not even exist anymore) (I take things out of the Powell’s free box. for some reason, and i have this problem with drinks, food, chemical stimulants, friends, sex, bowel movements — if something is free for my taking, i not only take much more of it than i would have otherwise or at all need, but i also attempt to prevent other people from getting any of it. which is why i take seven-year-old copies of The American Scholar that are badly coffee-stained and not that good to begin with, and also why I take copies of Dr. Who comic books and spend time thinking about where I should store/display said plastic-wrapped Dr. Who comics, which I have zero intention of ever reading, taking out of the bag, or throwing away, even though I don’t actually, in important legal ways, have a place of residence, and do not need to add Dr. Who comics to the pile of shit I have to drag with me)
Getting back to the thing about the American Scholar, which is getting back to the thing about the OC, which is the thing about our various futures/America
I forgot what the connection was. I’m sorry to have pulled that kind of shit here. I wrote this whole paragraph summarizing the articles about F. Scott Fitzgerald that I read this afternoon while trying to ignore the ultimate frisbee party that is constantly happening in the courtyard of this goddamn building. I actually have to go spill the blood of white people with dreadlocks now. Oh my god I hate these people. I;m not going to apologize if you or someone you love is into Ultimate Frisbee and I have to kill them or you walk away with the impression that I wanted to kill them. You wouldn’t let me get self-righteous if my family went Mormon or something. I have to go.
Alienation of affection
By my own personal standards I’ve been pretty busy recently, in fact one week not that long ago I had to go to work three or maybe even four times, like actually tuck in my shirt and use an elevator. Why you need to know that is up in the air. I have access to a one-eyed cat, incidentally, and he is in a fantastic mood today. Might be the weather, might be that Viktor Martinez is down for life. The cat isn’t the point. You’re missing the forest for the trees, I guess. Unfortunately today I am all business. We have to talk about knitting.
Knitting
I like to keep things upbeat and positive around here (is that true) but I feel like some people need to know about knitting. Stop having weird knitting blogs and having events called stitch and bitch. This is rank atavism and it needs to stop. I don’t mean to bust especially on the female gender. I understand that people like to socialize, which knitting provides an outlet for (so does not knitting?), and I also understand that hating on knitting looks bad or at least is impolitic because knitting is a a historically female-driven activity, but we all know I am not a misogynist and I am not here to stop anyone from having a good time, but I am here to stop you from having a good time if your idea of having a good time involves knitting. KNITTING IS ALMOST AS BAD AS CIVIL WAR REENACTMENT. This would be like if my hobby was making candles from dead pets. Or making my own salt-butter. Or running a grange meeting for young culture-industry prosumers. Don’t think that Prosumption is going away, incidentally.
What we can conclude is that I haven’t really buttressed my anti-knitting fervor with any kind of logic or even a reason. Step by step, then.
1. Knitting: It threatens me personally because I don’t want to knit, and what if everybody decides they like knitting more than they like me?
2. There are more efficiently ways of making clothing and potholders/-cozies. And ultimately when you factor in time-capital and opportunity costs, just buying your sweaters/scarves/pet outerwear is probably cheaper than knitting those things.
2a. Pet outerwear is for people who live incorrectly.
2b. Obviously just because there is a better and more efficient way of making clothing and other textiles doesn’t mean knitting should forever be forgotten. Obviously they shouldn’t throw away pianos just because we have keyboards (well, it would save space, let’s be honest), but we fight diseases, not symptoms nee.
3. We have do not, as the james bond movie teaches, actually have all the time in the world, and we will soon be killed by telly savalas after our wedding. what i mean is that In the year 2005, when we have all the books and movies and Important Shit to Think About I don’t want to hear about people knitting and have to shake my head in disappointment. I made a self-improvement pact where I’m not allowed to play video games more than two hours a week and so I expect you to do the same with knitting.
Conclusion: Please stop knitting, or at least please stop making knitting / semi-ironic enjoyment of outmoded means of production (construe broadly) a popular college-graduate hobby. Also, please stop giving yourself haircuts and living in Brooklyn. Anyway, even though negativity isn’t my bag at all and not an effective one-word description of my whole weltaanschaung, I want have to stand up and speak out against knitting, so I made a category for anti-knitting posts. Please sign up for my mailing list and Bonus Army in the comments section. We have a Bonus Army now.
