All right, now… who here in the audience loves Repo Man? Raise your hands.

*raises hand*

Ah, the make-out albums of the good old days…

I was just a little too young for Repo Man when it came out and didn’t start making out ’til some years later, I’m sorry to say. In case you missed it, that sentence was me going, “I’m not an old lady yet, really!”

Which reminds me why I called up Wordpress for this blog post. Google served me the following Pablo Picasso quote just now:

“It takes a long time to become young.”

I’m not 100% convinced that’s true. But I still like it. It strikes me as an intelligent re-working of that old chestnut, “youth is wasted on the young.”

Said old chestnut always struck me as patronizing and lame.

All you whippersnappers out there, add Repo Man to your Netflix queue or something.

Bedtime.

Fellow Chemsetter Andrew Drilon is rockin’ like Dokken.

Seriously. Just go see.

Congrats, dude!

Everyone having a fabulous holiday weekend so far? I hope so. I am. We kicked off the festivities withNicholas, who graciously invited us to his place for Thanksgiving dinner. Six kids and the best stuffing I’ve ever had in my life. No disrespect to my mom (who is awesome), but this was amazing stuffing. And there was tons of it. 15 of us or something and collectively we didn’t even make a dent in this ginormous dish of stuffing. I forgot to take some home, however. This is probably for the best.

My last post on the Amazon Kindle sparked some fun conversation over on my LJ. I’ve calmed down. Not sure what I was thinking, talking about carrying books around like they’re badges of honor. I will admit the appeal and practicality of Kindling in airports, for example. Dan makes an excellent point. And of course Leland had to needle me with the squillion dollar question: “What if it gets kids to read more?” You got me there, chief.

So I amend my crankypants stance. But I will never “curl up” with a Kindle. I may perhaps read a Kindle on a crowded bus or on an airplane. I will never “curl up” in an airport. I’m still cranky. And confidential to Amazon: pay the damn bloggers for the content they provide (and you CHARGE FOR) on your damn device.

There is no excuse for that shit. None. End of.

I had a horrific thought, and it was this: there’s going to come a day when kids aren’t taught how to write by hand. Like, penmanship. Because “they won’t need it any more.” Think it’ll never happen? Yeah, that’s what they said about electronic paper.

We were at the launch party for Dan’s book last week and I got no less than five — five! — comments on this pair of fingerless mitts I wore. Nice, but they’re sloppy as sloppy (the mitts, not the comments), so I’m taking a break from the Christmas knitting (have I mentioned I’ve been Christmas knitting since September? go, me) to make a leaner, meaner pair. They’re lean and mean and purple, but jury’s still out on whether or not I should have went with the mohair-infused Lamb’s Pride Worsted. Mohair all over the place.

I also made another beret. What is up with the berets? I’ve made something like 7 berets. I don’t even wear berets. It’s official: they make me look ridiculous. And yet, I keep making them. The synapses in my head, I’m tellin’ ya.

Last knitting thing: I’m keeping my discretionary income on a tight leash these days, but once I got a gander at the just-released Anticraft book, I could NOT put it back on the shelf. It totally blew the hinges off my expectations. I love their site (though, with all respect, I find the voice of cynicism a little loud and overbearing at times), so I knew it was going to be great. But I want to make just about everything in here, including… the embossing project. Embossing. Are we kidding? And yet there I was, going through the instructions for logistical clues.

Wow, this post is getting long.

We were going to go see Beowulf but got sucked into movies here instead. Never read it? Midori’s got great crib notes over at Endicott.

Like Gwenda, I’ll take the fingers-in-my-ears road when it comes to this Kindle business. But before I do, here are my personal contributions to the righteous indignation; I mean, sound arguments on behalf of paper:

1. I’ve spent the past dozen years of my freakin’ life and thousands of my freakin’ dollars building and maintaining my personal library. From the days of sneaking around with the flashlight and Madeleine after lights out, I knew I had to have books near me at all times. I have built back muscles thanks to hauling three books in my bag because I couldn’t bear to choose which one was coming with me for the 15 free minutes of reading I expected to get on a given day. Not electronic books — earthbound-bookly-spirits books. This wicked hot guy seduced me once with the idea of “Court Street 3000″: a domestic utopia located on Court Street in Brooklyn festooned with the 3000+ books our collected and conjoined libraries would comprise. (Holy alliteration, Batman!)

Yes, I know nobody’s forcing me to give up my books. But dang, does just the thought — the mere thought! — that this electronic doodad is somehow preferable in ANY universe to someone somewhere just gets my knickers in a wad. Ghah!!

My love of books-as-objects, paper, ink, wood, wool, cotton, snow, leaves, animals, trees, water and the world we live in is very deep and visceral, you understand. It’s not a fetish. Visceral. Hence this weirdly emotive response I’m having here.

Oh yeah, and I married that guy.

2. Do you ever… fondle books while you read? Like, jiggle the paper as you’re about to turn the page, bend back the spine a little but not too much, or crinkle the Brodart on your library book (or husband’s favorite Richard Burton biography) while you’re deep in ponder?

Well, I sure as hell do.

“Disappear in your hands,” my Aunt Alice.

3. Yes, EVDO is cool. And I’m all for instant gratification. I mean, it’s no accident that I live in New York. And I’ve done my one-day-shipping and same-day-delivery-in-Manhattan and running around the city because the latest McCaig / Vess / Cho / Jean / Pope / insert-obscure-occultist-here Book We Must Have Right Now is in or whatever.

But.

My attention span is not yet so short nor is my inner 3-year-old so in control that I must have the ability to manifest what I want in my hands this very instant. This could easily morph into a huge conversation about the fragmented hoo-ha of our digital age, but I won’t go there.

Sometimes it’s good to have to work a little. That’s all I’m sayin’.

4. And I know we’re at #4, but here’s my #1 reason why I could never use Kindle for any reason other than mere curiosity, and for any length of time longer than about 5 minutes: no ability to underline passages or make notes or yes, even talk to myself in the margins with my highlighting tool of choice, a hot pink Gelly Roll. Jeff Bezos and friends will never, ever make that happen.

Waid and I barely argued (you know, couple-style bickering) when we were together. Like, ever. The only conversation I can think of where I even got close to getting really upset was this one time when we were talking about electronic paper. He’s going, “Hate to break it to you, dude, but it’s coming” and I’m going “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

He wasn’t being mean. I just get really visceral about my books.

Sorry to be such a crankypants about this, everybody. I’m done.

I had this big post on arena rock all scribbled out here on an index card (Levenger, of course). Spontaneously came to me earlier this evening, after Bee sent me some “Dust In The Wind” on YouTube. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so spontaneous, then. Whatever.

But you know what? I’m not gonna post it. Like the arena rock era itself, the moment has passed. However, Shannon’s classic TMCM Journey / Steve Perry sequence is immortal, in my memory as well as my heart, so I’ll leave you with that.

It’s been a blurry two weeks. So blurry that I’m reaching out for arena rock. But it’s a good kind of blurry. Lots of writing, both paid and to-be-sold-later and to-be-given-to-patient-artists things. Slow going, but making progress.

Watched GARDEN STATE. Twice. Was charmed. Working my way through Christmas gifts. That’s knitted Christmas gifts, don’t you know. And speaking of which, let me introduce you to the BEST YARN STORE EVER:

Brooklyn General Store

Because I don’t have enough hobbies in my life (actually, for much more Deep and Meaningful for Art and Craft and Witchery reasons, but I won’t carry on about all that at 2:30 am), I’ve decided to give in and spin. As in, spinning. As in, make my own yarn.

Yes. I know. Don’t start with me.

You’re probably not going to believe this, but Leland has been gently pushing the big wheel thing on me for a couple of years now. Like comics, I’ve resisted due to time and, now, disposable income restraints. But, like comics, my resistance slowly wore down, then snapped. The fact that one of the coven girls is a spinning freak master didn’t help.

So off I went to get a drop spindle. Small steps, all that.

“You have to go to Williamsburg,” the Coven Spinning Freak said. “Williamsburg is the only place that carries drop spindles.”

“Oh, geez,” I said. “At least I can hit up Trader Joe’s on the way home.”

But it was not to be. I don’t know how I found Brooklyn General online, but I thought, “Hrm. Red Hook. Yarn. I love Red Hook, I love yarn.” And I waylaid myself to what has turned out to be the biggest, baddest craft joint this side of my beloved Great White North. (And there are a lot of badass craft joints up there, lemme tell ya.) I mean, short of P& S Fabrics on Lower Broadway, may she rest in peace.

Fabric. Notions. Buttons. Ribbon. Patterns. Of course, yarn. Notebooks, for crying out loud. Brittany double-pointed sock needles (which are the best needles in the world for reducing hats because they’re shorter and thereby less sticky-outy-pain-in-the-ass). And — the most precious resource of all for crafters here in the city — space, and lots of it.

Oh yeah. And they had drop spindles and roving, thus saving me a trip to Williamsburg. So I called up the Coven Spinning Freak and I squee’ed. I wish I could show Midori this place because she would absolutely keel over.

Coven Spinning Freak taught me how to use my spindle the next day. My yarn was pretty sad, but I’m told it was exceptionally non-misshapen for a first outing. I was fairly patient with it all around until we got to the Andean Plying thing, whereby I wanted to cry. (OK, so not really. But I don’t have the brain cells for these kinds of shenanigans right now!)

Speaking of all things witchy, I was delighted to discover that Judy, founder of my tradition, has a substantial Wikipedia entry. That’s good fun. If you look real close, you can spot a picture of Judy and I on my bookshelves.

The yarn store could be really bad for my productivity, what with being a short subway ride and my favorite Brooklyn nabe and right next to an excellent pizza joint and the Best Yarn Store Ever and all.

Speaking of which, I’m not getting anything done on my script at this point, so I think I might as well go watch a few more arena rock clips and hit the hay.

And it was a good playtime. All is good. Decided to go for broke and flipped through my folder of gifty certificates before I left. Found an old American Express gift check I’d never used, mostly likely a birthday present from the former day job. I tend to put gifty certificates in my gifty certificates folder and forget about them.

Anyway, picked up two craft books from my wishlist, The Knitter’s Book of Yarn and Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. I’m tellin’ ya, I have become fussier and fussier about my craft books, due to the over-saturation factor. I didn’t expect either of these to be all that great. Both are a cut above.

Now it’s back to work. 4 pages down so far today and I’m about to switch to writing that I actually get paid for. First, a few links:

I’m loving watching The Bohemian Gothic Tarot take shape over at Karen’s journal. Ooo, this is going to be a good one. Then again, they’re all good ones from Karen and Alex.

Endicott has a whole new publishing model for the Journal of Mythic Arts! Woot, et double woot! Read all about it.

By way of Gwenda: My So-Called Life is back on DVD! I’ve never been a drop-everything fan of this show, so I missed it when it was released the first time. But I’m starting to come around.

Also, no World Fantasy for us after all. Boo.