Month: February 2007

10 reasons why I hate Dr Harry

1. I won’t get serious straight off. I’ll start with the hat. Really, the man earns a packet, he can afford a stylist.
2. He promotes products that are really, really bad for small creatures. It may be hard to hear this from someone who doesn’t have a veterinary degree, but ask any vet who knows rabbits what they think of the Dr Harry rabbit food. You’ll hate him too.
3. The rabbit advice he gives on his show. One of the worst was removing rabbit teeth, and feeding grated apple as a “cure” for bad teeth. The human equivalent to removing teeth and feeding pure sugar, instead of advocating good nutrition from the start. And let’s not go into the housing he recommends.
4. He went to university about 3 billion years ago – and hasn’t learned anything since.
5. He won’t ever admit to being wrong.
6. He advocates breeding, so that children can learn about the “cycle of life”. It might be better to get kids to volunteer at a shelter in the euthanasia room – then they would really learn about life and death.
7. His godlike status brooks no dissent. I am surely being un-australian by even committing these thoughts to computer – let alone publishing them in a “public” forum.
8. OK, let’s get into the rabbit housing situation. Rabbits are social creatures. They crave the company of their own species, and go quietly insane if they are confined to a small space with nobody to hang with. No wonder many rabbits are aggressive and “anti social”. I’d bite Dr Harry if he picked me up by the ears.
9. He’s so fucking cheerful. All the time. Even when your pet has an inoperable tumour, and has less than a week to live, he has some revolting, condescending homily to dispense. He talks the talk, but to me, his understanding of the bond between man and animal rings completely hollow. If you’ve ever had your heart ripped out by the loss of a non human animal, you’ll know what I mean.
10. I never really thought I would get to ten. But apparently I hate him even more than I thought I did. Is that a reason to hate him? Probably not, but this is – he makes money out of being “a good guy”. And I hate him living off the pain his misinformation causes.

Oooooo… Bitter much?

Tuesday

Not even hump day, and I am aching for the weekend.  Boss won’t be back till thursday, and I am running out of things I can do to occupy myself.  Tomorrow I’ll be turning into a printing press for a mass mailout, at least that will keep me amused for a few hours.

I left work a little early to get to Mosman to pick up a monitor adapter, keyboard and mouse – so that I can use the larger monitor that is on the desk I am using.  Ask me why I don’t say “my” desk.

I spent over four fucking hours in traffic.  It’s a good thing Mark hooked up the FM transmitter in the transporter, I got to catch up on two episodes of Cast On, one episode of Lime & Violet, and two episodes of Sticks and String.

I made the choice to start work with a broken foot, knowing that driving would not be good for it, but also knowing that I wouldn’t be able to get to work unless I drove.  I wasn’t counting on spending over 4 hours driving (including driving to work this morning), and tonight my poor wee (size 11) tootsie is aching. 

All because there was a boat in the harbour.

(if you know Sydney, check out the size of Fort Dennison compared to the monster ship.  Check out the Opera House)

Solidarity

Unravelled has decided to have a knit in simultaneously with the Yarn Harlot’s New York act of resistance to being ignored. Much as I adore Canberra, and race to get there frequently (yes, that was sarcasm, which is a little rude – I have had some good times in our nation’s capitol), I won’t be there for that particular event.

But I can be here, and hopefully inspire others to join me, and maybe even inspire others to get together in other states so that Australians don’t have to go to New York to show solidarity.

A lot has been written about why it’s good to knit this week, why it’s ok for men to knit, and why we are so totally not our grandmothers and that we are really just racy and sex mad, and that knitting is the new singles bar without the Hep C. But frankly, I’m just here for the yarn and the beer.

Kris, M-H, David, anyone else that has a way to spread the word – are you in? Anyone in Tassie ? SA, WA, NT? Even Queensland ?

One small hitch. When it’s 7pm in NY on the 22nd of March, it will be 10am in Sydney on the 23rd. Perhaps we can compromise and hold an event in Sydney on the THursday night ? The venue Kris picked for the WWKIP day was very nice….

Another roadtrip

Today was a great day. It started off with some political bullshit. Hornsby Council had another by-election (after one in September last year), and since I knew the candidate to be a good bloke, with an outside chance of getting the job, I thought that it would be the decent thing to scramble out of bed at the crack of sparrows and spread the green word to the uneducated voting masses. Or hand out “How to Votes” at least.

At 10 am (after some malarky with the liberal candidate pretending to be an independent pretending to have environmental principles), Candi, Sally, Meg and Mandy arrived to ferry me off for yarny good time.

First stop, the Wool Inn at Penrith – I am sure Meg will have a great description (and pictures) of our adventures, because I forgot to take my camera out of the bag all day. I blame the drugs. I’ve been good with the painkillers, but today required some intervention. Sally, Mandy and Candi are, sadly, blogless.

I bought some Filatura di Crosa lace-weight in white (yes, I believe I will dye it in preparation for the arrival of my new book), a ball of Zara in a very intense teal/turquoise colour, and a variegated cotton that I found in a sale bin.

Then it was off to the Blue Mountains Knitters Guild meeting. I had never been to a guild meeting before, and it was educational, and inspirational to be in a room full of crafty women of all ages, skill levels, interests, styles, and degrees of yarn snobbery. I deliberately only mentioned women because David was the only man there. It was freaky. My knitting life is full of men – most weeks at the Courthouse we have more knitters with balls than knitters with boobs, so it was rather strange to be in such a large room, that was so overpoweringly female dominated.

Though it is definitely the case that a persons gender is the least interesting aspect of their knitting, it appears that I have taken for granted the rather special group that makes up the Courthouse. It never occurred to me that men were all that special – I thought they were just like people.

Australia’s “brain drain” hoax

For many years we’ve been hearing that Australia isn’t putting enough funding into research, that our top minds are going overseas for jobs (or into defense contracts, but that’s another story).

Today, cruising Photojojo, my favourite photographic tip site, I found out that we are spending money on research, and the Australian scientists are coming up with life changing, world class, award winning research.

Into exactly how many photos you ned to take of a group of people, in order to assure a photograph in which no one is blinking.

Brain drain, my arse.

In the mail

Another cute habit the husband has, is to empty the mailbox, and then hide the mail.  He rarely does this with boring mail, just the good stuff.  Hence my reluctance to email Interweave Knits to complain that my latest issue hasn’t turned up, because it might have just been hidden by the mister.

Like he did on Valentines day.  Probably because he was suspicious that I was getting a lumpy valentines day card that wasn’t from him.  It was from the lovely Ailsa, and it contained the best stitch markers ever.  They have built in irony™ too. While you visit her blog, please note the lovely finished and almost finished objects.  This woman has it.

Photo 14

Photo 15

And this is a magazine I ordered on the intertron about three years ago.  It may not have been quite that long, but it was a looong time.  I remember still being housebound at the time, and I’ve been up and about for more than a year now.

Apologies for the crappy pictures, taken using the built in camera on the lappy, because I have to race off to a Mardi Gras exhibition opening dahlink.