bad metaphor

In lieu of actual content, I bring you the Indian Joey Lawrence, some hot girl, and fifty others rocking out to the catchiest song ever performed on a TRAIN:

Yeah, dude, you’ll “wear her like an amulet.” Whoa.

While sifting through New York Times headlines, trying to stay awake during my morning training session, I discovered the news about the sorry fate of Pluto. My reaction was akin to hearing the death announcement of a distant acquaintance, like that guy who sat behind me in 11th grade English class, who’d flipped his motorbike several years ago. “Pluto who? Oh, that planet! Ah, that really sucks.”

Taken for granted as solidly unspectacular, Pluto was neither the juggernaut of the nine planetary warriors like Jupiter, nor the butt of mockery that is Uranus. Not since learning about the solar system in elementary school did I ever suspect the abrupt sendoff of dearest Pluto, caretaker of the realm of dead things. Its crime: insignificance! Meekness! Content to wander in its preordained path around the far-off sun, soaking what little light comes its way, it shares space with “the icy wrecks of the Kuiper Belt,” according to the NYT article. No rampaging about space, knocking obstacles out of its climb towards planetary success. Just peaceful, passive coexistence, which garners no reward. No respect.

Pluto in human form.

Yes, Pluto is small compared to its more obnoxious siblings, but still, take a gander at its size: 1.3 × 10 to the 22nd kilograms. That’s a good 10 to the 22nd kilograms more than either you or I or anyone reading this blog! If Pluto can be sacked for reasons of insignificance, what of little ordinary puny organisms such as ourselves? Who among us is fit to write the obituary?

Let us have a moment of silence for that cold and lonely speckling in the sky:

From reading knitting blogs, I have absorbed quite a bit of the fun, light-hearted, knit-vs-crochet snobbery. To knitters, knitting is for the hip and trendy crafter, while crochet is the art of toilet-paper-cozies (although, truth be told, knitting definitely has its share of gauche terrors). It seems easier to pick up knitting vs. crocheting. Not necessarily because of the technique (once you get down to it, crocheting is probably easier), but the availability of knitting resources out there: there’s your knittinghelp.com, as well as your free knitting magazines online. I sort of half learned crocheting from my stepmom a few months ago, but never really quite got the hang of it until I tried to teach my obstinate roommate, Simon, how to crochet.

Resisting my attempts to win him over to the dark side (I’ve successfully bullied about 80% of my friends into learning how to knit so far! Watch out, other 20%.), he’d poked fun at my crafty elitism, saying that he’d rather learn to crochet. Well, he would soon eat his words when I got it out: the hook. The pink hook of DOOM.

Simon broke under the pressure and capitulated to the knitting side (I’m a much better teacher of knitting than crocheting, of course), but for some reason, something clicked for me. The yarn I was teaching with was from a huge stash of Shine worsted, which I’d make the mistake of ordering before looking at any KnitPicks color cards (the color was called “Watermelon.” Watermelon. Why was I so naive to trust that it would be the lovely shade of blush red that appeared on my monitor?). To make matters worse, I had double the amount I’d ordered, because my package had been lost / late and I’d requested a replacement package from KnitPicks (the packages ended up arriving within a day of each other).

The yarn by itself? Not working for any project I had in mind. Previous attempts at crochet? Also bleh. The yarn and the crochet hook? For some baffling, mysterious reason I cannot even begin to analyze, I cannot put down the hook when working with this yarn:

It doesn’t look that impressive in photos, even to my enchanted eyes, but for some reason the texture created by the crochet stitches, combined with the shiny cotton-y yarn, is really resonating with me. I can’t stop petting it! I only know how to do one stitch, and I don’t even know what it is called (single stitch?), but it’s pleasant and easy enough, like a completely garter-stitch project. A good break from the mental puzzle of the boyfriend sweater. The fabric is so shiny and, for lack of a better word, sturdy. I’ll probably make this into some sort of market bag for groceries.

* Despite my newly formed excitement with crocheting, I probably won’t start a separate category for crochet. Yet.

My mother is moved in, and we are safe: I have not driven us off a cliff. It was very touch and go for a bit, as the clouds over Pennsylvania prodigiously dumped on us as I drove through the twisty roads. I am from the Midwest, you see, and am not used to things like curves and tunnels. While racing down the first tunnel I have ever driven into at sixty miles per hour, trying to elude the chomping jaws of the roadster dogging my tail, I suddenly had the strong, unshakeable feeling that I will die in a tunnel. Someday, maybe not here, but somewhere. The racing lines of the blurred brick walls; the blur of the cars beside me; the never-ending, rigid, clinical straightness of the road ahead of me; oh, this was all much too much for me. Each time I had to enter another tunnel, though it meant a brief respite from the downpour, my blood pressure level must have shot up twenty points. The boy says I’m just claustrophobic, but I think I’m not alone – why else would the tunnel be used as a common metaphor for death? The “light at the end of the tunnel,” near-death-experiencers call it. I do suspect that my claustrophobia might have had a little to do with my reaction, as well as the whole genetic paranoia thing, and the fact that I had been driving for fourteen hours.

Enough morbidity! Here are a few choice quotes from the crazy mother, over the past couple of days:

To me: “Get in the left lane! And slow down, you’re going too fast.”

To my brother: “Let me know half an hour before you need to go to the bathroom, okay?”

My mother at the wheel, heading straight towards the median.
Me: “Ahh, stay in your lane!”
Mom: “Oh. I thought we were supposed to go over there.”

Over dinner conversation:
Mom: “The boy says you’d like to live in Portland, Oregon.”
Me: “Yes, it’s a beautiful city.”
Mom: “I don’t want you to live there.”
Me: “Why not?”
Mom: “I was reading this book about tsunamis, and it says that there are tsunamis that could hit Oregon.”
Me: “But…I don’t think there have been any…at least it’s not a problem there that I’ve ever heard of. Besides, there’s nowhere you can live that’s totally safe from anything.”
Mom: “I like Hawaii.”
Me:

Me: “We can make it a lot further than Columbus, OH today, Mom. I’m not tired at all.”
Mom: “Well, we will have to make sure there’s a hotel where we stop.”
Me: “There are hotels everywhere!”
Mom: (gestures by the side of the road) “There’s not one here!”

And then there was the frantic insistence that we had to look up all the exit numbers for every single point of our trip beforehand. Ahh. Well, despite all the backseat driving, and occasional baffling comment or two, she did at least say to chiaroscuro and visual field that she thought I was a good driver. Good thing I am never doing it again!

* – Almost forgot this exchange:

When winding through the gorgeous Pennsylvania countryside, admiring the thickly forested hills:
Mom: “I think there must be lots of bears and tigers out here!”
Me: “I don’t think there are any tigers here.”
Mom: “How do you know?”
Me: “Mom, there are no tigers in America. Except in zoos.”
Mom: “Maybe we should ask someone who hunts! They would know.”

What am I supposed to say to that? How would I explain to my poor mother, who hails from a country where there conceivably are tigers lurking in the countryside, why there are no tigers milling about by the Pennsylvania turnpike? “You see, Mom, there used to be tigers here thousands of years ago, but then this thing happened called the Pleistocene Overkill…” Silly me, what would I know; I’m not a hunter!