So, today I was going to be so productive. But first, I thought I'd have a cup of coffee and listen to a little bit of Don't Think of an Elephant. Just a chapter, you know.

Two and a half hours later, I'd made some serious progress on the utterly pointless except that I love feather and fan and linen baby blanket, and listened to half the book.

You need to read this, if you haven't yet. Seriously. I mean it. It's very read/listenable, very non-psychobabbly.

It is one of those clarifying, edifying, Oh MY GOD I GET IT! books. It even tied to the recent round of Shame Game-ing - the conservative model of the strict father figure is so vividly illustrated in the comments that 1) throw out the poster's non-sequitur "authority" - like the ones that hit Kerstin - (I'm a supermom, I'm a pilot) and 2) try to trigger a fear response, like the blessedly Anonymous rocket scientist who told me that I was "flagged" for offensive content when I don't even have an active flag button, but I should be skeered because, like the boogeyman, ooooh, the owners of Blogger are Republicans! Oooh, like, I'm SOOO in trouble!!! They might call my mommy and take away my computer! (That was particularly hilarious if you actually read political blogs and know how many progressive blogs are on Blogger.)

The purpose of 1) and 2) is of course 3): shame a grownup like a "bad" child. They do this because that sort of shame response is easily triggered in them, and they just expect that it works in everybody. It explains the conservative values I've seen up close and just plain could not grasp. It makes so much sense - I can apply Lakoff's logic to so many things I've seen and heard from conservatives I know, and his criticism of the Democrats for not freaking GETTING this and changing their tactics is dead-on. While I really do know real-life neocons and evangelicals that really do respond to this sort of bad child fear and control game, they are not by any means normal nor the majority in this country, though their puppetmasters have convinced them that they are. We need to quit politely pretending their neuroses are normal and start talking over their little heads, to the grownups who vote Republican because they've been listening to the same memes for a generation and they can't hear facts framed as facts anymore.

So I listened and I made lots of progress on a knitting project I don't even need, but one I love doing. I figured out why I adore feather and fan - because it looks like you're doing something tricky, but you're not. Only one row in four requires any concentration/counting, and a monkey can memorize the pattern. So it hits just the right level of knitting challenge for me - just enough variety to keep me conscious, but not enough to make it impossible to put down and pick up and find my place. And it's so pretty. It's just My Kind of Knitting.

I may never knit lace. I just don't have it in me. I love the new job, but I spend my days untangling complex problems and when I come home the last damn thing I want to do is sit here picking my way through a lace chart, and then the phone rings or the dogs have to go out or in, or there's a really good moment on TV, or whatever, and I'm screwed. Screwed. I'll crochet lace - crocheted lace is fine, because if you screw up you pull it out ONE stitch at a time - you don't have to run lifelines and weep bitterly at a dropped stitch that vanishes. But knitted lace is for other people, not for moi. Moi likes it that way.

But after this linen one is done, I will move from baby blankets for grandchildren-to-be-conceived-later to baby blankets for charity, from more universally user-friendly fibers. I think there will always be a blankie on the needles. I love to play with stitch patterns but I really don't have the math skills to adapt many to anything three-dimensional. Blankies fill the bill and serve a purpose.

Oh, I had so much more to blog about, like how convinced Girlchild and I are that
Crazy Aunt Purl really is our spiritual relative - WWLGD? had us on the floor. She can have a seat next to me on the Knitting Short Bus any old day.

Oh, and where the hell was I that I didn't know
Marfa has a blog? Love it, and not just because she quotes Bill Maher's "letter to George Bush."

So, I've lost count, are there any Bushlets who haven't gotten arrested yet? How does the public intoxication and resisting arrest and drug charges and (of course let's not forget Columba's smuggling designer clothing through Customs) fit with this whole "family values" thing? And when it happens to them, it's a "private matter" and how dare we talk about it? But when Bill was sneaking around on Hillary, it was cause for a goddamn Special Prosecutor and a blow job from a consenting adult was cause for impeachment. I'm still puzzled as to how it all works - lie us into a war, eviscerate FEMA and fill it with your lameass prep school boy buddies, run up a debt that our great-grandkids will still be carrying, none of that is cause for accountability. But Monica Lewinsky was a scandal.

It's true. I just can't grasp conservative values.