Getting My Geek On
I finally got hold of Alex Lloyd's third album, Distant Light the other day. It's the aural equivalent of me snuggling up in a blanket on a spring day: it's invigourating but also deeply comforting. However, most days I'm listening to Canadian band Alaska in Winter - their album continues to worm its way into my ears.
And most days I am passing time by harking back to my roots. My grandmother sews, knits, crochets, embroiders and works with paper; my mother crochets, works with paper and even writes songs; my uncle P. paints, does graphic design and builds small castles in his back garden.. you get the picture. We are a creative bunch. I can sew, knit, crochet, do calligraphy, work with paper, paint and dabble in photography with quite good results. Right now I crochet and am re-discovering my love for textiles, textures and multi-dimensional shapes. It is exciting to see something I have in my head suddenly begin to appear between my hands just through using a hook and some scrap yarn. Exciting, I tell you!
And then you get people who think of crocheting as a mathematical exercise. The Institure for Figuring has an entire subsite dealing with Hyperbolic Space. It's actually really damn cool:
We have created a world of rectilinearity. The rooms we inhabit, the skyscrapers we work in, the grid-like arrangement of our streets, the shelves on which we store our possessions, and the freeways we cruise on our daily commute speak to us in straight lines. But what exactly is a straight line? And how do such “objects” relate to one another?
This question, so seemingly trivial, lies at the heart of a conundrum that dates back to the dawn of the Western mathematical tradition. Though seemingly obvious, the property of “straightness” turns out to be a subtle and surprisingly fecund concept. Understanding this quality ultimately led mathematicians to discover a radical new kind of space that had hitherto seemed abhorrent and impossible.
Books Running Through the Veins
If you can read Danish, it might amuse you to know that the editor of Bogrummet (The Book Room) is my cousin. I sorta-kinda-almost knew what she had been doing with her time, but it had sorta-kinda-almost slipped my mind.
It's still very cool and utterly amusing in a absolutely-definitely way.
Bringing Gifts
Look what the postman just brought! Seven copies of Odd and the Frost Giant by Neil Gaiman. This means that the non-UK people who requested a copy will receive one very, very soon. Hooray!
Before We Started Painting the Town
It is just one of those things, as Cole Porter wrote. I do not intend to let Fourth Edition become a voyeuristic woe-is-me blog just because I happen to be rather ill at the moment. Sadly, I am rather ill at the moment and so Fourth Edition languishes a bit. It probably irritates me more than it irritates you.
If you are a Dane, Spillet med byer might appeal (I'm hopeless when it comes to placing towns in Jutland) and if you are not, it could have a certain absurdish appeal trying to place obscure Danish towns on a map.
Saturday Linkage
This week I rummaged around on the net and almost accidentally joined a book club based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Thankfully the members correspond with each other online. The idea is that you set yourself up for reading 20 books within a set time (which is very achievable) and some of these books have to be books recommend to you (which is admittedly the only thing I struggle with a bit because I am set in my ways, I am). I have always had a natural distrust of book clubs but let's see how this one works out.
Famous SciFi films as Woodcuts? Yes, and they are beautiful. I have always had a soft spot for Russian woodcuts - this probably stems from my childhood when I'd read Eastern European fairy tales illustrated with amazingly visceral woodcuts (I'm still amazed that my parental unit never took them away from me - some of the woodcuts were brutal). Now I'm not entirely sure whether the linked pictures are actual woodcuts or illustrations deliberately designed to recall woodcuts (I suspect the latter) - but I do know it's fun trying to suss out just which film they are referring to. And The Matrix one is just damn cool.
I have also looked at Seven Proposed Futuristic Cities. Funny how modern architecture tends towards towers/tall structures (and has done so for about a century). I would be much more interested in futuristic cities preoccupied with ecology, sustainable energy and fabulous architecture. Surely these things are not mutually exclusive?
Finally, as I have had nasty migraines all throughout, I have spent most of my time crocheting. Yeah, I've rediscovered my crafty roots (I used to be really creative and crafty when I was in my teens) thanks to surfing Etsy and thinking: "You want $35 for that?! Dream on.."
So, let me know if you want a hat or a scarf. I promise I won't crochet anything too heinous (plus you could always go for an iPod cover).
How are YOU Doin’?!
Thanks to Tina who's still in academia (and thus has access to Project MUSE and I'm not at all envious of this), I have learned that F. Scott Fitzgerald had many talents:
"In the collection of his papers at Princeton University, Fitzgerald's scrapbook contains newspaper clippings of his publicity photograph and the letters that he received in response; one writer urged Fitzgerald to consider working as a female impersonator. In the same book, he also clipped and saved newspaper articles in which college presidents debated the danger that cross-dressing posed to their students. Yale enacted a rule that men could only perform as women [End Page 27] once every two years, lest their sense of themselves as men be damaged. Perhaps disappointed over his suspension from the Triangle Club (and other extracurricular activities as a result of his grades), Fitzgerald took it upon himself to attend a University of Minnesota fraternity party in drag while home for Christmas vacation. This performance also hit the papers ("He's Belle of the Ball Until Astonished Co-eds Find Blond Wig on Chair") and appears in Fitzgerald's scrapbook."
(Source: Pearl James' "History and Masculinity in F. Scott Fitzgerald's this Side of Paradise", MFS Modern Fiction Studies 51.1 (2005) 1-33)
I Should Be Texting You This. Possibly.
Tuesday I went to see my GP again for a non-seizure/keeling over matter and I was met with the immortal words: "Yup, we need to take a closer look at that. Which hospital would you prefer?" I did not know whether to laugh or cry. I still don't.
So, life is filled with little ups-and-downs at the moment.
On the other hand, I have begun reading The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke. I normally do not like short stories but a persistent migraine has forced me to accept swallow small segments of text. So far I am enjoying the read - the title story has an interestingly staunch feminist take on Clarke's own imaginative world as well as a delicious sapphic undercurrent.
James Joyce has been tucked under my pillow until the migraine abates. Oddly enough, I do not think he would mind?
Snapshot
Shop assistant at the bookshop (precisely, slowly): "You .. want discount .. on books, don't you? I can .. sign you up for .. discount on .. books. Give me your .. email address."
Later I met my partner by the door to the book shop. He too had been cajoled into signing up for their newsletter by a shop assistant doing the scary voice-thing. Gosh, what does the Borders chain do to their staff?
R.I.P.
P.S. Surely it is also time to announce that the postmodern novel passed away some time ago?
Our Protagonist Wonders..
Two questions: How do you say "I would like to buy six live chicken, please" in German? And if I were to say to you: "You look like a one-eyed pirate except you have two eyes," how would you interpret that?
I try to keep track of news in my erstwhile home country of Denmark. The more I read about government incentives, the happier I am that I chose to move to the UK where my being foreign isn't treated as a disease. It would have been far more difficult for my Scottish partner to move across and I dread to think what it would have been like if David had not had a very obvious Scottish surname. One day I'll reclaim Denmark from the people who annexed my nationality and turned it into something completely alien and repulsive. Right now I'll just sit here and wonder what on earth happened to Denmark.
Cooking experiment: Danish rice pudding cooked with coconut milk instead of regular milk and served with fresh raspberries = very, very yummy.
PS. "George W. Bush praises Tanzania" - a news headline from today which I find really quite amusing.