Well, at least I must not be old. If I were really old, I'd have shattered a hip or something, as I can't seem to get the snowboarding together, and keep catching an edge and variously cartwheel or flip or snowball or scorpion my way down the hill. Until I'm too tired to fight it all any more, and then it all magically comes together for the last run of the day. Definitely has to be my head, but knowing isn't helping. Ah well, there have still been some magical moments, like hitting a patch of completely untouched powder while riding at speed and finally understanding completely why powder is da bomb (rather than something one simply sinks into and has to laboriously dig out of... repeatedly). Tomorrow's the last day on the hill at Whistler, and then on a plane back to Toronto just in time to get all my gift wrapping done. Hoi-en is the best host ever, and I'm already planning the next trip...
Hoi-en picked me up from the airport on Friday night, and her iPod charger, necessary to get the music out of the battery-dead iPod and into our ears via the car stereo, was declining to perform its sole task in life. "Jiggle the cable," she advised, so I wiggled bits of the cable here and there, and reconnected the ends. "No, like this," she said, and proceeded to give the end of the cable plugged into the cigarette lighter a vigourous hand job. Still no go, and I was certain that the cable was indeed completely dead, because who or what wouldn't wake up for something like that?
"Unplug everything and put it back into the glove compartment." I stared at her uncomprehendingly. Seeing my disbelief, she asked, "Don't you ever do that? Like when the car won't start and you get out and then get back in again." I blinked. No, actually, I've never, ever done such a thing. Clearly all the jiggling in the world wasn't accomplishing anything, though, so I conceded and put the iPod, cable and charger back in the glove compartment, and we chatted for a while.
A bit later I remembered the iPod and pulled all the bits out, connected them, and everything worked just fine. Clearly I know nothing at all about technology...
Just moved to exceptionally commodious accommodations at Dream Host. Now I just have to figure out what to do with 400 GB of online storage...
Today's quote of the day comes to you from the comments of YouTube:
"men probably also invented the idea of the blow job but that doesn't mean they should go around giving them. some things is just women's work, gab dannit."
-- tdejmcd
I laughed and laughed...
What feels like a long while back now, I did an interview with Wendy Eidson, who was making a video about men who knit. The result of this and many other interviews was a DVD called Real Men Knit. A couple of months ago Wendy posted a promo for the DVD on YouTube, and there has been some controversy in the comments. Yesterday it was added to Featured Videos on the main page, and I really find it fascinating that for so many people the idea of men knitting is such a challenging concept, and that perceived gender-specificity of activities is still so closely tied to concepts of sexuality. At least for many of the adolescents commenting...
Are most men who knit gay? Well my first response is to wonder why anyone would care, but when I objectively look the answer seems to be yes, mostly they are gay. I really don't think that this means that knitting is gay, though. What it really means is that men who are gay don't need to worry that people will think they're gay because they knit. They already know they're gay because of the blow jobs...