Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Knitting is the New Rock, Pink is the New Orange, Reading is the New Sleeping.
Didn't make it to Alternative Fashion Week, Tosca and salsaing were great. I suppose "Unashamed, predatory lust" was apt for my operatic deflowering. And I want more. John has appointed himself culture nazi and apparently we'll be going to the Royal Opera (where, unlike the ENO, they don't sing in English).
I tried to be a different kind of culture nazi Friday night, but John slept instead of joining Wendy and me at the Cast Off event at the V&A. Wendy and I relearned how to knit, in a room full of museum goers of all ages, where the music was thumping, the beer flowing, the videoart projecting, and the hub bubbing. I may post pictures at some point of human knitting (I am an excellent needle) and my garish scarf in progress. It has a certain erratic charm, but is more a tactile record of my experiments with how knitting works than a piece of apparel, as Wendy commented. I replied, "Almost a pillow book, of sorts. But with no naked Ewan McGregor, more's the pity."
You can also check out this article about the Cast Off event, if the Times site is accessible to you. Arthur notes, 'the only word in quotes correctly attributed to me is "No." Most of the rest captures my meaning (and sometimes makes me sound rather more clever) but in no way resembles the words I used.'
I think I stumbled across Flaneur.org from the blog of one of the a softer world creators. Anyway, this essay about the freeway and public spaces and community memory in New Orleans is lovely, and I might use it in one of my essays for Planning Theory/Problem Structuring Methods. Look at how easily my web surfing is rationalised. Hoorah.
Also rationalised away: I'm going to find some way to incorporate Call Centre Confidential into our group project/presentation on phone line staffing at a fictitious airline, and even the brilliant Suburban TrunkMonkey is more than funny (and its funniness, particularly Episode 4, is beyond funny all on its own). It's useful, because we could have "a DeskMonkey that you can call out when poor service is delivered." OK, maybe that's a stretch. Anyway, DeskMonkey's Kevin's great idea, and I'm stealing it.
More easily justified are the many Global Citizen articles by the late Donella Meadows I've been reading, along with her book of the same title (due back in the library this evening), since it was actively recommended in class AND I can use it for my OR414 essay, glancingly. I really like her writing, and I agree with a lot of her concerns about sustainability. But I also question some of her arguements, and am working on figuring out if I agree with this critique of her reasoning and of the application of system dynamics to big systems.
Now I'm off to the library and then to this; even if knitting's the new rock, I still like live music.
