Don’t get used to it.

Fine. I got tagged for one of these stupid meme things. Now, I know that I have never expressed my hostility about these before, mostly because I don’t mind ’em on other peoples blogs, but you would think that the fact that I’ve been blogging for a year and haven’t even done ONE would mean something. Still, I have never been entirely clear about memes and dental work being about equal on my “big fun in the big city scale” so when Aubergine (our gentleman of the comments) tagged me on his new blog, I thought to myself “Fine. You know what? I’ll do one.”

This is the first, and the last time and I’m only doing it because I was looking for a reason to mention Aubergines
new blog anyway. So there.

1. The last movie you went to see in a theater:

A series of unfortunate events” which was really, really good, though Sam is still a little bit bitter that they left out some of the stuff in the books. Joe is still chuckling because when Jim Carey needs to be a salty sea captain…he plays it as a Newfie. Makes me want to call up Jim and say “Psstt…your Canadian is showing”.

2. The last movie you watched at home:

Festival Express

3. How many movies do you own?

31 (I counted. No reason to be innacurate). Though *technically* they are only mine because they are in my house. Nothing about the collection reflects my taste. With the exception of a couple for the kids, the rest of the movies belong to Joe and are pretty exclusively James Bondesque in nature. All of them have stuff blowing up, and a really surprising number of them have Harrison Ford in them. If I didn’t have fairly reliable evidence to support the idea that Joe is straight, I’d say he had a thing for Harrison Ford.

What was the last movie you bought?

Er…does the Crunch Pilates Workout dvd count?

4. Got Netflix (or a similar service)?

No. We have a Blockbuster at the corner… so it seems silly. (But I want it anyway…mostly because I love anything that is delivered. Anything.) Before we used the Blockbuster we went to the little independent guy down the street. We quit when Joe went to China, and I went into the shop alone. I tried to rent something…”Monster” I think, and the guy told me that I couldn’t rent that without my husbands permission because I was a “Nice Girl”. I went pretty ballistic. Then I went home (with no movie) and waited nine days for Joe to get home from China. Then I told him to fix it.

Joe came back from the movie place and said, “It’s Okay honey. I told him that you have my permission to rent anything you want.”

I was so angry, at both of them, really….that I put on my coat, walked to the shop, went straight to the back where they have the “XXX” movies in the little closet. I stuck my arm in, grabbed one and slammed it on the counter.

It was only when I got home that the irony of renting degrading pornography to make a feminist point sort of dawned on me. I didn’t watch it.

What are the next three movies in your queue?

Well, I don’t have that there “netflix” thingie…but I want to see

“Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow”

“Sideways” and

“Cellular”

5. List five movies you adore/mean a lot to you:



Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid“. (“Who are those guys?“)

The Guns of Navarone” (I can’t explain this one. I’m an enigma.)

Fargo“. (I love Marge and I have a real thing for William H. Macy and well…the Coen brothers. Anything by them.)

This is Spinal Tap

Dr. Strangelove: Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

6. Name your guilty pleasure movie (or genre):



Musicals. Let’s never speak of this again.

7. What’s your favourite quote from a movie?

Dr. Evil: “You’re not quite evil enough. You’re semi-evil. You’re quasi-evil. You’re the margarine of evil. You’re the Diet Coke of evil, just one calorie, not evil enough.”

or

Anything from Zoolander. Especially that part where the girl spills her guts about how the pressure from the fashion industry has really hurt her self image and how for a while she was “Bulemic”, then Zoolander looks at her, and he’s totally stunned and he says “You can read minds?”

8. Name 3 people to whom you’re going to pass these questions on, and why:



The madness stops here. I’m not passing it on.

Your regularly scheduled mitten disasters and meltdowns, along with prizes and merriment will return tomorrow, when your local Yarn Harlot doesn’t have to do a dumb meme, and has retrieved the digital camera from the studio where she left it because she had two beers at the party.

70 thoughts on “Don’t get used to it.

  1. WTF?! Would you please explain that stupid ass “Nice Girl” policy to me? I’ve never heard of such stupidity. Really. What the hell?!

  2. Meme aside, sounds like you’re doing better. I’m glad to hear it. I worried about you a bit this weekend, but hoped the party would help. Seems it didn’t hurt 🙂

  3. Oh Dear! I read your last post! The mitten disaster was just well .. classic! I think that it is definitely something I would do!
    You could always find someone with two left hands!hehhe.Or a missing thumb!
    I did enjoy reading your MEME bit! So fear not.. it’s not THAT bad!
    Denise

  4. Ahhh, yes. Zoolander. Now, every time DH says I word I don’t know the meaning of, I look at him and say “you can read minds?”
    This happens more than I care to admit, as he will ramble on about his job which is highly technical and has several fun words associated with it.
    I never did send my condolences about the mitten incident. I am sorry, so very sorry.

  5. Glad to hear you survived the weekend which I imagined would be full of Screech. Maybe it wasn’t! Maybe you started and finished a left Latvian mitten in record speed and have gone on to start something altogether new. Now *that* wouldn’t surprise me one bit.
    As for your top 5 movie list: BC and the SDK is always in my top 5. So is Fargo!

  6. Steph. I don’t know about the meme thing, but I do like your favorite movies. Especially, Fargo. Every summer I go up to Minnesota and run across old Norwegians who still talk like that. Then there was the State Patrol Dispatcher from North Dakota who when she called was oh, yah, you betcha! Honestly, Ole and Lena jokes are some of the best. Have a great day and look forward to reading you tomorrow.

  7. Yay! A fellow Guns of Navarone fan! David Niven’s character (and Edward Fox’s character in the sequel Force 10 From Navarone–which included a very young and cute Harrison Ford) was the inspiration for me to study chemical engineering. I kid you not.

  8. hahahahaha! We use “the diet coke of evil” around here a lot. And a good deal of lines from So I married an axe murderer. Mike Myers cracks me up in a very stupid way. Not too mention that If I didn’t know any better, I would swear he based “Wayne and Garth” on my big brother and his best friend.
    “Heed! Pants! Now!”

  9. You didn’t pass it on. You’re a saint.
    The ‘good girl’ movie policy is totally unbelievable. Except I believe you didn’t make it up.

  10. hahahahaha! We use “the diet coke of evil” around here a lot. And a good deal of lines from So I married an axe murderer. Mike Myers cracks me up in a very stupid way. Not too mention that If I didn’t know any better, I would swear he based “Wayne and Garth” on my big brother and his best friend.
    “Heed! Pants! Now!”

  11. What did you think of “Festival Express”? I recently convinced my quasi-boyfriend to purchase it (I’m cheap but convincing) and pretty much through the intire thing thought… Hmmm Canada’s a pretty cool place, the Yarn Harlot and a really cool “musical history”. 😉
    Hehehe The Diet Coke of Evil… heheheh

  12. Oh no, I now have Spinal Tap songs in my head.aaaaahhh. You MUST see Sideways ASAP, it’s such a lovely, funny, sad, sweet movie. Love it.
    “It goes to eleven”

  13. Steph-
    Thanks for mentionning my new blog (insert hyperlink here) – you rock! People are… like… commenting and stuff!
    I can’t believe you’re not gonna pass it on – that’s just asking for a whole host of future mitten disasters. Karma Speaks, “Harlot indeed.”

  14. Glad to see you are NOT buried in the backyard in an igloo.
    I love Spinal Tap. “But it goes to eleven!”
    Off to see the new blog.

  15. What do you mean musicals are a guilty pleasure? You never know when they’ll come in handy.
    Case in point: I got a homeless man to hold the subway door for me in Harlem (NYC) at 2 in the morning once because I was singing at the top of my lungs (I believe it was Anything Goes, but I could be mistaken. My musical repetoire is disturbingly large) No alcohol was involved.
    No guilt at all, please!

  16. Ah, yeah, the memes. It was fun to read yours… I just got tagged with the music one yesterday!
    oh, and I love Zoolander quotes too 🙂

  17. Just watched “Sky Captain” this weekend. Not bad. Of course, there is no “nice girl” policy where I rent from. I have never even put a limb into the “xxx” room, but would if some idiot clerk pissed me off enough. Although you want to hear ironic? The only place in town that rents porn is “Family Video”.

  18. The look of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is just gorgeous. I saw it this weekend, finally!
    Gwyneth wears a lovely knitted hat in one segment.
    The mitten situation highlights the laser-like focus you have. I think that is amazing.

  19. Ah, the Coen Brothers. Fargo is great, but there’s nothing like The Big Lebowski to make my sides hurt from laughing. “Eight year olds, dude.”
    Sky Captain is definitely worth renting. It’s probably one of the few sci-fi movies I ever got in to (Damn you, Jude Law!). Very entertaining.

  20. Somebody tell me, please — is “meme” pronounced to sound like meem or me, me? I’m guessing it’s not memm, as in French for same. . . and what does it mean??? I mean, what does the word itself mean? I can tell what the concept is.

  21. I never pass on nasty bits like a meme or one of those wretched “fwd, fwd, fwds”…ESPECIALLY the ones that say some terrible end will be my fate if I don’t pass it along. Those “if you are my friend you will send this back to me” ones are even worse. They are truly evil.

  22. Aw, geez….I like Zoolander, and Spinal Tap and I Married an Ax Murderer (Love the Head bit) And Fargo was okay…but not everybody in Minnesota talks like that, just like no one ever does the Boston accent exactly right, except maybe Saturday Night Live..
    But what about Best in Show? And Young Frankenstein? (Could be worse, could be raining)
    Or Monty Python?
    My list could go on and on…
    Oh and it sounds like the party was a success…

  23. Forgive my blog-ignorance, but what is a meme? Some blog version of a chain letter? I have a constitutional dislike of chain letters…

  24. Guilty Pleasure Musical Movies–how about Phantom of the Paradise? We just introduced our teenagers to this little gem last week. Awful and funny and catchy all at once. My daughter was astounded that Paul Williams was/is a star. Of course he is, dearie, he’s an evil musical genius! Bwah-haaahaahaa!

  25. To the best of my knowledge, it’s pronounced “meem.” It used to be used by scholarly types to refer to an idea or concept that propogates through a culture, rather like a virus. Nowadays, it’s more often used to describe something that appears on a bunch of blogs at about the same time — lists of questions like this one are common, as are internet quizzes, links to weird sites, etc.
    Here’s a good description, if you want to know more:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
    /geek scholar mode.
    (Sorry; I lived and breathed in academia for over 10 years — it’s hard to shake the effects sometimes!)

  26. Zoolander is one of my all time favs! David Bowie judging the catwalk contest and “I think I have the black lung” … oh god, Stiller can not get better than that – at least in my book.
    So sorry for the mittens disaster (they look beautiful regardless).
    -Franny

  27. Zoolander’s definitely on my all-time best list. The Walk-Off is my favorite part. Damn. Now I’ll have to watch it again.

  28. How nice and degrading! Sheesh. I think porn was the only answer really. I feel the same way about things being delivered and so also want to join netflix even though I know that I have no time for movies. Can’t wait for return to regular posting 🙂

  29. Glad to see you survived the Great Mitten Meltdown.
    I did my Master’s Thesis on Sam Shepard and included Fargo. (If I was gonna have to rewrite something 56 times, it’d better be about a subject that I LIKED)
    “High on a hill, lived a lonely goatherd…”
    😉

  30. I laughed myself sick reading of the porn incident. This laughter was specially welcome, as it’s almost 10 pm, I was supposed to finish an article for a collection of scientific essays by the end of this month and my daughter is making That Noise.
    Ooh, musicals! I just bought Singing in the Rain for my husband. 🙂 (Though I must admit that the most frequently watched musical in this household nowadays is Once More With Feeling, the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I just can’t help myself.)

  31. I’m with Amie, musicals aren’t a guilty pleasure. But I also don’t see irony in renting the porn, you were just going to prove his point that he was wrong about you, you weren’t a “nice girl,” because what did that mean anyway, and why did that matter if you were renting a movie?
    But I’m sick and twisted like that anyway.

  32. Heh. I used to do a lot of memes when I posted very regularly to my non-knitting blog, but it meant that there was not a lot of real content. People who came to the page were contending with really boring quizzes or tables about who would be in x movie (if I was casting). Half the people didn’t even know the other half. Not very interesting to read.
    I would much rather read about your mitten successes and disasters than most memes.

  33. I just saw Sky Captain for the first time. It’s really fun. It was completely irresistible for my comic book geek husband, and any movie that isn’t animated, has some romance to it, and can still be watched in front of the children is a plus, as I’m surrounded by the little darlings constantly and am completely sick of their movie criteria.

  34. Do tell about the MSF party…
    In my family the movie phrase is “widower than what?”

  35. I’m new here and I’m so pleased to find someone who voices my sentiments about life and knitting (as though they could be separated)better than I can.I’m knee-deep in the harlot poncho and studying but I do have a question – what are the MSF donations? Also, what are the prizes? Are they related? Thanks.

  36. Joe went and gave his permision,and you didn’t pack his bags ?…
    That’ll have been one of his near death experiences then !

  37. Happy, (Insert the state from which U.S. Pres. comes) – Wllm. Macy cries – he’s adorable.
    Station Agent -extremely soothing, can’t say why and there is a character named Joe, also adorable.
    Zoolander – “Eugoogely” My mother, the English teacher, nearly fell off the couch she laughed so hard.

  38. I can’t stop laughing about you renting porn just to prove a point! haha!
    I’m sorry, I can’t stop!
    Does it mean anything that I just got my first meme too? Never before have I gotten one. Made me feel kind of like I had been left out of the high school lunch table. And then I realized. I don’t mind being left out of the lunch table. Then I just make my own better version!
    what was I thinking?
    🙂
    I have had a mitten disaster too. What is with that? I knit way PAST the thumb on this one. Tonight, I rip.

  39. One dissenter here, I found Sky Captain boring, boring,zzzzzzz, and I’m a sci-fi geek. Couldn’t make up it’s mind whether it wanted to be Blade Runner (oh look, Harrison again) or Rocketeer (a dishy, smarmy Timothy Dalton). Jude and Gywneth reminded me of Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone in the 1985 version of King Solomon’s Mines, one of the single most horrible movies ever made. (with enough Leinenkugel’s that’s a good thing). I didn’t even watch the end, but apparently I didn’t miss much.
    However, I never would have believed that Leonardo De Caprio could act! I had a blast watching the Aviator (not on DVD yet), I looked at all the costumes, and my hubby drooled over the planes. I’d rather see Johhny Depp get the Oscar though.

  40. I’m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet…
    Steph, you’re fame grows!
    Today’s edition of the UK national newspaper The Guardian has a article on page 5 about knitting and gives two links at the side of the page as ‘suggested reading’. I can’t remember what the OTHER link was, but…
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1402029,00.html
    That’s the online version!
    Stewart (Nottingham, UK)

  41. Furthermore, I can’t believe I put YOU’RE instead of YOUR in that last message.
    A thousand apologies.
    S

  42. OK, I admit I laughed like a hyena when I looked at the pioture of the mittens. So I had to eat dirt today on my own blog — the gods always punish hubris — and will rip out the whole weekend’s knitting later tonight. Steph, you KNOW that if you knit a third mitten you are going to lose only that one and be stuck once again with two right-handed mittens. Murphy’s Law, Knitting Corollary #17.

  43. Coen Bros: “Raising Arizona,” best comedy movie ever, and most quotable. In our family, any prospective members must pass the “RA” test–if they like it, they’re in. If not, well, they’re still in, but…they just don’t get it. The one sister in law who hates Raising Arizona? We have nothing in common with that woman. She likes sappy “chick flicks” like Runaway Bride. Anything with Julia Roberts (except Erin Brockovich, the one JR movie I liked). But I digress…my husband, thankfully, is a Coen Bros fan, especially RA. Really, could I have married him if he wasn’t?

  44. *still can’t breathe* Have you recovered from Friday’s revelation? I’m still in shock. After I saw the picture I had to force myself to read on. It’s the car accident I want to look away from, but keep staring at for reasons beyond my control. You can get through this. You’re better than me. Sending good vibes your way …

  45. I don’t see why Musicals are a guilty pleasure. I’m still thinking about my replies to the meme, and Musicals was going to figure in the main category.

  46. Hee hee, musicals. I got “Paint your wagon” for Christmas because my mom “remembered how much I loved it as a kid”. Lee Marvin still cracks me up, but Clint Eastwood? Singing “I still see Elisa”? Oh,no. No no no no no.

  47. Ooops. Sorry Harlot. I said what about “Phantom of the Paradise”…Just read in the paper it bombed everywhere in the world except–Winnipeg. In Winnipeg, it ran for 62 weeks, the entire year 1975. So you’ve all likely never heard of it, but it’s still my favorite. *Sigh*

  48. They’re breakdance fighting!
    For some reason, I have this association with Fargo and bloody, snowy massacre. I haven’t actually seen the movie but I guess I am somehow tragically misinformed.
    It took me a long time to figure out what was wrong iwth the mittens (I had to read the comments.) Yeah, I’m an artist, trained in the meticulous virtue of observation and the way the human body is put together, why do you ask?

  49. wow, I don’t think I’ve ever been told that I need my husband’s (or my father’s) permission to do anything like rent a movie. That’s a well-deserved boycott.
    Oh, Zoolander, how funny thou art. Eugoogly…

  50. Your favourite movie quote came in very handy this morning when a coworker jokingly asked in an email “how evil was I”? haha!

  51. enigma shmigma!! read the guns of navarone for grade 9 english and loved it then we got to watch the movie and i LOVED it! not sure if it was the joy of getting to watch a movie in class or the movie but i think it was the movie 😉
    how ’bout thelma and louise? that coulda taught you a thing or two about dealing with the movie rental dude

  52. I have a friend who’s a Newfie. God, I love that accent. It doesn’t help that he’s totally hot, and brilliant.
    I think I need to go have a lie-down now. And go see the Lemony Snicket movie cuz, well, Jim Carey – yeah. Let’s not speak of that again either.

  53. I am so disturbed about that nice girl policy. I can’t believe such things are done in this day and age, or that it’s even legal to do that (I am sure it’s completely illegal to have a policy like that in the US, btw). Anyway, I am glad you boycotted the place.

  54. emmajane — well, at least her wheels.
    Jodi — How do we convince Klaus that there is blood on the snow AND that Fargo is delightful?
    (Doesn’t it feel like we’re all waiting out here for the doors to open? Don’t get trampled in the ruuuuuuuuuuushhhhhhh.)

  55. Ah, I feel for you with the mitten disaster. I just did the same thing myself, and the only good thing about knitting that third mitten was that it was a child’s mitten, not an adult size. I am blaming my middle aged brain for this one.

  56. You didn’t whip out your drivers license and prove to him that you are over 18?? I would have had his head…perhaps he could have let you borrow the phone to call your husband for permission!!! Next time Joe leaves maybe he should have left a generic permission slip for you. Sorry, I lived in the middle east for a number of years and that stuff doesn’t fly with me.
    Have you rented Dodgeball yet?? Pretty good.

  57. “How can the children be expected to learn how to read, if they can’t even fit inside the building? The center has to be at least… three times this size. I have a vision.”

Comments are closed.