I’m sure you all understood that the plague of locusts in the basement would be metaphoric. No actual locusts, just a string of irksome and annoying little things, that, much like locusts, are no big deal individually, but together are a paralysing disaster.
For starters, I have a splinter under the fingernail of my right index finger. (The finger otherwise known as “The finger that it turns out I use for everything in my whole life all day long”) The splinter is not serious, the splinter will not harm me in any way…its only impact on my life is to provide a little stab of pain every 2-7 seconds all day long. (I can’t find the stinking tweezers)
This wouldn’t bother me too much if it wasn’t for the drilling in the back of the house. Now, I’d be the last person to complain about the back of the house. The back of the house is even starting to look like the back of everyone else’s house. I’m thrilled and happy that the back of the house is coming along, I just wish that the drilling noises didn’t coincide with the stabbing finger thing.
Once I’d accepted the stabbing and the drilling and the phone…(did I mention that everyone in the whole world called yesterday during the three hours I was trying to sit and work?) I really didn’t have many problems. Oh…except the hat I was knitting.
What hat? EXACTLY. I knit the better part of a hat yesterday until I discovered that the stabbing, drilling and ringing had apparently thrown me off my game a little and I was knitting a hat with a 31 inch circumference. (A little note to help you understand the freak show locust hat size: Joe has an enormous head. It is so large that when I tell people how big it is they suspect that I don’t know how to use a tape measure. Joe’s head is 25 inches around.) See the pretty hat? Feel the rising blood pressure?
Never mind. I’m sure I can comfort myself with a little mitten knitting. I knit the red flowers, and made my way merrily about 5cm up the green and white hand. Where is it ?
Don’t ask. Apparently the whole enormo-hat thing caused some sort of brain damage and I didn’t centre the pattern on the mitt. Ok. I didn’t even try to centre the pattern. Actually, I screwed up the red flower border too and forgot to do the black braid at the top. This photo represents only what I was able to redo after the locust invasion.
Now normally, I’m a pretty relaxed person. That’s a lie. I’m never a relaxed person, but normally I have a pretty good grip on real life anyway. I understand that these things happen. Some days just have real teeth to ’em, and you just have to accept that there will be days when there is stabbing, ringing, drilling, enormo-hats, whacked mittens and poor outlooks. I’m ok with that. I don’t like it, but it happens. I am as a rock in the river. I should just let this flow over me.
And I would…except for that it is 17 days until Christmas. There is no room for error. There is no time for mistakes. This is the Precision-Operations of knitting. I must rise above the locusts set in my path. I must not be thrown off by the stabbing, ringing, drilling, enormo-hats and mitten retribution. I know how this goes. Today I restore order. Today…
Today I find the tweezers and take it one step at a time.
A little note to whoever is responsible for deciding to drown my blog comments in spam over the last two days:
In the interest of you not wasting your time and me not wasting my time, lets clear a few things up. I don’t play roulette and I don’t know what “Texas-hold-em” is, but I assure you that I don’t want it. I don’t need to diet, and I wouldn’t buy drugs from you if you were paying *me*, furthermore, if I did want to make a health decision, I assure you I wouldn’t think to myself, “Hey, didn’t my blog comment spam offer me medical advice the other day? How convenient”. While God and I are not on speaking terms, I understand that he probably wouldn’t like you sending me bible verses with imbedded ads for what we shall politely refer to as adult toys and extra curricular activities. I hope he smites you. I’m not balding, I don’t do that with my pets (and I think we can all agree that there is something very, very wrong with you and your suggestions.) I’m no prude, but I can tell you that I think better of women than you do and would prefer that if you must demean them (though this is probably why you were alone last night) with filth and poor taste that you do it somewhere where a feminist ain’t paying the bills, baby. Finally, nobody here feels inadequate about their penis size (though sometimes we wonder what you are trying to prove) and can rise to the occasion without any guidance, concern or email from you. Please stop offering, it’s offensive.
In conclusion, I’m going to offer you one more piece of advice. I will never, ever, no matter how desperate I become, or how convenient it may be, or how many times I see the word “busty” purchase anything from someone who is really, really PISSING ME OFF.
I bet your mother cries when she thinks about what you do for a living. Get your arse of my blog and better yourself.
Couldn’t have stated it better myself. Although, those penis enlarging products might actually help me… I can’t seem to find one on me anywhere…
Hope you find the tweezers!
I feel better about my giganto 23″ head now.
Oh Harlot, can I copy that last bit and use it as a reply to all those who spam me? That would be a small slice of heaven if I could annoy them even half as much as they annoy me. I commend you on your *lovely* response.
I think the spam comments are what killed my blog. So I sympathize.
One question–were you knitting a PINK hat for Joe?!
Just a quick note to Jessica (and anyone else who replies to spammers) – if you respond to Spam Mail, all you do is notify the spammer that they’ve hit a legitimate email address, and they will FLOOD your email with more spam than you can imagine.
It’s the worst thing you can do. Really.
Hope that helps someone, anyone. 🙂
Jackie
Janice, that wasn’t a pink hat for Joe. Stephanie was finally calling our bluff and knitting herself a foreskin to go with her electronically enlarged penis.
(scampering out of smacking range)
Splinter under your nail! That made me flinch! And now I know why I don’t knit for Christmas. All speed on those needles!
You tell em’!!
BTW, I just measured my head (out of sheer curiousity). It is 23 1/2 inches. And I am only 5’3″ and have a flat head. I would only sleep/play on my back as an infant, and now as an adult the back of my head is perfectly flat. Nobody ever believes me until they feel it. Hope the locust swarm leaves as quickly as it came-in December time is the enemy!
The time of precision knitting indeed. And to make matters more complex still, the new Knitty is out with some splendid new patterns (http://www.knitty.com). Arrgghhh! I totally empathize with you on the splinter-drilling-big hat thing. But I do have a question — are you really knitting a hat in those colors for Joe? Since Joe won’t see it, who will raw your attention to the color scheme? I seem to remember that Joe never wears anything that is more than one (dark) colors except a yellow raincoat.
Maybe we should do list of 100 things we know about Joe 🙂
As I was reading this, water gushed across my desk and into my lap (from a faulty paper cup), I got an email that I have my annual “performance review” tomorrow, my vacation plans fell through, and I choked on a crouton. Surely the locusts will be filling my office in a matter of minutes. I am currently hiding under my desk.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for both of us.
That was a very eloquent Dear Spammer letter – typed with a locust under your fingernail no less! A true demonstration of your passion! And by the way, have you seen the back of your house?? A finished room is in sight!
people with gigantic heads unite!! my head is indeed 25″ around. better yet my 10 son’s head? 24″. i tell all of my big headed offspring our heads are this size to hold our gigantic brains. my husband is the only one in this house with a normal size noggin. sorry to hear about the spam…
Your spam response was absolutely the most hilarious thing I’ve read all day. Thanks for putting such a humorous spin on one of life’s little annoyances.
Oh, and as for Joe’s head size, just remind yourself that size doesn’t matter – it’s what you can do with it that counts. 🙂
hurrah for you! way to tell those spammers what you think. May I add to that by reminding all my friends that there IS NO email tracking software that will count how many times you forward an email, nor is there an organization that will use this software to count how many times to donate 3 cents to starving children?
And I have a huge head. So does my fiancee. What if my children have even bigger heads? When will it end?
Joe does not have a gigando head.
Interesting biology/proportion fact- for adults, if you take the circumference of the human head, it’s the same circumference of that human’s waist if they are at tip-top physical condition, male or female. The woman’s shape isn’t so much the waist going IN (although there is some of that) but the hips going OUT. My head is 23 inches around.
For the record, my waist is twice that.
So, if you want to make yourself a neurotic mess, you can measure your head and your waist and know where mother nature wants you to be, then you can feel too fat or too thin with no help from Vouge.
Bippy
Jackie is right–it’s really not a good idea to respond to spammers in your email. Most email spam is sent with a machine and responding doesn’t get your message through to an actual person, it just tells them that they’ve got a valid email address.
Spammers are now targeting blog comments not to spread their message to the people reading the blog or the person to whom the blog belongs, but to get more links to their site selling whatever it is so when people search Google, their sites will be higher up.
I am so relieved that I am not the only one who was having knitting problems. Everything I tried to knit yesterday was ugly or just wrong. Hopefully it had something to do with the weather and our knitting will be back to normal today. Apprehensively, I knit a bit of a sleeve this morning and it seemed locust-free. Good luck!
Nice spammer letter – it may be above his/her reading level.
I just knit a too big beret for my Mom who always complains that hats do not fit her. My “think big” mantra worked a little too well.
Norma claims that no one looks dorkier in a hat…
http://nownormaknits2.typepad.com/now_norma_knits_2/2004/12/the_strikeeagle.html
Steph, I hope the locust fly elsewhere and you have a better day today. And I especially hope that you find the tweezers because my fingernails are aching in sympathy.
I am currently in a happy little bubble where the calendar means nothing to me and then someone mentions Days Til. I experience a brief moment of panic and then slip back into the bubble.
I am really hoping the bubble doesn’t burst.
Oooh, a 100 things we know about Joe meme. That’s great.
1. he’s dead sexy.
2. I can’t go through the archives, but we know the day of his birth.
3. He is tolerant of living with more yarn than, possibly, any other man on the face of the planet.
4. He’s a sound engeneer.
5. He’s not getting his gansey any time soon since most of it is still not spun.
6. He collects electronics the way our beloved Harlot collects yarn.
7. He fed the children Ice Cream while you were at Rhinebeck.
8. He flipped the coffee cups upside down while you were at Rhinebeck.
9. He’s so wonderful that, sadly, Prince will have to adjust to a life without you for his sake.
10. He’s from Newfoundland. This makes him manly and butch in some way I don’t quite understand.
11. He has weird rules about colors that he’ll wear.
That’s all I can think of off the top o me head.
Bippy
I’ve a HUGE head too… I think mine’s 24 inches or somthing.
And my poor 3 yr old nephew… his head’s 22 inches. I nearly crapped myself when my sister in law took the meaurements for the hat I made him for his birthday. Thank goodness he’s proportional otherwise he’d look like a bobble head.
I think the locusts are at my house as well. I just sewed the sleeves on a sweater and they are too short. And that’s just for starters. And for the record, we are a small headed family . So, if you ever make the mistake the other way, you know where to mail the hats.
Mercury is retrograde, hence the locust. They’re EVERYWHERE!
I would like to continue to believe that astrology is a bunch of hooey (or however you spell that – my apologies for the Immigrant Moment), but it appears to be the only thing that attempts to explain the current infestation. Everybody else says it’s a coincidence. I think not. It’s either the stars or some sort of giant conspiracy involving large multinational corporations doing secret things (yes, I’m an X-Files fan, why do you ask?). Blaming Mercury’s direction is less likely to get me involuntarily committed.
I have an embarrassingly puny head. I found out from an editorial that someone posted from Utah that it’s probably because my mind is so open my brains must have fallen out. I look riDICulous in hats, and my head is way too small for the width of my shoulders. So stop complaining, people, about huge heads. I want one.
Wow, lots of big headed people here, now I don’t feel so bad about my 25″ head. I agree with Lisa – we need this room to hold our big brains.
Pink is Hank’s favourite colour! Gee, I can’t figure out why everyone thought Joe would even accept a pink knitted garment of any sort.
Well, I still want to see a picture of Stephanie in a hat. For purely academic purposes.
It has defied all of my powers of imagination since she mentioned what they made her look like.
Please?
Stephanie, I hope your locusts are on the wane today. I had a day like that, too, although not nearly as spectacular.
A quick tip re: splinters. If you can find it in your junk drawer, a little piece of duct tape put right on the end of the splinter, and left there for a few hours, will suck that baby right out (or should anyhow).
And nice spam commentary!
Ah, the big head issue. My husband also has a freakishly large head… the first hat I made him (using an ‘average’ sized hat pattern – 22 inches) was so small it made his head hurt.
His head is 25.5 inches around!
The back of your house is looking great! Maybe you can use that thought as a salve to the annoying drilling?
“Interesting biology/proportion fact- for adults, if you take the circumference of the human head, it’s the same circumference of that human’s waist if they are at tip-top physical condition, male or female. The woman’s shape isn’t so much the waist going IN (although there is some of that) but the hips going OUT.”
Um… I’d like to see a source on this? The average American male head circumference is 22.1″, average male waist size is 32″. Average female head is 21.6″, average female waist size is 28″. (source http://www.genderweb.org/general/ave_bo.phtml becasue I couldn’t find Canadian stats).
That’s a whole lot of difference… even if you say that the average American is out of shape, most people I know over 5’3″ would *NOT* be healthy at a 22″ waist size. Tip-top physical shape means having some muscle, doesn’t it?
Your waist to *hip* ratio can be a good indicator of health (shouldn’t be greater than 1.0 for men, 0.8 for women… source http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hpfb-dgpsa/onpp-bppn/weight_book_e.pdf)
Sorry, I’m just feeling pedantic today…
You’re not going to like this.
Locusts have been a HUGE problem this year, and are currently making headlines all over the Middle East and Africa. My personal take on it is that Israel’s getting a message from their God (isn’t that how they alwasy get messages from Him? Big disasters as subtle hints to mend their ways?) about all that indiscriminate death they’re dealing to Palestinian children in complete contravention of all their books of rules – but it could be just the right time in the 17-year cycle.
Or it could, actually, all be your fault.
Check it out at the Google News site – click on the News tap and type locusts into the search bar.
My husband’s family called him “our little fathead” when he was little, so that when he got called it later, in school, which was inevitable, he wouldn’t be upset. And the day came, when he went home from school in tears, because when IT happened, his older sister jumped to his defense, saying, “He is not either a fathead!”, and he thought she didn’t love him anymore. I think it’s 25 or 26 inches.
If you can’t find the tweezers soaking it in baking soda and warm water might do the trick on getting rid of the splinter; I don’t know why but it’s always worked for me.
And, what is the name of that lovely pink yarn? It’s lovely and pink and I have decided I am in love with it.
Where oh where is the SJP hairdo/cut/mousse photo ~ you sexy Harlot you!!
Grr. Comment Spam. There’s Pingback Spam, too.
I don’t know if you use MTBlacklist, but I do believe since you’re using Movable Type, you should give your web-person to install MTBlacklist for you. Extra fast spam content removal.
There are moments of insanity when I want to change my comment form to require log-in. Grrr. But then it wouldn’t be nearly as easy to comment. I have seem some comment forms with the little picture at the bottom with a word which you have to type in. That might work?
Ditto Brianne about the pink yarn. Breathtaking. Requesting anything for me made with that yarn (well not a hat ~ you know what I mean). I am still a newbie at the scarf stage.
I have actually, knowing that it would never in a zillion years go through, replied to the spams, telling them off good. Swearing and everything. Wasted into cyber space. It always comes back to me. There will someday be no available email addresses on yahoo because all of them will be abandoned by the spammers of the world.
when I went to rhinebeck, I came back to 297 spam comments.
For a minute I thought I had gotten uber popular.
HA!
Hope splinty is gone!
The scary part, Stephanie? There is no “person” to receive your spam diatribe! It’s just a bunch of stupid databases and servers doing all the work; the real person only stayed around long enough to click the OK button. You know, sometimes I don’t think even the *spammers* could stop the juggernaut they’ve created…
THis too shall pass, and all that crap.
What’s the knitter gift for the day?
I am 99% sure that the spam comments are done by little programs that comment blogs which get a decent amount of traffic.
I’m new to blogging so I don’t know the best way to prevent it, and there may be a few ways, but the program definitely doesn’t care if you’re a children’s site or a knitting site or make strong arguments against its posting. They are, however, starting to make me feel like we need bigger penises.
Oh, baby. Put your head right here (pat, pat). I know I keep joshin about us being the same, and it ain’t even a little bit true. But any reader of the Knitty coffeeshop will know that I did a lot of heavy sighing yesterday and today as well. OK, I’m talkng a plague of gnats here in my case, but still. I think there’s got to be something to this “Mercury in restrospect” lark or “kharmic khom-uppances” or even a bad batch of quesos …
Inhale. Exhale. Rinse. Repeat. Restore order to the universe through sheer force of will and loomy deadlines…. oh dang. What am I doing sitting here at this screen …
You tell those stupid spammers!!!
And here’s a happy thought for you: that back room really is looking pretty good!
I have a 36″ head. Well, actually, I couldn’t find a tape, but according to the post by Bippy all I had to do was check the tag on my jeans.
My sympathies on the renovations – I’m having the kitchen redone. So I set up a table in my bedroom, with a small fridge next to it. Microwave on the fridge, toaster oven on the microwave, beer case under the table – feels like I’m back in University in a dorm. I wonder if I saved any old posters….
Circus freak circumference?
Dude, I’d say that was harsh if I weren’t laughing so much right now…
Wait, Joe pegs out at 25? I peg out at 23… okay, I never admitted to being normal, but I wonder if that’s large for being a girl. Must be all the brains I’ve been developing lately =)
Hi Stephanie,
I’m new to blog, and not a knitter, (my wife is a problem knitter…can’t stop) but speaking from experience I CAN sympathize with your splinter problem. I let mine go at it got infected and the nail had to be cut off…OUCH!!! Good luck and I wish you well…and btw, down with spammers!
oops, typo…should have been: I let mine go AND it got infected
jennie’s right when she says the comment spam is pretty much automated. this is why when you register with sites now a lot of them make you do that whole “type in the word displayed in the graphic below” thing. the word is sufficiently hidden in the image via different fonts, sizes, and “noise” like diagonal lines and static that it would be annoying to try to decipher the word via a program.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I have a small head (22.5 inches). You know what they say about big heads? Big head, big… brain! Einstein had a huuuuuuge head!
* The advice to the spammer gave me a cramp. Fun-ny.
Splinter removal: soft soap (from the soggy underbelly when THEY all leave it on the sink) on a bit of lint, brown sugar (has to be brown) on top, stick all down with a plaster, leave until tomorrow. Remove plaster and splinter in one swift and easy movement. Works every time. I wouldn’t try knitting with it on, though. There can’t be as many locusts there as there are here.
Stephanie: I think the same person/bot who spammed your blog a day or two ago got mine a while back… I didn’t bother to respond, I just deleted the comments & entered the IP in the IP banning list so they can’t come back. It’s annoying when you get several of those and they have different IP numbers…
BTW, are you still following Survivor? I haven’t been as hooked on it this time around, not quite as interesting as before & somehow this time around it is reminding me more of Elimidate with the catty comments people make… hopefully the next Survivor episode will be better… also, coming after the last Survivor all-stars, that’s a tough one to beat, especially with Rupert, etc… 🙂
I’d also recommend MT Blacklist. It sorts the wankers out good and fast.
Downside? It’s worth going through every post in your archives, up to about one week ago, and closing comments on those posts. If they’re closed, spammers can’t touch them. I had to do this on my blog, and 800 posts later, I am troubled no more. And when they do find a way in (because I missed closing comments on some stray post), MT Blacklist hoses them out automatically. It’s niiiiiiiiice! 🙂
Also: I’m not a knitter, but my wife is. Even so, this is one of the funniest blogs I’ve ever read. Looking forward to reading your book when it comes out! 🙂
You can also shut down your comments automatically with an MT plugin called “Coversation Killer” — in combination with MT Blacklist it has really made a difference in the amount of comment spam I’ve had to deal with lately. I close down comments for all posts older that 180 days.
Ach Spammers…they are thevery incarnation of the Devil(if you believe in such and entity, which i don’t but for literary pourposes…..well, enough of pretension)
Oh My God. I have caught the Mitten Disease, and in the past 24 hours since i recieved the Estonian knitting book have knit 1 and 3/4 mittens….
You do realize, dear harlot, that this is all your fault, with your nifty pictures of envy inspiring mittens:)
The texas hold ’em/online casino “guy” defeated not one, not two but three of my security measures. “He’s” hit the word press blogs pretty bad, with sometimes up to 4000 (yes thousand) spam comments a day on a single blog. “He” also plants a spider or bot or some stupid thing that will automatically generate spam comments when you press publish. There is a list of his IP numbers which is nearing the thousands, but of course those IP’s are discarded within a week. I swear as wool is my witness if I ever meet someone who admits to this sort of behavior I will break every bone in their body with my bare hands.
You are SO freakin’ funny. I just love your blog. I am truly sorry about the huge hat and the mitten problem, but somehow hearing you “say” it makes me feel better about all the mistakes I make!
Too funny about the spammers. We all are in the same boat, of course. If you’re not already using MT-Blacklist to help filter that junk, it really is a great (free) tool for Movable Type users.
Wow. I’m having some issues with a friend right now and I think i may need to “break up” with them. It’s just not working anymore.
I enjoyed your post to the spammer…think you could write me a little something to send to my former friend? Ha ha!
http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.asp?SID=&ccurrency=1&page=10434&category=2,43288,42183
Ouch for your finger! I feel your pain. I smashed my right pointer in my car door about two weeks ago, and you are right! It turns out that you are right, and that finger IS important!
This is my first time posting to your blog, but I’ve been reading for awhile, you are great and super talented.