Me vs. Game of Thrones

I resisted watching Game of Thrones for a few months, mostly on the strength of my HBO-related bitterness.

Also: my home Internet connection is really slow.

But one day I was bored, and my roommates were out, so the Internet connection was limping towards "reasonable" status. I made myself a BLT sandwich, opened a beer, and started the show. I watched one episode, and snickered. Barely halfway through the first episode, and there was just boobs a-jiggling all over my screen: yep, it's HBO. But then I watched another. And then I tried to watch a third one... but something happened while streaming and I missed the last fifteen minutes of the episode.

This led to many attempts to finish watching those last fifteen minutes. Who knows what could have happened during that time? The men could have started getting naked as well!! But by then the roommates were home and the connection had returned to its normal, 1994-like state. Which would have been awesome if I was interested in ASCII porn, but since I wanted the finest in boobies that HBO had to offer, it simply would not do. After the third attempt, it wasn't even about watching Game of Thrones: it was about beating the Internet and therefore winning the game of life.

Which is what I did the next morning. Sadly, there was no trophy for winning the game of life. Just the realization that, as enjoyable as Game of Thrones is, what with Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, and wolf puppies, it's not worth battling the forces of connectivity/chaos. And also, instead of angrily pounding at my keyboard because I am waiting seconds (perhaps just milliseconds) longer than I want to for free TV, I could try something else. Like opening a book.

This is What *I* Want You to Think: An Anti-Conspiracy Theory Rant

Before moving to B.C., I found conspiracy theories to be quaint and wacky little things. Oh the joy I felt at seeing a conspiracy theorist in the wild once, eyes a-darting and hands a-fluttering, explaining to a friend how the American government had been the ones responsible for the Oklahoma City bombings. But that was in Montréal, where most of the people were too cynical to trust the government, but also too cynical to trust a poorly-edited website instead. So he was a novelty.

Out here he would have been about as common as a seagull. Conspiracy theories are party conversation in Victoria. I would rather have malicious gossip and petty cattiness. I may even prefer talking about the weather. Instead, I have heard that:

• The U.S. didn't really kill bin Laden
• The U.S. (or at least the FBI, CIA, etc) did kill JFK
• Chemtrails are a real thing
• The government and university scientists are also bouncing radio waves off of those chemtrails to control our weather
  
• We should be growing all our vegetables using hydroponics as the Fukishima disaster has irradiated all of our land
• Bobby Fischer was the victim of a Cold War-era plot that lead to his exile
• D.S.K. was framed
  

All of this conspiracy talk has lead me to develop a ratings system for the theories. "Probably Wrong, But Understandable" is a level 1. Level 2 is "getting wacky." Level 3 is "WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS." Here's how I've rated the former theories:

• The U.S. didn't really kill bin Laden (1)
  
• The U.S. (or at least the FBI, CIA, etc) did kill JFK (2)
  
• Chemtrails are a real thing (2)
  
• The government and university scientists are also bouncing radio waves off of those chemtrails to control our weather (3)
  
• We should be growing all our vegetables using hydroponics as the Fukishima disaster has irradiated all of our land (2)
• Bobby Fischer was the victim of a Cold War-era plot that lead to his exile (1)
• DSK was framed (1)
  

This ratings system can also be applied to various 9/11 conspiracy theories:

• The U.S. knew 9/11 was going to happen, but did nothing to stop it (1)
• The U.S. blew up the planes themselves (2)
• The U.S. strapped propulsion engines to the top of the buildings, there were no planes at all and the JEWS WERE INVOLVED SOMEHOW (3+)

I know I shouldn't care, but I do. Not enough to argue with them-mostly because Beer #6 is when I'm accused of thinking what THEY want me to think, and Beer #5 is when I actually stopped thinking, whether for myself or others. But two reasons and a hangover usually lead to some irritation the next morning.

First reason: conspiracy theories are a waste of effort. Skepticism is a sign of a healthy democracy, but these beliefs are just more blind faith with a different end in mind. Governments and corporations do enough heinous things in the broad daylight that you don't have to waste your time chasing after shadows. Complain about corporate tax loopholes instead of chemtrails. All you need is a tax code and some filings, instead of a shaky grasp of physics and meteorology. These issues are a sideshow to genuine social problems.

Second reason: these theories come down to emotion winning out over logic. Talk to a few of these true believers for a while, and there's a pattern. Step 1: Something doesn't "feel" right about event X. Step 2: They go on the Internet. Step 3: They search out theories that validate their own "feelings" about event X. Step 4: They corner you so that you, too, may begin to see the light. Feelings aren't facts. Don't turn one into the other and call it a plot. It's just bad research. With the increasingly fearful and combative state of politics both here in Canada and down south, less emotion is exactly what we need.

Grudgingly, I'll admit that there's a chance, if slim, that some of these theories might be true. Or maybe the story's so good that it might as well be so. Thanks to my comic book reading habit, I spent most of my adult life believing that FDR knew that Pearl Harbor was going to happen- it was that handy of a narrative. But you know what they say about broken clocks and blind squirrels. They're right, they find nuts, but not often enough to start watching the skies and writing off exploding jets.

The Father, Son and the Holy Guilt Trip

I'm not a religious person. In fact, I'm an atheist. But, on the atheist colour scale where, say, Christopher Hitchens would be a garish shade of scarlet, I'm an inoffensive beige. In simple terms: I will not refuse to say grace around the family Thanksgiving table, but I will quietly think about gravy while mumbling the words.

Still, the beliefs of some believers do confuse me. For example, a recent Facebook post from a vague acquaintance that popped up in my news feed:

♥ I personally believe in Jesus Christ. I asked Jesus, "How much do you love me?" Jesus replies, "This much." And stretched his arms on the cross and died.

Jesus!! (for lack of a secular higher power to appeal to. ) My thought was less "What a powerful sacrifice our Lord made" and more "I should call a crisis line for this person Jesus is talking to." This just makes Him sound like the kind of abusive jerk who uses threats of suicide as emotional blackmail to keep his girlfriends from leaving him. Which does add another layer to Degrassi Season 5, circa 1991: "Claude Tanner as Christian Allegory."

I died for your sins, Caitlin Ryan!

I Love Legends Comics

Pictured: Nerd Alley

There's a particular section of Victoria's Johnson Street, from Douglas to, say, Government that I've taken to calling Nerd Alley. It features two comic book stores, a collectible store (in other words, a toy store for items that are not to be toyed with), two stores for WarHammer figure painters, and one used bookstore. Even the bookstore focuses on the occult, SciFi, and Ayn Rand. If they only added a bubble tea place to the block, it would be possible for any nerd to live, quite happily, in a block-square area of town.

Or at least it would be possible for me to live in a one-block radius, if I didn't hate Ayn Rand and her brand of cuckoo con-objectivism so much. But, from 5:15pm to 5:40pm on Wednesdays, I do anyways. That's because it's New Comic Book Day, and I have an unofficial appointment to be at my preferred of the two comic book stores at that time, begging for the latest issue of Sweet Tooth. Legends Comics is the best, because there are no action figures or licensed T-shirts, just comic books and graphic novels crammed into every conceivable corner and surface. The one area which doesn't have some kind of literature on it is only there, so you can park your coffee and not spill anything on the paper that's everywhere else.

Along with their stock, Legends also has Gareth and Lloyd, the owners. Gareth knows my name and always tells me that I'm awesome. Lloyd, on the other hand, still asks me if I live in town. This is in spite of the fact he's heard Gareth say I'm awesome at least a half-dozen times, so he should know that A. I live in Victoria, and B. am awesome. You might think this means I like Lloyd less than Gareth, but that's not true. Okay, so Gareth does have an edge, but that's as much for his expert lettering on The Perogy Cat as for his weekly validation of my worth. Really, G and L are the yin and the yang of customer-proprietor relationships. On the one hand, the soothing mother's milk where somebody knows your name and the books you like. On the other, the bracing two buck chuck of mild indifference that you yearn to impress away.

I might even be making progress on the latter: Lloyd now knows my name, and even dug through boxes to find an issue of this month's The Unwritten for me. This is a book I've found uneven in the past, alternately gripping and perplexing, but this month's instalment had my complete attention. There's a plot featuring an intelligent, brittle pulp fiction writer, blessed with a schnozz, and the hard-boiled man who loves her. For self-evident reasons, I'm a sucker for those.

Adventures in Arduino

In my youth, I decided that computers were not for me. This was a decision that likely coincided with my "Victoriana" phase, also known as the time in my life when I saved up my allowance to buy an antique inkwell. I had a quill (and a slate, dear God) to go with that inkwell. Fortunately my parents intervened before I ended up in pinafores and stockings, like a time refugee from Miss Tavistock's Home for Wayward Children, but the damage to my technical capabilities had already been done.

The past 10 months have been my attempt to overcome my technophobia, with mixed results. I mean, if it was still 1994, I think I could now make a pretty bitching webpage. On the other hand, and in the present day, I broke the 3D printer at the workshop when I tried using it. But at least now I have an Arduino.

Arduinos are really neat, open-source microcontrollers. And, as far as I can gather from my obsessive reading of the Make: Magazine blog, their main uses include somewhat creepy robots and the automation of fairly routine actions. Thus, my two-step Arduino Plan: 1. Use it to wind balls of yarn for me, and 2. Power my killbot, who will smite my enemies. But first, I started with a simpler, more manageable project: making it blink my nickname in morse code using an LED. Today, "MARTY MARTY MARTY," tomorrow the world/Vancouver Island.

Book Covers I Have Loved: A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

The hardback Penguin Classics, designed by the eerily talented Coralie Bickford-Smith, have been celebrated ever since the first set was released. And yes, they're lovely, but they're also a pretty cover on a cheap binding. Stiff and prone to cracking, I would wager that a standard paperback Penguin Classic would hold up better than their clothbound cousins. But I will make an exception for their version of A Tale of Two Cities.

Blame the knitting. Yes, I've actually read A Tale of Two Cities, so I know that knitting doesn't have the most positive connotation in the novel. But you can blame the knitting and my Madame Defarge-like vengeful streak for not really caring. This book cover is amazing, touching upon the passage of time, guillotine blades, doubles, and my favourite fibre art, all at once.

The Apprehensive Hooker

After a successful yoga mat bag-making enterprise, I thought it was safe to pick up the hook and crochet again. So I decided to make this scarf:Pattern from Berrocco.

Well, it's good to have dreams. Just trying to make the first medallion lead to a headache and a glimpse into Lovecraft-style madness. Crocheting is hard enough for a knitter, used as we are to linear progressions. But then the fine folks at Berrocco ask me to single crochet INTO yarn I've simply looped around my FINGERS, like it ain't no thing.

Reader, I did it, but I'm not sure I did the right thing. But here's what it looks so far, all 1.5 medallion's worth. Thank God I've got some socks to knit at the same time.