Friday, June 26, 2020

Everythings-A-Project Day

Everything is turning into a project today:

Open email: find the signup for the Writing Group for Philosophers. Said yes, of course, since I'm about to find myself writing more Philosophy this summer (and possibly beyond) than I had anticipated or imagined.

Open Twitter: Find out that Le Guin's story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas has been heralded as a condemnation of Utilitarianism. Apparently I have been under a rock or something, because this (wildly incorrect, misguided, and so-much-less-than-hot) hot take has been circulating in the discourse for at least six years, and it's being built on and referenced as gospel. WTF? Le Guin is a favorite author of mine, and I am a card-carrying (allegedly "most thorough-going living") Utilitarian, and this is the first I've heard of it. Also, my cursory research traced this notion back to a hyper-fundamental religious publication from six years ago, so how on earth does this end up in the literature as a real take? Anyway, No. I started writing my rant reply and it turned into an actual article, so I'm typing it up and sending it to a Philosopher Friend to read and comment on before sending it to a publication for peer review. (N.B. I'd love feedback from the general audience, so let me know if you want a link to the WIP.)

Open Writing notebook, because I'm supposed to be writing the novel, not playing around on Twitter or goofing off with Philosopher-Writers and ogling their projects (which I totally was, because Philosopher-Writers are a particular breed of neat-o.): Hi, I'm your novel. I'm not actually a novel!! I'm what you thought when you originally dreamed me up -- I'm so dramatic I'm a graphic novel! Yay! Let's find an artist! (f!f!s! . . . I know nothing about finding an artist or publishing in the graphic novel realm. . . .) Sending out love to the universe and a couple beginning messages to find an artist while converting everything back to storyboard format, and hey, that's starting to work better. A lot better. Thanks, GraphicNovel!

Pick up knitting because wow, this has been some day already, right? Knitting along, having just started the third skein, thinking about the fact that Minneapolis City Council voted (unanimously!!) to change the city charter to allow for the wholesale disbanding of the police, replacing the department with services and counselors. I mean how cool is that? I wonder if other cities will foll. . . HEY! What The Heck?

[For the record, no, this is not supposed to be in two pieces. This is the cable that holds the stitches and it is (usually!) attached to the metal bit that holds the needle tip. This is a bit of a tragedy in my world. Fortunately, I have another cable the same length, for a smaller-sized needle set, and a set of adapters. Most of the piece (196 stitches) fell off the cable, and putting it back on without messing the whole thing up took no small amount of fiddling and magic. I've knit about 750 yards since I cast this on a week ago, so maybe the cable was just giving up in protest. I kind of sympathize.]

Go to the knitting basket for the replacement bits: O, man, this yarn needs to be in a different basket altogether, and that project needs to be taken off the needle and rewound because I'm never going to have enough yarn to complete it and am probably not going to order any more for months at least. Well, okay, at least not order any more of that particular yarn for several months, at least not unless I get a book contract to go write about the women's collective in Uruguay that makes it.

Open Agraphia project document and start to list the writing projects I'm working on this summer. Holy cow, it's a long list. I'm going to need clipboards to keep track of it all. (Order clipboards from amazon.)

What is up with this day?

Never mind. I'm going to go put the laundry in the dryer and probably decide to mop the floor or make chicken salad with the mustardy mayonnaise, because I'm hungry and that sounds pretty good, especially on a slice of fresh sourdough. The second batch of mayonnaise came out beautifully, for those of you who were wondering. No mustard used at all, but I think I'll need to break down and buy something lighter than olive oil for future batches. It's yummy, but has a distinctively olive presence.