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It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39319]

Fri, 11 February 2011 20:55

b_twin_1
Messages: 2620
Registered: September 2008
Location: Victoria, Australia

Senior Member
[Moderator]

It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense

I've got a plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel ~ Blackadder

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39320 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Fri, 11 February 2011 21:08

jmeadows
Messages: 3174
Registered: September 2008
Location: Virginia, USA

Senior Member
[Moderator]

Oh, Editor Sarah tweeted something about that guy earlier, and I wasn't sure what was going on because of how I'd spent the day sleeping, but now it all makes sense. Hmph.

Looks like the squares are going well! The hellhounds will love their blanket.

Smooshes!

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39321 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Fri, 11 February 2011 21:14

EMoon
Messages: 670
Registered: March 2009

Senior Member

Martin Amis...the kind of nasty cleverness that appeals to little boys pulling wings off flies. It would take a brain injury (in the form of a brain transplant) to make him capable of writing for children. (I once tried to read his fiction. Not my cuppa.)

I'm glad the wonderful winged walking sculpture helped get Amis out of your mind. In one shot it reminded me of one of those deep-sea creatures--the ones with a double row of waving fins (?) on the back and undulations all along the sides. (And some of them are purple and orange and I don't remember what they're called. They're invertebrates, which this sculpture isn't. Exactly.)

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39324 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 00:44

Diane in MN
Messages: 2758
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA

Senior Member

Only seventy-eight or so more and I’ll have a hellhound blanket! At the rate of two squares a week I’ll . . . have most of a blanket by the end of the year. Whimper.

Two squares this week, four squares next week . . . But this is the big drawback of making something large. When I was relatively new to knitting and flush from actually finishing a wearable project for myself, I decided I would make a sweater for my husband. It went on and on and ON. And that was just the sleeves. I thought I'd never see an end to the damn thing, and once it was done chose my projects more wisely. Smile

I've never had the slightest urge to read anything by Martin Amis, and not just because he's come across in print interviews as a major jerk. He's entitled to his opinion, but I don't know why he thinks anyone should care about it.

I love the kinetic sculpture! I can think of long stretches of highway that would be enriched by adding some of these to the landscape.

_{"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich}

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39329 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 06:54

Knitronomicon
Messages: 93
Registered: January 2011
Location: London, UK

Member

I've seen those kinetic sculptures before - wouldn't it be wonderful to be walking along a beach somewhere and meet one?

Yes, keep up the squares! NOT to daunt you too much, but I'm making a blanket for my own bed, so nearly a double-size, and it's in fish shapes, each about four inches long. I need 720 fish in total... I think I'm about half-way, and have actually started sewing together some of the ones I've made. But it's a nice easy little pattern, and I've learnt the increases/decreases necessary to make the shape, so now it's something I can take on the bus with me and do while I'm looking out of the window. It's called A Recipe for Fish (http://knittingarrows.blogspot.com/2006/04/fish-return.html), and my patches look like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aunty_marion/5344520360

Marion
Keeper of the Knitronomicon

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39330 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 07:22

anef
Messages: 58
Registered: October 2008
Location: Cambridge, England

Member

Hmm. The Martin Amis thing made me think. My first reaction was that if you don't think about your audience then you end up writing for yourself, or people just like you.

Then I thought that was probably unfair - after all the Robin McKinley model of story writing involves the Story Council, and you write the story that they give you, to the best of your ability. So I'm assuming that you don't think about your audience when writing either. It just happens that both adults and children/teens enjoy your books, whereas (presumably) only adults enjoy Amis's.

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39331 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 10:07

Corellia
Messages: 111
Registered: June 2010
Location: Norway

Senior Member

I'm holding Robin responsible for the fact that I had a dream about bellringing and handbells last week!

(And I even don't know what the inside of a bellringing tower looks like. Or a handbell, come to think about it....)

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39332 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 10:10

Black Bear
Messages: 3239
Registered: September 2008
Location: Indianapolis, IN USA

Senior Member
[Moderator]

Theo Jansen came to the university here with a small one of his creations a while back, and I got to be part of the group trying to get it walking across campus. We discovered that they are sensitive beasts, these wind monsters--we weren't having ideal weather at the time, and it would either not walk, or suddenly rush in a direction we weren't anticipating for several feet and need to be corralled before it hit something and got damaged. When it got going it was utterly amazing. That was 5 years ago now; seeing him talking here about "releasing them into the wild" makes me wonder if he's found new ways of stabilizing them against variable winds. Too cool.

_{"The time is always right to do what's right."--MLK Jr.}

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39334 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 13:16

judy-in-ny
Messages: 4
Registered: December 2010

Junior Member

There is, somewhere, a very good, very very sarcastic, and very very very intelligent response by Ursula K. Le Guin to people who think that writing children's books is easier or dumber or anything-else-er than writing for adults. Her piece reads like it's written through gritted teeth--but I probably read it 30 years ago. If anyone knows it, maybe you can spread the word, because it is an answer for the ages to Such People.

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39335 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 14:24

Louiz
Messages: 38
Registered: October 2008
Location: London, England

Member

I'm not sure I've read anything by Martin Amis, but his appearance on the tv last week ensured that I won't. Not impressed as I think children's fiction ought to be the best possible. They've only just started reading and need good fiction to set the reading habit.

And cool on the squares. I knitted Robin's square that I made for the quilt in garter stitch. Garter stitch squares are very lovely.

Louiz.

[Updated on: Sat, 12 February 2011 14:25]

Bibliovorous.

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39336 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 18:03

Gomoto
Messages: 43
Registered: December 2010
Location: Central New York

Member

And just by the way, I find this ad, which pops up on Google while you’re checking bell weights, hilarious:

Church Tower Bells

Large Choice of Church Tower Bells
Find the Lowest Prices. Shop Now.
shopzilla.co.uk

Web searches sometime produce unlikely results. A few years ago I did a search on Amazon for Robin's books with the following result:

index.php?t=getfile&id=461&private=0

I was dumbfounded for a moment until I noticed the "McKinley, Robin" in the results (and was amused enough to print it out.)

Attachment: McKinley Booklist.jpg
(Size: 151.81KB, Downloaded 267 time(s))

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39338 is a reply to message #39336 ]

Sat, 12 February 2011 18:25

southdowner
Messages: 981
Registered: September 2008
Location: England

Senior Member
[Moderator]

aren't the random connections made by computers interesting? Very Happy

Someone says "pie" and we all go on alert, like meercats. "Pie? Where?" - Blackbear

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39344 is a reply to message #39338 ]

Sun, 13 February 2011 01:18

Diane in MN
Messages: 2758
Registered: October 2008
Location: Twin Cities, MN, USA

Senior Member

southdowner wrote on Sat, 12 February 2011 17:25

aren't the random connections made by computers interesting? Very Happy

Proof enough that a computer is not a "thinking machine". They do what you tell them, not what you want! Smile

_{"The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough . . . " Louise Erdrich}

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39345 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Sun, 13 February 2011 01:22

danceswithpahis
Messages: 382
Registered: October 2008

Senior Member

Quote:

Martin Amis has always been an asshole. It’s his shtick. I don’t doubt his writing ability,‡‡‡ but his personality should have been excised at birth and replaced with something more attractive like a wet flounder or a handful of weevils.

I had to laugh, because during my time at the zoo/aquarium I have met many wonderful flounders. Not sure how they'd feel about being forced to inhabit the mind of someone like Martin Amis, though.

"Oh good! My dog found the chainsaw!"

-- Lilo ("Lilo and Stitch")

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39352 is a reply to message #39334 ]

Sun, 13 February 2011 08:34

Inkwell
Messages: 68
Registered: September 2010
Location: UK

Member

I think I've read the same Le Guin remarks on this subject, but I haven't yet located them in the couple of volumes of her collected essays that I have. As soon as I find the right one I'll come back here with an appropriate quote!

Amis is a perennial self-publicist, and often a ******* ****, especially when he chooses to pronounce on some issue of the day. I was alarmed by the number of Amis titles owned by my husband when I first met him (I was mollified by the presence of good female writers on his shelves), but he told me today that he's the kind of clever-clever writer admired by male readers aged between 15 and 25. So Amis is a YA author after all! Smile

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39388 is a reply to message #39330 ]

Mon, 14 February 2011 18:28

NotACat
Messages: 66
Registered: September 2010
Location: Buckinghamshire

Member

anef wrote on Sat, 12 February 2011 12:22

It just happens that both adults and children/teens enjoy your books, whereas (presumably) only adults enjoy Amis's.

I'm not sure that one is supposed to enjoy books by Martin Amis. They strike me as the literary equivalent of having your bowels investigated by Gillian McKeith, and the facial expression is vaguely similar also...

Phil
My friends say I have CDO…
which is like OCD but with the initials in proper alphabetical order…

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39416 is a reply to message #39319 ]

Tue, 15 February 2011 19:06

Inkwell
Messages: 68
Registered: September 2010
Location: UK

Member

Additional note: I've just watched this year's Dimbleby Lecture on BBC1, delivered by the writer-and-campaigner-for-children Michael Morpurgo. The general theme was the rights of children. In a wide-ranging talk he addressed society's generally low regard for their rights, and for the services provided for children, as well as the adults who work with them, including children's writers. The lecture will probably be available soon via the BBC iPlayer. See it if you can.

[Updated on: Tue, 15 February 2011 19:07]

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39444 is a reply to message #39388 ]

Wed, 16 February 2011 15:13

Robin
Messages: 6025
Registered: September 2008
Location: England

Senior Member
[Hellgoddess]

This made me hysterical with laughter. Regretfully however I decided not to immortalise it on the blog proper. This is not because it's slightly . . . um . . . off colour (!) but because I don't actually want to give Amis any more air time.

But . . . ::hilarity:: Yes, the facial expression is VERY like.

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39445 is a reply to message #39416 ]

Wed, 16 February 2011 15:17

Robin
Messages: 6025
Registered: September 2008
Location: England

Senior Member
[Hellgoddess]

If you notice/remember, post it here or email it to me, would you please? And I'll put it on the blog. Michael Morpurgo is an A-plus person as well as a campaigner for the right of children's books to be taken seriously as books (and their writers as writers). And I think he may not be as well known as he should be in the States? Perhaps I'm wrong about this. But I'd still post the link.

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39449 is a reply to message #39445 ]

Wed, 16 February 2011 16:49

CathyR
Messages: 577
Registered: July 2009
Location: NW England

Senior Member

Here's the link to an article in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8324583/Michael-Mor purgo-calls-for-more-respect-for-teachers-and-parents.html

And here's the iPlayer link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00ymf57

6 days left to watch it on the iPlayer, or it can be downloaded.

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39452 is a reply to message #39449 ]

Wed, 16 February 2011 18:46

Robin
Messages: 6025
Registered: September 2008
Location: England

Senior Member
[Hellgoddess]

Thank you! Have just tweeted both of them.

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Re: It’s late Friday night and I’m not making much sense [message #39465 is a reply to message #39445 ]

Thu, 17 February 2011 06:29

Inkwell
Messages: 68
Registered: September 2010
Location: UK

Member

Oops, sorry, I've only just checked back here. Never mind, Cathy R has posted the BBC link now.

I found the lecture completely absorbing. Quite apart from what Morpurgo was actually saying, he is a natural at this kind of public speaking.

Earlier in the day I saw him on BBC breakfast TV discussing similar subjects. But when it came to the plight of children on all sides of the Middle East conflict, the BBC had decided to 'counterbalance' his views by putting up some politician to repeat, ad nauseam, the UK government's usual mantra. Morpurgo was polite and gracious throughout. What a guy. I was practically spitting at the screen.

Okay, rant over!

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