Um, did any of you Hoosiers notice – and you might not have* – that the actual Cousin Happy of Happy’s Place left a comment here yesterday?!

* You probably didn’t see it because it’s an old post, so comments don’t show up immediately. That’s part of my anti-spam efforts.

I really, really hope that the upcoming Hello Kitty Online Role-Playing Game is available for Mac, because that much cuteness and shininess combined would rock my world.

The comment-spammers have claimed another victim: John has taken down all commenting at his blog. This sucks. I’m not immune either; w-g now regularly gets batches of hundreds of spam comments a couple times a week. (This is even more remarkable considering that I’m using homemade blogging software, which means some effing spammer actually went to the trouble of programming a special case for my site.) I’m doing what I can to fight back. Archived posts are still open to commenting but anything older than two weeks must now be approved before being visible on the site. I’ve just added some code that checks to make sure that my site is the proper referrer for any form submissions. And I’ve also written up some tools to make blasting the damn things on the backend easier. Please let me know if any of this creates issues for you (real people) commenting. I’m just trying desperately not to have to resort to some sort of registration system.

Oh, and I got rid of the BackLinks (my version of TrackBack) too. I was getting hundreds of spams via that route too but I decided that the net benefit just wasn’t worth it. Nobody pays attention to TrackBacks anyway nowadays, do they?

I was reminded by the anxious-but-prudent Ma Snook that I should probably inform all wouldbe house-thieves that our house is not going to be empty while we’re away gettin’ hitched, so don’t even think about getting your fingerprints on the G5. Helen will be guarding the fort and CouchCam will be backing her up. So don’t you even think it!.

Bored now. Snooky’s off having a surprise Bachelor Party with his mates. I celebrated one of my last evenings as a Bridget Jones-like singleton by settling down to a dinner of Little Debbie cakes, beer, and the Simpsons. (Man, my diet is, like, so wrecked.)

Tales from the Knitting Trenches
Since I’m sure none of you have been able to sleep from the anticipation, I’m happy to be able to bring you the end of the Saga of Angora Man. You remember him, right? Well, our knitter finished his sweater fairly quickly and I was eager to get a look at it. It’s your basic men’s crew-neck sweater… just in extremely fluffy snow-white angora. We discovered a problem when we went to call him though – his number didn’t work! I guess that’s what non-refundable deposits are for, right? But wait, this story has a happy ending. A few weeks ago I was busy cutting some embroidery fabric for a customer when I noticed a familiar fuzziness in my peripheral vision. I looked up. It was him! “Hey!” I said. “It’s you, Angora Ma–” (Just caught myself there.) “And you’re wearing a new sweater! Gee, it’s sooo lovely!” And yes, folks, he was wearing a third white angora sweater. This one was also a women’s garment, as evidenced by the puffy sleeves and the panel of smocking on the front. “Your new sweater is ready!” I told him. “It’s really gorgeous!” We took him over and he immediately wanted to model it. I had to deal with other customers but evidently he was pestering the other manager for ages. Did it fit right? Did it hang correctly? It really didn’t seem to be hanging quite right, he thought. Losh had the unenviable task of trying to explain that this was simply because he’d been wearing ladies’ sweaters, and the new one was actually a men’s garment. In the end he was happy enough, though, and forked over the rest of the cash. And thus ends the strange, fluffy tale of Angora Man.

In other news, I’m in the latest issue of Creative Knitting! I met the original editor, Nicola, eighteen months ago at a Stitch & Bitch in the city. Earlier this year she read on Amy’s site about my career change. She e-mailed me and asked if I’d write the “Cable Knits” section for the next issue. (It’s just a little sidebar where a knitter talks about what they’re doing right now.) Anyway, I sent my copy off to her and pretty much forgot about it. Then in the past 24 hours I had two different customers at the store ask me if I was “the girl from Creative Knitting.” Yeah, that’s me! So I ran out at lunch to buy a copy. It’s really cheezy and kinda “gee-whiz!”, but apparently it was also pretty memorable, so I’m proud of it. Read on to see a scan.

Yay, Steph and Eva have started a weblog! (What a great tagline.) Some of you might have met them at the party.

Gangsta Knitter… knit for me! Man, that’s catchy and hilarious. (Link courtesy of Mary-Helen.)

Little Johnnie must be fuming. A whole article about world leaders’ reactions to Bush’s reelection, and not once is Australia’s PM mentioned! But he’s Bush’s bestest friend… isn’t he?

I’m heartsick. I can’t believe this. How can another four years of that dickhead possibly be justified? Who the…? What the…? How? Why did you jerks let me down? Here I am, defending us to the rest of the frickin’ world, one person at a time, telling every US critic that we’re really not so bad, that I think most folks are basically good, that things are generally getting better, that we’re not as backwards as our President makes us look. But you know what? That’s a big damn lie. The majority of my fellow citizens care more about two gay men setting up house than they do about responsible foreign and economic policy. I’m f**king ashamed.

Whew. That rant’s been building up for about six hours. Only sixteen months til I can get Australian citizenship, huh? And here I was thinking that moving back to the States might be a foreseeable goal. Sorry, Ma. As long as a Bush is in the White House, my mailing address will remain in another hemisphere.