I can innoculate myself

I fell asleep last night listening to the BBC, which meant that I was awakened this morning by the broadcasted cheers of McCain's veep announcement at the GOP convention. It's still August and I'm sick of the presidential race. McCain's choice came as a surprise to me, mostly because I haven't followed his side of the race much, but it immediately struck me as pandering. What a great way to capture all of those Hillary Democrats who just don't love Obama, picking a woman as his veep. Naively, I'd hoped that Clinton would end up on the the flip side of the Obama ticket, but I can see how that could have been awkward. All of this rah-rah campaigning (the point of the conventions these days, I guess) is just too much for me. When are they going to talk about the issues, have serious debates like the Lieberman/Cheney debates in 2000?

So, after listening to Sarah Palin gush for a while, I got out of bed and watched an hour long documentary on Nazi-era German state television. Very interesting viewing, and a good way to recharge the bullshit meter in the middle of election season. I highly recommend the website behind that link, Smashing Telly. It's a great way to pass an afternoon. After a bit of poking around, I also found a clip Disney made of Werner Von Braun explaining rockets and manned space travel (somehow managing to call him the head of the V2 program without going into who had the V2) and a composition that Philip Glass wrote for Sesame Street, complete with '70s animation. Did kids really sit through that kind of self-deferential crap? I like to think of myself as fairly open minded (I did enjoy John Adams' Dr. Atomic, which was more of a spectacle than an opera), but this clip just about did me in with its earnestness. Oh, public television!

A deluge of reading material came my way today. I bought (and forgot) the September Vogue earlier this week. It really takes an afternoon to take in all 700+ pages, but I look forward to it every year. The fashion issue of the New Yorker arrived today, as well as two books that I ordered from Amazon. Sweet! The books don't have a plot, but I still pored over them, lying diagonally across the bed. I finally broke down and bought Knitting Vintage Socks by Nancy Bush. My mother would tell you that I have loads of sock books already (and tons of pdfs of sock patterns from Ravelry), but I have heaps of sock yarn. In addition to fabulous patterns, the book offers very good information about variations in sock construction. I don't know how much I will put all of this to use, but it's always good to have the theory. The second book is Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard. I've really looked forward to its release, since I read Wendy's blog almost daily and have made a couple of her patterns. I like the book, though it struck me as a bit strange that so many of her sweaters are styled with panties. That doesn't really have anything to do with Wendy. There are a couple of sweaters that I look forward to making (I mentally checked the stash while perusing the patterns), and I really appreciate her choose-your-own-adventure approach. She explains the variations on top down patterning and its math in a non-scary manner, which is an accomplishment.