"The Sheep are All Lost in the Harbour"

Now these tweets float to the surface of the tea;

DVD-ROM is a bit off its game.
Japanese for sleepy is "nemui".
Saw two kittens, one feral and one tame.
Louie's better than Huey or Dewey.

It occurred to me some minutes after posting that the last tweet might be taken as a sign I'm about to go postal. I'm really not--it was about thirty minutes before I fell asleep, I couldn't think of anything better, and, when I was a kid, for some reason I had a serious preference for Louie above the other two. I always roped off these weird allegiances for myself--it was like how I preferred Leonardo above the other Ninja Turtles--everyone else liked Michelangelo or maybe Raphael. My rational was that Leonardo was the leader, he deserved respect and worked the hardest, and he had swords. No fucking around with sticks or knives. Just swords, the first and last word in medieval weaponry.

But I guess I oughta be clear I'm talking about Ducktales' Huey, Dewey, and Louie. The colours corresponded differently than they did in the old cartoons and comics, and I think there was an attempt to distinguish each nephew's personality--Dewey was the geek, Huey was the impetuous one, and Louie was the leader. See, I always aimed for the marginal top. I aimed high, but only by an angle of about two degrees. I was born to be a communist.

The two kittens I was talking about are Saffy, my sister's, and Snow, who I think is still technically a kitten, though he's pretty big now. As for which is the feral and which is the tame, I'm not exactly sure. Snow seems to be left outside to his own devices 24/7 now, but he's infinitely calmer than Saffy the indoor cat, who torpedoed down the stairs several times when I visited my parents' house yesterday.

Someone named "bluehatrider" responded to my burrito related tweet yesterday with the comment; "Burritos are special. But they have to be properly prepared." Which is absolutely true. I remember Jhonen Vasquez returned to the burrito image several times in the intro to one of his Squee comics. Burritos are precious and baby-like, and yet we eat them.

But surrounded by a couple tweets about women as it was, I started thinking about Blue Hat Rider's comment in the context of women--"Women are special. But they have to be properly prepared." I think this is true of both men and women, and I'll speak now as a guy who's been asked out by women more than he's actually asked women out. It's not that I'm not physically attracted to a lot of women, it's just that whether or not I can have an exceptionally good rapport with one is infinitely more important to me, and I don't often have the time, desire, or resources to play the field. The one time I decided to ask a woman out after I decided I was being ridiculous ended in disaster.

But I've seen no hard evidence that women fundamentally require more of a soft landing than men do (mind you, I'm not talking about orgasms here). I can tell you about the time a young lady I barely knew commanded me to go home with her (and off I went) or about a guy I knew who never quite felt he could ask out a girl even though the two of them were clearly into each other and she was visibly impatient for him to do so--she eventually asked him out and no tragedy resulted. There is a very unfair stigma against women who are too assertive, and I don't blame women who are made reluctant because of it. But I think it's a mistake to chalk it all up to internal wiring.

I'd better get to some drawing now. If anyone's wondering about the reference material I used for the drop spindles in the previous chapter--apparently a lot of people on YouTube are eager to demonstrate drop spindle technique. Mostly I watched this woman, who gives those of us who need to know how to draw arms using a drop spindle a good view of them. But the video's also worth watching to hear the astonishingly dull Radiohead cover band she's using as a soundtrack. It sounds like reggae/country fusion and all the songs are from OK Computer. But the lady knows how to spin her wool, I'll give her that.

Of course, in Wethepahn, there are no sheep, only mouflon. I couldn't find out how useful mouflon wool is for making yarn. If it's not, I hereby proclaim that Wethepahn mouflon are special.