All and Sundry

More for my fellow couch potatoes/global thinkers, with a shout-out for my cancer activists and campers, and the moment everyone's been waiting for: to see if I've thrown my knitting needles out the window. Haha.

First of all, in case you have not already clicked the link on facebook, National Geographic Education has an interesting post on their My Wonderful World blog about mental maps. Knowing that maps can deliver political messages can help us navigate (#1 on our Ten Essentials, remember) and can inform us about how the rest of the world thinks.

As you know, Americans are the ones freaking out about the end of the calendar this year. Maya themselves are not all that concerned about it. Other cultures have cast their lots, however, and gleaned their profits from the post-apocalypse marketplace. 

Netflix recommended the BBC series Survivors to me, and I enjoyed watching it. As fond as we Yankees are of our beloved conspiracies, this show goes above and beyond with the "it-was-an-inside-job" hypothesis. That's part of its charm. With endearing characters and a short first two seasons, I would definitely recommend it if you have to spend time laid up on your couch with a flu bug of your own. 

In fact, the flu bug seems to be the foreign market's favorite scenario for triggering the end of the world. Amanda was out of town for the weekend, and you know what that means: it's horror movie time! My horror movie choices this year, however, are affected by my desire to soak up as much hysteria as I possibly can. It is in that spirit that I chose an Argentine film called Phase 7 to keep me occupied on Friday evening. Coco and Pipi (who is pregnant) have been locked into their quarantined apartment with their neighbors. 

I appreciate this film because it's funny. More funny than scary. But interesting. One of the neighbors is himself a conspiracy theorist. There are bullets and cuss words and there is blood. There are also badly-translated subtitles and surprising plot twists. Not a bad way to spend an hour and a half. Due to the subtitles, however, it is not a good idea to continue to try to knit while watching Phase 7.

Knitting is more of a Happy Thank You More Please activity.

On Saturday, I suffered an unfortunate total meltdown which ended with my tent being thrown in the trash. Last May, my tent was part of the shelter plan for my (turned around) high school Key Club's Relay for Life event. In the chaos of taking down the shelters, two rain flies got switched so that this weekend, when Miss Gokey and I made a (somewhat) valiant attempt to set it up at Lake Mead NRA, the rain fly in my tent bag was 1/3 the size of the tent. In my haste to disassemble everything and abort the camping mission, I ripped the (admittedly probably partially dry-rotted) tent in at least three places. I proceeded to act like an infant for at least 15 miles after that.

I swore off watching horror movies for the remainder of the weekend. If you don't like indie-film-style EXTREME close-ups during pretentious dialogue, the painfully heartwarming Happy Thank You More Please will not be for you. I award it a Netflix three-star for "I liked it."

Here is my Happy Thank You More Please progress on my practice somethingorother:

It's not pretty, but whatever it ends up being is going to keep me warm, whilst people who have no experience with knitting needles are going to have to either freeze, or find a store that carries cozy things to loot. Just sayin'. On that optimistic note, I bid you adieu until Thursday, when hopefully a more focused post will appear.