First, my weekend stuff, then a rant, because I can't help it any more, and finally, a link, to try and make it all better:

Weekend stuff:

I did rewrite the paper. I came in to my office briefly, picked it up, and worked on it at home. It wasn't as much work as I thought - I had forgotten that I had already considered most of the reveiwer's comments. So today, after submitting an abstract or two for some meetings, I am going to make the changes and format it for the journal that will hopefully accept it.

I have to say right here, I do not like writing. I especially do not like rewriting. Oh, I mean, I love casual writing, like I do here - and I always enjoyed "creative writing" in school (and was told I had a particular knack for writing dialogue that had verisimilitude). But I do not like scientific writing, because it is all the work of creative writing (and then some) with much less of the fun. I love doing research, I love analyzing data and then looking at the results and trying to figure out what they mean, but trying to explain those results to someone who didn't do the project and who may be trying to deliberately misunderstand - it's frustrating. It's also frustrating to work on something for months and months and then get it back with all these recommendations - some of them contradictory - and a letter saying, basically, it's not good enough for the journal.

Part of the problem is I invest too much of myself in my work and a rejection of an article I wrote still feels to me like a rejection of me as a person.

No, that is not the rant, believe it or not.

I did get some work done this weekend on other things - I have the front right band (the button band) done on the Chinese vest and I've begin the left (buttonhole) band (on this vest, it's designed for the buttons to be on the "man's" side and I didn't feel like reworking the pattern to put them on the "woman's" side). The stupid neck stitches keep dropping off the stitch holder I have them on. I may throw away that stitch holder after I'm done with it, I think it's bent or something and doesn't stay closed properly.

I also worked some on the quilt in the frame. I should put up a picture of that some time, so you can see what it's like. I'm getting to the point where I can see a time when it will be done, so I'm getting more enthusiastic about it again (I'm good at working diligently at the beginnings of projects and when I can see the end; it's the slow unpleasant middle slog that drains my enthusiasm).

And now, the rant:

I think I am done with the FOX channel. No matter that they carry "The Simpsons" (which just has not been all that funny this season) and that they have some of the less-stupidifying local news*. They are now going to run a show called "The Swan."

No, it is not about swans.

No, it is not about someone realizing the beauty within herself or himself (this is commercial television; do you really think they'd go with something like that?)

No. It is about a group of women who enter seclusion to undergo makeovers and "extreme cosmetic surgery" and all of that - in order to be transformed from "ugly ducklings" (yes, dear God, that is what the advertisement said) into "swans". The real kicker? At the end, they have a beauty pageant, and some of them are deemed "not beautiful enough" despite all they have gone through. (Yes, I am aware they are willing participants but it still disgusts me)

ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh ugh. Can we PLEASE get past the idea someday that a woman's worth is entirely related to her beauty? Can we PLEASE accept that you go with what God and your genes gave you, and you don't have to go under the knife, or starve yourself, or cover yourself in a layer of paint to be beautiful? Can we PLEASE realize that there are different kinds of beauty and just because you don't look like Naomi Campbell or Brittney Spears or whoever the hell is popular now, you're not a loser?

I mean, geez. I realize, the point of commercial television is to make people dissatisfied with their lives so they will go out and buy what is advertised but...this is just too damned far.

I'd love to see an uprising of the not-conventionally pretty, a revolt of the unattractive, to try to end the idea that if you don't look like the cover of Vogue or GQ, you should go out and spend huge amounts of money and subject yourself to painful and dangerous surgery so you can.

(I've had a broken nose set and I remember what agony that recovery was; I can't imagine having that and more done to my face for purely cosmetic reasons).

Feh. Just, feh.

(*I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451, the edition of which has an interview with Bradbury in the back of it. Scary scary book, considering the popularity of wide-screen television and ear-bud headphones and all that. Bradbury makes the comment in his interview that local news will turn one's brain to mush)

And the link, in a vain (heh, heh) attempt to make it all better:
They don't s*ck socks, a link posted to socknitters for some cabled socks that I'd not seen before. Despite my distaste for patterns being referred to as "they don't s*ck" (which I suppose in this case could reflect the low self-esteem of the pattern writer; damning them with faint praise) because all too often it is used in opposition to more "traditional" knitting, which is apparently seen by some as knitting which does, in fact, s*ck.