alfred butts will be rolling in his grave

I noticed Scrabulous had disappeared from Facebook on Sunday. I don’t get cross about many things, but Mattel made me angry for a man called Alfred Butts. Apart from a lawsuit, Mattel has launched a (registered trademark) Facebook application of its own, but I won’t be using it. I tried to post a link on their page yesterday morning to remind them of the human being who gave them their game in the first place, but they wouldn’t let me. Apparently they found it ‘offensive’.

The link I wanted to post was to an article I read in the Guardian a few months ago, which if you are interested is here. Reading this article makes me smile. I like the idea of playing a game invented by someone as self-deprecating and unconventional as Alfred Butts. I like the idea he had ‘a postcard collection he indexed using a complex classification system, so that pictures of balloons were coded 4E2, pictures of amphitheatres 3E4 and so, confusingly, on’. I also like the idea of the man who invented Scrabble confessing to being ‘a terrible speller’.

As the article says, it’s hard to imagine Scrabble’s modest inventor minding Scrabulous all that much. Maybe that’s what Mattel finds so offensive. I still like Scrabble. What I don’t like is SCRABBLE®. I have signed a petition, sent an e-mail to Mattel, and one to Hasbro for good measure. I feel a little calmer now. Thank you for listening.

i made these

I have become obsessed with knitting. You may have noticed that I have a tendency to become obsessed with all manner of things, whether it be reading, writing, walking the dog, photography, the Guardian, going back to Japan, crosswords, Scrabble, or alien abduction. I become obsessed with these things because I have a constant need for something to concentrate on. It’s exhausting, but I have always been like this, and the alternative is worse. If I don’t have something to concentrate on, I start thinking bad thoughts, and when I start thinking bad thoughts, I stop being able to sleep.

Anyway, here are the three things I have made over the past less than two weeks. I like the thought that less than two weeks ago, these things were effectively just pieces of string. I like that, in the same way I like the idea that before I took them, my photographs were just light, and before I wrote them, my stories were just chemicals floating around in my head. [photos missing]

I am currently a knitter-in-training. I also want to learn how to crochet. Once I have mastered all the moves, I intend to rebel against patterns, and start creating random, ugly, and most probably useless works of art all of my own, like alien pets, sea monsters, and UFOs. They will only be works of art in my mind, of course. I am slightly worried that I am becoming obsessed with too many things. Perhaps I should give up crosswords for a while. And Scrabble, but only against my brother, who is currently thrashing me with TADPOLE, a 77 point word.

psychedelic trance knitter

On Monday I walked into town. I hadn’t been to town for over two weeks. I sat in the library for a few hours. When I got home, I slept all afternoon, and after supper I walked round the Barley Mow with the dog. I thought about how the next day would be my last day off sick, and how that was both a good and a bad thing.

I went to see the doctor on Tuesday, and he said he didn’t think I should go back to work yet. I stared at him like Paddington Bear and said I couldn’t see the point of not going back to work. We argued quietly in a calm, controlled manner for about ten minutes. Neither one of us backed down, and both of us were forced to compromise. I am now going back to work on Monday, which means I will have been off sick for exactly three weeks, which is better than six weeks, I suppose.

When I got home, I resumed watching The X Files. The X Files are my version of counting to ten. I watched them pretty much non-stop, until I got to the end of the very last one late on Thursday. I am relieved, I have to say. There has to be an easier way to count to ten.

I walked into town again yesterday. I bought the Guardian, mostly for the answers to last week’s pop quiz. Amazingly, I got most of them right. As I thought, The Shins won’t really change my life. The missing geometric shape is an octagon. I have never heard of Dr Octagon. The probability that Take That are exaggerating is 1. I think that means high. As for ‘Puis-je le donner un coup de pied?’, the answer is ‘Oui, tu peux.’ I wonder if that means ‘Can I kick it?’, ‘Yes, you can.’ I will have to ask my best friend’s French boyfriend sometime, after my best friend, his French boyfriend and his French boyfriend’s foster child return from their summer holiday in France.

I watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics yesterday afternoon. August 8 made me think of what I was doing in 1988. The cat caught a mouse. My brother came over for a little while, and after he left, I taught myself how to knit. So far, I know how to cast on, knit badly, and cast off. All this is because there was a supplement called The Rebel Knitter’s Guide in the Guardian last month. Not that my whole life revolves round the Guardian, you understand. I like the idea of being a rebel knitter, or knitting’s undercover hero, but probably not in the way this supplement intended, although I do dream of making a fruit cosy for a banana one day. After I went for a walk with the dog, I knitted along to OOOD’s aLIVE. I like OOOD. They have this magic mushroomy way of jumping out at you from corners of rooms and behind sofas when you least expect it.

beyond the sea, gender bender, lazarus, young at heart, e.b.e, miracle man, shapes, darkness falls, tooms, born again, roland, the erlenmeyer flask

Those are all The X Files I watched today. I feel tired now, and slightly paranoid, but at least I have remained calm.

Other things I have done today: I sat in the Cholera Pit in the sunshine. I finished the Guardian crossword, with a little help from my brother. I got ‘bunfight’, which is a ‘grand tea party or huge argument’, and my brother got ‘quorum’, which apparently is a ‘number validating a meeting’. I have never heard of that word, but my brother knew it straight away when I asked him, when he phoned to see if I wanted any of his rom-com DVDs. My brother owns a lot of rom-com DVDs, and he is planning on selling them. He said he knew ‘quorum’ because of The West Wing. Apart from rom-coms, my brother is about as obsessed with The West Wing as I am with The X Files.

I told my brother the last thing I need in my life at the moment is romantic comedy. What I need I think is to throw a load of buns at my new upstairs neighbour. That would be funny.