Under normal circumstances, I would never have run into this book. It is one of those right-wing fringe books that don’t come up in conversation in the circles I frequent. However, there is an elderly lady living in the hills who orders all her books through us. She has wide-ranging interests, from architecture to Robert Sabuda to the tax code, and this book is for her. I often read her books before shipping them — being, of course, very careful not to open the book fully and mess up the spine.

The premise of this book is that we in the U.S. have been seduced, by ordinary marketing techniques, into accepting things that are evil. It is written by a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, so his ideas of things that are evil are not the same as mine, or perhaps yours (the theory of evolution, whole-language reading instruction…). But it is a thought-provoking book.

My Lenten reading has been pointing out that, in our “co-creative relationship” with God, it is God’s job to judge people, not ours. So this book was an interesting counterpoint.

Now here is the dreadful thing that happened to me yesterday: an inch of the chart for Erin was destroyed. I do not know what to do in that entire inch of the chart. We are talking about 25 stitches over four rows. Seven repeats of the chart in each row, and another band of this chart after I finish the one I’m on, plus two bands of it on each sleeve. So roughly 4000 stitches I have to guess on.

I am trying to follow the previous knitting as though it were a chart itself, but this can be particularly difficult when working from the purl side, which I show you here.

On a positive note, here are some marvelous Plotz entries:

“Hair Trigger: Staggered by his recent discovery of Schick’s plan to shave the world, intrepid freelance follicular design specialist Herkimer K. Turdhurdler must come to terms with the Tubifex worm production strike, catatonic Alpine skiers, and stale birthday cake while unraveling the mystery of the missing goat cheese.”

“Emboldened by the realization that dinner was approaching, the noisy and flop-eared Red-Tick Coonhound Rufus struggled with encroaching cats, damp chew toys, and unstable hay bales, all while attempting to download the latest version of Melody Hound, which (to his chagrin) he discovered was not a canine dating service.” -Silfert

“Groomed
Stuck in the self-obesessed world of a top shelf private school, Scandanavian bombshell Pokey — pending her debut into a pretentious social society — must overcome her recital, tornado drills, and lying residents, while struggling with the sad seduction attempts of boring gentlemen, who tend to be persistent, all the while investigating the source of frustration for the insufferable Dr Uther Pendragon, working three jobs, and trying not to end up dead herself.”

“Cheekbone Dater
Determined to find a suitable fellow, New York city agony aunt Ribbon — accompanied by a staff of mis-guided school girls — must survive one date after another, discover the true source of conceit, and keep her garden weeded, while dealing with the sudden arrival of an old flame, who used to be a centaur, all the while investigating the source of a severed human leg, overthrowing the patriarchy, and trying not to end up dead herself.” — Chanthaboune

“Purple Prose Publishers invites youall to read with trembling tongue as Tzania Persephone – battlescarred from her previous life as an Antipodean boondock diver – transverses the uneasy bridge between the frozen dustclouds of empirical data and the generally tetrogenic atmosphere of linear model testing, in her quest to solve the greatest mystery in  all the multiverse – Is the multiverse really significant?” — Sighkey