Watching this is worth more than eight minutes of your time.

[via @jianghomeshi]

Will piracy ever die? is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Teenaged babysitter: You mean on Buffy?

Me, blinking: Yes.

Teenaged babysitter: I’ve seen the whole series, like, twice. My mom and I just finished watching the second season of Angel. We’ve been borrowing the DVDs from the library.

Me, under my breath: You are the coolest fourteen-year-old on the planet.

I sent her home with the third season of Angel from our box set.

Photo by Cameron Yee on Flickr. Creative Commons Attribution licenced.

Buffy Lives is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

DUDE. How awesome is this? And she made it a rattle. I can’t wait till Owen properly interacts with toys.

You, too, can knit a Dalek if you’re so inclined. Marie told me she used the Extermiknit pattern, slightly modified.

She put a little pocket in there to hold a wee Dalek-in-the-flesh, too. Brilliant.

Between this Dalek and the Jayne hats my friends Marianela and Mercedes made Owen, he’s well on his way to becoming a full-on geek. We’re very lucky to have such geektastic crafty friends.

Knitted Dalek: The Geekiest, Most Awesome Baby Gift Ever is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

I had like the anti-high school high school experience. Not “anti” like “against”. More like “anti” like “antimatter”. I hibernated. That’s the way I think of it. I put my head down and woke up on the first day of university.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. I had all the self-awareness of a seahorse when I was fourteen. I don’t know why I hibernated, but I did. I had some friends, but not close ones*. I barely dated. I was super active in the youth group but that was like a separate world to me.

But there was one week. One week when the ground thawed and all the high school crap seeped in. I was seventeen years old, accepted to college, impatiently waiting to get the hell out, just like everyone else. For one week in the spring of 1994 I experienced four years’ worth of full-on pain.

My cousin was dying. We’d known he was sick, but there were a lot of hushed conversations about it. More speculation than frankness. I sat one night with my parents and asked if he had AIDS. They said he did, but it wasn’t to be told. And my aunt, especially, wasn’t to know I knew. She thought of me as a child. It was too much for me.

I freaked out. If I could put together how sick he was, and from what, and how he got it, damned if I was going to accept being thought of as a child.

I couldn’t sleep at night. I’d doze in an uncomfortable chair in the school library.

That semester I was taking a sociology class that made me want to poke my own eyes out. The teacher was so smart, but the other students were freaking idiots. We could have all learned things, but instead we collectively rolled our eyes and popped our gum. The teacher never gave up, though. And one day that happened to be during my week of insomnia and angst, he decided to make a point.

We were learning about deviant behaviour. As our textbook told us, as far as sociology is concerned “deviant” bears no value judgment, it just means the behaviour isn’t performed by the majority of people.

And the example our dear, well-meaning teacher gave was homosexuality. In his mind, homosexuality isn’t bad, it’s just that the majority of people are straight.

Picture me sitting across from the biggest asshole I’ve ever known. His name was Justin. He was a mean kid and my only run-in with him was in t-minus two minutes.

Justin goes nuts. I can’t remember what he said, but it was homophobic and it was passionate. Hateful. Cruel and mean and I hadn’t slept in a week.

So I interrupted him. I asked him what if I were gay. Would he still say those things, knowing he was saying them to a gay person?

That’s when everything stopped. He stopped. He stared at me and I had no idea what was going on. I heard the blood rushing in my head.

And then a whisper from somewhere behind me. From one of the eye-rolling girls. “Oh my god. She’s gay. That explains it.” More whispers.

I remember walking out of that room and feeling such an overwhelming number of emotions simultaneously that I may have stumbled. I have no memory of that night. I don’t remember if I talked to my parents. I don’t remember if I slept. But I do remember having the suffocating feeling that I couldn’t go back to that school. I had visions of every student pointing and staring. Nobody would talk to me. I’d go from being a benignly awkward A-student to being a reviled freak.

But those thoughts were nothing. The part that broke me was knowing it wasn’t true. I wasn’t gay. But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t say so, because if there’s nothing wrong with being gay, why should I care if people thought it of me? I was misunderstood and I was lost and the injustice was so massive that I can barely put words to it even now.

And honestly, I don’t remember what I did. I don’t remember if there were stares the next morning. I don’t remember if I even talked to any of my peers about it at all. All I remember is that I finished the year just fine. I eventually slept. I came out of my years-long hibernation the first day of college. I buzzed my head in the fall of 1997 and then I went to an Indigo Girls concert and many of my friends thought I was coming out, and they loved me and I loved them and I was still straight.

I’m straight, and I’ve experienced crushing homophobia. And I cry every damn time they address it on Glee because we didn’t have Glee when I was in high school. And I wish with all my heart that no one ever has to feel what I felt. And I know that every day people do.

And it breaks my heart.

—
* ETA: I was exhausted and emotional when I wrote this, and I’m embarrassed to correct myself – I actually did have a couple of very close friends in high school who were also youth group friends, which is why I just didn’t think of them. My forgetting of them in the heat of this post doesn’t diminish how important they were to me then, or now.

We’re All Freaks. is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

GEEK. (That's me last weekend speaking at Northern Voice, wearing the Jayne hat I crocheted during the interview frenzy). Photo credit Carol Browne (CC-by-nc-sa licensed)

Have I ever mentioned that the whole let’s-do-an-interview-about-crafts-with-Joss-Whedon thing was the most fun I’ve ever had online? Well, if I failed to mention it, consider it immortalized here in bytes (until the EMP strikes and all this work we’ve done is obliterated).

The fun started nearly two years ago, the interview was in November of ’08, and yesterday Sci-Fi Wire resurrected it, much to the totally hilarious chagrin of its readers, if the comments are any indication.

During the interview, I asked Whedon if his then-soon-to-premiere-show Dollhouse would contain crafty elements like Firefly did. His response was facetious and funny, and Sci-Fi Wire running an article saying that the absence of decoupage is what killed Dollhouse makes the little green men that flutter around in my heart sing with a special song of laughter and joy.

One of the things I love about Whedon’s approach to talking about his work is that he brings both intense seriousness and great humour to pretty much every interview. If the audio from our chat had been any good, you’d have been able to hear that I was nearly shitting myself with nerves at the beginning of our conversation, but after a couple of minutes my high-pitched phone voice relaxed into its normal range, and we simply chatted for nearly twenty-five minutes. His being a nice guy with a good sense of humour is what allowed me to chill out. And dude, if I’d known he was as knowledgeable about crafts as he is, I’d have prepared totally differently for the interview.

There’s great overlap between the crafts and sci-fi communities (just skim the comments on the original post and over at Whedonesque), and knowing that this interview contributed to both just makes me happy.

Thanks for reminding me of the happy, Sci-Fi Wire. Thanks for reminding me of the happy.

Lack of decoupage doomed Dollhouse – Sci-Fi Wire is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

It’s this difference in how stories are packaged in Sweden vs. North America that’s making me insist you go see this Swedish version of the story*. Hollywood is making a version too; it’s slated for release in 2012. But I can’t imagine how Hollywood won’t end up making a movie more about a tattoo than about men who hate women.

My friend Michelle introduced me to the book last summer. I was sitting in her living room and she raved about it something like this, “Kim, you have to read this. It’s not a genre you usually read [crime/mystery], but you have to. For this book has the most kick-ass female protagonist EVAR.”

I read it in three days.

It’s a very good novel, worthy of international craze. But here’s what sets it apart, and this is why you should see the Swedish movie:

Alongside the gripping whodunit is a powerful portrayal of sexual violence. The entire story really is about men who hate women, and who, in their hatred, beat, rape and psychologically abuse them. It’s about how disgusting it all is. And it’s about women fighting back. And it’s about one woman, in particular, who’s like no other woman I’ve encountered in fiction in any medium. And this woman should remain uncompromised when she’s portrayed, just as she was brilliantly portrayed in the Swedish film.

I don’t think Hollywood can do this story justice. Not when the Swedes have already created the best film adaptation of a book I’ve ever seen. There shouldn’t be focus groups influencing the making of this film. There shouldn’t be a toning-down of the sexual violence to attain a more box-office-friendly MPAA rating. There shouldn’t be a glossing-over of the subtleties of the relationships between characters because there’s an industry perception that Americans can’t handle ambiguity and non-comformity.

Män som hatar kvinnor, which came out last year in Europe, was the highest-grossing film in Swedish history and was 2009′s top-grossing film in all of Europe. It isn’t a “small” film. It isn’t an “art” film. It’s a blockbuster. It’s a blockbuster with graphic scenes of sexual violence without sexualization. It’s a blockbuster where the female protagonist saves the male protagonist’s ass, and it’s not an issue. It’s a blockbuster without glossy hair.

I think it’s dumb that the North American publisher felt the need to change the name of the novel. But at least that’s all that was changed – the story inside was unaltered. A film adaptation, though, now that’s a different story. A film adaptation that really does become a story about a girl with a dragon tattoo will be a shame. A real shame.

Even if you hate “foreign” movies and you can’t stand subtitles, make an exception for this film. And do it fast, as I fear it won’t last long in North American theatres.

* I can only speak to North-American cinema; I’d love to hear from English-speakers from the rest of the world about this!

Go See The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

After watching the whole series again on DVD this month, I love it even more. It is, in fact, now safely situated among my all-time favourite television shows. And today, David Lynch’s tweet pointed me to this article in the Guardian about the show.

Twin Peaks is terrifying. That’s hard to find even in a cable show these days. In fact, I don’t think any character has ever scared me as much as Leo Johnson scared me. (Yeah, I found Leo far scarier than Bob. And I found Bob scary, too.) And let’s ponder for a moment how the part of the weird show that was the most disturbing was the part that had absolutely nothing to do with forward-backward-talking midgets or owls not being what they seem. The most frightening part was the part about wife beating. Which, frankly, is the way it should be.

The ensemble cast in Twin Peaks is damn near perfect. Each character is believable, with their own past and motivations, and yet the community as a whole is just damn strange.

The score is about as iconic as any number of other memorable aspects of the show. As a teenager I used to listen to the cassette tape in my walkman on the bus to school. It was the soundtrack to my weird adolescence.

And the friendship between Special Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry S. Truman is about the most healthy, beautiful male friendship I’ve ever seen portrayed on TV.

Yeah, there were a few episodes in the middle of the second season where everything seemed to go off the rails a little, but then they zeroed in on the Windom Earle arc, and all was back to creepy, creepy normal.

Did you watch the show when it first aired? Have you seen it recently? If not, you should. Soon.

I’m Going to Rave About Twin Peaks Now is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

I’m reblogging myself from over at Tumblr because I’m fairly desperate to discuss this. Please, oh please, chime in:

The relationship between Dale Cooper and Harry S Truman in Twin Peaks is the best example of true male friendship ever portrayed on television.

Go.

Dale Cooper + Harry Truman: Discuss is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

Regardless, instead of passing out from exhaustion at 7:30 last night, I parked myself on the couch in front of the television and finished off my groundhog (huge thanks to June Gilbank for such a fabulous pattern) for the Groundhog-along. As I mentioned in my post announcing this absurd little crochet-along, his name is Ned Ryerson, a name befitting as you can see from the photo to the right.

ETA: Check out more completed groundhogs on June’s blog.

Not familiar with Ned Ryerson? Educate thyself:

And the best follow-up:

Project specs:
Started: 9 January 2010
Finished: 1 February 2010
Pattern: Groundhog, by June Gilbank
Yarn: Red Heart Designer Sport
Hook: 3.75mm

So, has spring already hit where you are? And anyway, will you be watching the movie tonight?

No Shadows in Sight. BING! is a post from Kim Werker's blog.

photo credit Môsieur J. (version 3.0b)

I thought a couple weeks into 2010 I’d do a little wrap-up of 2009. It was, after all, a fairly unusual year for me. Also, I’ve neglected my pal the bulleted list and I feel I owe him a big one.

(Wee note: I’ve gone and put a new theme on the blog, so poke your head in for a peek, hey? I hope you like it.)

• My far-and-away favourite part of 2009 was making new friends. I set out to get more involved in the crafts community here in Vancouver, and I’ve met some lovely people who create amazing things. I also made some new online friends and even met some in person. And let’s not forget the Portland Craftgasm. Overall, I ended 2009 feeling like I was really a part of the crafts community both locally and internetly, and this gives me the happies.
• I spent much of the year not making much of anything, though. I was burnt out on crochet, and on yarn in general. I tinkered with embroidery and had dreams of quilting, but really I just ended up spending a lot of time playing World of Warcraft. The game-playing tickled a different part of my brain, and I enjoyed it immensely. The live-social aspects of the game blew my mind until the relative blathering stupidity of much of it turned me off. Still, I want to game more.
• By the end of the year I’d gotten my craft back. Now I’m crocheting and knitting again, and I’m again dreaming about sewing.
• I’m also writing a lot more. I’m blogging more, and I’m very much enjoying my new gig at the Make and Meaning blog. I’ve neglected The Creative Life blog, but I plan to stop doing that. Both of those blogs are exactly the kinds of things I wanted to get involved with at the start of ’09, so go me with the goal-meeting.
• Two interviews I did at the very end of 2008 set the stage for ’09 in fairly dramatic ways. Discussing creativity and the things that make me tick with Brenda Dayne on Cast-On kept me thinking about what I find most satisfying and kept me focused on providing myself with it. And talking crafty business with Sister Diane on Craftypod ended up being a gift that kept giving. I met so many people because of that interview. And let’s not forget that I got to know Sister Diane better, which is a gift all on its own.
• You helped me raise over $1700 for pancreatic-cancer research. And I thank you again. This spring my father will decide if it’s time to prophylactically remove his pancreas. Whether he chooses that this is the right time or not, the study he’s participating in means his pancreas is examined routinely. That study is funded by the Lustgarten Foundation, and it will hopefully lead to better screening for people whose families are tormented by the disease like mine is, and for the vast majority of sufferers who just get pancreatic cancer at random.
• My sixth book, Crocheted Gifts, came out in the fall. I really like this book, and other people seem to like it, too.
• I turned 33 the day Handmade Nation screened here in Vancouver, and I had about the best crafty birthday ever.
• Over the course of the year I started to read 23 books and finished 20 of them. I loved The Book of Negroes (beautifully told story, historically educational), The Name of the Wind (outstanding fantasy) and On Writing (best writing book I’ve come across and the only one I could get through). I couldn’t finish Made to Stick (it’s poorly written, the “science” annoyed me), The Echo Maker (I wrote about it) and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (great idea, terrible horrible no-good very bad execution that’s launched a spate of monster-classics reboots that hopefully won’t suck as much) (oh, and I wrote more about it, too).
• I did a podcast (with Jenny Ryan, who rocks my world). It was tremendous fun and I intended to do more but was sidelined by my second topic. Copyright can do that to a girl. Still, I learned quite a lot putting that podcast together, and I would very much like to tinker more with the medium.
• It was a pretty epic year for television-on-DVD watching, that’s for damn sure. Freaks and Geeks struck me through the heart and brain and Styx will never be the same again. Deadwood injected a new vocabulary item into near-daily usage. 30 Rock challenges Arrested Development for funniest show ever. Tina Fey is fucking amazing and Jack Donaghy is, I think, the best sitcom character ever written. At least, that’s what I think today. We’re into the second season of Dr. Who, and I love it. (Also, we just named our new car the TARDIS, on account of the inside of a Honda Fit being bigger than the outside. We bought this car because the transmission in our ten-year-old Volkswagen Golf crapped out just before Christmas. Yay, end of 2009.) Television-on-television was pretty sucky, the only exceptions being Dollhouse and, inconsistently, Glee.
• It took me till April to figure out how not to work – before then I barely noticed the compunction I felt to be productive. Which, of course, consisted of sitting in front of my computer “working”. Hiatus FAIL. But after my big epiphany about that, I stopped sitting in front of my computer so much.
• Even while I enjoyed my time off, I did have a big over-arching goal to end up with great work at the end of the year, and I knew the best way to end up with it would be to talk to tons of people about what I wanted to do. I did such a good job with this particular part of my hiatus that I ended up starting to work full-time in September. Four months later, I’m still with LexPublica, and I’m enjoying it very much.

I’m sure I missed whole swaths of important-at-the-time events and trends for the year, but I’m not so concerned about it. With 2010 starting despite my having failed to wrap-up ’09 until now, I’m more focused on the here-and-now, and on the high-level, informal goals I have for this year. I want to read more, make more, and write more both for fun and for pay. I have a vague goal to get paid to speak at events and the like (I like public speaking and I’m pretty good at it. You know, just in case you were thinking about hitting me up but thought I wouldn’t be interested. How’s that for just tossing that out there?).

So thus, two weeks late, endeth 2009.

What All Went Down in ’09 is a post from Kim Werker's blog.