Creature of Mad Enthusiasms

I've been so wrapped up in the neverending "must be done"s and "ought to get done"s that I've long since written off the "enjoy doing"s... and that's not right.

So I'm making an effort to spend not just a little time doing the things I enjoy, but putting them on the schedule as a high priority. There is little in my life that HAS HAS HAS to be done on a schedule anymore - there's no cosmic difference in my life if, say, I set up the new laptop today, tomorrow, or Wednesday. I need to do it soon, yes (this one is dying of cat hair and entropy at a high rate) but I don't actually need to do it *now.*

So I'm making a point that on the weekends I take the time to:
- read a chapter of a book. A whole chapter, all at once... and that this feels dangerous and slothful is, frankly, appalling.
- Spend significant time crafting. This can be knitting, sewing, quilting (even mending will count, I think, just to get the mending done) but Accomplish Something With My Hands
- Listen to a podcast or Big Finish. I'm about 3 behind on my Big Finishes and my podcast backlog is in the hundreds (recs at the end of this post)

The other day one of my actual chores was to sew a Jane Austen logo onto a second-hand purse so I'd have something appropriate for the upcoming Janeite convention, and I was sitting there, podcast and sewing machine running, thinking "I'm happy. I like this. Whyyyyyyyyyy did I ever stop?"

So... I won't stop. There's no damn reason on the face of this earth why I can't give myself the same happy time at least once a week.

So, podcasts. My backlog is in the hundreds because I'm now listening to quite a few. If you have an iphone, I recommend PodCruncher as opposed to the native bullshit app, but there is a learning curve and they haven't updated it to properly fit the size of the screen past iphone 5. Still, once I got the hang of it, I really enjoy using it.

Podcasts I listen to always:
- Staggering Stories (fannish news & chatter. ~1 hour to 90 minutes; Doctor Who predominates)
- Welcome to Night Vale (fiction. 30 minutes; NPR from the Twilight Zone)
- Stuff You Missed in History Class (history all eras. ~30 minutes; The vast bulk of my backlog is downloads of the last 3 years of this one)
- Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited (nonfiction. ~30 minutes; a must-listen for theater, history, and Shakespeare nerds)
- Within the Wires (fiction. ~30 minutes; the Night Vale folks break out into relaxation tapes for medical prisoners)

Stuff I listen to if I like the topic(s) du jour:
- BBC Comedy of the Week (exactly what it says on the tin. ~30 minutes)
- BBC Drama of the Week (see above)
- Big Finish Podcast (Advertising for BF. ~30 minutes)
- the Holmesian trio: Baker Street Babes, Three Patch Podcast, I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere (all ~1 hour)
- Reduced Shakespeare Company Podcast (nonfiction. ~20-40 minutes; theater interviews and Reduced Shakes news)

I'm off Great Detectives of Old Time Radio at the moment simply because Adam isn't running any of the shows I'm interested in. There are still some Ellery Queens and Philip Marlowes in my backlog, though.

And I'm waiting to catch up in Zombies, Run! before I start listening to Podcast Detected, although I know it's out there.

I'm about to test-listen to some food-related podcasts, such as The Salt, A Taste of the Past, Gastropod, Gravy, and Dinner Party Download (episode 356 of which apparently has Doyle at the dinner party).

I'm looking for recs for podcasts on the following topics:

- Doctor Who
- Sherlock Holmes (all eras)
- Knitting
- Cooking (including specialty things like tea or bento or specific foods)
- Literary discussion, esp on:
- - Jane Austen
- - Mysteries
- - SF/F
- - Shakespeare

If you've got a favorite that isn't on this list, sing out anyway; you know I've got eclectic tastes. And if you can find me a Jane Austen podcast that does NOT include the phrases "So, like" or "and he was all 'whatever'..." my cringing brain and appalled sensibilities will thank you most graciously.

PS - having just watched The King's Speech, I'm also interested in recs of biographies of the people involved.

I'd drifted away from all but the most imperative of podcasts because it just seemed to be a PITA to open iTunes, wait for 'em to download, wait for 'em to sync to the machine du jour, and hope that they *did* because sometimes what I thought I was downloading, I wasn't.

This is one of the things having a sea change because of the Touch - it's *so* much faster to whip out the touch, tap "get more episodes" and download direct!

The first thing I looked for was a modern Sherlock podcast, but if one exists, I haven't yet found it. If you have, sing out!) However, there are two that may be of interest to the flist:

First up, I'm going to hype my favorite, Staggering Stories because episodes 83 and 84 dedicated almost as much time to discussing the BBC Sherlock as they did Doctor Who. Add in a mixed-gender cast and a filthy sense of humor, and that's pretty much my ultimate in listening entertainment. They enjoyed Sherlock thoroughly, so I believe it has joined Who and Being Human as being their three main topics of discussion.

Second, there's I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere. This is a podcast for all forms of Sherlock. The drawback that will keep me skimming rather than squeeing is that the podcast team is a group of purist men, so there's little shrift given to modern interpretations (they didn't like the Robert Downey Jr. movie for canonical reasons) and there is no woman's point of view.

That said, they didn't bash the movie either, and there's lots of information on other things Holmsian, such as Sherlockian conferences, Sherlock Holmes for Dummies, etc.

I wanted to throw in yet another plug for the Staggering Stories podcast. Yes, I like it - enough to put up with hour and a half shows when my attention span is closer to 25 minutes. Yes, it provides a fairly comprehensive sweep of SF in addition to Who - at the moment I'm listening to Crumbly's overview of Harry Harrison's books.

But also, as Who fandom continues to chew over the staggering entitlement of Walker's selfish and lightfingered "flattery," I can't recommend Staggering Stories' "Fake Keith" enough. Because the attitude of the the men in the podcast isn't "And now here's a moment of 'feminist' blah blah blah from some alien life form with bizarre but hypnotic chestal protrusions to prove how open-minded we are," it's very much simply four fen and four microphones, period. That one of them is a woman and she talks about things like how dishy she finds some actors and raising her children goes completely unremarked - not that the others don't care, but her perspective is no more nor less than anyone else's. Aside from the monniker (I'm rather assuming that Karen is being ironic in doing that to her husband's name) there's no attempt to make her into one of the boys. She takes (and receives) the mickey equally with the others, she has as much to say as the others, she does *not* have to mommy the others - she is, in short completely equal and equally heard without it being an issue in any way.

And that's the way fandom is supposed to be. Snarky, opinionated, wide-ranging, and egalitarian.




(And besides, that series of Nanny Ogg-style single entendres over Time Crash? Hilarious.)

Tried a new podcast today: Word Nerds, as mentioned on the RSC podcast. The one I picked was rhetoric in famous speeches. Now, I could read a book on that subject, preferably one that went through the speeches with a fine-tooth comb for every obfuscation, logic flaw, appeal, etc. I could read a very thick book on that.

So that each speech got about two comments is why I won't be listening again.

However, yesterday, I liked Staggering Stories. Today, having listened to the uber-cracky Fight Club: Lois Lane vs Sarah Jane, I adore it. I loved it from Team SJ asking "would you like to just surrender?" at the beginning through Fake Keith (a woman) saying "Sarah sets the sonic lipstick to Setting 12. You know the one, ladies."

And then there was the recap of Stolen Earth:
"Boom, Rose appears! Packing heat!"
"Packing big heat."
"Packing SERIOUSLY big heat."
"Rose is in heat?"
"Bad Crumbly!"

This isn't so much a newscast as a drunken interlude with some seriously silly fans.


Speaking of Sarah Jane: I endorse this fabulous Clyde and Luke vid to "Popular".


On the knitting side of things, I'm kicking around designing a lap afghan. But just designing it isn't exciting enough, oh no. Knitting it isn't enough. The question isn't even will I share it with the blogosphere. No, the question is *how* I share it. Just put it up on Ravelry and here? Put it up, but release the directions at a piece at a time, knitalong-style? Or make everyone take a leap of faith and simply collect the instructions a piece at a time, to be told at the end how to put it together? (This despite never having been part of a mystery anything... although there is a mystery shawl project about to start.)

[Poll #1249337]

I've run out of podcasts to review and am going to be taking a break from new ones for a while.

The last three:

She Knits started out with a series of "lessons learned" from a Shrinkyknits' first sweater, but just when I was about to spin the dial out of boredom, Shrinky said "I'm so bored with this pattern that I'd want to move on even if it were pure cashmere imported from Deep Space 9." One of us! (There was a Lord of the Rings mention later.)

Then I went to the next couple of podcasts, found them rambling, and realized I didn't like She Knits so much as Shrinkyknitter, and she doesn't appear to have a blog or podcast of her own. Pity.

Sleepy Eyes Knitting is another one of those where I find the podcast rambling, but the blog interesting. According to her podcast, there are directions for crockpot dying, among other things on there.

Stash and Burn - I may have to come back at a later date and give them more of a chance, because driving home sick from work with no energy, a headache, and trouble breathing is not a time to be entertained. But after about 5 minutes without hearing anything of interest, I dialed out.

Cast On is looking a hell of a lot better in retrospect. And now I'm taking (another) nap.

I'm not that much of a people person, and I really don't give that much of a damn about what total strangers are knitting or viewing or seeing out their window unless there is some form of either entertainment or information that I can use.

Which is why both Knaked Knits and Knitting Naturally were blown through in minutes. The women running both started out talking about their lives, their families, and every time I spun the dial looking for something interesting to me, I didn't get anything. (It does seem as if Knitting Naturally had eventually gotten around to discussing three different cardigan patterns, but by then I'd spun three times already and wasn't willing to wait around anymore.)

On the other hand, Knit Science was so much of what I want that it might have been tailor-made. The first episode I listened to ("Stitch Anatomy") discussed the kinetic and potential elastic energy of yarn, gave detailed reviews of two books (including contents, what patterns were inside and how they were written), and even in her discussion of her vacation talked about a knitting kit she'd bought, the yarn, the pattern, and the needles inside.

She does talk about what's on her needles and other ephemera, but that's at the end of the episode, when you can move on. The other ones I've listened to haven't been quite that concentrated, but every time I'm about to spin the dial, she starts talking about history or data or society. For example, she started going on about the Christmas stockings she was working on, but just as I was about to spin the dial, she gave a potted history of the family tradition of stockings and where the stocking tradition started.

Now that's what I'm talking about!

Chopping down the big jobs into "just do x today" is helping a lot with getting the chores shifted and stress levels.

With that in mind, I'm going to deal with the overwhelming number of knitting podcasts I've downloaded at the rate of one review a day. There will be a couple of cooking podcasts in there as well, but most of those were video podcasts, which makes them inappropriate for downloading for the commute to work!

First up is tchwrtr's beloved Cast On. It is an extremely comprehensive 'cast, covering current knitting charity drives, pattern reviews, knitting web page reviews, a theme, Q&A, and music. Lots and lots of indy music, which is then linked and advertised on the web page as well.

It's a good podcast and covers a lot of territory, but in the end, tchwrtr loves it a lot more than I do. I get impatient with the sheer size of it and start skipping around (for instance, any discussion of spinning leaves me cold). I think in more leisurely days I'll enjoy the ramble, and I probably will subscribe to Cast On, but I also have to confess in all honesty that I haven't listened to a single episode all the way through without fast-forwarding at some point.



Small pleasures: Someone at my office got me hooked on clarity in a can, aka Starbucks Expresso Double Shots and Cream. But they are only randomly available at the Starbucks near my office, and another one in the area told me that they were being discontinued.

Silly me, I should have gone to the local college. There the person behind the counter told me that they get shipments of them *every day* - and they're a full dollar cheaper there than the lobby Starbucks near work.

Also, I am trying to make a point of literally stopping and smelling the roses every day. I cannot recommend David Austen Roses highly enough, and the ones I've had shipped bare root from England do even better than the same roses nurtured in the local gardening stores. I get them, I lovingly plant them, and then I neglect the snot out of them, and yet they thrive anyway. I would tell you the exact one that I'm sniffing - a pale, yellowish English rose with a delicate scent and a Shakespearean name, but their website appears to be down and I can't look it up. I think it's Sweet Juliet. (Wise Portia, if you can find it, and Noble Anthony have fabulous petals for drying - almost fuschia on the bush, but deep red when dried.)

Off to do tonight's soniclipstick.

The last two podcasts from last time were Mystery Theater and Old Time British Radio, both of which were pretty much what they said on the label and both of which came from the same Nostalgia Radio website.

They were both made about mid-60s, I think; and the British one had Jon Pertwee, although he didn't sound like I expected. Other than that, they lived up to the stereotypes about their respective countries: the British one relied on rattling off difficult and clever lines at speed and panto-level humor ("I say Pertwees because I three see of you. I'm talking to the one in the middle. Lis thandlord, 'e keeps inebriating that we're insisting!") while the American one was into portentious melodrama with musical stings ("So you're telling that just after your fiancee's uncle, the famous scientist of crystallography, committed suicide for no reason last week, she mailed back your ring and announced she would marry his laboratory assistant?" *Dun, dun, DUN!!*)

I don't see myself subscribing to either one, mostly because the women's roles are either Mrs. Slocombe or willing recipients of insane amounts of sexual harassment (British) or duplicitous dames and seriously stupid secretaries (American).

However, I can see myself downloading one or two for the occasional knitting afternoon.



[Poll #1236367]

Next post - a knitting pattern. How sad is it that I plan my posts in advance?

Some of the choices are starting to blend together - for instance, when searching on "mystery" in iTunes, you end up with a great deal of Old Time Radio offerings. So while I'm going to keep the poll, on the assumption that people like clicking ticky boxes, the actual offerings are starting to wander further afield than the winning topic would suggest.

The podcasts I'm trying are:
- Mystery Theater (old time radio mysteries, presented as serials)
- Old Time Radio Mysteries (ditto)
- British Old Time Radio (the same, with an accent)
- Agatha Presents (short stories)
- Classic Mysteries (what I was really looking for)

What I really wanted was a shorter Dragon Page, with reviews and information about upcoming books. That didn't appear to exist. However "Classic Mysteries" is a series of reviews of classic mystery books, and in a world with ebay and half.com, nothing is truly out of print. I've downloaded their commentary on some of my favorites - Return of the Black Widowers, Busman's Honeymoon, and The Hound of the Baskervilles.

The Colonial Williamsburg podcast is on iTunes, which makes it easy for me to subscribe rather than continuing to check the page and import.