Is chic lit the new fairy tales?

PS happy new year, blogworld.

I've been thoroughly enjoying the television twists on classic fairytales lately. I've also, fairly uncharacteristically, bought and read some chic-lit. And found it surprisingly enlightening. Well, enlightening for someone who knows next to nothing about the niceties and throwbacks of human relationships. I do so hate recognising myself in these things, but it's also a wakeup call, a reminder to reconsider. And an old theme emerges. Chic-lit can be shallow, vacuous, meaningless, trite. But underneath all that boy-meets-girl-runs-away-is-captured-by-girl-in-the-end sometimes lie some eternal truths and warnings. Like fairystories, which read in the right light are a careful set of warnings from way back in time; the sexual predator as big bad wolf, the infanticidal needs of a new wife (aka wiked stepmother) staking her children's claim to their father etc. And maybe these types of truths also persist in the otherwise-fluffy genre known as chic lit. Perhaps in these torrid tales of romance and resolution lie the same cautionary overtones that sat within 'don't go into the woods' and 'avoid the pretty fruit'; perhaps they can be seen as moral tales, even if unintentional (some stories are told and retold, and a lazy author won't ignore a good plot if it already exists) ones. Maybe I read too much into these things, maybe I'm just a little too naive and prone to oversimplification, but it would be interesting to distill enough chiclit to see if universal themes emerge.

Enough... I have a theme of my own to contain.

Almost Haiku

We are not Us.
We are You, I. Alone together.
Watching leaves fall.

Obsession

Okay, I admit it, I'm obsessive. Have a personality that leans towards obsessive- compulsive sometimes. Not noticably; I mean, I can't resist straightening a pile of papers on my desk, but the usual chick things like chocolate don't really do it (although I do have to finish the box, I don't have to do it immediately, and I have a lovely team at work who'll happily sacrifice their waistlines to help). No, what I obsess over is relatively-simple puzzles. I can spend hours piecing together online jigsaws, pretending to myself that I'm learning things about colour, whilst listening to tv detective puzzles, and I daren't keep any card games on my PC lest I start playing them repeatedly. And this puzzles me: why do I do this? What part of my personality can it possibly be satisfying. And if it doesn't satisfy (and it doesn't), how can I program myself to stop before I start? I know that sometimes the absence of thought is comforting but unsatisfying, and that obsessive puzzling usually happens when I'm tired. But I'm puzzled (to pardon the pun) about the mechanisms of this.

So today's topic for analysis is obsession. Possibly even obsessively.
Hmmm... the psych definition of OCD is obsession = involuntary, repetitive, and unwelcome thoughts or images that upset or interfere with an individual's life, and compulsion = action that temporarily relieves the anxiety caused by obsession. Which immediately broadens my own naive repetition-based definition. And at that point, my ability to sit playing games for hours deviates from the psych definitions of obsession. These include a sense of reality about the obsession (most people know that the obsessed topic is unreal; those that don't are said to have poor insight), and an underlying fear of "what if" scenarios. There's a subset of OCD, impulse control disorders, that could match, but right now my going-to-sleep obsession is kicking in. Maybe more later, but I may have just cracked the puzzling obsession by using the analysis obsession. Hmmm... I can feel a top-trumps-style game developing here...

wwwhy?

WWW is so passe now; why, there are even addresses now that skip the www altogether and go straight to the meat. Or vegetables, or whatever else they happen to be talking about (me, I favour the vegetable pages, lapsed gardener that I am). But that www leaves a space, a useful niche for seeing what sort of page one's landed one without having to read all the address at once. So, without ado, onto the alternative www alphabet.

aaa: innuendo-laden jokes pages.
bbb: apiary, but could be shared with self-assertiveness groups (if they ask nicely).
ccc: nautical.
ddd: 1980s music (ddd.dadada, that's all I need to say to you).
eee: mandatory for all pages from Yorkshire.
fff: diy (it's all the swearing, innit).
ggg: equestrian.
hhh: .
iii: opthalmology.
jjj: ornithology.
kkk: .
lll: witchcraft/ satanists.
mmm: recipes.
nnn: .
ooo: gifts and surprises (not always the same thing).
ppp: toddler training.
qqq: government (external).
rrr: transport.
sss: reptiles.
ttt: government (internal).
uuu: celebrity.
vvv: .
www: .
xxx: porn.
yyy: philosophy.
zzz: insomniacs.

I've missed a few, but will be back later to fill them in (if you can stand it!).

Why do fish like being stroked?

The aquarium at the Cherbourg submarine museum (highly recommended; wonderful museum to visit, especially with small people) has a petting tank. Where small (and not-so-small) children can stroke the backs of friendly rays. It's a large (but not very deep) tank that's only accessible to said small people on one side, so the rays have to actively swim to the people to be stroked.

Cats, dogs, humans and other furry things like to be stroked, and even the act of stroking can reduce down a stressed-out heartrate, and it makes sense that animals that rely partly on contact senses should benefit from using those senses to communicate maternal presence, safety etc. But then we get to the hairless creatures that also enjoy a tickle behind the ears, including toads (who are also partial to catfood, but that's another story), snakes, and fish, and my question for the day has to be "what do the fish get out of it?".

so, starting with which types of fish and why. Georgia aquarium has bonnethead sharks and cownose rays. Other aquaria mainly feature rays and sharks, with the occasional catfish (and starfish, crab or sea urchins to feel rather than stroke). And Nausicaa claims to have cuddly skates. Now it may be that these fish are easy to put small hands on without causing any damage from fins etc; rays, in particular offer a nice flat back to stroke with the minimum amount of coordination (sometimes a difficult thing when you're 3); maybe it's because these are naturally placid fish, and therefore unlikely to bite anyone (although it does occasionally go wrong, and in the case of the cownose ray, it's because they prefer swimming at the top of the tank rather than lurking at the bottom of the tank like most other types of ray.

Okay, so maybe the fish type is a red herring. But still, the question remains: why do the fish like being stroked? What evolutionary reason could there possibly be for this? OR maybe it's learnt; the touch tank at the Tampa Bay stadium sells ray food to its visitors. Maybe what we have here is simply Pavlov's fish.

Meanwhile, an intriguing nugget: the underwater world at SF's Pier 39 rotates its petting tank inhabitants out of the tank every 3 days because they get "tired out" in the tank. How? Why? The journey continues... To where I find that stingrays in petting tanks have their spines snipped off with pliers so they can't hurt the people stroking them. It's a good thing for us (but not necessarily for them) that they have a reputation for being docile.

Things to do in Seville when you're cold

Yahay! I've found out how to edit posts! Which means that this one will be growing over the next few months, ready for a small trip to yet another favourite place: Andalucia. So, in no particular order for now, things to do in Seville:
Seville itself: eat tapas. Lots of tapas. Seville invented them, it would be rude not to try, and it will be interesting to see how much they differ from the Pintxos in Donostia (that's San Sebastian to non-Basque-speakers). Walk up the Giralda tower, but not if you're a cow (they tend to get stuck in towers). Go to a real flamenco show to see wild young men fight with their feet and tug at your heart with their songs.
Go to Granada: spend at least half a day in the Alhambra, being overawed yet again at the sheer beauty of the place. If you have time (and I've never made it out of the Alhambra in less than a day), go up into the Sierra Nevada mountains: sledge, walk up onto the peaks, wear thick warm clothes and listen to the wind in the rocks then scare yourself with the drive back down to reality.
Stop in at Cordoba: go stand in the Mesquita; try to choose a sunny day when the light streams at the doors then dissipates into serenity amongst the mosque's columns. Sit amongst the orangetrees outside and stare at the light from the other side of the doors. Wander off and look at the roman waterwheels.
Stop in at Carmona: lose yourself wandering around the Roman necropolis.
And some places further afield, for a longer trip:
Ronda: take the back road from Malaga to Ronda (is one of my favourite driving roads); you'll scare yourself silly, but you'll arrive at the top with a huge grin on your face. Walk to the el Tajo gorge and admire the new bridge, then back to the bullring and lunch in the place where they don't serve up the soft bits honest nearby (they do a damn fine lamb there). And if you like shoes, this is a good place...

Where do knitting needles come from?

Ah... another one of those burning questions, like "what's the difference between blue and grey eyes (a genteel reader wishes to know)" or "why does washing stain pink instead of green?"

I knit. Some would say obsessively (although I've got it down to a one-a-year habit now), others would say occasionally (that would be the one-a-week crowd). And I've wondered for a while about just who first worked out that taking a stick and a piece of thread would create something warm, woolly and usually of questionable colour sense. Much is recorded about knitting styles and patterns, but very little is said about the humble needles that created them. So once more on a quest, dear friends...

What I know about knitting needles is this: most British knitting uses two long needles. Some folks in Northern Scotland use one needle and dextrous thumbs. Scandanavians use 4 or 5 short doubled-pointed needles, or two short needles joined by a long string. Lengths vary with taste, as do materials: metal, plastic and bamboo are all common, but needles were originally made from bone. And many of these objects are so frightening or annoying to non-knitters that they are routinely banned from aircraft cabins.

And so to curious research. First, nobody knows when knitting really started, but several sources agree that it wasn't 4th century Egypt or 10th century Scandinavia: things that look like knitting from these periods were really created using a complex form of needlework (as in one needle) known as Naalbinding; wikipedia is delightfully pointed about archeologists who can't tell this from real knitting. The rest of knitting needle history is relatively recent. Straight knitting needles probably happened in the 1800s, double-pointed needles are much older, the first recorded use of the term knitting needle dates to 1598, original needle materials included shell and bone which were replaced by less environmentally sensitive materials, and I have been unable to find any more online information than that on this subject.

The hunt continues, but in the meantime, there's always the knitting cartoon set.