nichole's auxiliary storage

The high cost of not finding information

Reading "The high cost of not finding information" by Susan Feldman makes me feel like only workaholics should go into librarianship (or other flavors of Content, Document, Information, or Knowledge Management).
Is drinking heavily an appropriate response?
[via librarian.net]

Elections

I just cast my electronic ballots for the ALA, LITA, and ALCTS elections. LITA members won 12 of my votes for ALA-councillor-at-large (we can cast, like, three dozen) because LITA told me who they were.

I'm feeling all civically engaged lately - school board, county supervisors, and some judges are all up for elections in Madison on April 6. I've made all my choices. Some really surprised me. (Though I'm leaving out the names - not that they'd be hard to deduce - and links, if you're burning to hear who I'm voting for, email me.)

For instance, I may end up voting for the conservative* challenger to my very green-friendly incumbent county supervisor, because he responded favorably to my request for his positions on libraries, education, and jails. The incumbent totally would have won my vote had he:

1. taken the bigger picture, not just his Sierra Club view, into account;
2. not been so pigheaded about voting down full funding of county library service;
3. definitely not claimed that he raised the county library budget 7% (blatant fudging);
4. responded to an email I sent him lo these many weeks ago - a general inquiry as a constituent and neighbor (JM signed his petition to be included on the ballot, for crying out loud!) that never garnered a reply.

I doubt he'll be ousted, so I'm glad of his commitment to environmental causes. He's such a one-issue guy, though, and rumor has it not very easy to get along with.

...of course, with all this voting talk I speak only for myself.

*this is Madison - "conservative" is relative....

update 4/7: I voted at 7:30pm and was number 812 at the polling station. There must have been more yard signs than voters in my district.

Madison Stuff Exchange

Jen Voichick at the ReStore recently told me about the Madison Stuff Exchange. Run by the city, and similar to FreeCycle, the Exchange lets folks sell or give away their stuff. Jen said she's glad the ReStore has more places to refer people who want to donate things that fall outside the store's scope.

I just think it's fun to peruse the listings.

memo to Zelda: In a fit of comment spam paranoia (Morgan's fault!), I deleted your comment! I apologize.

Classic Book and Movie Club

Hey, the Wisconsin Historical Society's Classic Book and Movie Club sounds like fun. Must check that out.
And I never woulda heard about it if they didn't have RSS feeds.

"Beverly Billingsly can't catch"

Aw, this kid's book by Alexander Stadler looks sweet: a librarian helps a "mild-mannered" kid with her softball game. Check out the LC record - the cataloger sure picked out the librarian character.

Mar. 26: Mel & Smarty Pants

Read on for notes on another installment of Madison's second-favorite talk radio show, Mel and Floyd.

---

SP's approach to society and disaster avoidance: worry about everything. He's like the anti-Alfred E. Neumann: "Me? Worry."

Bush is all over the news with the 9.11 investigation. The "Bushies" can't admit that Bush has ever done anything wrong, since he's the Perfect Leader - he'd implode. Classic narcissistic personality - lack of confidence in his real abilities leads to his supporters refusing to admit he ever does wrong.

When Clinton did something, it was always "wagging the dog;" if Bush does something, it's politics.

But it is nice to hear some politicians talking about things that have happened in the past. The talks point out the split in government over the Clinton administration.

Remember how Condoleeza Rice had an oil tanker named after her?

Made in Burma jacket stirs flap. Floyd sent in this clipping - he's vacationing in Mexico.
SP: What's he doing, scoring pot?
Mel: Prescription drugs. He's relaxing on an island somewhere.
SP: And that's different from when he's at his state job because ... he's on an island.
SP: Made in Burma = excellence.
Mel: Those children with the tiny little hands do good work.

Controversial Abercrombie and Fitch shirt annoys West Virginians. Speaking of that, SP says a guy he knew in school (back in Bugtussle, Kentucky) confessed to him that he was having sex with his own sister. It's not so much the people, but the sparse population.
SP: "It's either her or Grandma."
Mel: "Or the cow."

Dispatcher can't get unemployment benefits after being fired for wearing a tongue stud.

Top ten questions received by Isla Mujeres tourism department. Stuff like: #7. Are there beds in the hotel rooms?
SP: Is "Is our children learning?" on there?

The Tricorn Centre, a "mildewed lump of elephant droppings," according to Prince Charles, is scheduled to be demolished.
SP: He originally said that about Princess Diana, you know.

Iraq on the Record: a database of the Bush administration's statements about Iraq.
SP: Hasn't the Minstry of Truth taken that down by now?

Fanta Orange: proud new sponsor of Mel and Floyd. Now with extra benzene.

*break*

Couple Arrested After 'Passion' Debate.
SP: Chill out, people - you could argue religion forever.
Mel: Until you get out the scissors.
SP: Where are they, Talibama?

Michael Jackson wanted to play a car in Kevin Smith's movie, Hot Rod. Well, there used to be that "My Mother The Car" show...

Richard Simmons cited for slapping man in airport.

"He apparently said, 'Hey everybody, it's Richard Simmons. Let's drop our bags and rock to the '50s,'" said Sgt. Lauri Williams in a reference to Simmons' well-known series of "Sweatin' to the Oldies" exercise videos. "Mr. Simmons took offense and said he had to 'bitch slap' him."

Going urban: for the first time, most of the world's population will live in urban areas. It just depends on how you define the borders.

Woman says "I Don't" at NBA game. She sprinted right out of the stadium when her boyfriend proposed on the Jumbotron. SP: If you say yes to a proposal on a Jumbotron, you're in for it.

The "Stad Amsterdam," a clipper ship, caused a stir when it sailed into Jacksonville, Florida. It's got a figure of a red-haired woman in a green dress with one breast bared.
Mel: What's the big deal, breasts are all over advertising.
SP: That's for selling stuff. Breast for no reason is disorienting. Slap a Victoria's Secret logo on there and you're fine.

Deep-fried chocolate sandwich sells like hotcakes. Mel: I'm just hurt that Wisconsin didn't invent this. Cheese isn't bad enough.

*break*

Cheerleader's mom sent to anger management classes. Mel: Parental involvement is the scourge of public education.

Arms-Control Group Says U.S. Inflated Libya's Nuclear Bid.

Wedding ring offered for hit. A woman said she'd give her wedding ring to have her husband killed.
SP: Can't she just put something in his food? Why not be proactive?

The top box office hit last week was that zombie movie. If one coming back from the dead is good, hundreds must be great. SP on Passion of the Christ: Read the book!

And that's it.

New Elfs

Oooh! New works at Shari Elf's place.

"UW-Madison yearbook won't be published this year"

So the UW-Madison yearbook is cancelled this year, the only gap in the run since 1972-1974 "according to university archivist David Null." Attrition brings down yet another student organization. Maybe they can garner support from some serials librarians - regularity is good for everyone, after all...

we are an idiot

I like Sam Brown's drawings and have been putting them on my desktop at work. When my coworker saw we are an idiot, she said, "At least he has food and water."

That old public library meme

When you see a patron hunting-and-pecking at the second floor word processing workstation, and he's wearing gold spray-painted hitop sneakers and a crash helmet, also gold, you have to give in to the "isn't the public weird" library blog meme. Sorry.

I should add that a few years ago, a patron died in the library not far from said workstation. And that I enjoy my job in technical services very, very much.

Collaborative cataloging afghan

Knitting and crocheting have hit UW-SLIS in as big a way as everywhere else. One enterprising student has organized a collaborative project to construct a navy-blue blanket from blocks contributed by SLIS students. Our favorite call numbers will be embroidered on, and the product auctioned off to raise funds for the school's laboratory library. I'm chipping in a square or two and saving up for a potential bidding war - SLISters, you've been warned!

Jail temperature

It is so damn hot and dry in the jail. It may be fine for the inmates, who have to wear cotton PJs and plastic sandals, but when you're jumping around shelving books, pushing carts and hauling trash it gets warm fast. I have no idea how the deputies can stand wearing brown polyester.

I don't bring my water bottle in - though it may be allowed - but once I was so thirsty that I scrounged around the Kids' Connection room, where I came across an ancient can of orange Crush which had evaporated back down to a viscous goo in the bottom of the can. I threw it out and kept looking until I found a plastic Hardees cup, washed it in the staff bathroom sink, and guzzled down some tap water.

In other news, we're bringing one volume of World Book per week to an inmate who requested an encyclopedia. When I dropped off Vol. 3 (the first half of C) he said, "They get smaller every week!" I offered to bring more than one, but he declined. Vol. 5 (D) is hefty, so the trend will reverse soon.

As usual, some people mob the cart before it can even get parked. This time I heard somebody mutter to the crowd, "Why don't you motherfuckers get a job?"

And despite my efforts to appropriately adjust the ratio of Silhouettes and Harlequins to Longarms and Raiders, the men downstream of the women's pods sometimes get more ro-mance than they might be inclined to read. Once a male inmate asked me, "Izzat cart from the women's pod? Cause there a lot of sensitive books on there last time."

Oh yeah, and there were some Jack Chick comics on the cart which didn't come from JLG. Religious tracts are never in short supply in jail.

El Paso public library blog

LIS Blogsource reports that the El Paso public library has a work-in-progress book review blog.

I used to live in El Paso (and on Fort Bliss, for a couple months in a bungalow just like this sans the greenery). I can't remember what the library looked like, and the sun-drenched pictures of the branches don't stir any memories. But I cherished my library card - a sturdy, bright yellow and orange keepsake that I still have stashed somewhere.

I wonder how long the library's offered cards to residents of Ciudad Juarez and Doña Ana County, NM? That's pretty neat.

Cited

Warning: readers may find this wide-eyed "oh the blogosphere is so small" post pedestrian. And I assure you I wasn't ego-surfing - I have someone else who does that for me.

So, months ago I posted^{(1) (2)} about Bob Lodge's Calculatrivia contest that had me reading, not reluctantly, all of George Starbuck's poetic works. Fellow puzzlers started commenting on my posts, and before long, JM and I decided to launch an amateur Calculatrivia forum. It's taken off, and the Starbuck fans have even gotten wind of it. So here we are, cited on Harvard College Library's news page. I even get quoted, albeit as a man. (Not complaining - the Gender Genie has always thought me butch.)

Since I'm headed into the public library world, I'd wager this will be my only brush with the upper echelons of academia, so I'm going to savor it.

Mar. 19: Mel & Smarty Pants

Read on for notes on another installment of Madison's second-favorite talk radio show, Mel and Floyd.

Public service announcements:
Saturday, 3/20/04, 12 noon: free public forum and rally at the Orpheum.
Tuesday, 3/23/04,  "Gaza Strip," a documentary, will be presented at the Wil-Mar community center by the Madison Area Peace Coalition .

---

[Hm ... technical difficulties ... I hope this doesn't last, cuz I gots to go to jail right after the show ... ]

[1:07pm: Ah, better.]

Mel almost introduced SP as the bastard child of Jennifer and Ted Stanley, major contributors to NPR. [I had to link to that 'donar list' on NPR Hates America. Couldn't resist.]

SP: Actually, I was conceived out of wedlock, so I'm only a little bit of a bastard. I foud out later my mom got pregnant to force her parents to let her get married.

SP is a little peaked after taking Sudafed, a weird combination of alert and woozy.

Being a Celt (a Welshman, specifically) himself, SP can say this: while the Irish are noisy drinkers, the Welsh are quiet, vindictive, surly, drunks. Why is St. David's Day not a big drinking holiday? Daffodils are named after him. He only drank water.

Letter from minions: SP mentioned that he was impressed by the urinals at the Amsterdam airport in Schiphol.  The minions sent SP a close-up picture of the fly in the sweet-spot.
[Updated 3/23 with the actual photos]


As they took a close-up shot, the auto-flush went off.



Some confusion about what exactly happened with Marcel the monkey in Friends. Anybody want to clarify?

Ah, our environmental president.

[Missed a minute or two - arg, people. I don't care enough about a lack of Kleenex to be engaged in a conversation about it. Especially during Mel & Floyd.]
[Update 3/23: A more alert listener (thanks, Mark!) sent me the story they riffed on: "Administration Failing to Meet Bird-Bombing Deadline," with the notable quote:

The Pentagon, led by attorney William Haynes II, argued in a legal brief that conservationists actually benefit from the military's killing of birds because it helps make some species more rare -- and "bird watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one."

Post office nixes personalized stamps. Thank God. Personalized stamps are popular in Canada - "Hey, could you pack me up some prescription drugs, maybe some medical marijuana, a gay marriage, some of them personalized stamps, and a pint of liquor while you're at it..." Get all your human needs met just across the border.

All out of monkey news, but SP has a paintball story. [Here's monkey news for y'all.]

*break*

Public service announcements:
Saturday, 3/20/04, 12 noon: free public forum and rally at the Orpheum.
Tuesday, 3/23/04,  "Gaza Strip," a documentary, will be presented at the Wil-Mar community center by the Madison Area Peace Coalition .

President Bush says: "God loves you and I love you ... "

There's no Melvina in the studio this week. For dinner the other day, Mel served the kids peanut butter sandwiches and candy corn (it counts as a vegetable).

Via commongood.org [?]: "The presidential prayer team wants your help": in defense of biblical marriage ...

If marriage really is a religious issue, then it seems that, legally, people have a right to follow their own religious beliefs (or lack thereof) about it. Right?

Church nixes Good Friday hot dogs. Opening day falls on Good Friday, a no-meat day in Lent. Mel: That's assuming there's meat in the hot dogs.

"We're already getting all kinds of requests for dispensation to eat meat," said the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne.

*break*

Alert listener sends in this story: Indiana man reaches for ball of paint record. And, a picture of a core sample extraction.

French artist identified as "Pierre" runs over bin Laden look-alike.

''If it was [bin Laden], we would have won $5 million,'' Mendel said, referring to a reward.

That's Pierre's lawyer talking - when there's money involved, it's all "we."

New study says all but 6% of the defecit can be attributed to rising government spending on defense, and tax cuts.

Sea lion grabs man off boat. SP: Do you think the sea lion wants to marry him? Mel: Well, they're called sea lions, not sea lambs. I think we're ticking off the animal kingdom, because every week there's a story like this.

Arabetics, an effort to make Arabic easier, may help with second language acquisition.

California officials nearly fall for water hoax. "Well, it was on the internet!"

And that's it.

A natural progression

Though I tend to think and overthink (blogging is no exception) I've kept most of the navel-gazing to myself. Time to come out with it. Thus, a new category is born: metablog.

Over at Crooked Timber Kieran posted on the five stages of blogging. I tend to hover around bargaining. For me, this is characterized by spending more time making lists of things to post about than actually posting. To heck with it. I'll post when I have a minute and try to spare the anguish. It's my auxiliary storage, after all. Oh dear, is that a flash of the anger phase? I'm pathetic. Depression? Arg.

Spring break

My break was a long weekend with family near the (Minnesota) Twin Cities. On the way up, we saw altered graffiti on some overpasses: what used to be "Support our Troops" was now "Support our oops." The same trick has been cited by a blogger in Irwindale, CA and another right here in Madison - maybe the very same overpass.

No family weekend is complete without an anecdote about my mother-in-law's students. She teaches an elementary LD/ED class, though I'm not sure how necessary that detail is to these two South Park-esque stories. Last time she told us about a fire drill where one second-grader, noting the absence of the school principal, stomped around outside yelling, "What the hell was she thinkin'?"

This time she told us about a heavyset female colleague of hers who tried to rein in an eight-year-old's bad behavior. She tells it like this:
The kid, who could usually be described as a cute ragamuffin type, shook his fist at the teacher and said, "You want a piece of this, you fat fuckin' bitch?"
The teacher, unable to say anything else, shook her finger at the kid and replied, "Don't you call me fat!"

Webcast on LIS education

Dang, I had to miss most of today's panel on the state of library education and it doesn't look like it's been archived. I tuned in partly because R. David Lankes gave such a kick-ass presentation at the LITA Forum last October. I'm sure someone else has good notes...if anyone would care to throw them at me, I'd love it, lazy as that would reveal me to be.

What I did hear from Elaine Yontz and Ken Haycock was insightful. Yontz spoke about the entrepreneurial pressure that library schools are under, which helped explain some of the choices schools (mine included) make, like upping enrollment to absurd numbers.

Haycock talked about the state of LIS education in Canada, where a two-year practitioner degree is offered as well as the MLS equivalent. He said that library leaders are usually those who choose librarianship as their first career, while the field tends to have more than its share of second-career professionals. This led him to a summary of the "library pathology," a crippling combination of victimization, entitlement, and conflict avoidance that hinders the profession.

Arg. Just when it was getting juicy I had to leave.

Student radio interview with JLG

Last September, two JLG volunteers gave an interview to Isaiah of WSUM 91.7FM for his program "The Common Rabble." The theme of the show was "The Secret Lives of Librarians," and I recently got to hear it for the first time while I was compiling JLG's 2003 annual report.

A good portion of it deals with the image of librarianship (please, no more) and the "weird patron" genre of anecdotes that library workers know and quickly tire of. There are some very good bits, including interviews with Carin of the Cooperative Children's Book Center and, of course, Erin and Kathy of JLG. It's available in mp3 at the Common Rabble site - settle in and listen if you have an hour or so.

Mar. 12: Mel & Smarty Pants

Read on for notes on another installment of Madison's second-favorite talk radio show, Mel and Floyd.

Community Service Message: it's time once again for the Barrymore Flea Market. New this year: Strolling pickpockets. Sunday, March 14, 10-4, FREE FREE FREE admission, at the Barrymore.

---

Last week was a "Best Of" show, since they hate to let the old shows rot away in the vault on their silver acetate and wax cylinders. Mel had to go to Melvina's school for a conference - "Your kid sets off the sprinklers one or two times..."

SP was looking at this blog again, and found it funny that I thought I was going to get a break last week. Mel: "It's like the seven labors of Hercules every week." And, "Don't make enemies of those librarians." [damn straight.]

If you Google "Mel and Floyd," you know what else comes up? A gay travel agency. [guidemag.com - down at the monent?] SP: "Well, that's appropriate."

Get well wishes to John Ashcroft. They had to remove his gallbladder. SP: "It's because he's so bilious." Mel: "From chewing up the Constitution."
SP: "When he was under, Newt Gingrich snuck in and divorced him - just out of habit, I guess."

"Jews killed the Lord Jesus": Pastor who posted the sign resigns.

Kerry's well-publicized mess-up in front of a live mike. SP (as the GOP): "Take that back - we're only the second most crooked."

Dumb criminal news: Alice R. Pike tried to shop with $1 million bills.

Minnesota State Dept. of Education accidentally inflated standardized test scores.

Melvina's in the studio today for the first time in years - they're grooming her to take over, just like the Presidency.

Last week's "classique" episode scared some folks when it referred to "next week's pledge drive."

Robotic legs could produce "super troops": "These boots are made for marching." This'll look like "The Wrong Trousers."

Cigarette smoking and alcohol abuse up among the military.

AP correction: They misspelled the name of a web site for kids' research: it's factmonster, not factsmonster [probably nsfw].

Dads gain weight after babies are born.

Man who claimed to be 114 dies at 92.

Parents who describe their kids as picky eaters are usually not paying attention. SP's sister once stuck a hamburger into the family piano - by the time it was discovered, it was green and fuzzy. Another time she poured her cereal down the cold air register, which smelled pretty bad.

*break*

SP caught singing to Man's Man's Man's Man's Man's World. Mel: "I'll unplug your mike."

Little artifact came through the mail: the entire bottom third of an envelope got shredded at the PO. The PO put it in a plastic body bag, and the best part is the explanatory note with the headline: "We Care." SP: "But not enough to not rip up your doodad." Reading the apology from the PO, Melvina giggles in the background.

Mel: "You know what's annoying about the post office?"
SP: "Nothing, nothing's annoying about the post office. It's the best example of big goverment."
But really, it sucks that you can't call your local PO. The number in the book is some centralized 800 number, which takes 40 minutes to complete a task.

Pete Rose will be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Mel: "Why WWE? The Rock wrestled the panda and the panda won."

Treatment for infected dog bites runs into the tens of thousands of dollars each year. Mel and Floyd Tip of the Week: Don't wait until it's an infested pustule to go to the doctor.

SP enjoyed a web site [sorry, couldn't find a good link] that showed that the US has the highest proportion of evangelical Christians - but we also have one of the highest rates of STD transmission. SP: "Get out of the pool, kids."

Community Service Message: it's time once again for the Barrymore Flea Market. New this year: Strolling pickpockets. Last time SP went, he snapped up a black-and-white photo from WWII with Norwegian notes on the back. Details: Sunday, March 14, 10-4, Free admission, at the Barrymore.

Moscow zoo to have TV sets in cages.

Man forbidden to keep monkeys in NYC. Mel: "They had one on Friends - I'd bring that up in court."

*break*

"Kindly Uncle Trotsky's Vintage Stereo Repair" shop renamed; now "Cranky Uncle Trotsky's Vintage Stereo Repair." You get 10% off if you badmouth Bush or the war. [JSonline link, sub]

...the war in Iraq started to really get under Larsen's skin. Kindly Uncle Trotsky became Cranky Uncle Trotsky, which Larsen felt more genuinely reflected his new persona. The repair shop's motto followed the tone: "Don't bring me any of that modern crap!"
A woman recently stopped by Cranky Uncle Trotsky and dropped off a broken radio. After coupling "Bush" with "(expletive)," she confessed that, truth be told, she planned to vote to re-elect the president. Cranky Uncle Trotsky shrugged; he wasn't going to let politics get in the way of business.

Bush has 10x the cash that the Dems do - maybe he'll just buy the votes again.

Leading Israeli rabbi recommends hanging bags of pig fat in busses to deter Muslim suicide bombers.

Letter to Dear Abby spoofs Simpsons episode... Abby got taken.

Krispy Kreme's net income has nearly tripled since last year. Mel: Adding nicotine to the fat really paid off. They're looking into selling with Wal Mart - why doesn't Wal Mart just sell crack?

Mel: "Well, we're out of time..."
SP: "Really?!"
Mel: "Listen to the song, it's Hot Pants!"

Dr. Dave has his tinfoil hat on, so he can't take request calls. But if you think them really hard he'll pick up on them.

And that's it.

On library students confusing ourselves

So we were talking metadata in info architecture class the other day. To ease us into it via the warm, familiar world of books, the prof asked what kinds of info, that isn't included in the catalog, might be useful to know about a book. Some folks suggested color, weight, and other stuff that generally isn't in bib records.

Then it started to get fuzzy. Price? Date of acquisition? Number of circulations? The last two are most certainly "in the catalog," but not in bib records. They're usually in the holdings records, folks. I did hear some grumblings to that effect in the back row when circ data was mentioned, but by then we were done with the analogy.

A similar problem surfaced in database class when the prof used library examples in what I thought a well-intentioned but ultimately confusing way. I'd wager I was alone - or nearly so - when I worked myself into a FRBR-inspired lather trying to answer a quiz question about a hypothetical book database that would include multiple editions of works. But I know I wasn't the only one who found it hard to keep real-life library experiences from letting me take quiz questions at face value.

I think trying to use library examples (in 'practice' courses, at least - forsooth, were most other SLIS courses to forbid anecdotes of the "At my library job, we..." variety, they would be quiet indeed) muddies the waters between theory and practice unless the theorist also knows the practice well. Otherwise the practitioners overthink the examples and the theorists can't figure out what they're so worked up about.

The better pod

Last time I went to the jail, I overheard a deputy in the hall as he escorted two new inmates to their pods. After dropping the first one off, he said to the other, "I wasn't gonna say this in front of him, but you've got the better pod. Way better."

Later I was kneeling to straighten up the cart and a passing deputy tossed me a clean towel: "That floor's hard on your knees."

An inmate wanted to know how he could donate a box of paperbacks. I've been asked that three times in the past and I have not yet gotten it together to have a business card or something on hand. As it is, I tell them to call UW Information and ask for Jail Library Group at the library school, but who knows what morass that would send them to?

I should at least have something with SLIS's phone number and JLG's email address on it.

T.P.

Will Manley's March 2004 column in American Libraries holds forth that libraries must provide quality toilet paper to both public and staff. I hadda grin because the local free weekly recently wrote up my own employer, accusing the library of saving "the good stuff" for the staff and stocking the public restrooms with cheap one-ply. Patently false - it's all one-ply. So when I read the memo from a cataloger that Manley included in his article,

Supplying your staff bathrooms with one-ply tissue is the strongest manifestation of your utter disregard for the dignity and morale of your employees.

I prayed that the higher-ups would see it. If you have staff morale problems, it may be best to start at the bottom, hm?

While looking in vain for the aforementioned t.p. expose, I came across Madison's other toilet tissue connection: Carol Kolb, Onion editor, curated the Madison Museum of Bathroom Tissue until she moved to New York. The museum moved to Elgin, Illinois. In the search I also came across a great compendium of t.p. lore and wisdom.

Wow. That's enough potty content for this blog.

Zodiac by Neal Stephenson

It took me long enough - I read his Diamond Age for the first time ten years ago - but I finally read Zodiac, Neal Stephenson's 'eco-thriller' set in present-day-ish Boston. Predictably, I loved Esmeralda,

a black librarian of somewhere between ninety and a hundred who contained within her bionic hairdo all knowledge, or the ability to find it.
...
After this was over, we'd have to give her an honorary membership ... if [the group] was like the Starship Enterprise, then I was Scotty and she was Spock.

and the protagonist's resourceful use of his library card:

...I felt guilty and admitted to a square of blotter acid in my wallet which, since it was on a Boston Public Library card I didn't think would ever be noticed. But guilt is guilt.

I have yet to read Cryptonomicon or any of the Baroque cycle. I'm saving them as a post-graduation present for long summer days ahead....aaaah.

Oct. 3, 2003: "Classic" Mel & Smarty Pants

This week it's a "classic" Mel and Floyd, originally broadcast on October 3, 2003.

"Oh, a week off, how nice," thinks nichole.

Moments later, after consulting the archives, she discovers that on 10/3/03 she was in Norfolk, VA for a library conference, and missed the original airing of the show.

Foiled!

---

Rush Limbaugh was an NFL talk guy, the ratings went way up, but he insited on sitting in his own booth.

Mr. SP is not feeling so well, but he's saving those little nose gems for the next pledge drive. He's got a productive cough too.

3G mobile signals can cause headaches and nausea. SP to mobile users: "I have a suggestion: why don't you just live in the space that you're in?"

Mel is an advocate of changing all our governmental "Departments" to "Ministries." It' so much more soviet. In Mel's hometown of Owatonna, the local paper was called the Daily People's Press. Typical headline: "New tractor in town."

Maybe that Iraq war wasn't so bad after all: they did get rid of the little Weekly Reader-ish booklets that Iraqi schoolkids used to have to read. Sample dialog: "Come, Hassan, let us chant for the homeland and use our pens to write praise to Saddam."

Iraqi school was heavy on Patriotic Education. In math, kids added 4+28 because April 28 is Saddam's birthday. In gym class, they chanted "Bush, Bush, listen clearly we all love Saddam," while climbing ropes. When a teacher enered the room, they were to shout, "Long live the leader, Saddam Hussein."

Shameless US plugging of supply-side economics for the New Iraq. Mel: "Hurry, my car's on fire! Get rid of the estate tax!"

Paris, TX: High school band played Deutschland Uber Alles and flew a Nazi flag as part of a WWII football halftime show that happened to fall on Rosh Hashanna.

Texas has the highest percentage of the uninsured. Let's follow their lead.

Washington insider's new firm consults on Iraq. Consultants have lots of ties to the Administration, surprise surprise. More from Congressman Bill Delahunt's record:

...there is a story in the New York Times, dated September 30, that says that a Washington insider's new firm consults on contracts in Iraq. A group of businessmen linked by their close ties to President Bush, his family, and his administration, have set up a consulting firm to advise companies that want to do business in Iraq, including those seeking pieces of taxpayer-financed reconstruction projects. The firm, New Bridge Strategies, is headed by Joe Allbaugh, Mr. Bush's campaign manager in 2000, and the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency until March.

*break*

Mel: "The only TV show worth watching is Blind Date." He signs the praises of the all-star show, when guests return for another round. John Ritter's sitcom topped the ratings after his death, 17 million in one night.

Dean will come to Madison on 10/5/03 as part of the Generation Dean tour. He'll be at the Kohl Center (SP: "the Herb Garden, as I like to call it").

Stumbled across on the Internet: Now, more than ever, Bush needs your support. [more]

Potential Gov. Schwarzenegger gropes some women. [old news]. SP: "I guess if you're a fascist, you can win in the United States. It doesn't matter who you are."

Gorilla escapes Boston Zoo, injures two. [found another reference, but story, originally from CNN, is off the free web now.]

Non-James Brown musical interlude by the late great Warren Zevon's "Gorilla, you're a desperado."

Letter to Mel 'n' Pants asks "What should I wear to church?" re: this article on the Clergy on the Catwalk runway show (or one like it.)

Cardinals report that the Pope is not doing well.

[oh for krapp's tape, the batteries on my walkman just died and I don't have backups. So much for complete Mel & Floyd archives. Sorry folk/s.]

Color schemes

Forget web design - I'm using this colorful little app for my crochet projects from now on. (MeFi, again.)