October 200330 October 2003
Liberry
Blooze gives a damn funny account of a "workplace conduct
seminar." (You'll have to scroll down to the October 29 entry if he
blogs again before you get there.) Another Halloween-appropriate oldie from the bowels of
our Laugh'n'Links:
Brains4Zombies.com -- What
would happen if Amazon.com were run by and for brain-eating zombies. We're
about a month into The
Year of the Samurai Librarian. And what does a samurai librarian look
like? 29 October 2003
So, how long before OCLC sues Tori
Amos and the
kids selling these t-shirts? ALA's
Chief Bookmaker Handicaps Presidential Wannabe's for '04. By tomeboy. Slate has a slide-show preview of Bitter
With Baggage Seeks Same, a forthcoming book of chick-lit parody
by artist Sloane Tanen. We'd like to see someone make a stop-motion animation
video of the Librarian Action Figure kicking the Ann
Coulter Action Figure's mini-skirted ass. 24 October 2003
Finally got around to fixing or deleting a buncha dead links. Speaking of dead, late October seems like a good time to visit
the Library Ghostcam again. Added
to Lib.Sigs.:
"He liked books if they were books of information and had
pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises
in model schools." C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the
"Dawn Treader")
23 October 2003
Tom Tomorrow's
The Great Big Book of Tomorrow belongs in every public and
academic library in the U.S. Not only is it a handy retrospective of the
"This Modern World" comic strip -- going back to its genesis
as the product of copy-shop employee theft -- but the book also refutes
the claim that no liberals objected when Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998.
Really, if your library ain't got it, get it. You've probably seen this
photo of the shushing librarian scarecrow already, but we feel an
obligation to link to it. That reference assistant at Harvard may be too sexy to
get promoted, but the
frilly blouse doesn't do anything for us. And it's a major turn-off
that she seems to think Gov. Ahnuld is attractive. We're not sure, but we think the point of Eating
Poetry is that the poet wants to be the librarian's dog. The
SIBL Project: Songs Inspired
By Literature. Now we've got a jones for Kate Bush's "Wuthering
Heights." "Top
10 @ your library Slogans Not Recommended by AASL." Christina
Blogs for Jesus. She has to, you see ... there's no Internet in
Heaven. (Raise your hand if an old Gatlin Brothers song is going through
your head right about now!) At least she doesn't think Harry Potter
books are evil. [Update: Around the time we posted this item, Christina
posted to her blog and also removed the "no Internet in
Heaven" tag. No Google cache, but boingboing quotes it here.] Thanks to Lynette in Queensland for
sending a link to this
piece from The Guardian: "Libraries are brothels for
the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters,
understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their
books." Coincidentally, we had a dream the other night in
which we had a closet full of pimp clothes, and Huggy Bear came by to
look through it. Let's stick with the theme for another Lib.Sigs.
addition: "Each printed story is a hooker trying to be
noticed, trying to captivate the passerby and live at least a little
longer in the arc of your attention." (Roger-Pol Droit)
Hmmm ... maybe Christina ought to change her mind about the Harry
Potter. We've added Male
Librarian Centerfold to our groll.
18 October 2003
We had a great time at the Illinois
Library Association's annual meeting in Springfield this week. Saw
some old friends, made some new ones, played Stump-the-Rep, and stayed
in the Hilton, which is quite the, er, masculine
building. More about our ILA trip: OCLC said the logo
for its in-development "Illinois Group" union catalog
represents something like the long-time partnership between OCLC and Illinois, but it
sure looks a lot like a hurricane casting a big shadow over the
state. The vinyl tote bag given away at OCLC's breakfast is the best
piece of swag we picked up, though. At its booth in the exhibit hall, the Illinois State
Library was giving away little rulers/bookmarks to promote its Talking
Book and Braille Service. Braille or other raised markings were
conspicuously absent from the oh-so-smooth plastic rulers. Jenny
learned that you can't believe everything on the Web when she
mentioned in one of her presentations that the Starbucks in the
Hilton didn't have wireless Internet access and was corrected by an
audience member. (To be fair, Jenny had gotten the misinformation
directly from
the Starbucks site.) We saw a nice exhibit of Audubon
prints at the Illinois State
Museum. A highlight was the comparison made between Audubon's style
and that of his contemporaries: An ornithology volume by John Gould was
open to the illustration of bobwhites, showing male, female, and chicks
sort of just milling around. On the wall beside the book was the Audubon
print of a
group of bobwhites being attacked by a hawk. Speaking
of Audubon, pure bliss is a sunny drive home on the Interstate with Autobahn
in the CD deck. There was a wonderful
record store (used and new) a block from the Springfield convention
center. Also nearby was a gift shop which sold out of its stock of the
Librarian Action Figure during ILA.
9 October 2003
Our longtime pal Rebekah sent us a link to
Quest,
a strange bit o' animation featuring a
pirate-ninja mushroom and a librarian gag near the end.
7 October 2003
Last night, on TechTV's entertaining talk show Unscrewed,
guest Susie Bright was talking about the good things the Internet has
done for sex. We didn't have pen and paper handy, so we're paraphrasing
what she said: "Now people don't have to go the the library and ask
for a book about giving blowjobs." Except the
show bleeped out "b***j**." Go figure. Ask
John Ashcroft! An Ashcroft-vs.-librarians political cartoon. Back
in 1922, folks were advised to Keep
Your Mind Occupied With Good Books by this poster, part of an
exhibit of American
Social Hygiene Posters at U.Minn. library. NationStates
is a simulation game based on Max Barry's novel, Jennifer Government.
"You create your own country, fashioned after your own political
ideals, and care for its people. Either that or you deliberately torture
them. It's really up to you." There are more than 72,000 nations in
the NS World, but not one called Libraria! We'd start one up, a
country run like a library, but we don't want the responsibility of
being a ruthless dictator.
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Copyright 2003 Brian Smith. Non-commercial distribution of material from The Laughing Librarian is permitted only if the original URL and this copyright notice is included. All commercial distribution is prohibited without written consent of and large cash payments to the author. Some images are from a commercial clipart package and may not be redistributed.