Cycho Librarian

My brother (I would insert a link here if he had his own blog) asked me a while back to post something about the new librarianship. I usually don't take requests, my reaction normally being "get your own blog" (sensing a theme here bro?), so I begged off saying that I couldn't write coherently about my own profession. That's not entirely untrue. Librarianship is undergoing a massive change as the world begins to feel the full impact of the information revolution. I'm at as much of a loss to describe it as anyone. Honestly, I don't think anyone in the profession has quite realized yet just how big a deal this revolution is going to be. Hell, I don't think anyone in any profession has quite realized how big this is. Information has never been more readily available, and it has never been easier to let everyone in the world know what you think about any given topic. We've barely scratched the surface of what technology can now allow us to do. T

Normally I try not pay any attention to Ann Coulter. As near as I can tell, she's insane. Not insane as in "Oh my God, are you insane?" but rather "The nurse will be here any minute with your meds, Ms. Coulter" insane. Sadly, I work in a library. And as a dedicated public librarian I firmly believe that no matter how absurd I may find a particular title, my community has a right to see it. So it was that today I found myself face to face with Ms. Coulter among the new books. To understand the nature of my complaint, you first have to see the cover of her most recent book. Those of you with a delicate constitution may want to disable image viewing on this site before reading further. Putting aside the stereotypically provocative nature of the title, I want you to look carefully at Ms. Coulter's picture. Is it just me, or is she most definitely not selling this book on the basis of her brains? In fact, judging from the cover it would appear that the tit

I am most definitely NOT in the Christmas spirit. For some reason this season has been less and less fun over the past few years. I used to think this was because I wasn't a kid anymore, or that I wasn't living in a place with a real winter. But no, this year I have finally decided that we have killed Christmas. It's entirely our faults, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. I remember, and I swear I'm not imagining this, that at one point in time there were no Christmas decorations or products in stores until after Thanksgiving. This year I saw Christmas items for sale in September . I remember a time when Christmas carols weren't used as backing music for advertisements. I remember a time when the news wasn't full of stories about how well the stores were doing in the Christmas shopping season. I mean, all of that was still there, but it wasn't what it was about. Now the only thing that this season is about is shopping. You've got to give peop

In July our then newest cat, a 1 year old kitten named Gandalf the Grey, suffered a severe asthma attack and died. I've owned a lot of cats in my life, and I can say without hesitation that he was the sweetest cat I have ever known. He is still sorely missed. Since then I discovered the joy that is lolcats . If you haven't seen these yet you're missing out. Some of them a pretty cheesy, but every so often there's one that is perfect. My wife snapped a priceless picture of Gandalf that was made for lolcats, so I turned it into a lolcat picture. Yes, he really was riding my bike.

It's Monday night, I'm tired, and there's only 5 days left in NaBloPoMo. I'm tapped out folks. So tonight I'll just leave you to ponder the following: Aren't you glad you don't live in a country where you can be arrested for naming a teddy bear " Muhammad "? Sometimes I wonder what would happen if religious extremists actually read their holy books. Would Muslim extremists turn into peace-loving, altruistic intellectuals? Would Christian extremists turn into humble advocates for the poor and disenfranchised? Sadly, I doubt we'll ever know.

A piece from the 1970's followed by a Bach chorale in church this morning got me to thinking about "classical" music. I'm not talking about actual classical music, composed between 1750ish to 1810ish. I'm talking about what Joe Normal probably thinks of as classical music. That is, stuff you hear in church, at the symphony, or at the opera. I've been thinking about how inaccessible modern classical music is. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of modern classical music that I love. It's just that unless you've grown up on it and trained your ear to hear what's good about it, a lot of the time it's just so much noise. The problem is that it's virtually impossible to tell the good noise from the bad unless you know what you're listening for. On top of that, there's a lot of jokers out there who think they can write good classical music who frankly can't. What I can't figure out is how we got to this point. Classi

We've all gotten fairly used to recalls this year. It seems like we'd had a long run of nothing more than a few scattered cases of small parts causing choking when suddenly lead-tainted toys appear from China. As if credit woes and a declining dollar weren't enough, now we can't even buy cheap Chinese toys. Well, the recalls reached a new "high," so-to-speak, with the announcement that a company out of Canada has recalled the latest rage in grade-school crafting, Aqua Dots. Apparently what you're supposed to do is put the beads into patterns, spray them with water, and presto they're permanently stuck. Yeah, small beads with a weird, water-reactive chemical on them, aimed at the 3 and up set. Couldn't see this one coming. I don't want to make light of the fact that several children became seriously ill after ingesting these (I mean, what did they think kids would do with them? They look like frickin' Jujubees!). But you can't make

A little bit of a cheater post today, but after watching local news provide 10 minutes of coverage for "Black Friday" including tips from the Columbus Police about how to not get mugged, this post from 23/6 was just too good to pass up. Apparently my local news missed FEMA's update on how to protect yourself on "Black Friday." Enjoy!

A combination of my entry from yesterday, a most excellent commentary by Daniel Schorr last night, the holiday today, a drive to Cincinnati, and a piece on NPR in the car about The Great Gatsby made me realize an important truth about America. No matter how messed up we seem, no matter how insane Wall Street, corporations, major Industry, and all the rest seem to have gotten, what makes us who we are and what makes us strong is the vast majority of the population known as middle America. Where Gatsby comes into this is in the undercurrent behind the New York glitterati in the novel. What I realized in the car on hearing an extended passage is that the crux of the novel isn't Gatsby's death. Nick's final meeting with his father demonstrates that Gatsby is just a casualty of bigger problem. The crux of the novel comes with Nick's recollection of heading west from the east coast for the holidays. As he gradually recedes from the insanity that is New York into the sma

On the drive back from work this evening rush hour was strangely reversed. At 6:00 on most days I'll run into traffic just north of downtown where 670 and 71 merge bringing six lanes of traffic down to three. But tonight it was clear sailing from downtown to Clintonville. But southbound 71 was solid, bumper- to- bumper traffic. The traffic wasn't moving southbound from when I got on the highway until I got off. The reason for this is pretty obvious. Everyone got off work early so they could head over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house. So rush hour out of downtown was negligible, but everyone trying to get from north of the city to south, east, or west was getting hung up on the east-side splits. I saw this exact same thing last year. I don't remember if I saw it before that. But all I could think both times was, "why?" Why do we put ourselves through this? So that we can show up at the relatives stressed and grumpy, burn the turk

"Hey... . . .. ... .. .hold.. . .. .... ..red hat...." "What?" I said to the young man standing in front of me. "Uh, the guy in the red hat upstairs asked me to hold these for him but I gotta go." "So you want me to hold them for you?" "Nah, I gotta go. Can you hold them for him?" "Who am I supposed to be holding them for?" "Uh, the guy in the red hat." "Do you know his name?" I asked, oddly enough still trying to help. "Uh, yeah. It's Ali." "Is that his first name or his last name?" I said, thinking to myself that given how common the name is for both first and last it probably wouldn't help. "Uh, it's his name. His first name." "Look, I'd be happy to hold these for you but I really need to know the guy's name. Ali just isn't enough information." "Uh, okay, whatever." The young man then walked off with the DVDs. I noticed him se

No it's not. It's Anandita or Jagrati or Nishtha or some equally lovely Indian name. Why on earth do call centers make Indians use western names when answering the phone? I mean, I can hear the accent. I know I'm calling India! You're not fooling anyone and you're making this lovely girl stumble over a strange name for nothing! I think that part of why I'm mad is that when I called and heard the accent, the first thing that crossed my mind was "Oh no, I'm in India." I hated myself almost as soon as I thought it. I'm not that sort of a person. I don't hate people from other cultures just because they're from other cultures! I don't think people are dumb just because they have an accent! So what happened? Why did I have this reaction? I guess it's that I just wanted someone who could immediately understand everything I was saying, and whom I could understand in return. When you're trying to troubleshoot problems on

I hate shaving. I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't, honestly. If it weren't for the fact that my face itches like hell when I don't shave I'd probably not shave. Well, that and the fact that my beard is a little thin in spots and since I'm in the public eye I should probably only grow a beard if it doesn't make me look like one of the transient "all-day customers" at the library. Aside from the discomfort inevitably involved in shaving though, the other aspect of shaving I hate is razor blades. First and most problematic to my mind, is that there's absolutely no guarantee when you get a new blade out that it's actually going to do the job without burning you. Sometimes you'll get a good one and everything will be fine, sometimes the new one you get is even worse than the one you just threw away. Given the unpredictability of the quality of the blades, you'd think that maybe the companies that make the blades wo

I have absolutely nothing to write about today. Okay, not nothing. I've got some random thoughts about several things banging around in my head, but for whatever reason they don't want to come out yet. So I was casting around for something, thinking about changing seasons and time passing with Thanksgiving bearing down on us, and all I could think was: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." Ah, good old Groucho. Why can't we have something on TV like "You Bet Your Life" now? Probably because no one's like Groucho. A few more of my favorites: "Outside of a dog, a book is Man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read." "Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men, the other 999 follow women" "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception." "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know."

The New Oxford American Dictionary selects one word that was added to its pages each year as the "word of the year," and this year the word is " locavore ." A locavore is a person who consumes locally produced food. This all comes back to the idea that the less miles your food has to travel to get to your plate, the less of an impact it has on the environment and the better off everyone will be. Honestly, I think this is a great idea. I love it when I can get locally grown and produced food. Not only is it always fresher and better-tasting, it feels good to know that you're supporting the people who live near you. The environmental aspects are just icing. Following this idea through to its logical conclusion, shouldn't we try to accomplish the same thing with everything we consume? That is, why are we purchasing clothing made in China from fabric made in India from cotton grown in Georgia? Your clothes might have literally traveled all the way around t

A homework assignment, put off to the last minute, prevented me from posting until now. Those of you who have children younger than teens: this is what you have to look forward to. So in the interests of getting my blog in for NaBloPoMo, I offer you these candidates for the Darwin awards : Road rage certainly takes on a new meaning with these two. What could possibly drive two people to this extreme hatred that they put both of their lives in jeopardy just so they can beat the shit out of each other? Honestly, sometimes I fear for the human race.

Interestingly enough, both political parties seem to be in the odd position of being lukewarm about the candidate leading their respective fields. On the one hand, Rudy Giuliani is leading the polls among Republican candidates, but many conservatives have doubts as to just how conservative he is. Hillary Clinton is leading the polls among Democratic candidates, but many liberals have begun to question exactly what her stances are and her methods of deflecting criticism during this campaign. So the obvious question is, why are they leading the polls? Honestly, I couldn't care less about the Republican side. I don't like any of them (although I've been greatly disturbed to find myself occasionally agreeing with things I hear Ron Paul say). Clinton worries me though. She seems to be very hard to pin down on many issues and seems to be more devoted to not appearing to rock the boat than actually affecting significant change. NPR had very good discussion of the differences

The missus and I were out to eat tonight, and Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" came on. This song has two very different connotations for us. For me, I want to make fun of it by doing a silly little dance and try to remember the alternate lyrics I've heard for the song. For my wife it reminds her of the elementary school teacher who made her entire class sing his songs. At any rate, this led to a discussion of musicians who appear to be gay. I assured her that Manilow was straight, although she still has her doubts. The conversation then veered to Liberace, and the inevitable point that anyone who thought Liberace was straight was either clueless, deluded, or both. Bringing things to a more contemporary period, we then discussed Elton John and finally Michael Stipe. Just as we reached this point in the conversation, "Copacabana" ended and to our utter shock "Radio Free Europe" came on. You just can't make up coincidences like that. From ther

Monday is my night to work. Those of us in public service at the library who work at a location that's open until 9:00 typically work one night each week. At the smaller locations that are open until 8:00 people typically work two nights a week. Honestly, I'd take the two nights again to not have to work until 9:00. You wouldn't think that one hour would make a difference, but it does. That hour from 8-9 provides crucial wind-down time. If you get off at 9:00, you don't get unwound until 10 or later, and then you can't really get to bed until 11, which means you're not asleep until 12, and then you have to get up at 6:00 the next morning despite the fact that you've gotten one less hour of sleep than normal. It sucks. Another danger of the 9:00 night is that you start at noon. This means that you think you can get all sorts of stuff done before work. That may be true, but you pay the price later when you start crashing around 6 because, well, aren'

Like most major organizations, my library uses a spam filter to keep spam e-mail from even getting to my inbox. However, on the off chance that a real e-mail might get caught, we're sent a digest several times a day of all the spam that's been caught by the filter. It's absolutely astounding to me how much of this stuff is out there. Each of my digests routinely has 15 blocked e-mails. What I can't figure out is why people keep sending this junk. I mean, even my super-basic, free Mozilla Thunderbird has a spam filter. How many people are still getting fooled by these things? And of course, who would think these things are real anyway? Who says, "Oh, I just got an e-mail from Kiriharan Loies that says 'May i ask why you're so unhappy with your dick?' I think I'm going to read that." Or who thinks that a subject line that says "Shock action! Vi@gra free! no Money!!" is actually going to send you Viagra for free, even if you do

Caterwauller apparently thinks I've gotten too serious lately and tagged me with the random quote meme. Okay, fine. Maybe I have. I guess I feel like I actually have to say something meaningful for NaBloPoMo, which if you think about it is pretty silly considering the name for a start. I was going to try for a little more light-hearted piece until I read what I got tagged with, which apparently requires a response. So here's what you have to do: take the book you're currently reading, turn to page 161, and read the 5th sentence. Why that particular sentence? No idea. Maybe it's to ensure that only books of more than 161 pages are included? After that you pass the task on to 5 other bloggers. Wait, do I know 5 bloggers...? Like most people who work in a library, I'm reading three books right now. First the book that I actually want to be reading, The Savage Garden by Mark Mills. I've actually recommended the book to several people, including the enti

I've been dimly aware of the history of Pakistan, with most of my knowledge coming from a combination of Gandhi and The Jewel in the Crown . As excellent as both of those works are, Pakistan is treated as somewhat secondary to the story. A sort of, "Oh yeah, this country started too" sidebar in the story of India's independence. As always, there's more to it than that. Both of those films do a good job of indicating that there was a push for an independent Muslim nation in that area of the world long before the British left. My title today is taken from a seminal work by Choudhary Rahmat Ali written in 1933 describing such a state. A sort of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" for the Indian subcontinent. What is the most remarkable to me is how much sense the essay makes. We have a picture of Gandhi as a sort of Abraham Lincoln figure, desperately trying to hold the nation together. But there really wasn't that much cohesiveness to begin wit

I was extremely disappointed that after my last impassioned defense of cycling the Tour descended into an even greater morass than in the previous year. But regardless of the mess created by bastards like Rasmussen (Honestly, I really never did like him-- arrogant prick) and misdirected overachievers like Vinokourov , I stand by what I said. I think that Cycling has turned a corner, and that the majority of professional riders are clean. Unfortunately all you ever hear about are the ones who mess up, and screw up the sport for the rest of us. I've begun to suspect that Fuentes and the other folks involved with the Operation Puerto scandal were targeting pro riders, and that the "papers" that keep turning up with the names of seemingly every single pro rider with a shot at the big time were just Puerto's files on who they wanted to nab. All of this just serves to give the sport a black eye. But it's still a beautiful sport, and it's still worth preservin

You can be forgiven if you missed the blip in the news cycle late yesterday regarding the greatest debate that never happened in the Senate. Republicans very nearly forced the Senate to a debate on whether or not to impeach Vice-President Dick Cheney. Amazingly enough, the event that I mentally refer to as "Liberation" was foiled at the last minute by the party that I have been for some time assuming shares my interests, namely the Democrats. Here I was merrily voting along, thinking that the Democrats were a) liberal, b) opposed to the Bush White House, and c) not idiots, when suddenly they ran from the very debate I've been itching for. I suppose I could be charitable and think that since this wasn't on their terms maybe they didn't think they'd have enough time to put a case together. But in my heart of hearts I know that's not the case. I know that they just don't have the politcal cojones to force this administration to face its sins. Yet again t

So as we all tuned in to John Stewart, expecting to hear the requisite jokes about Election- Day-tomorrow-but-we're-not- voting-for-president-yet, instead we hear "Happy Halloween!" That's right, the Writer's Guild of America is on strike, and so we head into the barren wasteland that is reruns. That's okay with me though. I'm a big fan of Unions generally, and in this case the writers are definitely getting shafted. Writers have always been the red-headed stepchild of the motion picture industry. In reality nothing gets done without them, but for some reason studios have always treated writers as essentially unnecessary. I think that the majority of studio heads figure that worst case scenario they can yank someone off the street to slap together their latest project. This is really a very strange attitude, though, and seems to me to be a fairly recent development. Prior to the arrival of motion pictures, writers were definitely the most important pa

My uncle was in college in the late 60's, and did the whole college-protest thing. He had a VW microbus and was in a rock band that actually pressed a 45. I've still got a copy around here somewhere. When I was in college in the early 90's and there was something of a garage-band revival going on I played it for my cohorts at the college radio station, and the music director liked the cut so much that we actually put it on rotation and got it charted in our listing with CMJ . Sadly, we're once again stuck in a nowhere war that no one seems to know how to stop. So it's time to bring back the protest song. My uncle rewrote the lyrics to that A-side cut, and my cousin who's in video production put together a video for it. The cool part to me is that since the song is so clearly 60's in style this sounds like an old-school protest song. So, props to Chris and Mark, and I hope the rest of you enjoy it.

Election Day is Tuesday, and while the rest of the nation focuses on an election that will take place a year from now, we here in Cowtown actually have some stuff to vote on, namely City Council, the School Board, and the Mayor. Our School Board is run by a bunch of very well-meaning people, some of whom I've met and most of whom I like. My problems with the city's schools lie much more at the feet of the State than the District. Now, maybe they could be doing more, but I don't think anyone else is in a position to do more than those who currently hold the seats. So that's a no-brainer. Similarly, City Council by and large does a decent job. About the only thing they could do better would be to abolish themselves and go to Ward representation. But again, in the current state, the folks who are there are doing a good job so I'll keep them in place. As you can see, I'm not overly enthused about those races. My attitude is basically "eh." However M

I really hate Fox News. No, REALLY hate. And I try not hate anyone or anything. There is very little in the world that I hate. Fox News is one of the few. I know, this seething, blinding rage that boils in my blood for Rupert Murdoch and all things Fox-y is extremely un-Christian. And I will pray for forgiveness on Sunday. But for now, I hate Fox News. There is something about blindly reporting whatever opinions support your world view as fact that makes me mad. But this? This is right up there with Jerry Falwell blaming 9/11 on "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians" : totally invented and designed only to scare the bejeezus out of people. Ever since I saw Bowling for Columbine I've been hyper-aware of the tendency of news, especially local news, to focus on the horrific instead of the informative. And every May and November every report that begins "Your child may be in danger" sets my teeth on edge. By a

From this week's The Other Paper : Ah, dear old Columbus. We've got a substantial enough Gay community near downtown that the presence of an actual "Gay Street" in downtown Columbus is always cause for amusement. Nevermind that the street was named for some family named Gay. You can even take it further and point out that Gay Street is the East-West street between Broad and Long. Just so you know I'm not making this up: My favorite of all time though, was when someone called into a local radio station's rapid-fire "Taking Calls" segment (basically people call in and spout nonsense for 5 seconds) and said "I was standing at the corner of Gay and High, and I thought to myself, 'Yes I am!'"

Okay, I admit it. I postponed this post until today so it would count for NaBloPoMo. That's right folks, the Boston Red Sox are the World Champions for the second time in 3 years. Sure beats 86 years. But it really was a lot different this time. In 2004 I stayed up to watch every game of the Pennant and the Series, sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time. This time (admittedly because I had a couple very busy weeks) I couldn't stay up past the bottom of the 8th for games 2-4. In 2004 I called my brother and my Dad after both the Pennant win and the Series win (I couldn't get through to Boston after the Series win in 2004). This time I still haven't checked in to talk about the games. So I've been trying to figure out why. Is it because the 2007 team was so much better than the 2004 team, so that victory seems inevitable? Is it because we didn't have to fight the Yankees for the Pennant? Is it because the NL West was so atrocious that there was no