Librarian Avengers

ere’s some baby sloths. (thanks Kafkaesque)

These sloths remind me of the time I went to a residence hall library program with my friend Ryan “Galaxor Nebulon” Hughes. (Hi Ryan! Where the hell are ya?)

They had brought in a bunch of rainforest animals to the residence hall to, I dunno, promote reading or something. There were a bunch of snakes and fuzzy things, a scorpion, and a two-toed sloth. At the end of the program, the audience was invited to come up and pet the animals. Ryan decided that he should pet the sloth. Ryan HAD to pet the sloth.

I kind of lost track of Ryan after he went up to the sloth, and when I found him again he was bleeding. Ryan had been bitten by the sloth.

As you know, the sloth is the Slowest Mammal in the World. It is known for moving only 5 or 6 feet a minute. Yet here was Ryan, bleeding. “It looked so cute”, Ryan said. “When I saw it open it’s mouth, I thought, oh! it’s going to do something even cuter! I didn’t know it was going to BITE me!”

I believe to this day Ryan has a scar. From sloth.

Let this be a lesson to you.

Puppies and kitties rescued from New Orleans will make your day. I went to the humane society today on my lunch break to pet the cats because of these photos. Now I’m scraping cathair off of my sweater with scotch tape.

In other news, Chris and I will be gracing Ann Arbor with our presence next Thursday through Sunday for the annual School of Information CIC Thingamajig. We’re driving straight to Earthen Jar and are not coming out until they run out of that lovely cauliflower-and-curry thing. If you are in Ann Arbor, I want to see you. That means you Alexandra. And you Mihir. And you, whoever else is in town that I don’t know about.

I just signed up to do remote reference shifts for the emergency library service in Louisiana.

You should too, my geeky librarian dears. This is what we went to school for. (via librarian.net)

Bob Byler’s brother was flying a rescue helicopter in New Orleans last week. He tells stories of tearing the roofs off of houses, and airlifting people out of their submerged houses. However, for several hours he and his fellow emergency helicopter pilots were forced to stop their flights.

The President was in town. There is a well-established (and wise) security procedure that calls for a 50 mile no-fly zone around the President wherever he happens to be. However, during Friday’s presidential mission of mercy, this rule was responsible for the delay of life-saving rescue flights.

As the flood waters rose, flight crews were grounded so that Mr. Bush, showing his usual good judgment, could sympathize with the newly second-homeless Trent Lott, survey the damage, and pose for photos in front of hastily-assembled and later absent rescue equipment. I’m certain this was all a great comfort to the people drowning in their attics, waiting for rescue crews that never arrived.

Were their lives, too, a noble sacrifice for the causes of freedom and democracy, or has this administration endangered more Americans for the cause of the photo-op?

ey folks - sorry about the lack of posts. I just returned from a long roadtrip to visit my family in Michigan. Did you know gas is expensive? Here’s some assorted photos from the trip, including the Mad Max-esque gas lines in Ontario.