Librarian Avengers

i there - I’m on vacation. woo. Owl’s passed out next to me in a big long bundle of fur. Thanks for all of the great holiday decorating comments. You guys are hilarious and ever-so-various. I just wanted to follow up, because I think a few folks got the wrong impression about where I stand on this crucial topic. That whole rant? The previous post? About the cookies and the survey and the tinsel? That wasn’t me saying that guys don’t decorate or should decorate more. That would be dumb.

What I’m saying is that asking a woman you don’t know about her holiday decorations is a Gendered Question. This is a Gendered Question because Society (not me! society!) has associated women, fairly or unfairly, with homemaking stuff. This is also a Gendered Question because it is almost exclusively asked about women (and by women).

I, personally, don’t really like being asked Gendered Questions because I would rather be associated with the things I actually care about and value like PlayStation and my Large Cat. Not that any stranger is going to realistically come up to me and ask about any of the weird shit I enjoy. Still, I can dream of a world where people greet each other with a hearty “Have you read Seamus Heaney’s new translation of Antigone?” Or thump each other on the back with a cheerful “Ever considered opening up your 802-11 G wireless network?” I can dream my little holiday dreams.

So good for all y’all decorators and non-decorators alike. Good for all you lads who make with the tinsel, and you dudes who snooze through the whole month of December. Rock on my friends, I wish you a happy break.

Recently several people have asked me something that strikes fear into my cold and icy heart. The question is innocuous. The question is well-intended. The question makes me want to pull out my big librarian rubber stamp and do some smiting.

The question:
“Have you decorated your home for the holidays?”

No, this isn’t a war-on-Christmas screed, nor is it a rant against bland conversation.* This is about feminism. Specifically, this is about a brand of feminism I subscribe to, the kind of feminism that thinks being a woman really doesn’t require me to do extra crap around the house.

I’ve got nothing against decorating for the holidays. I’ve got nothing against talking about decorating for the holidays. I’ve got nothing against the holidays.** What I don’t like is that the lads seem to be exempt.

I have the good fortune to work in I.T., which means my co-workers are mostly male.*** I took an informal survey of these guys to see how they responded to this particular social pressure. Donning my best “we’re all girls together” face (you know the one) I sidled up and asked innocently “Have you decorated your home for the holidays?”

The result? Derisive snorts, awkward this-chick-has-gone-nuts pauses, glassy stares, and one guy actually did a spit-take. Finally one gentleman described his holiday decorations. His wife, it seemed, had done a great job this year.

Fine, maybe it’s the nesting hormones. Maybe women really do love to decorate. Maybe we’re all a bunch of scented-candle-chugging tinsel-hangers. But still, I get all gitchy when somebody just assumes I subscribe to this apparently gender-specific hobby. I mean, hell. I’ve got some garlands and shit, but I don’t enjoy feeling like it’s my venereal duty to start shooting holiday cookies out my oven just because every other woman on the earth seems to be.

I would love to sum it all up for you and present a nice, clear solution to all this damned gender inequity, but I can’t think of one. Just, maybe, the next time you ask someone about their hobbies, try to stay away from the race, gender, and sexual orientation-related ones. Don’t ask the gay man if he enjoys flower arrangement Just Because He’s Gay. He might love flowers but that still doesn’t make it cool. Don’t ask the black woman if she likes collard greens Just Because She’s Black. She may love them (how could you not?), but that doesn’t make you less of an asshole. And dangit, don’t ask me about my dang holiday decorations. Ask me about my Star Wars Battlefront score. I conquered the galaxy yesterday.

I got a catalog in the mail the other day advertising the new deluxe version of the Librarian Action Figure. She comes with a book truck, and some extra books. Nice.

Still, I think there should be a whole line of librarian action figures, including one with the earlier, discarded, exploding bun feature.

Lightning-fast reference is an obvious Librarian Superpower, as well as maybe, oh, I dunno, Willingness to Dedicate One’s Life to the Good of Others. But I don’t know how you would turn that into a pushbutton feature…unless you push the button and she detaches her head and offers it to you.

147 members! That frappr map is actually starting to spook me. It’s one thing to write for a few people who I know are reading, (my family, a few ex-coworkers, the library school grrls) and a few theoretical people I suspect are reading, but to have them all laid out there on a map…whew.

Well, anyway, good to meet you all and thank you for caring about my goofy life. I’m sneaking out of work early so I can see the sun, so short post today. Say no to seasonal affective disorder.

I just checked the frappr map, and dang you Librarian Avengers are so cute! And geographically disparate! All 81 of you. Gulp.

Once I realized there are so many people out there willing to read about my battles with bad librarianship, scary interfaces, and look at photos of my grandma, I had to sit in the closet and rock back and forth for awhile. But I’m back! And do I have news for you.

According to Siva and the ALA, there are more libraries in the U.S. than there are McDonalds. Let’s consider this news. Let’s consider the possibilities it opens up. Let’s consider what, say, 16,220 librarians (that’s one librarian from every U.S. branch) could DO if we all decided to work together. Are you thinking? Let’s make a list. I’ll start.

• We could swarm the U.S. Senate carrying burning copies of the Patriot Act on pitchforks.
• We could donate one book each and create a brand new library
• We could build a search taxonomy for the ALA BY HAND
• We could build an entire neighborhood for Habitat for Humanity and call it Librarian Land.
• We could dig up enough dirt on our local censors and anti-library-funding jerks to put them all out of commission.
• We could start selling yummy hamburgers and make the whole country fat.
• We could start making people do pushups for books and make the whole country fit.
• We could have the world’s biggest librarian party! Every year! Twice!

Your turn.

If there’s one thing I love more than Google Maps mashups, it’s Google Maps mashups that let me see who is out there is reading this website. Besides my mom. Hi mom.

Frappr is Friendster for maps. I made a Librarian Avengers frappr map so that we might all peer at one other’s geographic representations. Go on, add yourself. Stand up and be counted.

If I get more than 200 folks, I’ll host a librarian party at SXSW. With strippers. Feminist strippers.

Those things I was complaining about in London? I’ve got documentation. I just started uploading the ten gajillion photos we took when we were overseas. There are more to come, but here are two fun ones involving British hotels and some baaaaad interface design.

The first is our web-enabled tv that showed a 404 page not found error whenever you turned it on. Someone installed something weird and Windows-based on it, and apparently it went all wrong. Like British TV isn’t strange enough.

And then there was the hairdryer, conveniently located and unmovable from the desk drawer.

his movie, with its fantastic effects, original cinematography, and great directing has convinced me to forgive the franchise completely for all of those spiders in the second film.

Ok, I can’t restrain myself to one sentence. Believe it or not, I liked the latest Harry Potter movie even more than the book. For me, these days, the sign of a good action-adventure film is one with absolutely no Grab-my-hand scene, and very little Escape-in-front-of-the-fireball. There was one minor Escape-in-front-of-the-fireball incident, but since Harry’s butt caught fire in an amusing way, I choose to overlook it. There was lots of great, original stuff in this movie, and very little of the cliched crud that littered up the last few films.

Take that Voldemort! Several articles have come out in the Cornell press recently about the Macaulay Library’s huge collection of animal sounds. One of the ways we stay afloat is by licensing our sounds to movie studios. Recently, this has included helping give a voice to Buckbeak the Hippogriff in the Harry Potter movies.

Also, today we are being featured on the Cornell homepage. This is all in buildup to the release of our massive, monumental, absolutely nifty, online collection that will make all of our sounds and videos available for free Real Soon Nowtm. Just you wait. You’ll see.

In other news, it’s snowing here and I’ve got a two-foot high stack of receipts representing three different currencies to sort through from our Euro-trip. We also have that penguin movie sitting in a Netflix envelope at home. And I made matzohball soup last night using this recipe.