Librarian Avengers

went to see Children of Men today, which was fantastic, disturbing, hopeful, and cautionary. I cried a bit, but left not resenting the movie for making me sad.

Beforehand, we saw four trailers which ALL fell into the new Librarian Avengers Film Rating System. There was a Creepy Child Singing, Two Overly Patriotics, and a Jim
Carrey.

Beware.

ovie ratings suck. “Rated R” doesn’t tell me anything I need to know.
I need to know if a movie contains cannibalism, synthesizers, or Jim Carrey. I need a rating system that reflects the diversity of obstacles lurking in today’s cinema. Introducing…

The Librarian Avengers Film Rating System
Rated A for Animal Gets Hurt
Rated B for British Accent Faked by American
Rated C for Creepy Child Singing
Rated D for Dialog Written by Committee
Rated E for Escape-in-front-of-a-fireball
Rated F for Fun-filled Frolic for the Family
Rated G for Grab-my-hand!
Rated H for Heads chopped off/Hearts pulled out
Rated I for Italian Stallion
Rated J for Jim Carrey
Rated K for Keyboard hacks Pentagon in two clicks
Rated L for Lead Actors’ Real-Life Romance
Rated M for Motiveless Villain
Rated N for Natives
Rated O for Overly Patriotic
Rated P for Pacino Yelling
Rated R for Remake of a Better Film
Rated S for Scientific Content ≠ Reality
Rated T for T&A
Rated U for Un-ironic 80’s Soundtrack
Rated V for Vehicle
Rated W for Woody Allen as Romantic Lead
Rated X for Xenu-Sponsored Script
Rated Z for Zombies

We had a breakthrough this week in human-cat relations. Plover, our newest cat, was adopted from the pound, and came with a bit of post-traumatic-stress disorder. He had a rough time in cat jail, and has been on edge for the last six months.

Then we got him a shoelace.

We tried everything to get him to play: catnip, stuffed mice, balls, rattling things. He would try, but he always remained a bit reserved. The shoelace changed everything. He instantly recognized it as a toy, and jumped on it with a joyous fury.

He is a changed cat. He carries the shoelace around the house, lays on it, chases it wherever we drag it (even to previously scary parts of the house), and has generally blossomed into a fun-loving, easy-going guy.

This kitty was a mystery, and all it took was a shoelace to decrypt his code and get him functioning. Kittyhack!!!

t snowed in Austin, Texas yesterday. Schools and universities were closed, giving everyone an unexpected day off.

Long lonesome roads became treacherously icy. Heartbreak hotels shut down. Cacti cooled. Longhorns lost heat. Scorpions shivered.

Corrupt Texas Governor Rick Perry wasted a bunch of money.

The governor used state funds to build an outdoor stage to host his two-million dollar inauguration ceremony. When it snowed, the ceremony was moved indoors, and the stage was torn down unused.

Today, Texas teachers return to their elementary school classes, many of which are held in trailers that supplement tiny school buildings.

I’ll say one thing for New York State, we may not have the biggest cows, or the biggest hats, but we’ve got the damned biggest snowplows you’ve ever seen.

Adios, y’all.

s a librarian, I feel obliged to share this method of procrastination resource with others:

These clever folks figured out how to link directly to stuff on sale at Amazon. So if you want to look at 80% off Office Supplies for some reason, you are now able.

This ability proved to be distracting once I discovered the 50%-off pet supplies. Owl-the-cat will soon possess 60 “Rattling Rainbow Mice (in Cheese Wedge Display Box). He goes through the damn things like popcorn, and I’m sick of paying two bucks each for them at PetSmart.

Here’s the pet links for you Dog People and Cat People

Link via Lifehacker

OUR JOBS YOU’VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE
Historical Reenactor (1800s)
Historical Reenactor (Renaissance)
Waitress/Bartender (Dublin)
Designed a website for a group of Butterfly Researchers

FOUR MOVIES YOU WATCH OVER AND OVER
The Quiet Man
A Room With a View
The Commitments
Standing in the Shadows of Motown

FOUR CITIES YOU’VE LIVED IN
Flint, MI
East Lansing, MI
Dublin, Ireland
Ithaca, NY

FOUR TV-SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH
The I.T. Crowd
Veronica Mars
Father Ted
Colbert Report

FOUR PLACES YOU’VE BEEN ON VACATION
Budapest, Hungary
Ada, Oklahoma
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Shepherdstown, West Virginia

FOUR WEBSITES YOU VISIT OFTEN
Popgadget
Mimi Smartypants
Lifehacker
Cute Overload

FOUR OF YOUR FAVOURITE FOODS
Fried wontons from the Cantonese Gourmet in Flint, MI
Anything from the Earthen Jar in Ann Arbor, MI
Obnoxious cheese
Beer

FOUR PLACES YOU’D RATHER BE RIGHT NOW
Frank’s in Ann Arbor for Sunday breakfast, the newspaper, and friends
Sailboat in Georgian Bay, Ontario, getting sunburned and listening to the radio
In bed with the cat on my chest
In a canoe on Town Lake in Austin, TX with water moccasins

y brain and my bookmarks are getting more tightly interwoven as the years go by. A few hours away from my desk and I start itching for the hive mind. Here’s a few of the tabs I’ve had open lately.

• Wild Turkey Sounds
• Dojo, a JavaScript toolkit that takes the hard work out of stupid Ajax tricks
• The Current State of the Irish Language
• Palaeography, the reading of old handwriting. I got to translate a contract of indentured servitude for work once. That was cool. (thanks metafilter)
• Routine Recording Cards (thanks lifehacker)
• Cat and Girl debunk animal myths

got my New York Public Library card in the mail today.
Anyone who lives in New York state is eligible for a card, so I now have access to the library’s impressive collection of online resources.

I spent the morning refreshing my Spanish at the NYPL’s Online Language Learning Center. It uses the Rosetta Stone software, which now has a place on my desert island list of media resources, along with the White Album and the entire first season of The Dog Whisperer.

If you haven’t used or seen Rosetta Stone, it is Language learning software with the remarkable ability to hack your brain and force it to actually understand and remember all of those verb conjugations you had to memorize back in college. The lessons are reinforced with audio, video, writing and images, so it imitates an immersion experience more than a typical grammar-based language course. There’s even a module that has you speak into a microphone and shows you a waveform comparing your speech with someone who doesn’t suck.

I haven’t explored the other web resources, but I’m tickled at getting access to this one. The software is in the $300 range, and Cornell doesn’t have a license, so I feel like I’ve gotten my taxes worth this year. Thanks NYPL!

My tenure as couch fungus has ended.
No longer do I contain the churning seas.

I miss my days-long hibernation
I also miss being an overpaid cat-pillow.

Detaching myself from the couch was the hard part.
Since then, everything’s been duck soup.

After two plague-ridden weeks, I returned to work.
It’s much easier to be an office chair fungus.