Epidermaography

It’s sweeps week here at librarian enterprises, so here’s some links about anthropodermic bindings.

For those of you who were asleep during The History of Books and Printing, that’s books bound in human skin. Because if you intellectualize it, it’s not icky. (from boing boing)

Speaking of books bound in human skin, have you seen Peter Greenway’s film The Pillow Book? It’s one of my favorites. It’s about a woman’s obsession with writing on the human body, and understandably also, her obsession with Ewan McGregor’s schlong. Don’t watch during dinner, in spite of or perhaps because of Ewan McGregor’s schlong. Special collections librarians: Play this movie at your next SLA meeting!

Overwhelm them with sheer numeric superiority

Me and Dewey at ALAI 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.

Puppies and kitties are the antidote for midday sloth

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.

Library poetry

An exerpt from one of my favorite poems by Caroline Knox:
The Crybaby at the library.

It is raining all over inside the library.
Parts of the brick walls are curling up
and plaster is falling on the heads and beards of students.
It is very dangerous for the books.

… 

A precious incunabulum inside a glass case
is swimming gently as if in a dishpan.
Tiny letters and pieces of gold that were put there in 1426
are lifting off and turning into scum.

[link] 

 

Siiiick

worker antI’m home sick with some sort of sniffy sneezy cold thing. I tried going to work yesterday but my contant snorfing made me a bit self-conscious in my four-person office. I kept getting those "You’d best not be contagious" looks that one gets from coworkers in these situations. So I went home and slept for 16 hours.  Today I hauled myself downstairs to the computer and realized that my blog comment spam software has been running in super-zealous mode, so some of your comments might have gotten held up. My apologies. I’ve punished the software appropriately – it’s not allowed to access my Itunes network for the next week. Bad software.

Speaking of software, I’ve just become addicted to Pandora, the internet radio software that tailors its playlist based on the Music Genome Project. It’s in beta right now, so you can request a free account. One of the worst things about being sick is I’m too lazy to get up and change the cd, so this is great. I typed in White Stripes and got back Belle and Sebastion, And You will Know us by the Trail of Dead, and Nick Cave. Not bad. I’m also too lazy to stick this entry in the spellchecker, just so you know.