March 200331 March 2003
What
were they thinking? January Magazine has a fun round-up of recent
books that aren't necessarily bad, just dumb. Speaking of dumb books, a Bookslut columnist takes
a look at 1975's The Happy Housewife. Goddammit! It's the last day of Small
Press Month, and we still haven't sent out our cards. 27 March 2003
Library
Signs Explained. A funny bit from Warrior
Librarian. Computers
Drowned in MP3 Witch Hunt. "A giant tub of sea water was
wheeled around, and suspicious computers were dumped in. If the computer
floated, then it was considered possessed by MP3s." Someone's trying
to collect a million AOL CDs to send back to the company. The Onion has started its special war coverage: Operation
Piss Off the Planet. Added to Lib.Sigs.:
"'Let's try the library,' I tell him. 'We can find out
anything here!'" David McPhail (Lost. Scholastic,
1990, p. 23) 26 March 2003
On a beautiful day
like today, we find ourselves singing a Tom
Lehrer song.
Wonder
Woman gets glasses and a shorter 'do. Expect comments that she looks
like a librarian. If you want to go with the flow, add some camo
tank tops to your work wardrobe. A connection they haven't talked about on CNN: The
U.S.-led forces are using B-52s to bomb Iraq; the ancient land of
Mesopotamia is in Iraq; the B-52s did a song and EP called "Mesopotamia."
We've become regular readers of Tom Tomorrow's This
Modern World comic strip and blog. For
super-wicked, over-the-top satire of Bush and the war, see whitehouse.org. 25 March 2003
So, what do you call it when someone starts a blog and then abandons it a few weeks or months later?
We were thinking
"blog decay," but we didn't find that phrase used anywhere. Buzz Bruggeman coined "blog
rot" last year, but he defined that as not
"offering up great stuff on a daily basis." (Hell, our favorite blog writers
all take days off!) Bernie Goldbach has used
"blog rot" in the way we're thinking, though. We're surprised there's not more mention of the
phenomenon.
Added to Lib.Sigs.:
"We like nonfiction, and we live in fictitious
times." Michael
Moore (Acceptance
speech for Academy Award, 23 March 2003) Added to Lib.Sigs.:
"Well, that makes you a very clever librarian, Talamascan."
Scott Abbott, screenplay (Queen of the Damned. Line spoken by
Stuart Townsend as Lestat) The book is checked out from my library, so I couldn't check for this line in it today. 24 March 2003
After being slapped around the face and neck by Steven
and Jenny at CiL
earlier this month, we're trying the RSS thing. And we've done a bit of
a re-do of the home
page and a few other things. And we're now residing on LISHost.com.
There may be a few things that got broken during the move. Search form
has been fixed. Added to Lib.Sigs.:
"You knew I'd wanna read it. ... You're a book tease."
(Gilmore Girls episode, line spoken by Milo Ventimiglio as
Jess) Added to Lib.Sigs.: "I
did most of my learning in the library, where I could go at my own pace.
I learned that I really could be a scientist and that I could take risks
that other students couldn't because nobody had any expectations of
me." John "Jack" Horner, paleontologist (Chicago
Tribune article, 23 January 2003) Catching up on a
few links: Library
Fun (ways to annoy people), The
Empress (tarot deck's Lego librarian), HP
ad (PDF), Misadventures
of Dick & Jane. Researcher answers a question that just might come up at the ref
desk and also concludes that young
children should be banned from university library basements. |
Copyright 2003 Brian Smith. Non-commercial distribution of material from The Laughing Librarian is permitted only if the original URL and this copyright notice is included. All commercial distribution is prohibited without written consent of and large cash payments to the author. Some images are from a commercial clipart package and may not be redistributed.