December 2003

Hear "Christmas Time at the Library" in BibDitties!

19 December 2003

A perennial favorite of ours: The true story of the Whos and the "Welcome Christmas" song.

We don't recall running across the Real Librarians! page before, with its great mod of a Luis Royo "Hawkfinder" painting. (Here's the original.)

"I saw a woman lick sauce off her husband's elbow." A few of the comments they didn't print in the Zagat's Guides.

We finally got around to starting Jasper Fforde's second Thursday Next book, so we revisited the author's website. Almost as much fun as the books are. Some great pics for your desktop, a screening exam for SpecOps Literary Detective wannabes, vote for the most boring classic, etc. BTW, if you haven't read The Eyre Affair yet, start reading it now.

Amazon.com encourages pervs to "search inside" teenagers' skirts. (Noticed by another pointless dotcom.)

Some bits from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose added to Lib.Sigs.:

"'Are there not moments,' he asked William, 'when you would also do shameful things to get your hands on a book you have been seeking for years?'" (p. 138)

"A perverse mind presides over the holy defense of the library." (p. 176)

"I accept the risk of damnation. The Lord will absolve me, because He knows I acted for His glory. My duty was to protect the library." (p. 471)

Does anyone know whether this line from the movie appears in the book in any form? (We didn't find it.): "I assumed he could not resist the temptation to penetrate the library and look at the books."

2 December 2003

We're severely disappointed that this article doesn't say that the kids in an American lit class happened to be reading Poe's "The Conqueror Worm" when maggots started sprinkling down from the ceiling. It doesn't say they weren't reading the poem, either. So let's just pretend they were. 'Cause it's funnier that way.

We're contemplating a defamation lawsuit against Karen Schneider for calling our blog "narrative."

Why offer $200 on Google Answers, when you can ask your local librarian "why did the government paint their cameras on my window" for free?

1 December 2003

It's December, so we've added a seasonal new BibDitties recording by the anAACRonisms: Christmas Time at the Library. We hope this becomes as much a beloved holiday classic as the Mr. Hankey song.

Barbie Loves SpongeBob SquarePants. We wonder how Ken took the news. We're trying not to wonder about other implications of this inter-phylal romance. (Insert Seinfeld-inspired "spongeworthy" joke here.)

We saw Bad Santa the other evening; it's funny enough for us to recommend. Some lines even brought tears to our eyes, we were laughing so hard. The complaints about the movie seem a bit ironic, given that many "family" holiday films are feature-length ads for licensed products, and Bad Santa gives the commercialization of Christmas a nice spanking. (Maybe that's the part that shocked Eisner.) This isn't a flick for kids, but we think it's far less offensive than what Disney did to Hans Christian Andersen.

A columnist in New Zealand mentions us in a boring and derivative piece about the "secret life" of librarians. VALIS discusses the column, and claims that The Laughing Librarian contains "at least some 'serious' information." We're contemplating a defamation lawsuit against VALIS for slapping that "serious" label on us.

 


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