Gobble Gobble Hey.

I should probably apologize for that, right?
I'm reading Alyssa Brugman's Walking Naked and, boy howdy, is it annoying. Why am I reading an annoying book? Because I can never just put something down. I also don't walk out of movies, even if they're Moulin Rouge. It's also on the Best Books for YAs list for this year, and I try to read as many of those as possible.
This book isn't terrible, just kind of boring and irritating. And, Holy Ham-Fisted Foreshadowing! Gee, I think the persecuted, seemingly unhinged girl who the popular narrator befriends might off herself. And I wonder if Our Fair Narrator will learn a lesson from it, hmmm? I mean, why not just call the damn thing A Lesson About Bullying?
And it's not even trashy about it, so it doesn't have that fun.
There seem to be a lot of Australians on the list this year: what's up with that?

Jessy's Thanksgiving Teaser-Trailer

I've decided that, after careful research, I'm willing to bet that I can fit an unassembled Ikea couch in my car. Careful research involved remembering my height and a conversion website. All of Ikea's package measurements are in metric, after all. This is going to be the beginning of a great story were I come off like a moron, I'm sure. Mostly, I need to find my tape measure and measure my car's openings. Where's the conversion website that tells me what can fit in the back seat of a '79 Volvo?
Also, I've got a bunch of sweaters I don't want anymore. Most of them have no holes, and a lot of them are sequiny. I'm trying to figure out what to do with them.

The 5 people you meet at the mall.

Or at least, the people I would like to meet at the mall.

1. The small breasted, large-shouldered women that the Limited seem to think are their only customers. Really, how can a shirt be tight around my chest and have over an inch of extra room in the collar area?
2. Size 4 girls with a smaller waist then me, but larger everything else.

OK, sorry, that's all I've got. But really, why is it that every store I go in, and every different style of pant, shirt, etc. I try fits differently, regardless of the fact that they all have the same letter and/or number on the tag? I really don't think I'm all that strangely shaped or sized.

Also, I'd like for the employees at the mall to stop treating me like some sort of fashion pariah. Just because I happen to need to do laundry in THE WORST WAY (bka I bought underwear at the mall) and am wearing a shirt with a unicorn on it (which I happen to like--nerdy is the new cool, after all), doesn't mean I couldn't kick your ass at looking good under better circumstances. Of course, they treat me like a fashion pariah under even the best circumstances. Such is the life of a style innovator. Heh.

This book is driving me insane:. Just make out with her, goddamit! Too many freshman year flashbacks for me, I think.

pretend this is another line from "Brave New Girl"

Brave New Girl being returned last Thursday must have been some kind of omen, since I wound up seeing the Pixies Saturday night. And they were amazing. I can't say the same for the Datsuns (the opening act) however, since they just about embodied every criticism I've ever slung at the Strokes, but even more so. And from New Zealand to boot, so they really should have know better. Quick! Think of a rock star from New Zealand that isn't Dean Wareham. Does Dean even count?
Speaking of Dean (in the round-about, that cat that Cindy and Tiff used to see on walks that they named Dean kind of way), I've picked out my choices from the bookmobile annex kittens. I'm naming one Legs and the little black one will be Johnny. They're very cute, and on December 3 I can take them home. So I should probably clean before then, and get in the habit of closing my closet door.
The drive to Chicago was mostly notable because I got to see this giant cross in the middle of Illinois. Huge! I like when undemonstrative Midwesterners do things like Cubans, or Brazilians. The drive back, the parts where I was awake, mostly stick in my mind because there wasn't much in the way of electric lights, so we could see lots of stars. Although, despite having sat through a planetarium show only 36 hours before, I could still only positively ID Orion and Sirius. Shane seemed less interested in the stars, but then, he was driving. Just sleepy, or less of a science nerd? Fellow science nerds: apparently we're in for some good meteor showers round about the second week of December. I wonder where I could see them from here?
Reciprocal: Melissa is super great. She and her friends made for a great Friday night, if one that didn't involve any of the errands I still need to run. Because who wants to run errands on Friday night? Learned the lesson that Jameson one weekend and Black Velvet whiskey (in the O! so classy plastic fifth bottle) the next do not "balance each other out". Why do I insist on buying alcohol for camp? I never let people I'm with by food based on camp. Well, except for candy.
There are 6 books staring at me on the desk that I have to write booktalks for. I should get on that.

I'll buy you a cassingle if you come.

I really need to stop letting people check out books that I'm planning on booktalking in the next week. That's how I wind up with bootleg, sad looking printouts of book covers taped to other books that no one it their right mind would read. I just can't say no to a patron when it comes to checking out stuff, is the thing. I once spent 20 minutes copy-and-pasting barcode numbers to be able to give some Pokemon movie to the kid who found it on the shelf and make sure all of the holds were still in place. I've also been known to override huge fines, and let people have twice the number of items they should. Usually.
This sort of thing makes up for all the times I've bluntly follow the rules in the face of annoying patrons.
And the kid in question was asking the open-ended reader's advisory question. When someone asks me what they should read (especially someone who's still determining what they like--ooo! I get to mold!), I automatically shoot to the last book I was thinking about. Especially if the asker is a teenaged boy and the book is about early 19th century surgery. Especially especially if the kid doesn't know he dislikes historical fiction yet. Because I really like buying YA historical fiction, and no one seems to like to read it (sometimes myself included). Also great: his turn-around book seemed to be, from what he was saying, Perks of Being a Wallflower, but he hadn't read Catcher in the Rye yet. So now he's got that, too.
The challenge that I thought might be in the making is looking like a false alarm on my part.
The less said about my school visit yesterday, the better. As usual, got along with the kids one-on-one, couldn't hold much interest when giving my spiel (low-cut shirts and bending over, here I come!), wasn't surprised based on the tenuous hold the librarian has on their attentions, etc. I'm visiting classes next week, though (hence the more booktalks). And one of the jr high English teachers offered to arrange a presentation for me, where all of the 125 8th graders would be my audience. At once. In a gym. At 8AM on a Monday. I emailed her asking for a less arena-rock, more intimate-club setting.
Anybody read The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein? I want to booktalk it, but am not thrilling at the idea of reading it. Plus, I'm deep in the middle of The Blue Girl, which is one of those books that I wish had been written ten years ago, for teenaged Jessy. Speaking of which, is it wrong that I'm expecting Labyrinth II when I think of Jim Henson's company optioning Tithe?

OK, so I was just taking this quiz, mostly as a joke, because I know I don't have a religion, pretty much by choice. Quiz tells me that my belief is Unitarian, which only furthers the argument that Unitarianism isn't really a religion. I guess what I don't understand about Unitarianism is that all it seems to be is a community gathering to talk about faith. And isn't it sad that something like that has to pretend it's a church? It's like the people who have to watch Oprah for book discussions because the people in their lives don't talk about books on a regular basis, or their community has been so corroded that there really is no community anymore.
This was one of the nice things about the long voter lines. Even though I did have my nose stuck in a book (hey, I finally got through the damned thing), there was a definite sense of a community getting together and doing something. And that's getting harder and harder to come by, even in a midwestern small town. Actually, I think it's even worse in small towns, because everyone drives everywhere. I don't have a rapport with the people who wait at the bus stop with me, or the woman on her porch that I pass to buy groceries, etc etc. I miss that.
Speaking of the small town I've found myself in, it's come to my attention that there are people reading this thing aside from my friends who have owned up to reading my ramblings. Please just have the sense to remember that some things are kind of personal, and to not start any rumors based on anything here. Thanks.

the Bob Cratchit of YA librarianship

I've been so cold at work lately that I've been sporting scarves at the desk. Who wants to get me fingerless gloves for Christmas and/or Chanukah?
Either the industry in this town is pumping out rapid aging chemicals, or there are grownups in my teenhole. Grrr. And a small unobserved child is running around over there, presumably putting small child scribbles all over the grafitti board designed for big kid scribbles.
I think what really annoys me about this is that most of the adults I knew as a teen respected my space, and would have, by extention, respected a library teenhole. And yet there they are, reading picture books and talking about recipes.
Speaking of which, I'm really hungry. I need to buy groceries, but I'm in one of those not cooking as much ruts.
Tomorrow I return to the high school reading club, to force a program on 'em.

I give up

It's official. sucks. As much as I hate doing this, the job search is open again. If anyone (particularly in the Louisville or Pittsburgh areas) wants to help me out, they can try and get a librarian fired for me, to open up a position.

Sunday always comes too late

Ahhh, another Friday by my lonesome at the Youth Services Desk. Helloooo, home school kids, how are you? Yes, ma'am, I'm just going to let the page in the "ironic" logo shirt (it says "Lord" where it should say "Ford") talk to you about Toby Keith. He did, after all, just take my "If I put books where YAs sit, they'll be forced to pick them up and look at them!" plan to throw a Left Behind book on the chair. That's the thing with those Left Behind books: if you want 'em, you don't need to be coerced. And anybody that would need to be tricked into reading them, well, I'm not thinking the trick would work that well. I mean, I've tried to read one of those books (liking trash as much as I do, and hoping the author would leave clues as to his true identity--Norm McDonald in oldface makeup*), but they get too bogged down in the God junk. Reading this over, I'm realizing that there really isn't much correlation between helping a patron with Toby Keith and "helping" me sucker kids into checking out books they might not otherwise.
Mr. Man, do you see that sign directly in front of you that says "Videos"? Do you think that might be where the videos are?
Someday, I will stop assuming that people read signs. And yes, I'm guilty of it as well.
VIZ is giving away this nifty Manga/Anime 101 thing. It's made up to look like a composition book full of classnotes, all about manga and anime, particularly of the distributed-by-VIZ variety.
*Wait, I forget: is Old Man McDonald the guy who writes the kids' Left Behind, or is it the other guy? What if we switched authors and popular series? Like, V.C. Andrews could write Left Behind and Lurlene McDaniel could write Fearless. Which is ending, by the way. Apparently, there's only one book left, but in the back of #35, there's an ad for Francine Pascal's new series, Fearless FBI. So I wonder what happens in the last Fearless book, hmmm.
Oh, I'm reading The Year of Secret Assignments now, by Jaclyn Moriarty. It's a scream, or as this kind of book's older novel sister would say, v.g.
And a shout-out to Jim, since that whole Tim LaHaye/Norm McDonald thing was our shared running joke.

open letter

Mr. Bush,
You are not the kindergarten teacher of the world. You cannot treat every other human being as though they need nothing more than to think like you.
That being said, if you and yours continue to treat me and mine like we are naughty little children, I'm going to have to start acting like one.
I'm not taking my ball and going home (or to Canada, or Cuba, or where ever). I'm staying right here, in the Midwest, and I'm going to keep yelling until people listen.
I'm not looking for agreement, just acknowledgement and thought.
You continuously treat everyone and everything I care about with contempt and ridicule. How can you govern people you don't respect?

vote, ya mook.

I've been thinking a lot today about the last time this happened, 4 years ago. Happily, things are mostly going much better. Sure, I'm living in --which, I've decided, is pretty much a hole. A hole with an Indian buffet, but a hole nonetheless. But here follows a list of things I was doing in November 2000 that have thankfully stopped:
--Ken is no longer in my apartment, or my life at all. Especially now that I can't find him on Friendster to link to his blog and mock him. Consequently, there's a lot less grossness and whininess going on. More Ken to follow in my recap of Tiff and Jessy's FunTime ElectionNight 2000!
--I have a real job, kinda my dream job, not the coffee thing.
Actually, those 2 are so big I really don't feel the need to list anymore.

Tiff and Jessy's FunTime ElectionNight 2000!

I keep moving to type "nacht". Hmmm.
There was drinking. There was chain smoking, but only in the kitchen. The kitchen was also where, at both the graduation and Beauty Pageant parties, we tried to confine the non-clear beverages. That apartment had brand new beige carpeting. When we moved out, fucking over Ken and the landlords was more important to me than fighting for a piece of the security deposit. Ken didn't want people to smoke in the kitchen, "where we cooked," but that becomes a moot point when by "cooking" you mean defrosting and warming up broccoli mac'n'cheese in a push-up device. Also, his mom smoked all the time in the kitchen, and never cleaned out my souvenir Gettysburg ashtray.
There was watching of Angel, and just about anything else that wasn't election results, interrupted by election updates from Ken. Apparently who got to be President was something worth breaking into his internet cruising time, or sad gayboy chatting time, or straight-up porn watching time, or whatever. There is still photographic evidence of that night, black and white polaroids of the 3 of us wearing upside-down butterfly antenna, imitating Hasidic sidelocks. It was the Jew Veep Hat. You know, I'm still not sure why there was a butterfly headband construction paper thing on the coffee table.
Eventually, Tiffany and I went for a drive. A long drive. To Zelionople. Until 3 AM. Then I went home and (unlike Tiff, who turned on the TV to hear someone give the election to Bush) went straight to bed. Then I woke up the next morning to go make coffee in Squirrel Hill, which was nice because at least all of the customers were bleeding heart liberals, so we could commiserate.
I thought that that Tuesday night had been stressful, but that's nothing compared to today. Now we know what 4 years of Bush is like. Back then, it was just three kids (2 of them significantly less lame than the other) under some Pokemon lights in a Bloomfield kitchen, making crazy speculations. You know, I don't remember any of them, but I do know that none were as insane as Iraq, or the taxcut, or random no-checks-and-balances judge appointments.
Speaking of which, let's all send Rehnquist some get-well-soon vibes. Let's not think about what happens if he's not feeling well enough to hear a case concerning this election, because that's when the sitting president gets to appoint someone. Someone who doesn't have to be OKed by Congress until their next session. Can't we just put a thyroid cancer survivor in there temporarily? I nominate my mom.

Random work-related comment: it would be really nice if someone would outline when exactly I count the hour for lunch and when I don't. Of course, if that overtime law hadn't been passed, then I could have just said give me the extra money and not had to keep correcting my time card and have people act like I should know this. Seriously, last pay period, when I worked from 8 to 8 for that stupid program that only 2 kids came to, I've had three different conversations about shit I've done wrong on that timecard. And it's not like I don't ask people to make sure I'm doing things right.