Your "needs" for the Holiday, according to Google

I give credit for this post to a Librarian from Virginia. I saw this idea in her blog.

Go to Google and type in "(your first name) needs" and click search. Then post the top five results to your blog. I used my given birth name and here are seven results in no particular order.

1. "DM needs to become more tolerant, especially of emotions." (What? I thought i was always a tolerant guy.)


2. "DM needs a wash..or a serious dry clean" (Hey! What's the matter? Don't you like my cologne?)


3. "DM needs...support from a stable and harmonious family" (I've already been blessed with that, Thank you very much.)


4. "DM needs to roar with pride." (I do roar with pride, but my office mates know how to reign me in if I get carried away.)


5. "DM needs to learn to shave straight." (Okay, so I can't grow a beard like JG or NCA. That's no reason to nit-pick my cleaning routine.)


6. "DM needs tags on what type of room has what." (I do occasionally get lost in my own library.)


7. "DM needs a hug."

My friend from Virginia has a very unique name. When she typed in her name plus "needs" into Google, she got no results. If you have a common name, this should work.

Part of the mourning process...

It was a year ago that C called me at work with the sad news.....

Whoa! Has it been a year already? Seems like yesterday.

Shameless Promotion

The library is catching wind of the blogging mania that's taking place at our branch. For those of you who read our blogs, thanks for reading our thoughts about librarianship and about life. You're invited to join the blogging club.

More on "Buy Nothing Day"

It's nice to know that other librarians in this land have the same sentiment on the day after Thanksgiving that I do. Check out these blog entries:

"See Also"

or

http://www.librarian.net/stax/1554

In light of the media fervor that promotes "Black Friday," I was glad our library was open on the Friday after Thanksgiving. It gave our patrons a choice.

Doing a 180

Okay, so I did buy the pizza, beer, and antacid tablets last night. But I bought nothing else on "Buy Nothing Day."

Today, though, a different story....but, I didn't really splurge. I purchased my four boxes of Christmas cards for this year and spent the balance of the night looking for stuff on the net.

Buy Nothing Day

Of course today is the biggest shopping day of the year. BUT WHY? Why are we so obsessed with shopping on the day after Turkey Day? Is it because we behave like robots and accept the programming provided by newspapers, radio, television, and the mail? Is it because we are so boring that we automatically shift into shopping gear? Is it because we don't want to stay home and contemplate left-over Thanksgiving makings or college football games that just don't matter?

I encourage anyone whose fed up with the "Shopping out of the gates" mentality to simply blow off their Christmas shopping until a better time....like December 1. Heck, go ahead a procrastinate and then start your shopping on December 21. You don't have to have it immediately. Most places of business will offer a "rain check" for stuff on sale on Black Friday. The only thing I intend to buy today is a couple pieces of pizza, beer, and a couple of antacid tablets.

If you have a disdain for this culture, please visit this site that asks you to buy nothing.

I will abuse my credit card in a couple of weeks.

Two Thanksgiving media-related traditions

1. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles


2. Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!

"I've got my Gmail"

For you fans of Google's Gmail courtesy of Doug Dyson and the SIMS...

I've got my Gmail!

Walking the Harry Potter Line

Because of the respite from work, I watched two movies on consecutive nights.

• If Joaquin Phoenix does not win an Academy Award this year for his role of Johnny Cash in Walk The Line, I'll chalk it up to Oscar politics as usual. But, if Joaquin Phoenix does not get nominated for his work, I'll personally call Oliver Stone and ask, no beg him to direct the Joaquin-Phoenix-got-jilted-by-the-Academy conspiracy movie. Phoenix's performance is superb. And, unlike Jamie Foxx in Ray, Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon do all the singing with dead-on accuracy. The movie director painstakingly researched Cash's life and the result is a good story: Cash failing to get full support from his first wife as his career begins to go full throttle, Cash dealing with an unsupportive, undermining former alcoholic of a father, and Johnny and June discovering at the end of the movie that perhaps they were meant to be soulmates. I expect, no I demand that Phoenix's and Witherspoon's name be listed on all ballots during awards season this spring.



• Meanwhile, the fourth Harry Potter movie is the best yet. Now, I have only read one of the books, a fact I'm not proud of. So when I discuss anything Harry Potter, I am strictly talking about the movies. That being said, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the most tense, most dark yet. I think this movie serves as a perfect bridge for Harry's further encounters with "You-know-who," which we'll probably see more fully in the next couple of movies. A fun movie to watch, especially when the movie theatre is full.

On a side note: the theater played the new "Superman" movie trailer. I kept asking myself as the trailer played: "Is that Marlon Brando's voice I hear or do I need to get my ears checked?"

Kleenex and the Clear-Cutting of North America's Forests

As I poured through the many blogs that I read this morning, I stumbled across this article from the blog of the sister of M. Distressa, a colleague from work. Anyone who has traveled the Olympic peninsula in Washington State is aware of the clear-cutting of the forests up there. The Kimberly-Clark company has a poor environmental record according to the WWF. And as production of tissues continues, a forrest diminishes in size.

I have been to the Seattle area five times in my life and I have seen evidence of this clear cutting. Here are some examples of what I've seen or heard:

• I heard park rangers working in the Olympic National park telling stories of going home at night and seeing stadium lights being used on Vancouver Island so that loggers can continue working 24/7.



• On a camping trip to Vancouver Island in 1994, some friends and I were late in arriving to our campsite. As a result, we had to sleep in our rental car along the road. Although my friends were able to sleep soundly, I could not. I noticed during the night that logging trucks were constantly passing us. When morning came, we were asking ourselves how many trucks passed by. Without missing a beat I said "17." This is another example of the logging industry working 24/7.



• On a 1990 hiking trip along the Hoh River trail we made a grocery stop in Forks, Washington located just west of the Olympic National park. As my buddies and I entered the store, we noticed a sign as we entered that read "We Support the Timber Industry." We noticed the same sign at other places of business (gas stations, restaurants, etc). Some cars even had bumper stickers reading "I prefer the spotted owl FRIED," a reference to the timber industry's threat to the spotted owl in Oregon and Washington. This clearly tells me that the people who live there feel they can only make a living through this industry.

Of course, it would be foolish to say "Let's completely shut down the logging industry." It can't be done. But what I believe can be done is if we regulate the corporations who hire the logging companies. Hit them in the profit-loss column, fine them, make them look for other natural resources to use.
From the beginning of our country's history, the government has been passing legislation to protect some of our lands (for example, declaration of land for government use, the designation of land to be a National Park). And that's good. But what we need our government to do is to relentlessly hold companies like Kimberly-Clarke accountable for their actions in destroying our beautiful lands. This tissue company is one of many companies that are flushing our beautiful landscape away.

What Darth Maul did after Episode One

He became Ultraspark, the Librarian. Ready to help you (or hurt you, if you prefer). Able to help the librarian patron with a single stare using the power of "The Force" and a good working computer.

Check out Ultraspark's "Art of Patron Seduction" at his blog.

My Library Trading Card

I used to have a passion for baseball trading cards. But now, I've created my own Librarian trading card (made from http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/deck.php).

Hey Ultraspark, I'll trade you two "KC Librarain" cards for a "Ultraspark," "Haworth Hiker," and a "Tending Fires" card.

:)

Monty Python IM Shorthand

Rick, a librarian in Illinois, gives us this list of Monty Python Instant Messaging shorthand. Enjoy.

Random Notes from the weekend

• I went to the movie Zathura yesterday. It is exactly the same concept movie as Jumanji . As a matter of fact, both stories are written by the same author, Chris Van Allsburg. Although I found Zathura rather entertaining and a very good family movie, I found myself making comparisons to the Robin Williams-Kirsten Dunst Jumanji movie. And although I enjoyed Van Allsburg's Polar Express last Christmas, I would like to see something more fresh, creative, and original. But, that's only my opinion.


• In my attempt to find a new "favorite" restaurant, MS/PS and I went to Abuelos Saturday night. I must say it was a excellent dining experience. And I got a free to-go order of nachos out of the deal when the staff mishandled my order. The manager did a good job of handling my complaint when the mistake was made. I may visit Abuelos on a frequent basis.


• Finally, MS helped me get my Christmas lights up on my house. It took us about an hour and three extension cords to pull it off.

Yes, I do have these emotions....

Thanks to Haworth Hiker for sending me this....

I'm a sinkie, guilty as charged....

Occasionally, when I'm in a hurry I'll eat my meal over the kitchen sink. I am just very grateful that there's other people in the world just like me and there's a website for support.

Flying Circus--My Top Ten....

A colleague from work entered her favorite ten Monty Python Flying Circus sketches into her blog. After I made a comment about her list, she challenged me to come up with my own Flying Circus list. Sooooo.....here's a list of my favorite sketches. I will only give a short title to each one. If you're a true Monty Python fan, you'll know which sketches I'm listing.

1. Job Interview


2. The Larch


3. Deja Vu


4. Nudge Nudge


5. Wedding couple buy a bed


6. burglar/Encyclopedia Salesman


7. Dead Parrot


8. Ministry of Silly Walks


9. Spam


10. Confuse a Cat


11. I'm a lumberjack

Favorite movie scene: The Killer Rabbit from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
--"What's he going to do? Nibble your buns"

In closing, I hope someday I can see the musical "Spamalot." I heard it did well on Broadway.

NPR Story: "My lobotomy"

This is the first time since I have been keeping a blog where I posted a reaction to a story that was broadcast on National Public Radio. But, I must admit this story stirred some emotions in me and I felt a need, a venue if you will, to express those emotions. And the emotions focus on the fact that the man in this story had absolutely no control over what happened to him when he was a twelve year boy. And parents/step parents who abuse their authority over innocent children is one of my pet peeves. I'll try to elaborate.

The story, "The lobotomy: Howard Dully's Journey" allows Howard Dully, a man in his mid-fifties to recount his story of his transorbital or "ice-pick" lobotomy that was performed on him when he was twelve years old back in the early '60s. This was prior to the introduction of thorozine as a psychiatric medication. Dully serves as the narrator in this story. He embarks on an investigation as to why the lobotomy was necessary in the first place. His journey takes him through a discussion with a doctor who knew the doctor who performed the operation, an examination of his own medical file detailing why the lobotomy was necessary, and Howard talking with his father about the procedure.

It turns out that Howard's step-mother was the strong promoter of the procedure. Apparently, she did not like the ideas or attitudes that was coming from this twelve year old kid. She felt something had to be done. She managed to convince the boy's father that the lobotomy was the correct choice.

As I sat in my car in my driveway listening to the end of this story, my emotions got the better of me. I had to get my handkerchief out and wipe away some tears. An adult who assumes that kind of authority over a child just because they feel threatened by that child should not be a parent or step-parent in the first place.


It had been a long time that a feature story of any media stirred emotions in me. Yes, I know the peg of the story was the transorbital lobotomy procedure and its popular use prior to the introduction of the psychiatric drugs that are in vogue today. What humanized this story was Howard Dully getting the opportunity to tell his story and getting the opportunity to find out why the procedure was deemed necessary for him.

"Overdue" Wireless

Pardon the play on words, but our library is overdue for wireless Internet access. At least the good patrons of Mallville have wireless access if not chairs and spread out locations to use it.

Snyders (plural) on their way out

I was surprised when I checked Kansas City.com this morning that K-State Football coach Bill Snyder will be announcing his retirement today in Manhattan. I followed the Wildcats' rise into national prominence during the 1990s. It was good to see a team come from the total drudge and compete with the likes of Nebraska and Oklahoma for the league championship.

Meanwhile, I know that the Missouri fans are collectively grinding their teeth as Quin Snyder's basketball team lost the home opener against Sam Houston State. I think this will be a lame duck season for Snyder. Although his teams have made the NCAA tournaments, there have been rumblings and criticisms about his team's competitiveness and of course the stigma of what happened with Ricky a couple of years ago.

Another passion of mine....

One of my other hobbies (besides blogging) is collecting Toby mugs. I am in my first year of doing this. My dad collected them over his life. When he passed away, he gave me his collection of twenty-two mugs in various sizes. I have added six or seven mugs since then.

The three Tobies above are recent additions: Bacchus, Don Quixote, and the Viking.

Trying to spread the blogging mania

First coworkers, now.....family? Extended family at that dear reader. I just shot an email to my UncleP who will be coordinating the next family reunion. I suggested that we should start a L family blog as a way of seeing family news in more of a real-time fashion.

To Wiki or not to Wiki

Stumbled across an article examining Wikipedia (Can you trust Wikipedia?. taken from Britain's Guardian Unlimited Website). I am still undecided about Wikipedia. Quite simply, I have not used it enough to determine whether it's a useful tool for me in the work I do.

So, what's your favorite scene....

I was in house cleaning mode Saturday when AN calls to thank me for loaning her the movie Like Water for Chocolate. She read the book many years ago but never really had the chance to watch the movie because of work, kids, life, etc....

After discussing the movie we agreed that the scene where Tita's sister Rosaura dies of gastro-intestinal difficulties was the best scene and the wedding reception where everybody gets horny (including the priest) finished a close second. AN told me that the movie pretty much matched the images she got from reading the book.

On a second note, AN will be "on-call" with work during Thanksgiving weekend which means she'll remain in the southeast Kansas area during the holiday weekend. She ought to work for us at the library. The powers-that-be give us Wednesday off so that we have two days off to celebrate turkey day. I'm sure glad they make us work Friday.

Speaking of favorite scenes, I probably need to dust off my copy of Planes, Train, and Automobiles which has become a Thanksgiving tradition for me.

You can get most anything.......

Damn! Just went through Arlo Guthrie's website and realized that he's performing in Lawrence on Saturday. If I had time, I would have bought tickets. Back in January 1998, some Emporia friends and I went to see him perform in Oklahoma City. Pretty good concert........

I have to say this......

I miss DF as our computer tech guy....
Come home DF, pleeeeeease come home.

Assessing the Truman show

I went to see the movie Capote Monday evening. Here are some thoughts:

• I am glad this biopic focused solely on Truman Capote's obsession on the Kansas murders. I feel this six year window is clearly what drove Capote to alcoholism and his eventual death in 1984. Capote absorbs himself in the murder details even to the point where he gets emotionally attached to the murderers. In this attachment it appears to me that he puts some things he held most dear on the back burner. This includes his "wall flower" behavior at the movie premiere of "To Kill a Mockinbird."



• Phillip Seymour Hoffman channels all the right energies and emotions in becoming Capote. Hoffman has a history of playing quirky characters in the movies including the jerk newspaper reporter in "Red Dragon" and the sexually confused best-grip boy in "Boogie Nights." His portrayal of Capote should stir talks of Oscar.




• Finally, I feel compelled to read some of Capote's work. In particular, I would like to read "In Cold Blood" and see if Capote really projects these emotional energies to the point where he was never able to publish another piece of work.

Random Thoughts from this weekend

• Time Warner surprised me Sunday morning by sending a technician to address my phone problem. After some poking and prodding around my house, he was able to determine that an unused phone jack somehow shorted out and sent a signal out that it was in use...thus creating the constant busy signal. The technician fixed the problem and all is right in the world.



• I spent part of the weekend cutting down all the dead branches from my trees and converting them into firewood for my sister's outdoor fireplace. I have a small handful to complete Sunday morning.



• I went to Lawrence Saturday night to help my sister celebrate her birthday. KU just completed it's victory over Nebraska and I wondered if I would encounter any wild celebration as I hit the Lawrence outskirts. Fortunately, my sister's house is located way off campus and I didn't have any trouble. We ate at Molly McGee's. There, we saw a few dejected Cornhusker fans clad in red. I had a rueben sandwich with a side of steamed veggies. (No fries, JS)



• I am happy to see KU finally beat Nebraska. The only way it could have been sweeter is if KU upset a national-championship-contending Nebraska team. During my freshman year at KU, we upset #1 Oklahoma. I was in the KU marching band at the time and couldn't join the rest of the students on the field in celebatory revelry.

Digital Phone Service

For some reason, my cable phone service is on the fritz this week. This morning I went to Time Warner and asked them to address the problem. I better not hold my breath while waiting for them to fix my service or I might turn blue.

Blogging madness

According to a couple of posts that I've read, there are now about 20 million published blogs on the Internet. From this total come three of my library colleagues (JS, LC, and MD). And we are trying to convince other colleagues to join the fold.
On a side note, JG will be attending a seminar tomorrow. One of the break-out sessions will address the importance of blogging to libraries. I will be very interested to hear JG's comments on this session.

Web Feeds

I came across an entry from the LITA blog which provides arguments to the usefulness of Web Feeds. I think my library needs to embrace the idea of providing web feeds from our web page. But how soon will this become reality? Well, I'm not holding my breath. Here's the link to the blog entry: http://litablog.org/?p=148.

And they say I use too much butter....

I stumbled across this website that shows a Darth Vader Sculpture carved out of butter. http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/31/vader_and_yoda_carve.html


Somebody has way too much time of their hands.

Dabbling with HTML coding

It had been five years since I last worked with HTML coding on any web page. Today, I decided to create links on my blog so that whoever reads my blog knows that I rely heavily on the blogs of other librarians to keep my technology know-how fresh. I typed the code in notepad and then copied it over to Blogger's template. A problem occurred when Blogger decided that the quotation marks that I copied over were not proper coding. When I realized this, I merely backspaced the old quotation marks out and typed in new ones.
BTW, JS-the demonic librarian, is playing around with his blog. I am not sure whether he will take his as seriously as I do mine. I did encourage him to work with LC to start a "writer's" blog since LC is an accomplished author and JS aspires to be.

Halloween 2005

Yesterday, WW staffers celebrated Halloween in grand style. Several librarians went full bore and donned full costumes. JG came as Clark Kent, LC came as a Praying Mantis, and JS came as the demonic librarian with full face paint and stylish contact lenses. Lacking the time to develop my costume, I came as a King wearing the same crown that I wore two years ago--not as creative as the Praying Mantis or demonic librarian.
At Midday, we hosted an appreciation potluck dinner for our slough of volunteers. Staff members each brought something. I bought three pounds of Ambrosia salad. I was thinking this was probably way too much; but, little did I know that the Ambrosia would be used later on.
After work, I called MS on the phone to see if he and PS were doing anything special to celebrate Halloween. With DrB now in a nursing home, I thought that their celebration would be low key. But after MS checked with PS, he called me on my cell phone saying that we would perhaps go out to a restaurant after the obligatory distribution of candy to the trick-or-treaters. In the middle of the night, LE, their next door neighbor, stopped by saying she and her husband had cooked a ham and wondered if we could join them for a makeshift dinner. MS/PS had some leftover potato casserole and greenbean casserole, I had the leftover Ambrosia, and LE/HE even offered some cranberry wine they had purchased on their recent trip to the Amana colonies.
So, after the trick-or-treating subsided, we all went over for dinner, good company, and good conversations.
BTW, J, the dog who had doggie ACL surgery is doing remarkably well. He is now able to do the things that he has done in the past and LE/HE are quite happy but still cautious about it.
One final note: It appears that AG has had some second thoughts about the job offer with Halliburton with the impending assignment in Iraq. It looks like he will return back to Kansas City and continue with the jobs he had before.