This Year's Books

The books I read this year. Unfinished books, zines, or chapbooks were not included. Graphic novel-ly things are included, because I couldn't determine a compelling reason not to. It's about half text and half graphic novels.

1. A Wolf at the Door; Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds.
2. Pedro Almodóvar, translation by Kirk Anderson: Patty Diphusa and Other Writings
3. Max Barry: Jennifer Government
4. Josephine Carr: The Dewey Decimal System of Love
5. Dame Darcy: Dame Darcy's Meatcake Collection
6. Philip K. Dick: The Cosmic Puppets
7. Philip K. Dick: Lies, Inc.
8. Philip K. Dick: Solar Lottery
9. Philip K. Dick & Roger Zelazny: Deus Irae
10. Arnold Drake and Bruno Premiani: The Doom Patrol Archives Volume 1
11. Drawn & Quarterly Volume 3, (May 2000)
12. Bart D. Ehrman: Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
13. Carol Emshwiller: The Mount
14. Carol Emshwiller: Report to the Men's Club and Other Stories
15. Neil Gaimen & Terry Pratchett: Good Omens
16. Gilbert Hernandez: Palomar
17. Jack Kirby: The Challengers of the Unknown Archives Volume 1
18. Carol Lay: Now, Endsville
19. Little Lit: Folklore & Fairy Tale Funnies, ed. art spiegelman
20. Little Lit 2:Strange Stories for Strange Kids, ed. art spiegelman
21. Charles Ludlam: The Mystery of Irma Vep and Other Plays
22. McSweeney's Issue 13, Chris Ware, ed.
23. Grant Morrison, Chris Weston, Gary Erskine: The Filth
24. Gary Panter: Jimbo in Purgatory
25. Max Phillips: Fade to Blonde
26. Terry Pratchett: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
27. Terry Pratchett: Carpe Jugulum
28. Terry Pratchett: Eric
29. Terry Pratchett: The Fifth Elephant
30. Terry Pratchett: Going Postal
31. Terry Pratchett: Hogfather
32. Terry Pratchett: The Last Continent
33. Terry Pratchett: Maskerade
34. Terry Pratchett: Monstrous Regiment
35. Terry Pratchett: Mort
36. Terry Pratchett: Night Watch
37. Terry Pratchett: Reaper Man
38. Terry Pratchett: Thief of Time
39. Terry Pratchett: The Truth
40. Terry Pratchett: The Wee Free Men
41. Terry Pratchett and Paul Kidby: The Last Hero
42. Michel Rabagliati: Paul Has a Summer Job
43. Michel Rabagliati: Paul in the Country
44. Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood
45. Charles Schulz: The Complete Peanuts 1950-1952
46. Charles Schulz: The Complete Peanuts, Dailies & Sundays 1953-1954
47. Charles Schulz: Li'l Beginnings
48. Osamu Tezuka: Buddha,Volume One: Kapilavastu
49. Osamu Tezuka: Buddha,Volume Two: The Four Encounters
50. Osamu Tezuka: Buddha,Volume Three: Devadatta
51. Osamu Tezuka: Buddha,Volume Four: The Forest of Uruvela
52. Top Shelf: Asks the Big Questions
53. Trampoline; Kelly Link ed.
54. Ray Vukcevich: Meet Me in the Moon Room
55. Chris Ware: Jimmy Corrigan
56. Steven Weissman: The Kid Firechief
57. Steven Weissman: White Flower Day
58. The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror; Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant, eds.
59. Neil Zawacki and Bill Brown: The Villain's Guide to Better Living
60. Ron Zimmerman and John Severin: Rawhide Kid: Slap Leather

Not too bad; at least it puts me solidly in the column of frequent readers, rather than those lousy moderate readers. I wish I were an avid reader, but every year I sort of tire of reading, and spend maybe 5 months doing something else, like watching old movies or drawing Pop Art pictures of the Venus of Willendorf. I vaguely wish that my list wasn't so dominated by a single author, but I's gets me enthusiasms, and I runs wit' 'em. Besides, he's a prolific writer, and I was catching up with his back-catalog.

114,000 is about as many people as there are in the city in which I live. I hope you all gave. I suspect you have, even if, like me, you are on vacation.

Oh, this figures...

Thing is, this is more or less how I see myself. And how others see me, at least in one instance. Not terribly poetic, I admit. I suppose it's something I can New Year's Resolute about.


You are the baobabs.


Saint Exupery's 'The Little Prince' Quiz.
brought to you by Quizilla


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Watched Shaun of the Dead again tonight with Julie, Michelle and Mike. It is my favorite movie of the year; no other movie really even comes close. The Incredibles was good, but when it comes to superheroes, my expectations are terribly high. All in all, it was a really lousy year for movies. I just really, really want to see Bad Education.

Super Hunk and Spandexia

Sorry I haven't posted much, but I haven't had much to say. Mostly I've been playing City of Heroes too much. I bought it (as a graduation present) when I heard that Marvel Comics was suing them. While playing it, I have learned a number of things:

• People are not very imaginative. Their origin stories are generally earnestly unoriginal. Their names are usually variations on something like Skatterskull or Killdeath.
• People assume that, because you are playing a female character, you yourself are a female character. In particular, my character Starbootie -- a Pam Grier-type glamazon with a name "borrowed" from one of RuPaul's early characters -- has been the subject of much innuendo. I usually just try to play along, and have yet to own up to my Y chromosome when playing this character.
• The reactions to my character, the Flaming Advocate -- who once worked as a bouncer at the Man Hole, until that fateful night when he was bit by a radioactive drag queen in a bar brawl over the last bottle of Zima -- range from merely annoying to honestly offensive. No real surprise there. (I do like the fact that my gay and female characters are real shit-kickers, and my straight male character is a weak coward who turns invisible and heals people.) Comics books in general tend to be pretty conservative in this regar, anyways.
• Superhero costumes make no sense. The capes, the leather, the high heels, the women running around in what amounts to a g-string and two band-aids -- I mean, I realize this when reading comics, but usually I don't pay attention to it. But when you have to design your own costume, you think about these things. So I have folks running around in jeans and t-shirts, well-tailored suits (as if that's more realistic), and sweats. Because if I had super-powers, that is the type of stuff I would want to wear. Also, no primary colors -- no need to attract attention in a battle. My female characters are (mostly) fully dressed, which may be why people assume that I must be a woman.

As you can see, I've been using my time constructively. Oh well. I did find out that, in spite of my worst efforts, I got an A in my research class. I want to know what I had to screw up to get only a B! But at least now graduation is official.

Christmas Songs for People with Taste...

Specifically MY Taste.

For the past few years, I have been the one in my family responsible for the music that is played during a holiday. Well, I actually seized power of that responsibility, having been so stricken by the thought of having to hear "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree" ever again. That song is like "The Monster Mash"; I feel we should confiscate all copies and bury them in a mountain in Nevada.

So anyways, here are my recommendations (and a couple songs provided for you, gratis) to enrich your aural experience this Yuletide:

• Cardinal: "Do you believe in Christmas trees?"
  

This song has nothing at all to do with Christmas, aside from a line about it near the ending of the song. Which of course makes it the best sort of song to be playing as you gather around the Yule log. I usually like more uptempo holiday music,but I think this song is just beautiful and melancholy.

• Saint Etienne: "I was born on Christmas Day"

Again, this song actively resists having much to do with the holiday, and it has been heard in my family's living room for the past five years as my family and I open our presents. Unlike the previous song, though, it actually sounds like a Christmas song, with the chimes, the synth harmonium, the harp. It's a duet with Tim Burgess, late of the Charlatans UK, a Britpop outfit that popped up in the early '90's. The song itself is from 1994's Tiger Bay album. I just love the reference to EuroDisney, and the line "Getting groovy after Halloween..." If we could get less wet-eyed, simpering, bland Christmas albums retreading songs in the public domain, and more disco-carols like this one, that make me feel good and joyous, then I think we would have something a lot more valuable than the Jessica Simpson X-mas slop being peddled at 7-11.

• Pizzicato Five: "24 December"
  

I have no idea whether this is a Christmas song, since the lyrics are all in Japanese, but I assume so, given the title, the children's choir, and the opening vocal part. If so, then it's a disco Christmas for everyone: "We love the disco, we love the disco sound..." The final single relesed by P5 before they broke up, it's celabratory, danceable, and like most of their songs, a little bit of a potpourri of Western popular music. Never given a proper release in this country, this is from the double CD Singles import. Pizzicato Five did release a couple versions of "Silent Night" song in Japanese, but Nomiya Maki's voice was never strong enough to do the song justice, and I find that this song has enough spirit o' the season in it to keep my cheeks a' rosey.

To complete the S. Family Christmas Mix, add the contents of the following albums:

• The Beach Boys: Christmas Album
• Ella Fitzgerald: Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas
• James Brown: James Brown's Funky Christmas
• RuPaul: Ho Ho Ho
• Various Artists: A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector
• Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas

As well as these various and sundry songs:

• ABBA: "Gimme Gimme Gimme"
• Bad Religion: "Silent Night"
• Clarence Carter: "Backdoor Santa"
• David Bowie and Bing Crosby: "Little Drummer Boy/ Peace on Earth"
• Donny Hathaway: "This Christmas"
• Eartha Kitt: "Santa Baby"
• Erasure: "She won't be home"
• The Flaming Lips: "A Change At Christmas (Say It Isn't So)"
• John Lennon: "Happy X-mas (War is Over)"
• Judy Garland: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas"
• Kurtis Blow: "Christmas Rappin'"
• Lambert, Hendricks, And Ross: "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie"
• Lea & Chess: "Little Star (Shine On Us Tonight)"
• Mariah Carey: "All I want for Christmas is you"
• Pet Shop Boys: "It Doesn't Often Snow At Christmas"
• The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl: "Fairytale of New York"
• The Polyphonic Spree: "Little Drummer Boy (live)"
• Prince: "Another Lonely Christmas"
• The Ramones: "Merry Christmas (I don't want to fight)"
• The Raveonettes: "Christmas Song"
• Rudolph & Gang: "Here Comes Fatty Claus"
• Run DMC: "Christmas in Hollis"
• Valerie Masters: "Christmas Calling"
• The Wedding Present: "Step into Christmas"
• Wham: "Last Christmas"

The following songs are optional, and are as close as the music gets to having an overtly religious message:

• Ben Vereen (I think; I don't have the cast list in front of me): "Superstar" (from the Jesus Christ Superstar Soundtrack)
• Handel's Messiah (for my mother; she loves it.)
• Roxy Music: "Triptych"
• The Velvet Underground: "Jesus"

And there you have a Holiday Soundtrack that you can be proud of! Have a Merry Christmas, Chappy Chunakkah, Keen Kwanzah, Swell Solstic, ETICK everybody!

By the way, there's a lot of snow here.

It turns out that today is the last day of work before winter vacation, instead of tomorrow, as I expected. (It was phrased poorly in the letter we sent out to the doctors, and was very confusing.) I honestly didn't know. I do have to come in tomorrow night to make sure that UPS picks up the cases, but that's better than pretending I'm doing work all day.

My Christmas presents are all bought and wrapped, except for Julie; I'm making a gift basket for her. I usually buy her the most, because I know her the best, and I can do stuff like frame a giant postcard of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and be certain that she will hang it over her toilet. As far as I know, it still is there. (He was the initial reason she got into the show.) She doesn't know me so well, or she does, but is never sure what I already own and what I don't, so it's difficult for her. She's bought stuff that she knew I didn't own, only to find that I had bought them myself. I suck that way.

Song: Scissor Sisters, "Laura".

Post-Graduation Quasi-Blues

So you know that big drunken night of debauchery that I was planning? It turned into lying in bed watching movies for hours on end. Everyone else called off, and I wasn't feeling good, so I made plans to go see The Incredibles again with Julie and Mike on Sunday. Come Sunday, I had a really bad fever, but I went anyways, and found I liked it better going to see it with them. Afterwards, we went out for Mexican, and I was only able to eat half my quesadillas and several glasses of water. Julie gave me a CD -- Fantastic Plastic Machines mix-CD, Sound Concierge 404: Electric Extravaganza -- as a graduation present, which I was just shocked by. First, it was on my wish-list, but I doubted anyone would buy it, because it's a Japanese import, and thus $40.00. Second, I didn't expect anyone to get me a graduation present; I had to specify with her that that's what it was, and not an early X-Mas present. Third, of anyone, Julie was certainly the person I expected a gift the least; she was willing to live with me for a year rent-free while I was going to school (something I hope to repay), and I consider that as gifty as anything. But no, I now own it, and am listening to it, and love it. I will never make fun of that candle she bought me for Christmas that one year, ever again. I love my best friend Julie Newkirk.

Hopefully I will eventually get a proper graduation party; I may have to lobby for this, since Julie assumes (with some justification, considering my past party behavior) that I didn't want one. Which is totally not the case. The fact that Marcy Nussbaum, her neighbor, friend, car-pool partner, and co-worker, also graduated WSU this term, should make it easier for me to convince her to throw one for both of us. I deserve to get smashed (or whatever the equivalent would be for my proverbial three beers -- knicked, I think it would be).

After I got home from lunch, though, I collapsed on the couch under strata of quilts, wearing gloves, because my fever was so bad. I eventually went to bed, and when I woke up at 9:30PM, I was hot, and I knew I was getting better. Only then I was awake until 4:00AM. Today I just feel sort of poorly.

Last Friday, I went out to eat lunch with Veronica (and Karen Bacsanyi and her practicum student) at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Veronica paid for my meal, which I felt vaguely embarassed by. She then gave me a gift card for Borders, which I appreciated a great deal. It just makes me want to buy her something, and I'm poor. Oh well; I'll give her a Christmas card.

I am sooooooo ready for a vacation.

Re-Graduation Daze

Notice, please, the ABOUT ME section to the left has undergone a mild revision.

Tonight, if I were participating in graduation ceremonies, I would be -- well, participating in graduate ceremonies. But I've done that twice, and this degree is for me alone, and I feel no need to have my parents watch me get a blank piece of paper wrapped in ribbon and not hear my name called out.

It seems like graduate school happened too quick, like I'm not prepared at all. I said I felt like I was a librarian way back in the beginning of the semester, but I somehow don't know. I find myself thinking that there is so much that I don't know, that no Human Resources person in their right mind would want to hire me. I so wish I had taken some sort of Instruction class -- which sounds more redundant than it is. Almost all the positions I've been hiring for have been for Reference & Instructional Librarians, and while I have precious little experience with the former, I have virtually none with the latter.

Part of my freak-out is that, for the first time in two and a half years, there's no plan for next semester. Well, I would like to get a job, of course, but that isn't the same as knowing that you have three classes, scheduled in the evening so you can still watch "Lost" and "Gilmore Girls". You no longer have the Plan of Work that you have to fill out after completing 9 credit hours in the program. The future blob once again looms in front of you, it's gaping maw just a footstep ahead of you, waiting for you to fail.

Whoa. Heavy.

For right now, though, I'm just decompressing from the whole thing, and hoping that my expectations for myself in my Research Methods class far outstrip the expectations from my professor. I don't want to get my first B in my last class.

I think I'm going to take a vacation early next year. And I think I'm going to get actual-drunk* this weekend. But then, I always say that, and never do.

*Usually I drink 3 beers, start to feel it, and then demure from anything else. It sucks, being so responsible.

Graphic Novelty

NPR's Day to Day has just discovered "graphic novels". Alex Chadwick describes them as a new genre, which doesn't sound right to me; "graphic novel" is a format, not an indication of the content. They do generally share coventions (such as the speech bubble), but that's pretty broad.

The critic on the show reviewed the two huge compendiums of work by Los Bros Hernandez, which I certainly can't argue with, except to say that the praise is a decade or two late in coming. Personally, I prefer Gilbert's work; I prefer his stories, and I never minded that his work wasn't as "polished" as his brother's. His art, at its best, is perfect for what he writes, and it's chockfull of personality. Plus, he tends to be much more experimental; New Love is one of my favorite series of all time. So is Measles, his abortive attempt to create a new series for children. I loved his Venus stories in that series, as well as the stories of Steven Weissman. (I still haven't bought Los Locas.)

They review a collection of Lynn Johnston's "For Better or Worse" strips, which I respect more than I enjoy. And they discuss Craig Thompson's Blankets, a book I've had absolutely no interest in at all. The story sounds tedious, the length sounds excessive, and I'm not that fond of Craig Thompson's art. I've heard some people talk like it was absolutely brilliant, but I've heard some people say that it's really not that great, people who's opinion I trust. So I'm not alone. Even the critic was less than enthusiastic about the work.

No mention is made of Persepolis II, nor of Chris Ware, or Art Spiegelman, or Joe Sacco, or Alan Moore, or McSweeney's Issue 13. No indication that there are perfectly reasonable, sensible, literate adults who still read "comic books", some even with superheroes. No mention that manga seems to be slowly taking over my local Borders.

Oh well.

In other comics news: Grant Morrison is apparently going to be writing Superman. This so depresses me; it was bad enough that he managed to get me reading an X-Men comic, now he does this to me? Where is the love, G? Maybe I'll just buy the inevitable trade paperbacks.

I want Grant to revive the old Jimmy Olsen comic. Now that's something I would buy every issue of!

Surfacing

I'm not sure how I feel about a musical based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Broadway repackages old movies, movies repackage old TV, and TV repackages the same old crap.

Speaking of which, I have an appointment to take my car to the dealership to take care of any number of problems tomorrow at 7:30 AM. As if I needed that. But then again, I am the guy who managed to schedule taking the GRE the morning of my graduation ceremony when I received my Bachelor's, so maybe I'm getting off easy. At least I don't have to work tomorrow; I'll come home and sleep.

Enough with this -- ¿How you say? -- fun. Cor, it's back to da Thesis mines fer me, guv'nor. I'm doing better than I thought with it, though. Everyone wish me luck on bluffing the professor tomorrow! And on that vile presentation I have to give. Pretty please?

Song: The Shins, "Kissing the Lipless".

I have officially completed my practicum, although I promised Veronica that I would continue to come in until the end of the semester. I forget why I did that, it was stupid of me. Anyways, Veronica still has to turn in her evaluation of me.

Currently wrestling with my literature review. It thinks it's winning, but I'm pulling a rope-a-dope, and just as it starts to tire, I'll strike like a feral jungle cat. Most of the rest of the thing seems to be coming together, in tiny pieces. I'm going to get done tomorrow night and have to make a g-damn PowerPoint. Vile things, though.

I won the Italian release of Andy Warhol's "Chelsea Girls" on e-Bay. It was way too expensive, but it's one of my favorite movies, ever, if only for Mary Woronov's "Hanoi Hannah" bit. I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

I should probably go to bed soon.

It turns out my father's retina has detached; he just went to see the opthamologist today. He'll have to go in for surgery at U of M Medical Center.

He'll probably start running around (or as close to running as he can manage; sauntering, maybe) with an eye-patch, shouting, "ARRRRRR, me maties!"

The horror, the horror...

I figured out today that my constant headaches, rather than indicating that I have mind cancer, are probably due to the fact that my glasses are no longer the prescription that I need. I am actually having trouble even seeing the titles on the book spines that are four feet away from me. Actually, I'm not having an easy time seeing the computer monitor, either. This really bugs me, because it seems like I went a longer length of time between getting new glasses before. Just a part of aging, I guess. These glasses were bought on October 13, 2000, a day after I crashed my car into the median on I-96 when I lost control of my (first) Focus, and two days after Julie and I had her parents and my parents to dinner to show off the house we had just moved into. I was working at OnStar then, but had just bought my first new car in July, and it was a Ford. My glasses flew off my face when I hit, and I was never able to find them in the wreakage. I sat in the ER, oddly cheerful, wiping the blood from my forehead and only seeing blurriness. I had my replacement glasses in my backpack, but they had huge-ass Buddy Holly frames, so I was anxious to get some replacements.

I no longer live with Julie, I no longer work at OnStar, the Ford that replaced the one I totalled is paid off, and, since I got these glasses, I have earned my Master's degree. Ch-ch-ch-changes.

Except I hadn't planned on getting glasses until I was employed again, with insurance. It annoys me that I have to pay for an eye-exam, much less the glasses. I'm also afraid I may have to get bifocals: I have been reading books over my glasses, which is something my dad does all the time.

I almost have all my practicum hours done, although I promised Veronica I would hang around until the end of the semester. We're going to lunch at the cafe in the Detroit Institute of Arts next Friday, before a presentation on Virtual Reference.

Song: Donovan, "Atlantis".

Good grief, is this sad.

(Actual-sad, not sarcastic-sad. via BoingBoing)

Zen is the new dull.

How come I had to take a drug test when I applied for a job at Blockbuster, but when they talk about testing baseball players, they start blithering about privacy, and getting a knock on the door at Thanksgiving, asking them to piss in a cup?

NPR's baseball fetish really annoys me; it seems like they always have some old guy going on about the "poetry" and "zen" of the game. I've found more zen playing Candyland. If you like the game, then enjoy it, but don't try to wrap it up in quasi-mysticism in an effort to justify your enjoyment.

It's Sunday, and I have nothing to say. Hence, I give unto thee quizzes. (via Gwenda, via Chris Barzak)

You are 29% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator. Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend. You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines! Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals! You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

I think this depends a great deal on how you consider someone a geek. They didn't ask a single question having to do with whether I collect comic books featuring muscular people in brightly colored tights flying around. *ahem* Not that I do, mind you.

Anyways, a geek liaison sounds about right for working in an academic library.

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Which Famous Homosexual Are You?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

Well, I really have no problems being Ms. Roosevelt, but I guess I was hoping for someone just a tad bit more... flamboyant. Or colorful.

Song: The Buzzcocks, "Nothing Left".

I sent out my Christmas cards tonight: how anal is that?

Look, up in the sky!

My Mother made this bear for my cousin's eldest son, who just happens to have the same name as me. Apparently he is really obsessed by super-heroes, so my Mom had the idea to make a super-hero bear. I told her that a super-hero bear needed either an arch-nemesis, or a secret identity, so she made a suit and tie for him. I provided the glasses. The design for the costume is actually based on Chris Ware's Super-Man -- not the DC character, obviously, but the super-hero that shows up in Acme Novelty Library occassionally. (See for instance, the first panel of the story "Thrilling Adventure Stories (I GUESS...)" in the Quimby the Mouse book.) I told my Mom, primary colors for the hero, secondary colors for the villain. To be honest, the bear's trunks look a little like a boxer's shorts, which means that whenever I see the bear, I think of George Foreman. The gloves look like thumbless mittens. The tie was one that I found on the street in Kalamazoo in 1992, which we had cleaned, and which was much too short for me. My Mom did get the Clark Kent-ishness of the alter ego, although I wanted the bear to have a little hat to go with the suit, with a slip of paper slipped into the band saying: "PRESS". Actually, I'm impressed that the bear turned out as good as it did. If anybody has a special order, I can see what the going rate for a Mrs. S. original is!! (Sorry about the poor quality of the pictures; I have a really lousy digital camera, and I don't really have any reliable programs on my computer to correct the lousy color and poor focus.)

My Mom wanted me to write and illustrate a story to send with the bear, but I think I did my part. Besides, I always liked coming up with the names and the powers by myself; I renamed all my super-hero action figures and gave them different powers when I was a kid. Plus, I haven't drawn since -- well, since a long time ago.

In other news, Veronica had a problem patron at the reference desk today, angry because the book that had been held for him had been taken back to storage. It was from 1874, and it doesn't circulate. His paper's due tomorrow. I ended up having to take another patron, and show him where to check to see what journals we have, and where they are, because Veronica was tied up for so long. I think I did a decent enough job of it. As I left, she told me she didn't know what she was going to do once the practicum is finished. That was gratifying, because I don't really know what I'll be doing, either.

Song: Donovan, "Sunshine Superman".

Adam and Steve, not Adam and Eve!!

This just makes me sick:

A bill by [Alabama state] Rep. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale, would prohibit the use of public funds for "the purchase of textbooks or library materials that recognize or promote homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle." Allen said he filed the bill to protect children from the "homosexual agenda."

Allen said that if his bill passes, novels with gay protagonists and college textbooks that suggest homosexuality is natural would have to be removed from
library shelves and destroyed.

"I guess we dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them," he said. . . .

If the bill became law, public school textbooks could not present homosexuality as a genetic trait and public libraries couldn't offer books with gay or bisexual characters.

Because all those Ronald Firbank novels are destroying this country's young people! Anyways, it's only Alabama, and it's only a state legislator, right? But look more locally:

Governor Removes Same Sex Benefits

An aide says [Michigan] Governor [Jennifer]Granholm will remove same-sex partner benefits from contracts negotiated with state workers. The decision is in response to a voter-approved amendment to the Michigan Constitution that bans gay marriage. Granholm aide David Fink [Me: "Nice name, guy!"] says negotiated contracts scheduled for adoption by the state Civil Service Commission on December 15th will be stripped of the same-sex benefits. Fink holds the title of state employer. He says the Granholm administration decided to eliminate the benefits because of the passage of Proposal Two, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

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Personally, I'm sick of my tax dollars going to promote heterosexuality; I don't see that the government should be in the business of advancing The Straight Agenda, nor should it be recruiting impressionable young people with the ill-conceived (no pun intended) propaganda that is allowed to circulate within our public schools. Rampant heterosexualism pervades our schools, and all the politicians do is encourage the behavior!

Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are straight, and what they do in the privacy of their own home is their business; I try not to judge. You might even be surprised to learn that there are straight people in my family, and I love them just as much as if they were gay. As Freud might say, I hate the neuroses, but love the neurotic. I support them however I can, for the life of the heterosexual in society can often be a lonely and alienated one, what with the incessant unrealistic portrayals of heterosexual relationships that permeate our popular culture, setting the bar for romantic success so high that only Beautiful People In Designer Clothes can attain it. The pressure this puts upon straight people must be virtually unbearable. I admire their pluck and determination, and am proud of the courage they display when they finally come out of the closet, and into the Family Room. I try not to think about the more biological aspects of heterosexuality too much; the image of two people of different genders kissing is one I just find too disturbing. Nevermind all that other stuff. Mostly, I just feel pity for them.

But when straight people feel the need to flaunt their lifestyle choice in front of God and everybody, I simply have to draw the line! Heterosexuality tends to lead to excessive breeding and higher rates of divorce, neither of which I think ought to be encouraged. Why can't they just be happy comprising roughly 96% of the population, and leave the rest of us to live our simple lives, unencumbered by the burden of birth control?? Is that so wrong??

(That last line ought to be read in the voice of Harvey Fierstein.)

Song: Judy Garland: "You'll Never Walk Alone"

John Waters has compiled a Christmas album. I want it.

I didn't see A Dirty Shame in the theaters, which I feel a bit bad about. But I do really like the fact that John Waters has become something of a media entity, being in movies and TV shows, in addition to having that little musical of his. He gives some of the best interviews around; anymore, his interviews tend to be more amusing than his movies. Don't tell him I said so, please! He's sort of a throw back to the sort of gay stereotype before Stonewall, and before the rise of the Clones in the 70s and 80s and 90s; he's amusing, urbane, and educated, and well aware of the power of a witty bon mot. (The Clones tend to be a lot less cerebral, and a lot less fun, aside from the purely physical; they tend to mistake bitchiness for wit, and nastiness for cleverness. I might write about that another time; I have Pretty Definite Opinions. [As if you care.]) He also understands that campiness isn't simply about irony and mockery; camp is rooted in genuine affection, and is about being able to see both the absurdity of something, and the -- beauty is perhaps a stronger word than I intend... Merit? Anyways, John Waters' continued media presence almost makes up for the fact that Jessica Simpson hasn't been completely forgotten yet. Although nothing can make up for the 13 second of her and Whatshisname's Christmas special that I accidentally watched as I rushed from the room after Lost.

For those of you that haven't read it, I highly recommend John Water' Shock Value: it is funny, and oddly touching, and gives a good impression of his background and all that, as well as descriptions of his early, elusive films. Crackpot is also very amusing, but it is more spotty; it compiles articles Waters wrote for a variety of magazines, and some of them amount to little more than mildly entertaining filler. Although he does admit to being a fan of Woody Allen's serious movies, and he insists that it's not ironic. It also includes an article about The Buddy Dean Show, the inspiration for Hairspray, which he mentions in Shock Value, as well.

The day will come when John Waters will be on a U.S. Stamp. On that day, I will truly be proud to be an American!

(The Divine stamp is just too much to even wish for.)

SIRK-umstances

I wonder at what point I'll quit thinking of time in terms of semesters? I suspect not soon.

I applied to the Navy to work as a civilian librarian overseas. Preferably in England or Germany -- I took a few semesters of German, even though I could never figure out those split verbs, and I've always imagined that it would be easier to learn it if you're immersed in it. On a Navy base. Anyways, I have a good ole Kraut name; mein Familienname auf Deutsch means "bad". Germans tend to get a kick out of that.

In a way, it sounds really exciting (not in an "I-LOVE-A-MAN-IN-UNIFORM" way, since men in uniforms tend to scare the shit out of me. Subcultural memory, or something. This made my seven years in the Boy Scouts particularly difficult.), but it also freaks me out. I don't meet people easily, and being in another country (Canada excepted) on a Naval base wouldn't suggect any improvement in my socialization skills.

My parents want me to go, in part because it would give them an excuse to have to visit Europe, beyond the ports visited by cruise ships. And the idea of living in Europe is great, but I have the vague feeling that I should have done that when I was younger, and that at 31, I really should be Making A Life For Myself here.

But if they offer, I'll take it. I'll be like June Allyson in Interlude. Not the best film, but I have yet to be swept off my feet by my gardner in a relationship that scandalizes the neighborhood, and beggars can't be choosers. Right now I'm sitting on the Pavement of Love with a tin cup and a fistful of pencils; the sign in front of me reads: "WILL SIRK FOR FOOD".



I'm not really sure what that last sentence means, particularly in relation to trying to find a position after graduation, but I was running with a metaphor that I couldn't keep pace with. In point of fact, I think it means I am really tired, and am now going to go to bed.

Happy Leftover Day!!

Thanksgiving, for me, was not served until after 7:00PM EST. I had not eaten the entire day, after being awoken by the dogs barking at the reflections of themselves in my Dad's new high-def TV at the ungodly hour of 10:00AM. Needless to say, I was cranky as all get-out. My brother Kurt showed up early at the airport, and my dad was still here and hadn't put the turkey in the oven yet, about to leave when Kurt called asking where my Dad was. My mom inadvertently turned off the oven when she corrected the timer, which had been set by my father for 89 hours and 07 minutes for the turkey, which made dinner about an hour and a half later than it otherwise would have been.

I prefer Christmas, myself. More presents, better decorations, less football. Same amount of food, and more alcohol, at least for me.

After being so rudely awoken, I decided to cook my part of the feast to get it out of the way. I was responsible for the green bean casserole, a coconut-ginger-pumpkin soup which was better than it sounds, and a sweet potato & apples concoction I got from The Revised Joy of Cooking that was actually really, really good. That book has yet to offer up a poor recipe to me, and I don't even cook that well.

About 1AM, I took Zoe on a walk to try to aid digestion. Specifically, my digestion; there's a reason why people eat Thanksgiving Dinner earlier than normal everyday dinner. She wore her "Dogs Against Bush" t-shirt, since she has really thin fur for a lab, and I feel bad for her in the cold. The moon shone bright, and the ice on the sidewalks was slick.

My Mom is getting a wake-up call from Target tomorrow. I think she's hoping that Ice-T really will call her to wake her up; she thought he was a hoot in those commercials. Which I just think is weird.

May go shopping today; will probably try calling Julie again too, to see where the Hell she's been these last two weeks. I called her last weekend, and she never called back. I want to see The Incredibles!

Song: !!!: "Me and Giuliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)"

Dirty Dream #2

I had a dream last night that I was cleaning my toilet.

That's all there was. No sexy handyman helping me out, dressed in nothing but his toolbelt; no talking toilet, nor did the toilet have teeth it was trying to bite me with; there were no cameos by the Scooby Doo gang. Just me, my toilet, and a scrub brush. I think my subconscious must be angry at me, for some reason. This is even more mundane than the dreams I usually have.

Thing is, the toilet is clean; I cleaned the bathroom over the weekend. Stoopid dream.

Because I like lists, and because I am lazy.

This is what I'm currently listening to. Actually, it's what I've been listening to for a couple weeks, more or less: I've tweaked the playlist, but haven't made a new one. What is mildly dismaying is the fact that only about a fifth of the songs on this list are ones that have been recorded in the last five years. Not that the last five years have been so chock-a-block with splendid music that I ought only listen to that, but I try to avoid facing the fact that I seem to be (d)evolving into a curmudgeon. Like when I open up Spin magazine, I look at all the band names and just keep on saying, "Who? Who?" They all look the same, and all their names sound the same, and the fact that I can't keep them all straight makes me feel old. Although I'm not certain that the deluge of anonymous bands doesn't have more to do with the music press casting about wildly for the Next Big Thing than it does a slew of genuinely talented musicians among the young folk, particularly since the Music Industry won't shut the Hell up about how badly the record companies are doing. But that's a different rant...

The order is random; I just chose the songs I wanted and let the computer determine the order. A little like Clear Channel, only my playlist is twice as long as theirs.

1. New Fast Automatic Daffodils: "Big (Instrumental)"
2. Shonen Knife: "Daydream Believer"
3. Cornershop: "Brimful Of Asha (Les Rhthmes Digitales Mix)"
4. Markus Nikolai: "Bushes (The First Re-Creation)"
5. Can: "I Want More"
6. The Fall: "Hey! Luciani"
7. Yellow Magic Orchestra: "Behind The Mask (FPM's Sweet Soul Bossanova Mix)"
8. The Beatles: "Julia"
9. The B52s: "Topaz"
10. Debbie Jacobs: "Don't You Want My Love"
11. Blondie: "Contact in Red Square"
12. The Pointer Sisters: "Pinball Number Count (DJ Food Re-edit)"
13. Donovan: "Barabajagal"
14. Sigur Ros: "Agaetis Byrjun"
15. Ella Fitzgerald: "How High the Moon? (Live in Paris)"
16. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs: "Date with a Night"
17. Lulu: "Watch That Man"
18. Sylvester: "Over and Over"
19. Le Hammond Inferno: "Move Your MP3 (FPM's Legendary Disco All-Stars Mix)"
20. Sandie Shaw with the Smiths: "Jeane"
21. Noël Coward & Orchestra: "Mad Dogs and Englishmen"
22. Pizzicato Five: "Day Tripper"
23. Army of Lovers: "Crucified"
24. The Seatbelts: "Tank! (Opening Theme)"
25. Shapeshifters: "Lola's Theme (Single Mix)"
26. Thunderclap Newman: "Something in the Air"
27. Pete Burns & Pet Shop Boys: "Jack and Jill Party"
28. Komeda: "B.L.O.S.S.O.M."
29. RuPaul: "Supermodel (You Better Work)"
30. The Homosexuals: "Astral Glamour"
31. Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel: "Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)"
32. Boney M: "Rasputin"
33. The Orb: "Little Fluffy Clouds"
34. Ride: "Vapour Trail"
35. Billy Bragg: "A New England"
36. Womack & Womack: "Baby I'm Scared Of You Baby (Original 12" Mix )"
37. The Easybeats: "Friday on my Mind"
38. Jayne County & the Electric Chairs: "28 Model T"
39. Donna Summer: "Our Love"
40. The Jesus & Mary Chain: "Just Like Honey"
41. The Jaynettes: "Sally, Go 'Round the Roses"
42. Julian Cope: "World Shut Your Mouth"
43. Yazoo: "State Farm (Madhouse Mix)"
44. Lovestation: "Teardrops (Joey Negro 12" Mix)"
45. Mousse T featuring Emma Lanford: "Is It Cos I'm Cool"
46. The Marvelettes: "Too Many Fish in the Sea"
47. Elvis Costello & The Attractions: "Beyond Belief"
48. Kylie Minogue: "Butterfly"
49. ABC: "How to be a Millionaire"
50. The Beach Boys: "I'm Waiting for the Day"

Inspired by Kevin's list of recent music; I only figured out the alphabetical thing after I had mine written out, which suggests that, yes, I really am an idiot. But I blame my failing vision.

A Hit Reality TV Show Just Waiting To Happen!!

via Ms. Bond:

Grab the nearest book at hand. Go to page 42. Select your favorite sentence. Post it and the name of the book in your journal (add these instructions to your journal as well).

The book closest to me is actually inches from my left hand on the table: Patty Diphusa and Other Writings by Pedro Almodóvar, translation by Kirk Anderson:

She's in jail now, writing another screenplay that takes a funny look at the problems of right-wing terrorists, left-wing terrorists and junkies living together.

Time & Time Again

The other morning, I had a dream where I was offered the position of the personification of Time -- apparently God called me on my cell phone. For some reason when he called me I could see His face -- he looked a bit like Lawrence Olivier in Clash of the Titans, but mostly he just looked like Jack Black with a full beard and a caesar cut. In spite of a very generous benefits package, I told him that I had to think about it for a while, because taking the position would require me to move to California, which, in my dream, was apparently a bad thing. I'm not sure where in California we're talking -- I suspect I would have accepted immediately if we were talking about San Francisco. So anyways, in the dream, I take off for the lake house in Indiana for the weekend, to consider my options -- or option, as it happens. Instead of taking the interstate, I was taking the old highways to get there, like Old US Highway 12, which is picturesque and big with antiquers. I sometimes do that when I'm going to Indiana and not in any ruch, but I was sort of getting myself lost. It was also inexplicably snowing -- I say snowing, what I mean is blizzarding, since I ended up careening into an enormous snow bank in some small town I've never been. I got out of the car, relatively unperturbed, and walked toward the center of town. There was a church there, with people going in and out looking like Norman Rockwell people. Thing was, the church had no snow on it, nor on the sidewalks around it. The people weren't dressed as if they were in a snowstorm; they had their old-fashioned sunday best on, and weren't paying much attention to the weather. It was rather beautiful. At that point, I realized I had to take the job, and went to call God on my cell phone, but I didn't get reception in the town. Stupid Sprint PCS. I looked up at a bell-tower wistfully as it chimed and I woke up.

Eye to Eye

Saturday, while he was watching the U of M game at the bar, my Dad started seeing "snakes" -- squiggly lines -- through one of his eyes. He waited until after the game to go home, and try to call my mother to see what she thought was wrong -- she is a nurse at U of M Medical Center, and was working that afternoon. She wasn't around, so he went back to the bar to have dinner, and came back an hour later. He's not a moron, really. My mother was home by then, and she immediately sent him to the emergency room, who promptly sent him -- but of course! -- to U of M Medical Center. My mother had to drive him there; he was just a wee bit inebriated, in addition to seeing snakes where there weren't any. I'd like to say I was wracked with concern, but I'd be lying. I mean, he was apparently well enough to go back to the bar, right?

His eye has apparently had some sort of rupture. Apparently, he has some sort of thing up with his eyeball where it's thrown up all sorts of debris in the eyeball goo that is interfering with his sight; it'll eventually settle, and be reabsorbed. My mom described it as sort of like a snowglobe, which, you know, EW. Apparently one of the nurses said to him that it often happens in elderly people, as if that's why it was happening to him, which didn't make him too happy. He's 59, which, you know, isn't what I think of as elderly. I think of elderly as Moleman from the Simpsons. Or my Step-grandpa Jim, may he rest in peace.

They didn't get home too late; just by sheer luck the optomologist had already been called in on another case. I'm such a loving son that, after my mother assured me that he wasn't going to go blind any time soon, I immediately blurted out, "Is it hereditary??" I'm at that age where that becomes an issue. Apparently, it's just part of the natural cycle of aging, which, you know, EW.

She immediately started talking about that Piston's brawl thing. She's known me for 31 years, and she still thinks I ought to care. Parents.

* * * * * * * * * *

I finished reading Terry Pratchett's Hogfather and Night Watch over the weekend -- like I said before, I's obsessed -- and I also started and finished Max Phillips' Fade to Blonde, which I really can't recommend highly enough. It's part of the Hard Case Crime series, with some really spectacularly pulpy covers. They say not to judge a book by its cover, but lets be honest: everyone does. You look on the shelf at Borders or wherever and see another boring looking mass-market paperback with the title of the book in metallic gold raised block letters, your eyes just glaze over and you walk on by. Well, anyways, mine do. Books like this though, with actual paintings gracing their covers -- I love it.

The book itself was just like James M. Cain or Raymond Chandler, but it wasn't just aping them. I don't normally read a lot of crime fiction, because in general I find it sort of dull, but I find these sorts of books terrific. It was almost too outrageous, but then had so much grit and humanity in it that I never found myself rolling my eyes. I'll probably continue reading the series occasionally, when I feel the need to butch myself up a bit, lit-wise.

Song: Brian Eno: "Needle in the Camel's Eye".

Thought Of The Day

Incompetence is the new success.

Cyd & Gene's Day, with a Black Squirrel

It was a beautiful day today. Unfortunately, I spent it in the library.

As it was described to me, the climate control system in the library dates back to somewhere near the dawn of time; the building manager is only slightly more recent in origin. As such, on unseasonable days like today, there is no attempt to adjust the temperature to one that people might find comfortable. I was so dehydrated by the end of the day, I had a headache. And then I had to go discuss my research proposal with my professor. (I think she bought my spiel and gave me the go ahead.)

But walking around campus with my coat off was wonderful; everyone seemed to know that this might be it for temperate days for a long time. Even the black squirrel that lives on campus, by the entrance to the library, seemed to be making the most of his/her day. Basically, it was the kind of bright, colorful day that makes you feel like Gene Kelly is going to be singing and dancing around campus with Cyd Charisse at any moment. No sightings to report today, though.

I heard something about "On the Town" on Fresh Air today. It's given me showtune-lust. (I adore Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and I'm not sure why. I don't seem to recall enjoying The Band Wagon that much.) I had the lines "New York, New York, it's a hell of a town: the Bronx is up and the Battery's down" running through my head all day. I hope no one heard me sing it under my breath.

**************

I finished reading The Truth, and am halfway through Hogfather. HO. HO. HO. I can now finish it with a clear conscience, until about midway through next week, when I will start having an anxiety attack that will last the duration of the semester, because I won't have done anything on the research proposal yet. Until then, the living is easy!

Between the end of my "shift" and my meeting with my prof, and after returning the children's book I had borrowed with the Kelly Link story in it (A Wolf at the Door), I did a bit of browsing in the stacks, and found:

1. A recent book on the prints of Andy Warhol, because I'm attracted to bright colors and pretty pictures; and
2. A book of the translated fiction/non-fiction of Pedro Almodovar.

I got that last item because the New Yorker has a not-too-brief appreciation and defense of his films. Not that I think his films really need defending. In part the article was defending the films from the charge of being too camp, asserting that they have an emotional core that somehow transcends camp. I guess I don't see why a campy movie can't provoke a genuine, positive emotional response. Douglas Sirk movies do that for me, and so do the films of Pedro Almodovar. At least everything since Live Flesh; and a few of his early movies too. Perhaps I need to reread Susan Sontag. Not that I think she knew what the hell she was talking about. (By the way, one of the stories in the book is dedicated to Douglas Sirk; it's titled Scrotum in the Wind. Evidently the words for 'scrotum' and 'written' are remarkably similar in Spanish.)

My dad's back from Vegas; he didn't bring me anything.

Song: The Orb: "Little Fluffy Clouds".

What becomes a legend most?

When I was attending Winston Churchill High School in lively Livonia Michigan ("Explore, Discover, Enjoy," as a commercial of the time said of Livonia), back in the halcyon days of 1988, there was a radio station that broadcast from Plymouth/Canton High School -- our neighbors to the south-west. It was low-powered enough that reception of the station was a touch and go affair, but on clear nights, I would sit in my room and listen to it as I hung out with friends or worked on various arty projects, like making a collage out of pictures of Robert Smith and Morrissey that I cut out of Smash Hits.

This radio station played what was then known as college rock. The Cure, R.E.M., Echo & the Bunnymen, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Smiths. Locally, it was known as squid-music; squids were a group of us, at first basically what would now be considered Goth -- I suspect the term came into usage because of the tendency of some of us to have dyed-black tendrils of hair hanging down into our mascara-ed eyes. Squids encompassed punk rock kids, femme Depeche Mode fans, and nouveau Hippies. You can see here that I'm not actually making this up; it's a bit of local color that I'm almost proud of.

Anywho, so on this radio station, they played a lot of stuff that I've since forgotten about by bands I only half remember. But among all the musical flotsam, there was one song that I remembered clearly in spite of only having heard a few times, that I would sing to strangers if I thought they might recognize it (this is true! I sang it to some middle-aged ladies when I was working at Borders! Why I thought that they might recognize the song eludes me. I suspect they were sort of mortified.), but that I never knew who the artist responsible was. It was bouncy late-80s synth-pop, so catchy that it borders on annoying, and the chorus of this song went:

Just like Hemingway, he showed me any way
You can be a hero all you have to know is what to say
And if I want to die just like Hemingway
I'll put a pistol in my mouth and blow my head away.

Now that's entertainment. I've searched for it intermitently over the years, in song indexes, and searching for it through P2P file-sharing -- which, incidentally, is wrong, and something that we here at The Cornjob Memorial Library would never, ever condone, kids -- but without an artist, it was next to impossible to find.

That is, until today. On a lark, I googled what lyrics I had, and discovered the name of the artist; I used this to find an mp3 that had been posted with the band's (named Blue Clocks Green, incidentally; no wonder I didn't remember it!) apparent permission.

It would not be an overstatement to say that this is my Holy Grail. Well, OK, it would be overstating it, rather severely overstating it in fact, but I'm trying to indicate how happy I was to find it; for a while, I honestly wondered whether it had even existed at all. No one from high school remembers it, which seems impossible, and there really didn't seem to be any evidence that the horrors of puberty (I was an extremely late bloomer) hadn't driven me briefly, if quite catchily, insane.

But it exists. It is weird to hear it digitally -- the radio always played a slightly worse-for-wear 7" single. But it remains one of the most infectious earworms around, perhaps even rivaling the glory that is Salt 'n' Pepa's "Push It" for the song most likely to get lodged in my head for ever and ever. The synthpop music is dated, of course, but it brings up images of Molly Ringwald doing the Ringwald Shuffle -- you know, arms up, elbows at a 90-degree angle, head down, boots scooting in the Breakfast Club library to some synthy glop. This is like a song that was left off the Pretty in Pink soundtrack, the one that would've accompanied the part where a spurned Ducky shot himself outside the Prom in the original ending*. It's absolutely fabulous. I love the fact that this fey synthpop name-checks Papa Hemingway; I have no patience with him as a writer, but if his life -- or more to the point, death -- could inspire a song this enjoyable, then even I can't write him off completely.

If you have the constitution to stand such a catchy song, it's available as an MP3 here, at the bottom of the page, after the story of the band. I highly recommend it.

In less ecstatic news, I got a haircut. And my hair is not, nor has it ever been, dyed black.

Song (duh!): Blue Clocks Green, "Hemingway".




*This was not, in fact the original ending; I made it up, out of my imagination. Although it is true that, in the book, Molly Ringwald's character ended up with Ducky at the end, which all us squid-types agreed would've been a better ending.

Mono-tasking

Spent the weekend completely unproductively; I finished three novels, in a marathon reading session that started on Friday night and has yet to abate. I'm on the fourth now.* They were Thief of Time, Eric, and Reaper Man, all by Terry Pratchett, and I'm currently reading The Truth, by the same author.

I would talk about why I enjoy the books, but I think that ship has sort of sailed with other, better commentators. What strikes me is how I'm sort of compelled to read them. This isn't the first time I've become really focused in what I'm reading; at various times, I have reacted similarly to the works of Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare, Shirley Jackson, William Blake, Jane Austen and Philip K. Dick. I suspect that this is a by-product of A.D.D. -- I use my enthusiasm as a way to maintain my concentration long enough to read a sizable chunk of books. It eventually peters out, but not before I have been able to make substantial inroads in an author's ouvre. Only it's not even specifically related to reading; I'm like this about a lot of things. It's been remarked on more than one occasion, for example, that I will eat a meal one item at a time -- that is, I will finish off my mashed potatoes all at once and then I will finish off my vegetables all at once, et cetera. That's as good a metaphor as any for how I do things, I suspect. I put my mind to finishing something, and won't stop until it's either done, or until I lose interest. Not much of a multi-tasker. This can be useful for short term projects, but less so for, say, getting a Master's degree. Luckily, my entusiasms tend to be cyclical: I'm eventually reminded why I was so passionate about something, and return to it with the same vigor as before. It's occasionally frustrating, but often it's something more positive: a lot of people don't seem to manage that initial sort of enthusiasm more than once.

It occurs to me that I may be bipolar. If so, it's extremely mild, since I'm not really terribly manic, nor that depressed (at least not since I bitched myself out of my teenaged years).

My dad is the same way, only even more so. He's A.D.D., too. (We were both diagnosed way before it was hip to put 3 year olds on Ritalin, as adults [or quasi-adults], by the way -- we were the trendsetters.) It can be frustrating for the rest of us when we are confronted with his single-minded determination to be done with a project, even if that project should reasonably be of little priority. He needs things done, and he needs them now. I'm not quite that bad, I don't think. At least not with other people.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying: I think Terry Pratchett is a wonderful author. I don't regret reading 700+ pages of his books this weekend, instead of doing what I should have been doing. But I really, really need to channel some of my enthusiasm into my research proposal, since I have to go and confer with Dr. Ankem this Thursday.

Aw, maybe tomorrow...

(I'm also a notorious procrastinator.)

Song: Sandie Shaw, "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me".



*There are those for whom the completion of three novels in three days is but a walk in a well-lit, attractively-landscaped park, and they will look upon me; and Lo! they will gaze upon the goofy visage of a simpering, be-spectacled troglodyte for whom three books is an accomplishment. To which I shrug, and say: "Whatever."** I actually am reasonably well-read, and certainly above average, as far as American reading habits go.

**I apologize for my elaborate defensiveness. It's because my legs hurt.

In addition to completing my first solo reference question (I say solo, but Veronica did the explaining about where to access online journals by title), I also believe that I've completed the Subject Guide for the College Rankings. I'm not entirely pleased by the result, but most of my complaints have to do with the structure and rigidity of the template I had to use; it wasn't really designed to list individual citations. In spite of my the problems I have with it, I do think that it will be more useful to the students; when I started, the information was basically listed by year, with all the different rankings for different programs lumped together. The anchors help in that regard: a user can jump directly to, say, rankings for law schools from the top of the page. Now that I've proven myself reasonably facile with the template, Veronica has asked me to start going through her other Education Study Guides, checking for dead links and doing "the anchor thing". Not very interesting, I know.

Looking through Job Postings for librarians, I've discovered that they break down to two types of jobs: interesting jobs that are located in places where I would like to live, and jobs for which I am actually qualified and have more than a snowball's chance in Hell of being hired for. But they aren't jobs in call centers, or packing art for a megalomaniacal pimp/bruja, so I'm already ahead of where I was in 2002.

I think I'm going to put on some sweats and read for the rest of the night, maybe with the new Orbital album playing. But first I have to rustle me up some grub...

I just answered my first reference question! From an impatient patron!

Whoo-hoo!

**Doing the Reference Dance**


Now, back to the info mines...

I hereby declare a moratorium on the word 'disenfranchisement'.

Really people. Stop the insanity.

Especially on NPR call-in shows.

Resume Dismay

So I'm working on my resume, and I'm a bit confounded by how to structure it. Previously, the sections were structured like this:

1. Education
2. Employment History
3. Other Skills (HINT: none)

Fairly standard. The problem with this, of course, is that I have absolutely no work history in my chosen field of Library Science. The only experience I do have is this practicum, and another class where I did independent research for two professors at WSU; unfortunately, in both cases, I've had to pay for the privilege of doing library work.

I asked Veronica and (Library)Mike about it last afternoon while we were on the reference desk; Veronica recommended that I might structure it like this:

1. Education
2. Library Experience
3. Employment History
4. Other Skills (HINT: still none)

I suppose this makes sense. I think I'm going to completely redo my resume; it has proven extremely ineffective in getting me even the chance to go for an interview. It's based on one of those Microsoft Word resume templates, and someone suggested to me that the eyes of those hiring may glaze over upon confronting the 98th consecutive applicant using Word's "Contemporary Resume" template. Makes sense to me.

Any thoughts among the librarians? Or among you lucky people in other areas who have actually managed to land jobs?

(Related to all this, objective statement: yea or nay? I've heard a compelling argument that the objective statement is redundant and takes up valuable space on the resume. Only, since I have little to no relevant experience, it's not like I have other things to do with the space. And does it actually matter to employers whether I am a member of Phi Beta Kappa? I think the only people still impressed by this are my parents.)

How F**king American Are You?

Actually, I don't drink coffee. And I drive a Ford Focus.

Meme's ahoy!

File in "Everybody Else is Doing It, Why Not Me?" Dept:

Meme #1
RULES: If you happen to be working on some creative writing project, fanfiction or NaNoWriMo or what have you, post exactly one sentence from each of your current work(s) in progress in your journal. It should probably be your favorite or most intriguing sentence so far, but what you choose is entirely your discretion. Mention the title (and genre) if you like, but don't mention anything else. This is merely to whet the general appetite for your forthcoming work(s).

I am posting more than one sentence for each, because, well, I want to.

(I presume much, I know, but while I'm not published, and not at all what I would consider a writer, I do write.)

First up is my "novel", which I started first, and which is sort of stuck around page 30.

Then it hit me; the incidents don't always hit the same, but there's almost always the pain, a sharp pain behind my eyes, that lets me know what's happening. Sometimes I pass out; more often, I remain conscious and display any number of symptoms, depending on the ad. I may start gagging, or my eyes might start watering, or I may start coughing so hard that the area of my back between my shoulderblades hurts from the strain of my muscles. This time it is actually worse.

Next up is the story of mine that has yet to be rejected by Strange Horizons. It's titled "Thirty-Three".

In general, everyone's been nice enough, but there's always some jerk with a cowl and a generic European accent who starts heckling me, saying stuff about mine not being a science, but rather the purview of bitter spinsters who tie their hair in buns and wear sensible shoes. I try to argue that that is an unfair stereotype, much like the stereotype of a mad scientist with a cowl and a generic European accent, but by that time the jerk has distracted everyone with his army of Cyborg apes.

The final story that I'm working on is probably the one I have the most affection for, just because it is the most surreal. I've only started writing this story down, although I have it organized in my head.

"You're late, Mr. Oxleigh." The voice had no visible source as it echoed through the atrium of the library.

Its working title is "Arthur Oxleigh: Bibliographic Control"; it's another librarian story, but a lot more fantastical.

I'm not participating in National Drunken Writing Night 2004, since what I need to start writing is my "half-thesis" on information literacy and the use of citation software. I should also start sending out resumes, since I graduate next month. Whether I get anything actually done remains to be seen. (Ed is participating in it, and it appears to be library-oriented. Complete with what we called "the burning bush" when Dave Abel used to do this at parties in high school. On purpose. The smell was horrendous, believe me. We were sort of crazy kids, considering we didn't drink, do drugs, or [for the most part] have sex.)

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Meme #2
When you see this, post a song in your journal.

I've had this song stuck in my head for a couple weeks.


Get in the swing, pal
Get in the swing
With everybody and everything
(repeat)

My friends are here
Mind if you go out and not come back again
Well, thanks a lot
Hooray, hooray
The night is younger than the girl who's got the touch
But not by much

Well, I ain't no Freud,
I'm from L.A.
But I know certain things
That they also serve who sit and wait
They're cheaper than painting
And don't need explaining

(Chorus)

When Salmon spawn
A ton of water blocks their motion,
Spoils their game
But on they go
Thrashing 'til their mission is fulfilled or else
Oh, but they have their friends
And have a warm bed waiting
Just like I do with you
I'm happy, so happy, I'm happy, oh happy

(Chorus)

All for one, one for all

(Chorus)

Hello down there
This is your creator with a questionaire
Hello up there
I don't have the time to fill out questionaires


Lyrics by Ron Mael
Performed by Sparks.

Happy Guy Fawkes' Day!

I got ill this morning, with a reasonably significant headache and nausea, so I came home early from my practicum. (Veronica said I was "really, really, really" pale.) It wasn't a migraine; I've had one before, and the headache part of my pain wasn't nearly painful enough. I collapsed on my bed when I got home, fully-clothed with the light and TV on, and drifted in and out of sleep for a few hours.

OK, I know that I have expressed my distasted for Michael Moore in the past, and I do honestly think that his bullying tone did the left no favors come election time, but this is actually pretty amusing; Moore posted 17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists on his website. Among other, less amusing resons was this:

6. Michigan voted for Kerry! So did the entire Northeast, the birthplace of our democracy. So did 6 of the 8 Great Lakes States. And the whole West Coast! Plus Hawaii. Ok, that's a start. We've got most of the fresh water, all of Broadway, and Mt. St. Helens. We can dehydrate them or bury them in lava. And no more show tunes!

Well, it seemed funny at the time. I like the idea of a show tunes embargo, I think. (via Librarian's Rant)

I'm just glad I happen to be reading a book by Terry Pratchett right now.

This is SO cool; I've always wanted a secret room hidden behind a bookcase. If I ever have a house built, I'll get one. (I also want an R.Mutt urinal in the bathroom. And a gift-wrapping room. And stained-glass windows depicting Charlie Brown trying to kick the football.) (via BoingBoing)

I heard this rumor in 1991; I thought it was complete bullshit then, too. Honest Abe wasn't gay; he was just into good, old-fashioned, heterosexual anal sex. Is that so wrong? (via Bookslut)

Speaking of wrong: the history of the Hello Kitty Vibrator. (via Neil Gaiman)

* * * * * * * * *

Today I might be mad, and tomorrow I'll be glad, but I've got Friday on my mind:

• Danielle Dax: Jehovah's Precious Stone mp3

This one is from one of my favorite albums, Blast the Human Flower, one of the few from my early college years that I still listen to. Of Ms. Dax, Jello Biafra once said of her:

Dax is an electronics genius and multi-instrumentalist who produces her own records and designs her own covers. She used to be in the Lemon Kittens and is on the United Dairies comps. She's becoming Top Forty [this was in 1994; it never quite panned out] but still retains a lot of what's cool about her. Her voics is 1920s slithery-sultry, like Mark Bolan's voice on the first two acoustic Tyrannosaurus Rex albums. (RE:SEARCH #15 :Incredibly Strange Music V. II, pg. 20.)

This is song refuting the existance of God, or certainly of any God that the Christian Church (any of them, actually) recognizes. It's a wonderful song, pointing out the absurdity of it all. And it's all to a disco beat. Have you noticed I'm big with the disco beats? Well, I'm big anyways, but you know what I mean. But the song has a wonderful 'throw-your-hands-in-the-air-if-you-just-don't-care'-moment when she's singing, "Get up off of that altar, drink that holy water."

* * * * * * * * *

Tomorrow I have to go back on campus; the library science professor who's in charge of the practicum students is having another three-hour seminar. I hope at least I feel a little better; if I were to miss it, I wouldn't graduate, and even if I had all my hours finished (135), I would have to show up for the seminar next semester. And then I think I'm going to have to go work the reference desk with Veronica on Sunday morning to make up for today. This screws up my weekend plans of accomplishing absolutely nothing. *sigh*

By the way, my mother has sent me this petition, regarding the fate of two elephants that the Detroit Zoo is trying to retire to an elephant sanctuary, but The American Zoo and Aquarium Association is insisting the elephants instead be sent to Columbus, where the elephants are evidently treated less humanely. I'm not too fond of zoos anyways, but if the Detroit Zoo is trying to do the right thing, then I support them. I figure some of you might too.

http://www.petitiononline.com/winkwand/

Every silver lining has its cloud

What seemed overwhelmingly depressing yesterday ain't so much no more. I've been avoiding checking out the blogs today, because everytime I do, I see someone rending their garments over the state of the nation. Honestly, that started wearing thin about 8:13PM last night. Fact is, kids, we're all not religious zealots. You know that. Nor are we a homogeneous population; people vote different here than in Massachusetts, and different than Utah too, thankfully. The fact that Utah seems to be the one calling the shots among us is unfortunate, but not permenant. Women here are not donning calico burkahs, nor are Southern Baptist para-military fighters riding around in Hum-V's, enforcing compulsory attendance to the Sunday afternoon potluck -- I'll bring the ambrosia salad! This was a setback, but it's not the end of the world, and if it is, we at least die with the satisfaction of knowing that it's ALL THEIR FAULT. (They even screw the end of the world up by looking forward to it. Stupid Christians, in the words of the late Curtis Mayfield: If there's a Hell below, we're ALL going to go!)

Speaking of which, remember all those explosives that mysteriously disappeared in Iraq? Apparently they were taken by looters as U.S. soldiers stood by. The soldiers were unable to intervene, because they were seriously outnumbered, and when they sent word to the higher-ups about it, they received no response. I feel safer already! Thank you, Emperor W! Let the Pax Americana spread all across the earth!

Ed at Return of the Reluctant has been the voice of angry sanity in these dark, dark days, so I too say, Fuck you, gloomy cloud!


Song:

1. ABC: " How To Be A Millionaire"
2. The Style Council: "Money Go Round pts. 1 & 2"

"I got a rock."

I'm feeling a lot better tonight; when I got home from work, I was still pretty steamed. So after dinner, I sat down in front of the tube and watched the DVD of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". I watch it every year, but didn't get a chance to before Halloween. On the DVD, there is another feature: "You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown" from 1972. It's a bit of a hoot, actually: Linus decides to run for student body president after Lucy's poll numbers determine that Charlie Brown would receive no votes if he ran. Linus does the debate thing; a call-in show ("First time caller, long time listener"); campaigns by claiming the school is "in the midst of a moral decline"; when a reporter paraphrases his platform, he claims the press is against him; and then he almost blows the election be evangelizing about the Great Pumpkin to the other students at a rally. He eventually wins by one vote, and is almost immediately accused of being a corrupt politician by an indignant Sally. It's nowhere near the sublime quality of the Charlie Brown X-mas or Halloween specials, but it certainly is funny, especially after the high melodrama of the last 48 hours. And Lucy van Pelt does an amazing imitation of Karl Rove, constantly polling and arranging campaign events; at one point, she waxes somber on how the campaign staff does all the work, and the candidate gets the glory. She eventually vows that the next campaign she will work for will be her own.

For some reason, this cartoon made me feel a lot better. I would vote for Linus, in spite of his unorthodox beliefs. I have great respect for a sincere pumpkin patch.

Speaking of Linus's unorthodox beliefs, a related piece of fiction from Strange Horizons.

Mood: Still Mad -- But Good Mad, Not Evil...
Song: Vince Guaraldi Trio: "Linus and Lucy"

• Coldcut: "RE:VOLUTION" mp3

George W. Bush can bite my shiny, metal ass

And that goes double for you, Ohio.

• The Buzzcocks: "Oh Shit"
• The Shangri-Las: "I'll Never Learn"

And for good measure, my statement of defiance:

• Musique: "In the Bush"

After all, the only reasonable response to such electoral results is to dance your (shiny, metal) ass off.

There is not a vote conceivable where I could be more disappointed (that doesn't involve Nazis invading or zombie-Nixon being elected president), with every anti-same sex marriage ammendment among the states passing handily, in addition to the re-election of Emperor W. Evidently I over-estimated the commonality of my secular political views. I'm wondering if I can change my mind about the whole Canada thing. (I LOVE YOU, CANADA!!! You have good drama festivals and attractive roadways!)

That is all.

Everybody Move to Improve the Groove

The day of reackoning is at hand, my breatheren! I already voted, before I went into work.

Last chance for free music!

• Duran Duran: "Meet El Presidente"

Because when else can you post a song about "Miss November Tuesday"? I have always been a fan of Duran Duran, willing to suffer the insults of my peers, and the derision of one particularly vile AP English teacher that finally got his comeuppance, years overdue. At the time, they were mocked for being a bunch of pretty boys, but what with the slick corporate pop of the last few years, the idea of a bunch of guys writing and playing their own stuff seems much less risible. Particularly since so much of their back catalog is so, well, good: I listen to their greatest hits album, and the songs are both good, and actually were hits. Pop at its best. You got a problem with that?

This song is from the album Notorious, and features the funkier, Niles Rodgers (late of the amazing band Chic)-influenced songs of this particular incarnation. It has the clean sound I associate with 60s soul; I hear Motown in the chorus -- 80s British Motown, like ABC's "When Smoky Sings". The lyrics aren't that bad, either.

• LaBelle: "Something in the Air / The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

"Something in the Air" is a Thunderclap Newman song that apparently appeared on the Easy Rider Soundtrack; "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" was (of course) by Gil-Scott Heron. The fact that the group had the nerve to cover these songs is notable enough; that they did it so well, and that the two songs work so well together, is simply astounding. It starts out slow, a nice groove, not unlike the Bowie song I posted earlier, and different from the more uptempo original of "SITA"; but them cranks it up to full-throttle for the Heron bit. The middle section's music sounds like the soundtrack to a Blaxploitation chase scene, which I guess is quite appropriate. The women deliver the lyrics with authority, because "Hooterville and Petticoat Junction will not be so god-damned relevant". (OK, so it's a bit dated; it makes up for it in providing you with 99% of the Recommended Daily Allowance for Soul.) Sing on, sisters.

• Liza Minelli: "Tonight is Forever"

A remake of a song from the Pet Shop Boys first album. A lovely song, and a subtle arrangement. Apolitical, but indicative of my mood as I wait for the other shoe to drop.

On the way home from work for the day (I have homework that needs doing) I saw three young men walking along the sidewalk. One was holding a boombox, the second was holding a videocamera and wearing what looked like a tri-corner hat, and he was apparently filming a thrid, who was holding a piece of posterboard with something written on it. The first two were walking backwards. I love it; this augers well.

Hail to the Chief, baby. Now more than ever.

UPDATE: I'm giving myself an ulcer, splitting my attention between PBS, NPR, and my own political songs. They keep talking about how moral issues are playing such a big part of the vote for Bush. You know what? I consider Iraq a moral issue; I just don't need to point to the Bible as justification. Although, you know, I could. Go Michigan! Do me proud! (Please? And you too, Ohio!)

"I'm Herkimer Puffinstuff, and I approved this message."

Zoe endorses John Kerry. Again.

Narrow-Minded and Poorly-Taught: My Final Thoughts

The penultimate installment of my Election Year Mix-tape*;I wonder if anyone's downloading this crap? Today's not quite as funky as I originally intended, 'cause I decided to spread the funk more evenly over these last two days.

• Heaven 17: "(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang"

The names in the song may have changed, but the groove thang stays the same. Does it even require further explanation? Heaven 17 are perhaps my favorite New Wave group; they grew out of the British Electronic Foundation project, that itself grew out of the early days of the Human League. The group managed to marry politics to a dance beat on more than one occasion, and they did it really well. Incidentally, the BBC banned this song because of the title.

• Stetsasonic: "Talkin' All That Jazz (Dimitri from Paris Mix)"

This is a classic hip-hop track from the late 1980's, remixed by Dimitri from Paris. As compares to the LaBelle track, its direct political significance remains elusive, although I suppose all the complaints directed at the music critic would be equally applicable to, say, the President of the United States. Plus, you know, remixed by a French DJ, I guess that's a bit political. Or it was two years ago. But I really am just including it because of that awesome bassline, and because I think that more people should hear it. It reminds me of late nights listening to the Electrifyin' Mojo on WHYT in the mid-80s, with my lights out so that my dad didn't know I was still awake. Mojo would play sets with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, Kraftwerk, Afrika Bambaataa, and the B-52s. Anyways, j-j-j-j-jam on it! Word to yer precinct!

* * *

And in a non-downloadable note, Mark Evanier pretty much summarizes my fears for how tomorrow will play out:

Right now, I'm less scared over who will win than I am over how messy it will be with all the charges of vote stealing and vote suppression and machines that misrecord your selections. This past weekend, we turned back the clocks and they said it was the longest night of the year. Just wait 'til tomorrow evening if you want to see a long night.

I'm not afraid that Bush will win -- OK, yes, I am afraid of that, only because I suspect he will be even more strident in pursuing his agenda without an eventual re-election to worry about. And of course there is the issue of Supreme Court appointments. But if Kerry wins, I don't suspect that much will change for me on a day-to-day level. Maybe there will be less bitching about the PATRIOT Act, but he can't really withdraw the troops from Iraq at this point; to do so would be irresponsible, and the people who would suffer the most (as has pretty much been the case since this ill-advised endeavor has been initiated) would be the people of Iraq. When the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, so did the interests of the U.S.; this eventually led to the ascendancy of the Taliban, and we all know how that played out. (I'm simplifying, of course, but I'm still a simple man.) Bush has insured that there is no easy or quick way of extracting our troops.

Regardless of who wins, the circus that will follow in its wake promises to be atrocious. As it is, the lengths that both parties have been disturbing, and I'm not entirely certain that, given that, I'm all that comfortable with either party in power. Although I do admit that the most egregious of the offenses have been done in the name of the current regime. The notion that this is the most bitter and heated election ever is just silly, though. Aside from the inundation of ads being concentrated in states, such as mine, who weren't at all expecting it, this electoral season has made me rather more optimistic about the state of electoral discourse in the U.S. I had been genuinely upset by the Massachusetts court ruling that brought the issue of gay marriage to the fore, not because I'm against gay marriage (obviously), but because I thought that Bush would be able to use it to distract the electorate from the other (actually important) issues. And maybe he's been able to mobilize the Christian Right using this issue, but I haven't heard it invoked quite as much as I feared. Instead, there seems to have been a genuine discussion (I use the term loosely) of the war and the state of the economy. More than any other election I've participated in, this campaign has been concentrated rather heavily on the issues I consider important. It's like the first Adult election I've witnessed, in spite of the candidates occasionally giving the impression of spoiled rich kids arguing over who rules the playground.

I am not going to be moving to Canada if Bush ultimately triumphs, because I don't see why the Canadians should be subjected to an influx of Americans just because our elected officials suck. (I've found Canadians are the first to point out that Canada isn't just the 51st U.S. state.) The fact is, we're all incredibly lucky to live here. To leave just because W won is just letting him win that much more. But that doesn't mean I've got to like it, and it also doesn't mean that I'm going to sit on my ass, watching him fuck up the world.

I am hopefully dreading tomorrow. How about you?

End diatribe.

* * *

Tomorrow I conclude this project with a three-song finale, and then I can go back to blogging about my boring life. Huzzah.

Remember to vote. Now, more than ever.

"I'm Hystrionia von Rumpole, and I approved this message."

* "Mix-CD" just doesn't sound right.