Test Run Librarian: 05.23.2004

Check it out: A florida blog and an index of new orleans blogs. And here's a song I wrote:

"Electric Holdings"

I have this 1 page paper due
I think I'll ask the librarian
What do I see a the desk? A man?
Everybody knows you can't mix
Books and learnin' with d****

C'mon gimme your electric holdings
I want everything online fulltext for free
C'mon gimme your electric holdings
Throw in a coupla cubic inches for me

So his name was Bary and he scared me
With his ogling eyes on my breasts
And his hand on my knee
I said dude how old are you? Like 33?

C'mon gimme your electric holdings
I want everything online fulltext for free
C'mon gimme your electric holdings
Throw in a coupla cubic inches for me

One day later and one page done
Barely made it in just under the gun
Thank god for Bary's electric holdings
I'm under his refdesk having some fun

Hey, I have a new favorite band to report: Creepy T's! Very entertaining, and it helps that I am a groupie (surprise) and think someone in the band is dreamy. Back off, bitches!! But what does it mean to be the 'tiger with the she-bitch on'?
I also want to link to someone's blog: matt's, from nola... interesting life, interesting thoughts.

Librarians need to be involved in the Semantic Web. Here is an article anbout it. Check this out too. Check this out too! Cool stuff!

Yet another complaint about ALA's attempt to change the librarian stereotype: "Librarians are Not Search Engines." The points are very weak and unconvincing as usual. Does this complainer not understand that librarian as search engine is an ad campaign, not a statement of who we are? CAN WE PLEASE BREATHE SOME NEW LIFE INTO THE PROFESSION? OK, off soapbox.

Here is something more positive: a site that allows you to compare search engines. Cool!

Yes, NOLA = New Orleans, LA (or "La." for Tom!). Why am I not an artist? Do you know how many people have asked me that question? Well, here's the story: Since I can remember, I'v always sketched, painted, crafted, wrote stuff in journals, etc. By the time I was 18, I had amassed a portfolio large enough to be admitted as an art major at Rollins College. Long story short... I didn't pursue my degree in studio art because my portfolio full of mounted sketches, acrylic paintings, sculpted figures, in addition to my poetry and art journals, was ruined in the NOLA Deluge of 1995. Yes, all my work was RUINED. All those years under water and gone. My heart is still totally and 100% broken - It's a v-i-s-c-e-r-a-l pain. Did I use that word right, Marc with a C?! I have been able to take one low-commitment acrylic painting class, but I gave all my work away because I did not want to look at it. (I took a watercolor class, too, but I dropped it because the instructor would rub all over the women -- really gross.) A strange thing occurred the night before the flood (which I think is the night that I saw the Beastie Boys with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) -- I opened the door to my patio, and a crawfish walked through the door. I thought it was a scorpion (why?), and I beat it to death. I'm sure I looked like a crazy insane person to the married man whose tree house overlooked the yard. That treehouse had a large window in it and he exposed himself on occasion.

OK. The reason why I am here. My favorite books are the following:
1) Heart is a Lonely Hunter by C. McCullers. No one has ever come to close to capturing the depth of human emotion than this Queen of Southern Gothic.
2) Cold Mountain by C. Frazier. One of my favorite genres is Civil War fiction, and some of my favorite poems are the Cold Mountain poems of Han Shan, a Chinese Zen poet who lived in the T'ang Dynasty. This novel combines both & there really is a Cold Mountain in North Carolina. I made a point of seeing it.
3) Dream Songs by J. Berryman. Poor Jon Berryman killed himself 4 days before I was born. His father killed himself when Berryman was 11 (or 8? 10?). Berryman's Dream Songs are the mental road map of his disintegrated mind. One of this confessional poet's alter egos is Henry, a vaudeville character. Berryman also wrote a poem about his anger towards his father: the poem talks about his wish to un-inter his decayed father's corpse.
4) A Confederacy of Dunces by J. Toole. This book describes the lived & felt atmosphere of NOLA perfectly.
5) Sons of Heaven by Terrence Cheng, a new writer. It is a fictionalized account of the Tiananmen Square 'incident' of 1989. Please read this book if you can!

Check out Candy Sue's "An Exhaltation of Larks" post: http://wrycandy.blogspot.com/. And go to this page so you can see her cute red-skirted butt playing bass in her band called Pantsburg. You'll have to scroll and look for her.

I met candy in NOLA @ Loyola in an art class. We quickly became friends because 1) we were the best artists in the class (she was #1; I was the second) and 2) we both have a wacked-out sense of humor, and when we're together we really stir it up. Just mix together equal parts plaster + water + MJ + CS and you'll see. Your life will never be the same again. Candy made this awesome plaster family for that class. (She created an interesting set of figurines and grouped them together. We learned that when you put things in groups, the mind wants classify and perceive these things in pre-determined social categories.) I threw a bag of lawn seed on my old trampoline in my back yard, watered it, and brought it in, and people just stared. An eerie quiet filled the room when I displayed my final project: a plaster of paris figure in the shape of a chicken, wrapped in plastic and coated with red water, all suspended from the ceiling with twine. The other people made portraits and door stoppers.

Oh yeah, back to the virtues of candy -- she used to (and probably still does) take pictures with her I-Zone camera just for fun. One day she and our friend Jeffery T. Pedersen came over to my house one day, took lots of pictures with the I-Zone camera and somebody made up this crazy story. I was dressed in a Tina Tuner gold sequined dress and Jeff was an Irish Catholic priest dressed in black robes with a cross suspended from his neck. Somehow we got a skit out of that and put it into Candy's recorder (that's how Candy is; she just pulls a gadget out of nowhere and instantly you're in business). Jeff kept saying something about a "little potato." In fact, he did have a potato in his hand.

Candy was single-handedly responsible for reviving ReVisions, Loyola's student literary publication. A lot of aweswome student work went into that publication, including my own poems "Early Motherhood" & "Wishing For Trinity" and Candy's poem that won the Dawson-Galliard (sp?) award. She used to hang that award in her bathroom in her loft apartment on Natchez Street!

I am waiting for my partner - gubersheek - to stop worrying about the job interview (that I was, uh, part of) and just post. In the meantime, I want to report that I am reading The Tattooed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates. Here is a link to a review of it in the NY Times. And another one by M. Kakutani. I'll post my review when I'm done.

Things to do when your boss is out of the office:
1) Her work.
2) Create a concept map of information literacy. There aren't any. Really. I just KNOW you are shocked.
3) Relax and look at databases because you have time and you're not stressed out that the boss is here and the man is watching.
4) Wonder why & how the f on earth Google retrieved an abstract & citation from a subscription database. How does it do that? Does Ingenta know? Are they in cahoots?
5) Listen to the same CD overandoverandoverandover while you lead the people via email.

ALBUMS/BANDS THAT I WISH I STILL HAD (but don't 'cause I got rid of the record player):
1 Adolescents (self-titled album - NOT any of the others)
2 False Prophets - the album with "Taxidermist" on it (I am the taxidermist; it's my job to keep you in stitches. 'Cause people are just aggravating and lovers are just bitches... Why don't you die a natural death / Get hit by some dumb Mack truck!)
3 Misfits, Samhain - everything. (I am ashamed admit that I was in love with Danzig as a youth, and he had a heavy hand in shaping my morals.)
4 The Dickies - they are just cute!
5 Tales of Terror -- not the death metal band, this one
6 Sup Pop 7-in club. So much good music for so cheap! My favorite band was Mudhoney.

Another album that I am listening to is Rabbit Songs by Hem, who sound a little like Beth Orton, but not as melancholic. Since I am talking about dark folk musicians, I should mention David Gray. Allison Krauss is awesome too - I like "Now That I Found You." Anybody got any band suggestions?

Good morning to everyone on this fine Sunday morning! I have a new band love to report: The Shins. Last night I watched Kill Bill (the first one) with a very sweet and cute young man who had to go home early to translate some text. (Did I mention he is smart too?) I need to also add to my list of friends the wonderful and immensely talented Candy Sue. She is one of the best people to inhabit our planet today, so il faut necessaire to mention her new blog: http://wrycandy.blogspot.com/. Yay for Candy Sue! I should also mention her website: http://www.geocities.com/sloecat/. Everyone needs candy in her life! I want to also mention the site of an enormously talented photographer with whom I am acquainted: http://www.merzdigital.com. Today I am going to Delray Beach, my favorite place on the East Coast. Notice that on Delray Beach's offical website home page, there is a link to its library.

Test Run Librarian

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