Skank

Have you seen this?

Words cannot express how appauling I find this. I hear laser removal is coming along. I shared this with MMMono last week...her response centered around having actually read the article. Apparently the librarian in question is quoted saying "I recently finished library school and decided to commemorate the experience with a tattoo that honors my favorite book series (and musical genre*) ever." This is why no one respects my profession. Yes, the skanky tattoo, but also the fact that even people with an MLIS refer to it is "Library School". For the love!

Speaking of skanks, I just bought yet another cocktail dress. In my defense, it was on clearance. It is classy--black skirt and white halter top and I like it. A lot. It's not too short and it's not too much boobs. Now I just need some place to wear a cocktail dress. . .

Basically, I am excited for my summer off and my up-coming trip to DC and my life in general. Worst case scenario, I will spend the entire summer in sun dresses and cocktail dresses--preferably with friends.

ChannelOne News Starts. . .

Part of my job is hitting the "Play" button to start the ChannelOne Broadcast. Very stimulating. I typically just hit play and then walk away, but today I was rooted to the spot. The broadcast greeted me with none other than NPH!

This, of course, got me all NPH-obsessed for the remainder of my day. I mean...he was barely in the last episode of HIMYM and his branch of the plot was stupid. I hate Ted Mosby--such a plot-hog. Just because it is *his* story. Whatever.

So, anyway, now I am planning on going to see Beastly, all because of NPH, in theaters. Rest assured, I was always planning on seeing it, but now I will go and see it in theaters...not on a library-owned DVD.

Thinking of NPH, I turned to the YouTube. I love it! I watched this little piece of joy (which is angry and will not allow embedding).

Now I'm all excited for the Oscars. I was totally *not* excited before, but now I am excited...who is hosting?

Life of a stupid plant

I recently read a book that made me giggle...incessantly. And out loud. Good times. I would be shocked if MMMono has not yet read it, as it is Neil Gaiman. And it is set in England. The book is Good Omens and I found it to be quite fabulous at times, though a bit silly.

A segment that struck me follows. A note for those who have not read the text: Crowley is a demon who has been living on Earth for all of human history tempting people to be bad.


In fact the only thing in the flat that Crowley devoted any personal attention to were the houseplants. They were huge and green and glorious, with shiny, healthy, lustrous leaves.

This was because, once a week, Crowley went around the flat with a green plastic mister, spraying the leaves, and talking to the plants.

He had heard about talking to plants in the early seventies, on Radio Four, and thought it an excellent idea. Although talking is perhaps the wrong word for what Crowley did.

What he did was put the fear of God into them.

More precisely, the fear of Crowley.

In addition to which, every couple of months Crowley would pick out a plant that was growing too slowly, or succumbing to leaf-wilt or browning, or just didn't look quite as good as the others, and he would carry it around to all the other plants. 'Say goodbye to your friend,' he'd say to them. 'He just couldn't cut it ...'

Then he would leave the flat with the offending plant, and return an hour or so later with a large, empty flower pot, which he would leave somewhere conspicuously around the flat.

The plants were the most luxurious, verdant, and beautiful in London. Also the most terrified.

Friends, I've told you about Spidey-the-spider-plant-that-virtually-refuses-to-live. I coo to it; I love it; I water it with purified mineral water; I tuck it in every night and sing it to sleep. It hates me. It refuses to be green and pretty and survives only by spite so that I cannot, in good conscience, get a new shiny green plant that actually loves me. Obviously, I need to sell my soul so that I can strike fear into its heart so that it will grow and be pretty and verdant.

Oh Google, how I love thee

Let me count the ways...


Earlier this month (on the first, if you care to know) Google rolled-out its latest project. In true Google form, it is collaborative. This project, aptly named GoogleArtProject is a means of bringing world-renowned art to the masses right in the home and classroom.

"What's so special about that?" you might ask. Let me tell you.

Think about what Google has that few others have: the fact that they are Google. It elicits almost universal participation from institutions that have consistently turned others away. Just look at the list of heavy-hitting participants:

Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany
The Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Insitution, Washington, D.C., USA
The Frick Collection, New York, NY, USA
Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, NY, USA
Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain
Museum Kampa, Prague, Czech Republic
The National Gallery, London, UK
Palace of Versailles, France
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
Tate Britain, London, UK
Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

I don't know about you, but I am impressed by this list of heavy-hitters.

In addition to being Google, the GAP (heehee) also brings into play the most current digitalization techniques, making it possible to bring an exceptionally high quality image of the art--which is probably another reason that so many agreed to participate--the Art looks fabulous. In fact, it looks like it does in real life. In fact, you can look into the image with more detail than you could with the naked-eye at the gallery. So what if that's not the point of art--Google lets you do it!

This is achieved in two ways: gigapixels and Google. No, really! And Google. Google's Street view technology, to be precise. You can tour the galleries all by yourself digitally because they have been captured using Google's Street view. You can even frolic in the gardens at Versailles. Best part? The galleries and gardens were empty when the images were captured, so no one is in your way--ever!

Basically, this is ArtSTOR Platinum...but it is free and open for any user. Play with it yourself. This is a good example of the gigapixels--you can zoom-in on the Globe or the music score and read either perfectly. Apparently, this image contains over 7 billion pixels...so be patient with the zooming.

I think they should use street view for the Guggenheim next.

In other news, I slept for 14 hours last night. I am feeling much less plague-infested. I need to be better by tomorrow, so that I can go visit my cousin!

Okay, who sent this plague? I didn't even kill anyone in a completely unnecessary duel...

I, Aussie, Queen of the Underappreciated Inactive but Elegant Thinkers (Q.U.I.E.T.) decided that regualr exercise would be a decent life choice. Despite the unbearable boredom that I associate with regular exercise, I decided to take-up yoga (I do value being flexible) and maybe treat myself with the occassional winter nature walk. I think we all know how I feel about snow. Also, I absolutely adore pronouncing to a room "I think I shall that a constitutional."

This was in mid-November. Going to Europe helped jump-start this program, because I walked everywhere. Lots of stairs. I did pretty good, considering how busy I always am. . . and considering the fact that I blatantly refuse to dispense with any of my alotted reading time for anything. Also, let's just admit it; Facebook is an evil time thief, feeding off of the time that it steals from its many unsuspecting victums.

So anyway! I was doing good. I was Yoga-ing and nature walking and I was happy. And then I stopped. Not because I got bored. Not becuase I no longer saw the point. certainly not because I had achieved 8-pack abs and checked that off of my bucket list.

Nope. I got the plague. Guys, I have been sick for over six (6) weeks. SIX WEEKS! Lame. In the course of my illness, I have continued to do many of the things that I always do (40 hours at work, choir, Church multiple times, cantoring, reading a book every week), but I lost my exercise time. I now only use the word "constitutional" when it is followed by the word "ammendment." It's not that I dislike constitutional ammendments...I just so prefer straight-up constitutionals.

In the course of this illness, I have lost my voice three times. I was laid-up in bed during my two glorious consecutive snow days. Sure, it was convenient, but who wants to waste a snow day on that--let alone two? Now, with a four-day weekend approaching, I am preemptively pissed that I woke-up with no voice this morning and shall apparently spend the weekend in bed, not out boozing and seeing the world.

I typically attempt to refrain from such maledction, but to whomever sent this plague upon me: Fuck you.

Dear Aquinas, please stop ruining my life

For the past...I don't want to think about how many years...I have been using my Aquinas email as my primary email because:
A. It was just easier for me, and
B. It functions exactly like a Gmail account, so why bother?

This was true until Aquinas ruined my life by "up grading" the Google applications. In sum, they took away access to many applications! Seriously? How is that an up-grade? chief among these applications was Blogger. It took me forever and a day of jumping through hoops to figure out how to get back into my account. Hatred, AQ. Hatred.

In other news, St. Thomas Aquinas, head baller of the Church (more commonly known as a Doctor of the Church or the Angelic Doctor) is also attacking me. Apparently silly mean baby-killers are taking some of Aquinas's words and applying 21st Century science to them in an attempt to say that the Catholic Church used to think abortion was okay, so long as it happened before the fetus got a soul. What bothers me most about this argument is that in a debate about the existence of God, many atheists will not recognize the existence of the soul.


I'll be doing a bit of travelling over the next few months. This should be awesome! I am looking into the possibility of doing a road trip camping extraveganza over the summer. That, or Canada. I have not been to Canada, properly. I have been through Canada, but I have not set foot in Canada, as we did not get out of the car.

Nothing is mine

After my previous post about how sharing can lead down a treacherous path, I must admit that I was not thinking it all the way through. Sharing is not that with which I take issue. Contrarily, it is the means by which teachers expect sharing and fail to properly implement collaboration among student minds. I have no doubt that true collaboration among high school students would bring exceptional results. However, this is not manifesting, at least as I observe, which makes me sad. Very sad.



It is only in recent society that this notion of “mine” has taken such a furious hold. Very little that is tangible is purely mine. Which can be a good thing. I learned to share! Don’t believe me? Ask MMMono! Or yourself…how many times did I bring you Amish friendship bread or cookies or lava cakes?



What I find entertaining about the whole sharing thing is the gross amount of socially-inclined software and resources I already use that is not being shared by me. This is not because I am hording or greedy or ravenous…but because I have taken advantage of certain socially-designed utilities for my own ease of use. Take, for instance, social bookmarking. Working between buildings, bookmarks set on one computer are not retained on a separate machine’s log-in. Lame. Solution: Delicious.com



Through this site, I simply log-in (apparently Yahoo! Purchased this brain-child somewhere along the way, because I doubt that they developed it originally) and all of my bookmarks are available so long as I have the interwebs. And, let’s be honest, what would I do with a list of links if I did not have access to the interwebs? Added bonus, instead of using folders like conventional browsers, Delicious utilizes tags to group bookmarks. This way, the user can file a link in multiple locations! Genius! So far I am using this like a pro!



Delicious is social in two ways. The first way is in recommending sites for you to bookmark. This is done through popularity of other links by other users. For instance, the front page of the site gives the top bookmarked sites (through Delicious, of course). Additionally, you can get recommendations through the tags that you use. It is a lot like Amazon’s recommendations, taking what you have bookmarked and producing a list of what others with that same bookmark have saved, as well as examining your tags. Running off of the (is it astute or simply logical?) assumption that people will have tag overlap, Delicious will also produce results for your tags.



The second means of being social, the active means, is where I epic fail. This functionality requires you to have friends on Delicious that you send the links to—like a personal recommendation or a not-so-public Facebook share, if you will.



Speaking of Facebook, the average Facebook user has 130 friends. We are all officially over-achievers.



Speaking of being social, I am kind of amazed at the number of 35-44 year-olds that are dominating every single form of social networking. All of it. Also, in a few months, I will have to face moving brackets on some surveys and face the fact that I am old. Super old, in fact, as I will be that much closer to 30.

Is nothing mine?

As I witness the variety of assignments that the children have as JesusHigh, I am struck by how much collaboration is stressed. Of course, the world is becoming more and more collaborative and group-think-driven, but I am not sure that these groups are being handled well. For instance, the study hall kids were in here legitimately working on a group project. The standard complaints ensued: “They are not doing any work,” “I don’t understand the point of working in groups,” and “I wish I was doing this by myself so that I didn’t have to worry about other people’s work”. One of the girls astutely commented on how the groups were broken-up “Why is there a group of all boys? That is just stupid.” The boys in the group of all boys made the observation that “All the smart kids are divided into different groups, so we’re just carrying each of our individual groups. She should have put the smart people together so that we could actually learn from each other”. Interesting concept. I can see the teacher’s attempt at making the groups “even”, but as a smart kid, I can definitely appreciate the pressure of performing work for not only the self, but two or three others in order to make the grade. At this point, one of the girls (they were sophomores) asked “Does this ever get better?” No. Short answer is no. Your only chance is in Honors courses and even then a divide between smart and super smart is still present. Jillian Russo, anyone?



Is nothing independent? I know that we want these kids to share and be open to others’ ideas and needs and other stuff, but why must it always be at the expense of the learning of the outliers, both top and bottom?



As a bonus fact, I was chatting with a child development specialist at a birthday party a week or so ago. She and I—we had never met before—were really hitting it off because we quickly recognized that we were leaps and bounds more intelligent than everyone else at the soiree. I usually do not jump to this conclusion. It was simply a self-evident fact of the evening. Anyway—bonus fact! She was talking about how annoyed she becomes when people use a turn of phrase amounting to “we learned how to share in kindergarten”. Why is this annoying? Children are not developmentally capable of sharing until such an age when they are capable of empathy. Children in kindergarten who share merely doing as they are told; it is a trained response of which they are reminded constantly. Left to their own devices, they would not voluntarily share without a reminder. True sharing—that is, voluntary sharing—is not seen until about age 7 or 8. While it is possible that your kindergarten teacher attempted to teach you to share, no student learns this behavior until first or second grade.



In the spirit of sharing, here is a fun graphic on the current break-down of social media use. I love this break-up of the distribution into a Media Food-Pyramid. Also, note that gaming, which includes Wii fit and is in any manifestation the most physically active portion of media consumption, is in the place of “Fats” on the traditional food pyramid.

Bliss

I forgot how exhilarating it is to have a snow day! And then to have two...I cannot describe my pure elation! I did *nothing* productive. I even had time to make some delicious soup. I had some red potatoes and thought to myself: soup. And then I made it. I threw in some corn and some vegetable broth and some spices and it is delicious, Thank God, because I have leftovers. And we all know how I feel about wasting food--especially homemade food. Almost as strongly as I feel about wasting alcohol.

Of course, working at the public library we would close for weather, but it was always kind of stupid. Like...closing early at 6 instead of 8--we were already there, just let me get some work done and by 8 all of the idiots will be off of the road. The other annoyance was missing a snow day. Being hourly union people, we were still paid for closed times when we were scheduled, which was great, but if you weren't scheduled the snow day it just kind of sucked. Instead of being able to get your errands done that day, you were trapped in your home and would most likely have to go to work the next day! Lame.

Being salaried, however, makes snow days the most wonderful feeling of all--especially these past two where I've had the great fortune of knowing ahead of time. Fabulous!

So, I get two weekends this week, since I was just given a two-day break and work today (jeans day!) and have the regular weekend starting this afternoon. Shots all around!

I am guessing that we have all seen this, but I still find it delightfully entertaining:




Dear Fox News people: Egypt is the one on the left with the giant river. Yes, you do know the name of one country in Africa.