I’ve decided that although memes featuring books or former jobs are kind of cute, I’d rather stick to my favorite style of finding out about someone:
THREE QUESTIONS.
I’m going to start by asking three questions of SBeers.
1. In junior high, how did you dress?
2. What is/are your superpower(s)?
3. You totally must want an Anti-Griddle. What would you do with it?
Jason told me about a Blogger-like wiki site I could use for a group project*, called Peanut Butter Wiki. After creating a site so we could dump our resources**, and working with it, I realized that wiki technology has come a long way. Kind of like Blogger is to those who are HTLM inept, PBwiki makes things a little more WYSIWYG. (That won’t make sense to those folks I mentioned in the previous sentence. Oops.)
My last interactions with a wiki (other than wikipedia) have been on Nounatron, which at the time seemed neat and new, but now kind of looks like a Commodore screen. (Sorry Jason, I know you are going to restyle it.)
So the hot or not question arises with this: the Hot Librarian wiki. Mostly, I wanted to make lists of things, and organize them. And I thought it might be a good place to keep stuff like upcoming hot librarian events and stuff. Ryan’s into the quote board thing, so that could take off. All of our Flickr pages could be in the same place … if the site had interest, I think it could be neat.
My only concern is if the whole “hot librarian” thing is kind of exclusionary. You know, like religion. My mom always warned me against excluding. Those who are hottt should email me for the password, so you too can start dicking around with the wiki.
*the only reason why I’m not going to make snarky comments about this group project is because I’m working with two elite library students.
** It’s going to be a website featuring roadtrip-themed library materials.
A great culmination of current events, environmental politics, and a Salon article have finally made me realize why I love knitting and apocalyptic movies so much.
First, the Salon article, which envelops the current events and environmental politics – “The oil is going, the oil is going!” by Katharine Mieszkowski. It outlines the current ‘peak oil’ point of view, which is those who believe our oil supplies may crash – within the next few years, even – and are taking efforts to ‘power down’ (using less) and figure out how they’re going to weather the storm.
See, here’s where we get to apocalyptic movies. Where do I begin? Tank Girl is my favorite movie, and it’s set in post-asteroid, arid Earth. The Day After Tomorrow is a global-warming tale. Every zombie movie ever made covers how one survives once the zombies come.
Now add my desire to spin and knit myself a sweater out of anything available. And my mad campfire skillz. And my secret dream of living in a treehouse.
It’s never come together like this until I read the oil article. I’m totally down with the peak oil crew. I don’t know if we’ll actually have fuel Armageddon in the next couple of years, but I would LOVE to make a radical change to the way I live (and everybody else). Rooftop garden? Solar panels? Handmade clothes? No car? I’m ready.
I’m sure there will be things I’ll lament (pink hair dye?) but I like the idea of living closer to what allows me to live. I want to appreciate what I have. I want to NOT OWN 10 hoodies. But until peak oil or the zombies come, I don’t know that I have the willpower to get rid of them.
[Addition]
It just occured to me that another reason why I desire this semi-Luddite life is that it wasn’t that long ago that my ancestors lived off the land. My home is a fifth generation farm. I come from self-sustaining folk.
Last night I dreamt that I hosted a party for 1990’s sitcom stars. Jodie Sweetin, Candace Cameron (who married the dad from Family Matters), and a bunch of other people. In the dream, I had also been a child star, and they all knew me from our time being famous.
I hosted this party in the basement of my parent’s house in Iowa. A tornado was coming, and the cast was grumbling about being an a small farmhouse basement (hey – it’s finished!) and I reminded them that we were safe from the impending weather.
We were grilling steaks and burgers (in the basement!) and everyone was catching up. Someone said something witty, and someone else started quoting an ode. We all finished the last line with them, someone pointed out that it was actually a quote from a movie (not the literary ode it was expressed as) and I said, “Do the Goonies one now!”
Then my aunt Sharon came down the stairs with some appetizers she got at Trader Joe’s.
I don’t see there being any point in analyzing this dream. It’s obviously pop-culture ridden, and I wouldn’t have dreamed it if I were a Masai tribeswoman. I also was up late working on a midterm and drinking Librarian Decaf. (Which is like regular coffee to my caffeine-sensitive body.)
It’s a good thing I installed speakers in my bathroom (thanks, Anton) because I spent TWO HOURS bleaching and dying my hair last Friday night. Modest Mouse got me through.
TADA!
So now I have pink hair. And a pink hand. And a pink bathtub. And a pink shower curtain.
*If you’re Jake, Joe, Margaret, or Jason, you’ll know how to say this properly.
Also from the same evening, this is a little game I like to play called “Who’s Not Evil?”
There are varying degrees of evil in this photo, but it’s ok, see, because E is wearing magical armwarmers.
My camera was on vacation this past week, so I’m only now able to present to you:
The 2006 Winter Knitting Olympics finished object:
You know what I like? Old-timey medical names. I’ve always liked to throw in “rickets” when I don’t know the word I mean. C’mon. Remember that Johnny Socko song “If I Didn’t Have a Goiter”?
So while reading Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers, I ran across a footnote that made me giggle (p. 226). Ready?
Scrofula
Dropsy
Quinsy
Granders
Farcy
Tetter
Hectic fever
Roach, Mary. (2003). Stiff: the curious lives of human cadavers. W.W. Norton & Co: New York.
I’m totally making this. I’ll have to find some hand-dyed yarn, or do it myself.
As you probably know about me (because I CANNOT keep from dropping the ‘I was a firefighter’ thing) I was in AmeriCorps*NCCC. The NCCC stands for National Civilian Community Corps, and it’s been a modern-day version of FDR’s CCC program (back during the Depression) – you know the guys, they built many of the buildings and trails in the national parks in our country.
I was in Year 8 of the NCCC. It was October of 2001-August of 2002. I spent 10 months in the program, and I can say without a doubt that thus far in my life, it has been the most impacting, interesting, eye-opening, exciting, thought-provoking, bonding, tough, neato adventure I’ve had. Ever ever.
That’s why I’m so disappointed and discouraged that the 2007 national budget doesn’t have room for it. There has been a budget cut within AmeriCorps. Half of the total budget cut is the elimination of the NCCC program. They cite high costs of the program and being “rated poorly in a recent Federal management assessment”.
I’m not surprised at either of these reasons. We were fed and housed, had a 15-passenger van (with a gas card), uniforms, backpacks, tents, sleeping bags, and an administration team back at the campus to keep things running. That’s pretty costly, compared to the other volunteer programs AmeriCorps runs.
And as for management, it’s a government program, for Cripe’s sake. Of course it was manged in a ridiculous fashion.
But it was also the most amazing thing I’ve ever done, and outside of joining the Peace Corps (which I still may do), it’s one of the most amazing things someone young can do as far as up-to-your-elbows volunteering.
I’m really disappointed. My heart is hanging low in my chest today. I want there to be a solution – I want there to be a small organization that wants carry on the tradition – providing national-level volunteering for all sorts of kids all over the country.
And not to get really bitchy about the whole thing, but the announcement mentioned that they were closing the NCCC despite its popularity – especially the disaster services it provided. My first day of training, in Washington, D.C., was less than a month after the Tragic Events of September 2001. I have a photograph of a still-smoking Pentagon, as we drove by it. After training, half of our campus immediately went to New York City and began helping FEMA and the Red Cross with disaster services. I didn’t go because I continued on to firefighting training – and saved taxpayers $300 a day (my estimate, after talking to the paid crew) by being on a volunteer fire fighting team.
And Hi, New Orleans? God knows how many NCCCers are recovering from the emotional drain disaster relief brings. We are all disaster-relief trained, meaning we are a movable set of squads of people ready to help in the event of a disaster. I don’t think right now is the time to get rid of a program that provides that particular service. I was talking to a State Farm trainer for their claims-adjustment department, and he said they’re not only hiring more national catastrophe adjusters, they’re keeping them in the lower states – because weather predictions are that this isn’t the last of Mutha Na-tcha coming to get us.
I had a life-altering experience, which is pretty standard for everyone who goes through the program. I met friends who I love, even if we’re spread quite evenly across the United States. I mourn all the things this means about our country’s ability to manage a budget, stay out of ill-reasoned wars, provide meaningful opportunity to its young adults, and instill the feel of altruism in its citizens.
And I’m very, very glad that I DID apply, and WAS accepted, and DID go volunteer with the NCCC, because I met one of my best friends there. Too fucking bad he’s dead.
OH, and apparently I’ve ranted about the scrutiny of AmeriCorps*NCCC before.