shut me up with milk

Friday, July 4, 2008

Chilling Evidence of the Shih Tzu Revolution

Check out this site: http://www.obeythepurebreed.com/

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Happy 4th of July

Happy day before the 4th of July!

Have you ever written what you think to be an excellent post and then, instead of clicking on the mighy "Publish Post" button, you, out of habit, hit the back arrow? No. You're too smart to do something like that. Apparently I'm not and did just that. Idgit.

Today's Stupidest Person of the City Award Goes to:.....
The woman who let her dog walk on the escalator stairs only to get his paw and tail jammed into the angry teeth of the escalator because he didn't know how escalators work (something that was crammed down my throat when I was a kid, "If your shoelaces get caught in those teeth you could lose your foot" my sister always warned me). Apparently the dog's high-pitched screams could be heard in the library. Can you imagine? What kind of smarts does it take to know NOT to let your dog accompany you on an escalator unless held? Especially a tiney tiny one.

As for the dog, luckily he gets to keep his paw and tail but was cut-up. The woman, well, she lost her brain (if she even had one) a long time ago to do something that idiotic. I fear for that dog's future.

Today's Linkies:

http://www.accrediteddldegrees.com/2008/100-awesome-youtube-vids-for-librarians/ This one is good for us librarian-types.

Explore Jamestown VA

Test Drive a VW from Your Desk

Art Institute of Pittsburgh (I like this concept)

My Pregnancy Pregnancy information presented in a cool way.

http://ydouthink.com/ Release your inner artist.

Local.com Search Engine (sort of)

Play a Spelling Bee game

Going GREEN was never so much fun.

Another crazy interactive site, click around on easter eggs to explore/unlock hidden areas.

It's so cute it must be stopped. It's a game but also a great marketing ploy.

Ew, ahhh....

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Who's Yer Bunny?

Maddy is my bunny. Fer ser.

I'm web updating today so no linkies to share, but to make-up for it I've enclosed a picture of my puppy in a Sherpa on the subway, she's rip-roaring and ready to go.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Linkies

This would be great if we could do this same thing in our library:

http://zoomii.com/

A Hunter Blog.

It's Lesbian Pulp Fiction Wednesday

I got this book free at work and knew it was to be my next subway read. It's original publication date was 1950 and is credited to be the first pulp to address a lesbian relationship. It's author, Tereska Torres, fictionalized her experiences in the French women's barracks during WWII. It sold 4 million copies when it was published and it was denounced as "obscene" by the House Senate Committee on Current Pornographic Materials in 1952, but never actually banned.

There is a very intersting interview with the author at the end which took place in 2004. The first sentence of the novel reads: "When the war began, I was in my last year of school at the convent of St. Celestine." Good times...

Here are some links if you care to learn more:

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=155861494X
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1888785

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

I Kilt a Firefly

I feel horrible. I killed a firefly because I thought it was a Boxelder bug. Stupid. I know. He was walking around the backsplash in my kitchen and I guess he got in Sunday night when I had the back door open during the rain. I was sitting outside and a flurry of Fireflys came into my back yard, it was like magic. There are few bugs that I get in a twist over and Fireflys top that list. I was one of those kids that never put them in a jar or smashed them on my arm to see the glow. I just let them be, flying haphazardly around without grace but purposeful. I realized it was a Firefly when I was squashing him he lit up. I was instantly filled with regret. It reminded me of the moment in the D.H. Lawrence's poem "The Snake",

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

Moving on.

I was reading The New York Times Book Review this morning on the train and was very interested in the Andre Dubus III review of his novel "The Garden of Last Days." It's a follow-up to his novel "House of Sand and Fog," a novel that I read (and saw the film) and renamed it, "House of Death and Sorrow." Don't get me wrong, I like this novelist (loved his father, after much hardship of getting him crammed-down my throat in grad school), but the comments this book got from the reviewer reminded me of many of the comments I got on my first thesis from my committee. It reminded me that writing is damn difficult, even for a guy like Dubus III. I particularly loved the last line of the review, "Journalism needs only to tell us what happened; fiction, which deals in hypotheticals, has a higher threshold of truth." Exactly.

The other review that caught my eye was "Notes on a Life" by Eleanor Coppola. Fancying myself a bit of a life documentarian (of my life, naturally), it was interesting to discover how her work reads. I saw the documetary "Hearts of Darkness" and found it riviting, in fits and starts, and a bit long in other portions, but interesting overall. In reading reviews I find writing lessons litered throughout the texts (sometimes reading book reviews is more valuable than reading the actual book being reviewed), in this review, Sarah Kerr writes, " Coppola is an observer, and her method here has changed less than you might expect. But a life is no easy thing to pull into focus." That line made me pause and consider what I'm writing now (a memoir, but of course) and how I struggle to pull into focus the last three years of my life (which is my time-frame). Next chapter up: my time at mighty South Dakota State University. Watch-out, here I come, but I promise to steer clear of the Fireflys, they're my thwarted friends, after all.

Today's links: http://www.blogher.com/
http://www.chickchatradio.com/index.php/main/about/

Daily Coyote