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TIME TRAVELING PIRATES!

The best part about working in a library with an established YA Librarian is the booty. And by booty I mean swag. And by swag I mean Adanced Readers Copies provided for free by publishing houses.

Free books. It's like getting the Beast's library without having to deal with the claw marks/fanged hickeys. 

So. Since I get to read these before anyone else, I think it's only fair that I get to judge them before anyone else. Obviously. And because the idea of ranking things with stars is cliche, we will be using the Harry Potter System of Rankings, which goes like this:

• Muggle: The author has no idea where their plot went, what their characters are doing, and doesn't seem to be self-aware enough to care. 

• Squib: The author tries-- seems to have some concept of an idea, but just doesn't manage to get it off the ground in the early planning stages, making the book a confusing and dull thing.

• Ron: The story has a few cool characters, some decent beginnings of a plot line, and could be cool. However, the author fails to seal the deal and you're left going "Uggh, what a Ron," and enjoying more of what you think the author could have done with it than enjoying the actual book.  

• Harry: A good book. Interesting story, a few twists and turns, and a nice feeling of satisfaction after you finish. You maybe don't read it again, but you liked it and would recommend it to a friend.

• Hermione: Not only beautiful done but just damned beautiful and fantastic and a lot of other awesome praise for plot, characters and diction. A story that makes you understand why you read books.

Steel by Carrie Vaughn ranks a solid Ron. 
Readalikes: Piratica by Tanith Lee

Professional Development: I Has It

Because all of a sudden, like more or less overnight, I have developed into a Professional! With a capital P and everything! I have discussions with people about how to advance my skills and grow as a person in my chosen field of interest and make myself more interesting as a resume-attached-face!

I know, I know, I'm surprised/confused/jealous/craving-Mexican-food too. So young. So young.

Yesterday-- get this-- I got to teach a class! That's like having 11 padawans at once! And not just a class, but TWO classes! Back to back! About Internet privacy and about how everything they put online stays forever and will totally impact their future job/life/spousal prospects!

Because the internet isn't written in pencil Mark, it's written in ink.

And then because, I dunno, putting me in charge of impressionable minds for 2 hours wasn't enough of a sign of the world ending,  I get to do it again next week! Four more times! That's right, four! As in one more than the number three and two less than the # of cups of coffee I've had today!

!

You should be using exclamation points right now, in the real world. Why aren't you using more exclamations points right now?

Way I Know I'm Not an Adult Yet #23

Man on Subway about my Scarf: "That's too long."

Me: "..."

Internal Me:

1. That's what she said!
2. Imma get in my TARDIS and whoop your ass, buddy.
3. You're obviously a bad guy. 
4. I'll have you know that this is an authentic recreation and it has been measured to be perfectly accurate, jerk-face. 
5. You're obviously a trekkie. Schmuck.

Webcomics You Should Read

Because the only thing better than borrowing a graphic novel for free from the library, is reading it for free online instantly and not having to pay late fees when you inevitably forget to return it.

No? Just me?

Anyho, here's a list of things that should suck up your time and brain:

Book I Really Wish I Liked: Heist Society

Next in the list of KAH-books, "Heist Society." A story of art-thievery, teenager rebellion, and Nazis (I love it when there's Nazis!)

And sadly, of all of the books I've read so far, this is the one I was most psyched for. So therefore it was the one that had to not be that good.

Fantabulous Pictures of My Beautiful Library!

And by my beautiful library I mean Karyn's beautiful library that I happen to live and frolic in. Like the Care Bear Cousins hanging out in the Care Bear's forest. Or a friendly neighborhood bridge troll. Whatevs.

Cathedral-esque, without the guilt

YA books abounds

Anyhow, as I have spent the last month and a half, so must you now bask in the glory of its cathedral like windows, extensive YA collection.

Look at all those shelves! Full of
books I am going to read!

There's a Batphone. It's ext # 316.

And see this? This is my lair. I share it with the head of technology, who's awesome. It gets natural light, has plenty of room for rolling around, and has four walls around it, with a door that locks.

I can leave and lock things up securely at night. I can scratch awkwardly placed mosquito bites without worrying about who's watching. If girls did such a thing, I could theoretically pass gas! In my own space!

Shut up. After cubicle land this is a big friggin' deal.

I Am the Messenger (and I Am Awesome)

Okay. So whatever you're doing right now, you need to stop.

Seriously. Screw brushing your teeth, cooking dinner, scratching your butt: you need to stop right now and go and read this book.

Gambit changed people
with cards (& explosions)

Go for it. I'll wait.

Okay, now that you've finished, wasn't that friggin' awesome? I mean, come on! Yeah, okay, the last five pages are kinda weird, but the book as a whole is brilliant!

Take Ed Washington-- unmotivated, underage, underemployed, and British-- and all of a sudden give him a purpose in life. Mysterious playing cards that show up with addresses and names written on them; Aces with people that Ed needs to help or else face doom from scary men with big fists.

Women who pine for dead lovers, or get beaten and raped by living ones. Children who need to be okay with themselves, and parents who need a little extra something. People who need to beat the ever loving crap out of Ed to make themselves feel better. And all of a sudden Ed goes from "guy with a smelly dog and a regular poker game" to "guy with a smelly dog and a regular poker game and a mark on the world."

It's beautiful. Absolutely friggin' beautiful. I may have cried on the subway. And then looked around to see if anyone saw me and felt the urge to interfere in my life to give us both a sense of satisfaction and connection with our fellow human.

(No one did. But the love was there.)

Tithe: Not at All About the Church

Inexplicably blond.

But instead, about faeries and changelings and a certain type of teenaged-decay that's just fantastic to read.

Kaye has been following her mother and her mother's dreams-of-fame for 16 years. She's a high school drop out, Asian girl with unexplained blond hair, no roots (as in stable place to allow her to ground and recover, but the same goes for the hair), and a strangeness that has been with her for as long as she can remember-- her imagination comes to life, she can make things happen just by wanting them, and her earliest friends are of the winged and tinkerbelling variety.

Peeps: Vampires Who Do More than Just Whine

Spike's so awesome he's even a BAMF pumpkin.

As a Buffy fan, my favorite character was Spike. Not because of my penchant for blonds and accents (though that helped-- never believe that that didn't help) but rather because he seemed to be the only character that didn't spend all of his time bemoaning his life. Everyone else was all "Oh, woe is me, my entire existence is crap!" and Spike was all "Um, okay, yeah, while you're doing that Imma have sex with your girlfriend and drink all your booze. Wanker."

I respect that in a vampire. Action, not emo. Which is why Peeps, the first part of my Karyn-Assigned-Homework (hereafter known as KAH) is awesome.

Homework. I Has It.

Because Karyn has assigned it and when you work in the same office as the teacher its bad form to fall back on my normal procedure which is to do it five minutes before class/on the bus/the lunch period before its due.

Also, this homework actually has an end goal in sight that I want to aspire to. Which is to enable me to have an awesome, intelligent conversation with teenagers about what book they should read.

Yeah. Awesome.

So, this is what I'm reading over the next week and a half:

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld

Swordsport by Ellen Kushner

Tithe by Holly Black

Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox

i am the messenger by Markus Zusak 

Heist Society by Ally Carter

Liar by Justine Larbalestier

Expect regular updates. Because I process books by regurgitating them onto the internet interspersed with a few "dudes."

Yeah. That's how the real pros do it.

Reason Number Fifteen That Skeletons Are Awesome

BAMF!Skeleton.

Skeletons are awesome. Obviously.

Is that because you can always be a skeleton with a boner ("Get it? Get it?") for a cheapie Halloween costume? No. Does it have to do with their strong but silent "keeping-our-guts-and-skin-from-touching-and-allowing-for-movement" determination? Pshaw.

No, my friends, reason number fifteen that skeletons are awesome is because the ranks of skeletons include such wonderful characters as Skulduggery Pleasant. Who, for those of us playing the home version is at least five times more awesome than Skeletor, and three times more talkative than Yorik.

Crossdressing and Magic: Alanna of Trebold

The power of Grayskull.

So, picture this:

You're the female of a set of twins in a far off and crazy land. You're magic, you've got purple eyes, and you really want to be a BAMF knight and protect the aforementioned far off land, but you have a vagina so no dice.

Except dice. Totally dice. Because you are Alanna of Trebond, and you cut your hair, cross-dress, pretend to be a boy, and become the most BAMF knight that the land of Tortall has ever seen, all while doing awesome magic, boning the hot prince and the hotter Price of Thieves, and hanging out with a talking cat who may or may not be a) a god, b) a constellation, c) voiced by David Hyde Pierce in the inevitable movie series.

Awesome.

Why Shakespeare in the Park is Overrated

Mainly, because I can't get tickets. After showing up at 7:15 in the morning on the hottest day of the year in New York City, on a Tuesday, I got nada.

So, bitter, disillusioned, and saddened by my failure, I decided to turn this into a teachable moment and get up earlier next time, go on an even hotter day or one where rain is anticipated, and wait patiently for my chance to see Merchant of Venice.

But then I decided nuts to that.

So instead, tonight I am attending a performance of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot. Where the performances are free, there's no insane ticketing line, and I don't have to get my lazy ass up at 6 AM to sit on the hard ground in Central Park for 7 hours and still probably not get tickets.

So there, Delacourte. Suck it.

Library Manifesto! It's LIVES!

Really. Well, not the blog. The blog for Library Manifesto never really got off the ground. And by never really got off the ground, I mean never really had a single post.

Yeah. That.

But, the new issue comes out on (tentatively) Sunday! With articles and goodness and Librarian-ness! And to celebrate that goodness, here's a sneak peak at one of the articles I've written for this issue!

This serves as both a cheap excuse for a post, and a place for feedback! Everyone wins!

Read me.

*ded of cute*

New Job!

This is New!Job Coffee.

I have been MIA. And not the crazy singer MIA, the absentee friend and associate MIA. Like, text messages on my phone that haven't been read, emails threads that I haven't chimed in on, plans that I haven't formalized even as they approach and friends start to go "Wow. Clair's kinda a schmuck."

I am! I totally am! But I have a great excuse, I swear. And this excuses name is New Job, hence forth referred to for the sake of nerd simplicity as New!Job. 

And because explaining all of the stuff I've spent the last week doing and learning and trying would take a really long post with a lot of words that I'm not coherent enough to spell out, we're going to do this in the universal language of pretty cell-phone pictures. 

Cuz that's how the Tower of Babel was built, my biblically unversed friends.

Ways to Save Your Library Money (Furreals)

If working for the Friendly Neighborhood Wexis Competitor has taught me anything, it's this:

it doesn't count as cheating the system if you understand how the system works. 

Things to Know When Dealing with Vendors

Rainy Days in New York

Bring out my biggest New York Pet-Peeve since ever.

Jerks who use golf-umbrellas on rainy days.

Yeah, it looks trendy when you're playing golf. I'm sure it impresses the other golfers in their funny pants and little hats and shoes with the spikes on them. They all go home and talk about what a great umbrella that was and how cool you are, I'm sure.

I go home and hope you get hit by a car, or swept away on a British-bound wind like Mary Poppins. You jerk.

Children of Dune: Still Pretty Awesome

Today in Things That Are Still Awesome Even After I Graduated High School: Dune and Children of Dune.

Picture this giant friggin' desert. Arid, dry, full of a whole lotta nothing. And in this desert full of a whole lotta nothing, these giant friggin' worms go around pooping out crack.

Not just ordinary crack-- this is like Super-Crack. It makes your eyes really awesome, and gives you super powers, and if your mom uses while she's pregnant instead of getting a crack-baby, she gets a Super-Crack baby who is super brilliant, knows the future, and sees dead people (in their brain).

If you're thinking "Wow, this sounds kinda awesome. Slash cracked out," then you sir are correct! And if you're thinking "There must have been a SciFi original movie for this crap," then pick your door prize because today we are discussing Dune and Children of Dune.

My Name is Michael Weston. I'm Really Hot.

Person you should know today: Jeffrey Donovan.

My first exposure to Mr. Look-At-My-Sexy-Armpits-Donovan came in the 90s show "The Pretender." The general plot of The Pretender is that Michael T Weiss is a super genius who's been kept in a basement for 25 years, and Andrea Parker has great legs and the general desire to mess your shit up.

See? Those are some great legs on top of those CRAZYEYES.

Donovan played the crazy half-brother of Weiss for all of 3 episodes, and was all "Imma kill people!" and then Weiss was all "nooooooo!" And then Donovan was all "*iz dead*" and that was that.

Then, someone gave Bruce Willis a show, and he decided to make a US version of "Touching Evil." And against all odds (and its short-lived run) it was *friggin* awesome. Including Donovan playing a not-quite-as-crazy as before guy who gets shot in the head and all of a sudden goes from being an okay cop to an amazing I UNDERSTAND THE CRIMINAL MIND cop.

Donovan fought crime and pedophiles and bad stuff, and almost made out with his partner (the chick from that Clooney movie about firing people and gaining frequent flier miles), and lo, it was good. Download it illegally and check it out sometime.

Now, though, we have Donovan as he is meant to be: making out with Gabrielle Anwar, doing voice overs about how to invade Guatemala and escape from a coffin, and spending a lot of time with Bruce Campbell.

Speaking of, tomorrow's person you should know: Bruce Campbell.

New Job!

I have one! Starting June 14th, I will be working as a technology assistant for a small, awesome, and prestigious private school in the Village. I'll be fixing computers, trouble shooting printers, and helping out in the small and beautiful library that houses the tech office and about 170 students who do things like learn Japanese at school and hang in the hallways playing blues guitar for hours on end.

I feel so trendy right now, you can't even imagine.

More importantly, this new job means that I can do things like hang out with teenagers, learn how to run and manage a small library with limited staff, and change the world with Karyn Silverman. It means that as of June 11th,  I will no longer be a vendor but an actual, honest to Dewey, librarian.  Less than a month out of library school, and I'm a real librarian at last.

Thank you, library gods. You are kind, and always remember to rewind (before returning). I will make several sacrifices at the altar of information literacy for you, and lo, it will be good. 

The Master

I totally am.

Because yesterday, I handed in my thesis.

That's right, my thesis. Handed in. Out of my hands, and into someone else's hands. 

Like, into a mailbox and everything. There's photographic evidence, posted to Twitter, with a time stamp and everything. And once the grades post, I'll have credentials and everything.

And then you shall refer to me as The Master of Library Sciences.

Bwah ha ha.

Law and Order

Has been officially canceled. While bemoaning the news with my distract-me-at-work-with-IMs-friend Brianna, I realize I've been paying way too much attention to this show ever since I was seven:

me: Law and Order has been official canceled.

I'm sad.

Brianna: wow, all of them?

like SVU and whatever else?

me: Nah, just the original.

But still! Jack McCoy, man!

Brianna: haha

me: He was a scary ass crazy old man WITH the death penalty!

Brianna: aw. i think i've seen like, two episodes :X

me: It's okay.

Here's how the show went:

1) Bitch(es) got murdered

2) Cops went out and found someone who they were sure did it, only we were only 15 minutes into the show.

3) That guy didn't do it. But ohnotheydidn't here's another guy who totally did!

4) Guy goes on trial (30 minutes into hour). Jack McCoy thinks it's a slam dunk, he gets foiled by some uppity defense attorney.

5) Jack's hot assistant DA chick said some stuff, wearing a short skirt.

6) They totally got the guy in the end, and now he's going down because YOU DON'T FUCK WITH JACK MCCOY.

7) Fade to black.
Brianna : hahaha awesome

Ya here that, NBC? You just stole a Police Procedural Part of my Childhood!

Law and Order taught me things about

• critical thinking ("If we're only five minutes into the show, that guy didn't do it even if he is a Neo-Nazi.")
• pattern recognition ("She's the first person they interviewed, and she looks totally innocent-- she's totally guilty.")
• and enough about the legal system to B.S. my way through every conversation that's ever mentioned legality ever and convince everyone I know what I'm talking about ("The burden of proof for insanity is on the defense, and they have to prove that the defendant was incapable of knowing right from wrong in the moment.")

 Important things! Things that are imprinted on my brain to this very day! Where will today's youth get these lessons? Huh? Won't someone please think of the children! 

Movie I Am So Going to See (*cough* bootlegged online *cough*)

Agora, with Rachel Weisz is about Hypatia, who has her own Wikipedia article and everything guys! And while it sounds like craptacular fluff (romance! murder! hot-man slaves!) there are two very important things to take away from this movie:

1) HYPATIA WAS A LIBRARIAN OMGZ!
And depending on who you ask, she was either:

a) the Last Librarian for the Library of Alexandria. She totally knew those circulation stats without the help of an ILS, man-- she had that down like James Brown. No, scratch that-- she INVENTED HER OWN INTEGRATED LIBRARY SYSTEM OUT OF STONE AND STUFF! That's hardcore, my friend. Hardfrickincore.

b) A naked lady who hung around thinking deep thoughts and being stoned by Christians (not the 4/20 stoned, the "we're gonna pick up pieces of your ILS and throw them at your head until you're all bloody and dead stoned).

c) A badass.


2) Racheil Weisz is Playing a Librarian for the Second Time in Her Career
She totally loves us. And if she does it a third time, she becomes one of us by default. Like how The Lesbian Rule of Three means Misha Barton is one pair of Doc Martens away from the Pride Parade; Rachel Weisz is officially one movie away from her MLS! Think of the exposure! Think of the hotness!

Dude. This could be in your library. This, right here. That hot chick with the headless snake wrapped about her body.

Thank you, Rachel Weisz. I promise to forgive all your fines if I'm ever in a position to do so. Not that you have fines, except being fine (get it? get it?) but the love is there. Oh yeah. It's there.

You Know What's Awesome?

XKCD made "Malamanteau" the fourth most Googled term as of 9:15 AM this morning. Fans of the web comic got into a Wikipedia war with, well, fans of Wikipedia, and now the article is frozen for discussion. There are multiple articles that have been hastily thrown together by online news source-y type peoples to give some meaning to the word that, as far as I can tell, was made up this morning.

Dear Power of Society Over the English Language,

Sweet dude. Totally killer.

All my love, 

Clair

PS-- This totally makes up for "guestimate"

Free Stuff, Just $5

So last semester I had to make a bookmark of Free Stuff for Teens for Sarah Couri's Young Adult Services Class.

Except they were all free things I did. Because I'm apparently still fourteen, only kinda hotter. (And I can buy beer now! Score!)


Free Music

Fanmix: Because somewhere out there, there's a little fangirl and boy who have made a free album devoted to their love of Castiel/Dean. And even if that's not your bag, baby, you should join and get free music. Cuz it's free. 


Elbo.ws: Blog aggregator for music. So on the twenty thousand bajillionty blogs out there, one guy posts a live version of "I Touch Myself," and instead of making you know where to find this gem of a music master is located, you can just enter it into the search thing that looks like a box, click go, and get to the song. Easy things are easy.

Free Clothes

S.W.A.P.P. & Five Boroughs Clothing Swap: The best part about clothing swaps in NYC? Everyone else has more money and better taste than me. Goodbye Gap T-shirt, hello over-priced dresses from stores I wouldn't actually go into! Booyah!

Free Fun
Etsy Labs: Have you ever looked on Etsy and gone "Wow, I'll never be that talented." Now you can do that in a room full of people! In Brooklyn! For free!

Free Geek
MediumAtLarge: Geeks everywhere, Peter is our people. And as the Program Guru for New York Comic Con, C2E2, NY Anime Festival, Star Wars Celebration, and Your Mom, he posts about a lot of cool (and relatively free/cheap) geek culture things going on in the NYC area.

So. Free things. Go and don't pay for them.

*iz sad*

Lena Horne died today at the ripe old age of 92. The first black performer with a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio (back when Hollywood Studios owned performers and treated them like trading cards), she fought for civil rights, for equal representations, and legal protection from violence and discrimination.

She refused to perform for USO shows where German POWs were seated before African American servicemen. She helped Eleanor Roosevelt draft anti-lynching laws. She supported discriminated against Japanese citizens during and after WW2, and was blacklisted for refusing to shut her mouth in the McCarthy era and sit quietly while the world moved around her.

While my first exposure to Lena was in The Wiz, where she played the Absolutely Fabulous Glinda the Good Witch (who hung out in Space with a lot of shiny babies), my personal favorite Lena scene comes from Sesame Street. She and Kermit sang about how is wasn't easy being green, but how they wouldn't want to be any other way.



You have to be taught to be second class; you're not born that way.
~Lena Horne

Iron Man 2: Awesome Times with Blowing Crap Up

Two of the NYCC volunteers work with a movie screening company. Which means that when sad, broke, library students want to see movies before they come out, they have two sweet, friendly nerds willing to help.

So Tuesday night, Volunteer Den Mom and I got to go and see Gweneth Paltrow be hot and stilettoed, Scarlet Johansson be surprisingly likable, and Samuel L Jackson remind us all that he hasn't been "acting" for a good fifteen years now.


When Stan Lee made Tony Stark, he wanted to make a character who was intentionally hard to like. Arms dealers-- who the heck likes an arms dealer aside from pirates, mercenaries, and creepy militia guys who have Nazi flags in their basements? No one, that's who.

Unless that arms dealer is Tony Stark, and he has a talking house. Then we're okay.

Because Tony Stark is an orphaned alcoholic ass who deals with his pain by sleeping with everything that moves, spending a lot of money, and hiring a hot secretary to run his life. His temper tantrums involve race cars and Senate hearings, his midlife crisis will probably involve blowing up part of Mars, and his fifth birthday party was the real cause of the San Andreas Fault. 


Stan Lee made a character who was hard to like. When Marvel made this into a movie, they wanted to make a film that would be hard for me not to love with a passion. Because they're smart that way.

It's awesome. It comes out today. Go and see it.

Stuff Librarians Like: Fictional Librarians

In the spirit of Stuff Lesbians Like (duct tape! showing their undies! texting!):

Stuff Librarians Like #1: 

Fictional Librarians 

Just like lawyers are much more interesting on TV, librarians are much more awesome when they're fighting mummies.

 

The every day life of the librarian might involve dealing with ten patrons who are mean, twenty people who are clueless, and that one special boy who's defecated in a very special place, but librarians in the media deal with none of that. They are superheroes, crime fighters, and Harrison Ford.*

Librarians in movies have the ability to recall things that no real person that you'd want to spend time with actually knows. They hide library cards in uncomfortable places and pull them out at a moments notice (because all librarians secretly want to be Gambit).  

They repel from buildings, fight crime, and always get the girl. Because brains are hot. Seriously. We promise. Brains are mad hot and some day when you grow up all of your peers will find brains more attractive than pretty features, a nice butt, a fit body, and muscles. 

Really. 

*I know Indiana Jones wasn't actually a librarian. However this argument puts me like two degrees of separation away from Han Solo. Shut up and give me this one.

A Reflection on the Hours to Come

In haiku form. Like all good reflections should be.

Rough draft due Tuesday
Expect little sleep tonight
Thesis still needs work.

Bonus Verses: 

Coffee will be brewed
Bed will not be slept in much
Clair is freaking out.

Tomorrow comes soon
What is this, your matched luggage?
No, bags under eyes.

Spotlight: NYPL Research Branch

Because I'm spending the next month living in it to finish the Big Damn Thesis, I thought today might be a good time to focus in like a laser on the NYPL Research Branch. Also known as the ones with the lions in front.

Here goes.

See This?

This is what I'm seeing tonight.



Oh yeah. Tribeca Film Festival. Not just for French-movies-about-boring-white-people-who-kill-themselves-in-the-end-because-life-is-pointless-in-the-face-of-ennui  anymore.

Flat Stanley: Promoting Literacy By Being in my Pants

So like a week ago, I was all "let's run around a convention center in a strange town for four days with little sleep, water, food, and respite. And also, semi-insult/become new twitter BFFs with Bill Willingham, become Batgirl, and do some other stuff that I can't remember now."

Yeah. Remember that? Good times.

But more important than the fact that I am Batgirl (only just slightly) is that I had a little man in my pants.

That's right, Flat Stanley came with me. I was both happy to see everyone and had something in my pocket.

And other people were happy to see us, too. See? I have photographic evidence.

Follow the jump for a photo dump. (Rhyming skillz yo.)

Mary Russell: Fictional Character You Should Totally Love

So my folks used to have this rule when we went to the bookstore-- I could get one crap book (defined by my father as anything I could read in less than three hours) for every serious book (defined by me as something my father wanted me to read that I totally knew would be mad boring).

This led to a lot of me reading Nancy Drew books hidden inside "The Black Pearl." Bwah ha ha, take that parental system of promoting literacy. I totally played you.

But bottom line: whatever crap boring book I had to pretend to read to get The Beekeeper's Apprentice when I was in 5th Grade? Totally worth it. Because that's where I met Mary Russell.

Big Damn List of Things To Do

It's big. And scary And I'm totally wrapping myself in a Brown Coat of Comfort until it's all over.

1) Thesis-- Due on May 18th

2) Thesis (Rough Draft)-- Oh crap, when is this due? Crap, crap, crap.

3) Archives Paper-- 15 pages on folksonomies and the rise of social networking archives, which requires a brief meeting with my archival-BFF.

For all that I love Ben Alexander, I'm an idiot for taking one of his classes at the same time as my thesis. A masochistic, big idiot.

4) The God of the Hive-- Came out today. Guess what's going on the back burner for the next twelve obsessive hours of reading? If you guessed "Everything," you win a prize. I'll figure out what when I'm done reading this book.

5) Getting the IRB form signed-- Eventually, Professor Kibirige and I have to sit and have a talk. I'll bring ladyfingers and tea. It'll be great.

6) Archives Presentation-- Tomorrow. Which of course means it'll actually get pushed back about two weeks, but still. Presentation. Tomorrow. (It's about comic books. Rock on.)

7) Clean My Apartment-- Seriously. It's starting to get a little stinky.

Dear IRB Board

I recognize that I previous mentioned that we are not BFFs, but I would like to inform you of an upgrade in your status.

While I still loathe you with a passion, we are now friends-who-talk-about-each-other-behind-their-backs.

Yes, I know, I am excited for this new stage in our relationship as well. But seeing as how you approved by IRB form, only for it to arrive and inform me that I have until April 27th to obtain my faculty adviser's signature and return it in person to your office, I think this new status is warranted.

You evil, pain in my butt, hopefully almost out of the way thing.

Kiss Kiss,

Clair

Things That Are Awesome Today

They're making a movie called MacGruber. Which looks awful, but is obviously a parody of:

Which, okay, so I never really watched. But you know what happened after MacGuyver made some stuff out of rubber bands and paperclips?

He met aliens and stuff.

And had fantastic biceps and posed a whole lot with them bulging out and stuff.

Like this. See? That's awesome. You know that guy could totally beat you up, while being snarky and attractive and awesome.

Yeah. Awesome.

Good choice Hollywood. Good choice.