Thesis Work: IRB is my BFF

Or at least they will be when they finish approving my lovely Underground Performance Archive. After four hours in a coffee shop with the lovely Miss Beth, I have my proposal to the Internal Review Board. Which pretty much consists of:

"This doesn't concern you. These aren't the research ethics you're looking for. I can go about my business."

...is it a problem how many things in my life can be easily adapted to Star Wars text? Or just a sign that I am cosmically blessed with awesome?

In Celebration of

The Star Trek Slumber Party I'm hosting tonight (bacon and VHS-- how can this be a bad thing?)

I present to you video evidence of Kirk's desire to bone everything.

THE DARKSIDE DOES NOT USE NIGHTLIGHTS!

If anything, they would need a light that exudes darkness! It's the *darkside,* people. Come on, let's get with the program.

Darth Vader is not here to assuage your fears. He is here to bring the pain and fill your ever waking moment with fear! HE IS A MASTER OF EVIL NOT COMFORT AND MILK AFTER NIGHTMARES!

It's Snowing (Again)

Schools are shut down, the Bar Library is shut down (the Friendly Neighborhood Wexis Competitor was open, but was kind enough to let us go home early), and the city sleeps under a probably-not-that-comfortable blanket of white.

See? Brrrr! Unpleasant. I think I shall spend the night comfortably ensconced inside, and force some poor pizza boy to come and cater to me. Cuz I'm a Meanie McMeanerson that way.

Reason Number Twelve I Need to Work for a Rich Archive

Because even if I'm not sure if I want to be an archivist (or a law librarian, or a teen librarian, or an academic librarian, or a records manager, or a corporate librarian, or any of the other things I've tossed around my head for the past two years) I want to have what my Favorite Professor of Life #4 calls "a check book and an auction catalog."

To buy Iron Man's Brain on Drugs, from the Iron Man auction.

Or the Cyberman Who Kinda Has to Pee, from the Doctor Who auction.

I could own the Still Beating Heart of Tony Stark. Someone get me the Beinecke on the phone. We need to get on this.

Best Thing on Twitter Ever: Fake Supreme Court Justices

So I've been following @scalia for months now, and I have to say that the best part of Twitter is people pretending to be other non-Twitter literate people and posting humorous things under their name.

For example:

So. We'll hear that drunk-driving case. Y'know, if an .08% limit applies, I haven't driven sober since age 12. I'll invoke *steery decisis.*
-Scalia

For those of you playing the home-version, Scalia is the Supreme Court Justice who has a giant stick up his ass about just about everything.

For those of you playing the home-improvement version, this Twitter feed isn't the Supreme Court Justice. Unless I've gotten very lucky.

Ways of Making My Thesis Easier

Presenting BibMe.Org, the website that puts things in ALA format for me. I've been using it for months because, hello, screw buying books when the internet can do it for you, but I discovered a lovely new feature today.

You can create an account and a saved bibliography. So basically as I write my thesis during lunch breaks, I can save citations, have a little hamster inside the internet-wheel do the work for me, and then profit.

I love internet hamsters. Those are some hardworking little rodents, my friends.

April in Chicago: Slightly Colder than a Cold Day in Hell

Unrelatedly, the best part about this picture is that when you do an image search for C2E2 in Google, the first two images are this, and the third is gay porn. True story.

Yesterday was the Team Leader meeting for C2E2. Which was amazing because Reed is amazing and the people who I've stumbled into at Reed are the coolest bitches that I have ever affectionately called bitches.

The outcome of the meeting was basically that April is going to feature me working "BEHIND THE SCENES" at C2E2. I have no idea what BEHIND THE SCENES involves except running around doing everything that needs doing.

The secondary outcome was myself and four of my favorite fellow Team Leaders coming back to my place and consuming:

(1) Indiana Jones movie
(3) of the Original Star Wars
(8) beers
(9) shots of Jack
(1) cup of sake
(12) hours

Yeah. This is gonna rock.

We've Been JAMMED!

Have you ever had a breakfast and thought "Hm... this could be a little more evil?"

Well, never have that thought again.

Now you can enjoy the taste of evil, murderous rage, the dark force, evil, and shattered Jedi dreams all before you have to change out of your holey socks in the morning.

Ah, delicious, delicious evil.

FAIIIIIIL

Epic fail! My defrauding of both capitalism and West fail!

I have not won Sarah Glassmeyer's orange WestNext Loves You and Your Music Tastes iPod.

As for the shuffle for the Westlaw Breakfast, I blame Flushing and my decision to try a new bus route in the pissing freezing rain and sleet.

The Westlaw Breakfast was yesterday at 8:30. And the chest cold stops me dead in my tracks just as I get my G-Man suit on and the cuffs buttoned. It's still sitting discarded on my couch, like so many broken dreams, while I nurse at the green menthol laden breast of my NyQuil goddess.

My iPod is getting progressively fuller. At this rate, I'll have to *gulp* BUY ONE THAT ACTUALLY FITS ALL MY MUSIC!

*sob* NyQuil! Comfort me!

The Westlaw Breakfast is Tomorrow!

And you know what that means! The iPod Shuffle will be MINE!

MIIIIIIIINE!

LawShucks Is Sending Me a Present (Not a pony)

I am the Competitive Information Management Professional, or ChIMP, for the Friendly Neighborhood Wexis Competitor. As such, when I find out public information about one lawyer moving to another firm, I inform the team, the chief, and strangers on the internet.

So LawShucks has informed me that because I contributed to the Lateral Tracker crowdsourcing objective, I have won a prize! While it is not an Apple gift certificate, the way I was hoping it was, apparently I have received one of the following:

The four participants with the most submissions will each receive a copy of The Lawyer’s Guide to Finding Success in Any Job Market by Richard Hermann, courtesy of the author.

Ten random winners will each receive a copy of Building a Better Legal Profession’s Guide to Law Firms: The Law Student’s Guide to Finding the Perfect Law Firm Job, courtesy of Building a Better Legal Profession.

While none of these are things I want, maybe I can trade them to some out of work lawyer for an iPod shuffle. Fingers crossed.

It's a Cake! (There's a hole in this cake)

Successful story about baking! A cake! A STAKE CAKE! (To be read in a Julia Child's voice.)

The first thing to remember when baking a cake is that when a gas oven is on the stove top is hot. For proof, see melted egg carton. The eggs were kinda pissed that I destroyed their home after killing their brethren.

In the meantime, there is cake baking. When the cakes are removed, one of them thoughtfully caves in to provide a convenient place for the stake. I've always said, baked good are good people.

In the mean-meantime, a bleeding cake requires blood. Take frozen raspberries, throw in sugar, throw in lemon juice, add really quickly spinning mini knives, and you have delicious, delicious blood.


It spreads onto cake really well. See?

So, now that we have our cake, and our blood to bind them, we need our chocolate to make it delicious. Thing to be learned: with enough sugar and milk, the fact that you don't have evaporated milk doesn't really matter. Ignore what the internet tells you if they say otherwise.

Now, combine the lot of them together, have a beer, pull up the handily available BUFFY FONT on the internet, and write on your cake with frosting.

Fill the gaping hole in the middle with raspberry blood, stab a deformed Hershey bar through the oozing wound, and all of a sudden, you have BADASSERY.

Feel accomplished. Leave the dishes, and go to watch Teen Mom on MTV. Bon appetit!

What time is it? Time to DIE.

Okay, I'm just going to say it: I'm a 23 year old woman. I am brave and strong and what have you and am no longer afraid of the dark.

This scares the crap out of me.
GLOWING EVIL RED EYES OF DEATH ARE WATCHING YOU AS YOU GET CLOSER TO YOUR DEMISE!

Is it morbid to give an 18 year old a tombstone cake?

Help me decide! These are the two entries right now in the AMANDA THE VAMPIRE SLAYER cake.

I like how I spend my lunch break doing things like this as opposed to going out and eating. Good times.

Amazing Idea! AMAZING IDEA!

So my friends Beth and Teresa have a Young Ward named Amanda. Amanda is amazing, funny, and waaaaay cooler than I was when I was 18.

And that's the other thing, Amanda is going to be 18 next week. So this weekend, we're having an impromptu get together, and I am making that chick the most awesome cake to ever be a cake. I am going to make a BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER CAKE.

After helpful input from Karyn Silverman I am confident in my ability to put this together. There may be a chocolate stake through it. There may be a tombstone made of milanos. Who knows?

But there will be pictures as I attempt to put the damn thing together. I'm psyched.

And now, because he popped up when I Googled "young ward," the Goddamned Batman.

The Snow! She's Actually Here Now!

New York has snow! It's beautiful and today was full of small children that I unfortunately didn't get to actually see playing (but sensed with my children sensory abilities).

My neighborhood looks like something out of a Normal Rockwell painting. If Normal Rockwell painted Washington Heights or Dominican people. Seen here, a parking lot covered in snow. There are cars under there somewhere, I'm sure of it.

The sidewalk is passable manly because my super is obsessive compulsive about salting everything. But as of right now it's still snowing, I've made a delivery guy bring me a pizza, and I am comfortably warm and full of food and beer.

Remember when we were kids and we would go roll around in the snow and, like, be active? Yeah. No. This is a much better way to do this. I highly recommend.

Short Term Goal: Short-Change Capitalism

Following on the heels of the West iPod Give Away Debacle (it's now been quoted on Library Stuff-- it's a debacle) I have decided to set a new short term goal for myself.

Get as many free iPods as humanely possible.

Now, you may say to yourself "Self, what the hell is Clair going to do with more iPods? She already has the perfectly functional iPod Nano in lovely square that was around for all of one year before Apple replaced it with the long sticky looking one?"

And to you I answer "Walk around and feel bad ass."

Imagine-- one iPod for work music, one for leisure time, and another for audio-books/podcasts/class notes! The luxury, man! The sheer unadulterated luxury!

West is giving away a free iPod shuffle to the first 100 people to show up for their "LOOKIE! IT'S NEW!" breakfast that I am happily attending (and showing up twenty minute early for). Additionally, the lovely Sarah Glassmeyer is giving away the iPod that started all of this bruhaha, and I am firmly entered in that drawing.

Soon I shall have at least one free iPod from West. It shall be full of nothing but my large MB audiobook files, and sit prettily in my bag waiting to be used when the mood and fancy strikes me. And lo, it shall be amazing.

St. Agnes Branch of the NYPL

Reopened, my friends, reopened! And the NYTimes has some beautiful pictures including this gem that shows the Children's Area.

Do they take down the Story Hour thing when it's not actually Story Hour? I mean, logically, it's not always Story Hour. Then it'd just be, I dunno, Story Day. And that's just silly.

Also of interest in this article is the lovely note about how all of the 67 libraries that Andrew Carnegie built include staircases with little black hooks, meant to catch or "deter" sliding children who think to themselves "Hey, banister! Fun!"

Imagine getting one of those in the crotch bone. When they say "catch" what they really mean is "castrate."

Carnegie, seen here with a boner tenting his hat, either didn't want children to get hurt by sliding down the banister and falling, or was afraid that one day a child would be born whose own massive boner power would far outweigh that of Carnegie, and then they would have to, like, epically battle or something. And being a kind-hearted rich guy, Carnegie was all "No way, man. No way. Hook those little rugrats in the balls."

And history was made.

You can find more New York History like this at your local library, kids. To find out more go to www.nypl.org and start on the path to learning!

Snow Storm Persona Non Grata

So in Manhattan there was supposed to be this giant snowstorm, right? Like, snow shoes, abominable snow man, Canadians roaming the streets with impunity snow storm.

Guess what it's not doing here right now?

However, never one to be dettered I have decided to spend my Saturday night in denial, doing the same things I would if it was actually snowing. Meaning:

a) hot chocolate with Baileys
b) watching Blazing Saddles
c) reading fanfiction from shows I've never watched
d) periodically texting my friends to say "Wow, it's really come down out there! Stay warm!"

Man, it is really come down out there. Hope you're all staying dry!

EDIT:
"Qualifications?"
"Rape, murder, arson, and rape."
"You said rape twice."
"I like rape."

Oh Mel Brooks, you amuse me and keep me warm when the bitter snow outside would otherwise freeze me to the core.

Twisted and AWESOME

Sometimes, when you stop and think, you may think to yourself "It is not humanly possible for Darth Vader to become more bad-ass than he already is. I mean, he force chokes guys in meetings, and kills underlings, and wears a cape."

But you forget. He's more machine now than man.
A transformer Darth Vader, that turns into the Death Star. That's like taking one really awesome thing, and gluing another really awesome thing to its back, and then topping it off with a dash of ohnotheydidn't.

GiantDeathStarVader. What really killed the dinosaurs.

Dear Westlaw

Dear Westlaw,

It has come to my attention that you are sending out free Westlaw Next iPods to librarians, as a way of promoting your new search interface and its lovely capabilities.

As librarians, we are understandably shocked and appalled by this sort of behavior. The trust between student/lawyer/general public/homeless person and librarian is a sacred bond, one that must be impartial, fair, and above all else uninfluenced by outside pressures. Many in the community view these offerings as a blatant bribe; a present to try and push us to push you on our students, violating that aforementioned sacred bond and acting in a way that is anathema to our professional code.

To help you in this PR disaster in the making, I would like to offer my services.

As a library assistant working for the Friendly Neighborhood Wexis Competitor, my opinion of you is more or less inconsequential. There are no student for me to influence, no young minds to warp. My co-workers have no idea how to use your database, let alone formulate an opinion on it.

I therefore propose the following: send me all of the iPods. All of them. I will use them, I will refrain from becoming biased for or against you, and all of the other law librarians out there and you can rest easy in the knowledge that the ethical code of conduct that I'm sure you would like to help us all uphold is safe and secure.

And then I can have an orange iPod.

Win win, don't you agree?

Sincerely, your friend,

Clair



PS-- Thanks for the earbuds you gave me at LegalTech. You know what would go great with this? Thirty orange iPods.

Thesis Class: Ho No

After the first of (way too) many sessions of my thesis class, I have come to the following conclusions:

1) Queens College needs to get new professors
2) This thesis stuff isn't as hard as everyone makes it out to be judging by the

• Number of misspellings
  
• Improper sentence structure
• Non-APA formatted citations
• General uselessness

present in the example theses passed around in class.

and
3) I am so ready to be a real librarian, you have no idea.

After this May, I promise to never learn anything ever again, ever. In fact, I will go out of my way to forget stuff I already know.

My brothers birthday's? Gone. How to cook a burger? See ya. My mad rap skills? Never to be heard from again.

Cosmic trade off: I become a real librarian, the world lives without my burgers and freestyle abilities to throw down. That's the deal. Have at it, universe.

LegalTech: Lexis! It's Shiny!

So yesterday was the Westlaw Next review. Today was Lexis's turn.

Now, I'm a Lexis girl. Not because of the database, because Lord knows it's the biggest pain in the hindquarters area to search. Not because of the content, because 90% of it is free online somewhere else.

I'm a Lexis girl because Lexis is run by Reed Elsevier, who runs Reed Exhibitions, who runs New York Comic Con, and who is taking me to Chicago come this April, which my father bought for two zuzim. So even though the Wexis Twins are more or less interchangeable, I'm a Lexis girl because I like Batman.

More after the jump

WestlawNEXT! Whoosh!

Just got back from my first day of Legal Tech and boy are my arms tired!

(From all the schwag I got.)

Review of the lovely new Westlaw Next after the jump.