for Pussy lovers.

I can't force you to buy my book...

but hypnokitteh can.



Check the image of the cover over there on the right. But don't read the message under it because that's meant for the cheap bastards, not you. You are thoughtful and generous and not at all cheap.

The bastard part I'm not sure about because I've heard some stuff. On Twitter. But I'm sure it's all lies.

I need to check with Dennie Heye and Walt Crawford to find if any of their books sell.

(you have no idea how long it took me to figure out how to make the eyes do that... 5 years.)

WWLR (What Would Lindsay Read).

Here are a former prison librarian's suggestions for what Lindsay Lohan should read while she serves her sentence.

Lindsay Lohan is supposed to do some jail time. But with celebrities, jail "time" is relative to their money and fame and gender and race. So do the math, and Lindsay will get very little "jail" with her time. She'll do about 14 of her 90 days and be away from the general population, so any "Caged Heat" fantasies I imagine are purely my own invention, as usual.

Hmmmm....

[begin fantasy]

Lindsay Lohan sits cross-legged on her D. Porthault voile linen sheets she had smuggled into jail when she requested the kosher meal. A single strap of her Guia La Bruna silk chemise dangles from her creamy shoulder and rests just above her perfect breast as she reads aloud from Don Juan in the Village to her secret fellow inmates she cannot see beyond the walls that guarantee her solitude.

But moments later, after Lindsay runs into a word she doesn't understand, she stops reading, and an autographed photo from Mean Girls and a pack of Marlboro 100's work to bribe the guard to unlock her cage and set her free. Silently, catlike, she steps out to meet the other prison girls. One is from Trinidad and Lindsay loves her accent. One is Japanese and Lindsay loves her silky black hair. And one is kinda dim and says her favorite movie is Herbie Fully Loaded, but Lindsay says it's her favorite, too. And later, they vajazzle each other.

[end fantasy]

So yeah, I don't give a crap what Lindsay reads during her 14-day, taxpayer funded vacation. Because with her fame and money, she's still going to be living better than me.

Oh crap, my generic, no-name brand Spaghetti-O-like pasta product is burning on the fire I made from discarded library romance paperbacks to cook my food. Again!

I don't know who this is...

that's gotta win me some kind of prize, right?


E!Online says this is Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino and that he is famous for something, so he just got a book deal. To write one, not to read one. Even though the story says he's holding a copy of Walden on purpose, and not at all thinking, "Wow, the Cheesecake Factory menus keep getting bigger, let's see what I want for lunch... 'that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them...' what the hell kind of menu is this???"

But what's really good is the E! asks what The Situation would call his book, maybe The Old Man and the Situation? And then lots of comments add to this: The Situation in the Rye, etc.

But since we just suffered that recent trend where it seemed everyone was turning public domain works into horror novels, it seems like it would be a "good" idea to just take an old book and add in The Situation as a character and not create a whole bunch of new sentences.

Someone just get their butt over to Project Gutenberg and start editing, assuming The Situation got that trademark thing settled:
The Situation and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Situation
Adventures of Huckleberry the Situation by Mark Twain with The Situation
The Dracula Situation by Bram Stoker with The Situation
The Situation and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and The Situation
Metamorphosis of The Situation by Franz Kafka and The Situation
The Situation, Old and New Testaments, by God and The Situation
Les Situàtionables by Victor Hugo and Le Situation

Marilyn Johnson: Ditto.

"I hope you'll take a few minutes to read through this chatty Q&A with Marilyn Johnson, champion to librarians everywhere and super-author of This Book is Overdue!"

A Champion to Librarians Everywhere.

I totally agree.

The "$10,000 book" got marked down.

The "$10,000 book" is out. But for circumstances beyond my control, I had to price it at $2,999.99.

And again, this is my reasoning: since no one would buy my books for fifteen dollars, they might as well not buy them for then thousand dollars.

I really wanted to have a book published that would cost $10,000. I wanted to go to Amazon and find my ten thousand dollar book and shout, "Woo-hoo!" Because ten thousand dollars is a lot of money. Or so I thought.

But not so for a book on Amazon. I just did a search and found:

The case of the irate witness: A Perry Mason mystery, and other stories by Erle Stanley Gardner (Hardcover - 1973)
1 used from $55,364,960.99
Seller: Mr. Affordable

And then I see that there are hundreds of other books that are listed for millions of dollars. So pretty much everyone has one goof book on Amazon listed for thousands of dollars or more. And my dream of having one of the most expensive published books faded away.

So my third book, Librarianship: "THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL": a $2,999.99 book is listed for $2,999.99 and not $10,000. Because then it would have a different title, dummy.

I don't really have anything else to say about it. But as soon as I order a few copies for myself, I will hold a raffle and give a couple away.

But I am working on a fourth book, one that will be priced under $20. Because it seems unfair to anyone who doesn't want to buy any of my books, to not buy them simply because of price. To say, "Oh, the effing librarian isn't worth $2,999.99" isn't much of an argument. I want to give everyone the opportunity to not buy my books, not because they are cheap bastards, but because they think I suck.

Teen blogger raises library shit storm on LGBT books

When I first read this story, I said, Gay Teen, Shmay-Teen. I was pissed that this kid was whining about his school librarian and that he did nothing to fix the problem. Except complain. And anyone who complains without contributing to a solution is a waste of my time.

So as a complainer, I don't give a crap about the "gay teen" because he couldn't find any book with LGBT characters in his school library. But I care that the librarian told him those books were "inappropriate" because it was a stupid thing to say, especially today, when anyone can make a Facebook page to harass your ass back into the stone age.

The librarian didn't handle it right, and I have my own solution down at the bottom.

I am not a librarian in a Middle School. And I don't even know what middle school is, but Brent, the former middle school student, who, and get this, has been labeled "Gay Teen" in pretty much every news story, even though he does have an actual name, is a gay teen. It makes me think that the next headline about President Obama will read, Black Man Angry at Big Oil.

But I remember being an 8th-grader and wondering if I might be gay. Seriously. No girls liked me and I wondered if any ever would. And so I thought, What if I'm gay? And I looked around at my classmates and got really sad because all the guys in my class were UGLY. Which meant I wasn't attracted to any of them, so problem solved.

So I don't know what a typical middle school library buying policy is or what their budget might be.

But I am a librarian in a public library. So I know a little about that. Now HERE IS THE BIG QUESTION YOU HAVE GOT TO ASK YOURSELF:

What is the role of MY library? And this has nothing to do with LGBT books. Although this was the case for Brent.

Is there demand for these books? How can I anticipate demand when all I have is one kid who requested some genre books? I don't even know about this subject, so where I do start?

One answer is, "It's the librarian's job to find out which books the library should get." Okay, but if someone came into my library and asked for Mexican Romance Novels, I would answer truthfully and say, "I don't know what this." Are they romances set in Mexico, or with Mexican characters or in Spanish or in English or American romance novels translated into Spanish or novelizations of Latin "telenovelas" or what? And if a computer search didn't help, I would ask the patron for some authors so I could search better. Because at that point, I need an expert, and it ain't me.

Getting back to Brent, his librarian didn't do that with him. She may have done it a half hour later when she asked another adult about it, but Brent left the library a little pissed off. And again, I am not a middle school librarian and I don't know any middle school aged kids, so I don't know just how likely it is that 14-year-olds already know they are gay and that it would be in the school library's interest to carry books on that subject.

If a school carries, Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret., they could probably carry, Are You There, Rock Hudson? It's Me, Brent. (sorry, is that in bad taste? fuck you.)

But if the answer is "very likely" or even "pretty likely" that there is demand, then middle school libraries need to rethink what is "inappropriate" for their students to read.

I'd like to imagine that this would be how I would have responded to Brent.

BRENT: "I'm looking for some books with lesbian or gay characters."

ME: "Dude, you got me. Which books are you looking for? You think I read this crap? I just shelve what they send me. I wouldn't know if there was a gay character in any of these books. What about that guy who wears all that black leather? No, that's Batman. Name some authors and let me see what I can find."

[after a fruitless search - I won't even acknowledge whether there might be a pun there]

ME: Look, kid. This is a school library, in middle school. It's hard enough for adults to accept that there are gay kids in high school, do you think the school board really wants to piss off the parents by having gay-themed books in the 6th and 7th grade collection? But if you can prove to me that there's a need, that there are other kids who would read these books and check them out from here, then I will order them and if anyone wants to know why, I will tell them that there's a need. Okay?

Now, in a different article, Brent says, "A librarian isn't going to buy a book for a small group of students. They want books that'll appeal to a lot of people."

So he understands our situation. So don't be so hard on the librarian who denied his request because the books were "inappropriate." You've seen the stories about school libraries and parents. We don't know how much shit this librarian may have dealt with already regarding what's appropriate for kids in her school.

But yeah, if your middle school library carries books about gangs and drugs, but you tell a kid that his request for a gay character book is inappropriate, then maybe the appropriate thing to do is to call for the National Guard because that school is totally fucked up.

Who wrote this story for you?

I have trouble with lots of fiction. I find flaws everywhere. I find flaws in logic, in time, in language. I get irritated so easily whenever I read.

So I was looking at another novel yesterday, not for myself, but for a library patron, told in the first-person by an (formerly) illiterate character. The narrator made grammar and spelling mistakes that could be consistent with an illiterate person.

But the character is supposed to be illiterate. If you, the character, are telling this story after you learned to read and write, then why insert those misspellings and errors? Are you trying to recreate the atmosphere which surrounded that past you? But you are no longer that you, so why do it? For sympathy?

Unless you, the character, are speaking and recording this now somehow? Recording it into a microphone? Your cell phone? So, that's why I asked, Who wrote this for you?

These are small things, but they force me to think about them. Why are you using parentheses and apostrophes but misspelling those other simple words? It starts to make me wonder if there is another person involved.. a writer, and not you.

So suddenly, this whole literary world seems artificial to me. I can't picture someone else writing this. And I can't see the character finding this tape a year later and transcribing it. Well, I guess I could, but it seems unrealistic.

There are many things that bother me in storytelling. When characters seem to be aware of events they could never have witnessed, or when I have no sense of time in the story.

That's what's fun about movies and TV. Characters usually keep the same hairstyles throughout the story arc: I laughed when the TV character Dr. House told someone that he shaved once a week. Because he always looks like he shaved a couple days ago, never just this morning.

But my problem with reading is that it takes so long and I have too much time to think about what I'm reading and I start to pick it apart. Mostly undeservedly. I mean that the stories are good enough, but I guess that since a novel is just the responsibility of one person, I tend to give them almost no room to make mistakes. But movies take the efforts of many, so I figure I need to be more forgiving.

But literature bothers me. I read and I think too much and I withdraw. Sometimes I wonder how I became so hypercritical. Like what did I once read that made me this way. And then sometimes I wonder if I ever really learned to read at all. Because "how to read a novel" is something we're supposed to learn, isn't it?


...So damn you, Batman, Richie Rich, Thor. Your perfect 12¢ comic worlds spoiled reading for me, forever.

Our Summer Reading Program: BOOKS WITH BENEFITS.

Summer reading at the Effing Library has just started off with a bang. Many libraries have summer themes like "Dive Into a Book," "Summer Reading Frenzy," "School's Out. Reading's In" or "Read. White and Blue."

But this year's theme at the Effing Library is, "It Happens Between the Covers."

"We took the theme of 'reading in bed' and created these six foot by six foot book beds," says the Director. "They are all designed to reproduce covers from classic books."

He pointed to the large foam beds with cover reproductions from Tropic of Cancer, Portnoy's Complaint, Fanny Hill, A View from Above by Wilt Chamberlain, and My Life by Bill Clinton.

And we let our patrons get in between the covers. "See," he said as he demonstrated with the Cleland book, "these are very roomy. I can get one or two other people in here. Three if they were children."

"We converted our public meeting room into this large bedroom. We've put down cushions and pillows and dimmed the lights to give our patrons a comfortable place to spread open a good book. It's extremely popular with the high school students. And these middle-aged men."

"Hi," the Director calls out to a man squeezing into a Portnoy's Complaint with a teen, "did you guys meet on MySpace?"

"We want it to have the exact same atmosphere as a bedroom. And what's better to do in the bedroom than read a good book?" the Director added.

"It's so good to see kids getting into the classics. We only ask that they write about their books on the social networky thingies. And they can do that through their phones," the Director said. "One girl asked me, 'Is sexting okay?' And I just laughed and said, Of course, 16, 17, all ages are welcome. Kids think they need permission for everything. But I say, go wild."

Starting June 6, the program runs throughout the summer and climaxes with a group booktalk on July 20.


sorry, but this post was inspired by this actual headline:
"Books with Benefits" by COLIN MERRY
...come on, "books with benefits"? it's like "friends with benefits" which is SEX. gawd, do I have to explain all my dirty jokes to you? you're like my mom...

Look, it's Jesus!

I bought this book the other day because I thought it was funny. Look! It's Jesus includes pictures of all the objects and locations where people have witnessed the image of Jesus or Mary or Moses or... but not that other holy guy because they'll say you drew it and then kill you.

Half of my brain is thinking, "Oh, this is hilarious. These people must be idiots," while the other half wonders, "Oh, these people must be idiots. This is hilarious."

Yes, I know that was the same thing. It's my brain.

Parts of the book are interesting and thought-provoking like seeing the image of Jesus in the pierogi: I see Him. But I also see a delicious pierogi. And Couch Stain Jesus? It don't feel right worshipping a picture formed from back sweat.

And some of these visions aren't even close. Cell Phone Jesus is just nothing. Alabaster Vase Jesus looks more like Kirk Douglas or Mel Gibson. And Handbag Jesus doesn't even mention that the wrinkles on the right side of the photo seem to suggest that Jesus had a dog.

Cloud Jesus, Frying Pan Jesus, hell these people find Jesus everywhere. And that made me look around my own home. And I found several mysterious representations.

You might not believe, but others will. Some of these images are unmistakable if only you learn to look not only with eyes, but also with your heart.

Hints:
look for Jesus on a Twinkie,
Jesus over the world,
Jesus in the wood grain,
Jesus on a tortilla chip,
Jesus walking on the water, and
Jesus in the refracted light from a crystal goblet.

Amazing. There are completely unretouched photos.

So where is my publishing contract?




larger versions of the photos are here.

Books Suck.

So there was this story last week about Stanford University's "bookless" library. Ooh, you are so cool, Stanford. Why don't you blow me. Yeah, you heard me, Stanford.

This whole bookless argument has escalated since Amazon showed that ebooks kick regular books' asses when they deleted copies of 1984 remotely from a bunch of Kindles. Tell me the last time Mr. Houghton or Mr. Mifflin kicked in your front door to take back a paperback copy of Animal Farm...

But my guess is that since most people still read paper books, they aren't aware this battle even exists.

My dream is to develop some portable device that fries every other electronic device for 200 miles. Not to teach anyone a valuable lesson about information access or some other crap, but just to be a mean bastard. There will always be about half the world's population that won't tweet or blog or do anything online. They're too busy looking for food and water. I know that there will be a day when no iPad will work, when no Blackberry will work and when no one will be able to Google anything. It will be an inevitable result of overpopulation. Sorry to ruin your day.

Crap. I lost my train of thought. You know, I typed part of this a few days ago and then I look at it and try to turn it into something. Is it something, yet?

This is what we think of as progress:

• Having a book means that you have direct contact with the information.
• Having an ebook means that you are at least one step removed from accessing the information.
• Having your ebook in the cloud means you are at least two steps from accessing the information.

And this really is progress. For people who don't know any better. Doesn't anyone see how the supply chain for getting to the information is getting longer and longer? And what does any business model say about long supply chains? Shit happens.

So I'm amazed that people still review books. (For the record, this is the first line of this post that I wrote.) Since any person who matters has abandoned them by now.

I mean, we live in the 2.0 world where information flows in both directions, to the consumer from the creator and then back again, so the creative process involves everyone. And I am told this is the new world, that books, movies, all media will evolve to incorporate the desires of the consumer to create fantastic new art forms.

And that is why I'm amazed that anyone still reviews anything professionally. Why review the book before we get to tweet about how we loved it? I mean, we are the meaning of 2.0. Why would we care about your opinion?

So I appreciate our reviewers and journalists. They remind those assholes tweeting their opinions freely that there are other people who do it well enough to get paid. And it is not they.

No serious art requires our input. It exists regardless of how much I want it to be different or the same or bigger or with extra kitties in it.

There are the common entertainments, the jugglers, the street performers, the penny arcades, the bouts of fisticuffs in alleyways; and these are for most of us because we demand so little. We don't want to think critically about our world; we simply want to enjoy it.

But a book or CD or movie or whatever is a one-street. It does not seek collaboration. It does not require my input. And that's why I'm glad that we exist in a world where professional reviews are still valued and that the publishing world doesn't just link to hashtags in Twitter: "Can't wait!!! #transformers3D".

Question: are hashtags copyrighted? Trademarked? Is any metadata (datum?) protected by copyright?

There's a subtle balance between art and science that happens when you critique some discovery or product or invention or performance. The science is fact: who, what, when, where. The art is understanding and explaining in a new way: why, how.

I'm glad that there is still a market for intelligent criticism, that there are still those who can appreciate it. But for how long?

Libraries and the Decline of Civilization.

I don't know how one would define civilization, but I would guess that it includes relationships, pairings, groupings or collections of people. Hell, Charlton Heston needed Nova before he could ride off down the beach to curse the maniacs who blew up the Earth. You can't start a civilization with just a shirtless guy named Chuck on the back of a horse. At least not one we can show on TV.

And these relationships need some permanence. They can't keep forming and dissolving every ten minutes. Relationships need to endure long enough for shelters to rise and children to grow.

So what does this have to do with libraries? Don't libraries preserve culture? Aren't they centers for communities to gather and leave horrible messes in the toilets?

Traditionally, yes. But recently, libraries have begun contributing to civilization's decline, collapse and total failure.

What is the length of a good relationship? I know teen girls claim they are "bff"s with just about any other girl wearing a "Team Jacob" charm bracelet around her wrist, but how long is that relationship going to last? Best Friends Forever only means "until I change my mind and hate you forever."

So let's say a proper relationship lasts 3 months. And a good relationship lasts several years. Where does that leave libraries?

Libraries used to loan books for a month. You checked out a book and got a card stamped with a date at least 30 days in the future. And for those 30 days, that book was yours to read and reread to your heart's content. You formed a relationship with that book.

But then libraries started buying "popular items," meaning things that real people might actually spend their own money on at the store. And these popular materials couldn't circulate with just one person for a whole thirty days; they were just too popular. So we reduced the time one could monopolize those items to allow more people to share them. Those books circulated twice as much or even four times more often as regular books. In my library we call those books The Slutty Books. They've been left on more bedroom nightstands than Warren Beatty's underpants.

And after these sluts get passed around twenty or thirty times like the whores they are, the library will change their due dates to reflect this decreased demand as fewer borrowers want to riffle through the sheets of these skanks.

So libraries have been discouraging long-term relationships by encouraging readers to borrow popular materials for shorter periods. Hell, simply segregating books into the regular stacks labels them inferior or ugly and less desirable no matter how much we stress their charming personalities.

And it gets worse with ebooks. And on-demand downloads of music and video. Libraries now offer material that can be downloaded from anywhere at any time. And shared with other devices. And then discarded whenever the user decides the relationship is over. Books get deleted, their existence wiped out, with a single click of the mouse. Talk about the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That book is gone.

And what about Redbox? Some libraries are now contracting with a company called Redbox which rents DVDs (and possibly books) out of a vending machine for $1 a day. One day! For a buck! Libraries are destroying civilization by reducing the length of the relationship between human beings and their desires. We're reinforcing a notion that love is temporary. I mean, who doesn't love Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman? And now I can have her whenever I want for the whole day for just one dollar? If only Richard Gere was offered that deal. Now love can be rented like the temporary $2 affairs I have down at the bus station.

So libraries need to begin working on rebuilding civilization. Libraries need to start forcing longer relationships with mandatory borrowing periods of at least one month. Or maybe three.

If you borrow a diet book and you try to return it before you lose ten pounds, then you're keeping it until you drop at least one pant size.

If you check out a book on home repair, don't try to return it if the closet door still squeaks or the roof leaks. And that auto repair book doesn't come back until you fix that passenger-side window that doesn't go all the way back up.

And that self-help book stays with you until you stop being an asshole. Yeah, I know we're never getting that one back. But that's a loss we can all live with.

My Fame is Overdue.

If you own This Book Is Overdue!, flip to page 51 to see the.effing.librarian mentioned and preserved for all time.

I wasn't going to mention this here because I just use this blog for fun and not for commercial purposes. Except when mentioning those good folks at Nabisco and their fine product, Ritz crackers: Mmm, good cracker.

Also, it's a book about librarians. And why would I want to associate myself with any of them? Better to just not mention the book at all.

But then the general excitement and appreciation for Marilyn mentioning me, when she could have typed the name of any number of other (yes, less talented) bloggers, won out.

And as you can see, I have an autographed copy, signed to the effing librarian. When someone at LISNews posted that I appeared in the book, I emailed Marilyn and asked how I could purchase an autographed copy. But get this, here is what she wrote back:

"yes, effing, I do mention you....and I follow you, too. In fact, I think I wrote to you and asked to use your fab chart Should You Become A Librarian in one of my presentations. (Can I?)I will send you a copy signed to the effing librarian if you do. Send your address! I think you're great!"

Look at that, the closed quote goes all the way to the end, meaning that "I think you're great!" is something she actually wrote. Yes, I know you also think I'm great, but who are you? Nobody. This is a somebody; an author. I know your cats think you're somebody, but they're still going to eat your face when you die on that couch. Knitting.

I never heard if she used the "Should you become a librarian?" chart, or more importantly, when she used it, did it get a laugh.

Anyway, the book seems to be doing well. A big plus for it over her previous book about dead people is that the current subjects tend to buy more books than the former. Go and get a copy. I have two; the one she sent me and the one I bought which still needs signing. I guess I'll have to get this one addressed to my "real" name, whatever that is.

Antiquarian Desperation.

The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America sponsors a rare book collecting contest. First prize is $2,500.

An association which promotes the sale of rare books is sponsoring a contest which encourages (requires) the collecting of rare books. I guess they never heard the phrase, "no purchase necessary" to enter or win.

The story says, "But UCLA, among the 30-some universities participating in the student book collection competition, shows how it can be done." Their "sample entry" lists 22 books. And I priced the first title that caught my eye:

2. Carroll, L. (1888, 1924) Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. New York: Macmillan. Illustrated by John Tenniel.

So I checked abebooks.com and found these:

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
Book Description: MacMillan & Co, London, 1872. Cloth. Book Condition: Very Good. Tenniel, James (illustrator). First Edition. Price: US$ 27,829.23

Too expensive? Don't worry because there is a cheaper edition:

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, And what Alice found there.
CARROLL.LEWIS.; Tenniel, John. illustrates.
Book Description: Macmillan and co.London.,1872(1871)., 1872. FIRST EDITION. Price: US$ 2,385.36

But if you want the 1924 edition mentioned in the UCLA list, the price drops even more:

Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There
Carroll, Lewis
Book Description: Macmillan, London, 1924. Leather. Book Condition: Very Good-. John Tenniel (illustrator). Price: US$ 150.00

So if 22 books cost around $150 apiece, then competing for the $2,500 top prize would only put you $800 in the hole (assuming you win). But just think of all the fun you'd have with your extremely fragile, climate-sensitive bundles of paper! Here, Buster, fetch!

I think most college kids will just wait until The Orthopedic Corrective Footwear Association holds its dance contest.

A thought: Isn't this how Oscar Mayer made his fortune? Hey, kids, let's have a wiener eating contest! See how many you can eat! Just a buck a wiener. Hey, I'm losing money here.

lOO Book Challenge

I don't understand trademarks. From what I know, a trademark is applied to product or service with some exclusivity and can't be used by a different product or service which conflicts with the original trademark. Conversely, if I own the trademark for Bean Shoes, "the shoe made entirely from beans," I can't keep you from selling Bean Caps, "the cap to cover your bean." Or at least, that how it seems to me.

So it seems odd that the American Reading Company sent a cease and desist letter to LibraryThing because they proposed a 100 Book Challenge for 2010 whereby everyone would strive to read 100 books. Apparently the American Reading Company sells products under the brand, "100 Book Challenge" and they don't want to share their ownership of those three (or four; does "100" count as one word or two words hyphenated?) words.

My only response is that the American Reading Company misread the LibraryThing name. It's not the 100 Book Challenge, but the lOO Book Challenge.

Forgive the spelling, but the word is "loo" as in the slang term for lavatory in Britain. The real LibraryThing challenge for 2010 is for everyone to read books in the loo.

I understand that the American Reading Company is concerned about their trademark, but really, these are two entirely different things. I realize that lOO looks similar to 100 to the naked eye, but a computer can see the difference.

It was a harmless mistake. And no, LibraryThing is not changing the capitalization to reduce the confusion. Because it's funnier that way.

p.s. I Am Not a Lawyer.

France to Google: Volez ces Livres.

So France just hit Google with a $400,000 fine for violating copyright on 80,000 French language books when they scanned them into the Google Books collection.

"'It shows Google that they are not the kings of the world and they can't do whatever they want,' said Serge Eyrolles, president of France's Syndicat National de l'Edition."

France and their kings; won't they ever learn. Hmm, Google Ier, le Grand, doesn't sound too bad now, does it?

By contrast, the Recording Industry Association of America sues people for sharing music and the fines have been more like $22,500 - $80,000 per song.

Google is also being fined $14,000 a day until it deletes the French copies, but you and I click on enough ads for "mesothelioma" that they can afford to take their time getting that job done. I might email Google and offer to remove them, since I can make any simple assignment last a year or more. I think there's an inventory on my desk somewhere that was due in 2006.

Google says it has agreements from French publishers, so I'm not sure if Google will remove any books at all, "[Philippe] Colombet could not say how many French books Google has scanned overall, or how many French publishers it has agreements with."

So what does that say about the value of the printed word when one can file-share a book for a $5 penalty, but sharing a song costs $80,000?

Is "Welcome to the Jungle" (one of the shared songs that added to a $2 million judgment against a MN woman in June, 2009) worth that much more than that classic French bestseller, Le petit chien qui a vécu en tant qu'homme?
(which I just made up using Babelfish and is supposed to read, "the little dog who lived as a man.")

Okay, bad example because that song kicks ass, and $80,000 isn't nearly enough to cover it. But what about "Don’t Stop Believing" by Journey. $80,000? Really? Can't I get them to play that at my birthday party live and in person for, like, $10,000? So they'd have to play seven more songs? (Hey, hey, hey, keep your spandex pants on. I'm not dissing Journey, just making a joke.)

So frankly, I'm offended by France's ruling. If they haven't learned anything from America about what our media stars are worth, then they can't have Jerry Lewis' body when he dies. I know Gerald Ford promised that France could have him, but I think that was just a misunderstanding from bad translating; I'm pretty sure he thought he was ordering the soup. As much as I know we'd all like France to take Jerry Lewis, I'm just not giving him up on principle.

[monday morning add: "he thought he was ordering the soup"!!!! no one thinks that's funny??? or maybe you didn't make it that far.. anyway, I wish someone would give at least a pity laugh because I think that's hilarious]

Okay, I agree with this one:

Woman wants sex book banned from Pataskala library. The book is, Mastering Multiple Position Sex: Mind-Blowing Lovemaking Techniques That Create Unforgettable Orgasms.

Written by this guy:


Eric Marlowe Garrison, MAEd, MSc, DLSHTM.

Or written by some really ugly guy who got that photo out of a new wallet.

"[Marti] Shrigley took her campaign to Matt Nojonen, director of the public library, and appealed to the library's board of trustees. The board, however, voted unanimously in November to maintain the book in the library's collection."

"Nojonen selected the book, and he said he was swayed by Garrison's credentials -- as a sexuality and relationship educator, Garrison has made presentations to hospitals, universities, medical schools and fraternities and athletic teams..."

Swayed only by his credentials?? Not by those hypnotically blue, bedroom eyes. Methinks Matt isn't being too honest. To his credit, the author's bio says he "earned the Diploma of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine... and holds lifetime membership in the American College of Sexologists." I was going to say that the Hygiene and Tropical Medicine degree sounds a little sketch, but, holy crap! a lifetime member of the American College of Sexologists sounds a thousand times better on a resume then "library school."

In Shrigley's corner, I can find no published reviews for this book. And WorldCat shows only 5 locations holding it, with two of those being book sellers, and of course the LOC. So I'm not sure how the library even found the title to purchase it.

I tried to access the publisher's website, Quiver Books, but our filter blocks access to it. Okay, fine, I bypassed the filter in the name of librarianship. And, hotchee-motchee, this site is smoking! There's this flash animation with couples boning in all sorts of locations. And boobies! Male and female boobies! Wait, what the hell is she doing with that?! Does that really fit in there? Without butter?

The Quiver page says, "Quiver Books, books and kits for couples wanting to take their sex lives to the next level. Books feature sex positions, techniques, erotic stories, color photography, kama sutra, and tantra. Celebrate erotic pleasure and intimacy through beautiful, sophisticated photography and inspiring text."

So, what do you think, kids? Does this book go too far? Is the library right to keep it on the shelf? And how many of you are adding this title to your Christmas list? Especially if you've been naughty this year and you want next year to be a lot naughtier.

You forgot the cinnamon.

So I've been shopping all weekend. I probably started around 7:30 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day when a few stores like Kmart opened to prove that Americans will work any damn time the boss tells us. And then I finished buying crap around 3:00 p.m. today.

My worst example of shopping addiction was on Thanksgiving night at midnight when I was trying to get Black Friday bargains online. At 12:01 a.m. I was on the computer hitting "refresh" to see if some deals that previously were unavailable would suddenly appear and be ready for me to purchase.

If you know what Black Friday is, then you know that many stores opened for business at 5:00 a.m. Friday morning and the online bargains were not active until then. But at 4:30, I got up and clicked "refresh" again to find that something I wanted was now ready. So I sent my credit card info to the store and probably to several hackers and bought crap I really don't need.

I don't give to charities and I don't support any political movement or public television or radio, but I support America by moving money from my credit card company to a large department store so the store can afford to employ additional seasonal workers who send my packages through a shipping company which employs more people to eventually arrive at my house. It's no cure for cancer, but... no, there is no but. I'm a selfish bastard.

So I was in a mall today when I passed a window displaying books. The sign said that this particular book was being sold by Gucci to raise money for something, blah, blah, blah: I don't know because I didn't read it. I just saw that it looked like a children's book and it looked pretty cool.

So I walked over to the Gucci store; doesn't every mall have one? And no, not that chick who sells fake Gucci bags in the ladies room at your library, a real store. And I asked about the book, Snowman in Africa. The saleswoman said it was $25 and all the money went to charity, and again, I didn't listen to which one. But I said, I'll take it.

You should see this book. I'm not a book critic, but it's about a snowman who doesn't melt and doeesn't like cold weather so he goes to Africa in a balloon and hangs out with the animals ... so I'll just point out the cool stuff I noticed. One, there is no barcode, and no ISBN. So for a librarian, this is just freaky. It's like meeting someone who doesn't have fingerprints. You start to wonder if he's ever murdered anyone. Maybe this book is in the witness relocation program.

And the book jacket is illustrated on the inside, too. And the endpapers look cool. I don't have the book in front of me, but they're covered with art, too, bananas or elephants or something.

So anyway, I buy the book, and the woman asks if I want it wrapped. And I think for a second that it's not a gift, so I almost said, no, but then I nodded to her and said, sure.

She disappears for about 4 minutes. It was like that scene in Love, Actually where Rowan Atkinson is gift-wrapping the necklace. Except I couldn't see what she was doing. She returned with a large bronze Gucci bag and hands me the receipt tucked into a matching Gucci envelope. Inside the bag is a large Gucci envelope containing the book with a ribbon going round and tied in a bow, and a gold sticker sealing it closed. There is crumpled brown paper filling the area around the envelope.

I couldn't take it. I had to see what she did. So as soon as I got home, I pulled out the envelope and untied the ribbon and removed the sticker. Inside was the book wrapped in more paper and sealed with another sticker. Inside that was an envelope with a card describing the charity and providing some info about the author of the book.

It was just amazing to see. So if you have the opportunity and the $25, stop into a Gucci shop and get the book. And make sure you say "yes" if they ask if you want it wrapped. The book also seems to be available online, and I'm tempted to buy another one to see how it arrives. I swear, it made me feel so giddy to get something wrapped with so much care, I just want to go buy copies and hand them out to strangers. I'm so used to being treated like shit, it's worth the $25 to have someone be nice to me. How the hell will I ever be able to shop at a regular store again?

And the next time I buy stuff online, I'll probably have to light a scented candle and wear pants. Not like now.


Snowman in Africa animation, but remember the pictures in the book don't move:


Alan Rickman tormented by Rowan Atkinson:

bookshelf wishes.

So I'm listening to the audiobook for Philip K. Dick's Valis. And it's not so much a mindfuck, so far, as it's a perfectly rational exploration of time and space.

Actually, I'm simultaneously listening to Valis, The Time Machine (Wells), and Anthem (Rand) by clicking back and forth between chapters.

The Time Machine has me laughing because every time the reader mentions the Time Traveler, I substitute Time Gorilla. And then I try to change the story to fit a world where an intelligent gorilla invents a time machine. I haven't gotten very far, but I cracked up when the Time Gorilla asked his guests to join him after dinner in the Banana Room.

And in order to make Anthem bearable, each time I hear the reader say, "Equality 7-2521," I substitute, "Fuck You, Dickhead." And whenever I hear "The Golden One," I drive up on the sidewalk and crash into a delicatessen.

I guess these stories are somehow related in that they each express an individual's attempts to explore and influence the world around him. I think I'm going to press Shuffle and see if I can keep up with the combined narrative.

But Valis is pretty fucked up on its own. Dick seems to be a genius or at least well-read. So the influence of drugs on his characters just makes me envy them more. Most people are boring on drugs. Expand the consciousness of most normal people with chemicals and they all end up singing "Stairway to Heaven."

Drugs fuck you up because they enable our brains to access things our other senses can't normally perceive. Or through a long developed self-preservation, they choose to ignore. That's why drugs fuck up so many people. There's a lot of shit we just shouldn't know.

I've known things that I shouldn't know. But I've had to ignore them. Otherwise, I might become indebted to some Entity or some external Force. I can barely tolerate having regular people around; so I for damn sure don't want to clean the house because some Entity might come to visit. Fuck you, Entity.

Speaking of which; Dick writes, or says, however you want to interpret the narrator in Valis, as an autobiography or a novel, the words "fucked up" to describe where he lives, as in "The whole place was fucked up." I think that's awesome.

I love when characters say something was fucked. Fucked or fucked up; it's the same to me. Say something is fucked and you can only go up from there. Your story could end with everyone near death and you missing a leg and it's still better than being fucked. To be fucked implies the promise of something better somewhere down the road. To begin a story by saying everything was fucked is to be an optimist.

So my choice for the Greatest Novel Ever Written would open with "Everything was fucked." I thought about "everything is fucked," but that sounds too negative. In fact, my ultimate story that I would place on my nightstand and read every night before bed would just say, "Everything was fucked. The End."

And I would nod and think, "Yeah. Yeah, it was."

Brainworks.

I always wonder about written language. Apart from manatees (Trichechus), humans (Homo sapiens) are the only creatures able to form rhyming couplets and compose poems of any substantial length. Although, and this surprises some people, manatees are offended by limericks.

So I think this book might be something that me and the manatees could enjoy, Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human (and Manatee) Invention, by Stanislis Dehaene (ISBN-13 978-0670021109). Hey, he has a Wikipedia entry so he must be good.

But yet, this is the same guy in this report:"Babies Can Communicate with Numbers Before Talking," io9. February 7, 2008.

"Behavioral experiments indicate that infants aged 4 months or older possess an early "number sense" that allows them to detect changes in the number of objects... very young infants are sensitive to both the number and identity of objects, and these pieces of information are processed by distinct neural pathways."

Yeah, tell that to my nephew. The kid is 14-months old and loses at blackjack every time. Sure, he understands that he has three cards in front of him by the way he smears each one with drool, but he doesn't know shit about when to stand on 20. Never mind when to split. The kid has two face card cards for chrissakes and wants more, so I give him another. And you're busted, you idiot. Look at that. You better get more money from your mommy's purse. I'm not giving you more cards until you pay up. Here, play with these scissors.

I've written about writing on my blog. Hey, that sounds funny: I've written about writing. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. (Catches breath.) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

But this book sounds cool because I always wonder about written language, about how most cultures have one-to-many forms of it and no matter how the language evolves, we can still find consistent meaning that allows us to communicate.

There were stories this week about the difficulty autistic children have learning handwriting. And that made me laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. What is wrong with me?

Do any kids even write anymore? Don't they do that thing with their thumbs where messages fly through the air from kid to kid and "brb" and "h8r" are meaningful substitutes for actual words?
But as modern librarian, I avoid paper books, with their germs and their bulk and their simple presence. I prefer ebooks which are so much easier to ignore since they reside out of sight. But yet, I can still tell everyone, "that's next on my reader," or "that's in the queue." But on my bookshelf, that book is just a slab of procrastination, a guilt brick. But on my reader, it's the promise of a new day. Ah, we modern librarians are more awesome than every other librarian put together. Okay, that's too many. But we're more awesome than 53 regular librarians.

So anyway, Reading in the Brain sounds like a book that I can't wait to consider reading, as long as it has lots of pictures, and doesn't use big words.

If you'd like to enter a drawing to win a free book which could be Dehaene's book, but I think it's random from a list of available books, visit Seed Magazine here.