basic web crap.

I know there are lots of ways to download images and videos from the Internet. I have a Firefox extension that downloads and I have Tubesucker. And I know how to right-click (yes, this is Windows).

But there are times when I'm not on my computer and I need to download a hidden or secret or unavailable file and there doesn't seem to be any way to get it right then and there.

So this has helped:

(<)html(>)
(<)body(>)
(<)a href="http:// "(>) right-click and save as (<)/a(>)
(<)/body(>)
(<)/html(>)

Obviously, you need to remove the parentheses, but I couldn't get the text to display properly without them. Put that in Notepad or any text editor and save it with a .htm extension.

I say now, I Am Not a Geek, or a h4x0r; I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. So there may be easier ways to do this, but there are many times when I've scanned the Source of a web page to find the file I need and then copied or compiled the URL from known pieces and pasted it into a simple file like this to get the download.

If you know a better way, let me know. Or maybe I just shouldn't be downloading these kinds of files.

... okay... assume you just saw a video or an animation of something, but there's no way to save a copy, and since this is the Internet, you assume, like me, that everything on it is free for the taking.

so you look at the source for the web page and see something simple like "/videos/123456.flv" and you think, hey, this is where the video is stored. so you add that to the web page URL you're on, like www.dontstealmyvideosyoudamnthief.com and you get www.dontstealmyvideosyoudamnthief.com/videos/123456.flv.

so you paste that whole address into the quotes area in the html file you see above and hit Ctrl-S to save it. then open the file and it will open up in your default browser where you can then right-click on the hypertext link and left-click "Save target as" or "save link as" or whatever it says.

again, not really a big deal, unless you are like me and think that everything on the web is yours to keep. there's more and more stuff that's impossible to get like this, but there are still tons of avi, mov, flv, swf files out there that are easy to grab this way.

have fun. but don't steal other people's stuff. the above is for educational use only and not for any purpose explicitly spelled out in the post. wherever you see the words "steal" or "take," just assume the author meant to add, "do not" before it. any misunderstandings will be attributed to typographical error or poor translations or computer error.

think happy thoughts.

Why Hot Topic is Awesome

I'm easily offended. So when I see some Gen-Y-tard writing about punk rock when the department store cosmetics clerk and the indie record store manager's humping that was to conceive him was probably still coming five years after the Sex Pistols went down the crapper, I can't imagine he has any idea what he's talking about.

Shawn says, "Punk was born on the street but is now bred in major label board rooms with clothing manufacturer tie-ins." But every history of punk acknowledges that Malcolm McLaren only "created" the Sex Pistols to sell bondage and fetish clothing from his shop.

So English punk was always about selling something. New York punk was different. Maybe he's got his geography mixed up.

So now that we've established that no one should glorify punk rock as some mystical surge of DIY grassroots music that somehow has become corrupted by corporate greed, let me just say that punk and rap (hip hop) are the last great musical genres since they existed before the dawn of MTV and Ticketmaster. (But I use "great" loosely with rap music because I am not a fan.)

And Hot Topic is such an easy target. It's goth in a box. It's soccer mom nipple rings. It's safe rebellion. It doesn't take a hatful of clever to make fun.

So why do I love Hot Topic? Because they have the coolest crap. Futurama and super hero toys, tee-shirts, and Hot Topic is the only store I've ever seen to carry Battle Royale on DVD. Battle Freaking Royale! Which I had to buy on VCD from Korea when I first heard about it.

And since they are everywhere, I can find cool crap on clearance in practically every mall in America.

Like last week, I stocked up on Twilight buttons @ 50 cents each in preparation for our library's New Moon nerdfest next month. And I've bought Watchmen and South Park and Flogging Molly tee-shirts and Converse sneakers at huge markdowns.

And there's nothing like having the massively pierced goth and emo kids behind the counter get all riled up when ancient me walks into their store. Why is every kid in Hot Topic covered in tattoos and punctured with piercings? Hey, kid, You will never get a good job if they can see your tats poking out of a business suit!

So don't knock Hot Topic. They didn't kill punk. If anything, they've helped to keep it on life support for old dudes like me.

DISCLAIMER: Due to recent Federal Trade Commission decisions, the.effing.librarian discloses that HOT TOPIC did NOT supply one complimentary stainless steel barbell post for my uvula piercing in exchange for this review. So I shoplifted one when the pale, emaciated vampire chick passed out from malnutrition onto a stack of neatly folded Paramore tee-shirts.

How Oprah will kill me.

It's a tiny thing, but it could mean certain death.

Oprah has an online store which sells "her favorite things" and other useless crap like the O logo Brushed Twill Baseball Cap or the O logo Workout Ankle Socks, so you can get dressed, look in the mirror and say, "O crap, I don't feel like going to the gym today."

But the thing she has that will kill me is the hand-crafted Zulu telephone wire mini-bowl (seen below).

Isn't that awesome? And it's only $17. Sure, it's small, but I like bowls. So I need to buy some. And this is how Oprah will kill me.

If you read the tiny print, it warns: Prop 65 Warning: This product contains Chemicals, including lead known to the state of California to (cause cancer) and birth defects or other reproductive harm. Wash Hands after handling.

WTF??? Oprah sells products that she knows will cause cancer? And reproductive harm? It's a small bowl, so I wasn't even considering storing my reproductive parts in it.

I don't know why she wants to kill me; we have so much in common, being loved by millions of people, for one thing.

And Oprah says, "For twenty years, I've been saying, we need to be able to give people a place where they can get a key chain, a T-shirt or a mug, or something."

So like Oprah, the.effing.librarian says, buy a freaking coffee mug, already.


I have a warehouse full of this crap (not, I think CafePress beats a child to make the mug each time you order one... wait, did I say, "beats a child"? no, never. submits an order to a highly-paid, satisfied adult worker, who is only rarely beaten, only usually around Christmas because the lashes keep him warm).

So, wish me well. I'm torn between supporting the whole African bowl-making economy, and not spawning a 30-fingered baby. Oh, well, it's for Oprah, and the extra twenty fingers might just make the kid a faster typist.

The worst $8 I ever spent

Forgive me, but I just spent money on the DVD for the movie Pathfinder.

I saw the original (1987) version at a film festival and also owned it on VHS until it was lost in some box of crap that I can't remember where I stored it. But I see there are some clips around, so I guess I'll have to settle for watching those for now.

The original movie is like Star Wars in its simplicity: it's a coming of age movie with a powerful villain and an untested hero.

But this new version is a bowl of crap-flavored crap dusted with powdered crap. I'm certain there was a recipe, but each ingredient was another variety of crap.

This movie isn't pleasant to watch; it's not fun; it's not sexy; it's not violent in any good way that only digital effects can screw up, blood just seems to splash around without any consequence of physics. If there is anything good you can say about this movie, I don't know what language you would use because I only know English, and I couldn't come up with any.

Get off Your Ass and something something something

So it looks like the Annoyed Librarian is just sitting on her ass this summer. She's probably in love, taking long walks at sunset, having picnics in the rain, feeding her love dill pickles and listening to Fergie on the Victrola. But checking her site, I saw something that has me posting some old crap I wrote a year or so ago.

She mentions the life expectancy of librarians. I've mentioned this before, but before I wrote this blog, I wrote for another site, which you can see here. All my posts began with, "Get Off Your Ass and..." Eventually, the editor of Game Couch sent me a tee-shirt for my labors. And you know how I feel about tee-shirts (buy one of mine! I still haven't seen one picture of one person or animal wearing one. Look, my email address is right over there; send me something).

When I last checked his site, not one of my articles had a comment on it. For me this means that they haven't been read. Meaning, if I see a comment, I'm done with that item. No comment, and I'll keep pushing that crap until we're both sick of it.

Note: story is old; links are dead.

Get off Your Ass and Get off Your Ass

Like most people, I enjoy sitting on my ass and I need a really good reason to get off it. Between recreational and non-recreational activities, I'm on my ass about eleven hours a day. I'm on my ass a lot at work, and I make a pretty good salary. If I go out drinking, my ass gets a big thumbs up for keeping me on my barstool (not a literal "thumb up my ass," it's not that kind of a bar).

And sometimes I'm just on my ass driving around in my car listening to the groovy band, Thelonious Monster.

Let's face it, on my ass is a good place to be.

The problem with being on my ass is that being on my ass is associated with some of the most common ways I can die. You know that my lifetime odds of dying from falling off a bed, chair or other furniture (like a couch) is 1 in 4,473? That's worse than death from an accidental firearms discharge: 1 in 5,134. I'm safer playing with a loaded gun than just sitting on my ass.

And I'm almost 200 times more likely to get killed from an assault with a firearm than the criminal is likely to be executed. Here's a link to a very attractive graphic on my (and your) odds of dying under various circumstances.

We have a 1 in 7 chance of dying from cancer. The estimated number of deaths from colon & rectal cancer (yes, ass cancer) for 2006 is 55,170: that's more than every other cancer except lung cancer.

Based on these odds, I have to visit the ass doctor and have him poke around my ass to make sure it's okay. This is non-recreational poking. Unless I'm feeling lonely. Then lines get crossed.

However, the odds of death from a foreign body entering through a natural orifice are 1 in 170,367, so my doctor's foreign digit manipulating my fragile posterior could, ironically, do me in. (I wonder if Christopher Walken's Captain Koons knew that when he carried a watch up his ass, "this uncomfortable piece of metal," in Pulp Fiction.)

I like my ass. It's been good to me. My ass keeps my pants from falling down. Like most of my good friends, my ass isn't particularly attractive, but it usually shows up on time. And my ass likes to party.

But I need to do something to get off my ass.

I was thinking about going to Halloween Horror Nights, you know, the big haunted house at Universal Studios. I figured that a bunch of scary monsters running around would keep me on my feet unless I fainted in terror and flopped back down on my ass (death from tripping or stumbling, 1 in 6,278).

But as long as I'm on my ass, I should get back to playing the mini-game, "Car Bomb," in my old copy of Sam and Max Hit the Road (death from explosion of pressurized devices, 1 in 124,936).

Where is my mind?

People always stop me on the street and ask, "Hey, is that your face or did your neck throw up?" But I ignore those people and continue imagining that all the.effing.librarian fans out there are cheering for me because I'm so wonderful, and then they raise me up onto their shoulders and carry me to a world filled with ice cream and jelly beans and Scotch and Jennifer Jason Leigh sexbots, but designed from the way she looked when she was in Miami Blues. And then I wake up in a strange part of town handcuffed to a former Miss New Jersey who tells me "That was the bestest party ever!"

But really, what is in my head all day? Here is a picture of the door to my room when I was a teen. This is pretty much what goes on in my head 24/7. Lots of crap. Except I don't think about Mercury Morris or Nick Buoniconti or the 1972 Miami Dolphins any more. But everything else, yeah. I wish I could turn it off.

Relax: know that you're safe here.

I have good news for visitors of the.effing.librarian: I've recently contracted with Blog Angels.

Blog Angels provides blog guard services for major corporations around the world. Many web sites are continually and constantly monitored by corporate staff, but small blogs like this one are often left unoccupied for hours at a time. I can't be everywhere at once; I need to eat and work and poop. Okay, yes I do all those things at my desk, but you know what I mean.

So who is there to guard your blog when you are away? Who's going to keep out the riff-raff? Have you ever seen a blog that's been overtaken by hoodlums and thugs? I've seen plenty of blogs, innocent oases for vacation photos, kitties wearing feather boas, breastfeeding tips, and diet diaries suddenly get tagged with graffitos, their banners pulled down, posts disassembled, and feeds choked without that watchful eye or sturdy boot around to keep order.

And that's where Blog Angels comes in. The brainchild of Tina V., a former Guardian Angel® and Ray O., a third-degree black belt and former Green Beret, Blog Angels watches over my blog to keep you safe. Intellectual property is no joke, and neither is your security. Blog Angels guarantees to keep the peace. With Blog Angels on the job, know that your comments are safe from vandalism and your visits are as uneventful at night as they would be in daylight. Anytime, 24/7/365 that you visit the.effing.librarian, you'll be safe from muggings, car jackings, terrorist dirty bombs, and litterbugs.

When you see the "winged sword stabbing a computer"™ logo, you know that everything is well. With Blog Angels on the job.

If you don't blog every day or if you're worried about what happens to your blog when you can't be there, then try Blog Angels: a little piece of mind for your little piece of the net.

Mention the.effing.librarian and get the first month free.

Thoughts "c"

So I just went to Toondoo to log into my account to create another hilarious episode of BLACK SHIRTS, you know, that comic strip that all the world is talking about. (The next strip will continue with "square conversation bubble" trying to convince "round conversation bubble" that he's a woman - coming soon.)

And I see this question about a strip: "I don't get it. What's LAPD?"

So, of course, I wonder if this "google generation" lazyassmofo googled "lapd." The first hit from my search says "official website of the Los Angeles Police Department," so I guess he didn't.

But even if he did, how would he even know if the top answer was the right one? I google acronyms and abbreviations and new terms all the time, but sometimes I need to confirm what I find, since obviously at first glance, I don't know what I found. That's why now I tell people to bypass google and just go to wikipedia for any damn thing they want to know. If they aren't going to read a book or ask the librarian, at least they'll find some answer that isn't tied to lots of ads. And they won't have to think too much. Because who needs that; it hasn't helped most people so far.

Thoughts "b"

I hear these kids in the stores with their parents, asking, "Do you like this?" "Do you want this?" "Do we need this?" "I think I want this." "I think I want a yellow one." "Mom, you know I'd like this in yellow." "Mom, I'd like this."
All in less than a minute.

And there are parents who try to answer all the questions until they freak out under this massive denial of service attack. And I want to yell, "Put up your firewall!"

And I start to see kids as some kind of biomechanical organism, as if computers and the Internet and hackers and spam are just a natural evolution of human beings.

Mom, I'm in love with my teacher.
Mom, I'm in love with Adolph Hitler.
Mom, I put a roll of nickels up my ass.
Mom, I put the nickels in your purse.


It's like a complex computer program testing the strength of the firewall. What code gets a response? What code lets me stay out later? What code gets me cash?

Sorry, no conclusion. These are just thoughts.

Thoughts "a"

So I was just watching the Michael Moore film, Sicko, but I had to turn it off. I can't stand his narration. His voice sounds like he's going to end each sentence with, "You gonna eat that?"

I appreciate what he's trying to do, but I don't see how linking the current health care crisis to the demonized Richard Nixon is going to get everyone to suddenly change the system.

"Sarah Jacobson needed a new heart. Her insurance company denied her claim on the grounds that since Sarah's own heart had been beating in her chest since before birth, giving her a new heart for her used heart would be an unfair trade. Um, you gonna finish that?"

But I think he's misguided. I think the real culprit is the stock market. As long as businesses make decisions based on what shareholders want, these problems won't disappear.

And shareholders are everyone, even foreigners who hate America.
"Let's make Americans pay so much for health care that they can't afford to live.
And let's make food cost so much in America that they can't afford to eat.
And let's make real estate so expensive in America that they can't afford to have homes."

People are worried that terrorists are going to blow stuff up in America, but that's not my worry. I worry that hostile nations will make everything so expensive in America that I won't be able to afford to live here, and then I'll have to learn Spanish and live somewhere else.

I didn't give a crap about foreign investments in the USA until ten years ago when South Americans started buying all the housing in South Florida and raising all the home prices. And now that the dollar is so weak and foreign investors can be buying commodities like wheat, which translates to expensive food, I'm really paranoid about it.

"And let's make energy so expensive that the gamer librarians can't play their Wiis and PS3s and XBox360s."

Ah, that got your attention, huh? Who's paranoid now?

What's right or wrong with Wikipedia?

It's nice of Wikipedia to have an entry on Wikipedia.

As I read the entry, I came across this criticism:

"The site has also been criticized for...favoring consensus over
credentials in its editorial process..."

I don't know what Wikipedia's current editorial process is, but I think it's pretty open, allowing any registered user to post and/or edit any entry. And then it would be up to any one of the rest of us to correct that entry or make a claim that's it's inaccurate or complete bullshit.

This is the core of the democratic process. Present an idea and allow the masses to judge its value. And this is what seems to be good about Wikipedia. The people decide what is right or wrong.

And this is the state of much of the Internet. The people decide. If I blog something and you blog something and others blog similar somethings, the Internet will become filled with our ideas. And if we say similar things, then similar ideas will dominate.

Now I trust my own level of susceptibility to stating crap. But how can I be sure that you don't say complete crap? And if you or I have more free time to post our crap, then won't the Internet just be filled with your or my crap? Even if your intentions are good, are you or I qualified to load the Internet with crap?

We like to think of a hierarchical chain of knowledge, from the student to the teacher to the expert. But what if the opinions of students dominate: are masses of students qualified to make decisions in this democracy when obvious experts are ignored?

This seems to be the root problem with the Internet and Wikipedia. Is consensus of opinion good enough to help us make decisions?

How do you control information? Do you limit what is known, or, do you dilute the known with crap until the general understanding of everything is wrong? ...In other words, is it possible to use Wikipedia or Google or any other popular informational sources to make people stupid?

The complaint of lack of credentials is what interests me most. If one is an expert and paid to publish ideas (research, facts, conclusions, opinions), then others must pay, in some form, to access those ideas. If Wikipedia is free, then the ideas posted there would be inferior to those of the expert.

But if consensus is the arbiter of knowledge; if Wikipedia can alter the perception of people to believe that consensus is the rule, then the argument is that consensus limits knowledge because people will accept what's "generally known" as an expert opinion. If we are all experts, is anyone an expert?

Does this make any sense?

Teachers oppose Wikipedia because they've seen the bell curve and know that consensus only equals about a grade of C+.

An educated person knows her own limitations and says, "I am not qualified to answer that, but here is an expert source."

Where do you go for answers? If we define that source as an expert, then Wikipedia and Google are the experts.

There is the dilemma. People want agreement. Reality demands agreement. If ten of us call something a "chair" and one calls it "my son" then that person might be labeled as crazy. But what if ten of us say that the Earth is flat and one says it's round? By consensus, the Earth will remain flat until, when? We fear this kind of power that consenus can wield because of the scale of information access on the Internet.
[editor's note: the chair is not my son.]

Does consensus guarantee that the Internet will eventually be filled with crap?

Rest easy and read with confidence the words written here: I am The Effing Librarian. And I guarantee that everything I say, regardless of consensus of opinion, is complete and utter crap.