TechCrunch confirms what I've always known: the.effing.librarian was there before Oprah.
Now that Oprah is on Twitter, all or your friends might suspect that you only started tweeting because Oprah does it. But with the help of this Fancy Nancy website (actually, it's very "stark," which is a fancy word for "plain"; but it's fancy in it's power), you can prove to the world that you were on Twitter before Oprah.
Just visit herebeforeoprah.com and enter your Twitter username to see whether you existed before Oprah.
"@effinglibrarian was here before @oprah"
Gosh. I'm just the coolest. What about you?
Showing posts with label oprah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oprah. Show all posts
Monday, April 20, 2009
Saturday, November 8, 2008
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."
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.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Google tricks we need.
From Lifehacker: Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks, someone posted the comment, "don't forget http://www.google.com/search?q=mass+of+the+earth"
And I tried to be funny by adding, "what about
http://www.google.com/search?q=mass+of+Oprah
Apparently it wasn't funny to them since my comment wasn't approved: it seems you have to audition to comment on Lifehacker. And Oprah jokes are taboo.
[what? the woman is one of the most powerful celebrities on the planet: that alone is license to joke about her.]
You know what? Screw Oprah. Every time she announces a new favorite book, we all have to scramble around to find our dusty copies that haven't circ'ed in two years or rush orders for 25 copies for each branch so we don't have to hear all the old farts complain that we don't have this excellent book that they just heard about that was published fifteen years ago.
This just happened with The Pillars of the Earth. For some weird reason, my mom calls me and asks for me to get it for her. Normally, we discuss my day while we make some Mrs. Grass chicken noodle soup together (because I still live with my mom because I'm a librarian) which is our special time because she lets me drop in the flavor "egg." Oh, you know what I love about these food company sites is when you look for nutritional information or how the mystery numbers on the package translate to an expiration date, but all you find is some page that says, "Tips" or "Helpful hints." And you click on the link and you get a page of ways to personalize your dining experience by adding ingredients to the preparation like cheese or salsa. And they treat this information like it's helping, like now they've satisfied some federal regulation to provide consumer product information. Add cheese! Fuck you. I add cheese to everything, anyway. I have shredded Colby Jack melted on my PopTarts. How about suggesting that I add a turtle? Or a tennis ball? Or shredded tin foil? I guess you should recommend that I don't add those things to be helpful, but you should have told me before I dropped Speedy into the soup.
Let me get back to hating Oprah. So my mom calls for The Pillars of the Earth and I notice that there are about ten holds on it already which for an 18 year-old book is a lot. And I asked mom where she heard about the book, and she said she just heard it was a good book. She can't name where she heard it. So two hours later, I see news that Oprah just named her latest book as The Pillars of the Earth, and I call my mom to tell her, and guess, what? Now there are about 75 people on the list. And by the next day, there are hundreds more people who suddenly need to read this book. Three days earlier, it was sitting on the shelf completely unaware of its impending notoriety. Sure, it had seen its share of the being in the spotlight, and it was stilling pulling its weight by getting into some reader's hands around 6-8 times a year. But because of Oprah, we have like 200+ copies of this thing and there are 600 people waiting to read it. So you're looking at a 2 to 3 month wait.
I can't think of another person who can create such mass-fucking-hysteria while producing nothing. She doesn't write the books: she reads them. And sometimes she peddles absolute crap. Don't even get me started on A Million Little Pieces or The Secret. At this point in her career, when she's worth $1.5-2 Billion, there is nothing she can credit to being "life altering." But yet she pushes this crap on us and we believe her. What the fuck could she ask the universe for that she doesn't already have?
On the positive side, what this says about people is that they want to read books; they just want the effort to be meaningful. Nobody wants to read a book for a week and then go, feh. So Oprah gets people to read something besides TV Guide. And for that we can thank her.
I just we weren't such zombies, following Oprah's every word. When the fifth patron calls in for the latest Oprah book and I tell her that all the copies are checked out, and she has the nerve to be surprised so that I have to explain Oprah's popularity.... "Yes, I know she just announced the book a little while ago, but she announced it to 100 million people all at once. And we only just heard about it, too, so we didn't order 200 copies last week. So yes, we just had the one copy on the shelf, so that's why there are eighty people ahead of you. Yes, I know that means it will be six-and-a-half years before you get it, but we'll try to get some more copies to keep that from happening."
Oprah isn't simply the most influential (non-Pope) person on the planet, Oprah is a fucking planet. And we are simply millions of unspectacular bodies caught in the orbit of her gravitational pull. If only Google could produce a formula to calculate her mass.
And I tried to be funny by adding, "what about
http://www.google.com/search?q=mass+of+Oprah
Apparently it wasn't funny to them since my comment wasn't approved: it seems you have to audition to comment on Lifehacker. And Oprah jokes are taboo.
[what? the woman is one of the most powerful celebrities on the planet: that alone is license to joke about her.]
You know what? Screw Oprah. Every time she announces a new favorite book, we all have to scramble around to find our dusty copies that haven't circ'ed in two years or rush orders for 25 copies for each branch so we don't have to hear all the old farts complain that we don't have this excellent book that they just heard about that was published fifteen years ago.
This just happened with The Pillars of the Earth. For some weird reason, my mom calls me and asks for me to get it for her. Normally, we discuss my day while we make some Mrs. Grass chicken noodle soup together (because I still live with my mom because I'm a librarian) which is our special time because she lets me drop in the flavor "egg." Oh, you know what I love about these food company sites is when you look for nutritional information or how the mystery numbers on the package translate to an expiration date, but all you find is some page that says, "Tips" or "Helpful hints." And you click on the link and you get a page of ways to personalize your dining experience by adding ingredients to the preparation like cheese or salsa. And they treat this information like it's helping, like now they've satisfied some federal regulation to provide consumer product information. Add cheese! Fuck you. I add cheese to everything, anyway. I have shredded Colby Jack melted on my PopTarts. How about suggesting that I add a turtle? Or a tennis ball? Or shredded tin foil? I guess you should recommend that I don't add those things to be helpful, but you should have told me before I dropped Speedy into the soup.
Let me get back to hating Oprah. So my mom calls for The Pillars of the Earth and I notice that there are about ten holds on it already which for an 18 year-old book is a lot. And I asked mom where she heard about the book, and she said she just heard it was a good book. She can't name where she heard it. So two hours later, I see news that Oprah just named her latest book as The Pillars of the Earth, and I call my mom to tell her, and guess, what? Now there are about 75 people on the list. And by the next day, there are hundreds more people who suddenly need to read this book. Three days earlier, it was sitting on the shelf completely unaware of its impending notoriety. Sure, it had seen its share of the being in the spotlight, and it was stilling pulling its weight by getting into some reader's hands around 6-8 times a year. But because of Oprah, we have like 200+ copies of this thing and there are 600 people waiting to read it. So you're looking at a 2 to 3 month wait.
I can't think of another person who can create such mass-fucking-hysteria while producing nothing. She doesn't write the books: she reads them. And sometimes she peddles absolute crap. Don't even get me started on A Million Little Pieces or The Secret. At this point in her career, when she's worth $1.5-2 Billion, there is nothing she can credit to being "life altering." But yet she pushes this crap on us and we believe her. What the fuck could she ask the universe for that she doesn't already have?
On the positive side, what this says about people is that they want to read books; they just want the effort to be meaningful. Nobody wants to read a book for a week and then go, feh. So Oprah gets people to read something besides TV Guide. And for that we can thank her.
I just we weren't such zombies, following Oprah's every word. When the fifth patron calls in for the latest Oprah book and I tell her that all the copies are checked out, and she has the nerve to be surprised so that I have to explain Oprah's popularity.... "Yes, I know she just announced the book a little while ago, but she announced it to 100 million people all at once. And we only just heard about it, too, so we didn't order 200 copies last week. So yes, we just had the one copy on the shelf, so that's why there are eighty people ahead of you. Yes, I know that means it will be six-and-a-half years before you get it, but we'll try to get some more copies to keep that from happening."
Oprah isn't simply the most influential (non-Pope) person on the planet, Oprah is a fucking planet. And we are simply millions of unspectacular bodies caught in the orbit of her gravitational pull. If only Google could produce a formula to calculate her mass.
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