Me < Cool

So one of the kids comes up to me and asks if that's an earring in my ear, and then he laughs a little. Like he thought, look at the old dude with the earring.

But I got my ear pierced over 30 years ago, I thought, before that kid was even born. 30 years ago. Damn.

That was the first time I did anything cool. We went to Carlos' house and mixed booze and whatever we could find in the blender: fruit cocktail, frozen yogurt bars, whatever. And Carlos brought out the dissecting needle that he took from school and all the guys pierced their ears. We borrowed earrings from the girls until the holes healed and we could get our own.

Everything I've done since, the Loverboy headband, the Sex Pistols safety pins, the Bon Jovi hair cut, the David Bowie leg wax, the David Lee Roth chest wax, the Ani DiFranco nose ring, the Michael Jackson nose job, the Tori Amos hair color, the Axl Rose cornrows, have all been an attempt to recapture that tiny, fleeting moment of coolness.

That year I first got my ear pierced, I was cool. It's been downhill ever since.

Naked Lady Pen 2.0

You read about my love for the naked lady pen (of course, you did). And of course you also declared me a foolish person because the naked lady pen is a tacky, exploitative object that belongs back in the 1950's with the naked lady playing cards and Playboy club swizzle sticks.

But the naked lady pen concept is so much more. Thanks to a Google search visitor searching for "naked lady pen iPhone," it got me thinking about the ability of the iPhone (and other devices) to flip their screen displays to either a horizontal and vertical orientation. Well the concept of the naked lady pen is that the "image" changes based on vertical up or down so that the lady appears either naked or dressed.

Is there an application for the iPhone that lets you switch between two different wallpaper images as you flip the phone from vertical to horizontal?

If not, imagine as you flip the phone to imitate the effect of the naked lady phone, you would have two mostly identical images except that one would have matted or mapped area where
the third image would appear or disappear. The third image could be anything, a black shape to mask the naked lady or any image that appears and disappears just like any other "float" pen, a gradient, or a pattern. It would be like a liquid wallpaper.

You could make "lava light" wallpaper for your iPhone or reproduce Rorschach's mask (from Watchmen).

If this doesn't exist, please, get working on this. Doesn't it sound cool?

My most prized possessions.

If you ask a mother what she would grab first in the event of a fire, she would answer, her children. If you asked the father the same question, he would answer his Dan Marino autographed football and then his wallet and then his children.

If you asked the.effing.librarian what would get saved in the event of a fire in the carboard box he sleeps in behind the Late Nite Laundry, he would answer, without hesitation, his collection of naked lady pens.

I love naked lady pens, or as they are otherwise called "tip and strip" pens, or float pens. I didn't know that there are collectors (and here) of float pens or that there are patents involved in removing the ladies' clothing. If you look at the image, you can see that the "clothing" slips away to reveal the lady beneath. The patent page on the design is pretty interesting.

Whenever I pick up my naked lady pen, I imagine that I've just been elected the President of the United States of America. And as I take the Oath and prepare to sign my name into the Big Book of U.S. Presidents, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court realizes that he left his pen in the toilet where he was working on the day's Sudoku puzzle.

Pulling my naked lady pen from my jacket pocket avoids any embarrassment:

"Here, let me just sign with my naked lady pen."
"Let me see that. Why, look. She disrobes and dresses as you alter the orientation of the pen. You card! That is most amusing. The pleasure you must derive from such a spectacular writing instrument. You will be our most popular president, ever, as you are a true man of the people."
"Thank you, Chief Justice. Would you indulge me by pulling my finger?"

The universal appeal of the naked lady pen has now spread to the golfing community in the form of the Putt-Her (click for video).

I wonder what other products might benefit from the naked lady pen technology... Or is it, that the naked lady pen is the perfect model of form and function? Yes, that must be it. By comparison that golf club is pretty stupid.

I guess you could create a sleeve where you could insert your library card (or a smaller "key-chain" version on flexible plastic) and your library logo would appear and disappear to cover or reveal your library barcode.... that could work. But not as well as dressing and undressing a tiny lady. Or dude. But I don't own any of those dude pens. Yet.

Cool things I own.

I've collected some cool stuff over the years, but most of it is in boxes, somewhere. But here are two neat things I own that I like to look at (so I will share them with you) - this is a Kenny Scharf necktie and a Todd Schorr uncut sheet of Veil of Delirium cards (signed) and detail from the sheet:

This is too cool.

I wish I could remember how to make a record.














from blyberg.net

cool stuff

Here are a couple more cool things to play with:

Make a silkscreen at the Warhol factory. This site walks you through Andy's basic process and lets you make and send an e-card (which doesn't always get sent, so you might want to do a printscreen to save your artwork).

And at Haringkids, there are games and pictures to color and lots of activity and lesson plans for parents and teachers. You can also download a weird morphing screensaver for your computer.

this is cool.. yeah

Maybe you noticed the new banner image here at the.effing.librarian.
Staff at Effing Labs have been blasting underachieving high school students with gamma rays in an attempt to waste taxpayer money or possibly create a sensitive yet tortured superhero (we forget).

But after months of that, while typing a condolence letters (one of many, gamma rays and teens? who'da thunk?) to a parent, we accidentally discovered a completely awesome use for WordPerfect.

A lot of people have given up on WordPerfect. But it (I have ver. 12 for Windows) has one of the coolest 3D text editing features called TextArt. Here are some samples:







How to do it:
Use your standard fonts or go to AcidFonts or wherever you like and download your cool fonts. Then open a blank document. Go to Insert : Graphics : TextArt.

Play around with all the settings because they're pretty cool. But be careful with the 3D mode because it needs lots of memory.

Once you have something you want to use for your document or web site, you close the TextArt box and check your results. If all you want is something for a document, then you're done. Treat the TextArt as any other image. But if you want to use it for a web page or for your blog, select the image and go to Edit : Copy.

Now you can open some editing program like Paint or Irfanview or the Gimp (I used Irfanview) and paste the image. When you save it as a .gif image you can set a transparent color for the background which (yeah, I'm not a graphic designer) removes that big rectangle thingy from around your text. Now you can upload the image as needed.

Now, if you'll excuse me...letters...

Are Librarians Cool?

If you need to ask the question, then the answer is "No."

Here are two of the latest articles branding the profession as "cool."

A Hipper Crowd of Shushers (you'll need to log in)
For New-Look Librarians, Head to Brooklyn

But Librarians are not cool. That doesn't mean that there aren't cool librarians. I went to library school with a few people I would call cool. But does that make them cool (that I could label them as cool)? After all, who am I that I could call someone cool and have it mean what most people define as cool?

As an fyi:

• I got a tattoo because a Richard Hell song told me to. Wow, I must be cool.
• I skipped a Jane's Addiction concert because the crowd looked too trendy. Too cool for Jane's Addiction, gosh, my coolness is off the charts!

If none of these things makes me cool, then I don't know what else to tell you.

But I've been places where, when answering what I do, someone will look around as if they're thinking, "oh, librarians hang out here; let's go someplace else." So sometimes, when asked, I won't say librarian; I'll answer "scientist." People aren't sure what to make of a scientist, but at least a scientist could be cool. Hell, maybe that's why the Library has disappeared from the degree and most schools only offer a "Master's of Science."

But ultimately, being a librarian isn't cool. I don't know how long it will be before it is, if ever.

So for now, I tell people I'm a scientist. An evil scientist.