Warning, the Internet's not private PEOPLE ARE READING WHAT YOU SAY!!!

I wasn't going to tell anybody this until after my vacation (oh, I'm going on vacation Thursday-Tuesday, don't expect to hear much from me)... anyway, I wasn't going to say anything yet, but something happened and now I want to. So I started a new blog. It's not original or good or anything, it's just about the books I read and stuff. I did it because I have met some neat people lately who share the same taste as I do, and I thought it'd be fun to have a place of my own to talk about that stuff where it wouldn't be interrupted with talk about my night at the bar or pictures of my fat butt.

The site is called Booky Ooky and I called it that because my cat told me to. Anyway, the reason I am bringing it up is because I wrote up a little review of this book I read over the weekend and didn't really like. It was fast and off-the-cuff like everything I ever do, and so I posted it and forgot about it until two hours later when I got my first comment. I was so excited because nobody knew about my new blog, so I was amazed someone stumbled upon a review I had written two hours earlier.

Well it turns out the comment was from the AUTHOR of the book I had just sorta trashed. So clearly he is obsessed with reading what people say about his work and is also Nancy Drew.

His comment makes me like him a lot. I dunno why. I just like him. But as I was just telling a friend in an e-mail, I feel really weird and bad and awkward because my lame, half-assed opinion of a book that I wrote about in my shitty blog actually reached the author of said book, which is not something I ever thought would happen unless I met J.K. Rowling on the street and freaked out with praise and adulation before I fainted on her. It's very bizarre.

But the good part is that my very first comment was from a semi-famous author (who's name and book I am not saying here because I am hiding from him) and how many people can say that, y'know?

Anyway, go check out the blog if you want. It's way under construction. My CSS skillz suck major, and I don't know dick one about PHP/MySQL, so Wordpress is still very daunting. And there's no blogroll yet, so don't get offended that you're not on it.

Office Art

Ok, here are pictures of my fabulous office art. First the Inspirational Post-Its Series:

Wuzzle Riot

The Gloppies

Hellraiser

You-Know-Who

And introducing Timothy Pirhana:

Don't fuck with Timothy Pirhana!

BB

I'm wearing a shirt that makes me look really skinny today, but I noticed in the bathroom earlier that looking skinny in the torso only accentuates my huge fat ass. I'm like this close to being one of those emaciated vegetarian hipster boys except I eat a balanced diet and get lots of sleep, so I have a healthy face. THIS CLOSE! I could move to Williamsburg and fit right in if only my weight were more evenly distributed.

Right, this is basically in update on my quest for a muscular butt.

Updated status: Not muscular.

On the plus side, my occasional outings to the gym have left me feeling more energetic. I mean energeticer.

In other news, I've been considering lately how fun it would be to have boobs, and I'm trying to decide if the benefits of having them would override the tortures of menstruation.

I don't want to be a girl, mind you, I am firmly combortable in my masculine status (that was a pun), I just like the idea of boobs. I feel like if I had them, I could never leave the house and just lay around all day playing with them. My friend Kim used to say this about having a penis, and I totally understand where she's coming from. I have a good body for boobs. Not big ones, like maybe a B.

Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about today.

Oh gross!

This article courtesy of this guy.

I don't even want to talk about it. If I had spiders in my ear, I wouldn't flush them out with water. I'd use a flame thrower.

Zzzzzzing!

I keep having sex dreams, it's so annoying. Every time I have one, there are annoying people in them that get all up in our way and then when we're finally able to get on with it I wake up and smash my alarm clock to bits like "SCREW YOU ALARM CLOCK, MORE LIKE ALARM COCKBLOCK!"

This morning, it was with a sexy blonde quiddich player (DON'T make fun of me, in my brain quiddich players look like rugby players) and it was interupted by a Toby Keith concert. I'm pretty sure this always happens because my subconscious is telling me how I have emotional problems, but dammit, subconscious, I already know and since I'm not living it up in my life, let me do it in my dreams, stop trying to fix everything!

Anyway, tell all your friends to read my blog because it's such a wonderland of introspection.

Also, I wanted to show you guys something. I wrote an article for that website Best Gay Blogs, which has recently restructured itself. It's new look and feel is still in its infancy, but I'm now a staff writer there. My first article sucks a lot because I wrote it in a hurry, but it's about having a major crush on a stranger who's blog your read, and I'm an expert because it happened to me, but I'm not telling you who. Anyway, I'm pretty sure for a lot of you, that site's not going to be your one stop spot to shop for all your blog-reading needs, but if you're not worried about your wife scanning your web history and seeing a gay website, go read my little piece. It's all about me.

Ask me if you need help on the big words

Hi. It's me.

This article from The Walton Tribune, whatever that is, is a couple weeks old. I set it aside after reading only the headline and forgot about it until today. I thought it would be an interesting little diatribe on the disappearance of book reviews in major papers and the depressing, though overdiscussed topic that people are reading less and less. And in a way it was. Mr. S. Milligan, however, decided to turn it into a self-righteous whine about how nobody as smart or cultured as him is being given a forum to discuss "good" literature anymore.

Like countless other deluded, uppity smart people -- you know, the kind that made you decide against pursuing that Ph.D. -- he seems to think that certain mediums of expression (like the Internet) are somehow beneath him because their contributors are second-class idiots who think Jane Eyre is a character on the O.C. Observe:

Despite the claims of Internet equality, if you've ever read the average online review of anything, you know that issues like intelligence or writing ability rarely come into play on the web.

First of all, Internet equality? What does that even mean? Secondly, shut your mouth, Milligan. Honey, there are numerous print publications, considered legitimate, where intelligence and writing ability have little to do with what they produce. You should know. Furthermore, if you can't find anything of quality on this new-fangled Internet contraption, then you clearly are not looking hard enough. Sure, any moron can set up his own blog and spout nonsense for the world to read, and there is a lot of dreck to trudge through, but I will not sit and listen to you blustering on about a total void of intellectual material on literature. I subscribe to a lot of quality blogs about quality literature, not to mention a couple podcasts and a general sense of where to look for more. The Internet is not so large and confusing as to be unnavigable in this regard.

I also don't appreciate Milligan's tone, which implies that only brainy, "literature" literature is worth the time of the intellectual elite. Just because a book does not have the empty validation of sitting on the proper shelf in the book store does not mean it holds no deeper value than entertainment. I'm gonna go right out and say that I'm a smart person. I get literature. I can read difficult works and grasp the secret special between-the-lines ivory tower implications. I promise that these standards that you so prize, Mr. Milligan, are present in more than one "mindless" book with a dragon on the cover. Lots of it is crap, sure, but let's not judge books by their... well, you know.

I don't disagree with our humble journalist. It's upsetting to see book reviews removed from newspapers. I'm on board with this. But maybe instead of complaining about it, you could reach out a bit further to look for the community of elitists you so desperately crave, and if you still fail to find them (though I know they're out there, I've tripped over their websites before) then do it yourself.

Vanity Post!

So I finally found the cord that connects my camera to my computer! The only pictures on there were before and after photos from when I colored my hair and one of some funny Pocky and even though you saw my new hair when I was a famous model I don't care.

before

after

WHY IS EVERYTHING I OWN RUBBISH!?!

At last.fm

Often the first, but this time the last to heft my increasingly large ass onto an Internet bandwagon, I'm now going to talk about my experience with last.fm, which I joined Sunday afternoon, so by now I'm a total expert.

Basically, what the site does is spy on you listening to music on your computer, right, and it keeps track of what you listen to if your metadata doesn't suck (more on that later.) You can also hook up with friends, join groups, tag stuff (a website's not a website without social tagging these days, it's the new anorexic), and eventually get recommendations based on your music habits. Not preferences, habits.

I say that because if you listen to a song all the way through, it assumes you like it no more or less than any other song you listen to all the way through. There's no rating system except for if you listen to something over and over again like a crazy person with no desire for variation.

The website's clunky and slow and horribly-designed, and I find myself very often subjected to things I hate on my recommendations station. This may be because I listened to the wrong sorts of stuff at the beginning, but the thing plays some real shit. Luckily, you can skip tracks and ban songs, but you cannot ban artists and try as I might, last.fm, I promise I'm not going to starting liking Nelly Furtado or Michelle Branch, those bitches make my blood boil and just because I like ONE SONG by The Wreckers does not mean you have to shove her gross whining into my ears every three minutes.

On the plus side, I've heard more obscure, crazy Japanese music than I have in my entire life up until now because I joined the shibuya-kei group. I've also filled up a little post-it of things to check out, and after work today, I'm going to Virgin to buy some music by Messer für Frau Müller and Plus-Tech Squeeze Box because now I'm in love.

I also spent a good portion of my work morning listening to the personal station of this guy in Finland, and it's pretty much the only place besides my living room where you can hear Christina Aguilera, Diana Krall, Winona Judd, and Judy Garland in succession without touching any dial. He's also kinda cute, so I messaged him and told him I liked his music and now he's my Finland boyfriend even though he hasn't written back yet.

Anyway the main reason the site is frustrating is because nobody in the world can take care of their music collection. Everyone's ID3 tags suck, so things don't really get cataloged right. This is especially hard with Japanese things, but ESPECIALLY with classical music, which I won't even get into here because I don't get into it on last.fm because it would be a crock. (I studied this shit, I'm a music librarian, after all. I have papers written on the uselessness of ID3 tags and the databases that supply them.)

Also, a chronic problem with social tagging is that people are idiots, and the way this manifests on last.fm is like if I say "Play me music with the tag 'upbeat' plz" the thing starts playing these dirges and emo anthems and whiny singer-songwriters, and I'm like "BITCHES, if an artist does not play exclusively peppy music, do not tag them as such unless you're all depressives who consider anything over 65 bpm to be upbeat."

To conclude, no matter how sucky the website is, it's still real fun to play around with and a fun way to learn new things so everyone join and be my friend. At the very least, go to my little playlist that I made to give people an idea of my musical tastes. You can't pick what song you want because it's illegal, so you're just going to have to set aside 45 minutes to listen to the 15 tracks. You'll notice I don't like slow songs or music that's about feelings unless it's by a woman with a silky, jazzy voice.

Happy Bean

When I'm stressed and feeling crappy, I take very little pleasure in things. First to go is my sex drive followed by my desire to do quiet things I usually enjoy like write in my blog and read. What I prefer is loud, mindless things like movies and dancing. I tend to surround myself with people, but in a strangely artificial way in which I'm with them but not really there. Also, my shoulders get real tense so that even my nifty back massager machine isn't enough, but I can't ask anybody I know for a massage because it's weirdly sexual and, as you know, my sex drive if by then diminished so I don't want the pressure. (I don't know any girls.)

This weekend I saw The Ex in the theatres as well as The Incredibles, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai in the 8th Dimension, and Grey Gardens through Netflix. And Sunday I spent about 7 billion hours listening to specific tracks in iTunes (loudly) to get good recommendations from my new Last.fm account (be my friend.)

But I'm getting myself out of it, which I have this ability to do. I'm doing good. My shoulders are still tense, but I'm a bunch happier and I finally finished the second half of Peter Pan last night. It's not like I can make problems float away by magic ("it's leviOsa, not leviosA"), but I find that turning my mood around is the best way to start approaching them to fix. Treat the symptoms, not the disease... bad in medicine, best in frustration management.

Anyway I'm back and I'm not going to be whiny anymore and my best coworker and I got a free pineapple from the cafeteria downstairs that they were just gonna throw away because it wasn't ripe yet and the manager is from a Scott Adams comic and would rather throw it out and waste it than wait for 2 days and use it. So we put it in two paper bags and it's hiding in my desk until Pineapple Wednesday when we will cut it up and make the library materials all sticky COME JOIN THE PARTY!!!!!

P.S. My belated review of Spiderman 3 is that it sucks and I'm mad I had to see it two times because I accidentally double-booked myself and couldn't cancel because both people had already booked tickets. It was funnier the second time because I knew it would suck and I acted obnoxious and the girl two seats down from me was all "Kirsten Dunst looks like shit in this scene" and we became best friends.

10-4 30w

So last week I was walking into work and they were having one of their security meetings where all the guards stand around in the hallway and get their assignments for the upcoming week or something. Anyway, they're all anal about us wearing these stupid ID cards for some reason because I guess that makes the library a safer place even though we all know each other's faces anyway.

Anyway, I always have my ID in my hand (there's usually nowhere to clip it because I don't wear fancy shirts with pockets and ties) but fine. I was wearing a zip-up hoodie sweatshirt that day because I am a shlub and I was walking with my ID in my hand and the head of security eyes it as I'm casually placing my hands in my shirt pockets in order to look more emo.

I saw him see it, but he stopped me and said "Where's your ID?" in this rude, condescending tone. "Oy, here we go," I think, so I removed my hands from my pocket and said "It's right here" all innocent-like. He goes: "You're supposed to wear it on the outside" with that same asshole tone like I'm 10 years old and he's fucking Sir High Officer Muckety-Muck in charge of saving the world from a nuclear holocaust. But I keep my cool and say "I know, I will as soon as I get upstairs and take my sweatshirt off." It was a lie, but it was totally logical because why would I wear that ugly hoodie all day?

Yeah, but he's all "You should be wearing it when you walk in the building" (the rude tone continued) so I had had enough and figured if he's gonna treat me like a miscreant teenager, I'll act like one so I said "Ooookaaaay," like a crabby 15-year-old and then I put the ID back in my pocket and walked away.

It was such crap, nobody ever wears their ID and he never gives them shit but suddenly because he's standing in front of his loyal toadies he has to embarass me for the sake fo some pissing power trip? As if.

Anyway I felt like I won even though I didn't because it required me acting like an immature brat, but part of me felt liberated.

Then a few days later I saw him in the cafe downstairs and I know the girl behind the counter, and he's the type of guy who thinks he's friends with everyone so we were both talking to her and he introduced himself to me as if I didn't hate him. Fine.

But today he made it all better because we were in the cafe again and he was talking to the girl. I wasn't listening because I was putting milk in my tea, but suddenly he turned around, pointed to me, and said "If only we could all be skinny and good-looking like this guy here." Then he asked me "What are you, 19?" So then he was my best friend and I smiled and said "I'm 24."

So I forgive him now because a) he complimented me, but also b)cause I realized the reason he was treating me like a kid that day was because he thought I WAS a kid, so it made sense even though being a dick to a teenager is just as rude as being a dick to me.

But mostly I forgave him because I'm shallow and he drew everyone's attention to my waist, which is one of my favorite parts.

I'm youth, I'm joy...

Everything in my life is making me really tired right now, so I'm escaping. I'm planning a short trip to a secret somewhere, and instead of doing important things like laundry and dishes, last night I read the first half of this edition of Peter Pan, and it's already become my favorite book in all of literary history.

Pardon the imagery here, but about 20 pages in, I already felt like I was lying in the arms of a charming British man as he told me this lovely fairy story to make all my problems go away. Right, and we were naked, but whatever.

What I'm getting at is there's this comforting, genuine quality to J.M. Barrie's style that makes it feel like I'm hearing this story from a close friend instead of just some dude who wrote a book. It reminded me of, and hear me out here, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

This has nothing to do with C.S. Lewis' writing style. I didn't read that book. It was read to me by somebody I was dating about whom I care very much. (Note present tense.) I remember those nights so fondly. Being read to is probably one of the more intimate things I've ever done with anyone. I'd have my head on his chest as he did this deep Aslan, and holy God, he has this soft, creepy voice for the Ice Queen that turned me on so much I can't even handle it. (I swear, if you ever get the chance, date an actor and make him read to you, but make sure he's a guy.)

Anyway, the relationship didn't work out because I have emotional problems, so in the current absence of a talented Prince Charming (or, preferably, a Dread Pirate Roberts), Peter Pan has come the closest to simulating this lovely experience. You should all stop what you're doing and read it immediately, but make sure you have a blanket. It's also nice to let your cat sit on you.

So, I've decided to do a Peter Pan bookfest. After this, I'm reading Peter Pan in Scarlet, some authorized sequel that they got this chick to write for some reason. I dunno why, whatever. And then I'm reading Peter and the Starcatchers and Peter and the Shadow Thieves by Dave Barry, and they had better be good because I'm putting a lot of stuff on hold for this. Then I'm watching Finding Neverland because Johnny Depp is hot.

Perfect

I just caught my cat batting around a dead cockroach, and now I want to die.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Nothing in the world is grosser than crusty, dried-out rubber bands. They almost make me not want to be a librarian anymore, not that I need a lot of help in that department these days.

Morale is low here in the trenches. We lost two of our men this weekend, and nobody's sure who will be next. We sit in fear over our keyboards, shifty eyes peering left and right always expecting more managerial treachery to leap from the shrubbery. Twitching at every innocent sound, we pray to someday be free from our post to return to the happy life we once knew, the life our fallen comrades will never remember.

Ok, enough. Friday we were called into a meeting. Apparently management (all 4 or 5 layers of it) has tried everything it can to cut corners and adjust next year's budget to work with our ever diminishing funds. So, layoffs. Fine. Layoffs happen; it's the unfortunate side-effect of working in this industry. They told us at the meeting that technical services was to lose a certain number of people, and two of them were from monograph cataloging. (That's my division.) They apologized, tried to justify it, and answered questions, one of which was "If you've cut all the corners you could, what happens next year when the budget is cut again? Won't there be more layoffs?" The answer to that was in Non-Committal Managerese, but it translates to English as "Nice knowin' ya!"

Then they sent is back to our offices. "Hey, you might be fired in a couple hours! Ok, back to work! Have fun! Chop chop!" Clearly we were not going to get any work done because we had to form a circle and start bitching.

Now, I like my boss. I like his boss. I like her boss. But this has to be on the list of Top 10 Ways NOT To Handle Lay-Offs. I'm not sure who planned it. Nobody would tell us who was being let go, and they all knew. Nobody's happy right now.

I'm not supposed to bitch about work on here because I signed some sort of bullshit privacy thing that said I wouldn't. But before this happened, we already felt like were being dicked around by outside forces, outside forces being a term which here means "by people who are not my boss or his boss or her boss." The division's been shrinking for years, nobody communicates with anybody, we're given conflicting information about how to conduct ourselves here, and people are making decisions that affect our jobs without consulting us catalogers when we're the ones in the thick of it. Maybe my boss or his boss or her boss are a part of the trouble, but I get the impression that we're all in the same boat here and that the bullshit is trickling down from a higher level.

And now this. At it's early stages, low morale leads to minor water-cooler grumbling. As it increases, productivity is affected. After Friday, we've officially passed that to the point where low morale is bound to lead to massive disloyalty. Why stick around here when my job could be gone in a year? I'm not moving up since there's no career ladder to climb. I'm not learning anything since I've been relegated to do copy cataloging of backlog for the past two months, a phrase which here means "a tedious, repetitive, non-morale-boosting task usually performed by paraprofessionals and sometimes students." The pay is barely enough to keep me in clean socks and a Spartan living space. We'll continue to be dicked around, a phrase which here means "treated unkindly and humiliated, as though hit in the face with a dick." So what exactly is the draw?

If they see this entry, I'll probably get fired or something. Today my answer is "Feh!" While unemployment is not the most appealing state of being, I can't seem to let rest the fact that when I found out I was not laid off, a part of me was honestly disappointed. After all, to the well-organized mind, a lay-off is but the next great adventure.

Click clack snip snap

Hooray, it's up! To the right is me, as presented by Bill Wadman, the super-cool, super-nice photographer I met with yesterday.

It's part of his 365 Portraits project, and you are all required to go to the site and leave him a comment praising his talent and my attractiveness because I don't want to be the only picture that doesn't get any attention.

Oh, right, I dyed my hair red, that's not been altered. If you want to comment specifically on that, do it here. I don't think he cares. Other features of this picture include my suntan (an upgrade from Casper to Rose McGowan), the way my new hair makes it look like I'm always wearing eyeliner, and the blue scaffolding screens the mayor hung special to bring out my eyes, which are actually blue-green so he has failed me.

Anyway, so check it out. I like a lot of his portraits because they're bright and contrasty and make my eyes dance, so look around the rest of the site. April 15th is my new secret lover. In April 26th, you will find a picture of my cat. February 21st is my favorite one of all. And March 12th is what I think of you.

Just Shoot Me

Today I sat for my first real live photo shoot because I am a glamorous movie star.

Not really. I dunno if you remember back a few months ago, but I mentioned about being a part of this guy's portrait project. I can't find the entry. Anyway, it got all postponed, but we finally did it today. I felt like such the celebrity, we were outside the library and he had a big silver thing that shined the sun in my face. I know people were watching me and totally jealous, I just know it.

At one point this one black guy came up and interrupted us as if he couldn't see the giant silver thing and the fact that I'm a VIP, it was weird. Anyway, I thought he was going to ask us to give money to the Democrats or hand us a copy of the Watchtower, but we sent him away and later as I was leaving and the photographer was gone, I passed him again and he wasn't selling anything and he made this dirty comment to me because I'm a sexy model. It was gross.

The photographer is a really nice guy and he was talking to me as he did the thing because I was uptight (because the psychologist stranger told me I'm not comfortable and don't know my self, remember?) and I liked him a lot. He was telling me how he's become friends with some of the other people he's shot for the project and I was like OMG HOW DO I GET HIM TO BE MY FRIEND IF HE'S NOT MY FRIEND I AM A SOCIAL FAILURE!!!! But it didn't work, we're not best friends even though I told him I like his hair. I don't have any friends, maybe I should learn to make more facial expressions.

Anyway he took about 80 billion pictures and one will be his favorite and the one he uses and he'll also e-mail me a bunch of the better ones and I will plaster them all over the internet for all to see, especially Myspace. I'll also link to the website tonight once I'm up on it.

He wants to maybe one day make it into a gallery showing or a book, so I'll be even famouser if that happens and maybe get invited to fabulous party, but for now it's back to being a humble librarian. But anyway, I'm signing autographs so if you want a brush with fame just let me know and I'll leave a comment your blog to show everyone.

Two Drink Maximum

Ok I'm doing a project this month. It is May, ok, and May is the month of birth and renewal or something lame like that. I dunno. The point is, I'm sick of feeling yucky on Sundays. I want all my Sundays to be ones where I wake up early and do stuff outside all day. Not sleep in, nurse my dehydration, watch TV until 4:00 and then shower and order in dinner. And I'm also sick of accidentally going home with people I normally wouldn't look twice at and then having to find my way back from Astoria with greasy hair, red eyes, and sore muscles. (That was a while ago, but similar things have happened in more recent history. I'm just lucky they didn't involve Queens.)

So May is the beginning of a new project. It's called "Two Drink Maximum" and how to play is until June 1st, you limit yourself to 2 drinks during any 12-hour period. It's 12 hours and not 24 so that a mimosa or two (not three) during Saturday brunch doesn't interfere with bar night.

I'm excited for it. Well. Maybe not. But I'm excited about saving a bit of money and a bit of embarassment and perhaps avoiding a vicious case of some hideous disease, perhaps syphillis. I'll probably be stand-offish until June since according to a certain psychologist I met last weekend, I come off that way because I'm uncomfortable with who I am, and once I get to know myself, I won't be so afraid to be that person. (Let me just say, he's really lucky he was hot.)

So anyway, let's hear it for all the moral support I'm going to get this month! You may now leave a comment to provide words of encouragement, success stories, praise for my restraint, and recipes for especially potent alcoholic drinks.