Consumption update, in which I refer to a total of four books as being "splendid."

I'm too scatter-brained to write a coherent update, so here's what I've been reading.

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid. Funny, but I'm getting a bit tired of the Lemony Snicket schtick. Actually, forget the "getting." Fortunately, I only paid $5 for this book in hardcover!

The Mysterious Edge of The Heroic World by E. L. Konigsburg. Splendid. It's about freedom of expression, and the value of art, and political persecution, and Nazis. And a retired opera diva who wears flamboyant clothing. It's great.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Also splendid. It was based on a BBC 2 series which I now want to watch. Gaiman's books are so clever and funny and scary. I started this in the Vancouver airport yesterday and finished it last night at midnight.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. I know this book is Kind of a Big Deal, but I didn't like it at all. I found it borderline incomprehensible. The mystery "clues" were always really cryptic, but there were so many of them, I got bored of trying to figure them out.

Last week (or maybe the week before) I also finished The Thirteenth Tale (Splendid!) and The Several Lives of Orphan Jack (Splendid!) At work I am compiling a list of read-alike books for Orphan Jack. It's such an exciting task.

E. L Konigsburg and Lois Lowry were probably my two favourite writers when I was a kid, and now I've decided to re-read all their books. E. K. Konigsburg's books are actually out in a series of beautiful new editions, so I might have to buy them all, but that is neither here nor there. I'll be using the lists of their books linked above to undertake this task.

I'm also watching Season 7 of CSI (I know, I know; see this) and it's predictably CSI-y. There is so much science going on. It's exhausting.

I just got home from Washington last night. I did lots of outlet shopping, went to see Jonathan Coulton live at a great venue called The Triple Door in downtown Seattle, and saw a tiny lighthouse.

OK, I updated my blog. It all you guys' turn now.

They like me! They really like me!

70% Snapple, 30% sass

I'm looking at the projects submitted to Learning to Love You More.

Since I put up a red dot sign in my mailbox I haven't gotten any unaddressed junk mail. Thanks, Canada Post!

I'm working through lunch, if by working you mean "playing travian."

Under my desk, my feet are bare. Also, I am drinking Snapple. What could possibly be better?

On the down side, I've been neglecting my online life.

Or post titles.

*in Strong Sad voice* I don't like blogging anymore.

it's blizzarding, Internet. It's blizzarding IN MY HEART. And by "in my heart," i mean "outside." it's like the world ended. If we could, we would all crawl into our beds and never come out, with the radio on so we know we are not alone in the universe.

I never used to be much of a shoe-person. I don't like having stuff on my feet. I live for the 6 months of the year that flip-flops do not constitute a completely ridiculous footwear decision. but since i started working, i suddenly have shoes, like proper ones, and with shoes come shoe-storage problems. you know? isn't that pathetic? there are people in the world with malaria, and I am concerned about my pile of shoes.

I've been letting everything fall apart around me. I am only so invincible. Can someone be invincible up to a point?

5PM He Needs Special Arthropodic Shoes
Asian girl: I only know his size in millimeters -it's 245.
Shoe store clerk: I won't be able to help you, we only have American sizes and centipedes.
Asian girl: Ok, Einstein. Give me a 24.5 centipede.

Potomac Mills
Woodbridge, Virginia

Overheard by: Steve
via Overheard in the Office, Apr 16, 2008

So, this month I am working at the children's library. I realize I have probably never properly cleared up this issue. I got a (permanent) new job which begins in May. This month I am working here, filling up the hours with books about princesses and trucks and dinosaurs. And I am weirdly aware of my status. I know that people come in, and see me sitting at the desk and think: There is The Children's Librarian. She is wearing a cardigan! Just now I saw two little (little-- too little) boys outside waiting on the sidewalk, and I went to see if they needed help because I'm responsible like that, and I identified myself: I am the children's librarian. If you need help, or you need to use my phone, you can come into the library. I am aiming for kindly, but I may be hitting matronly instead. I accept that, though. Both kindly children's librarians and matronly children's librarians are ok. I just don't want to be one of the stern ones.

Post #700. More of the same.

Teh internets made has pleased me today. First, Cookie Monster searches deep within himself and asks: Is me really monster? (from McSweeneys). Second, a Penguin (the publishing company, not the animal, sadly) project in online storytelling: We Tell Stories.

wishful thinking

Please stand back and watch respectfully while I roll up the rim and win a boat.

Good morning, class

This photo shows the lobster finnials I made from the hors d'oeurves spreaders I bought last week. Since I got a set of 4 for $1.75, I would say these two cost approximately 43 cents each. Definitely worth it. I hot-glued them onto the ends of my curtain rods (from which are hanging my new curtains, which were also a tremendous bargain).

I disappeared for awhile there, huh? Sorry. I had a nice weekend, and I am having a nice work-week, actually. It's surprising how I have managed to not hate work at all over the past few weeks. Imagine if this is what my whole future was like. Everyone would hate me, for one thing.

But starting tonight, I have one million things to do, and those one million things will not be done until next Monday. Meetings! Prison tours! Car-trips! Magazine launch parties! Movie nights! Concerts! Also, it doesn't help that I am reading The Thirteenth Tale, and finding it absolutely bewitching. I am reading it when I should be doing other things. I am reading it when I should be sleeping. (If you visit that website, forgive its cheeziness. The book is better.)

deletia (tm): it's always about me.

I'm pretty smart, but sometimes I think I'm the wrong kind of smart. Further evidence in the "Jocelyn is the wrong kind of smart" column: I did this Monty Hall problem game a bunch of times, I read the explanation, and I don't get it. At all. It seems like insane troll logic. Sometimes I get the feeling that people who are good at science and math are just messing with me, as in, "Today let's do a feature in the New York Times that will emphasize Jocelyn's lack of understanding! Today let's invent something called symbolic logic and then make her take a class on it so she can get her BA!"

Bastards.

But, Orange!

The Home Outfitters opposite my library is in the process of closing. Everything in the store is marked down 50-70% off prices that were already on sale. So, that is pretty cheap. I have gone a couple times on my breaks and have managed to buy a set of orange pillowcases, a set of lobster-shaped hors d'oeurves spreaders (which only cost $1.50 fortunately, because I am probably going to break off the knife parts and then glue the lobsters on to other things) and a set of orange curtains. Yeah. I get lucky when stores go out of business, because I get to buy all the orange goods at deep discounts. Anyway.

The thing about this store is this: yes. Things are cheap there. Yes, there are products to be had, especially if you like orange. But the behaviour of shoppers, and the atmosphere in general, are wayyyyy out of proportion to the coolness of the event. People are rummaging madly through shelves of curtain panels as if they're looking for the vaccine to some deadly disease. I saw an old woman buying a cart of seemingly endless Christmas decorations, presumably all for $1--so much glitter, plastic, and probably lead paint. There are staff in the store, ensconsed in towers made of empty boxes and giant ceramic vases with gold vines painted on them, trying to sort to keep up with the constant stream of customers moving everything around. There are items abandoned mid-aisle, jettisoned, as if the person who had planned to buy them was overwhelmed (by SAVINGS) and just freaked out. There are women pushing strollers full of clocks and plastic storage bins. Earlier in the week, the couple in front of me were buying a giant, bright pink cart containing the apparatus for making cotton candy. Today, the three people in front of me in line were buying a Christmas-themed welcome mat and something called "Coffee-to-go!" There was a couple in the other line, and although they were speaking an Asian language, I'm pretty sure this is what they were saying:

Woman: Look at this shiny red tealight holder in the shape of a star!
Husband: It is so ugly.
Woman: But it is only $1!
Husband: But if we buy it, it will then become ours.
Woman: Put it in the cart.

In other words, the general atmosphere of shopping mayhem somehow compels people to buy things that they would CLEARLY never otherwise buy.* It was surreal. And I felt like a moron for taking part in it, for buying into the crowds of people behaving irrationally=awesome sale mentality. Stupid capitalism--you always get me with your bargains!

*I don't think this description includes me, however. Orange linens and lobster-shaped hors d'oeurves spreaders are EXACTLY the kind of thing I would otherwise buy.

Where are the facebooks of yesteryear?

lost without facebook.
even a haiku won't help.
nothing is working.

Early-morning sarcasm alert

Dear the guy who sent the inspirational email forward about the badly burned little girl to the entire building, indicating that if we just forwarded the email, she would magically receive money for her medical treatment, and the two guys who sent the "THIS IS A HOAX" notificatsions, also to the entire building:

Thanks. No really, thank you. All thousand of us realllllly appreciate it.

Love,
Jocelyn

Whoa, the Craftster dollar store challenge absolutely rocks my socks today. I think I am most impressed by the woman who made a hoodie out of three fleece scarves and 7 teddie bears, although the mosaic mirror and the doggie yurt are both incredible as well. Oh, and: in case of zombies, break glass. Clever! Crafty people are the best people.

nice to wake up to

I know I'm just a sentimentalist, but this article on Jezebel made me all teary. The people love librarians! Heart-warming!

sort of like a love song

On my to-do list today (along with a bunch of boring things) was "create new iPod playlist." The main motivation for this was that I thought of the best possible playlist name last week and haven't had time in front of my computer to make it. thus was born songs for boning.

Romantic, right? I thought it was the funniest thing ever, at the time, and I still do, a little. However, these are songs for boning, or about boning, for sure (well, except the corb lund one, which is nominally about horses, like every corb lund song):

all the way down - gemma hayes
soft revolution - the stills
rumors - josh ritter
just like heaven - the cure
out of this world - bush
i don't know - starsailor
maybe tonight - nicole atkins
samson - regina spektor
about a boy - patti smith
superstar - sonic youth
under the blacklight - rilo kiley
not tonight - matt sharp and maya rudolph
it's only love - heather nova
love will tear us apart - hawksley workman
limit to your love - feist
what's left of me - nick lachey
baby i - amy millan
adore adore - yoav
hotel song - regina spektor
how my heart behaves - feist
mind's eye - josh ritter
all the way down - glen hansard
especially a paint - corb lund
straight to hell - moby and heather nova
running back - emm gryner

yep, not one but two versions of all the way down. These days, that song is the one my brain is humming to itself all the time. I can't account for Nick Lachey, except he told me he wanted to be on at least ONE playlist. who am I to argue?

Among the BORING things on my to-do list was laundry, but I have to note that a few weeks ago i made the mistake of washing some white things with my red bedspread and, well, it didn't end well. The Internet told me to try Rit Color Remover, so I did, and it is magic, eye-irritant powder. Everything has been restored to its natural colour. I just thought you'd be happy to know that.

My heart grew two sizes today!

You know that part in How the Grinch Stole Christmas that goes, "and then the Grinch had an idea. A terrible, wonderful idea"? Well, I just had a terrible, wonderful idea. And it is: stove-top stuffing.

James and I are going to see Stop Loss tonight. We have accepted that it might not be good, but we're antsy for a movie, and there hasn't been much playing around here for a coon's age.^* I'll let you know how it goes. I recently upgraded to zip's super-mega-6-movies-at-a-time plan and I have been awash in DVD-type movies. Actually, it's kind of like what my vision of heaven would be like. If you took the 6-movies-at-a-time deal and added puppies, coffee, and pleasant weather, that would be heaven.

* Approximate lifetime of a coon: since I went to see The Other Boleyn Girl, apparently, and that movie was neither good nor recently.

I am a real librarian now. Yep. I'm really excited. I am going to be employed for the forseeable future, and maybe even longer than that.

I'll try to bring it to the attention of the collections department

There has been much encouraging work-related news of late, and I keep false-starting blog entries about said news, but nothing ever materializes. (I say that as if it has nothing to do with me, when in fact the opposite is true.) Plus, this keyboard at the children's library is weird and foreign, somehow. So let the following list suffice:

Things we DO have books about, I discovered today:
Disneyland
Chinese dragons
NBA basketball
Elephants

Things we don't have books about, probably:
How you should spend the rest of your life

Incoming transmission

"Command, this is Unit 1, come in."
"Go ahead, Unit 1."
"Reporting that 'Bogey' is a funny word, command."
"Roger that, Unit 1."

And I don't mean metaphorically throw up

I have a job interview later today. I feel like I might throw up. Therefore, later.