Found via Idun’s Apple

Important question for tonight’s GOP YouTube Debate.

On March 15th, Ryan Skipper was found stabbed to death on the side of the road in Wahneta, Florida. Ryan was murdered because he was gay. (The Ledger).Ryan’s parents, Lynn and Pat Mulder, have posted a question for the Republican YouTube Debates which will air tonight, Wednesday, November 28th. They’re asking what the GOP candidates intend to do to combat “social climate of condemnation and rejection which is often the result of misguided religious teaching.”You can help insure this video gets the attention it deserves. Please …
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I started off buy nothing day with consumerism!  A Christmas present for me!  A new robot!  A Scooba!

At least Fido will get some company.  And it was really cheap on Woot.com.

Speaking of presents, you people I am supposed to send presents to have to post the same offer on YOUR blogs, and I haven’t seen that happening.  Don’t make me Scrooge on your presents!

Hope you are blessed with the pie of your preference and good friends/family.

I thank you for reading and commenting, and for your friendship.  I wish we could all have dinner!

When I was a kid, my mom took me to the mall a lot. Outdoor, 70s-type malls that were bigger than 90s strip malls. And a lot of them had public art. The art was pretty contemporary, and “out there” and often, fake paranormal exhibits, or Rube Goldberg machines. I LOVED these things. I remember the day they took the magical moving rock away. You could see the wires left bare, and the magical moving rock sign was still there. It was like finding out there was no Santy Claus.

My favorite art mall was the Cermak Plaza in Berwyn, IL. It had car pelts…..flattened cars hung like bear rugs. It also had this AMAZING landfill commentary sculpture made of old household appliances. It was torn down when I was a kid. But the biggest, most spectacular piece was the car spindle.

You might know it better from Wayne’s World. But it’s really in Berwyn, not Aurora.

The parking lot of where the car spindle is was probably the last place I ever drove a car (in driver’s ed), ironically. I have taken many people there over the years, and the longer it stands, the more I wonder, “Cars were really that big? Why?” The last time I went there, we were in a Honda Civic. It looked miniscule! Using consumer trash and cars for art in the parking lot of a suburban mall is ballsy, and far more meaningful than putting it in a museum.

I love public art. I love contemporary art. I love controversial art. I really dislike cars. I really don’t think our culture (including me) thinks enough about how much technology we throw away needlessly. I can’t help but think that these very core beliefs I hold as an adult had nothing to do with some of my happiest memories as a kid with this art.
And now they are tearing it down.

To build a Walgreens.

There’s already a Walgreens IN THE MALL.

If you live in Chicago you will understand the true irksome nature of this. Chicago has a Walgreens every 5.8 feet. You know, in between the hot dog stands and the banks. Seriously, I have never seen more drug stores than in Chicago. I guess you need a lot of Tums with the hot dogs.

There’s not a lot of current news that I can find, but if we can still do anything, here are some links. My brother saw it up on November 3, and there’s a Flickr photo from Nov. 17. I hope it sticks around another month so I can go see it one last time. Critical mass did a ride to it:

When’s the last time you saw Critical Mass protecting cars?

Anyone “on the ground” have some news?

I do not know my neighbors.  I have never seen them.  But either they just got a new yappy dog, or I just got new neighbors who happen to have a yappy dog.  I imagine it’s the former.

I can hear the yappy dog all the time.  Sometimes they take him to a room where I cannot hear him.  I know this, because if I am inside I cannot hear him, but when I walk outside I CAN hear him, so he’s in a room facing away from my apartment.  Yay.

Yappy dog likes to traipse around outside of my door in the wee hours of the weekend mornings.  In and out.  In and out.  Yapyapyapyapyapyap.  It is non stop.  Sometimes they literally have him in our lobby, inches from my door, and sometimes in a room just inside their door.  For hours.  I can hear this in from my dark, dark bedroom.  When I come in the building he can hear me at the door and freaks out with the yapping and scratching.
This has been ongoing for a week.  I thought, maybe it’s a new dog, maybe I will give them a couple of days for the dog to chill out in his new place.  But a week?  Oh no, this must stop.
Seeing as I don’t know my neighbors, what is the best way to approach this, before I knock on their door at 7am on Sat screaming, “I will drown your hellhound if you do not make him stop with the yapping.”

Of fruit pies, which is your favorite? Not too long ago, I shocked a crowd of people by saying I would take cherry pie over apple any day. Really? I thought red always won!

So what kind of pie suits your fancies?

ADDENDUM: While I am proud that many respondents make their own pies, this question is more if someone else is making your pie. I mean envisioning a work-free pie, which would you choose?

Never has George Orwell made me squeal with cute overload. Mugs available here.

I love cranberries.  I drink straight cran juice frequently, causing old roommates to think I always had a urinary tract infection*.  Previous to college, I had never had cranberry anything, I don’t think.  We didn’t have traditional side dishes with Thanksgiving, and so the only “cranberry sauce” I have ever seen was that on tv which came out of cans.  I did not understand how anyone could like this, and I have never been a fan of the gelatinous, so I never sook out cranberry anything.

Then one day in my college cafeteria I had cranberry juice.  I love everything sour so it was love at first sip.  I still do not understand why you would combine cranberries and meat (except for maybe sauerbraten), or why you would sweeten tasty tasty cranberries to the extent that is in most cran-sauce, but I am excited to see them in stores.  And I am super excited to have a lot of cranberry mimosas on Thanksgiving.  Num!  The only cran-jelly I’d be into is cranberry jello shots, however, Thanksgiving doesn’t lend itself to crazy parties in my experience.

*Maybe TMI, but I have never had a UTI, mayhaps due to this cran-love?

Dear Discovery Channel,

I love your programming even though at some times I cannot tell the difference between you and TLC.  I love Dirty Jobs.  I love I Shouldn’t Be Alive.  I love all those shows that say a tsunamiearthquake will kill me and everyone in America next year.  But for the love of all that is holy, I do not care about sharks.  I have never cared about sharks, and, I do not think I will ever care about sharks.  Programming that contains sharks does not INSTANTLY become interesting.  Please explain to me why you think sharks are to adults who love Discovery are to dinosaurs and dorky children.  If you cannot explain the intense appeal you believe sharks have, please cease with being the shark channel.  Or, create a whole OTHER shark channel.  Whatever.
Thanks!
~J

PS  Please don’t do programming about dinosaurs either.

by Jennifer Crusie

I am reading pretty much every Jennifer Crusie book.  I enjoy them all about the same (which is a lot–they are funny and quick to read).  I also have the same, “I really don’t want people to see me reading this very pink book” shame about them, which, IS WRONG.  I know this because I had a whole class on it in library school, and I generally do believe, as a librarian that anything anyone enjoys reading is totally acceptable.  For some reason I can’t quite apply that to myself!

by Hannah Rosin

Nanette recommended this to me and oh boy is it up my alley.  A journalist goes to an ivy league built for home schoolers.  I am a sucker for the evangelical culture.  I liked it, but in a trashy way.  It didn’t really make me think and I didn’t learn anything from it, which is fine.  But it’s set up as a non-fiction important look into this culture.  I highly recommend it thought to everyone interested in Evangelicals, or how they are being groomed to take over politics.

by Christopher Buckley

Silly, political, addictive, funny, biting satire.  I feel like at this point Christopher Buckley is super consistent–all of his books bring the same amount of cutting amusement.  The only difference on this one is that it’s about blogging, so it was a little more interesting to me.  But who knew there could be so much humor in a book about social security reform?  Although I often get bored at the DC-centric nature of Buckley’s books, this book made me realize I really wish he would run for office because I’d love to see his actual political beliefs.

A lot of these audiobooks I have been reading have been from Overdrive at the NYPL.  Of course I can’t listen to them on my ipod, or on my home computer.  I can listen at work though, which is nice.  The major bummer of the system though is that you can only check out a certain number of books, and you cannot return books you have checked out.  So digital books I checked out and finished two weeks ago are still in my queue and I cannot get them out!  It’s really annoying.  I can understand most other aspects of the library digital books copyright issues, but not why they force me to keep the book!

75 Objects with Unexpected Significance

I got this book at Book Expo. It has a lot of very pretty pictures. Basically a lot of arty/semi-famous people are asked to photograph and explain something they own with significance. It’s funny and surprising what people choose, but I wish there were more stories and they were more in depth. It made me wonder what I would choose, and I could not figure it out.

by john green

I don’t normally read a lot of YA, but I have been obsessively been watching Brotherhood 2.0 all week since I discovered it. John Green and his brother Hank have decided to not textually communicate for a year and thus video blog to each other. If you are a ZeFrank fan, you’ll love it.

So after I exhausted all the videos, I went on to the audiobook. I kind of wish this weren’t YA. I think this book would have been more awesome if set with adults. But nonetheless it was really funny, personal, and dorky. I hear the print version has crazy charts and footnotes so I am going to check that out too. I read this in a day.

Wow this is a really depressing look at city life. The bummer side of all the coincidental things about living in a large city. The anonymity which makes people fall through the cracks. Still good, but, whew a downer.  I picked this up/completed it around my New Yorkerversary, when I went to the OLDEST library in New York–it’s the coolest.  It has glass stacks!  I felt like I was back in ye olde maths library.  Awwww.

Man, I hate to say it, but former Republican presidents of our modern age are really ramping up the awesome. I mean George Bush, a distinguished man in his 80s, the former president of the US, the former head of the CIA, skydived into a grand reopening for his presidential library. That is so cool. Who knew I could love a member of the Bush family? I hope he doesn’t give Nixon a run for his money.

Hey! I just found out that Boyd’s Otlet video is online here which I found out through this review which has some great stills!

As a young’un I read a lot of Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High.  That’s why I am GLUED to this website wherein a woman in her 20s rereads all the BSC books.  AMAZING.

As a person who wears mostly black, hated high school, listens to metal, and shoots guns, I feel my brethren are giving us a bad rap what with all the school shootings. I mean this current guy and I pretty much watch exactly the same movies and love the same books.

So I have a new freelance service. I will come to your high school and hang out. I will turn the metalheads onto metal that happened after 1997 and outside of Germany. I will chat with them about how there is no god, and how jocks suck, and how cool conspiracy theories are. And then I will show them the Anarchist’s Cookbook, and tell them about the old days when we had to go to the library to learn to make a pipe bomb. I will chat about French existentialism. I will also give them some punk rock because oddly, punk rockers never really fuck up the establishment. And then I will snitch. I will tell you, after five minutes which of these kids is your school shooter. Because it is PAINFULLY OBVIOUS. It’s social profiling. I might even be able to read a few blogs and tell you. And then I will also point out the “cool kids” who are totally forcing the metalhead’s hand to blow up the school.

On the grounds that they are both held equally responsible.

It’s good to see the education system in other countries is making kids just as miserable as it is here!

Torture and Democracy’s finally out! And the jacket has a review from Zimbardo–one that I hope was not coerced. (Oh, the wacky torture humor!)
I know at least 2 readers who are torture nonfic readers, so, you know, the rest of you can get your learn on. I am totally excited to read it.

edited to add this amazing beach boys parody of waterboarding.

I received the best question at my recent presentation.

Aaron: “Is that a Glock sticker on your laptop?”

Me: “Yes”

A: “Cool, Do you own a Glock?”

Me: “No, I live in NYC where it is impossible to own guns, and I prefer HKs.”

This Aaron fellow mysteriously disappeared, but it got me thinking we should institute Librarians with Guns at ALA a la Geeks with Guns at SXSWi.

Anyone going to Midwinter and interested?

Seeking one date for Jerry Springer: The Opera starring Harvey Keitel.  Only serious offers considered.
I believe this is the only time I have been excited about opera.