Do you think the US Department of Agriculture is the only Cabinet department where it’s totally acceptable to wear a cowboy hat in your official photo? If I were in homeland security I’d wear one too.

yay! i could have bought an offensive birthday cards!

As part of where I work, I cannot donate to political campaigns.  We’re an objective news agency and so when you donate money to a particular campaign, everyone can see it.  Some “fair and balanced” television stations might construe this to be non-objective, even though their CEO is also on our board of directors.  Whatever.  I am almost never moved to donate to political campaigns anyway, so this is a great excuse.  However, that mettle was tested today by this comic strip.

Best. Campaign. Ever.  Man what I would do to have a candidate who knew what XKCD was.

hey! i am proposing a panel at a conference and it’s democratically chosen by those willing to sign up and click a box. Being the Chicagoan at heart that I am, I would love if you would vote early and often for yours truly (and a bunch of awesome people/librarians, not listed, from LibraryThing, Pandora, Zappos, and Google).

STEP 1: go here and register (takes 2 secs)

STEP 2: wait for your confirmation email (I had a problem with getting it in Gmail, so use another address if possible. They won’t spam you.) Click the link!

STEP 3: Search for metadata. You’ll find my panel “Kicking Ass with Controlled Metadata!”

STEP 4: Give that thing 5 stars!

DISCLAIMER: I certainly would not encourage any ballot stuffing. No, not me. No good comes of that. So you should only vote if you think it would truly add to the edification of the general SXSW populace. I leave this at your moral discretion.

But you know, VOTE FOR ME! VOTE FOR ME!

I need a ring, and I have been looking for one on etsy.  I want something fairly simple–a thick silver band.  There are quite a few with inscriptions available so I have been considering that.  Most of my favorite sayings are too long for these rings, but the first thing that came to mind was DFTBA, or Don’t Forget to Be Awesome.  Something I always live my life by.

But someone was offering rings with your favorite Latin inscription.  You know everything sounds more profound in Latin (nunc est bibendum
quid Latine dictum sit altum videtur).  So I compliled my list of awesome Latin phrases.  I put in italic (ha!) the ones I am most interested in….Opinions?

• alis volat propris “she flies with her own wings” (state motto of Oregon)
• caveat utilitor “let the user beware”
• cura te ipsum “take care of your own self”
• delectatio morosa “peevish delight”  (In Catholic theology, a pleasure taken in sinful thought or imagination, such as brooding on sexual images. It is distinct from actual sexual desire, and involves voluntary and complacent erotic fantasizing, without any attempt to suppress such thoughts.)
• disce quasi semper victurus “Learn as if always going to live”
• dulce periculum “danger is sweet”
• dura mater “tough mother” (also a part of the skull)
• ens causa sui ‘existing because of oneself’ (both anti-god & individualistic)
• de omnibus dubitandum “be suspicious of everything, doubt everything”
• hic et nunc “here and now”
• illegitimi non carborundum “don’t let the bastards get you down”
• In omnia paratus “Ready for anything.” (also, Gilmore Girls connection)
• memento mori “remember that [you will] die” (wunderkammern connection)
• nemo saltat sobrius “Nobody dances sober”
• Rara avis (Rarissima avis) “Rare bird” (”very rare bird”)
• res nullius “nobody’s thing”
• scientia vincere tenebras “Conquering darkness by science”
• scientia potentia est “For also knowledge itself is power”
• tempus edax rerum “time, devourer of all things”
• vide supra (v.s.)     “see above” (footnote joke)

This is pretty much all I have gotten out of the obama campaign

The first letters to go on my keyboard are always N and T.   They have started to go on my Macbook.  They are very useful letters, particularly to me, as my name without them is Jey Beeeo.

I am considering changing my name officially to Jenny Bento.  It’s an idle thought at the moment.

Humankind, I have just completed a task you must look upon with amazement.

I cut/skinned rhubarb and overripe strawberries while making and drinking kool aid in a WHITE SHIRT.  FOLLY?!  NO.  I remain unscathed.

This is a fluke because I did not realize I was wearing white (my only white item of clothing) until halfway through.

I was obsessed with the show Today’s Special as a child. Every few years I would do some searching for it to no avail. Well the internet has caught up wih the late 80s!  YouTube has a bunch of great vids, including the intro.  It’s painfully musical (and the singing isn’t even very good) and Canadian, and the storyline revolves around a department store with a mannequin with a magical hat that turns him “real” or at least real in a gay high school musical sense of real.  The other characters are a dept. store window designer, a puppet security guard, and a talking puppet mouse.  I do not know for sure, but I think a talking puppet mouse would shock me more than a living mannequin with a magic hat.  In retrospect I have no idea why the mannequin didn’t leave the store when real a la Mannequin.  I haven’t been this excited since Danger Mouse came out.

Now to lose many hours to Zoobalie Zoo.

heart.

Electric Six is to dancing as Andrew WK is to partying.

Discuss.

The idea that one tragedy means that decades of self-regulation won’t ever work is bullshit.

Were I to grow out my hair, bleach it, get colored contacts, and a lot of makeup, I would look like this:

Truly frightening.  To enjoy a timewaster that will allow you to do this sort of horrifying business to yourself, go to Taaz.

Are not something I generally enjoy together. UNTIL NOW!  My favorites are this and this.

Tufte would be proud.

Do you live in DC, SC, NC, TN, PA, KY, LA, or AR? And do you love to listen to rock music? Or perhaps would you like to meet a Jew? Then perhaps you should go see a show by my friend Jared Friedman. He will be playing in your parts, and, in addition to being a smashing musician, he will let you in on how he controls the media for a dollar.  If you bargain with him.

You can listen to his musical stylings here and tour dates are as follows:

Oddly Mr. Friedman will not play alone here in NYC, so I will not be able to hear the awesomeness you can!

“I’m making a Cobb salad, which is bacon and chicken…(pause) and bacon.  and chicken.”

My mom knows the important part of salad.

This was followed by a discussion about how no one ever beats cancer, and she did so by drinking and smoking.
I often wish my mom had a medical program a la “Talk Sex with Sue.”  She would just diss on doctors and tell people to drink vinegar.  It would be great.

I just compulsively watched the whole run of “Wonder Falls.”  It is so amazing.  Run out and watch it.

Also, I am starting my 29th year on a high note with a bacon and egg salad sandwich for breakfast.  Followed by cheesecake.  Then I will clean my house and make some punch and possibly Jell-o shots.  For gelatinous liquor is an ideal way to celebrate the last year of my 20s.

On a layover in the Cincinnati airport (which may actually be a bus station that my plane happened to land at), I had about three minutes to pick up a sandwich. I signed my credit card bill with my usual haste (my signature includes 6 letters, tops) and rearranged everything I was carrying. The woman behind the counter stopped me and asked if I was an artist. I replied in the negative and she began listing off other creative occupations. Musician, maybe? I was starved, sleep deprived, and in a hurry so I couldn’t figure out what she was getting at. I wasn’t dressed odd, but I thought to myself, “Maybe I look hip for Cincinnati?”*

Finally she said that my signature is indicative of high levels of creativity. She was sad when I said I do things “with computers (hey, I was tired).” I was interested in this assessment, but when I said something self-deprecating about how messy my handwriting was she said it was so, but in a designed/artistic way.

Take that Queens Board of Elections, who finds my signature too arty to allow me to vote. And now I am sad to have let down an airport newsstand clerk who has an awesome hobby. I didn’t want to tell her I pretty much do the opposite of art, though I do use the whiteboard more than my coworkers.

*Though I spent scant minutes in Cin City, and they were all in the airport, I definitely did get a sense that even boring me was way hipper than your average person coming through the Cincinnati bus station airport.

I am an uncoordinated person by nature.  Only recently though, have I noticed a new trend of my uncoordinatedness in relevance to famous people.  I have now literally run into several “famous” people, or fallen on them.  They all seem to take it graciously, after ascertaining I am not a crazy attacker.  My other famous people MO is to chat with an anonymous person only to discover they are the parent of the famous person.  So watch out celebrities (or “celebrities”), I will be falling on you in the near future.  Or your mom.

If you happen to be in Austin and of the library/info science/museum persuasion, please come to the hoedown:

Saturday, March 8, 2008
12:30 PM
Las Manitas
211 Congress Ave Austin, Texas 78701

Eat/drink with your fellow information professionals. Use the words gatekeepers and cherrypicking. Snicker about your out of touch colleagues. Ask for advice/help from others who’ve been there. Bitch about Michael Gorman. Mention how Otlet could have schooled all of
these SxSWers decades ago. Reminisce about the days of authority control as king. All with tasty food and drink.

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I am late reading this, but it totally freaks me out.  More people with weapons on trains does not make me feel safer.  I do not understand what a person with a machine gun will do if the mass transit is bombed.  How is that in any way helpful?
I grew up around guns and generally have very little issue (relatively) with being around them.  However I still remember the shock, at 16, of being in the Frankfurt airport with tens of soldiers with automatic weapons.  It completely made me feel patriotic that we didn’t have that sort of crap.  And I remember the first time I saw officers in America, soldiers in the exact same gear here at the South Street Seaport, which is a MALL.  Really?  Do I really need machine gun carrying soldiers at the mall?  Holy crap if the terrorists get the Ann Taylor they will really have won!

Grocery shopping after three days of the flu and sparse eating is like grocery shopping in stoner movies–you come out with preposterous items you would never usually eat and don’t go well together.  This may explain why I just purchased a jumbo sized container of chicken nuggets and a half gallon of chocolate chip ice cream.  About every three minutes I fall in love with the idea of eating some new random food.

I am officially tired of having the flu.  And stir crazy.  Yet moving my body also seems like a painful endeavor.  So instead I watch a LOT of movies.  Weird British tv shows entitled “My Boyfriend the Sex Tourist.”  Crackheads Gone Wild.  It’s bad.  I have eaten a couple of triscuits and string cheese, and a crapton of juice.  Never has my stomach made more audible digestion noises.  I have begun being somewhat hungry again but am frightened by what eating might do to me.  Plus, I would have to sit up.  Bother.

So tired.  Back to bed.

An office where you can shout, “All the orphans are dead!  I killed them!  I am so excited!  Look!  Ten thousand, all gone!” and the response is merriment.

My brother is shaving his head for children’s cancer. Whether this will improve his haircut or not, I cannot say, but if you would like to donate click here.

From Outpost 505:

Five Things I Think When I Visit Non-NYC Places:

1. Holy crap! Not everyone here is physically honed to perfection!  I immediately feel less fat!
2. Wow. I wear a LOT of black.
3. Holy fuck if you do not fucking walk correctly I will fucking shiv you in the face you fucking whore.
4. Everything is so new and clean!
5. Why is everyone staring at me?  Oh maybe I shouldn’t say fuck 12 times.  In a church.

I lied to a man on the street to get out of a conversation with him.  Usually this means Greenpeace.  But today, I told a man I was saved so that we wouldn’t have to pray to Jesus together.  It came naturally to lie about being saved, but it made the man really happy.

Is this speeding my progress toward hell?

So I will be heading to Austin for South by Southwest Interactive 2008.  I am doing a Librarian meetup again, so message me/comment if you’ll be there and want to meetup!  Or if you just live in Austin and want to hang out.