Randomness (Happy May Long!)

Concerts Are Fun
Went a bit crazy last night and bought tickets to both Bright Eyes (June) and Wilco (July), both at the Centennial Hall in London.  Two of my favourite bands within a month – why not?

Music Is Political
One of (maybe the only) good thing about George Bush being in power in the US is that the music community has responded with some great albums.  I remember reading an article in Salon or Slate, maybe around the time the Iraq War started, lamenting that music wasn't like it was during the Vietnam War era.  Well, musicians were slow to catch up but now we have amazing politically-charged albums and songs coming out from Bright Eyes, Wilco, Neil Young (although he wrote “Let's Roll” after 9/11 so that's a big strike against), Green Day, Hawksley Workman and probably dozens of others I don't know or am forgetting.  Listened to a lot of the new Bruce Springsteen album yesterday via a Net Radio station and it's perhaps the best of all of them – simply amazing. 

Saturday in the Computer Lab Is Fun
After putting in an eight hour shift at the Grad Club last week to help “welcome” the first years to the MLIS program (I do what I can), I feel like I've balanced the scales a bit by spending nine hours at school yesterday working on my Independent Study on the relationship between book publishers and public libraries in Canada.  I've got a long ways to go but I'm pretty excited with what I've got so far.  Anybody with articles or books about public libraries, publishing and especially the relationship between them, feel free to e-mail meCanadian Books Count which I only heard about because I happened to be paging through the latest Quill & Quire is exactly the type of stuff I'm looking for. 

Haggis Is Fun
For a change, the “Break the Fast” club went to the Scottish Corner this morning for our weekly Sunday breakfast.  I ordered a scoop of haggis on the side and they brought me a bowl.  Oh well, now I've got supper. 

Colleague of the Day
For anybody new to this blog, when I started it, I did this recurring feature called “Classmate/Colleague of the Day” which was, if I'm being honest with myself, basically just an excuse to get people to want to read it.  (Why I thoughtt a no-prize like being called Classmate of the Day would make people want to read, I'm not so sure.)  But anyhow, I'm going to bring it back because Chris Dixon, PhD student and TA extraodinaire, put up a poster giving away some very expensive-type LIS textbooks for free.  I greedily claimed a couple of them and when I picked them up yesterday and tried to offer him at least some money, he said “Nope, I believe in the barter system.  So either you can get me back sometime or pass them on to somebody else when you're done with them.”  More people should be like this – very cool! 

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