Head Tale
Yet Another Librarian's Blog
I Work At A Public Library…
…which is why I find this Tumblr so funny!
Music Monday – “You know when people change/They gain a piece but they lose one too.”
Jimmy Fallon is getting all the viral love for his Tonight Show clips while David Letterman (who would’ve likely been a viral star if YouTube had been around in his early days) is doing things in a more traditional way and not aiming for online buzz like his younger counterparts – Jimmys Fallon and Kimmel.
But Letterman isn’t immune to viral hits. In fact, he recently had a musical act’s performance go viral as well. It’s all about the dancing…
“Seasons (Waiting on You)” – Future Islands
My Book Themed Interview
I saw an interview with author, Joshua Ferris, in a recent Entertainment Weekly and thought the series of book-themed questions they asked would be fun to answer for myself…
Your Favourite Book As a Child
“Child” usually means someone quite young but honestly, the first book to come to mind when I read this question was one I read as a pre-teen. So I’ll say that one – “Space Station 7th Grade” by Jerry Spinelli.
Your Favourite Book in High School
Probably “The Secret Annex” aka The Diary of Anne Frank.
An Illicit Book I Read in Secret As a Kid
I don’t know the title but there was some paperback my mom had that was about a female Russian spy who somehow gets plastic surgery and training so she can take the place of the US First Lady. I think I opened it up to read based on the spy-thriller blurb on the back cover but my memory is it had some pretty raunchy sex scenes too! 😉
The Book I’ve Read Over and Over
Either “The Secret Annex” or “Slaughterhouse Five”.
My Favourite Movie Adaptation
It’s rare to find a movie that exceeds the book its based on but I’d say “Fight Club” comes close.
The Classics I’m Embarrassed To Say I’ve Never Read
As an English major, my answer is…most of them! This is partly because there are just so many classics you’re “supposed” to read and although I appreciate most of the Classics that I have read, I’ve always been more drawn to popular material, non-fiction and the like (no surprise I turned out to be a librarian instead of an English prof I guess) so I haven’t read the “good” books that I’m supposed to. 😉
A Book I Consider Grossly Over-Rated
The Bible. Seriously, when you think about how much of our world is defined by and tries to live by, what I recently called “the campfire stories of a bunch of desert nomads”, that’s the definition of over-rated as far as I’m concerned. A well-meaning Christian friend recently posted an infographic on Facebook that claimed to list the Top 10 Most Read Books of All-Time with sales figures showing The Bible at #1 by a wide margin followed by the Quotations of Chairman Mao then the Harry Potter books. Someone else left a comment pointing out exactly what I was thinking: “The list shows the Bestselling Books but the infographic’s title claims to show the Most Read books – these are two vastly different things when you consider how many people own a Bible but have never read it in any depth, let alone cover-to-cover.”
The Recent Book I Wish I’d Written
“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy. So damn good.
The Book People Might Be Surprised To Learn I Love
As a librarian, I’m a pretty big believer in not judging people for their reading choices. On top of that, I’ve already copped to loving pop culture biographies, pro wrestling (so any books about wrasslin’ are on my “To Read” list) and all kinds of other embarrassing stuff on this blog. So I’m not sure what book would surprise people that I love? Well, I wouldn’t say I love it but I enjoyed John Gormley’s first book which was basically a 200-page take down of the Sask NDP. I always think it’s valuable to try to understand the mindset and arguments of people who don’t agree with and this is a prime example of that.
The Last Book To Make You Laugh
Maybe “The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas” which was a series of essays relating to various secular aspects of Christmas, many of which were quite funny.
The Last Book To Make You Cry
Not sure if I cried but “Wonder” by RJ Palacio was pretty powerful. Same with “Fault in Our Stars” which I read around the same time.
What You’re Reading Now
Reading the autobiography of one of my favourite wrestlers from the 1980s and re-reading “Evolution” by Stephen Baxter.
Saturday Snap – As A Handyman, I Make A Pretty Good Librarian!
Luckily, my one neighbour has spent many years as a carpenter for the City of Regina (and also does numerous side projects for his own clients as well) while my other neighbour said “I’ve lived in five houses and built five fences!”
Add in two son-in-laws of the carpenter helping out (including one who is also a carpenter!) and you’ve got the perfect combination for a pretty damn good fence – even though I kept trying to screw it up by digging crooked holes and tipping over wheelbarrows of crusher dust and rounding off screws left and right! 😉
Could Minecraft Help Make Kids Smarter?
Given how much Pace plays the game (and watches YouTube videos about it and reads books about it and has themed birthday parties about it), I hope so!
Big Changes at MetaFilter
I don’t hang out there nearly as much as I used to (and worse, a lot of my “community web site” time has shifted to <gasp> Reddit!) so it was a bit of a shock to see a librarian colleague post on Facebook about the big changes happening at MetaFilter.
Cash-strapped after a recent downturn in advertising revenues (aka “Peak Ad”), the site is laying off three of their moderators including long-time MeFi moderator and librarian super-hero, Jessamyn West, who has chosen to voluntarily leave the site to move on to other endeavours.
I’ve got a few random thoughts I’ll throw out…
- MetaFilter (and Reddit and most sites) probably struggle with the need to balance implementation of new designs and new features without turning off the user base (hello Digg!). MetaFilter looks almost exactly like it did when I joined in 2001 and I wonder if that’s part of why it lost a bit of its appeal to me recently?
- This is my own opinion which is definitely not shared by the top folks at MetaFilter but I think they also really missed an opportunity when they said there would be no “ChatFilter” questions allowed in the AskMetaFilter section (ChatFilter = generic questions like “What’s your favourite book?” or “Who’s the funniest comedian you know?” or whatever. My take is people really enjoy those types of questions which are very engaging. That’s not just a sample size of one talking – if you look at the top voted posts on Reddit’s front page at any given time, many would be classed as ChatFilter.
- My fingers still want to type “MetaFitler” every time I type the site name which is essentially me Godwinning myself. 😉
- Jessamyn will be a huge loss to the community and much of what I learned about moderating an online community – most recently the 80+ members of the Social Media team for the Ryan Meili campaign but various other places as well – was modeled on what I saw Jessamyn doing: being humourous, responsive, open, fair, thoughtful among many other techniques she used. (I wish I only had 1/10 of her success!)
- It’s embarrasing to admit that I’ve long thought that if I ever won a lottery, one of my first moves wouldn’t be to invest in Google or Facebook or any of those sites. I’d probably rush to throw a big chunk of money at MetaFilter because, even if I don’t visit it as much as I should anymore, it’s probably the site that gives the best sense of being around literate, thoughtful, engaging, insightful people I’ve ever seen (the high librarian to regular user ratio probably helps!) 😉
- They don’t like NewsFilter posts either but because of the types of users it has, it’s still the first place I go to see feedback about breaking news and events – just as it was in 2001 when the 9/11 disaster inspired me to stop lurking and finally join the site…which Jessamyn has laughed about to me on more than one occasion – “Oh, you’re one of *those* people.” – since the site saw a massive influx after 9/11.
Too Many Tabs Tuesday
- The Stanley Cup playoffs are heating up but it’s still the off season for some teams. The official Twitter accounts of the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Tampa Bay Lightning engaged in what is perhaps the world’s first game of Twitter Tac Toe!
- “Dad Jokes” are shorthand for lame jokes that inevitably get groans from those who hear them. A dad on Reddit does a great job of explaining why he makes dad jokes.
- One of the charges religious people occasionally make against atheists is that we somehow can’t enjoy the wonder of the world without having god in our lives. Scientists have recently discovered that the basis of human (and all animals’) heartbeat likely evolved from the motion of single cell organisms a *billion* years ago as a way for them to move around their environment. But yeah, campfire stories by nomadic goatherders two thousand years totally beats that! /sarcasm
- Maybe just me but I’ve noticed a real uptick in infographics showing the greatest X for different states, provinces and countries lately. Here’s one I came across that shows the biggest exports for countries around the world
- Textual analysis to find out who has the biggest vocabulary in hip hop
Music Monday – “How I wonder where you are”
“Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” as a history of recorded music…
“Twinkle Twinkle” – Scott Brandlee