Parasites and other realia ....

It's basically an advertisement, but Japan's Weirdest Hotels sure has a lot of very useful information. Who knew that there was a museum of parasites "...many of them spilling out of organs and dead animals ...", let alone a catalogued collections on display of socks, another of laundry.

You can even buy a t-shirt with "raised tape worms that you can feel!", but not over the 'net. All purchases strictly in real time, real place.

Which of course opens up the floodgates for other off-beat museums. There's sure to be a stampede of the naive (I believe P.T. Barnum referred to them as "suckers") wanting to visit - and purchase from the gift shop - of a potential museum of Cell Ring Tones that Caused Madness, a Repository of Retrograde Reading Resources, the Parade of Paradoxical Policies, an Exhibition of Exotic Ephemera, perhaps a Panoply of Polynesian Paperbacks, or a Roving Rendition of Retributive Rants? More?

So how's this new gig going?

Pretty good, and thanks so much for asking! There's a lot less books, a lot more computers; less reading and much more writing. There's more break time, with less interruptions; but little opportunity to purchase low protein, high carbohydrate sustenance.

Thank goodness for the one solitary vending machine, even if my application to have it moved to next to my desk has not yet been answered. Nor, apparently is it likely to ... since I apparently left it on the printer for so long, someone thought it was a joke and threw it away.

So far, I've finished a suite of classroom resources on "stellar evolution" for Stage 5 to use with their Federally funded notebooks. Got an"energy transmission" collection up to penultimate draft, and have now made inroads in Chemistry. Also finished two sets of "Teacher Tips", but with only three weeks to go at this gig before returning to LibrarybLand, its not the ideal time to be starting any new topics.

Luckily I've had a very experienced and capable substitute stand in for me in the bLibrary. Which is just as well, as there could be some Interesting Times (in that Chinese curse context) about to develop. Ah well ...

Words of Wisdom, from Fiction

After having done (possibly) the wrong thing, but for the right reason ...

"Like a hunter, you feel an adrenaline surge of pleasure at having usurped the province of God. The person who says otherwise is lying. But the emotional attitude you form later varies greatly among individuals. Some will keep their remorse alive and feed it as they would a living gargoyle, to assure themselves of their own humanity; others will justify it in the name of a hundred causes; and they'll reach back in moments of their own inadequacy and failure and touch again those flaming shapes that somehow made their impoverished lives historically significant."

Heaven's Prisoners (Burke, James Lee). Random House. ISBN 0-09-941562-3

A Podiatric Epiphany

Now that I am temporarily a public transport commuter again, and have time to indulge in Shoe Envy, it's come to my attention that female library folk are once again going "against the flow"; no wonder the Fashion Police are holding a very long rap sheet on us.

Seen on every carriage, at every station, at every stop are stylishly dressed women wearing joggers, sneakers and various sports shoes - on their way to work. No doubt they are concealing about their person alternative footwear of a less comfortable kind to change into At The Office.

Now I know that this is not an issue that overly concerns the vast majority of my male library colleagues, but it did occur to me that many of my gender dress "stylishly" (within the limits of our measly pay packets) during the travel into our libraries ... wherein we slip on something devastatingly dowdy but hugely welcome. Are we the only profession that does this? And does anyone actually care, anyway ...

Internet Footprints?

You've seen/read/heard that well-distributed piece about footsteps in the sand, right? And you know that saying about lines drawn in the sand? Well, this has pretty much nothing to do with either of those. It's morning tea time, and I'm just about coffee'd out.

So I thought I'd sign up for a few things, as one does at times like this. First cab of the rank was a new "fan" page over at ning.com. This will allow you to sign up to become a member of a very small, select - may I say even possibly elite - group, the Fans of Amanda Credaro. I don't know how long membership will be open for, but it IS free, which is really the most important thing, isn't it?

I signed up for something else too, but now that my loyal reader has rushed off to check out the possibilities at ning, I guess I'll save the other one for another day.

Letting go?

Just read today's horoscope over at Facebook: "You're maybe just a wee bit too attached to some idea or gadget -- or person. Now is the perfect time to pull back to a healthy level of attachment, even if it feels like abandonment at first."

And you know, that's sort of good news for me. I had been Formulating Strategies for doing some pretty hefty cleaning up, house-wise. I thought I was going to have to throw out a goodly number of my Martin Luther King clothes ("I have a dream..."), but now I find out it's only ideas, people and gadgets that have to go. Not any of my insanely high stilettos, nor my ridiculously short minis (both from another era, several eons ago).

People-wise, I'm pretty confident that those I have I either want to keep, or are filed under 'evil but necessary".

Ideas-wise, I think I'm "good" - if I ignore the fact that I'm obstinate, self-opinionated, and often wrong. Which only leaves gadgets that have to go. I think I've got a broken stapler somewhere ...