“I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.”

Non-event of a week. Watched Deadwood. Cried. Watched Tombstone because I was still on a Western high…couldn’t watch Unforgiven, some other sad Deadwood fan had it out. Cried again. Missed episode 1 of Torchwood, and for the first time in what must be HISTORY there won’t be a season premier repeat… and now I can’t very well watch it having missed the pilot! TV SUCKS!!

So anyway, with no more Deadwood to lose myself in, I’ve had to lose myself in the crazy tripped-out world of the good ol’ Inter-me-net again. And look what I found for you this week!
1) Check out this crazy BBC news article on how the Chinese are cheating their way around the one child policy. Evily ingenious. And kind of stupid, seeing as these are poor starving farmers who already don’t have enough to eat. But who am I to judge people’s devious anti-government plots? I’m already thinking about ordering some of these suckers (the fertility drugs, not the Chinese farmers’ wives) on eBay – surely if I have quadruplets nobody can reasonably expect me to ever go back to work again? Or at least not work nights anymore??

2) Check out the crazy Finnish idea (gosh their brains must be frozen in Scandimanavia!!) of the Complaints Choir. A whole bunch of people get together and whine about stuff all in glorious harmony. Interesting to note the whole project started out actually in Birmingham, UK (sweet irony, I believe I made some poorly received comments about whiney Poms last week). Hey, if there’s not one near you start one up and tell me how it goes!

3) Finally, in yet another trip to the world of gross food (and this could even be a clever pun on the word “gross”!) We bring you the Giant Burger – recipe and all! Your digestive system hates you just for looking at this link, you know…

And wouldst thou leave me so unsatisfied…? (HBO, not Juliet)

Well, for the second most deadly-dull week of the semester, it’s been all upsy-downsy hasn’t it just! Upsy because I did really well for my conference presentation (hardly surprising seeing as how I was better than half the keynotes, and NOT just in my own humble opinion I assure you!)

Downsy because I got up, came to work, got sent home at 12 then had to come back again and work all ungodly night… the Great Library God hates me.

Then Upsy AND Downsy at the same time since I bought the final season of Deadwood – up because c’mon, it’s DEADWOOD people! And down because I already KNOW it’s going to end all open and stuff and I’ll have to sit and wait for HBO to make a movie-length closure piece that will NEVER happen…hence our post title tonight!

Anyway, having atypically chronically overshared…then kicked myself for doing it because I promised not to… here are some links to play with. Enjoy, please, thankyou.

1) Statistics/economics buffs, one for you – we all know the US has some obscenely huge GDP, but what about its states, how do they rank with the rest of the world? The Strange Maps blog features one map of US States renamed for countries with similar GDP’s. One one level (the obvious one) it’s pretty scary stuff. On another, it’s pretty crappy because poor Australia ends up as Idaho. On yet another, it’s ironic because seeing as only 10% of US citizens can find even their own country on a map, this might actually help them get geography a bit better…

2) Second, a clever gem from The Onion – which everyone knows is the best news source in the world – about the MySpace Outage of a few weeks ago (I can think of at least 3 people reading this right now who just practically brown-trousers panicked and rushed off to check their MySpace to make sure it was still working…they’re talking about you guys here, you know. Mockery and such…)

3) Finally tonight, we’re upping the cute factor with the (very) short French YouTube film “Un chaton qui a sommeil”. I am told this translates as “A kitten which is sleepy”; don’t worry, whatever you think the subtext is here it really is just a sleepy kitten. Watch him doze off, die from cute and call me in the morning…Dr LiberryDwarf signing out!

I think the finish line’s a good place we could start…

Semester being all over bar the shouting (and the 7000 word report!) it’s time to celebrate with crazy links! Yeah! This week…

1) From the world of books (the online kind) Fairy Tales Collection.com brings you full online versions of fables, legends and fairytales from around the world. Lots of the sections are still under construction (I think they only have the Mark Twain, Hans Christian Anderson and Aesop sections up) but if you’ve got kids, or look after kids, or even you’re just a little bit emo (and believe me, kiddies, some of those HCA tales are pretty disturbing, little animals and kids dying all over the place!) take a look and find something suitably terrifying and depressing for bedtime…

2) Also from the world of books, if you took a look at BookCrossing as featured in the Liberry a few weeks ago (See January 31 2007) you can take your BookCrossing in whole new directions at BookObsessed.com. A big community of active bookcrossers, these guys organise swaps and games for trading your BookCrossing labelled books, general book news, reviews and gossip, little word games… anyway, if you’re a big reader wanting more from a particular genre, a BookCrosser who wants their books to go somewhere AND get properly journalled, or just a or just a lonely bibliophile, the folks on the BookObsessed forums are there for you…

3) Finally tonight, can you imaginea world without mobile phones? How did our grandparents cope without their PDAs, their Blackberries, their iPods? Well, they had terrible fun with their Prat Samplers, they trotted around town in their Zenith Radio Hats, they voraciously downloaded to their Acoustographs…. not making any sense? Head on over to the Museum of Lost Interactions and let your mind boggle (and the videos! don’t forget the videos!) at the delights of the lost communication and entertainment devices of the twentienth century…

(Image © interactive media design, computing, design, university of dundee)