“O shame! where is thy blush?”

Is it strange and ironic – when you get up in front of dozens of people in jingly coin belts, tassley skirts and belly-dancing get-up, throw your jiggly self around the stage for five minutes AND get filmed doing it – why is it the AUDIENCE who are the ones looking embarrased??

We reckon we’ve got it all worked out why they wear veils now…

Anyway, when not dying of shame here’s what I’ve been playing with this week:

1) Against all rhyme or reason, I have been wasting enormous amounts of time equipping a hedgehog to launch into space. ‘Nuff said.

2) After bringing you the Editing Room’s version of the Indiana Jones script a few weeks ago, I’ve another Crystal Skull treat for you. Grab this year’s two biggest movies in one thanks to McSweeney’s – “Sex and the City and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”…

3) Finally, as I drool over (well not really as that would spoil their beautiful as-new-box-set condition!) my new D&D 4th edition manuals which I finally got up the guts-slash-boredom to pick up, I laugh at all the friends who call me loser and uphold that at least I’m not as bad as this… (lengthy, but if you’re a gamer, a geek or even just like laughing at people like us, worth a view!)

“Bad weather always looks worse through a window.”

Brr… hello everyone! It’s cold and rainy and miserable, and I have hot chocolate and blogging, what could be better? (Yes, I know Australians don’t really have the right to whine about cold weather. Queenslanders in particular, but any excuse for hot chocolate and not having to go outside!) Here are some winter-warming links I’ve found to share while I’ve been rugged up inside…

1) I’m gearing up for my UK trip (only 5 months to go now! Heehee!) and looking around for where-to-go inspiration. Having never been to Stratford-Upon-Avon, if I want to have any claim to being a worth-my-salt librarian I thought I probably better go. Especially since, Shakespeare’s obviously pretty hot property if this BBC article is anything to go by. That, and thieves are stupid and librarians are awesome. Why does nothing like this ever happen to me??

2) I’ve been in two minds as to whether or not to include this one – it intrigued me and made me laugh, but it’s pretty creepy. Mostly because I think they’re 100% dead-set serious, and I shouldn’t be laughing and am going to hell. But what are we here if not controversial? (Lazy. Yes, that answer’s correct too, I guess. Be quiet!) So here you go – Suicide Food. I can’t sum it up better than they can, so here:

“What is Suicide Food? Suicide Food is any depiction of animals that act as though they wish to be consumed. Suicide Food actively participates in or celebrates its own demise. Suicide Food identifies with the oppressor. Suicide Food is a bellwether of our decadent society. Suicide Food says, “Hey! Come on! Eating meat is without any ethical ramifications! See, Mr. Greenjeans? The animals aren’t complaining! So what’s your problem?” Suicide Food is not funny.”

I beg to differ with the last…. my smoked chicken sandwich and I both…

3) Finally, via YouTube this week, more fun with food – and with the 80’s! A lot of people my age consider being born in the 80’s some sort of trophy, something to celebrate. Not this little liberrian. The 80’s were trashy, over-the-top, embarrassing and down-right crass. But hey, at least they got enough fibre…

“Television was not invented to make human beings vacuous, but is an emanation of their vacuity…”

For reasons that I will elect not to go into, I had TV people at my house yesterday – it’s a long complicated story, but let’s just state that making a TV segment is NOT glamorous, it’s phoney and repetitive and very dull. Particularly a segment for the local current-affairs half hour. Seriously, they spent almost 3 hours at my house filming. For a 4-minute segment. Yes. FOUR.

But hey, I’m a great believer in trying anything once – particular anything where I’m getting attention and looking good. (And to be fair, now that we Aussies are canning Big Brother, how else do we regular idiots get our 15 minutes of fame?)

So today in the Liberry we celebrate TV in all its forms (for 2/3 of the post, anyway…)

1) “House” is a great show. A tad repetitive at times, but witty, clever, interesting and very watchable. For me, at least. But what about for doctors? I mean, I know I HATED “The Librarians”… well for an inside perspective, head over to Jeffrey’s blog of House M.D. Reviews – he’s a med student from Victoria here in Australia, and he’s watching House episode-by-episode (albeit a bit slowly) and commenting on the medicine of each. Glorious slides and videos abound (note: do not eat lunch first!) and he’s not bitchy about it. Great fun if you’re a curious House fan who wants to know a bit more (but you, like me, are too lazy to Google “Eosiniphilia” properly…)

2) This one’s a treat for Non-Aussies: we’ve got a great show down here (if you don’t mind comedian Wil Anderson, who year-by-year gets decidedly more un-funny) called the Gruen Transfer. It’s all about advertising – what works and doesn’t, why they do the things they do, how you’d sell the unsellable, etc. And they’ve kindly put up every episode on their website. So if you’ve ever wondered why they use sex to sell chocolate – or how on earth you could market abstinence as cool –  drop past!

3) Finally, from YouTube this week, learn everything you ever wanted to know about cats from the true knowledge professionals – Engineers!

” I wish everyone was a sci-fi geek because then there would be no violence in the world. There’d be no wars. There’d only be people e-mailing each other. “

Last weekend I trotted off to GenCon (here in Aus for the first time ever…) lined up and simpered over Stargate Atlantis stars, killed goblins with a bunch of random strangers and learned how to paint tiny spacemen. And not wearing home-made-out-of-icecream-buckets Storm Trooper armour, I felt like the most normal person in the room 🙂 You have to appreciate die-hard nerds, if only because they take far more passionate effort with things than boring regular people do!

So here, in all their nerdy d20-rolling glory, are this week’s links…

1) If you can’t get enough of laughing at stupid stories in local newspapers (and I know I can’t. Brisbane Style Magazine? Ha! Talk about mutton dressed as lamb!) then News of the Weird will become your new best friend, as they scour the newspapers of the globe for the stupid, the wacky and…well, the just plain weird of the world that SOMEONE out there considered newsworthy…

2) When I think about “Books that changed my life”, I think Oscar Wilde, I think Lewis Carroll. (Secretly, yes, I also think “the Dragonlance series”). Animal Farm, maybe not so much (though maybe childhood terror from the cartoon version is to blame here.) Take a look at the rest of the world’s Books that Changed Your Lives here, courtesy of LifeHacker…

3) Finally, no YouTube this week. Partly because this news story is probably the saddest and most awful thing I’ve read in ages. I can’t bring myself to articulate it here, but here are some pictorial clues…

*Weeps softly…*

‘I never think that people die. They just go to department stores…”

Yesterday I had a day off (after working Saturday, 8 hours in which I talked to about 23 patrons in total. Booooring…) and I saw Kung Fu Panda. I have a much greater respect for possums now than I ever did before.  I also learned that the Myer department store chain and its stupid wedding registry section are evil and have a super-plot to take over the world by wasting everyone’s time, and that my friend Georgie better love the pants off her stupid crystal cake server thingo or else!!!

Ironically, on the subject of wasting time, here are some links provided by me to help you waste yours (seems I’ve got a super-plot to take over the world too. But it’s not an evil one so it’s okay!)

1) A few weeks ago when I brought you Literary Tattoos, I discovered I’d only just tapped the tip of the iceberg! Discover more body art for the bookish at Contrariwise… particularly if you’re a Vonnegut fan, apparently. Does an overused literary tattoo go from cool to kitsch, perhaps?

2) Oscar Wilde isn’t the only guy who loves diaries… (to be fair, Wilde probably mostly just loved his own, but I think the point’s valid anyway!) If you’re a bit of a voyeur like I am, take a look at the Diary Junction – if you’re looking for the diaries of anyone famous (or even just people whose diaries make them famous) this site will point you straight to them. Sadly, no Wilde in sight – we’ll have to find something else sensational to read on the train…

3) I love stupidly pointless violent cartoons. Happy Tree Friends is one of my favourites. So when they venture into the world of libraries, I couldn’t resist…