Blogmewithaspoon

The Road to Perdition

2008-02-02T13:39:00.000-08:00

I asked a friend of mine if she would like to twitter or wiki with me. She drilled me to the wall with a suspicious glare followed by a high-pitched squealed, "You want me to what?!"

In that moment my mind reshuffled and mutated. I'm sure she thought I was depraved and about to lead her into a deadly sin. She now saw me as a crazed infidel that was inticing her down the road of wickedness to commit some sinster act that would put us both on that well-trodden road to hell. I sputtered a protest, waving my arms like an over-inspired preacher. I insisted she had misunderstood me and baked under her disapproving scowl. My first impulse was to hide under my desk, but could not leave my friend in a state of unenlightenment. I had to drag her into the 21st century.

"Wiki wiki," I said as she retreated away from me. Her face screwed up into a knot of stark fear. She thought I was casting a pagan curse on her soul.
"Twitter, flickr, RSS, YouTube, blog!" I continued.

"Back!" she screamed, "I have garlic!"

Oh, what a mess! I'd have to try a different tact. I took a deep calming breath and said as sweetly as I could muster, "Remember, I'm a librarian. We're generally harmless."

She licked her dry lips, trembled and crossed herself.

From there we were able to have a quasi-coherent conversation about all things I'd been learning about through krl2pt0. By the time she stopped twitching I had completed imparting my new knowledge. "A wiki has a lot of cool stuff," I gushed, "like collaborative learning, mail, discussions, communcation, explanations, brain-storming, one-stop shopping, special groups, programs, reader's advisory, social experiences, archives, repositories and... more stuff."

"Oh," her eyebrows were so high they seemed to recede into her hair line. "You mean like... a library?"

She was right. A wiki was a library. We had all that cool stuff with the added bonus of expert guides. We'd been a wiki for years and didn't know it.
We were no longer limited to the physical walls of our buildings. We could touch the lives of people who were afraid to leave their homes, centophobes, bibliophobes, coulrophobes, geliophobes, and metathesiophobes. And especially those with phronemophobia. If we used all the tools available to us then we could reach everybody in the world except those who were intentionally avoiding us and those without electricity and flushing toilets. Virtual outreach. Going places we weren't invited. Grabbing people using the element of suprise. Being and lurking in unexpected places. The innocent would find a library no matter where they went and ultimately realize that the ubiquitous library had become an essential part of their lives.

Then they'd vote for our levy.

Greeting ducks at the cemetery

2008-01-26T15:31:00.000-08:00

My nephew is looking for a job. He was a waiter at a tourist restaurant but was fired for being rude. Rudeness in a waiter isn't good. You don't get many tips that way, but you do get axed and booted out the back door. I was thinking about him as I explored the Sites for Students. He has a computer at home and access to the Internet. With just that he can use any of a number of sites to search for a job or rewrite his resume.
I'm already thinking about what my next job might be. Jobster was just full of ideas. I've often thought I want to become either a cemetery caretaker or a clown. There are 43 clown positions open today and there is an opening for a cemetery caretaker in San Francisco. The jobs were easy to search. I found 137 jobs for lazy people, 4336 jobs involved hiking, 96 jobs involved ducks and over 25,000 involved books in some obscure or vague manner. And there are 1132 organization looking for greeters. I could be a greeter. I can smile and say hello. I can point and nod. I can stand for short periods of time, too.
All the tools I need to write my next resume are included in these sites for students. Z0ho has a word processor for me to use. I can even create a presentation if I want. I could take pictures of myself dressed as a clown. What I'm hoping is that I can combine the cemetery care taking job with the clown occupation.
Sometimes I think my mind is stuck in a buggy whip shop while the rest of me exists in the virtual world. As I explored the Digication site I was astounded at what people are willing to share. Modesty is a forgotten element in this new world. People share thoughts, histories, hopes, philosophises, failures and take pictures of all of it. In this world, sharing everything is good whether it is a picture of your generous behind or a closeup of your nostrils - it doesn't matter. All is art. All is public. All is shared. All is educational.

I explored many of the sites and found that some are simply fabulous - a goldmine for any student who has access to a computer and needs to create a document for a class, job or just collaborate on an idea. The speed at which ideas can be shared, learned and spread is phenomenal. There is too much there to know. It is like a metastasizing cancer cell. Poof it is everywhere.

The swift-footed twaddle

2008-01-26T15:13:00.000-08:00

The swift-footed twaddle is a cagey seldom seen bird. It is like the garden nymph. You know it is there but it is too quick for your eye to ever catch it out in the open. Alas, the same is true of the twaddle bird. In order to see it you have to have gobs of time and you have to sit very still for epochs of time. You must creep silently out into the forest and wait. About the time moss has begun to grow between you toes is when you'll see the twaddle. Or at least catch a glimpse of him or her (the females are quicker than the males). I have never had enough time to do this but I've been told it is well worth the wait. We'll see.

After I've seen the swift-footed twaddle then I'll plan to incorporate the social networking tool twitter into my life. Right now I'm much to busy planning my foray into the forest to capture the heretofore unknown and unseen twaddle bird.

Rumors and dodo birds

2008-01-25T14:28:00.000-08:00

Rumor says that in 1598 when Portuguese sailors landed on the island of Mauritius they discovered a previously unknown species of bird, the Dodo, and being hungry they promptly ate the poor creatures into extinction. The piteous dodo is today associated with being a big, dumb, sloth like galumph. This demeaning talk has ruined the reputation of a perfectly fine and stately, albeit very dead, bird. But the enticing lies about this unfortunate bird have continued to this day. Reality is that it is doubtful that the bird was eaten into extinction because all historical reports indicate that they tasted like crap. The birds lived in isolation due to their island location and had no contact with humanity, so the dodo greeted their first visitors with a wide-eyed gullible innocence. The sailors thought the big lumbering birds were stupid, not understanding the truth; the birds simply lacked any fear of the newcomers and had no experience with predators. The sailors named the bird "dodo" (meaning a simpleton in the Portuguese tongue). Thousands of the dodo were killed by their human visitors, mostly for their feathers, and those that survived man had to face human introduced animals. Things went from shallow to deep doo doo for the dodo when domesticated dogs and pigs soon became feral. By the year 1681, the last dodo had died, and we were left with only feathers, bones and a bad taste in our mouths.

The dodo bird is a lot like facebook. It is new and different and we might well not understand everything about it, but killing it off before we get the chance to fully investigate it would be as foolhardy as mankind infecting the dodo's environment with our ignorance. The magnitude of possibilities for facebook and other social networking sites are incalculable. Even though man wiped out the dodo in less than one hundred years, its legacy lives on in fairy tales (Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland), in the coat of arms of Mauritius, modern novels (J.K. Rowling and Jasper Fforde) and is even the title of a Dave Matthews song. Who is to say what the legacy of social networking will be? No one can guess. Instead of reaching a few hundred people each day we can touch millions of lives through a new social tool. What a hoot! How could we turn that opportunity down?

YouTube - mr bean goes to the library/ LOL :D

2007-12-24T15:44:00.000-08:00

YouTube - mr bean goes to the library/ LOL :D

mr.bean (the library)

2007-12-24T15:42:00.001-08:00

YouTube - Library Limbo

2007-12-24T15:29:00.000-08:00

YouTube - Library Limbo

Library Limbo

2007-12-24T15:28:00.001-08:00

Frogs animations - cute funny froggs with music.

2007-12-24T14:40:00.000-08:00

Frogs animations - cute funny froggs with music.

Malcontents, Miracles & Frogs

2007-12-24T11:23:00.000-08:00

Elastic is a miracle. I know this because otherwise I couldn't get dressed in the morning. Everything I own stretches, expands or spreads. My body is like that too, being supple, stretchy and springy. I prefer these words over loose, fat and droopy. I thank God every day for the invention of elastic.

Inventions are supposed to be good and I suppose most of them are. Thomas Hancock invented elastic and a machine called the rubber masticator on which to make it. When he was working on the machine he called it a "pickle" in order to keep his invention secret. Old Thomas and his elastic machine got me thinking about who invented what. And what were good inventions and what were bad inventions. Who, for example, invented the first knot? And did that lead to a button and from there we got the zipper and finally Velcro? Who thought up the shoe lace? The first sack? Or thread? Who thought up singing? Who hummed the first melody? Who made colors? Who thought to draw a picture?

I am thankful for most inventions. Indoor toilets, for example, beat the heck out of the outdoor privy although I cannot think of why there were "one holers" and "two holers". Is this an experience I want to share with
someone else? I thought also about the typewriter. It was a vast improvement over the printing press and the electric typewriter was better than the manual typewriter. At that point you'd think it couldn't get any better, but then along came the word processor and the personal home computer.

But some inventions are questionable. Such as girdles, snuff, taxes, super-sizing meals and spandex. Cigarettes, the rack, thumb screws, pay toilets, dog sweaters, panty-hose, removable tape, nuclear weapons, individualized cell phone rings, plastic plants, and would someone please explain to me the benefit of a see-through shower curtain?

YouTube is an invention I had never thought of wanting or needing but I enjoyed the trip. There are videos on everything. I watched a engaging Japanese video on how to avoid your own flatus. This video was a mixture of science and wisdom and some of it I might use, but I wondered if it wasn't more important to learn to avoid the unexpected emissions of others. That information was not included. I also watched a old very naughty ninety year old woman begging for just one more hot night with any willing man, and the Darwin awards, for the dumbest among us, made me feel brilliant or at least that I had a right to procreate. And I have to say a word about frogs. YouTube has a lot of them. Deadly frogs that predict human calamities and frivolous frogs to lighten a day.

YouTube hasn't been around that long, but it caught on like free lighters with pyromaniacs. Even the Queen of England is joining in. She has her own Royal Channel on YouTube. Can the Queen be wrong? Well, probably, but who is going to tell her?

This made me think that there are a lot of somebodies out there thinking up this stuff. And another thing, all these inventions didn't come from contented people. Contented people invent nothing. It's the brooding malcontents who invent. It is these grouchy, disgruntled and unsatisfied people who think up something that changes the world. Which leaves me to think I should leave the grumpy alone. They may be thinking up the next world-altering contrivance.

The Muppet Show - I'm in love with a big blue frog

2007-12-22T18:48:00.001-08:00

Who Ordered this Pile of Dung?

2007-11-29T16:25:00.000-08:00

I have things in my house I don't want. The stuff just appears like a hairball on the carpet or a toadstool in the back yard. I have three kids, six cats, two birds, a dog and a husband who's suspicious that I'm a secret hoarder. My garage is full. Even my front lawn is full of poop from by neighbor's dogs. I have bags of bags, boxes filled with boxes and gorged closets. Worst yet, I have forgotten what I put in them. I did investigate the contents of one closet one time. I came away with a large bag of old Loc blocks, seven long red candles with an unpleasant odor, a pink robe with large red roses appliqued on it that was my mother's, two unopened packages of men's underwear, a Ziploc bag filled with socks without partners, a twenty-five year old swimsuit and some green rubber gloves. Before I fled, I had three dead spiders sticking to my pants, two live spiders in my hair and a dehydrated dead mouse by the tail. I haven't returned since and am too cowardly to repeat this profitless adventure.

No doubt there are more interesting things in my closets but that doesn't mean I want to go there. Life is like that. It is full of interesting places that I don't want to go to. Hell is first on my list. I'd like to know where it is and who is there, but I don't want to go there. Hell is followed closely by a pig farm, prison, Big foots home, the public landfill, a slaughterhouse and a junior high school. A morgue would also be an interesting place to visit as long as nobody moved.

Collecting things just adds to this problem. Hobbies can rapidly get out of control. You start with one antique button, but that isn't enough. Then it's twenty and twenty quickly escalates to a hundred. It has been like that for me with a couple things. I confess to being a aqua phobic numismatic bibliophile. I don't swim, collect shinny round things and books. My husband is suspicious of this. I ignore him.

This is why I approached LibraryThing with a gimlet eye. Would I want to record my phobic collection for everyone to see? I signed in to the site and tentatively added one book. Then I added two more in quick succession. By the tenth book I was hooked. I leaped from my chair and scurried about my house recording books from every shelf and pile. I didn't think this would be a dangerous undertaking until I stepped on a sleeping cat's tail. By the time my heart returned to it's normal rhythm I had fifty items cataloged and was busily scribbling notes on other entries.

LibraryThing turned out to be a terrific and unexpectedly gratifying addition to my life. This is my opinion of course. My husband is convinced I'm over-productive in certain areas and is earnestly looking for a treatment center for me. I'm happy. Until he finds one I'm free to collect and catalog to my soul's satisfaction.

Messages from the boneyard.

2007-11-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

Flickr is a lot like my high school annual. It has thousands of pictures of people I don't know. I decided to do a search for the odd and curious stuff. Anything peculiar, queer or uncouth would do. It was then that I learned something that would keep me awake at night. I made the mistake of using the explore option to research zombies. I didn't need to know that zombies desire human flesh or that they are unfailingly tenacious in their attempts to obtain it. The only good news was that they are are really dumb. I thought it best to move along.

So I decided to venture off into another area. Instead of the undead I'd look into the really very dead. What I uncovered, digging into this subject, was that graveyards are facetious and witty places. I found an auctioneer who had "Going, going, gone!" as his epitaph, a Mr. Pease who's gravestone read, "Pease is not here. Only his pod." I found a monument to a young man erected "by his grateful family" and another marker claimed that the man buried there was the "only surviving son" of Admiral Vernon.

As a warning to us, I suppose, many people had to tell you how they died. One claimed it was from eating crab, another claimed that bananas had done him in. One man died choking on a fish bone. I didn't find this unusual, but then there was the woman who claimed her death was due to eating a watermelon. Then there is the hypochondriac who's marker reads, "I told you I was sick."

Ultimately, it is nice to know the dead are really dead and will stay put. It is also nice to know that they have a sense of humor. Some names on grave markers, for example, set you to thinking. Names like: Yul B. Next, Willy Rott, U.R. Gone, Barry M. Deep, Izzy Gone, I. Emma Ghost and Sue D. Bum. One of the best epitaphs I came across was written by a woman who had shot her errant husband and I am sure wrote his epitaph from her jail cell with a big satisfied smile on her face. It read, "At least I know where he's sleeping tonight."

Flickr got me to thinking that maybe I should ponder what I want on my headstone. During my researach I came across a picture on Flickr of the marker of the man with a thousand voices, Mel Blanc. His marker says, "That's all folks!" It seemed so final that I had an immediate vision of Peggy Lee singing "Is that all there is?" So I sat in my kitchen and gave it some thought. I'm vacillating between two choices. Either, "I just knew this was going to happen." or, from Longfellow, "From dust thou art to dust returnest was not spoken of the soul." What do you think?

Blogger :: Edit Layout

2007-11-24T16:04:00.000-08:00

Blogger :: Edit Layout

Swimming with zombies

2007-11-04T11:24:00.000-08:00

Zombies are one of those things in life that you never give it a lot of thought to until you have one standing next to you. Looking at you. Abruptly your knowledge on zombies becomes personal and important. I haven't had this experience but if I ever do then I am now prepared thanks to one of the podcasts I watched. I learned more in that three minutes than I ever expected. For example; zombies cannot swim. {I do feel a bit conflicted about this unsettling piece of information because, as you know, I cannot swim and therefore cannot elude zombies by hiding in a lake.) Zombie bites are always infectious and fatal. You should not hide from zombies in your house or apartment. The best escape is to flee to either Costco or the mountains. Why this is the case was never made clear, but I do know that I need to have a survival kit ready to take with me. That kit should include a hatchet, long-handled knife or chain saw. You need one of these three because zombies can only be killed by chopping off their heads. I've chosen a hatchet as my weapon. The reason is clear. I'd have to get too close to the zombie to slice his head off with the knife and the chain saw seems too messy. The other reason is that I have ready access to a hatchet in my library. It is a part of my disaster preparedness kit. Really. It is. It is kept behind the kit which is right next to the courier boxes in the hall closet opposite the ladies restroom. I had no idea the library was so prepared, but I am delighted and feel much safer knowing it's there for me to use to slay a zombie if I need it.

This has presented me with a quandary and that is that I am sure it takes some skill and therefore some practice to swing a hatchet just so. It would appear that you only get one opportunity and you would want to be quick and accurate. So, I am thinking I need some practice. The conundrum is how to practice and become an expert hatchet-handler without ending up confined to a softly padded beige room with no door handle on the inside. I'm going to think more about this later.

What krl2pt0 has done for me is to open the door to a world of pleasing stuff (no other word covers everything like stuff does) and provided me with a way to link that stuff to my front doormat. I don't have to go searching for zombie sightings. Instead they come to me. Could it get any better?

Learning by the cat method.

2007-10-30T14:37:00.000-07:00

My cat peed on one of my books. It was a direct result of my testing Mark Twain's claim that if you hold a cat by the tail you will learn things you cannot learn any other way. That cat was out for revenge. We both learned from the experience.

What I think about learning something new is that it's also a good idea to start at the bottom and work your way up. The only exception is swimming. In swimming you should start on top of the water and try to stay there. That's the whole point of swimming. Swimming is something everybody should know how to do. There are some who never learn how. I'm a pretty logical thinker so it also stands to reason that any body lined with fat would float and therefore swimming would be easy. I know this to be untrue. Take my corpulent body for example. It does not float and consequently I can't swim. I've preached many long stirring sermons to myself exhorting the virtues of posessing that lifesaving ability. But the awful truth is that I just never got the knack of synchronizing my arms and legs. Instead each limb operates independently and seems totally unaware of what the other three are doing. The result is ugly. The last time I was in a pool I beat the water madly into a froth of foam as I sunk slowly to the bottom. This amazed the lifeguard and the small crowd who had gathered at the edge of the pool to watch. After reviving me the lifeguard told me kindly that it wasn't my fault that I couldn't swim. The crowd nodded in silent unison at his thoughtful comment and many smiled encouragingly at me and I felt better about myself.

So the long and short of it is that I don't venture into water above my knees. I will admit to being afraid, but not of water. I'm afraid that there is something very big with sharp white teeth deep under the water that is going to rise up and bite me. I am sure there are others out there like me.

As I have been going through the krl2pt0 training I have been offered up a splendid opportunity to find those other people like me. In addition, I've listened to podcasts, signed up for a del.icio.us account and collected websites on many of my interests, fears & phobias and have stumbled across an assortment of astounding and startling information that I had never given much thought.

I have to admit to being significantly cranky a few times when I was struggling with a particular assignment that was proving to be more formidable than trying to get a toilet seat cover to stay on long enough to get seated on it before the whole thing slides into the water or the floor. Sometimes I felt wildly befuddled by it all. I have a history with IT things. Normally when someone from IT tries to elucidate me to the wonders of the virtural world an odd fuzzy buzzing emitts from somewhere deep within my brain until I can't hear a thing they are saying and my lazy eye begins to wonder. Shortly I begin to feel like an abysmally stupid pinhead and spend my time smiling and nodding encouragingly, trying to pretend I'm not a dimwitted booby.

But this time it is different. I have the feeling that if I keep at it that damned buzzing will stop and I will end up learning a lot and I'll be quite chipper and pleased with myself. I've already had an exhilarating learning experience with a podcast on zombies. I learned the darnest things and have a completely new outlook on that hatchet in the library closet that is part of our disaster kit. It is kept right next to the courier boxes. Tune in next week for the rest of the story.

Carrying water in a sieve & Dear Abby

2007-10-28T12:24:00.000-07:00

You won't put out a fire by carrying water from a well in a sieve. I'm not a certified firefighter nor a pyromaniac and I've not tried it out, but I'm pretty sure this is true. There are other truism bantered about that I would just as soon not try out either. Ignorance is bliss is one of them.

I knew a man once who everyone considered a little light in the noodle. In fact, his whole family was considered light in the brain department. I have no idea why this was so. It just was. Their family name was Hereford. Like the cow. I'm sure this was coincidental. I recall my father telling the story of this family driving down a country road when the back seat door of the car flew open and one of the three kids in the back seat tumbled out. As the story goes, they didn't know what to do and after an loud argument between the parents and the two remaining children they stopped the car to discuss what to do next. After more deliberation they concluded that they should back up the car and see if they could find the missing youngster along the road somewhere. Of course they ran over him while backing up.

Please keep in mind that this is supposed to be a true story and that this family was an unfortunate a group of related innocents who would easily qualify for the featherweight division in mental expertise. They were not ignorant. They were all stupid, my father said, and sadly there was nothing that could be done about it.

As I venture valiantly into the world of social bookmarking, tagging and tag clouds, I keep the Hereford family in mind. I do this because it plainly shows the difference between those who can, those who can't and those who won't. I have a lot to learn and if I keep at it some of it will slide off but some of it will stick. As my father would say, I don't have the Hereford excuse for not learning.

"It's true that a little learning is a dangerous thing," Abigail Van Buren said, "but it still beats total ignorance." I think Abbey has a point.

My feet used to be small; another musing

2007-10-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

When I was born my feet were very small. The older I get the larger they grow. If this continues by the time I'm planted six feet under the soil my toes will be sticking out of the ground.

Of the new do-hinkey's I'm going to be learning this year why my feet are expanding is just one among many questions that have occurred to me since reading the article on 43 things to learn about. I've decided to start close to home. I'm determined to learn how to unlock the lock box that holds the key to my house should I forget or lose my keys. I think this is a smart move. Next, there is my digital camera that currently I can only turn on and off, then I'll learn to adjust my car radio & discover what all those mysterious buttons & dials really do. I'm going to make myself sit down and read that 108 page book on my new cell phone. I'm sure that phone can do surprising things like maybe teleportation. {If I'm suddenly gone then you'll know that this is the case.} There is such an array of new tools, implements, paraphernalia, phobias and accouterments to learn that the list will be endless. It is a time to be glad. A time for change.

There is nothing quite like change. Change can be good as long as it doesn't invlove something on me sagging. I'm determined to retool my cognitive & emotional functions to embrace an altered terra firma. I think the word I want is reformation. Yes. That is it! There will be a reformation in my life. Now I'm really up for and dedicated to making a change. It will be a giant leap forward. It doesn't matter if I feel like a puny turtle trapped in a biosphere of warp-speed rabbits; I've been given the tools to jump aboard, to learn, to grow and to pass it on to others. Hey, it kinda' sounds like fun.
The more I learn the more I like it.

Butter My Butt & Other Musings

2007-10-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

Well, butter my butt and call me toast! Old hounds and nublings can stumble upon the darnest stuff on and in this newfangled electronic world & there seems to be something hot off the griddle nearly every dang day! Makes me wonder what bizasrre, peculiar, curious and modernized oddity will crop up next. I do believe that this unfamiliar gadgit has transformed and reinvigorated my lazy brain into an unrelenting industirious and diligent erudition gismo, wanting to launch itself into the vast uncharted waters of this callow titillating world. It is my goal to soon become a crackerjack prodigy or better yet a genius or maestro mavian adept at and practiced in the intricate details of e-everything. If not this, then what? Prehaps spimply able to swim with some confidence into unsettled lands and return to shore without getting lost. This would do.