Public Service Announcement

Public Service Announcement

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Two Important Things I Learned Today:

  1. Beds need to be put together properly, or else they will fall apart.

    When you buy yourself a bed, it’s probably best to either a) read the instructions before/as you put the thing together, or b) note the spaces where wood slats seems to be begging for screws and actually give it what it wants. If you’re me, what you opted to do instead of putting your bed together properly was just to throw those slats on the frame and then throw the box spring on top of them. Surely they’re not going to move around or fall off about oh once a week. (It was a very hot day when my bed was delivered. And I was tired. And by myself. Have you ever tried to put a queen sized bed together by yourself in a very small room?)

    So today, after the top slat on my bed fell out for the millionth time, I pulled my mattress off the box spring and slid it (on its side) into the kitchen. (Man: a queen sized mattress is no light weight, I tell you.) And then I pulled off the box spring and leaned it up against the wall. And then I got out my ikea tool box and screwed those damn slats to the bed frame like I should have done the first damn time. I swept out the bunnies that had started to multiply underneath, and then put the box spring and the mattress back. Now I have a structurally secure sleeping space. All is (more) right with the world.

  2. Don’t drag software you use every single minute of the day into the trash.

    In a fit of oganizational pique, I accidentally added 5,000 new files to my itunes playlist. Files that I didn’t want there. Do you know, the only way to delete files from your itunes list, as far as I can tell, is to delete them manually? One by one? I suggest you take my word for it, because I don’t know about you, but most people don’t have time to manually delete 5,000 files from itunes. You can delete them en masse from the folder in your itunes library, but getting them off your itunes display is another thing entirely.

    So what did I do? Smartypants me, I decided the best way to get rid of those 5,000 extra files was to delete itunes and then reinstall it, so it would have a look through the library again and only show what’s actually in there. Drag, drop, empty trash. Download.

    Oh, sorry! There is nothing to install! I don’t even know how to explain this error; I couldn’t even re-install itunes from the system disk. It was as if my computer had decided that, since I had so thoughtlessly and shamelessly deleted itunes, i didn’t deserve to install it again. No itunes for you!

    [Insert mad panic here.]

    Let’s take a moment to consider what this would mean. No more listening to inspiring tunes at work. No more syncing my ipod. No more creative playlists for all my trips on the Go train into Toronto, or the Go bus trips, or even the humble city bus commute I do twice a day. No more audio joy.

    I pulled out all my installation disks and I was so ready to do a clean install on my machine that I zipped up my manuscript and uploaded it just in case of total data loss.

    Much thanks to my dear Catsy (who diagnosed and cured my malady) and Jason (who deleted his own itunes in solidarity).

    So it turns out that the installer is so smart that it won’t let you install itunes if you have the receipt for a previous itunes installation in your Receipts folder under the global directory. So you really need to delete that in order for the installer to admit that you need this thing that it is you’re trying to download, oh yes you do.

Oh unix. We love you and hate you all at the same time.

Learn from my mistakes. Don’t do these things. Beds need the slats screwed in (they really do), and itunes doesn’t belong in the trash. Thank you for listening.

Welcome home, Jim Loney

Welcome home, Jim Loney

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Today, two Canadians held hostage in Iraq came home. James Loney was kidnapped in November along with three others from a Christian humanitarian organization, in Iraq as peace activists. I remember when they were first abducted, because there was a long piece on the radio about James Loney. An ardant and activist Christian, he objected to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The hostages were meant to be killed on numerous occaisions if the Americans wouldn’t release Iraqi prisoners; time and time again they were not killed. Family and friends of James Loney expressed their certainty that he would convince his captors that he was on their side. If anyone could do it, they said, James could. They talked about what he was like, what pushed him to put his life on the line and travel to Iraq. They spoke about him as a friend, as a sibling. How kind he was, how gentle and intelligent and thoughtful. He appeared to be the personification of goodness. And here he was, off in Iraq, a critic of the American invasion and a defender of Iraqis, all because of his faith.

I was struck at the time at this show of Christian morality; it’s not one that we see very often in the news these days. It wasn’t about Christians turning up their noses at gays or demanding that schools teach intelligent design or abstinence. It was about peace. About, presumably, defending the defenseless. About laying down arms. About avoiding war at all costs. On Thursday, the member of provincial parliament for his riding said:

James Loney and others put their values of peace and goodwill ahead of their personal safety, and we commend them for their perseverance under such extreme circumstances. We thank those in foreign affairs who worked so hard for their release [via]

It was a military intervention that brought him home today; James Loney was quoted months earlier saying that if he were abducted in Iraq, he would not want the military involved. That was how deeply he objected to the military presence there.

While lately I’ve been left with a bad taste in my mouth because of the antics of some other self-described Christians, I found myself gaining more and more respect for this James Loney fellow. He had a sincere belief in what Jesus meant to tell his followers; he listened to the pledge of the peace-loving (blessed are the peacemakers, after all), and took it to a dangerous and impressive extreme. He risked his life to follow his beliefs. What also struck me at the time was that he’s Canadian. We don’t hear very much about activist Christians in Canada, barring the few who protested the government’s recent decision to legalize gay marriage. I couldn’t quite hear about James Loney without hearing those other Christian voices echoed around his. I felt a kind of dissonance. I went to Divinty school, I know lots of Christians that I respect beyond all things, but I’m not used to hearing about Christians doing such good things on the radio these days. I’ve grown so cynical.

“For 118 days, I disappeared into a black hole and somehow by God’s grace, I was spit out again,” Loney told reporters shortly after his arrival on Sunday afternoon. [via]

Today he came home, after months with his own death hanging over his head. It’s a miracle that he’s here. The American in his group didn’t make it.

I listened to the coverage more carefully because I remember how I felt hearing about his abduction. Today, they spoke about the joy of the members of his church felt that he was coming home. A church in his hometown held a mass of thanksgiving, even before he had flown back into the province. [via]. He has become a sort of idealized Christian figure, the sort of Christian others should emulate and praise.

The part of the story that’s new to me about James Loney is that he’s gay.

“It’s great to be alive!” Loney said.

Flanked by his teary brothers, partner, and sister-in-law, a thin-looking Loney said he was still having difficulty believing he was free after almost four months as a hostage, and just three days after his rescue.

“During my captivity, I sometimes entertained myself by imagining this day,” Loney told a crush of reporters and photographers at Pearson International Airport. “Sometimes, I despaired of ever seeing it; always I ached for it.”

One of the things he most wanted to do was “wash a sinkful of dirty dishes.”

While he said he wanted to tell the story of his captivity and rescue, he first wants to slip into “an abyss of love” and get reacquainted with his partner, Dan Hunt, his family and community. [via]

What does it say about the Canadian Christian community that their latest hero, the man so good his practically shined over the radio, is a gay man? Not a gay man struggling to be straight, either; an open, out gay man in a long-term relationship? What does it say about the Canadian press that this fact has passed by virtually unmentioned? I discovered it by noticing that the radio report talked about the other hostages returning to their wives, and Loney returning to his “partner”. Later in the report they mentioned his “partner, Dan”. So they didn’t ignore it, unlike the web version of the story, which simply says that he was met at the airport by “family and friends”. Had he been straight, they would have noted a wife or a girlfriend, surely. But even so, other reports do mention it, and don’t remark on it beyond that. I haven’t heard a thing from the Christian community about this, though perhaps it’s not in the best of taste to decry the gall of a homosexual to run around the world representing their values when he is being held hostage and threatened with death. But even so; the churches are celebrating his return like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

It’s certainly interesting to watch, even though I can’t draw any conclusions about it. At this point all I can say is: welcome home, Jim.

Documenting my World

Documenting my World

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Today I bought a digital camera. I’ve been talking about this for ages, and today, talking to a dear friend of mine in California, I had finally had enough of not being able to showcase the loveliness that is my latest living arrangement. Well, loveliness is one word for it, anyway.


Welcome to Streetsville!


Any self-grooming issues you’re having can be fixed here.

Drop in for some ice cream or some musical instruments.


And we’re not lacking in the caffeine department.

OCLC Spam

OCLC Spam

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comment spam | kom*ent spam |

Comment spam (also called blog spam or link spam) is the placing or solicitation of links randomly on other sites, placing a desired keyword into the hyperlinked text of the inbound link. Guest books, forums, blogs and any site that accepts visitors comments are particular targets and are often victims of drive by spamming where automated software creates nonsense posts with links that are usually irrelevant and unwanted.

I think we’re all fairly familiar with comment spam at this point. It’s super annoying, and most blog platforms have tools to help us bloggers deal with it. That’s the status of things on the internet right now.

But when I started to get comment spam from OCLC, I really wondered what the heck was going on. Generally it’s presumed that spam comes from people who have paid a professional to generate it for them. The online viagra peddlars, for instance. But OCLC? Why would they do such an underhanded thing?

At first I thought it must be some kind of joke, and I just ignored it. But after a few such comments I started to get annoyed, and fired off a question to OCLC. I took a screenshot of my comments moderation page, uploaded it, and sent that along too, to demonstrate the problem. Why am I getting comment spam from these people? Is this the latest OCLC advertising blitz?

After a significant amount of confused back and forth with OCLC support (at first they thought I was complaining about getting spam email from them, in spite of the screenshot, and asked me if I’d signed up for something), they still have no idea why I’m getting these comments. They admit that the IP addresses (plainly visible in the screenshot) belong to professional spammers, which makes it look as if OCLC has paid these people to harrass me.

Anyone else getting OCLC spam? Anyone at OCLC want to take a crack at explaining this?

Edited to add: OCLC assures me that they had nothing to do with the spammers. I believe them, but I’d really like to know: what is the point of random, pointless comment spam? Who’s getting something out of this? It’s very random and strange.

Annie

Annie

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I wonder if there’s a special psychiatric condition to explain why I’ve been longing to hear the soundtrack from Annie all day.

The sun’ll come out tomorrow…

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

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Yesterday afternoon, the university library system through a party to introduce the new information professionals to the rest of the staff (there are some 250 librarians across the whole library system, so that’s saying something). It was a little overwhelming, but an amazing experience, and I had a great talk with a librarian who had been working in the same library for 31 years. She told me stories about the kind of changed she’d seen in libraries since she was a new librarian herself. It was completely fascinating, and I may have to take time out to go back downtown and seek her out to hear more.

That shift from card catalogues to where we are currently is really something; not just in terms of databases and OPACs, but in terms of the way we can serve users and how much more streamlined our processes have become. I heard a story about how smaller libraries in the system had a dedicated phone line to the main library reference desk in order to get information out of the single copy of the union catalogue, so they could tell a patron which library they needed to go to to get their book. Talk about librarian as interface!

I love stories about old library technology and service methods, but here’s something I don’t understand; why do people think those stories are funny? I really don’t find them funny at all. I find them fascinating. Librarians have always pushed the limits of the technology at hand in order to do their jobs as well as they could, no matter what that technology was. Card catalogues don’t strike me as funny; they were the absolute best method of organizing and sharing a morass of information without a keyword-searchable database. They were the only way to empower users to do their own searching. They were anticipating the database in ways no one else could have done. I certainly don’t take current technology for granted, but hearing about how librarians stepped into the breech between what patrons needed and the limits of data organization before databases and digital catalogues makes me very grateful to be a new librarian now rather than then; I can sense that there must have been a certain level of frustration when the only interface you can use to determine whether or not a book was at one college or the next, at the main library or at in department collection, was a telephone call to a another busy reference desk. But they really pulled out all the stops, and I can only applaud them for that.

So, tell me, why are stories about old technology funny? I feel like people laugh because of how low-tech it is (like ditto machines and monstrous computers that accept punch cards), and how silly it would look next to our current tiny laptops and cell phones and bar codes, but that doesn’t seem fair. You can’t really compare technology backwards like that; people did what they could with what they had, and to be perfectly honest I think they managed to come up with more creative and thorough public services based on the technology they had access to than we have. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants, after all; both the technology and the librarians got us to where we are now. We don’t have to call up a larger library in order to determine the location of a book. With that extra energy, we should be providing a higher level of service than they did back in the early 70s. But are we? I guess it remains to be seen who gets the last laugh.

Four Things

Four Things

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I got tagged, and while I rarely participate in memes, I can’t pass up a real honest-to-goodness professional tagging, so here I go:

The idea here is to list four things from each of these categories, presumably to share more about yourself. Or something like that.

Jobs:
Page
Camp Counsellor
Mail Girl
Academic Programmer

When I was 18 I was a Page in our local public library (children’s department). I sorted books, I put them on shelves, I shelfread. Little did I know that my first job was going to be so closely related to my career. (Not that I ever have any actual contact with books in my current job, but hey, I do still work in a library!)

I was a camp counsellor for many many years. Through high school and through my undergrad degree. I loved it. I can’t express enough how much I loved that job. I worked primarily with 12-15 year old girls, the ones in that difficult stage. They were amazing, they were inspiring, they were energizing. Those many summers I spent living in a tent and living at a considerable distance from flush toilets is the reason I can play the guitar. Also why I know so many ice-breaker games, but I don’t pull that skill out very often these days.

During my first master’s degree, I delivered mail for Harvard Divinty School’s staff, students and faculty. Best. Job. Ever. First off, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as sorting mail. I mean, once you know who everyone is, you can just do it like you’re flying through it. Also, I delivered the mail, and got to put little post-it note smiley faces on the packages. I knew everyone, and everyone knew me. It was great.

What the job title “Academic Programmer” doesn’t tell you is that to do it you need to live in a residence hall full of 18 year olds. I did this when I was 29. I helped them with their academic issues, directed them to services on campus, that sort of thing. It was fantastic, and really taught me a lot about radical reference service in higher ed.

Movies:
Six Degrees of Separation
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Being John Malkovich
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Four Places I’ve lived:
Guelph, Ontario
Ottawa, Ontario
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, Ontario

That’s leaving aside Toronto (and Mississauga), of course.

Four TV shows:
Star Trek: The Next Generation (well I am a geek, what can I say)
The Collector (I’ve been watching this one lately)
America’s Next Top Model
Ellen (it’s on when I get home!)

Four places I’ve vacationed: I’m not sure I’ve ever properly vacationed, but I’ll give this a go.
Norway (don’t ask)
New York, NY
Duncan, BC
My couch (eventually I will add London, UK to this list, but so far, I have never taken an official vacation)

Four of my favourite dishes:
Breakfast (at any time of day)
Fish and chips (in spite of my deathly fear of fish)
Butter chicken
Turkey dinner

Sites I visit daily:
Livejournal (to read my friends list)
Metafilter
Defamer (don’t judge me!)
The Zokutou word meter (I’m obsessed with my word count, what can I say)

Places I would rather be:
With my nephew
On a long walk with my ipod in my pocket
in front of my computer (Wait! I’m already there!)
My bed. (Wait! I’m already there too!)

Books:
A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, Julian Barnes
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
Green Grass, Running Water, Tom King
Our Lady of the Lost and Found, Diane Schoemperlen

Songs: (This one changes every week or so!)
Liquify, The Servant
The World you Love, Jimmy Eat World
Your Legs Grow, Nada Surf
Everybody’s Changing, Keane

Cars:
None yet. I don’t know how to drive.

Four bloggers I am now hereby tagging:
Jason Nolan
Catspaw
Sherri
Caitlin

Blogging: The Podcast

Blogging: The Podcast

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A couple of weeks ago, my buddy Jason Nolan, Assistant Professor in Early Childhood Ed at Ryerson, came up to my place of work to do a talk with me about blogging.

There were a lot of ways we could go with this talk. Jason and I have been talking about blogging since 2000, so we have a lot of years of natter and thought to distill down into 50 minutes. We opted to go with the conceptual rather than the practical. This talk involved no powerpoint slides, no how-tos, no demos. We talked about why we thought blogging was good for higher education, but from the point of view of good pedogogical practice and the quality of the student experience. There were millions of things we wanted to spend more time talking about but couldn’t.

That talk has now been turned into a podcast by Jason; it’s a 44 meg file, however. But if you’re interested in hearing us blather on and hopefully make a point here and there, you can download the podcast here: Blogging: It’s good for you.

If you do, please let us know what you think! It’s the beginning of a lot more talking we want to do on this subject, so stay tuned!

An Open Letter of Complaint

An Open Letter of Complaint

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Dear CBC,

I heard a recounting of weblog history on the radio this morning, and it’s completely wrong. If it were just once I would ignore it, but I hear this history repeated on the CBC over and over. Even a tiny bit of research on the matter would have avoided this problem. It seems that someone at the CBC would rather go with their gut on the history of the weblog than actually look it up.

Weblogs did not begin as “diaries”. This is like saying radio began in 1981 with the launch of MTV. Weblogs in fact began as change logs for websites. At the time, it was standard practice to post a line with a date attached to indicate that change had been made to a website. With time, those change logs morphed into sites dedicated not to posting diary-like reflections but annotated links. The first incarnation of weblogs was as an annotated bibliography of the web, since searching wasn’t quite as easy and efficient as it is now, and this was a way to make sure people saw the cool parts of the web.

Blogging didn’t get conflated with personal online diaries until well after 1999 with the creation of Blogger, and when I started blogging in earnest in 2000, blogs were still largely expected to be link-heavy rather than diary-like. As blogging got easier and the broadband revolution took over (with more and more parents getting home connections and more and more teenagers getting online as a matter of course), blogs were increasingly expected to be personal accounts of daily life. At that time, blogging platforms like Livejournal, Xanga, MySpace, etc. started being used more frequently for personal purposes. With increased access to the internet, the userbase of the internet changed; new users were more interested in sharing their personal stories and less interested in geeking out about the web. While blogging was intially a sort of meta-internet (creating websites about other websites), with time users of all stripes started using the web as a means of communication rather than as a tool to remark on the medium itself.

Today, there are blogs of all varieties; political, professional, corporate, personal, fictional, etc. Highlighting one element of the blog world (the personal, diary-like weblog or the political journals alone) does a great disservice to the medium, and encourages the general perception of weblogs as simply diaries or pulpits of political opinion. They are so much more than that.

Sincerely,

Rochelle

We are not the Lost Generation: Search Strings Redux

We are not the Lost Generation: Search Strings Redux

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I’ve been a bit busy of late. It’s a bit easier to blog regularly when you a) don’t have a full time job, and b) aren’t trying to write a novel. Just my opinion. I’ve been saving the better parts of my brain for work and/or creative (or not so creative) writing, so there’s only a tiny wedge of myself leftover for my blog lately. And often that wedge would prefer to curl up in bed and fall asleep, and so.

It’s been ages since I went trolling through my search strings, so I had tons to choose from this time around. And boy were there ever some gems in there. [If you’re new to this feature on my blog, a short explanation: when you type in a search query on Google, and click on a site you found there, the person who owns the domain you visit gets a hit from Google with your original search string in it. Thus, people who are perversely interested in such things can see what kinds of search strings lead people to their websites. What follows is a selected list of search strings my website has been collecting over the last month.]

Some initial favourites:

we are not the lost generation
find essay about balance school and partying
carrot cliches
google will always be a piece of shit

And from the WTF files:

winnie the pooh slash fanfiction archive

I was tempted to leave this one without any commentary, but I can’t resist. What sort of slash pairing do you imagine would be dominant in a Pooh fanfiction community? Would the biggest draw be the hurt/comfort of Pooh/Eeyore? The playfulness of Piglet/Roo? It’s anyone’s guess, really. (n.b.: If you ever want to freak out your friends, just ask them that question.)

how can i relate the professor to understand me

Wow, I think that question sort of answers itself.

mazar imp sales

They’re slow this season, I gotta admit.

how to typed a straight bar

I can’t parse this one at all. If you have a guess, please let me know.

how many places is my browsing being saved at asshole?

This might be my favourite search string EVER. Someone has just discovered that the internet is not a passive experience, but that everything you type into those boxes is being logged somewhere, and every website you load keeps a record that you loaded it. I particularly enjoy the name-calling at the end. Do you think he’s talking to me, or to Google?

encyclopedia britannica ready reference crack

I’m posting this one because I like the idea of “ready reference crack”.

my magic man Rochelle

I’m shockingly low on a) magic, and b) masculinity, unfortunately.

tilex fresh shower chat room

Can you imagine what this would be like? A whole chatroom dedicated to Tilex Fresh Shower? How long can that conversation go on, really?

i live in mississauga and

Trigger happy! Didn’t even finish the sentence!

brendan greeley aim

Brendan, someone called for you. They didn’t leave a message.

And, as usual, I have my list of search strings that came from the cheaters of the world. People using a search engine to get their homework done, and not in a good way. Some examples:

capricorn systems exam papers
narrative essay bout a difficult decision you have to made and the process you went through t oreach yourr conclusion
confessions of an ugly stepsister chapter summaries
i need information on dogs for my speech
what is feeling sorry for celia about

And then there’s the technical questions, which this time around were dominated by people concerned that they were being blocked on MSN and wanted to know if it’s true (if you have to ask, you’re being blocked, friend), and people wanting to sneak into people’s private posts on livejournal:

clear google search strings
hack livejournal locked posts
how to be added to someone’s friend page in lj without them knowing
msn how to know if blocked
how to write a good progress note
random im windows popping up
how do i know if i was blocked on msn?
msn blocked how to know

Another fun search string category is the Direct Questions.

what does technologically literate mean
do you need a licence to own a hair salon in ontario
what does a search string look like
when and why was the internet created?
what is the free thought? by wikipedia
when did winnie the pooh began
where to find a metaphor
where does debbie travis live
should i count twisted pagegetter as search engine
how do you cite a work cited page with mutiple volumes
why was the internet created?
why the canadian government doesn’t like change

Good times, good times. More soon, I promise.

An Open Letter to the Conservative Party of Canada

An Open Letter to the Conservative Party of Canada

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Dear Stephen Harper and Co.,

It’s great to see you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the Canadian political and social landscape. I know you like to think of yourselves as vastly different from your Liberal and New Democratic colleagues, and the gay marriage debate is one way to underscore that. Look at that wide world of voters out there who don’t like the gays! Surely they will vote for you instead of those gay-friendly other parties!

I had the pleasure of hearing more about your party’s policies on the gay marriage issue this morning on the radio, and listening to the details gave me a great idea. Following your line of thought, I’ve come up with an idea: how about we legally change the name of your party, the “Conservative Party of Canada”, to the “Homophobic Party of Canada”.

Let’s look at the issues: historically, the term “conversative” has meant something different in the Canadian political landscape. There was a Conservative Party that merged with theProgressive Party back in the day, but for a long time a “Conservative” candidate meant a PC party member. You cannibalized that party, it’s true, but it was Brian Mulroney who killed it, and it’s disingenuous to take the name of another party in the hopes that people will see you as the same thing. For decades it belonged only to one group of Canadians. You can’t just take the name and expect to be legitimate. I’ve even heard people refering to your party members as “Tories”. That’s completely out of line; you’re not Tories at all. If we rolled the clock back 50 years no one would call you “Tories”. History is important!

Yours can still be a political party, don’t worry. I’m not even asking you to change any of your policies. I mean, you’ll still be an equal party among the other parties. We’ll make sure you have all the same legal rights as everyone else. You just can’t call yourself “Conservative”. It’s not really that much of a hardship, if you think about it. What’s in a name? And think of all the people who will feel better knowing that the term as they used to know it (see Joe Clark) will be legally preserved. We need time to adjust to these radical changes you’re proposing for us. Give us that time by not appropriating a name that you haven’t historically been given.

“Homophobic Party of Canada” is definitely descriptive. What, you don’t like the sound of it? Well, I don’t like the sound of “civil union”, but they tell me it’s legally equal to “marriage”, so I don’t see why you should complain. It’s still got the “Party of Canada” part to it, and you’ll still be allowed to campaign, collect funds, run candidates, and even be elected! Just like all the other parties! What more can you ask for, really. It’s all about preserving our historical definitions, after all. Right?

Best,

Rochelle

Dopey Grin

Dopey Grin

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Dear God. Someone clearly told Stephen Harper to put on a dopey grin at the end of every complete sentence. “You’re too scary-looking, Stephen. Smile more. Yeah, that’s it.”

It’s frightening me more, quite frankly.

If I could vote for Gilles Duceppe, I would. Is that wrong?

Winnie-the-Pooh Fanfiction

Winnie-the-Pooh Fanfiction

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I’m not entirely sure how to spin this story. Disney is replacing Christopher Robin with a girl. I mean, on one hand, I’m a big fan of taking elements of popular culture and throwing them in the blender. I like the idea that fictional worlds are open; we can always wander into Wonderland and tinker with it, recreate it, set a new story in it. I like the idea that once a fictional world and fictional characters are released into the wild they become, on some level, the property of all of us; once we take them into our lives we create them in our imaginations, and the residue of them is left of us all to use. Fictional worlds and fictional people are like digital documents in that they can be endlessly replicated by each individual user. We make a copy, we don’t steal the original widget. So partially, reading this story about Winnie-the-Pooh, I think it’s sort of interesting that someone is very seriously stepping into his world again and see how he would respond to a little girl. (A ‘tomboy’, no less, whatever that’s supposed to mean these days.)

But on the other hand, this is Disney. This is less about stepping back into the 100 acre wood to reimagine it and more about wringing some more cash out of a classic.

“Pooh appears to be a robust brand that can handle expansion.”

Reducing Pooh to its market value makes my blood turn cold. But it makes me wonder: why replace Christopher Robin? What would a tomboy bring to this new audience that Christopher Robin couldn’t? He wasn’t a particularly masculine little boy, after all. He was a gentle little soul, not particularly exclusionary. Obviously this is less about being creative and more about repackaging something that sells to see if it will sell more. But the entire process rests on an interesting point; companies hate it when fans take possession of a character or universe and produce new stories featuring it, and often push forward the ‘integrity’ argument (something Anne Rice clings to). Interesting how corporate-driven fanfiction, which is what this Tomboy-girl thing is for Winnie-the-Pooh, is just fine to them.

So for now, Christopher Robin is out in the 100 acre wood, all on his own:

And so Christopher Robin began to run, first one way and then the next, looking for a tree or steam or path he knew, so he could find his way to his friends. He called out to them — “Pooh! Piglet! Tigger! Rabbit! Owl! — but none answered, or if they did Christopher Robin did not hear them. From time to time, however, it seemed to Christopher Robin that he could hear them, just over a small rise, all his friend’s voices, and a new voice he did not know. But when he ran that way he found nothing, just more trees and more leaves.

It was in a small pile of leaves that Christopher Robin finally lay, covering himself with their little brittle hands to ward off the chill of the night in the Hundred Acre Wood. “It’s a simple thing, really,” he said, bravely. “I’ve been looking for all my friends, and they have been looking for me! If I stay in one place, they will find me. And then we will go to Pooh’s, where I will be warm and have something nice to eat.”

And so Christopher Robin lay down in the leaves and went to sleep, shivering only a little, trusting in the love of his friends to find him and bring him home.

Rootkits and Controlled Vocabulary: An Unlikely Comparison

Rootkits and Controlled Vocabulary: An Unlikely Comparison

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I’ve been following the Sony-BMG rootkit DRM issues with interest. There’s a series of themes to that scandal that reappear at regular intervals; one of the most compelling to me is the perceptions of the user that’s becoming increasingly obvious. The user as criminal, and as cash cow; the user as high-tech hacker, and then as dumb sheep who pay the ignorance premium.

Sony-BMG is clearly interested more in your wallet than your personal experience of their products. They seem to feel that they’re sitting on hot property and they want to make sure you pay for it, you dirty, dirty commoners. But even more than that, they want to mediate the user’s experience of their product. They want the user to pass through several levels of technology and difficulty (using a custom player, installing software on the your machine, etc.) in order to experience the product in the right way.

While there’s an argument to be made that the malware-inspired rootkit that Sony forced upon its paying users is a sign that technological evolution have had an impact on the way the music industry communicates with us (modelling themselves after crackers rather than the open source movement), on the whole, this whole mess is a testament to an industry that doesn’t want change, that distrusts technology and the people who know how to use it. Some homegrown folks worked out better ways to distribute information and got there first. The big guys are fighting back with traditional ways of thinking and the morality card rather than coming up with a better economic model. The conflict is a perfect description of an industry that is trying to stall technological evolution rather than allowing it to get under their skin and fundamentally change them.

Sony-BMG did not, I’m sure, mean to wreck their users computers and open up gaping security holes in the operating systems of the people who actually paid for their products. The fact that they did shows that they are (I would say) criminally negligent, and that the people making the decisions weren’t qualified to have an opinion about what constitutes fair DRM, and didn’t care enough about their users to ask the questions about the damaging installs. They will blame their tech guys for this. They will blame their own ignorance of things technical. But none of that is fair; the strategic directive behind this is to blame. What they wanted was a controlled product. They wanted to mediate the way we seek out and use their wares, and were not prepared to tolerate anything less.

Looking at all the discussion around the rootkit issue, I’m prompted to make an unlikely comparison to the way librarianship talks about controlled vocabularies. Bear with me on this one; a bit strange, but still revealing.

A controlled vocabulary is sort of like the rootkit of librarianship. In order to find the product (the information you want), you need to play by our predetermined, sometimes nonsensical rules. You can’t use your own language or your intuition, you can’t ask your question and get some answers. You can’t take the skills you’ve honed in your other forms of searching and apply them to the product we manage. No, you need to leave all that at the door and use our system. And in order to use it, you need to learn how we think, and find things by first framing them according to our values and perspective. You need to install the rootkit that we are offering you in order to get where you’re going.

Like the language around DRM, many librarians tut-tut at people who use search systems that don’t conform to the traditional values of librarianship, that reveal information in ways many librarians don’t approve of (see Michael Gorman on Google).

And this is not to say that I’m perfectly uncritical of keywords. I recognize the pros and cons of a controlled vocabulary and human ordering. I guess where this comes from is looking long and hard at what’s going on with Google, and being disappointed that it was them who came up with it. Sure, they have the money and the time and the skills, but still; it disappoints me that it’s Google that worked this one out, and that it’s still Google who’s on the forefront of information organization.

I’m frustrated by Michael Gorman, in his role as the president of the ALA, is telling the world that Google Print (now Google Book Search) is such a bad thing. I’m frustrated that it took someone other that librarians to stop and think that the scanning == indexing equation is a natural progression of subject headings; it’s what the first cataloguers would have done if they’d had the tools to do it. I know about the legal issues around Google’s project, and I’m hoping against hope that Google wins in the end. Because technology has presented us with a better means of getting at the content of books and articles, and it would be a crying shame to lose that. And no, it’s not just about bad keyword searching. (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone complain that Google’s algorithm is based entirely on how many times a word appears on a page, I’d be a rich woman.) I’m frustrated that so many librarians are willing to stay ignorant about what Google is actually doing and cling to this old trope about how a dumb search engine works. With a combination of human categorizing (tagging/metadata), authority control, and full text searching, we can help users arrive at a better search result that goes deeper than the cover of the book. We can help people find what they’re looking for, which is supposed to be the point. I’m frustrated that Google Book Search seems to mean e-books to people (even to some librarians). Is an index an e-book? Are subject headings giving away too much of the book? Are summaries and abstracts just small, abridged e-books? I’m disappointed by how much of the truly innovative thinking about cataloguing, metadata and searching isn’t coming from the library community, and how much resistance I’ve seen to those non-librarians by some of us on the inside. We should be inspired by these technological advances, not wringing our hands like Sony BMG.

This isn’t about bowing down to the gods of Google. Likewise, I’m not suggesting that the music industry roll over and accept that we’re all going to snag free copies of whatever we want, whenever we want it. What I’m hoping for from all angles is the openness to accept change, to be challenged and changed by it, and to create a better information environment because of it. I’d like to see the music industry stop hating its user base and start catering to it instead; I’d like to see librarians stop hating/fearing Google and start working in partnership with them for the benefit of their patrons.

Since a dear friend of mine has recently been offered a job with Google, I’ve had time to think about what it might mean to consider Google a partner rather than an enemy. There’s so much synergy between us and them, so many interesting ways our worlds intersect. Do we want to be DRM pushers like Song BMG, or do we want to be open source and user-friendly? Be at the forefront of change or in the courts trying to preserve the information landscape of the 1950s?

Find me something

Find me something

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It’s time for the search strings redux! And I’ve got a lot of search strings to skim through. I’ve handpicked a few along certain themes, because, as always, my interest is in who people think they’re talking to when confronted with a search engine. Can we tell what’s going on in people’s minds by looking at the way they phrase their questions? It can’t hurt to try.

First, the how-tos: people often turn to Google when they want to know how to do something. But, as is often the case, users haven’t entirely parsed exactly what they’re looking for, or how best to ask for it. So, users see an empty search box as saying, “So, what do you want to know how to do today?”

how do you know if a women wants to be that just friends
how to clear search strings
how to care for uncircumsized penis
how start revolution
how to know if you’re blocked on msn
how to get superglue off plastic glasses
how can i get free erotic story to my e mail inbox
how to keep student from being bored
how to break up a ganglion cyst
how to get people to come to library

And then there’s my personal favourite class of search string, which many of those how-tos above fit into: the complete phrase:

what did you think of the july 2005 new jersey bar examination
why do you see laptop as a distraction in class?
what makes people steal
what could i use from todays society to be written like jonathan swifts a modest proposal
what’s so great about reference librarians
what kind of problems do medieval peasants face
why are women complicated
how did people react to swift’s a modest proposal
what was the climax of jonathan strange?
when did cbc go on strike?
what is an academic monograph
how do i become a librarian?
is there profit in bookstores
what have people been searching for lately
why was the internet created
what is a wildcard when writing a search string
what problems are librarians encountering today?
what happened on december 9 2004
if you could change who would you be
what does the eagle has landed mean
does tilex fresh shower really work
who started sociological critcism?

And, I think I have to pick a personal favourite:

find me a coursework story about an assassin

I love this one because of the delightful anthropomorphizing of the Google search that’s going on here. Not only a complete sentence, but one with a directive at the front: find me this. There’s something strange yet endearing about that.

Follow up from Wednesday

Follow up from Wednesday

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Some Wiki projects of interest that I highlighted in a presentation at OISE this week:

* Wikipedia: The biggest, most obvious example.
* Lessig’s Codebook: I think I forgot to mention this one. This is a collaborative edit of a published book. The book was published, and Lessig is opening it up to edits from whomever wants to edit it.
* ALA Conference Wiki: A wiki used by presenters and attendees of a recent library conference to record the proceedings, among other things.
* Romantic Audience Project: Wiki-based poetry project. (A direct link example page: Ode on a Grecian Urn)
* Lexicon RPG: A proposal for a wiki-based role-playing game.

Enjoy! Good luck!

On Muses: The Process of Learning by Writing

On Muses: The Process of Learning by Writing

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It amazes me what you can learn by starting to write something. While I’m trying to very hard to plot carefully, and I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about big plot elements and moving things around and being as clear as I can be with myself about everyone’s motives, still the discovery method rears its random head when I actually sit down to write.

I’m not a fan of the concept of the muse. My characters are my own, I invented them, they can’t do or say anything that I don’t imagine them saying (at least, so far, since I have not spawned any fanfiction universes). I get a bit bored when people talk as if their characters lead different lives outside of the writing, or are talking to them personally, or need to be cajoled or prodded into action, so on and so forth. And yet.

I find that I learn so much about a character once I start actually writing them. I can plan them out all I want, but writing seems like actually becoming them, or thinking like them, really getting into their psyche in a way that isn’t as precise in the planning stages. Because once I start writing a character I sometimes get completely new vibes off them. Rather than attributing this to a muse, or to some disembodied version of the character who knows me and can chat with me (I don’t know how people manage this; if my character knows I exist, the plot falls apart because then they know they’re fictional, and it’s a paradox, and argh), I’m attributing it to learning from writing.

I have two examples of this. I have a character who is bisexual. I have always known this about him, and there has never been a moment where I have strayed from that early conviction about his character. But one of the things I never wanted to write about was him telling his parents. I didn’t want to write a coming out story, it’s not the focus of this plot, and just the idea of that conversation made me tired. I just felt there would be drama and there’s enough drama in the book without that sort of thing. I’d rather have his parents die off before he felt any need to mention it. His parents are so committed to a very traditional way of life, I just didn’t see them ever accepting anything so non-traditional.

But then I started writing his dad. Nothing terribly dramatic, just a brief but serious conversation which has already been edited out. But in writing a simple bit of dialogue I just got that this bisexuality revelation wouldn’t break him or throw him into a frenzy. It just wouldn’t, he would just be happy that everyone was healthy and alive and at peace with the world, nothing else would matter. It was just startlingly clear to me. And what a shock, after all my planning told me not to broach this subject between these characters. Now, I haven’t tried this trick with his mom yet. But his dad at least would be on his side in a heartbeat. I’m not even sure they’ll have this conversation. I’m not sure his parents will ever know. But I learned something important about this character I just would not have known until I got inside his head by writing him.

The other thing I’ve been doing, here and there, is writing short scenes in first person present tense. I have such a love/hate relationship with it. In general I don’t like the first person OR the present tense. I feel like if you’re going to go first person present tense you have to write very conversationally, because it’s got to be 100% dialogue. Even when it’s not dialogue, first person is your character talking, even in her/his head. And generally speaking people don’t talk description. People don’t sit there and muse about things with adverbs and adjectives. They think conversationally, actions and people. So if I’m going to write first person present tense, I’m going to do it like a monologue.

But I’ve been writing short scenes to answer my own questions. Things happen in the story and I ask myself, how new is this or that? What’s so-and-so’s experience with X or Y? And these questions spawn these little monologues in the first person, between one character and another. (Not me. No no not ever to me! It’s my question but I guess I put it in the mouth of a character he would feel comfortable with, comfortable telling, and work from there.)

It’s weird to go from writing third person past tense to first person present. Suddenly you have this voice to deal with and that’s really quite interesting. I guess it’s like writing extended dialogue, but I find myself really learning about a character by doing this. What words would he use? How would he structure this story that he’s telling? Is he entirely factual? Does he go back and add his later interpretations of things, and does he recognize that he’s doing that? Does he gloss over things? And I guess the odd part about it is that I don’t seem to consciously ask those questions. I just try it, and do it. Learning as I go.

It’s amazing, really, how much you know about a story that never shows up in the story itself.

I’m not going to say I work with muses. But I can see where the idea comes from.

Radio Open Source, Revisited

Radio Open Source, Revisited

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Well, there’s always two sides to every story, aren’t there.

I explained what happened between me and Radio Open Source here. So now I have a rather lengthy addendum.

Brendan, blogger-in-chief at Radio Open Source, was the fellow who made the offending comment, and it was Brendan who got in touch with me tonight to clear it up. He got on AIM and just called me up. That’s bravery: just grab an angry Canadian by the horns, that’s how you do it.

We talked around the issues about nationality, essentially agreeing that while Americans often don’t care about what’s going on outside their own borders, that’s not too much of an excuse for a pithy program like theirs, but yes, the world is wide, and yes, Americans are not very excited about their northern neighbour at the best of times. Sad, but true. He admited that the “us” in “a country none of us care about anyway” was meant to be a wry remark about Americans in general, not Radio Open Source staff in particular. We also discussed the very real issue that media can only talk about media so many times before someone calls them on the navel-gazing, and this is something I can see and do indeed accept.

Brendan, charming man that he is1, understood that in the end the issue was not about a show topic, but about communication. Oh yes, the medium is (as always) the message. Rule #1 in creating an online community/audience: if you want feedback, you’ll get feedback, and dammit you’d better respond to it in some way or the hoards will get prickly and upset.

Throughout this exchange (with Brendan tonight, but primarily prior to it), I’ve been thinking about the advice and guidance provided by Creating Passionate Users. I follow this blog because these folks think so totally differently than I do, and I find their insights interesting. I thought about Radio Open Source as trying to create passionate users, and I saw myself as the passionate user. And I was very much falling into the model. What I learned from CPU is that it’s good if some users (or, in a library context, patrons) love you, and some users hate you, but if there’s too many in the “meh” category, that spells trouble. This to me seems like a valuable lesson and it keeps coming back to me.

And I knew, even as I wrote this frustrated and unhappy post about what had happened, that I was jumping right over that sea of “meh”. I was still a passionate user. Even I as I tried to do the “turn your back” thing, being upset as I was still labeled me a force for…well, something.

I guess the idea is: if you get passionate users of your service, your product, your community, or your library, you should grab them and make use of them. Sometimes they’re going to get upset. Sometimes they’re going to throw themselves a great big tantrum. But you’ve got to listen to them and use them, because passionate users can be your greatest asset.

I have a feeling Radio Open Source may find a use for me yet.

I’m always going on about the power of the internet, the power of blogs, how internet communication can lead to great things, and at times Radio Open Source was being the exception. Until this. All I did was post my Canadian outrage on my own blog. The technology did the rest. My wordpress pinged his wordpress; he got trackback about my post. My post came up as a comment on the post in question on the Radio Open Source blog. My friends and neighbours saw my post and commented; Brendan got to see not just my reaction, but the reactions of those around me. And he in turn edited his blog, as I’m now editing mine. Private discussions become public, and real change comes through it.

Radio Open Source wanted to move at the speed of the blogosophere, and I think for the first time Radio Open Source is participating in a classic blog debate as a blog itself. There were hurt feelings, vague flames, humour that didn’t translate, and finally, reproachment, through the magical joy that is instant messaging.

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1 See, Brendan? I did remark on your charming nature. Just like you asked me to. 😛

Radio Open Source doesn’t Care about Canada

Radio Open Source doesn’t Care about Canada

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I’ve been a fan of Christopher Lydon’s for years, ever since 1999 when I moved to Boston. So needless to day I was delighted when I discovered that he was doing a podcast radio show called Radio Open Source.

The spirit of Open Source will be open source — open as to subject matter, open as to views and voices. Our favorite oft-times caller on the original Connection, the famous Amber, once remarked to me: “Chris, you treat your callers like guests and your guests like callers.” We will try to extend the same open manners to the new show, and to the new website that comes with it. We chose Open Source as a name to live up to. [via]

I’ve been an avid listener. I’ve told all my friends about the show and send them links to ones I think they will particularly enjoy. I talk about it at work. So you imagine my joy when they announced three things at once; an open call for feedback on the site, and a live webcast the following week about what more they could do to live up to their name and engage their listeners, and a renewed call for show suggestions. I was so excited! I composed a long comment about web interactivity and some things they could do to help create community through the web. This is something I’ve done a lot of thinking (and writing) about. I was thrilled to be able to participate. I also added a show suggestion: the CBC lockout. If anything changed labour relations through a new means of production, it would be that. I thought someone should do a thoughtful review of those events, but I’m not sure it can happen in Canada (at least, not yet.) I felt like a “source”, just like Chris said. I was thrilled to just be able to make a suggestion, whether or not it was taken.

But then the webcast happened. What happened to the interactivity? There was none. I could hear the webcast, but I couldn’t be heard. There was no forum for users to react and respond; only an email address. A friend of mine, also listening in on the webcast, and I were getting increasingly frustrated as the folks on the webcast talking about how on earth to engage listeners while they devoutly ignored us. The feedback comnents? Didn’t get addressed at all. And the worst of it all was when someone during the webcast joked about how everyone in the room was “backchannelling” on IRC. Ha ha! How funny! What a nice little in circle they have, these folks who asked for our feedback, hanging out together on IRC without extending an invitation to the rest of us! My friend nearly choked with shock; I just felt sad and uninvited. Why did they ask us for suggestions and feedback if they weren’t serious about listening to it?

I was frustrated but was prepared to blame technology. These things happen, right? Maybe they didn’t know how to cope with hundreds of listeners banging on the door. Maybe they didn’t think through what it would mean to webcast something like that; dangling a carrot before us and then never letting us gett a bite.

But add insult to frustration today. Because today they responded to my little show idea with this:

So: not only were my comments barely noted and responded to, now I come from a country they just don’t care about. This, apparently is the best way to increase your interactivity with an audience; ignore them, tease them with the opportunity to “be a source”, and then kick them in the teeth and tell them that you just don’t care.

I’m sad and baffled by this turn of events. I really felt good about these people. I was prepared to do anything I could to help them with this neat radio idea. I was so behind them. And yeah, that phrase is kind of echoing through my head right now. I can’t think of too many things that would have made me turn away from something I enjoyed so much, on a medium I love.

I’m sure they won’t miss one listener from a country none of them cares about.

Edited to add: The resolution of this matter (the dramatic tension! the suspense! Will they resolve their differences? Will it come down to a match of steely wills, broadcaster vs. librarian? Will it be a deathmatch, and if so, will it be in the mud?) can be found here.

Why I am a Feminist

Why I am a Feminist

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Because in the US, the latest nominee for the Supreme Court believes that men should have ultimate control over their wives’ bodies.

Because if you give a search for “rape” in Google News, it takes 0.23 seconds to come back to you with 14300 results.

Because in Pakistan, a woman can be sentenced to gang rape on behalf of her brother’s alleged association with the wrong person.

Because vaginal cosmetic surgery and labiaplasty are two of the fastest emerging growth trends in plastic surgery.

Because an estimated 130 million women and girls worldwide have been genitally mutilated.

Because since 1993 more than 370 young women and girls have been murdered in the cities of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua – at least a third suffering sexual violence – without the authorities taking proper measures to investigate and address the problem.

Because In the US, someone is raped every 2 and a half minutes.

Because combatants and their sympathizers in conflicts, such as those in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Afghanistan, and Rwanda, have raped women as a weapon of war with near complete impunity.

Because <a href="http://mondediplo.com/2001/05/13pakistan in Pakistan, wives, daughters, sisters and mothers are killed for the least sexual indiscretion and upon the slightest suspicion of adultery. Because

poverty is increasingly being feminized.

Because two-thirds of the world’s 875 million illiterate adults are women.

Because Arab militia use ‘rape camps’ for ethnic cleaning of Sudan.

Because the trafficking of women and children into bonded sweatshop labour, forced marriage, forced prostitution, domestic servitude, and other kinds of work is a global phenomenon.

Because a pig farmer in Canada may have killed over 60 sex trade workers before anyone noticed.

Do you doubt that we might organize the world a little differently if we had the chance?

How the Music Industry Encourages its Audience to Steal Music

How the Music Industry Encourages its Audience to Steal Music

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I’m not the stealing type. Let me be clear about that from the start. When I was in high school every one of my friends got arrested for shoplifting except for me. I can’t cope with the idea of stealing. But man, the music industry actually makes me want to steal.

Actually, let’s start with the movie folks and work back to music, because my first example of stupid pet tricks on behalf of the people with a lot of money is the one they pull in movie theatres. There are those ads about how many people it takes to put a movie together, and how mean it is to download that movie without letting these people get paid for their work. Let’s leave aside the fact that the Best Boy and the Key Grip has already been paid for that movie and won’t get paid again whether or not we download the movie; they tell us this sob story while we’re sitting in the theatre with our paid ticket in hand. Why are they guilting the people who are actually paying to be there?

And this leads into what the music people are doing. The music people want to stop people from stealing music; but since they don’t think they can reach the actual abusers (or because they think we’re ALL abusers), they punish the people who actually buy their music. And how do they do this? They don’t let you transfer music files to your ipod. They restrict how many copies you can make. They’ll make music play in formats that aren’t likely to be supported past the latest operating system, forcing users to buy new cds every time we pass through another tectonic technological shift. And in a new turn of events, they put malware on your computer. Yep, that’s right: if you legitimately pay for music, Sony will make sure you get what amounts to a virus on your system. They will add secret files to your computer so that you won’t be able to do anything sneaky with their property. They will do this without telling you it’s happening, without giving you the option to uninstall it, and doing all this in such a way that if you happen to find the files and delete them, you will accidentally cripple your own system. [This via metafilter.]

I’m not sure what upsets me more; that the music industry can’t seem to come up with a logical way to cope with the fact that is the internet, or that they’re learning from malware to figure out how to disable systems rather than changing their business model, or that these people have opted to exploit the general technical ignorance of people in order to make people have to buy more CDs for the rest of their lives. Or maybe the worst part of it is that they don’t trust anyone, not even the people who opted to lay down cash for the product. Isn’t that what they want us to do? Does this make you want to support them? Particularly when you can download those same files for free, and you will be able to burn as many CDs as you like, transfer them to your ipod, send them to your sister, and whatnot? The music industry is setting itself up for failure here. They’re making the stolen product better than the purchased one.

Makes me want to steal some music, I don’t know about you. And as I said, I’m not the stealing type. Way to go, Sony!

If you could change only one thing…

If you could change only one thing…

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I got this idea from Creating Passionate Users. If you could change only one thing about anything (or many anythings) what would that be?

Library Catalogues
If I could change one thing about catalogues, it would be the level to which cataloguing occurs. Someone would have made the decision years ago that the content of journals, books, and edited volumes is as significant as their titles and sought to catalogue those as well. That way, when the digitization thing started, we could have just encorporated full text instead of having to outsource the searching AND the content. But since that’s not one thing I can change, I’d like librarians everywhere to change their minds about Google. I’d like academic librarians everywhere to embrace Google scholar and do everything they can to make that the best source there is.

Reference
More service points. While I’m of two minds about the “get rid of the reference desk” idea, I’m very keen on multiple service points; mobile, digital, in your face, in your office, in the foyer, in the stacks, reference everywhere all the time.

Virtual Reference
An acknowledgment of the value of local reference as more important than 24/7 access. It’s more important to get the right person than it is to get some person. I’d also like to see v-ref stop being a reference-only tool and start being a system-wide communication option.

Blogs
Blog posts don’t have to be short. I hate this idea, everyone always says blog posts are short and unthoughtful. Why would that be so? Is there a word count limit on a blog post?

WordPress
A really, really good threaded comments function.

Canada
An extensive light rail system. Better public transit. And this is a second thing, but can we join the EU? Come on, were sort of European. Ish. (I’d wish for another two years before an election, but I know that’s a pointless plea.)

Streetsville
A cheeseshop. Is that so much to ask? Oh, and a real bakery would go a long way, you know, somewhere that sells bread. Inability to get bread caused the French revolution, you know.

Writing
More time to do it. That’s really it.

Cliches Scorned

Cliches Scorned

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(18.7%)

Today I looked at a variety of pages cataloguing the typical cliches of the fantasy genre (which, somewhat inexplicibly, I find myself writing). These included The Grand List of Fantasy CLiches and The Not So Grand Cliche List. These are amusing, but also instructive, of course.

I am of two minds about the cliche. I realize, on one hand, that the idea is to avoid cliches at all costs, because if you’re using them your story isn’t terribly original. But on the other hand, cliches are cliches for a reason; they do something useful, they stir something in us (if well executed, of course). I’m interested in cliches, I’ll be honest. There’s nothing like a retelling of a powerful fairy tale, there’s nothing like that sense of satisfation when a story ends just the way you felt it should, and nothing quite so annoying as when a character does the exact opposite of where you felt she was going (ahem, Little Women). It seems to me that cliches, on the bright side, are that feeling; cliches scorned, that’s the real mistake.

I’m inspired by cliches, to be perfectly honest. I love to write stories that are based on something so well-worn you think there’s nothing salvagable in them. I learned long ago that it’s no the cliche that’s boring, it’s relying on it to take you all the way home that doesn’t work.

Maybe this is the difference between people who want to be surprised by a book and those who want to see the process. I don’t really care about how a book ends; I’m more interested in seeing how we get there. Likewise, I don’t care if a storyline is cliched. I just want to know if it works, if it’s satisfying. There are only so many stories, isn’t that true? We’re all writing the same story, metaphorically speaking. But only we can put ourselves in ours. So they’re all bound to be different in a million little ways.

Amazon Reviews

Amazon Reviews

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A one star review of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, as posted on Amazon.com:

I bought these books to have something nice to read to my grandkids. I had to stop, however, because the books are nothing more than advertisements for “Turkish Delight,” a candy popular in the U.K. The whole point of buying books for my grandkids was to give them a break from advertising, and here (throughout) are ads for this “Turkish Delight”! How much money is this Mr. Lewis getting from the Cadbury’s chocolate company anyway? This man must be laughing to the bank.

Too funny. Just like how the New Testament is full of advertisements for those “30 pieces of silver” Cadbury is trying to sell us. Good times.

Amusing one star amazon reviews for famous books collected here.