Further tales from the library

A few amusing things have happened so far today, and it's not even lunch time yet!

I was chatting with an 11 year old boy who, after getting yelled at by an older, mentally handicapped man on the computer (who thought the boy was invading his personal space), asked if this was the section for "special" people. He wanted to know why this man was playing games that were "very childish", and we also talked about our library's hour limit for the computer and whether he could steal people's cards and get extra computer time. I told him I supposed he could do that, but he really shouldn't ... he wanted to know if people would get mad at him for doing that and I said yes, probably.

There was a gentleman in his sixties on the fourth floor (I only heard about this one and didn't get to witness it) and after trying to use an expired card to access the computer, which didn't work, and trying to use his son's card (which also didn't work), he told the staff member on desk that "if you don't make it work the next time I come in, I'll kill you, you old bitch, and everyone else here". Touching, really.

Lastly there was yet another Lazarus encounter - I know I never use people's names in this blog but Lazarus is too precious of a name to change to L ... especially because he is only 2 years old. Lazarus is quite possibly the loudest child I have ever met in my life - and while he is not always crying, he is always yelling and running around, sometimes into oncoming traffic directly outside the building. You can often recognize him by hearing him enter he library yelling "yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh we're in the library!". I used to be terribly annoyed by him but I've started to get so used to him that when he's not here I miss him - and feel that the library is much too quiet.

Q-Ray hoax

Check this out:

http://www.qray.ca/Technology.aspx

I just saw an ad on tv for this product, otherwise known as the biggest joke I've ever seen - even worse than the Sauna Belt! It's a bracelet, but oh no, it is no ordinary bracelet - it is an ionized bracelet, and therefor a "serious performance bracelet". It has been known to help golfers worldwide and even make them feel better. WOW! Give me a break - it's a fucking bracelet. Maybe I'll have to buy one and see if it cures all of my medical anomalies, and hell, maybe it will even make me a better person too.

Eeks

What's the world coming to? One of my entourage teens was telling me this afternoon about all the teens she has known who have gotten pregnant, including one that's not even a teen, an 11 year old girl in middle school! First of all that doesn't even seem possible to me because most girls haven't gone through puberty yet at 11, but then again with those freaky chicken hormones maybe it is possible. Creepy, but possible. Especially because it means that 11 year olds are having sex and I refuse to accept that. Or maybe this girl is just an urban legend, like the story about the woman who had a spider crawl into her ear and lay eggs. I had more than a few people tell me that story when I came back from South America and had a spider bite that, 2 months after getting it, became itchy again, and people suggested I had an egg-laying situation in my foot.

On a lighter note, I'm thinking, once again, that I must be allergic to my mid-sized Canadian city. For the second time in two weeks I have been violently sick on a sunday night - and this most recent time I had very itchy palms and soles of my feet, which led me to believe it was an allergic reaction to something. And there are so many things to choose from - bad beef, weird weather, cotton spores, pigeon shit, rednecks, 17 year olds who keep hitting on me - it could be anything, really. One could also consider the massive amounts of bacteria that likely live at the library in the teen area. Again, I ask - worker's comp? I think if anyone deserves it, it's me. If not for the illness, then for the fact I have to put up with so many fucking teenagers.

Summer Reading program fiasco

I can't actually take credit for this stunning bit of writing - it's courtesy of the two summer reading coordinators who were in charge of the children's program this summer. But it's amusing enough that I might as well have written it, right? It also proves that things go wrong during all programs, not just mine.

Movie Event: Chicken Little (ages 3-11)

Get your popcorn and juice! Throw the DVD in and hit play and you’re good to go, right? Wrong. The first hour of this event could be justly described as a fiasco.

With seventy-one children sitting in front of the screen waiting, the Auditorium was packed. We provided popcorn or chips and juice for everyone, and the kids were just itching for the movie to start. The menu screen had already been looping incessantly (to the annoyance of the coordinators who had listened to it for the past forty-five minutes while filling a thousand cups of juice), and D hit play.

Everything seemed normal, until a few seconds into the film when we realized that the characters were all mute! At first this was thought to be some sort of affirmative action campaign played out in cartoon form, but we quickly realized that the problem lay with the sound. There was no dialogue! For some reason, the sound on the DVD player was not playing correctly, with only some sound effects and music being audible. We tried restarting the movie from different menus, turning everything off and on, reasoning with the DVD player, and changing other settings in every permutation. We also fielded many helpful inquiries and suggestions from the peanut (I mean parent) gallery. Most began with, “At our house, we…”

Remarkably, the kids didn’t seem to mind too much as they watched the first ten or twenty minutes of the movie over and over. Finally the call was placed and R was summoned from his lunch.

Meanwhile, R2 bought time by dressing up as a clown and prancing around the stage, waving streamers, blowing up balloons, and leading the children in “I’m a Little Teapot”, followed by her encore of “I’m a Special Teapot”. Just kidding. Instead R2 did the next best thing and drew door prizes.

J and D were planning to start some theatre sports or perhaps a Shakespearian reading when suddenly R arrived, a true hero in a true crisis. We assessed the situation once again and R brought in his laptop to play the movie on. It worked flawlessly, aside from the screensaver turning itself on every seven minutes, always during exciting action sequences. The movie ended and we emerged, disheveled and beaten, shaken and stirred, but clinging to moral victory.

Miraculously, the final playing of Chicken Little ended only about fifteen minutes after the event was supposed to end anyway.

Morals of the story: It is not enough to merely test the DVD player, the projector, and the sound system the morning prior; you must actually watch part of the movie and not just the menu. You must convince the equipment that working properly would be in its best interest.

Also, if you are trying to make something work and have refused to try a parent’s helpful suggestion for the past half hour, you had better hope that suggestion doesn’t work when you cave in and try it. (It didn’t in our case, thus bringing us moral victory.)

Thirdly, this event proves the Squarepants Theory, which states that children will watch anything appearing on a large screen in a dark room on a weekday afternoon. Perhaps the absence of light induces short-term memory loss…

And lastly, don’t panic, because eventually R will come to save you.

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

Jesus and Satan were having an argument as to who was the better programmer. This went on for days until they agreed to hold a contest with God as the judge. They sat at their computers and began.

They typed furiously for several hours, lines of code streaming up on the screen. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning struck, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power was restored, and God announced that the contest was over. He asked Satan to show what he had come up with. Satan was visibly upset, and cried, "I have nothing! I lost it all when the power went out."

"Very well, then," God said, "Let us see if Jesus did any better."

Jesus entered a command, and the screen came to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir poured forth from the speakers. Satan was astonished. He stuttered, "But how?! I lost everything, yet Jesus' program is intact! How did he do it?"

God chuckled, "Jesus saves".

Six(ish) degrees of separation

I haven't played this game for so long that when my friend J gave me two challenges yesterday, I was more than happy to get to work. With the more complex ones (that do not just involve actors), the new rule is they do not have to be six degrees, nor do they have to be conventional connections. But they are still connections nonetheless.

1. Robert Homme (The Friendly Giant) to Prince (the freaky singer)

Robert Homme won the Order of Canada, an award that Dan Akroyd also won, Dan Akroyd was on SNL from 1975-79, during the time that Bill Murray was also on SNL, Bill Murray was in Lost in Translation with Scarlett Johnannson, who was in Ghost World with Thora Birch, who was in American Beauty with Kevin Spacey, who was in Seven with Brad Pitt, who was in Fight Club with Meatloaf, who performed on the 2006 American Idol finale, where Prince also performed.

Or if you want a much shorter, but not as connected, way - Robert Homme - Dan Akroyd, Dan Akroyd was on SNL and Prince performed on SNL (but I think in the 80s, when Dan was gone)

Or I can do a version with Robert Homme being on "Life and Times: growing up Canadian" that talked about him, Mr Dressup and Fred Penner, and then I saw Fred at the children's festival in the 80s, and in the 90s I was in an episode of the X-Files with David Duchovny, who was in a really bad movie called Playing God with Timothy Hutton, who was in Beautiful Girls with Natalie Portman, who was in The Professional with Gary Oldman, who was in True Romance with Samuel L Jackson, who was in Unbreakable with Bruce Willis, who was in the Sixth Sense with Mischa Barton, who was on the OC, where Lisa somebodyerother (Bonet?) from American Idol did a guest appearance, and Lisa also performed in the finale with Prince.

2. Bob Ross (the tv painter who made "happy little trees") to Ozzy Osbourne

Bob Ross was spoofed on an episode of Family Guy ("We're just gonna put a happy little bush down in this corner, and that'll just be our little secret. But if you tell anybody that bush is there, I will come to your house and I will cut you!"), which stars Seth Green, who was in Austin Powers with Mike Myers, who was in Shrek with Antonio Banderas (who was Puss in Boots), who was in Evita with Madonna, whose song "Papa don't preach" was covered by Kelly Osbourne, who is, in fact, related to Ozzy Osbourne and was on the Osbournes tv show with him.

Curses, foiled again

So much for the free pink Ipod - A is giving it to her step-sister M. To quote her favourite little bitches from Full House, how rude! I know it's just as well because I would have been making a deal with the (12 year old) devil, but still, it was tempting. Now I'll have to buy my own, and it won't even be pink! On the bright side, I'm now the girlfriend of a sex god ... ok, that's not true, but I did have to find that book for someone today. On the bright side, both A amd M were here again today at 9:30 am pestering me, jumping on the bean bags, and showing off their glittery faces. Apparently they dressed up just for me today. How sweet. In a really stupid, pink book sort of way.

Finding God in unlikely places

God's word - soak it up.
-From a SpongeBob Squarepants t-shirt I saw a kid wearing a few months ago

God made grass. Man made booze. Who do you trust?
-From a "Pro Pot" t-shirt I saw a teen wearing today

Pink stalker

Help! Pink book girl knows where I live ... should I be scared? She looked in the phone book, found my phone number, and apparently even knows which bus I take to get to work. Oh joy. Let me just say that if she does decide to visit me at home, I will be very content in slamming the door in her face. When Shaw decides to finally grace my mid-sized Canadian city with phone service and I can tell Telus to kiss my ass once and for all, I think that maybe I should consider changing my phone number and having it delisted. I never really thought that people would be lonely and pathetic enough to bother looking me up and calling me at home, but that day has come, and I am none too happy about it.

Sadly I had to live without dear A for the last couple weeks while she was at camp and then in Hawaii, but she was back with avengeance today and even more spastic than usual due to the jet-lag (which she was undoubtedly playing up after I mentioned that this might be the reason that she was tired ... all of a sudden she was even sillier, laughing at nothing in particular, falling down, and talking gibberish). My favourite bit was when she started talking about her sister's Fruitopia bed, and how cool it was. A bit perplexed, I asked if this is a new type of water bed that is instead filled with Fruitopia (that you can stick a straw in and take a sip when you get bored or wake from a wet dream), and she said "no, you can fold it out as a bed but have it as a couch too", and I said, Ah, a futon. Same difference.

She also offered me a free pink Ipod (which I'll believe it when I see it tomorrow) because apparently she got one free when she bought hers in Hawaii. I really shouldn't accept gifts, but fuck, a free Ipod? Wouldn't I be stupid not to? Especially after giving out a free Ipod to the grand prize winner of my summer reading program last week, and discovering that the donated Ipod was in fact a 2GB Ipod Nano, the same one I was considering buying. The 13 year old who won was very delighted, as was his mother, who thanked me about a billion times for the prize, the summer programs, and for "always having a bright smile on when she and her son come into the library". So while it was a well-deserved prize (and made me feel warm and fuzzy), I still thought, Man - this kid gets a free Ipod and I have to pay $250 for one? That sucks! It did cross my mind that accepting the pink Ipod may be like making a deal with the devil and I will owe her my firstborn, not to mention feel bad about ignoring her when she comes into the library ... so maybe it would be better to just shell out the $250 for one of my own.

Hostel takeover

You fucking bitch - you fucking whore! How could you do this?

I get a lot of money for you, and that makes you my bitch.

Classic line from a classic movie. Apart from the classic part. I just watched Hostel, the latest Quentin Tarantino-produced film, in the hope that it would be so bad it would be funny, but I was sadly mistaken. Instead it was so bad it almost made me puke (that seems to be happening a lot lately) and even though it was predictable and not the least bit scary, kept me from sleeping for two nights. The plot: three backpackers (two American and one Icelandic) are in Amsterdam, get locked out of their hostel, and meet some guy who tells them the sweetest, hottest pussy can be found in Slovakia, where the babes totally dig Americans. After going to Bratislava and hooking up with some of the aforementioned babes in their dorm room, two of the three guys (along with a shitload of other people) get drugged and taken to a deserted warehouse where they are brutally tortured (for no particular reason other than being tourists) and then murdered, cut up, and burned. The third guy goes there voluntarily while looking for his friends. Dumbass. I feel a little bad for Tourism Slovakia, because dammed if this is not going to slow down backpacker business for a couple years. That being said, as long as you are not American and don't hook up with cheap whores you should be alright ... and in the end you might be able to run those whores over with a car so at least you get the much deserved revenge. There are a lot of things that don't make sense, such as the people at the torture factory who get brought there even though they aren't American and didn't sleep with cheap whores, and the wide variety of people who work there, including some people who actually don't like being torturers and accidentally get their legs cut off by chainsaws. I suppose that was the humanizing element of the film. But there are more than enough severed arms, legs, fingers and toes, faces melted by blow torches, bodies smashed by trains and cars to make up for the rest of the movie. If you like that sort of thing. And I don't. No, I shouldn't have watched it then, I know, I know. I should have known even before the movie started when I saw that it was made by Lions Gate Films, who are famous for making some similarly disgusting movies like Saw and American Psycho. My bad. Actually, Quentin's bad - I blame him for everything.

Bomb Threat Form

I thought this was pretty relevant, given yesterday's almost-terrorist events - I'm in the process of reading Safe Harbour: Policies and Procedures for a Safe Library, and came across this on page 58 in the "Forms" section.

BOMB THREAT FORM

When will the device detonate?

Exactly WHERE is the device?

WHAT does it look like?

WHO placed it there, and when?

WHAT do you want from us?

Who are you, and why are you calling?

Will you repeat these details to my supervisor?

Keep asking these questions until caller refuses or hangs up!!

Describe background noises

Approximate age of caller

Gender of caller

Did the caller have an accent? (Describe)

Caller's exact words

Immediatly notify your supervisor and call the police. Call 911 or other emergency numbers and repeat information. Do not leave until questioned by police. Retain this form.

Well, I guess it's better to have it and not need it then not have it and need it, right? I can just picture it: Uh, sir, could you please wait a moment? I need to find my form before you proceed with your bomb threat ... heavens sir, that's awfully rude of you, there's is no need to speak to me that way!

Toothpaste terrorists

In light of the recent terrorist attempts yesterday, I am a little angry. Not because I'm worried about getting dehydrated from not being able to bring my water on to the plane or because I'll get dry skin from not being able to bring my moisturizer, but the fact that in reporting these events the dumbass reporters are telling us how to make bombs! All you have to do, says Mr I'm an Important Scientist from an Unimportant University, is add some powdered nitroglycerin (conveniently hidden in your travel-sized toothpaste) to a bottle of water, detonate it with the signal from your cell phone and BAM! You're good to go! You can not only blow up all the people on your plane but hey, if you're above a big city like New York or LA well then even better, you'll kill many more people! Essentially, I'm fine with people being a little paranoid if it will help limit terrorist activity, and do agree that these are scary times, but think they are even scarier when people tell us how to make bombs on the local news. Then Mr Political Scientist says, and the problem now will be that because of worldwide media this high tech knowledge will become widespread and there may be a copycat attempt in months to come ... well no shit! Maybe you should stop telling us all about it then! I'm not saying the world should be kept in the dark about terrorist attempts, just that the bomb-making seminars should be kept to a bare minimum.

They like me ... they really like me!

Last night I had S's mom come in after I had finished my teen movie night (The Corpse Bride) looking for her son, and when she found out that he had already left with his friends she stayed for 10 minutes telling me how thankful she is for me being such a positive role model in S's life. He hasn't had the easiest time at some of his previous schools (excluding his current one, where he is Mr Popular, but will be leaving for dreaded high school this fall) and really doesn't have that many people he looks up to in his life, so she is really happy that he discovered me. She says he talks about me all the time at home (which makes me happy, because it's great to see a son and mother with a good relationship), and really misses me when I go away for a holiday or am off sick for a couple days. It's at the point where they even consider me a member of their extended family; that's how much he and her both value me. This is possibly the highlight of my year in this job so far - after all, S was the first teen to approach me when I started here a year ago, and has been to see me almost every day since, telling me about accomplishments, sorrows, etc. I even helped him find Shakespeare! Even though it was raining and storming when I left work I had the greatest feeling - it's one thing to have my teen friends visiting me, but another thing entirely to have their parents come and say thanks!

Fear Factor Cafe

Sometimes I think my mid sized Canadian city is a little starved for news - this is about the 5th time in the last year they have written an article on one of my teen programs at the library. Don't get me wrong - it's fun to be internationally famous locally and have free publicity for the library and my programs, but it's getting to be a little ridiculous. Last Friday this article about my Food Fear Factor program appeared on the front page of the paper in the "Local" section. Names have been omitted to protect the innocent (and guilty).

Welcome, little darlings, to Fear Café — a repugnant repertoire of repulsive repast. Dip into the Nasty Nachos. Fill up on Sickening Stew. And for dessert, finish with olives, grapes, cherries and pickled onions, drenched in dark chocolate. Between courses, why not try Harry Potter style jelly beans, but watch for the ones that taste like boogers or dirt — or worse.
Call it an Epicurean Russian Roulette: There’s no way to tell whether the next bite will contain the surprise that ruins your appetite for the rest of the meal — or at least leaves it severely diminished. The idea was to see if the teens had to guts to tackle something difficult, without putting them into any kind of jeopardy.

“(The jelly beans) have the potential to taste like vomit,” says WM Jenner, teen services librarian at the _____ Public Library. WM put her cooking skills to work on Thursday afternoon, inviting youngsters from her summer reading program to pop into the auditorium and pit their wills — and stomachs — against some truly disgusting concoctions. First, they had to taste the stuff. Then, they had to try figuring out what was in it. Those who were willing to try everything would be eligible for a grand prize.

Twelve-year-old S screwed her face in disgust as she tried the first course of ordinary tortilla chips served with a heaping spoonful of something orange and stringy. “Are there onions in here? I’m allergic to onions.” Well, no onions. Just a giant mass of sauerkraut, beets, sweet potato, tapioca, artichoke hearts and baby food.

Yucks all around.

Thirteen-year-old A managed to finish his and was still smiling when WM introduced the next course, Sickening Stew. What could be tastier than cutting a can of grass jelly in with some baked beans, canned spaghetti, mushrooms and green peas? So what if the hunks of grass jelly look like gooey eyeballs? S nibbled at hers, then pushed her bowl away. A finished his. Then he finished his sister M’s. Then S’s. Then he had a couple more helpings, along with a few of the dreaded Harry Potter jelly beans. S2, also 13, fearlessly crammed jelly beans into her mouth between bites of the so-called stew. “I’ve eaten chocolate covered centipedes — oven roasted. They weren’t that bad, but knowing it’s a centipede, that’s nasty,” she said.
S, spitting out yet another mouthful of food, decided the Fear Café really wasn’t such a good idea after all. Nor was 13-year-old S3 amused. “I think you have, like, a new pig chow here,” said S3. A2, 16, seemed to actually enjoy the stew. Maybe almost as much as A.

And then there was the dessert: a huge tray of chocolates disguising blobs of who knows what. WM insisted that each diner take at least four, to make sure they got a good variety. After all, some were filled with maraschino cherries. Others were filled with red seedless grapes. Yummy. S scraped some of the chocolate coating off her first morsel, to find the globular green body of an olive lurking inside. Then she got a pickled onion. Phhtt — into the garbage can. Then she got another onion. Finally, she found a cherry. It was about the only thing she managed to get down, excluding a couple of plain tortillas.

A and S2, on the other hand, were preparing to go up against 19-year-old C and the tag team of J, 14, and S4 (damn, who knew I had so many S's at the library! No, this line was not in the article), 13, for the grand championship. WM gleefully put together her piece de resistance: grinning like all three of the witches from Macbeth, she stirred together the Nasty Nachos, the Sickening Stew, the chunky chocolates, the tortillas, a bag of fish-flavoured chips and the Harry Potter jelly beans. “I might win this by default,” said A, as he watched the faces around him while stirred her brew.

S2 took a bite, clamped her hand over her mouth and turned red. She tried and she tried. It went down. But for a few seconds, she wasn’t sure it was going to stay down. J and S4 pinch their noses shut to hide the taste. Nothing doing. C quietly munched away at the glimmering goo. A took a few bites, but he was too full to finish. Too much Sickening Stew. The grand prize went to C, with A taking second for his valiant effort at cramming everything possible into his juvenile gullet.

Nobody got sick. And that’s kind of unusual for a Fear Café, WM said afterward. “It’s not fun until somebody vomits.” She said the people who showed up for Fear Café showed a lot of courage. “I admire them for that.”

Uh, did she just compare me to ALL three witches in Macbeth? I sort of resent that ... aren't witches hideous old crones? And am I not a young, beautiful librarian? Also, the ironic (or just shitty) thing is that after making the "it's not fun until someone vomits" comment, I got hideously sick on the weekend and was vomiting all over the place for two days. Although I didn't actually eat the Fear Factor food, so it wasn't from that. It could be that the absinthe actually did burn a hole in my stomach, or the pigeon shit, or some other infectious disease, but either way I ate my words (and threw them up again) because you know, it really isn't fun when someone vomits.

Bible directors, Part 2

Neil Jordan could direct The Bible, but it would be filmed in Ireland, star Stephen Rea as an abusive alcoholic Joseph, and of course Sinead O'Connor as the Virgin Mary.

Oliver Stone could direct The Bible, but it would all be a big conspiracy theory with some blatant propaganda, patriotism and hopefully a disgruntled Gary Oldman as some kind of hitman. I didn't think that any movie could be more sickeningly American then Saving Private Ryan until I saw the trailer for World Trade Centre. Cue sexy movie voiceover guy:"Every generation has a defining moment ... this was ours". Ok, I guess that's true, as I wasn't around to see JFK being shot and having Kurt Cobain's suicide as a defining moment is just kind of pathetic, but making a movie about 9/11 (however inevitable it was) still pisses me off. It will be interesting to see whether Oliver Stone makes an actual comment on terrorism and whether or not America deserved it, or if it's just a weepy epic with Nicholas Cage looking heroic and dapper. But I digress.

Kevin Smith could direct The Bible but ... oh wait, he already directed Dogma, so he's off the hook for this one. That movie was funny in so many innapropriate ways. Just how I like 'em.

David Cronenberg could direct The Bible but it would it would focus on commandment number 7, thou shalt not commit adultery. Except there would be lots of adultery, as well as some sex in cars before and after crashing those cars. And Jeremy Irons would do something nasty.

Martin Scorscese could direct The Bible but it would have Harvey Keitel as Judas ... oh wait, he already did that too. Damn, all these people are beating me to it.

John Sayles could direct The Bible but it would be a few hours long and while it would be critically acclaimed, I would still fall asleep. Although that may be true of any movie version of the Bible, except for the Ewan Macgregor one.

Roman Polanski could direct The Bible but it would be so explicit it would get banned in several countries, due to the virgin sex scene replacing the virgin birth.

Peter Greenaway could direct the Bible but any sort of Last Supper scene would take on a whole new meaning. Although there may not actually be a Last Supper scene in The Bible - maybe that's just the Da Vinci Code. Oh well - same thing, right?

Michael Moore could direct The Bible but it would be a documentary, and Charlston Heston would have a brief cameo as Moses's father. Did Moses have a father? Maybe I should actually read the Bible. Just kidding!

David Fincher and M. Night Shyamalan could co-direct The Bible but it would have a twist ending involving Brad Pitt and Mister Night himself. And the closing credits would contain bloopers of the two directors kicking the shit out of each other due to creative differences. But you'll have to watch it to know that, because the first rule of director's club is that no one talks about director's club.

Darren Aronofsky and Todd Solondz could co-direct The Bible ... actually, that version would be so fucked up I don't even want to think about it. Maybe we can throw Terry Gilliam and David Lynch in there for good measure too, because I couldn't think of a use for them but wanted them to at least have a crack at it.

My new puppy

Happiness is having a little puppy that follows you around adoringly, jumping all over the chairs with puppyish glee and not letting you get any work done all day long. Oh, did I mention that the puppy is actually my new11 yr old friend A? I've figured out who she is: she's the female version of K, otherwise known as the boy with the long hair who will do his best to get into anything he's not supposed to and seek "look at me!" attention until you acknowledge him ... unless you decide to ignore him, and then he gets bored of you and leaves. The only problem is that A doesn't seem to get bored, so that trick may not work on her. She has literally been by my side from 9:30-5:30 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, and what started off as a little endearing has become more than a little annoying. She is perfectly happy to sit, stare, and chatter at me for 8 hours unless I give her something to do, so as a result I have had her clean tables, computers and door handles, and today she started the daunting task of washing my bookshelves. I feel a little guilty about the whole slave labour issue, but she did volunteer to do it, so it's not like I'm totally evil. She very much has a "what's this?" mentality of asking about everything from computers to my choice of sandals, why I like tomatoes or what movies are the bestest ever. To add to the passion for pink books, she also seems to like Mary Kate and Ashley, then (Full House) and now (sluts/ addicts/ billionaires) and being excessively klutzy (bragging about all of her accidents). Finding things to occupy her time (that do not involve sitting and staring at me) can be difficult due to her limited attention span, and while she is reportedly going to a couple day camps during August, it looks like I will be blessed with her company nearly every day until she goes back to school. Lucky me. When asked yesterday "how do you get any work done when these kids sit and chatter at you all day long?" I replied, "Uh, I don't - that's sort of the problem".

Bible directors

The name of the post does not imply that I have become religious in any sense, in fact it is quite the opposite. An email from a friend a couple weeks ago inspired me to think about who would direct the Bible, if it were turned into a major motion picture. Here are a few of my ideas so far, but I invite people to suggest other alternatives.

Quentin Tarantino could direct The Bible, but it would have a lot of blood (which would be ok), swearing, and Judas would get his ear cut off for being such a dick.

Peter Jackson could direct the Bible, but it would have to be filmed in New Zealand and have some Orcs and Elves.

Danny Boyle could direct the Bible but it would have to be filmed in Scotland and have Jesus played by Ewan Macgregor, who would be a heroin addict.

Ron Howard could direct the Bible but Tom Hanks would have to be God and he'd win another fucking Oscar for it.

Anthony Minghella could direct the Bible, but Gabriel Yared would have to do the musical score, Miramax would produce it and it would also win a shitload of Oscars (and preferably have Ralph Fiennes in it).

Tim Burton could direct the Bible but it would have to have Johnny Depp in it, be animated, and be a musical.

Lars Von Trier could direct the Bible but ... actually, he'd probably do a pretty good job of it. After all, it is a pretty damn depressing story.

I'm all out of ideas now but I'm sure I'll think of more later....