It's been while

To quote an awful, awful band, it's been awhile since I've gone and fucked things up again. A few people have asked why no updates, oh great swearing one, and the answer is simple: there are so many things going through my little mind that I don't have time to put them down on the blog! Which could explain why I've let some rants loose on some of my poor, unsuspecting friends, who really don't deserve to hear me yell about something that is not their fault, and for that I apologize.

So what do you want to hear first, the boring teen stories, or the "plan for world domination" stories? Let's go with boring and work our way up to fun. Under the category of "kids are morons", here are just a few of the wonderful things that have happened lately:

• Someone left some shorts in the magazine drawer of the teen area (where I have previously found condoms, bras and underwear) and they were smeared with a brown substance that I'm hoping was chocolate. Needless to say I wiped the whole area down with wet wipes, but I wanted to throw out every single magazine. Luckily so many of the magazines are stolen and ripped up that they'll disperse eventually.

• A kid put his pop on the rafters in the teen area before I could tell him to stop, and when he went to go get it down the only way he could reach it was to stand on the metal railing that overlooks the children's area (can we say suicidal?) and even though I told him to get down he didn't listen to me (they never do), and his belt buckle fell off his belt onto a girl in the children's section. Luckily the girl was an idiotic teen who just happened to be down there, and not some sweet little soft-skulled kid. For anyone who was worried, the pop escaped unharmed.

• This girl brought a mouse in the teen area that did NOT look like a pet, so she probably found it on the street. I told her and her little friend to leave, but does she not understand that A) you can't have animals in the library and B) we already had a mouse problem at one time, so how fucking bad would I feel if I was the one responsible for starting it up again!

And for the "the kids are alright" category:

• One of the teen girls told me that her email address contained the word phantasmagoria in it, which just so happens to be my favourite word and as far as I'm concerned, one of the coolest words in the english language. As proof of this, I have been conducting a "phantasmagoria test" in novels over the last few years and so far have only seen it in Death on the Installment Plan (Louis Ferdinand Celine), Briar Rose (Jane Yolen), The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman) and Skybreaker (Kenneth Oppel). That fact that this girl had even heard of the word, let alone knew what it meant, helped restore my faith in teens just a little.

I've also watched a lot of tv in the last month - Lost, Nip/Tuck, Scrubs, and for anyone who needed reminding just how good Heroes is, Christopher Eccleston, otherwise known as the UK actor second in line to Ewan, is now on the show! 24 started up again, and my favourite moment so far is still the Lost Boys moment where Jack Macgyvered his way out of a torture and imminent death situation by biting a guy in the neck.

And probably because I plan to leave this city soon, I've actually just started making friends - one who went away to do her Masters but came back over Christmas, and I got to hang out with her and her fun friends a few days in a row before they all disappeared again, two girls who currently live here who are both awesome, and on Friday night, a German computer geek boy who I have nothing in common with but I may have a bit of fun with him. Although I am currently undecided about him, because after he sent me a cute little babelfish-translated email (his English is not so good) he also showed up at my house (no I don't recall telling him where I lived) and called as well. Well of course I did what any good 21st century girl would do and didn't answer the intercom or the phone and just pretended I wasn't home. While it's very cute he had a little present for me, it's not so cute that he showed up unannounced at my apartment!

So that brings us to the "the future of the swearing librarian category". Over Christmas I was mucho excited about the Aussie plan, and while I would still like to go there I think that won't be happening any time soon due to how insanely expensive it is to get a work visa and how impossible it is to get a public library to sponsor you. Soooo ... onto the second city in my plan for world domination: London!

First I had a crazy idea to my my PhD at either Newcastle or Roehampton University, two places with awesome special collections of children's literature, until a couple people convinced me that it would be much better to do a PhD in library studies (with a focus in children's lit) than a straight degree in literature, because my chances for jobs would be much higher with the library degree. And plus the UK schools are $25,000 a year for 4 or 5 years. The only problem with the library PhD plan is that the best schools are in Florida and Illinois, neither of which are included in my plan for world domination, and let's face it, no one really wants to live there. I have decided to compromise, and stick with the original plan of going to the UK to work for a few years, and while there I will consider if I REALLY want to do the PhD, and if so, plan to move to Florida or Illinois. But this way I'll have time to think about it, to apply, to and fill up my resume with library experience and pretty things like conference presentations and possibly teaching a summer class at a library school.

Long story long, Operation Fish and Chips is now under close investigation, as I try to figure out how to get the jobs, if I am qualified to get the jobs, where the jobs are, just how bloody much it will cost to live there, how much much it will cost to ship my children's books (yes I'm taking them with me - after all, they are my babies), how I will sell all my nice new furniture I just bought a year and a half ago, whether I will even like living in the UK, if I will meet my future husband there or better yet, Ewan Macgregor, how helpful my British friends will be in my relocation (so far I have two supportive friends), and about a billion other things I need to worry about. But isn't that the whole fun of making a life change like this - all the worrying involved?!

Almost a good day

My dear sweet J came in to the library today wearing a yellow tutu over top of his clothes. While he actually looked quite lovely in the outfit, I dared to ask why - and he said that he lost a bet to his sister and this was his punishment. He wouldn't tell me what the bet was. This is the same 13 year old boy who is "unsure" about his sexuality, and often talks to me about his "friend" who is gay and how mean people are to him at school. While on some days he raves about loving Sunny Moore, the male leader singer for an Emo band, he also spends equal time talking about cute girls at his school, which has prompted the majority of kids to call him bisexual, a title which I am yet to determine if he likes or not. But what I want to know is if he is really so concerned about his sexual identity, why would he go to school, ALL DAY LONG, wearing a yellow tutu? Silly, silly boy. Although it may have just been an attempt to get attention, and in that case, it really did work!

Also today, S brought in a copy of a trashy teen movie that I starred in as an extra back in the late 90s ... this kid has one of the best memories ever. I once told him about my Norwegian friend from my travels in South America and about how he liked to say things like "We go - we go now" or Ya-ya , no-no" or my favourite (which he said when we made a pit stop after many hours of driving in Southern Argentina), "I don't have to go now but maybe I try to squeeze a little bit of pee out", and more than 6 months later, not only did I hear S saying "we go, we go now" but he even remembered the name of my Norwegian friend! Anyways I suppose S remembered me telling him about Disturbing Behaviour so he rented it with his mom, found the parts with me, and brought the DVD to the library and would not leave me alone until I promised to put it on our big screen tv. I agreed, but only to the specific parts with me in it so we whouldn't have to watch the whole godforsaken thing, and many of the teens (and the pretentious guy who I used to like who still loves to mock me) all had a great laugh at my expense. One of them said that I was the second famous person that he had met, the first being Hayden Christiansen, to which I said uh, I think he is a little more famous than me. My name wasn't even on the credits!

Slings and Arrows

Alright, who thinks that Canadian television sucks? Hmmm ... I suspected as much. Well, then you MUST watch Slings and Arrows. Right now. Like any good Canadian show, it is actually more of a miniseries of two 6-episode seasons (and a third that hasn't been released on DVD yet), proving that once again (like in Once a Thief) the best shows know when to end and do not go on for many years past the point of shark-jumping. Mocking the Stratford Festival, Slings and Arrows follows the misadventures of the actors, directors and office staff of the New Burbage Festival. While it will appeal to all drama or english geeks, I think everyone else should watch it too, as it is just plain hilarious, and stars many great Canadian actors like Paul Gross, Don Mckellar, Mark Mckinney, Geraint Wyn Davies, Rachel McAdams, and Colm Feore, to name a few (and there are many more that pop up to great delight, like Jonathon Crombie, who was Gilbert Blythe on the CBC Anne of Green Gables). While Paul Gross is truly inspired, all the other actors do a great job, and the writing (done in part by Mark McKinney and Susan Coyne, another actress on the show) is actually intelligent - that's right, intelligent writing, and on a tv show, no less! The first season followed the production of a version of Hamlet starring a hot-shot American movie actor (that suspiciously resembled Keanu Reeves in the Winnipeg Hamlet a few years back) directed by Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross), the crazy artistic director who last appeared on the stage several years before when he was starring as Hamlet, and consequently went mad. He comes to the aid of the festival after their previous director gets killed by a pig truck, and his ghost haunts Geoffrey, and all future productions. But I think the second season, about the staging of a disastrous Macbeth, was even better ... and in the third season they apparently perform King Lear. But why are you still reading this? Go watch the fucking show!

This is a chemical burn

It seems like the kids are taking the “I just don’t want to die without a few scars” mentality of Fight Club a liiiiiiittle too literally these days. I just helped a teen out this afternoon by giving him some gauze and tape for the “cut” on his hand which actually looked more like a chemical burn, even though I did my best not to look at it or touch it and wiped my hands with an antibacterial wet wipe for about 5 minutes afterwards. I told him to go the doctor because it looked quite infected, but I’m guessing that is the whole point, if he wants to get a pretty scar like Tyler and Jack in the Fight Club movie. What’s even worse is that this is not the first time I’ve seen life copying art here in my teen section this year – a couple of months ago I saw a kid with a huge healed-over scar on the back of his hand that he claimed was from someone putting an eraser in salt and then rubbing on his hand, which I highly doubt. I know kids are stupid but damn, this just takes their stupidity to whole new levels of stupidityness. When looking for some Fight Club quotes on the internet, I actually came to a site that suggested where and how to buy the lye which can then be used to create a rather lovely scar. Madness, I say. Although I’m not sure who is crazier, the kids, or Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote:

I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.

But if you’re more of a movie person than a book person, you can find the whole screenplay here online at:

http://www.fightclubquote.com/content/fight-club-screenplay/fight-club-screenplay.php which I find quite interesting, given the fact that I thought screenplays, like books, were copyrighted, and you couldn’t just publish the WHOLE thing online.

On an entirely different note, I just discovered a new favourite blog, The Librarian’s Guide to Etiquette: http://libetiquette.blogspot.com/ that I think you should all visit immediately, including the kids who are playing with lye at home, because I’m sure that’s not good etiquette.