Sunday, December 30, 2007

A Good Day for Metadata

Winter break has proven to be quite nice. I am holed up in my boyfriend's railroad style apartment in Hoboken, reading book after book that is purely for entertainment and enlightenment purposes. Today happened to be a day sackful of metadata. Now, how does one get so lucky, you might ask. Well, when a librarian and a book love each other very much, they get very intimate. So intimate, that she looks ::gasp:: at the copyright information!!

Actually, I only bothered to look at the copyright information of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography because, well, he's Lemony friggin' Snicket. Clearly I can find cleverly coded information to augment my understanding of the VFD and perhaps even locate the missing sugar bowl. Sadly, the data did not elucidate any kitchen utensil whereabouts, but it did provide a few chuckles. As this could be viewed as a review of sorts (though, admittedly, not a very good one if you wish to know what the book was actually about), I am going to reproduce the copyright information here, for your enjoyment.

No part of this book may be used, reproduced, destroyed, tampered with, or eaten without written permission except in the case of brief, possibly coded quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews and subpoenas. Allegedly printed in the United States of America. For information address Harper Collins Children's Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019, although the people at this publishing house have no idea where the documents enclosed in this book came from. If you recognize yourself in any of the photographs of illustrations in this book you may find yourself in Very Frightening Danger and/or slightly embarrassed but there is nothing you can do about it. Please note that the author has been called a fraud, a criminal, a bestseller, a corpse, a fictional character, an unreliable narrator, an objective flaneur, an embattled gentleman, a magnetic field, an arsonist, and late for dinner by an odd number of dubious authorities. Send help at once. All rights reserved. Wouldn't you rather read about ponies?


All that and more is precisely why I am secretly courting Mr. Snicket by reading every stitch of material available to me, especially the metadata. I saw that the copyright page looked a tad bit wordier than usual, but this is just absurd. And he just kills it in the end with that bit about ponies.

Mr. Snicket doesn't end there. How could he be the unreliable narrator he claims to have been labled in the past if he only provides one bit of intriguing metadata. Oh no, his index is quite something as well. Let's see if you can follow this thread of associations. Ahem. Imagine you wished to find out exactly where Sunny Baudelaire is mentioned in the text. Why, just check the index and it will promptly bring you to the correct pages, no? No. No, it doesn't. Instead it tells you to:
See Baudelaire orphans (which tells you to)
See Baudelaire case (which tells you to)
See Snicket file (which tells you to)
See solemn vows (which tells you to)
See noble causes (which tells you to)
See necessary evils (which tells you to)
See moral uncertainty (which tells you to)
See villainy (which tells you to)
See conspiracies (which tells you to)
See overall feeling of doom (which tells you to)
See doom, overall feeling of

From this last bit, the eager researcher is then instructed to turn to pages ix-211 (i.e., the whole book) to find this information. Now, I've read the book and can assure you that Sunny Baudelaire is not mentioned on every single page. This chain of markers referring one elsewhere in the index is not alone. "Winnipeg, Duchess of" may lead you to a specific cluster of pages, but it also tells you to "See noble causes" which we are all well aware by now leads to moral uncertainty and then a large assortment of other key terms. Now, I may not have taken courses about indexing practices yet, but I don't think this is a very helpful index (not that it was Mr. Snicket's intent to allow information to be easily accessed).

Once I finished Mr. Snicket's tome, I moved on to finally reading An Abundance of Katherines. And while I am only a few chapters deep, I am thoroughly delighted by the abundance of footnotes. It's as if John Green, the authordude, dove deep inside my brain and found hidden amidst squishy tissues and neurons my secret passion for footnotes and sprinkled it throughout the lovely book just for me. Or maybe not, but I sure as hell love a good footnote. Especially footnotes that involve graphs and bell curve charts. FOOTNOTES!! If I could figure out how to add footnotes to everything in life, I would. Just watch me.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Un-Pottertastic Tuesday

When prompted, I have been quite vocal about my disdain for the fifth Harry Potter movie. Thing is, I haven't relayed this annoyance to any of my family members. I anticipated getting the DVD for Christmas, since whenever no one knows what to get me, they end up choosing something Potter related to great result. Not that I really wanted the DVD (I certainly won't buy it for myself), but I just figured it was a guarantee. Nope. No such deal. This was a completely Potter-free Christmas, so I shall continue the trend and have a Potter-free Pottertastic Tuesday. Happy Harry Holidays.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Kid's Television

Now that Nick Jr. has pulled that scary trumpet playing face from the air, it has once again become a safe place for children to veg out and absorb some wholesome entertainment. But then again, I sometimes wonder if executives in charge of children's programming are trying to capture the stoned college kid market along with kids. A link that was sent to me makes me wonder this even more. Now, this clip is from a television show found on Nick Jr., but it is way too absurd.


That's not too bad and I'm sure my five year old sister would love it. Alas, that is not all. This show, Yo Gabba Gabba, also has featured celebrities come on for a segment called Dancy Dance. I don't know about you, but I don't want Elijah Wood teaching my kids the puppet master.


Freaky Frodo - The top video clips of the week are here

And speaking of poor decision making on behalf of beleagured celebrities appearing on Yo Gabba Gabba, it is clear that the entertainment industry says that they're just a friend no matter how many times Biz Markie comes crawling back.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Pottertastic Tuesday

And while it is not quite the same as reading the tales and seeing all of J.K. Rowling's illustrations, I am rather glad that the proud owners of the lone, sold copy of The Tales of Beetle the Bard wrote amazingly detailed summaries. Reading the tales this way was like eating rather stale salt and vinegar chips--still enjoyable, but not quite the right taste. The reviewers were even kind enough to include the differences between the Tale of the Three Brothers found in their amazing copies and the tale in Deathly Hallows. I'm still waiting for the copies of these manuscripts to circulate. ... Please?

Thanks to Mugglenet for the link!

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Meet My Dæmon--Araphon


Not only is the Golden Compass a really flipping sweet book and now movie, but it has a neat-o website, too! They provide factual information about dæmons, complete with a little quiz to find out what your dæmon would be. I'd provide the link to it here, but it all has the same web address. You can find it on the top menu under Dæmons.

Now I hope the Golden Compass movietypes don't get angry that I didn't save their picture of my dæmon and opted to create my own. But they should know that since Araphon is a lion that I am fickle, and therefore need to create my own depiction of him. Having a lion dæmon also means that I am modest, inquisitive, assertive and outgoing. Well, duh.

I am quite pleased to find out that I am a lion and all, but I almost wish I was more docile so I could have a pug as a dæmon. Only servants and people that follow authority get to have dogs as dæmons though. Lame. I mean, how freaking cool would it be to have a pug following me around at all times, running sideways and sticking its teeny tongue out at me?

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Pottertastic Tuesday


I'm a bit troubled that this is on the first page of Google Image results for "Harry Potter." Especially if other kids do what I did when I was younger and look for pictures of favorite movies/artists. (Which, those searches brought disturbing findings themselves. When I was in the 7th grade I downloaded images of my favorite Spice Girl, Ginger Spice, and was in for quiiite a surprise when her less tasteful pictures came up). Oh the Internet, how you distort childhood role models so...

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Review: The Golden Compass, film-style

I have to say, the people responsible for The Golden Compass's journey from print to the big screen have their act together loads better than those Potter film folks. Whereas the most recent Harry installment felt more like an outline with crucial quotes instead of a fully fleshed out story, this movie stands on its own, independent of the books. And despite the recent controversy with the church, I feel like they did a great job toeing the delicate boundary between doing the books justice and not being blatantly anti-church. The Magisterium comes across more as a governmental body than anything else. In fact, the only direct reference to it being related to the church was the illustrations on one of their buildings depicting holy bodies. Even then, I was only aware that the figures were holy because of the application of artistic conventions I learned from an Art History course in undergrad. I don't quite see where children will get confused about their faith, but that could just be me.

Now what I don't get about this rendition of The Golden Compass is Dust. They began the movie by stating that the Magisterium banned the topic of Dust and that no one knew about it. And yet when people died, their daemons turned into Dust. While it made the dark battle scene super-duper neat to watch, how the hell do people not realize that there is such a thing as Dust, if daemons spontaneously turned into shimmery particles? In the books, the daemons just disappeared. That was it. Much more ambiguous that way.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Tiny Word, Big Gripe

In my elementary school, we had library special once a week. I can vividly recall one time in particular, standing in line waiting to go to the library in the third grade. There was nothing really out of the ordinary about this day. Hell, I can't even remember what happened once we got to the library. I do, however, remember Mrs. Schwartz giving us an impromptu lesson in the hallway, since we all called the library a lie-berry. She had us annunciate 'library' over and over again until we got it right. From that moment on, it became a personal pet peeve to hear the word lie-berry (Reason number 32 I should have known I was destined to become a librarian).

That being said, I have had to give the same impromptu lesson many a times in my day (though I'm sure they will argue that they have been nagged repeatedly by me. Tomatoes, tom-ah-toes). At this point, I expect it and try to hold my tongue to avoid persecuting my friends and family over a teensy word. I am almost at the point where I don't shudder uncontrollably upon hearing the dreaded mispronunciation of my safe haven. Or at least, I thought I was. All that changed once I was enrolled in a library program and heard FUTURE LIBRARIANS saying lie-berry. !!! Now, I can understand people outside the profession to some degree--said fast, that first 'r' is almost silent. But if you are eating, sleeping and breathing library like so many of us MLIS students have to do in order to pass our courses, that is just unforgivable. I'm sorry. I think that alongside having to take 36 credits in order to graduate, you must also be able to properly pronounce your intended career destination. "Oh, where do you want to work? A lie-berry? I'm sorry, give me that diploma." ::rips said diploma into party confetti, throws it in the abomination of a librarian's face and then jumps up and down upon the little shreds while doing the twist so as to get the pieces good and dirty::

There is one guy in my Human Information Behavior class that makes me wince over and cringe because he blatantly calls it a lie-berry every time. Every time! I've listened closely, done a critical analysis of his intonations, and he distinctly utters 'lie' and then 'berry.' I understand that this is a rather trivial matter in the grand scheme of things. And that it is your people skills and ability to find things and blah blah blah that makes you a good librarian; but if we cannot pronounce the word correctly, how will the patrons ever do it?

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Er... Pottertastic Tuesday

I pondered my blog a bit and my Creative Writing/English degree just won't allow me to have a Pottertastic Thursday when the pseudo-alliterative Pottertastic Tuesday is an option. I probably should have posted something in between Pottertastic Thursday and Pottertastic Tuesday, though. Oh well. As executor of this blog, I hereby make the official decree that all mentions of Harry Potter and all materials and items associated with such will be delivered on a weekly basis to be published on Tuesdays. Please jot that down. Thank you.

So without further ado, I have what is potentially the best thing ever uttered by an athlete, real and fictional alike. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Krum:
"Vot is the point of being an international Quidditch player if all the good-looking girls are taken?'
::Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows::The Wedding::(150)
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