Christmas in November?

This FAL made it through Thanksgiving, not as angry, but definitely weighing a few more pounds.  

And with Thanksgiving gone, Christmas has arrived at the library this week.  The decorations started going up yesterday…we are awash in garlands and strings of lights.  Student assistants have been conned into making tissue snowflakes and construction paper chains. (The con is that they think it’s fun).  We even have our own version of the book tree pictured left.

I am going to a library Christmas party on Friday and handing out goodie bags to the Student Assistants this week.  The cookie exchange is next week, as is the staff gift giving annual Christmas card signing.

I am no Grinch.  I like Christmas.  I like getting presents, eating good food, and even my family is tolerable in small doses.  I will admit to not liking shopping (crowds and Christmas muzak…shudder), but overall, the Christmas experience is a pleasant one.  I do, however, have an issue with celebrating Christmas in Nov-freaking-ember.

I hate Holiday Creep.  I hate how the stores were selling Halloween candy in August. It was bad for my hips.  And the second Halloween was over it was out with the Christmas candy.  Holiday Creep is pretty much an evil conspiracy run by big business and small children. The goal is to guilt the rest of the population into spending money to show affection the whole year round.  When there is no actual holiday, marketing companies capitalize on small cute days and try to force them into spending holidays.  Think about it.  Why do you give diamond engagement rings?  Thanks a lot DeBeers.  Mother’s Day? Why must I show my love with a card, and flowers, and a gift?  Father’s Day?  Valentine’s Day?

I suppose that I should write about the “true meaning of Christmas” or that “the real gift of any holiday is spending time with your loved ones”, blah blah.  But that is not what this article is about.  This article is about the Santa garland someone put above my office door and wrapped around all of my windows.  This article is about the reindeer antler headbands that the staff will all be expected to wear. 

You can’t force people to love a holiday by making them look stupid.

Is Your Library Ready for the Apocalypse?

“If I had known the world was ending, I would have brought better books.”   The Walking Dead



Not a photo of the zombie apocalypse



In the near future, there could very well be a zombie apocalypse.  Don’t laugh.  This highly scientific article describes how it could happen.  And obviously the CDC takes it seriously,  because they’re even selling T-shirts! 

But hey, my odds of surviving any kind of zombie anything are slim. Even though I work out (sometimes), I’m still *ahem* curvaceous.  I have very poor hand/eye coordination, and no real survival skills, unless you count my ability to navigate a QuikTrip parking lot.  Let’s face it.  If the world were taken over by zombies, the only reason I wouldn’t be zombie-lunch is because I didn’t make it past breakfast.

But the relatively good news for me is that there ARE other end of the world scenarios that I could possibly survive.  The whole 2012 end of the world thing?   I’ve got a fighting chance to be one of the 5% survival rate, right?  After all, when it comes to species survival, brains have to count for something.   And because I have a nice basement, I could be one of the lucky ones in an asteroid impact, supernova or even certain kinds of alien invasion.

Ok, so assuming that there was a not-zombie apocalypse of some kind, and assuming that I survived,  I realize that my beloved Kindle would be useless.  After all, according to my extensive research (movies and sci-fi books), an apocalypse is recognizable by the absence of electricity, toilets and the internet.  Kind of like camping. This means forget about downloading directions on how to create a generator from paper clips, much less an e-book about local edible plant life, or instructions on how to treat radiation poisoning.

We need real books, people! 

According to a great, yet gloomy, Hecker article about academic libraries in a post-petroleum apocalypse, "Libraries that resisted the temptation to throw away or incinerate their paper resources and microforms in favor of the deceptive promise of digital resources will be filled with the intellectual and artistic treasures of ages of human striving, worth every effort to maintain and preserve" (193).  Uh oh.  This may not be so great for my library, which has embraced digital word with the kind of passion and fondling usually reserved for teenagers in cars.  However, there are plenty of real books left in other libraries…somewhere. 

The best thing about an apocalypse is that I could possibly still have a job.  Hecker, relying on  on Roberto Vacca's book The Coming Dark Age , says we will need librarians to be “informed generalists who understand and can interpret the texts they protect--this along with the ability to grow their own food and to clothe and shelter themselves" (194).  And yes, this means I need to be a badass with a gun or, “proficient in small arms,”  which will  “find extensive use in the war-lord dominated feudal system.” 
Oh boy. 

 I’m a librarian and I have a gun. Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Citation for Hecker article:

Hecker, Thomas E. "The Post-Petroleum Future Of Academic Libraries." Journal Of Scholarly Publishing 38.4 (2007): 183-199. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts. Web. 14 Nov. 2011.

Day 2

My teenage daughter said Fat, Angry Librarians was NOT a good name for a band. I told her she was not part of our target audience.

What is our target audience?

What started this blog

Once upon a time, two librarians from different, yet nearby libraries were trying to find a time to go for a walk.  Here is the e-mail mayhem that ensued:

ML: I’m on the desk 1-3, so I’ll have to go early.

EK: I’m on the desk 10-1-  guess we’ll have to try for tomorrow

ML: Our schedulers are trying to kill us.

EK: No, they’re trying to make us fat, angry librarians.

ML: I think that would be a great name for a band or a blog.

EK:  I would like to be the back-up singer and triangle player.

ML: We could be a band just of back up singers. 

EK: Geat- all of the groupie sex and none of the rehab.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.

ML:  And then after rehab we can write a book.

EK: Oh, and we can go to Dr. Drew’s almost a celebrity rehab.  Too cool.

ML:  Very cool!  And then there will be a tv movie.  Who do you want play you?  I think I’ll have Sandra Bullock.

EK: Angelina Jolie, of course.  But only because we look so much alike. J

 If she won’t do it (she still resents me and the whole Brad thing- get over it already!), I will probably have to go with…Meredith Baxter-Birney, as she is the queen of TV movies.  Or maybe she could play my mom.

ML: MB-B is too old to play you, she will have to play your mom. Then there will be a spin off tv series, too.  it just gets better and better.

EK: Our band will break up and reunite for one last world tour.  Again and again and again.

ML: Well into our 70s.

EK:  Actually, maybe that only works if you're male.  Well, there's always Vegas.

ML:  Viva las vegas!   And then we can open our own bar.

EK: Fat, angry, DRUNK librarians.  Sounds better all the time. 
 

EK:  We can stage our own protest on wall street. 

"Yesterday a crowd of drunken, angry librarians converged on Wall Street shouting obscene slogans such as 'Reference THIS!' and 'Take this book and shove it'.  The National Guard...."

ML: Check This Out! 

There will be Fines!

EK: Overdue!  Overdue!  

I don't know, but I'll find out! 

Look it up!

ML: When do we start?

EK: We can start at any time.  Oh shoot- I'm on reference till one.

ML: And then I'm on ‘til 3.  Maybe tomorrow...

-

Later that day…

ML: Well, I walked without ya.  So now I am a not quite as fat, but still angry librarian.

EK: I can see our group splitting up over this.  Or we can just change our name.  The fat and not-so-fat angry librarians.  That actually sounds like a book title.

EK:  A murder mystery.

ML: "I was a fat angry librarian"  Memoir

"The Not Quite as Fat, but Still Angry Librarian: How you can be one, too"  Self-Help

EK: “Encounters of the Fat Librarian Kind”- Sci-Fi

“Why is She So Angry?: A Look into the Paradox of the Overweight Librarians and Dopamine Production in the Cerebral Cortex” – Dissertation

ML:  Ok here's one: “Shut the F*ck Up: Rules for Engagement in the Library.”

EK:  Oh, you win.  I can’t top that one!