On the subject of ketchup

I, Katie, have a confession to make. I am a lover of ketchup, that sweet American condiment with little nutritional value. In the past, I have been mistrustful of others who do not like ketchup. HOWEVER, I would like to apologize to the ketchup haters out there, because I have recently learned that one among you is one of my most trusted allies -- Emily, also of ugliblog.

Dearest Emily, please accept my sincerest apology. I will try not to hate on ketchup haters from here on out, and I will also stop wearing my ketchup costume to torture you. I've seen the error of my ways!

Much love!

Plan D: Donkey Ball

I have made an important discovery for anyone out there looking for Life Plan D. If this whole librarian thing doesn't work out, I'm considering putting my marketing and outreach skills to good use by becoming a donkey ball promoter. The sport, also known as donkey basketball, is similar to standard basketball; the key difference is that a player must be on the back of a donkey in order to score points. Donkey ball events are often organized to draw crowds to fundraisers. As far as I can tell, scores are typically much lower than in human-powered basketball. Please see the following:

Thomas, Katie. (2009). Donkey Ball Stubbornly Holds on Despite Criticism. New York Times, April 17, 2009. Available online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/sports/othersports/18donkey.html.

• This article provides an introduction to the history, current practice, and controversy surrounding the sport of donkey ball.
• Donkey Ball Operator Leticia Kwall describes the whimsicality of the activity: "Normally when you see animals, people are in control. In this forum, the reason it’s so entertaining to children is that the donkeys are totally in control of the situation."
• As if you needed further impetus to click on the link above, here is a sample of what awaits you:
  

Thanks, New York Times!

For looking for further information about professional "assletes," I recommend these donkey athletic profiles put together by a donkey ball company in Vermont.

For fellow information professionals in need of direction, might I suggest you carve out a niche in the field of donkey ball informatics? There are myriad design possibilities in this market -- consider donkey ball trading cards (or e-trading cards), donkey ball apps for Facebook and iPhone, or building the first donkey ball online community. I'm issuing a call to action, friends: it's time to bring donkey ball into the Web 2.0 world.

Recession good news

Dear readers, UGLi Blog has been hit hard by the global recession, leading to a dearth of posts in recent times. Thankfully, Reuters has reported some more positive results of the recent economic downturn:

* In another sign of holiday cheer, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department reported a 250 percent rise in the number of guns handed over in a no-questions-asked program to exchange weapons for holiday gift cards. The department's station in a high crime suburb received 964 guns, two hand grenades and two briefcases full of dynamite. [Emphasis added.]

http://www.samstoybox.com/toys/DynamiteShack.html

If only I had a couple of briefcases full of dynamite, I would be RICH in holiday gift cards right about now. Now I know what I should have been investing in all these years.

* More people are seeking love online to compensate for the pain of losses. Match.com, which has online dating sites in 40 countries, had its largest membership growth in the last seven years in November. "During these trying times, people are looking for hope in their inbox," said CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony.

Could this possibly become a Depression when there are so many opportunities for informating? I think not, my friends. I think not:

http://images.google.com/images?q=internet dating

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Case of the Missing Book

Books go missing from libraries. Librarians and library users hate that. Patrons demand explanations, and librarians yearn for the answers. Where do books go when they are missing? They choose their own adventures. Go ahead sleuths, track down that book. Your patrons depend on you. Here are your options:

Get paranoid.

Explain that some books just don't fit in.

Surrender the book. You've had it all along.

(A special thanks to Katie for making this possible.)

Nerds in possible like

Hey boy, why you didn't call me?
-The Blow

Lately, Katie and I have noticed on our ugliblog analytics that people in need of relationship advice are turning to google and landing on ugliblog. There seem to be a lot of people out there who need advice about flirting, flirt texts, flirting in Grand Rapids, flirting with librarians, good comebacks for flirting with nerds, among many others. Over the past three months, people have landed on ugliblog by searching over 20 different keywords dealing with the subject of flirting. In order to stay relevant to the needs and interests of our readers, I will now provide you with some innovative flirting advice (a special thanks to Katie and Greg who helped me brainstorm this system awhile back).

Scenario: You are at the bar. There is a rather cute person in the corner, reading a book. This person is so perfect that you may try to find them on Craigslist missed connections later. You look up from your crossword puzzle and stout, just as the person looks up from their book and i.p.a. You want to wink, but that's soooo 20th century. So go ahead, take those skills that you learned in the chat room and apply them to the bar. Throw that cutie a sign language winkey emoticon ;).


I hope that this helps those of you that are struggling with this whole flirting thing. Please note that flirting with emoticon sign language has never been tried by those who invented it, so the success rate is still unknown. Please share your success stories with us!

The secret about girls is that they want you to like them.
-The Blow

Terrestrial Life in Space!

Following up on my July lit review, I am particularly geeked by this recent bit of news... WATER BEARS IN SPACE, everybody!

Like, OMG, you guys. I could talk about this story in relation to popular/scholarly information and its potential uses for library instruction, but I'm really just too overwhelmingly excited that we (Earthlings) have reached the Final Frontier, surviving the vacuum of space without special equipment. It's a good week for science, y'all.

Tardigrades: so incredibly sci fi.

Theft, Part II: TO CATCH A THIEF

I think one reason our library director considered the stakeout a viable option for dealing with a series of thefts was that Oberlin actually has a history of apprehending library thieves (which is a whole other amazing/ridiculous story).

James Shinn, who got his 15 minutes of infamy in the early 80s, was caught by a librarian at the Oberlin College Library in 1981. He had stolen 480 rare library books with a combined value of $35,000. Shinn is a nerdy-interesting Google if you are curious. A brief 1981 NY Times article describes the manhunt. Besides inspiring librarians in general to beef up security for special collections, Shinn also gave librarians at Oberlin a hearty sense of their own crime-fighting capabilities, thus enabling me to have my very own brush with library covert ops nearly 25 years later.

The Oberlin College Library has a special room named for James Shinn and plastered with news stories of his crimes and capture. This room is not open to the public and is rarely visited by staff. The Shinn Room is the library’s Executive Washroom. I mean, where better to study a rich history of library heists and library heroism than a library director's bathroom? Nowhere, I suppose.

[Something I discovered along the way:
books about people who are crazy about books.]

P.S. Mr. Shinn, if you Google yourself regularly, thanks, and no hard feelings!

The Typical Librarian (a Friendless Old Hag?)

My good friend Remigio recently forwarded me a comic that depicts the typical librarian in a slightly negative light:

http://www.theonion.com/content/cartoon/nov-19-2007

This satirical commentary on our current political climate, where debate continues as to whether the use of torture will strengthen our national security, compares steep overdue fines meted out by librarians to the cruelest form of physical punishment.

Since we librarians generally have a sense of humor, I'm not going to argue with this representation.

But one "friendless old hag" to another, is this -

- the face of a sadistic state-sanctioned torturer?

Most likely. Steer clear of this one if you see her in your local library. Safety first, friend. Safety first.

Emily and Katie's Super Classy Office Warming Reception!

A photo montage.

There were stories of problem patrons.

There was lots of leaning.

Of course there were jokes!

There was super classy food.

It was a delight.

Legalize it (Books)

My housemate Sarah recently sent me this comic, which details an alternate universe. It's a dangerous world out there, and books are the ultimate gateway drug.

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/061808/legalize-books.gif

toothpastefordinner.com

ALEXANDRIA, Va. DEA officials held a press conference to alert law enforcement officials of a dangerous new hallucinogen, "books", which can cause users (slang term "readers") to visualize people and places that do not exist.

- Protesters assemble outside drug den ("library")
- A student holds his "library card", which he claims grants him access to books legally.


I'm so glad that in the real world, books are available over-the-counter without a prescription or legal repercussions. Well, if you don't count copyright law.

He doesn't even know I exist (insert sigh here)

I was spending some time in the British Literature section (PR's for library nerds) of the UGLi the other day, deciding what books we should keep and what we should get rid of. I stood a minute pondering on whether or not we needed two copies of Oroonoko by Alphra Behn, when this lovely photo fell out of the book. I always knew I'd meet my true love in a book, I just didn't expect him to be so good at wheelies.

TAX DAY! or, how this one time, I almost didn't graduate from Oberlin but then I shaved a rat's head and everything magically worked out for the best

In past years, April 15 would find me scrambling to complete my overly complicated, multi-state, last-minute tax reporting. Somehow, this year, I got my taxes done early and mailed YESTERDAY. I am like, so administratively sound right now, you guys.

Anyway, in honor of this special day for the United States economy, I thought I would share with you the story of one tax year in which I was NOT quite so on top of things... this is the story of tax preparation and its fallout circa April 15, 2006.

It was my last semester at Oberlin, and I was taking two courses required to complete my psych major (and thus, my degree). One of them was a 2-credit neuroscience lab. Since it was a once-a-week lab course, and only worth two credits, attendance was mandatory. I also had softball games many afternoons, which complicated my attendance and made the professor grumpy. Of course, one week, my lab section fell on April 15, otherwise known as TAX DAY OF DOOM.

Let me mention that I am really bad at remembering to do things if they are not in my routine. Or remembering to do things that are in my routine after I have been soundly shaken out of the flow of normal activity by something as traumatizing as trying to complete my taxes at the last minute.

So, this tax day necessitated a lot of phone tax support from my mom, and generally running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get everything squared away -- the proper forms and payments mailed from Oberlin or Detroit to the appropriate agencies. I let my coach know that taxes had been more complicated than I'd planned and I'd be late to softball practice, but somehow in the midst of my tax-related frenzy, I completely flaked on going to my (mandatory for graduation) neuroscience lab. And this was the day we were supposed to do brain surgery on a rat. Oops.

Having missed rat brain surgery (clearly the pinnacle of my career as a psych major), I was convinced that I would fail the lab since the professor had already been very unforgiving about potential softball-related absences. My only hope was to go to the another lab section the next day, which was run by a different professor, and beg for her to let me participate in their rat surgery session. The only problem? I had a softball game that afternoon, and would not be able to stay for the whole surgery.

Thankfully, the other professor was very accomodating, and allowed me to switch over to her lab section for the remainder of the semester (the rat project continued after the surgery, when we implanted an electrode in the pleasure center of the rat's brain, and then tracked how he learned to press a bar to stimulate the electrode), as long as it was okay with my new group members that I was not able to complete the surgery. I arrived in lab wearing my full softball uniform, ready to perform rodent neurosurgery. The group was cool with me not being there for the whole class, so after the demonstration surgery and the anesthetization of our rat (Orpheus), I was tasked with the important duty of pre-surgery prep before I left.

In other words, I shaved the rat's head. This did not go incredibly smoothly, since Orpheus wasn't quite anesthetized enough, and was pretty squirmy. Nevertheless, I completed the task and then rushed off to my softball game. I remembered to go to the rest of the classes, and eventually passed the lab with flying colors.

So, I guess I might have been overreacting, but for those 24 hours following that fateful tax day, I was absolutely certain I would be unable to graduate from Oberlin. It seemed so ridiculous yet so fitting that I would miss graduation for such a silly reason. But in April, 2006 I learned a valuable lesson about Tax Time: while there are those Tax Days that make you miss the important things in your life, there will always be subsequent miraculous opportunities to shave rat heads and undo the damage you've caused in your tax-induced delirium.

In the end, I graduated. On time. All thanks to Orpheus, who (begrudgingly) let me shave his little rat head when my academic career needed it the most.

Poetry Break

(From Garbage: A Poem by A.R. Ammons, pt. 7. It reminds me of a certain catalog I know.)

... I punched

out Garbage at the library and four titles
swept the screen, only one, Garbage Feed,

seemed worth going on to; and that was about
feeding swine right: so I punched Garbage Disposal

and the screen came blank--nothing! all those
titles, row on row, of western goodies, mostly

worse than junk, but not a word on Disposal: I
should have looked, I suppose, under Waste Disposal

but, who cares, I already got the point: I
know garbage is being "disposed" of--but what

I wanted I had gotten, a clear space and pure
freedom to dump whatever, and this means most

of the catalog must go, so much that what is
left will need no computer to be kept track of:

har:...

A Review of "10 Funny Flirting Facts," in honor of Valentine's Day

Today on MSN.com there was an article I found amusing:
10 Funny Flirting Facts (I don't know how long this link will work, but I'll try to include enough of its content here so that you don't have to use the link to understand the awesomeness of the list).

First, the health benefits of flirting -- apparently, people who flirt more often have higher white blood cell counts and better immune systems. According to "studies." I couldn't find any of these studies, but I'm sure it's true.

Second, the hair flip is the most common flirting signal, "according to scientists."

This one is impossible to paraphrase:
"3. In some places, flirting is illegal. In Little Rock, AR, an antiquated law is still on the books warning that engaging in playful banter may result in a 30-day jail term. In New York City, another outdated law mandates that men may be fined $25 for gazing lasciviously at a female; a second conviction stipulates the offender wear a pair of blinders whenever he goes out for a walk."

The list of flirting tips goes on to talk about how people are taking flirting to the next level -- flirting the tech-savvy way includes email and text messaging. People have also taken flirting to the streets -- between cars on a morning commute, or via mass transit.

I found this article pretty entertaining, but I have a nit to pick: like many popular articles, this one mentioned scientific research about its subject, but didn't directly cite the scholarly sources it used. I found this frustrating because I think the idea of being a professional flirting scholar is really, really hilarious, and I wanted a less efforful way of finding all that flirting literature out there. Flirting scholars, please hit me up with some reliable citations. Soon.

I enjoyed this article so much, I decided to ILL a book by the article's author: Man with Farm Seeks Woman with Tractor: The Best and Worst Personal Ads of All Time. I'll let you know if it's awesome.

What a darling suggestion!

One of our lovely co-workers was recently reading through the UGLi suggestion box, and found this recommendation; "KDT should wear more revealing clothing. HOTTT." This nearly killed me. Thank you patron for your comments and honesty. I can assure you that the UGLi has taken your comments respectfully, but this is outside the scope of the library's services. However, Katie has graciously taken the time out of her hectic life to respond to the patron's suggestion. Thank you for your response Katie!

As a side note, please remember that the UGLi suggestion box is not a joke.

Because President Bush Said So

November is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month because President Bush said so. Well, President Regan said so first in 1983, but that sort of fizzled out.

But, we can’t look at this as just some political good deed, but as a time for awareness about the disease as it becomes more prevalent in our world. As this number of people with Alzheimer’s begins to rise, so does the cost of living and healthcare for many. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that nearly 4.9 million Americans over the age of 65 are currently suffering with the disease. Many of us are among the 4.9 million families that have been affected by Alzheimer’s.

As the disease becomes more common, the simplest action for us to take is to gain a knowledge and understanding of the disease so that we can know the warning signs and symptoms, as well as know how to support our friends and family as they deal with Alzheimer’s.

The Alzheimer’s Association has a wonderful website that gives basic information about the disease, as well as resources for people suffering with the disease, their caregivers, and their support networks.

http://alz.org/index.asp

My favorite book dealing with the subject is The Wind Garden by Angela McAllister. It’s a lovely children’s book about a young girl named Ellie who looks out for her Grandpa. Her Grandpa reminds me of my own Grandma as he spends his days sitting on this porch remembering. The book itself is aimed at children 10 and under, but shoot, I read it all the time. It’s a really beautiful book.

SAFETY FIRST!

Wedgie-proof is the new black. Just in time for the holiday season.

Orange Almond Cookies
These decadent treasures are a must for all homework, class, or meeting breaks. We like to keep them in a drawer labeled "event supplies".

1/2 cup granulated sugar
7 tablespoons butter, softened
2 teaspoons grated orange rind
1/3 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 egg
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup plain yogurt
Cooking spray
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice
orange rind to sprinkle on top of cookies

1. Preheat oven to 350'

2. Beat first three ingredients with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add honey, almond extract, and egg; beat until well blended. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cups, level with a knife. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt stirring well with a whisk. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with yogurt. Drop by level teaspoons 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350' for 12 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown.

3. Combine powdered sugar and juice in a small bowl; stir with a whisk. Brush powdered sugar mixture evenly over warm cookies. Sprinkle rind on top of the cookies before the powdered sugar mixture dries. Remove cookies from pan and cool.

(This recipe was adapted from the Lemon-Honey Drop Cookies in The All-New Complete Cooking Light. To make the cookies lemon, substitute orange rind and juice for lemon rind and juice, and the almond extract for either lemon or vanilla extract.)