Sgt. Dubya's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Wonkette commentator Civil Negligence suggested that the getup from the recent APEC conflab had a very Sgt. Pepper's look to it, so I put together this little tribute to the brave men and women who provide the world's leaders with batik shirts, chamantos, barong shirts and other things that make these men and women look stupider than, umm
stupider than a bucket of stupidity at a stupid factory?
no?
stupider than a cow whose just been fired from the position of Professor of Stupid at Hull University?
yeah, that aught to work.

Although, when it comes to 'Peppering' the world's leaders I think that Bangkok (oriental city, and the city don't know what the city has got) did a better job.

New Line decide Hobbit film to be crap

Reading between the lines in this report,
I have to say that there is almost no chance that the film adaptation of the Hobbit will be worth watching. Not only will it suffer under John's First Form Imperative, but now Peter Jackson - the man who gave us Bad Taste - is no longer to be involved.
Boo Hiss New Line, you had true love and you gave it away for profits. Boo Hiss

now you don't even have to read the dummies guide

Continuing with my recent theme...

Literary 'Dummies' getting TV treatment

Nov. 16, 2006 at 9:32PM

The creative minds behind NBC's "Hell's Kitchen" and the " ... for Dummies" how-to manuals are set to bring the literary works to U.S. television.
With more than 1,000 such literary manuals to choose from, "Hell's Kitchen" producer A. Smith & Co. and U.S. publisher John Wiley & Sons will have lots of topics to choose from for TV adaptations currently being planned, said Daily Variety.
"Whatever topic you can think of, there's a 'Dummies' book for it," said Arthur Smith, who runs his TV production company with Kent Weed. "There's such a plethora of information, and these are books -- not pamphlets."

I think there is something in that for all of us.

books v films

A bit of an offshoot from my last couple of posts,
It is what I call the First Form Imperative.
That is that the value of any text declines as it changes form.
My examples would be;
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was at its best as a radio serial, the books were still fantastic but the TV series and the film did nothing to add to the franchise. Of course the passage of time might interfere with this as the Film has better technology than the TV series.
Likewise Lord of the Rings was a better book than Film while Star Wars is better as a film than any of the books (or graphic novels).
Any comic book is completely crap when it gets to the big screen (Judge Dread, Hellboy and everything Marvel or DC) but the Batman TV series was better than the films.
The same is true with the new trend to turn games into movies or books.
The one place where this rule might not work would be Fantastic Voyage, where Isaac Asimov wrote the book of the film and decided he didn't like the Hollywood ending so he changed it. Although, despite the film being made first, the book was released first (and I never saw the TV series, but I'm going to guess it was appalling) so perhaps the imperative still applies?

Anyone else think they have an exception to John's First Form Imperative?

Books are for blind people

My last post was done, and I was walking away from my PC when my brain reminded me of this ctrl+alt+del comic and it seemed to fit in with the idea that if a book is difficult it isn't worth reading it. After all, every book (even Area 7) is harder to digest than a movie so why bother at all.

Remove My Brain And Replace It With A Turnip

Ruminations pointed me to Bibliobibuli's post on Nick Hornby's comments about Low Lit, or lowbrow reading.

...reading for enjoyment is what we all should be doing. I don't mean we should all be reading chick lit or thrillers (although if that's what you want to read, it's fine by me, because here's something no one will ever tell you: if you don't read the classics or the novel that won this year's Booker Prize, then nothing bad will happen to you; more importantly, nothing good will happen to you if you do); I simply mean that turning pages should not be like walking through thick mud...

Which is the line of defence I use when people question why I try to spend all of my youth budget on Hellboy. But then I realised that the "walking through thick mud" quote is rather similar to how I have described reading Patrick White. Although I prefer to say it is like swimming through treacle.
Despite this, I love the work of Patrick White. I've started Voss at least four times, I've read The Twyborn Affair twice (and got different things out of it) I find A Fringe of Leaves to be a wonderful read, I saw a Sydney Theatre Company performance of The Ham Funeral which was some of the best theatre I have ever seen. In short, there is a lot to be said for "walking through thick mud" because the willingness to push yourself beyond your comfort zone is important.
So when I saw this little opinion piece in the Herald The Great Patrick White Massacre Is About To Be Unleashed I was more than a little taken aback.

The discovery of Patrick White's rough drafts just shows that there's a good and bad side to everything. The five people in the world who actually read Patrick White novels will be pleased...

This is the sort of Dickhead thinking that saw Shakespeare taken off school reading lists. But just because not everyone is set up to read Patrick White (or Shakespeare) doesn't mean that we should be preventing those who want to, to give it a try. Nor should we hold back from giving those who could read something a bit more high brow a push in that direction. Because while Nick Hornby says "we have to promote the joys of reading, rather than the (dubious) benefits" I would suggest that we could strike a balance and rather than turn out a whole generation of average students who all read average books we could suggest something more challenging. But then this is Australia, the great egalitarian land and if we give some kids Patrick White and other kids Selby Goes To Fluffy Bunny Town then we might be suggesting that some kids are smarter than others and that would cause our entire society to fall down into a screaming great heap. Because in Australia we are all equally gifted intellectually and the only way to tell one person from another is by our Sporting Ability.

Funny, this seems to have taken a turn away from what I started writing.
So let me end with
Read Patrick White, it might not be as simple to read as Hovercar Racer but it's well worth the effort. And it might get you thinking about this putrefying averageness which invades every aspect of Australian society. White knew about it and fought it but Matthew Reilly (and many other authors) just seems to be exploiting it as a market for books which are as intellectually bankrupt as most of the vapid TV we get spoonfed.

There is no God

You scored as atheism. You are... an atheist, though you probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul.

Instead of simply being "nonreligious," atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God.

atheism		67%
Christianity		63%
Buddhism		50%
Satanism		50%
agnosticism		50%
Judaism		50%
Paganism		46%
Islam		38%
Hinduism		25%

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com
This result comes as quite a surprise to me as I didn't realise I was an atheist, but I'll just have to live with it. After all if you can't rely on online quizes to know you better than you know your self then what is the interweb for?
That said, I have never done a very good job of being a Christian, at least according to the way it is understood in our current capitalist western society and i know that I scare the hell out of most of the members of my regular Bible study group with my oddball theology.
So perhaps I am almost atheist, after all there are a lot of gods I don't believe in.

Where the bloody hell are you?

It would seem that the "Where the bloody hell are you" ads promoting Australia as a tourist destination have not been as successful as had been hoped. This is a big blow for me personally as I had put a lot of money into a library marketing campaign I had hope would replace "@your library".






My "We're more than Bloody Books you Moron" campaign now however seems to be dead in the water.

Is something the matter

You're damn right there is something the matter. Something sinister and something grotesque. And what's worse is that it's going on right here under my very nose.

I am as excited as a very excited person who's got a special reason to be excited

Well, we're 7 days into my search for moustache based machismo and it seems that my chances of having a full Melchett by November's end are perhaps a little on the unlikely side. Still with luck I'll manage a Darling because if by month's conclusion I only have a Parkhurst I shall be more than a little chagrined and might instead have to take up slug balancing. Still at least I'm giving it a go, not sitting this one out on the touchline with the half-time oranges and the fat wheezy boys with a note from matron.

Online resources - waste of money. Better to put your library budget into trifectas

Well, it is cup day and I went up to the TAB and put a few dollars on a few horses. And aint life grand I picked 1,2,3, which is all nice and gives me money in my pocket but then the director looked up at the odds and pointed out to me that had I put those three horses in as a trifecta I would have pocketed myself over $50000. So my current payout doesn't seem so fantastic any more.
Still, we had a few bottles open for lunch and was feeling slightly merry. then I sat down at my PC and found a request for the manager for my October report by 3:30 today. Today? After half a bottle of red? Ah well, so be it, I got in and typed it up. I'm not the only one who had to do it in a hurry, but the others are still working on theirs.

The report writing graduated into a bit of discussion on the use of our online resources and emboldened by the grape I declared them all a monumental waste of money.
Let me give you my reasoning:
I have kids at school and I haven't shown them the online resources. If I'm not bothered by it, how many of our other patrons will feel the need?
Somewhere in the vicinity of 95% of our potential patrons live within walking distance of the library.
I am currently studying postgrad and I rarely (if ever) use the online resources my uni offers, which are an order of magnitude better than the ones our little public library can afford.
I manage to survive a masters degree using my set textbook, book of readings, a selection of industry blogs and Google Scholar. All free of charge.
To get to the online resources we offer from home, you need to:
1. Go to the council page
2. Click the library link
3. Go to the online catalogue
4. Enter your library card number
5. Enter your password
6. Click on the online resources link
7. Select the link you want (from a very spread out list)
If you are doing this from home with a slow or even a dialup connection it would take most of our patrons less time to drive to the library.
Plus a lot of the content you get from online databases is Americancentric, which while not a problem if you are looking for who built the Great Wall Of China, may be less beneficial if you are looking for information on drugs which have different trade names in the US than the ones we use in Straya.

Cocking a snood

During November I'll be attempting to grow a moustache. That's right I'll be trying hard to get a fuzzy upper lip, with luck more in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle style than that of Freddy Mercury.
A bit more Lord Kitchener than Ron Jeremy,
A tad more Nietzsche than Chopper Read,
Much more Wilhelm II than Burt Reynolds.

Why the hell would I do this, well the official reason is that I'm raising money for men's health.
* The average life expectancy of men is 6 years less than for women.
* Every year in Australia 2,700 men die of prostate cancer.
* Depression affects 1 in 6 Aussie men
To that end you can help by sponsoring my mo.
Go to the Movember web page, enter 20881 (my Rego number) and give the nice computer your credit card details.

That's right folks, I'm after 'Mo' Money.

1. My daily food diary

Two spicy fruit muffins (English, not American style).
One cup of tea (unfinished)
One double shot latte
Two Eclipse cinamon mints (why are they called mints when they are cinamon?)
Six lemon sherberts
Half a bottle of water
one six inch meatball sub
half a can of pepsi

where too from here

I once saw a courier's van with the legend "No Delivery To Small" emblazoned on the doors.
My recent lack of posting has made me consider what I'll be posting on the blog. You see, during the click 06 conference I was outed as me. Prior to that I believe only a couple of you knew I was me (and sometimes even I forgot). It changes things however, for example my rant about my manager treating me like a child will be funny and full of ADHD vs Librarian dichotomies. However it could well be considered bad for my career to rant about the boss when some of you know who I am and therefore who she is. So that story is sitting in post production as I try to get the balance right between my propensity for confabulation and my boss' inability to tell the difference between a joke and her arse being alight, even if I've just emailed her a link to a website which deals with the dangers of hindquarter combustion..
You see my problem?
Even that seemingly innocent first paragraph, when you look at it carefully, has the possibility to come back and bite me.
No seriously, look carefully. I used the phrase "I am a terrorist". I know, I didn't see it at first either but then when I took my medication this morning I noticed it. Luckily I noticed it before I posted it, unluckily I'm still ADHD enough not to care.

So what to do.
Well, the Hot Librarian has a post in which she lists some potential topics for her blog

Here's just a sample of what you can expect in the coming months:
1. My daily food diary
2. My health complaints
3. My musings
4. My daily ramblings
5. My take on current events
6. Some more musings
7. A smattering of piquant rants
8. Numbered lists
9. My inventions
10. My assorted thoughts
11. Self-portraits, shiny hair portraits, ass pics, bikini shots, diagrams of my daily outfits, detailed discussions of my favourite brand of shower gel
12. Partial sentences, incomplete sentences, run-on sentences, grammatical abominations, deliberate misspellings, words created out of whole cloth
13. Random yet thoughtful musings
14. Charming anecdotes
15. Noodz
16. Nude musings given to you via numbered lists - lists filled with rambling grammatical abominations, too many commas, and piquantry (what? I like that word better than "piquantness"- sue me, I have no money) with a side of rant.
17. Downhome folksy humour
18. Hot XXX girl-on-girl action
19. Talking armadillos (dilloes?)
20. A long treatise on the burgeoning threat of the coming world war when hybrid automobiles team up with the robots
21. Portraits of famous Amishmen, Masons, some Scientologists, assorted Baha'i Faithers
22. And more!

So perhaps I can join her and see how many of the things on this list I can blog about over the next few weeks.

Where oh where has ADHD gone, oh where oh where can he be.

Screw you!
I've said it before, I have ADHD so you can't expect me to post...
ever!

Oh, I can't stay mad at you. Forgive me? I have been busy, honest. And I am saddened by my lack of blogular wisdom to my devoted fan base. I've been working on getting myself a masters degree. I've probably posted about it before, but it was a stupid idea, wrapped in a delusion, floating on a sea of WTF. And it got worse around July, when I had to do a compulsory accounting subject. Now, I haven't done maths since I was 16 so I wasn't looking forward to it. Plus my difficulty was compounded when I went off my medication for a month. You see the medication was never supposed to be a permanent thing. I like to think I am a functioning member of society even without it, it is just there to point me towards productivity on occasion for work and for study. So I had family visiting from the old dart and took several weeks off work (and study) to show them the local sights. Look, red dirt. Oh a red rock. Look a fat lizard. Look a thin lizard on a red sandhill.
All in all it was a lot of fun, I was self medicating with my Irish brother-in-law at various venues of liquid refreshment and it didn't matter to anyone if we thought we were going to look at a railway museum but I decided to take the long drive via a salt pan and along a dry riverbed.
After this little bit of R&R I went off to a conference (as you may have noticed) where I kept ignoring my chemical conscience and had myself a lot of fun, which isn't what most people would expect of an ADHD kiddie surrounded by librarians.
Then I went back to work and discovered that I had become unused to my chemical regimen. The stuff has always decreased my appetite and affected my sleeping habits but despite the high doses I had still managed to eat and sleep. Now however I have cut by dose to 1/3 of what it was, because otherwise I can't eat or sleep and both of those things are in my top ten of things I like to do at least once a day. The trouble is that 1/3 of the dose is about 1/8 of the benefit, so I have been living a life of quiet loud desperation. My uni work went to hell in a hand basket and work has also been suffering.
I am lucky in that I can work without it. There are huge areas of my job where ADHD is in fact a benefit, but there has been a lack of paperwork, a lack of telling the boss what I am doing, a decrease in my cataloguing output and I keep forgetting to give my assistant any meaningful work to do.
Still, over the last couple of days I have taken my full dose, forgone food or sleep and done the overdue (by at least six weeks) section of my subject. That's right folks, I did the second half of a masters level accounting subject in two days, including two of the three assignments. Now I'm sitting at work, having taken a slightly decreased morning dose but feeling more jumpy than a ferret on crystal meth. And in this situation my thoughts turned to my blog feeds and having sated my own desire to read the ranting of others out there I started to consider my own readers. Thus a post was born.
I'm happy enough in this situation, my boss is out of town visiting her real children so the ADHD librarian who tends to feel very angry about being treated like a child (there might be a post on that topic some time soon) can relax a bit. I also have a day today with no storytime, no school visits, no desk shift and no meetings. Sure I have a desk you can't see underneath piles of half complete paperwork and uncatalogued junior non-fiction, but paperwork and books won't be scared if I start gibbering incoherently at them.
Now all I need is for my uni to accept my excuse very good reason for my work being late. I'm lucky in that my doctor has given me a certificate stating

please excuse the lateness of John's work, but he and his brain chemistry aren't on the best of terms at the moment and the nearest private practice psychiatrist is 1500km away, so he's just hanging in there waiting for the public system to find a gap between the dangerous nutjobs so that they can look at having him rewired.

So, while my lecturer isn't going to mark my work, the associate head of the school has agreed to take a look at it for a pass/fail grade. I'm happy enough with that, I was sitting at 70% for the first half of the subject despite the fact that most of that was at least a week or two late and while I always feel good about credits and distinctions I'm often heard to loudly proclaim Ps get degrees. Sure my wife is averaging Ds and HDs in her postgrad work, but an addition to being a very clever person, she has a work ethic. As of last week though, she is finished her grad dip and as I don't have another subject until late January life might be quite relaxed for the next few months. Or as relaxed as it can be for her being as she chose to live with me.