the comedy train

This rollicking ride pulled out of the station yesterday afternoon beginning with a welcome call from The Two T's. I thought T was crying at first. Coworker Mrs. D handed me the phone and let me know that it was T but all I heard at first was a little whimper. The she squeaked out, "You wanna hear something funny?" and began to giggle a little hysterically....this I HAD to hear! I said sure and she told me she had the other T (yes, my two friends have the same name, but we manage all right) on hold and conferenced her in. The other T is divorced from a philandering, lying, cheating, stinky, poopoo-head and has recently moved out on her own and begun dating again. One of her avenues has been via the Internet and, more specifically, eHarmony. I'll give you three guesses as to who eHarmony matched her up with out of the probable millions in their databases, and the first two don't count. Yes my friends, eHarmony matched the other T up with her cheating ex-husband. So much for those 29 components of compatibility. The first T pointed out that they obviously fail to (or have no way of) taking into account the fact that people LIE when they sign up. I have a difficult time believing this is not just another, more elaborate racket for taking people's money...some of whom are actually trying to find someone special, many of whom are just looking for their next booty call :(

The next stop on the comedy train track was my front yard that night. You can lie if you want to but EVERYONE has now (or has had in the past) a pair of underwear that have just plain worn out. The elastic is gone, they have been washed so many times they no longer have any real distinguishable color, maybe a hole or two around the waist/leg bands...you know what I'm talking about. Well, I wore my pair yesterday and fought with those bastards all day long. They just would not stay up! Finally, 6pm rolled around and me and my wornout underwear could go home. On arrival at mi casa, I went to the mail box and grabbed the trash can on the way back to the house since thursday is trashday and the truck had gone to all that trouble not to throw the can down the street as it usually does while making its weekly rounds. So I'm pulling a 95 gallon trashcan with one hand and holding a stack of mail in the other when I begin to feel the old, busted underwear head south. No big deal, I thought, I can make it to the house, surely. Suddenly, I feel them around my ankles. I take another step, still not too worried, because hey, I've got a skirt on. Um....no, no I don't. Somehow the band of the underwear had rolled up in the band of the skirt so I'm now standing in my front yard, my 32 degree F front yard, in a blouse, a hooded jacket and a pair of tennis shoes. My stunned brain takes a few seconds to comprehend the fact that I'M NAKED IN MY FRONT YARD! At that moment, a car swooshes by, very fast thank god. No horns were honked, no anti-lockk brakes engaged, the neighbors house remained dark and I heard no laughing. I dropped the trashcan and the mail, yanked my skirt up, grabbed the mail again and fled for the house on the verge of tears. In the past 24 hours I've thought back over the course of my life and I cannot think of anything more embarrassing happening to me, truly.

Today, Daxx and I were late getting our lunch breaks so we were off from 1:30-2:30 instead of 1-2. Usually I go at 12 or 1, meaning I get to watch either 2 episodes of Family Feud or 2 episodes of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Today I got to watch one episode of WWTBAM and one episode of Merv Griffin's Crosswords, a new game show that premiered after his death. It is an interactive crossword puzzle game obviously. I was listening with only half an ear when the host mentioned the next clue had this many letters and was worth this much money, but I guaran-damn-ty you that I heard him say, mickey mouse's willie. My head jerked up and I saw that it was indeed, Mickey Mouse's "Willie". The answer was "steamboat" of course, but I'd already begun to giggle. Daxx surfaced from his Mp3 player and began to laugh with me. I could not believe no one on the show laughed. I remained firm in my belief that I was not the only one with a sophmoric sense of humor since the clue writers obviously did too. Two clues later, 5 letters and $200 brought this clue: "small and sprightly, like Santa's staff" I'm sorry folks, but that is comedy GOLD and again, no one even cracked a smile! They had to have cut away or did a retake or something! No one could be that hard-hearted!

The train's final stop of the day occured right before I left at 6pm. One of our regular computer users was paying for his printing, walked a few paces off, then doubled back to the desk as I was saying goodnight to KT and ask me if I knew the politically correct term for "someone of weight". He said he's heard them talking about it today on the Tyra Banks Show and he couldn't remember what it was. "I want to apply it to myself" he said, with a big laugh. I wanted to say, "No, I'm sorry sir. I didn't make it to my tankass lodge meeting this week so I don't even know the secret handshake at this point much less what we're calling ourselves these days."

I'm fat, I know I am. I'm trying to change my life and get rid of it as well. But you know what? I don't know politically correct terms for "fat" because I've never been addressed with them. That's terminology thin people use to talk about fat people so they don't even have to verbally associate with us. They are generally just mean to your face. Busty women have their boobs talked to, most conversations patrons start with me are directed at my stomach. The young children I can deal with but the adults who do this just disgust me. I don't do that to people.

I ended up telling the patron that if I saw anything about it, I'd make a note and tell him the next time I saw him. I can't think of any reason (and I lug my personal baggage all around on this one) why in the world he would think I'd be an expert on that. He just said, "I thought you might have heard of it." Whatever. Thanks for putting the breaks on the comedy train, chump.

random bits of info

I'm getting so O-L-D! I feel like one of those elderly men who keep telling the same stories over and over, never once remembering that this is like the 89th re-telling. So, forgive me if I'm repeating myself.

Comfortably Numb
My carpal tunnel is still raging, with all the fingers of my left hand with the exception of my pinky having little or no sensation. It's very uncomfortable. So I have a nerve conduction study on Valentine's Day. KT said, "That's a bummer." I replied, "It's not like I'm gonna have anything better to do." There you have my life in a two sentence conversation.

Ah! The Sun! Shield Me!
My doctor has also recommended that I do a sleep study to see if I have sleep apnea, which he seems to think is a certainty given my nearly constant fatigue and afternoon sleepiness. (of course, it would have nothing to do with the extra tonnage I've managed to put on in the past 3 years) Additionally, my blood test results show that I have a Vitamin D deficiency. I'm supposed to take vitamins (trying), eat bone-in sardines and canned salmon (um, have to get paid tomorrow before any new victuals can make their way into the house), and get out in the sun (guess I need to start taking my breaks at work). What? You mean the ab fab flourescent lighting at the library won't do? *gasp* I get to the library at ~8:30 or 9 (a.m.) while the sun is still behind the trees for the most part and I leave when it's dark. I'm turning into an albino apparently.

Tiptoe-ing Through The Clovers
I finally got KT and her sister Z to go see Cloverfield! Now I am personally responsible for one more Cloverhead in the world. Unfortunately, my accolades fell short with Z, who liked the movie but didn't find it to the same pants-crapping terror-fest that KT and I enjoyed. She claimed to have watched too many horror movies at which point she and KT had a (very tiny but noticeable) verbal spat where KT pointed out that she was older and had probably watched just as many if not more horror movies than Z and it scared her! KT asked me in the beginning, when I called her from the parking lot of the movie theater after my first viewing, breathless and still terrified, if it was supernatural creepy and I said, unequivocably, NO! It was just so loud and violent and terrifying! I wanted (both times) to go home and stock up on flashlights and nonperishables in case something started destroying Bibb County! (KT did some holing up at home of her own, the film made quality time with the kids imperative...) So, Hi. I'm Holley. I'm a Cloverhead. I have been since January 18th, how about you?

A Tale of Two Eyes
So I came across a review of the upcoming (yet again, a remake of a Asian film) release, The Eye. I won't say the review janked the movie exactly, but much more praise was lavished on the orgininal Cantonese version which apparently is supposed to be v.v. scary where this one is just tedious. I quickly queued it on Netflix and bumped it to the top. The disc has sat on my kitchen counter for 3 days now because I'm too pansy-assed to watch it :) So tomorrow, I'm taking it to work, KT and I are ordering in pizza and watching it on our lunch hour. If it's good enough (and conversely, not too bad) I'll be considering it for my 2nd Annual Horror Movie Marathon program at the library in October. The kicker will be if it's dubbed. If you have to turn on subtitles it won't work with the digital projection system we have at la biblioteca. Here's hoping!

Holier Than Nonfiction
Here's a new one, and I really should have remembered this as I voted on it. I am a member of the Reader's Advisory Roundtable in the library consortia I work in. We meet bimonthly and bring (generally) two examples of the agreed upon topic WHICH WE ARE TO HAVE READ, and share them with the group. When it comes right down to it, we are kinda like a librarian's book group...and we get paid for it :) This month's theme? Christian Fiction. I voted for it specifically because it is a genre I don't read. Unfortunately for me, I forgot about the meeting until reminded recently so now I have until next Wednesday to read to books and prepare a book talk for each. I had absolutely no idea how to just jump into choosing one so I decided to go with prize winners. The major awards for Christian Fiction are The Christie Awards and I chose the winner for Historical Fiction, Tracy Groot's Madman, and the winner for Suspense (a.k.a faith-based thriller), Tim Downs' Plague Maker. I should actually be starting the reading frenzy now instead of sitting in front of my laptops but all needs must be fed :) Rest assured I'll let you know what I think since these two will also be entries #9 and #10 of my Book Awards Reading Challenge if I finish them.

Now, on to the comedy train!

I know, I know....

....I'm really dweeby for liking M. Night Shyamalan but there you go. I like the guy. I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village, AND Lady in the Water. Now we have an upcoming flick (6/13/08) called The Happening. Cinematical posted about it earlier today and you can click through to view the trailer if you're interested. After Lady in the Water tanked so hard right behind The Village, the audience M. Night is work with is somewhere around 98% skeptical and 2% supportive.....maybe 99% skeptical and 1% supportive now that I think about all that I've heard. I don't care....I like what I like! After all, tons of people watch those crappy Nicholas Sparks movies and I've remained quiet to this point. How can it possibly be fun to sit in a theater or on you sofa and sob? I have enough angst in my life, I'd rather not pay 8.50 to watch someone else's in my free time. The old saw about "if you don't have anything nice to say....." still holds true for the most part.

I like the fantasy aspects of M. Night's movies and have always enjoyed the twists people are so scornful of. As a librarian, I've gotten used to people being playfully scornful about my reading tastes since I so rarely like literary fiction but I'm not reading all that much off the best-seller lists either, hardly at all! I like occult fiction, some historical fiction, sci-fi/fantasy (as long as the sci-fi is not hard core), romantic suspense (as long as it's spicy!), romantic comedy (as long as it's funny AND spicy), action/adventure (true to life or larger than life, it doesn't matter as long as there are automatic weapons and some sort of explosives involved), and horror (the creepier/gorier/scarier the better). As are my reading tastes, so follow my taste in movies. Literary fiction (print) and drama (film) are just not my favorite genres. That's not to say I won't read/watch them but there has to be some serious motivation involved. Hey, I watched The Painted Veil the other day and enjoyed it even though some moderate sniffling was involved. I'm not a totally coarse creature :)

I've said it before.....

.....and I'll say it again, Juice could be describing my library. If you'd like to be amused (or disheartened in another respect), go visit Tales from the "Liberry" and read his chronicle of conversation for today. Other than the fact that he is a he and I am a she, we could comfortably swap places with only minor difficulty. How is it that the public library experience can be so similar across the board? (well, mine anyway)

Rock on, Juice! Keep fighting the good fight!
htw

Book meme ! ! !

(via @ the Library by way of someone Woeful knows)

• grab the nearest book at hand of more than 123 pages
  
• turn to page 123
  
• find the 5th sentence
  
• post the next 3 sentences
  
• tag other people (woeful recommends 5 but I don't think I have 5 blogging friends, we'll see)

KT and her Jane Austen-loving self put up an Austen display on the reference desk so the nearest book at hand for me is Jane Austen: A Life by David Nokes.

Without further ado:

Away in the East Indies, Frank was transferring from HMS Perseverance to HMS Minerva; James was regularly hunting with the Prince of Wales at Kempshott Park; Edward was setting himself up as a great landowner in Kent; Henry was at Oxford, and even little Charles was placing his first foot on the ladder of naval command. Her brothers lived in the public world of history, politics and global affairs, but Jane was confined to the domestic world of female preoccupations, a world quite invisible to the eye of history, where a confidence in pronouncing the superiority of an Indian muslin over an English one must be reckoned a very great accomplishment. It dismayed her how these busy men would all affect to despise mere novels as ephemeral female diversions; their only reading must be in more weighty subjects: history, political economy and the more sententious kind of moral essays.

Well, wasn't that spectacularly interesting? I wish now that I'd cheated and found a book with an interesting 123rd page....

Anyway, it's your turn KT, Book Diva,.......um, KP?

spontaneity ! ! !

so when I got off work yesterday I had a voicemail from my brother (I just canNOT get him to call me at my actual work number!) saying that they were planning on going to a movie and inviting me along. My nephew's 7th birthday was a few days ago and this would be another celebration of that as well. When I called, they were messing around the house doing around-the-house kinda stuff because I hadn't returned his 10am phone call. It was at this point that we had a brief not unfriendly spat about calling on a landline when it's important. At la biblioteca, we are not allowed to carry our cell phones on the floor so I'm not in the habit of checking for messages until the end of the day. Anyway, that's not important.

I ended up pointing my car towards Jasper instead of home and we went to dinner at Shogun's Japanese Steak House where there were flying knives, spatulas, and food as well as gouts of flame to the ceiling and a volcano made of stacked onion rings. If you've never been to a Japanese steak house I recommend it!

Our movie....Hannah Montana. In the interests of not offending girls around the world, I'll say that she seems to be a truly decent young lady and leave it at that. I have to mention that at one point one of the roadies talks about all the little girls screaming and he says "it's like standing behind a jet engine," they do a quick cut to a concert scene and it is a very similar sound to the flight deck of an aircraft carrier :)

I had an absolutely FaBuLoUs time with my brother, niece and nephew (bunko night for sis-in-law!) and hope that our next visit doesn't take so long to arrange.

evenin' ya'll!
htw

Book Awards Reading Challenge

I have just posted review #8 of the 12 required to complete the challenge and be entered into the drawing for prizes and I still have until June 30, 2008 to finish. You can go there if you'd like, but here's the review in its entirety for those who prefer instant gratification. I'm serious folks, go read it!

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
2006 Alex Award

Wow! What a story! I started this book at 10am on a Saturday morning and by 5pm that evening I had turned the last page. I flew through this woman’s life like a speeding jet. This is narrative nonfiction at its very best, though I will admit to a bit of skepticism on how exactly she remembers so much. The book begins with a 3-year-old Walls setting herself on fire while cooking hotdogs. Meticulous details take us from the ballerina tutu she was wearing catching on fire through skin grafts and the gentle investigations of the nurses and administrators as to why exactly a 3-year-old little would be cooking her own food.

You would think the story would expand from there to include foster homes and accusations of negligence but you’d be wrong. Instead, her father decides it is time to “check out Rex-Walls style” so he grabs her up and flees the hospital for the car, which is still running and packed with a few belongings and Walls’ mother and siblings. They drive away into the night and so begins Jeannette Walls’ incomparable life with parents more nomadic than loving.

The extreme poverty this family goes through is unimaginable, especially in light of the fact that this story took place not too long ago. Jeannette Walls’ photo shows a beautiful woman’s face to the world but her life’s story reveals that she felt gangly, awkward and unlovely. She had buckteeth and her home’s lack of indoor plumbing made hygiene a problem as well. I could go on and on about the struggles these poor kids had to go through for the most basic of conveniences but it would begin to sound repetitious coming from me so go out and read Walls’ version instead. She chronicles better than anyone the heartbreaking lows and manic highs of her dysfunctional family.

Happy Reading!
htw

saints (or anybody else like-minded) preserve us!

(via The Vampire Librarian)

Sucks:*
My Life Dreams:
1. Quit school
2. Get on Girls Gone Wild.
3. Have my baby.
--As seen on a dry erase board in one of our study rooms.
*Sucks was definitely written by someone else later.

At my library, all we get are cusswords and the occasional attempt at naughty drawings. If we're lucky, it's the dry erase board and not the walls or windows.

the celebrity gossip craze

Click here to read a great fan rant on the $200,000 Heath Ledger video that Entertainment Tonight pulled.

The author makes some very salient points about our disgust for celebrity behavior contrasted with our insatiable hunger for gossip about said behavior. There is lots of Hilton/Lohan/Spears bashing and he is not choosy about casting blame at us as consumers of that information. I don't know about ya'll, but I've come to the point where I change the channel/radio station/webpage when something comes up about those three because I am so weary of hearing about their latest hangover or near-OD experience. Too much money or fame seems to do no one any good.

Would you be able to keep yourself under control if you're bank account suddenly swelled with several million dollars and the world started to adore you?
htw

Cloverfield 2? :(

The imminent planning of Cloverfield 2 came through on Cinematical a few days ago and boy am I sad :( Discussions continue as to whether this will be filler on where/when the monster originated or just the same night from a different camera's perspective. I am excited about NEITHER. Why can Hollywood never just let a good movie be?

I loved, loved, loved 28 Days Later and have yet to see the reputedly tacky Americanized sequel. I just don't want my opinion of that great Brit-flick to change. I'll have to watch it eventually because my curiosity will get the better of me, but I'll put it off as long as possible.

Hey, I liked First Blood (the first Rambo movie) too! But guess what, the book is better and at the end of that book the colonel who gets Rambo out of town in the movie puts a bullet in John Rambo's skull to stop him from rampaging through town any further. Would it have been a better movie if they'd kept to the original storyline? I don't know but I'll wager they were banking on the success of the Rocky franchise to catapult this into a franchise as well (and they were pretty successful apparently).

Maybe I should make a YouTube video, "Leave Cloverfield Alone!"......
:)
htw