October 2003

It’s been a great weekend…and it’s only Saturday. Of course, it helps that my weekend started on Friday, which is a bonus. But add to that the fact that I got paid for NOT going in to work on Friday makes it that much better. And whipped cream on this weekend sundae? Carleen rented me 3, yes count them, 3 movies. And not just any movies, no. Two horrors and Charlie’s Angles 2. Charlie’s Angles was pretty good, considering the type of movie it is. You can moan and groan all you want, these type of movies are not meant to be good. They are meant to be fun, you’re supposed to sit down and relax for an hour and a half and forget you have bills due, loans to pay, and a seemingly endless list of chores. They’re just fun. And the horror movies—wow! 28 Days Later and Wrong Turn. both of which are going on my Amazon Wish List. I may add reviews at a later date, but for right now let’s just say they’re probably to two best horror flicks to come out in a while. And speaking of which…Texas Chainsaw Massacre tommorow! Score! I can’t wait. Anyway, Carleen has been outstanding this weekend. Well, she’s outstanding all the time, so for her, being outstanding is just normal, so to the rest of us mere mortals, her outstanding is so far above the normal outstanding. Anyway, she rocked this weekend and she deserves far more than she gets. At least I kept Chani occupied all night these past few days, and as such, she got probably the best sleep she’s gotten in a long time. It’s so good to see her wearing a smile in the morning.

You know, if I were black and I did a thorough exam of the film industry today (yes even today!) I’d be disgusted. Now you would think we’ve come much closer to unifying the human race than what we have. Now let’s take a look at one particular movie I”m having a beef with. The Matrix and Matrix Revolutions. now at first you may say, “Huh??, but Mike, like most of the lead actors in the both those movies are black and probably 80% of Zion appears to be black (I’m sorry i you’re offended by my use of the term “black” it’s not meant as a insult, but i find the politically-correct term “African-American” to be a half-assed and utterly misleading term. I mean, I’m Welsh–that doesn’t make me Welsh-American, I’ve never even been to Wales!). But back to my point. Yes, I applaud the Wachowski Bros. for including as many blacks as they did, BUT, look who all these black folk are looking to to save them–The White Boy Keanu Reeves. For years all these people have been searching for their savior and he is found in the form of a white person. Am I reading too much into it? Probably, but I enjoy that sort of thing and it makes an interesting point.
On the flip side, lets take a look all the way back to 1968. George Romero makes horror cinema history with perhaps the definitive Zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead. In the film, for those of you who haven’t seen it, the male lead is played by a black man, who does a fine job i have to add. this was back in the 60’s–not exactly and easy time for any black person. And George Romero took a stand and cast a strong black man as his male lead. Awesome. Of course, he eventually gets shot by a redneck, but we can’t blame the redneck, it’s just what they do–it moves–shoot it.

It’s been a very emotional day. Trying to make this long story short is going to be a challenge but basically, I discovered last Friday that the city has been overpaying since I started my position at Reference at the end of July. I was naive enough to believe that since it was their mistake that they would be willing to work with me and come up with a solution that would be convenient for me. But, alas, the head of the human resource department doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of the word “cooperation”, and turned down every proposal that we suggested. My bosses at work have been extremely helpful in trying to get things sorted out for me. All I wanted to do was pay the lump some that I owed them which, by the way, was over $800, rather than have them deduct it from my future paychecks for the next three months. My father was going to loan me the money to do this. That way the problem would be solved faster and I could pay my father back at a pace that was convenient to me. Apparently this was not a possible solution. I was also requesting an official apology from the human resource department since this was a ghastly error on their part. Turns out they are incapable of doing this as well. So I visited with the city manager today and under the suggestion of my co-workers, I brought my father along with me since he was going to be the one to write the check and also for support. I was very apprehensive about inviting him and worried about how it would look, which it turns out I was right to feel this way because the first thing the city manager did when we walked in was voice his discomfort with having my father there and proceeded to scold me for inviting him without informing him of it first. I am quite curious as to why I should have informed him when the director of our library had already informed him by email the day before. If he was going to find my fathers presence so threatening he should have told me so in one of the two phone conversations we had earlier that day. I asked my father to wait outside. At this point I was ready to throw away any intention of proceeding with a diplomatic discussion. I hate how these tense moments have a way of creating a mental block in your brain that inables you to say the right thing at the right moment. You can always come up with something good an hour or so later after you’ve analyzed the conversation but by then it’s too late and any such statement will just lack impact. So, I never really got to tell my side of the story because the city manager seemed much to interested in hearing his own voice. He had obviously made up his mind about my situation long before I had walked into his office. It became clear that any attempt I was to make was useless because he didn’t seem to care if his human resource department had demonstrated extreme incompetence or whether $800 in the whole was going to make christmas shopping a lot more difficult for me this year. And as for an apology, apparently the city manager feels I really need to take some of the responsibility for not noticing the mistake that took the trained payroll clerk over three months to spot. So, I have had an experience today, I am wiser and I have even less faith in our government officials than I ever did before.

I’ve suffered from binge eating problems since I was a teenager. I was active enough then that I could get away with it, but my body’s changing now and so is my activity level. This bothers me only because it represents an inability to be disciplined and have control of myself. I think that’s the main reason I quit smoking because I realized one day how much it controlled my life. I had to work my day around when I was going to have a cigarette and I didn’t like that. My health is important to me and I want being healthy to be a natural thing, not something I constantly think about all day every day. Here lately, it has been. I’ve already mentioned my intolorence for fad diets. I don’t believe in deprivation and I will not be on a diet that makes me feel deprived. I think I’ve found an answer. I discovered in my “back issues” of health magazines at home an article on something called Volumetrics. I will not even attempt to explain what it because I’ll probably get it all wrong, but instead I’ll just provide some links at the end of this entry. Most important, I can eat chocolate, I can eat potatoes, I can eat meat, there aren’t any crazy ratio’s to remember or any calorie counting involved. It’s basic philosophy seems to be based around eating until your full. However, it doesn’t seem to deal with the issue of emotional eating which I think is one of the major causes for binge eating in this day and age. I’ve checked out a book so I can read up on it some more. It’s called Volumetrics by Barbara Rolls.

Volumetrics
study conducted by Barbara Rolls
Shape magazine survey

CSS and GoLive are pissed at each other. I don’t know why, i tried to smooth things over between them, tried to get them to put their differences aside, but alas, the wound run too deep. They are not making this easy on me–it’s difficult creating web sites solely with html but GoLive is too clunky for some things. Can there ever be peace between them!?

Swing in this tree
Oh I am bounce around so well
Branch to branch,
Limb to limb you see
All in a day’s dream
I’m stuck
Like the other monkeys here
I am a humble monkey
Sitting up in here again

Brings up a good point– a point I’ve often stated–why did we ever leave the trees? We had it good, eating bugs and fruit, sleeping all day, no worries mate! But that wasn’t good enough for us, no. We had to stand upright. We had TAILS, dammit!! How cool would that be! Nope now we gotta do the 9 - 5 thing ( or in my case 11-7 ). My point? Don’t really have one. What’s the point? We’re here now and we gotta make the best of it. But I will say this, we took a big step in coming out of the trees and i think that we’ve stopped looking ahead at where we’re going. True, Yoda does say to keep your mind on the present, however you should still be aware of the future. So what’s the future of humankind? Evolution or De-evolution?
Such deep thoughts just from changing the CD in the CD player.

So I went to another certification class yesterday in Coweta on Public Library Administration. I have to say that having my ingrown toenail removed was a much more pleasent experience than this class was. I won’t go into details because complaining only puts me in a bad mood and I’m trying to avoid those as much as possible nowadays. Luckily I managed to relearn a skill I taught myself in highschool which always helped me get through my boring science classes; the art of hiding an open book under your desk and reading without getting noticed by your teacher. So, on the upside, I’m thoroughly enjoying Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

I left work feeling rather annoyed today and, quite frankly, very glad that it would be a good sixteen hours before I laid eyes on any of my co-workers again. We had staff training day today which was successful, and fun and I for one learned a lot and enjoyed myself. But, it was a long intense day and I think by the end of it we were all getting on eachothers nerves. I came home and walked Chani, who, as usual, didn’t want to walk but wanted to sniff every leaf, pole and worm on the road so that left me only more frustrated. So I dragged her home, put her in the sun room and went for my own run. I think I’m feeling human again. All I need now is some chocolate.

Is it important to have an opinion? I mean about anything. Whether it be politics, global issues, or whether Kraft Macaroni & Cheese is really the cheesiest. Sorry I’m extremely exhausted and as such I’m feeling a bit overly philisophical…to be continued…my overly whiny dog is demanding my attention. Ok back on subject. I mean, why can’t we just see the good in both sides and accept both (or all sides for that matter?). Or is that just being indecisive?
Hmm seems to be a lack of balance in my life. Not to sound new age-y but I feel like I need some inner peace. It’s kinda weird, I think I feel like I was supposed to feel (but didn’t) when i was a teenager. Mentally, I’m like 8. I play computer games and slack in my chores–basically deny and responsibility whatsoever. Then there’s responsible Mike (who doesn’t come around often enough) who needs order somewhere in the chaos 8 year old Mike has created. So there it is, I need to balance those two sides out. How do i do it? Do I just wait? Is it something I need to work on? Am I just really tired and I’m rambling?
In other news the web design stuff has almost dropped out of my life– I haven’t worked on anything in weeks. Which is frustrating. That whole focus thing is gone. Well I’m sure it’ll come back. I miss it. Focus? Are you out there? Come back!

I went to Oklahoma City today with Laura, Cindy Y. and Courtney for a workshop on young adult programming. It was lead by a leading library consultant named Patrick Jones. He’s brilliant, entertaining and has a very realistic outlook on how we need to serve the young adult public in our libraries today. He made me realize just how important and how responsible librarians are for the future of children. I’ve often reasoned that librarians are here to assist and contribute to the upbringing of a child. This workshop has made me realize that a librarian is responsible for a lot more. I remember reading once that “it takes a villiage to raise a child”. I think I understand how true that is now. The impact a librarian can have on a child/teenager is so much more tremendous than I ever knew. I don’t want people to take this out of context. A librarian shouldn’t try to be a parent to every child that walks through the door. I just think that I need to stop using the excuse “it’s the parents responsibility to make sure their children are exposed to a library, or “it’s the parents job to make sure their child learns to read, or enjoys to read, understands right and wrong, becomes a model citizen”, or whatever. As adults in this world, it is our responsiblity to take care of OUR children period. Where this becomes difficult, obviously, is when we disagree on how this is to be done. But we all must have this collective purpose in mind, we all must be sensitive to other peoples opinions, no matter how ludicrous we think that opinion is. I think it is this very confict, this constant differing of opinions, that always made me resort to this attitude. I’m really not sure where I’m going with this. All I know is that I’m starting to question my beliefs. I’m not talking about anything drastic here. I find myself doing this periodically in my life, especially here lately, because it’s the only way I know how to keep myself open minded.
Patick Jones website

I’m taking the GRE in two weeks. I’ve been studying but the more I study for it the more scared I get. Does anyone have any advice or tidbits for me?

Ok I finally updated the information that gets posted with our posts (i.e. the user name and email address) unfortunatly, since we were both using the same login name originally, it looks like all the posts were made by Carleen.
Well it should be fixed now, so it’ll say when i made the post and when Carleen amde the post. For all earlier ones–well, if it’s smart and intellectual–it’s Carleen. If it’s smart-assed and doesn’t have anything to do with anything, it’s Mike.

Saw a preview for the House of the Dead last night while at the in-laws place. Can’t believe this one has silently floated under my radar until now. Why was I not informed? Anyway yet another video game zombie movie–but i can’t get enough zombie movies so I’m psyched. It opens this Friday, but unfortunatly our poor little Chani-monster is going under the knife that day. Yup, as of Friday Chani will no longer be a girl but that’s ok I can wait till Saturday to see my gorey movie.
Speaking of gore, I just watched Day of the Dead, the final movie in the “Living Dead” series by George Romero. Wow. Sick. Have you ever wondered what it would look like to see a man drawn and quartered? Watch this flick and you’ll find out. It is by far in the Top 3 Goriest (is that even a word) Movies I have ever seen. But i gotta say, anybody who calls themselves a horror buff definetly needs to check out Romero’s work-brilliant.
Oh and speaking of Chani, we’ve never really discussed her in our blogs–Chani is our 6 month old, hellishly adorable Beagle. She is Queen of the Castle (despite my ever-failing attempts to convince her that I’M Alpha Dog). She LOVES Peanut Butter, in fact, for anybody who has cats out there, you know how cats react to the sound of a can opener (can opener=food)? Well Chani reacts the same way when i open the peanut butter jar. She can be passed out on the couch but when I open that peanut butter jar, she’s on her feet without a second thought. Anyway, that’s our dog and that’s my entry

-M

If there’s one thing I really enjoy about living in Bartlesville, it’s being so near to my parents. It’s strange that even though we now have our own house, and even though I refer to this house as my home, I also call my parents house “home”. I don’t believe this is habitual, I believe it’s just natural and I believe I will always call it home very simply because that is where my parents are. I love going to visit them and treasure the time I spend with them. In particular, my mom and I ((and sometimes dad) love to watch British drama series’. I borrowed a series from the library a few weeks ago called Lillie and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys this kind of stuff. My mom and I watched the entire thirteen episodes in one sitting. It’s based on a real historical figure by the name of Lillie Langtry. Best known for her lenghty love affair with King Edward, Lillie was considered to be the “original Victorian supermodel” and later became a successful actress making many appearances accross the United States. If you do enjoy British drama, I would also suggest the following:

Upstairs Downstairs
The Grand
~C

A columnist by the name of Rich Lowry has written a rather disturbing article proposing, albeit sarcastically, that we “kill all the librarians”. According to Lowry, librarians are “thoughtless” and suffer from “unreconstructed leftism”. He also seems to infer that ALA opposes filters, not because the software is flawed, but because they believe a person has the “right” to download pornography on the internet. Lowry has also fallen for Ashcrofts assertion that section 215 of the Patriot Act has never yet been used. Perhaps he should check out this California survey.

However, little Richi does score at least one point in my book. I did some research on the independent librarians jailed in Cuba this past summer and according to a New York Times article, ALA failed to support their cause for an extremely stupid reason:

“Winston Tabb, the outgoing chairman of the ALA’s international-relations committee, gave perhaps the flimsiest rationale for the association’s decision. “One of the questions was whether there was too much focus on Cuba,” he said in the New York Times, “and whether we should focus on freedom of access to information and freedom of expression generally. Those questions arise in Cuba but they arise in other places, too.” Tabb listed Turkey and Zimbabwe as two of these other places. This evasive logic posits that unless all violators of free speech are being censured, no one government or dictator should be criticized. But even if there are more than a few tyrannies that stifle intellectual and journalistic liberties, how does that excuse the most egregious offenders, such as Castro?”
Find a copy of the article here along with more information on The Friends of Cuban Libraries. Hypocrisy is everywhere, even in those we believe in.
~C

I’ve been rather consumed by chores in my house these recent weeks so I’ve kind a fallen behind on my blogging. October is here, it’s cold but we’re too stubborn to turn on the heat since Oklahoma is notorious for fall seasons that suffer from split personality disorder (45 degrees one day, 85 degrees the next). I have a whole list of things in my brain which I’ve been wanting to comment about. My greatest thanks to my brother, Mitch, who, with his emails, helps keep me updated on the current events in the world.
As a full time employee at the Bartlesville Public Library I am now required to complete the necessary certification classes to qualify me as a Librarian level I (I think). I’ve actually been really excited about this opportunity and two weeks ago I attended, along with two of my colleagues, my first certification course on collection development. I didn’t know very much about collection development before I went to this class, and I’m certainly no expert now but I do feel I have a better understanding about what goes on behind the scenes and in the tech services department of our library. Ever since I started my job at reference I’ve been going through all of our reference books, mainly just to get more familiar with the collection. I now, after taking this class, actually feel skilled enough to observe the collection more critically and weed through the material. Weeding isn’t difficult, it’s just scary. At least I find it scary, especially when it comes to reference books since they’re often very expensive and who wants to just through away books anyway. But this class has helped me feel a bit more responsible and a bit more confident and that, along with the support of my mentors, I finally feel like I’m finding my place in this world of libraries.
~C