I Read Marine Biology When I First Saw An Ad For The Summage Solution.  I Greatly Enjoy The Parasol

This is amazing!  I wonder what the rest of the concert was like.

The Nutcracker dance you’ve NEVER seen before!  

I’m trying to figure out the downside to encouraging “the inventor of both magic and science and keeper of all wisdom.”

Callout post for people who use the word ‘thot’

Folks, I need to warn you

I’ve been seeing a sudden surge of use of the word ‘thot’ and I’m concerned

We’ve recently seen at least one ancient Egyptian deity resurrected through meme magic

Thoth is a significantly more powerful member of the pantheon than Kek and the consequences of summoning him may be even more drastic than the rebirth of Kek (Brexit, Trump winning the election, a series of celebrity deaths)

The phrase ‘return the bones thot’ radiates an obvious mystical power and it may herald that Thoth will come to preside over 2017 as Kek has presided over 2016 - the bones possibly refer to the millions of mummified ibises buried in his honor at his main temple in Khmun, by reblogging that post you may be unknowingly beseeching this ancient and powerful being to repay the thousands of years of sacrifices humanity once offered him - what form that might take, we can only speculate

Although it’s possible that Thoth has been with us for a while - his name in Greek letters is Θώθ, which is clearly referenced in the ‘OwO what’s this?’ meme

As the inventor of both magic and science and keeper of all wisdom, Thoth assuredly does know what ‘this’ is, but I’m not sure we want to find out

I’m also concerned that Thoth’s wife Ma’at may be connected to the frequent seemingly compulsive and superfluous use of the word ‘mate’ or ‘m8′ in memes

Please be careful with your memes, they may hold hidden arcane power

Exactly!!  Take it from someone who is Queer and Old -- rainbow capitalism is definitely an improvement.  Could corporations do better?  Yes!  Should we keep pushing them to do better?  Absolutely!

However, it’s important to remember that rainbow capitalism means the corporations want (and think they can get) more money from the LGBTQIA+ community than from homophobes.  That’s definitely a step in the right direction.

i’d rather have rainbow capitalism then living in constant fear of discovery. the woman in the pride flag disney t-shirt might be missing the nuance, but at least i know i can be myself. a street full of rainbow flags makes me more comfortable holding a mans hand. look. corporations aren’t your friend. they will sell to whoever will buy. but kids seeing gay everything every year is only ever a good thing, and a massive improvement in history

I forgot to post again yesterday, so it's another two-for-one deal on National Poetry Month!  We're continuing our trend of dangerous womanhood with Lucille Clifton's won't you celebrate with me.

Part of shaping your own life is naming yourself.  There is power in a name, as Enby-Phoenix explains beautifully in Names.

Election day in the US is less than 2 months away.  If you are legally allowed to vote, start planning!  Make sure you are registered.  Look into whether you qualify for an absentee ballot, so you have more time to research the candidates and issues.  If you will need help turning in your ballot or getting to the polls, figure out what you need and who you can ask.

Even if you feel like none of the candidates are good, vote for the person who will do the least harm.  (Hint: it’s not a Republican.)

The system is rigged. The advantages for the wealthy are immediate and endless.

I kindof want to see all of these.  I’ve seen enough Shakespeare and adaptations of Shakespeare that they sound ridiculous but also like they could be really good if handled well.

Six Shakespeare adaptations

1. Titus and Ronicus. Somewhat like Titus Andronicus, but with the addition of Titus’s wisecracking brother, Ronicus Andronicus. Known for that one wild slapstick scene with the pie at the end.

2. The Complete The’s of Shakespeare. Consists of every ‘the’ that Shakespeare wrote, delivered in an appropriate manner for each instance. Has the advantage of being much easier for a million monkeys to type. Is therefore much kinder to monkeys than the alternative. Please consider the monkeys. 

3. Henry V in space. We begin the play awaiting the arrival of the French Ambassadors. They are coming from France, which is seven light-years away and several hundred metres under the newly-risen Atlantic. It may be a long wait.

4. A Twelfth Night’s Hamlet. In which Hamlet is shipwrecked on the way to England and has to dress up as a woman dressing up as a man to in order to evade detection whilst avenging his father’s murder, but comedy strikes when he vacillates a little too long in an oddly-mislocated enchanted forest. Everyone ends up both completely heterosexually married and also dead.

5. The Scottish Play, a theatre-safe version of Macbeth which avoids bad luck by never mentioning the title character’s name or indeed anyone else’s name either. Explores issues of identity and confusion. Usually there is at least one murder, but nobody is quite sure of who by who. In fact, because nobody is sure who is king, or indeed what the succession actually is, it naturally follows that the only way to ensure kingship is to kill everyone.

6. Juliet and Cressida. It may have been that Cressida found some way to take advantage of Shakespeare’s not-always-consistent time periods to perform an audacious act of time travel. We are still not entirely sure. In any case we tracked down Juliet and Cressida to ask them what the plot had been, since they were both notably still alive in the present day. But Juliet made a rude gesture at us and slammed the door. It may be that only the protagonists know the plot.

Another librarian who would love to see more people doing this! We have displays of shiny new books and movies, as well as some on various topics to tempt you. However, you can also go into the stacks and search for forgotten treasures! You could find books about salt or pockets or seahorses or doorways to other worlds or forbidden romance.

You can also try that book or movie or music CD that everyone is recommending but you don't think you'll enjoy! If you don't like it, bring it back and check out something else guilt-free -- it didn't cost anything, and it won't keep taking up space on your shelves.

unsung benefit i think a lot of ppl are sleeping on with using the public library is that i think its a great replacement for the dopamine hit some ppl get from online shopping. it kind of fills that niche of reserving something that you then get to anticipate the arrival of and enjoy when it arrives, but without like, the waste and the money.

This explains the situation of e-books in libraries much better than I did.  It’s incredibly frustrating for librarians, most of whom just want to connect people with books!

It’s been an increasing source of frustration for many library users: waiting weeks, sometimes months to get to the top of the waiting list for a popular eBook or e-Audiobook.

Why does it take so long? After all, it’s not a physical object, it’s a digital file that lives in the “cloud”, why can’t multiple people access it simultaneously instead of only one at a time? Barring that, why doesn’t the library just buy more copies so that the waiting list is shorter? Getting people access to books and information is what libraries are all about, but the struggle for acquiring lendable e-content is very real, and it’s getting harder all the time. Why? What’s the big hairy deal? For that answer, you have to look to the “Big 5” Publishers, who are responsible for close to 80% of trade book sales. 

Publishers have been extremely wary about allowing library users virtual access to their books. After all, digital copies of books never wear out or have to be replaced, and are more vulnerable to unauthorized copying (“pirating”). Publshers were afraid if they allowed libraries access to their books digitally, they would be losing money. Individual publishers came up with their own sets of rules for libraries to access their e-content, and they have been tweaked many times since 2006.

In addition, the prices libraries must pay for ebooks and e-audiobooks is very high. Libraries must pay up to 4X the retail price for digital versions of books (which only one user can have access to at a time).  Meeting the library patron’s needs for downloadable content is a very expensive enterprise, indeed! Take a look at this comparison of the prices for various versions of the same book:

It becomes easy to see that acquiring ebooks for public use is a very expensive endeavor…

Read more on The Cheshire Library Blog.

Canada geese are weird.  On the one hand, they’ll stand up to huge, scary animals.  On the other hand, I’ve seen a whole flock take off when a single small dog runs at them.

This is the Goose of Outrageous Self Assuredness.  Take from her example, her ludicrous and excellent poise in the face of bullying, and be confident in your place, your course, your equal validity.