Friday, December 26, 2014

a Batman and Superman Story you won't see in the comics

BATMAN and SUPERMAN are outside  a HUGE COMPLEX OF EVIL about to do BATTLE with some VILLAIN

SUPERMAN: Wait, I think I have something in my eye.

BATMAN: What?

SUPERMAN: Something's in my eye, maybe an eyelash.

BATMAN: I didn't know you did that.

SUPERMAN: What? Lose eyelashes.

BATMAN: Yeah. That seems weird. I've seen you use a custom built laser to cut your hair. So I didn't think you just lost eyelashes.

SUPERMAN: Well, it happens.

BATMAN GROANS.

SUPERMAN: Can you see it?

BATMAN: The eyelash. No, I don't see it.

SUPERMAN: Did you look?

BATMAN: No. I didn't really look for an eyelash in your eye.

SUPERMAN: Can you, take a look?

BATMAN: Hrm. Can't you just use your heat vision to blast it out?

SUPERMAN: (irritated) Don't you think I've tried that? I once blasted out the side of a moon just trying to get one of these out.

BATMAN: (incredulously) A moon?

SUPERMAN: Yes. A damn moon. Near the planet Kryos 5. It freaked out the Kryotians and I had to rebuild it. BATMAN LOOKS SKEPTICAL. It threw off their tides and messed up their surfing.

BATMAN SMILES AS IF HE MIGHT LAUGH.

SUPERMAN: It really wasn't funny. I mean, it was, but it wasn't. So, can you look?

BATMAN: Okay, I'm looking.

SUPERMAN BENDS TO LET BATMAN LOOK AT HIS EYE

BATMAN: Yes, it's in there.

SUPERMAN: Yes, I know it's in there. I want you to get it out.

BATMAN: Look, I said it's in there. Why can't you get it out yourself?

SUPERMAN: I could if I had a little mirror or something. Do you have a cosmetics mirror in your utility belt I can use?

BATMAN: (thinks for a second) No. I don't keep a cosmetic mirror in my utility belt.

SUPERMAN: Maybe you should.

BATMAN: I never had a need for one before.

SUPERMAN: Well, we could use one now. 

BATMAN: I will add it to the list.

SUPERMAN: I bet you have shark repellent in there.

BATMAN: I don't keep shark repellent in my utility belt.

SUPERMAN: You know I have X-ray vision and I can see it. Fourth pouch. It says right on the label, "Bat Shark Repellent."

BATMAN: (touches his belt) Really? That's in there? Must be old.

SUPERMAN: And why Bat Shark Repellent? It's shark repellent, why do you need to add Bat to everything? Batmobile. Batplane. Where's your creativity? Are you trademarking these names so some other crime fighter doesn't dress up like a bat and copy your stuff?

BATMAN: (sarcastically) You telling me about names? Superdog. Supergirl. Everything you do needs to be Super.

SUPERMAN: You know that I didn't pick the name Superman, right? The Daily Planet named me that. You picked Batman yourself. (sarcastically) Look, there's a bat. I'm a man. I'll call myself Batman. If I allowed myself to curse, I'd say That's really fucking creative. But I don't use that kind of inappropriate language.

BATMAN: I don't see any moms around.

SUPERMAN: I'm just saying.

BATMAN: Yes, I know. You have a image. Red White and Blue. The All American Boy. Truth, Justice and the American Way. (irritatedly) All that patriotic shit.

SUPERMAN: Are you disrespecting the United States of America?

BATMAN: (realizing the conversation would be pointless) No. Of course not. It's just the blind obedience to God and Country. It's the jingoism I detest.

SUPERMAN: I, for one, believe a little obedience is a good thing.

BATMAN: RAISES HIS EYEBROWS AT SUPERMAN AS IF TO SAY, Duh: No comment.

SUPERMAN: Now can we stop (looks around) fucking around and get this fucking eyelash out of my eye. It's a Super eyelash and it's digging into my Super eyeball.

BATMAN: LAUGHS. Let me just get my glove off. (tugs off his glove) You know what would be great right now? Some Bat tweezers.

BATMAN LOOKS INTO SUPERMAN'S EYE TO LOCATE THE EYELASH

BATMAN: My face is really close to your face right now. You know you have the bluest eyes.

SUPERMAN SCOWLS.

BATMAN: I'm just saying. Now hold still. Got it.

SUPERMAN: Thanks. Took long enough.

BATMAN HOLDS THE EYELASH BETWEEN TWO FINGERS: Make a wish?

SUPERMAN: I wish this was a solo mission.

BATMAN: Ouch. (pulls glove back on his hand) You can be mean.

SUPERMAN: Sorry.

BATMAN: I was kidding.

SUPERMAN: Oh. It's that cowl. I can't tell when your joking if I don't see your face. So, no, I don't use my X-ray vision all the time. That would be creepy seeing everybody's bones all the time.

BATMAN THINKS ABOUT THAT FOR A SECOND.

BATMAN: Everything good?

SUPERMAN: I think so.

BATMAN: Good. Let's go kick some ass.




Batman and Superman are trademarks of somebody.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Award for Best Graphic Novel Collection in a Library. And the WINNER is....

So Thomas Maluck @LiberryTom says,
I keep seeing "Best Retailer" among comics awards. Its time for them to add "Best Library." Who agrees?

And I agreed.

Let me clarify. I hate awards. Because I don't think librarians should be awarded for doing our jobs. But as part of our communities, we should show some pride in the ways we manage and spend the money we are given. And if that means we need to stick a ribbon on our collection that tells everyone WE DONE GOOD, then maybe we should do it.

Clarification Expanded: I also hate extra work. I don't have time to READ graphic novels and EVALUATE content. So here is my PROPOSAL for an award for GRAPHIC NOVEL collections in libraries.

If this were my project and I wanted to get it started asap, I would limit to giving awards for graphic novel collections that include each of the titles from these lists:
YALSA Best Graphic Novels Top 10 Lists, 2007 to Current
and
the Wikipedia entry for List of award-winning graphic novels

Libraries could check their collections against the lists and get nominated if they think they have everything or most of everything or everything for given years. The actual award doesn't exist so I don't have the rules sorted out. Except for the one that says, if you had a book in your collection and it's now missing and it's currently out of print and can no longer be purchased: tough titty. If it doesn't show in your catalog as being part of your collection, you don't get credit for it.

The rules for the first awards should be kept simple. Until we get a committee, then YEE-HAW, the more rules the better!


Award Process (DRAFT)
  • Library collections are nominated through an online form.
  • Libraries may be nominated in multiple categories (when separate category awards become active).
  • Nominations are verified through online searches such as library catalogs for collections and library websites for programs. Media sites may be used to verify news stories.
  • Only print collections are accepted. Animation (video / DVD) could become a separate category.
  • All Titles must have an ISBN.
  • In event of a tie, libraries will be awarded based on annual purchasing budget sub-categories: under $10K, $10K-$50K, Over $50K.

There could be Future Categories, if someone WANTS EXTRA WORK. Wikipedia uses these nine categories that we could use to give awards for library collections:

A

    ► Adventure graphic novels‎

C

    ► Crime graphic novels‎

E

    ► Erotic graphic novels‎

   
F

    ► Fantasy graphic novels‎

H

    ► Horror graphic novels‎
    ► Humor graphic novels‎

   
N

    ► Non-fiction graphic novels‎

S

    ► Science fiction graphic novels‎
    ► Superhero graphic novels‎

Final Clarification. I would love to do this. And I could do it. But I can't imagine any library would accept an award from the.effing.librarian. So I don't know what to do with this DRAFT. Except post it and hope I can be involved in some way if-when it finally gets going. But I'll have to probably use my real name at some point. So promise you won't tell anyone it's me.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

the first library to partner with google will be the last library standing

A recent story had the mayor of Miami-Dade saying that his library system could be run with one librarian on Skype.

After you're done shouting, Fuck You, Motherfucker, at this shitbag asshole of a mayor, take a moment to acknowledge that he's probably right.

Many librarian skills have been devalued. Research has little value to people who have settled for being idiots. The number of people who claim Google can find anything they need, yet CAN'T USE GOOGLE, are growing exponentially. I have to stand next to an incredible number of assholes who use Google to get to: Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL... AOL is only 3 FUCKING LETTERS! So I stand there as they type G O O G L E and then press enter and then say, "Your Internet is down" with the same fucking authority I might imagine my doctor would use to tell me I have cancer. "I'm sorry. The test came back positive; your Internet is down."

And I need to pretend that this is a teaching moment and remind them that GOOGLE is nothing, but GOOGLE.COM is something. And then they say back, "Well, not on my computer at home. There must be something wrong with your computers."

And I don't say, "Using your logic, you should be able to leave this room, take a left, pull down your pants and take a shit because in your house there's a toilet there. But in the library, that's where the copier is. Have you been shitting on our copier?"

So traditional Reference is dying. People don't want correct answers, only fast ones. And librarians, due to, I don't know, caring or education or professional ethics, can't get their heads around just giving their patrons the fastest answer without it necessarily being the right one:
PATRON: Do you have books on how the building of the Panama Canal encouraged drug trafficking to the United States?
LIBRARIAN: Here! [Hands any random Panama book] And would you like to learn more about Discount Hotel Accommodations in Panama?
Thank you. That was my impression of a search engine.

Library research takes some time, several minutes usually, to locate the right answer to a question. But people have been conditioned to accept every answer from Google as the best answer. Why? Because the Google results often link to a pretty good answer and people have decided that a pretty good answer really fast is better than a really good answer not so fast, or ten minutes later. 

And,... I'm leaping way ahead here (because the adrenaline is burning off and I'm losing interest in the topic), this is why your governments, refer to Miami-Dade at the top of this post, do not want to fund libraries: BECAUSE LIBRARIES ARE HERE TO EDUCATE.

And it's pretty damn clear to anyone paying attention that politicians don't need their voters to be educated in order to get elected.

Now that my political announcement is out of the way, let me get back to whatever it was I was trying to say.

Reference librarians are finding is harder to do their jobs because of not only the historical reasons, people don't know what they do or are afraid to ask; but now people are just settling for some search engine to tell them what the the answer is.

So what the people seem to want is Google-fast with librarian-smart. So like the title of this post says, the first library to partner with google will be the last library standing. If you think a library should still employ librarians.

Libraries will forsake librarians. You will see fewer of us in the future. But there will still be library jobs, just $12-$15 an hour jobs like everywhere else. And the library CEO will make 10X more than that just like real business.

And the librarians who are left will probably be your "rock stars" because they've been climbing over the rest of us for the past 5 years trying to be the important ones, when, frankly, I couldn't name one useful thing any of them has done. Other than get the rest of us to follow them on Facebook.

So expect more mayors to question why we need librarians. Because educating the public, according to them, is the goal of the also underfunded public schools and the out-of-most-of-our-reach-without-borrowing expensive universities and NOT the role of the publicly-funded and therefore free-to-all public libraries. So fuck us for caring.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Fun with German Libraries, or You Can't Use the Spear of Destiny to Attach that Photo to Your Email

If you work in a public library, then you understand the agony of helping old people. Some of our elderly patrons will gleefully proclaim their ignorance of all modern technologies and smile as if this should make them appear cute and endearing. But it doesn't.

I've been using computers since around 1985 and I know people who started a few years before me. And AOL, your grandparents' Facebook, started in 1991. But I'll give these oldsters the benefit of the doubt and remind them that Google started in 1997, so that's 15 years they've had to get up to speed with computer technology.

So there's been more than enough time for them to learn something, anything, anything at all. But they haven't.

The old people who know about using computers probably never visit the library, spending all their free time, most probably, helping their computer illiterate neighbors get all their money back from that deposed Nigerian prince.

And this group of helpless mouse fumblers, virus spreaders, accidental rebooters and reckless spam clickers, is, according to Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation. Partly because they won World War II and defeated the Nazis.

So this is what I don't get: if our oldest Americans are so clueless about computers and digital technology and claim they can't learn to use any of it because it's new and strange and confusing, AND these are the Americans who beat Hitler's master race, then... wait for it... what the hell are the old people like in Germany?

Do German librarians work with even stupider people than we do? How did America beat the German Army or the Nazis? You know, the cool looking Germans who held their cigarettes upside down and wore monocles and polished their black leather boots until Colonel Hogan could read the latest secret codes in the reflection. One would think it's because we were better or smarter. Hell, we broke the Nazi code. Or maybe that was all just something that Hedy Lamarr did.

So this Greatest Generation can't figure out email, but they deciphered the Enigma machine. Where does that leave the German former soldiers, the defeated? Does this make them completey incompetent? Or something else entirely?

Based on what I learned from movies, I know Hitler was fascinated by the occult. Maybe German librarians face completely different problems from their aged veterans.

I can almost hear someone telling this to their confused patron and former Nazi: 
"Sie können keine anhängen foto mit the Spear of Destiny." Or, You cannot attach a photo with the Spear of Destiny.

Or worse yet, but would probably only happen once, "Ich kann nicht helfen, I can't help you to email the Ark of the Covenant because I will need to cover my eyes when you open it."