Real Life Twitter

From CollegeHumor:

"Did you miss me?" Ned asked with a grin as he helped me out of my hybrid car.

--first sentence of a 2008 Nancy Drew novel, Pageant Perfect Crime. It amuses me that the car has changed but the boy has not: still "Ned," still grinning, still helping Nancy out of cars.

ToneMatrix

Andre Michelle's ToneMatrix is mesmerizing. I think it might have healing properties.

See also (previously blogged here): play virtual Harry Partch instruments online

Call for Participation: "None of the Above" at MCBA

Via Crg Hill's poetry scorecard:


NONE OF THE ABOVE:
Assembling, Collaborating and Publishing in the Eternal Network


In an ambitious assembling-style project, Minnesota Center for Book
Arts invites any and all to send 125 copies of anything (within reason
– see below) that will fit into a 9” x 12” envelope. This project is
in conjunction with MCBA’s upcoming exhibition None of the Above:
Assembling, Collaborating and Publishing in the Eternal Network.

An assembling project represents the ultimate in democratic art.
Everything submitted will be included in the publication (or series of
publications, depending on how many people participate). In return for
your efforts, you receive a selection of 89 different works created by
others who participate.

Who’s invited? Artists, writers, printmakers, zinesters, poets,
photographers, xerographers, pamphleteers, cartoonists, diagrammers,
visualists, mail-artists, transitionalists, minimalists, maximalists,
pencilers, stencilers, composers, medics, bookleteers, decoders,
conceptualists, transcribers, documentarians, historians,
storytellers, manifestoans, CDsters, designers, anti-artists,
ventriloquists (make the paper sing!), book artists, book artists who
are ventriloquists, whoever so chooses and those chosen – meaning you!
Plus, you can exercise reckless editorial control or lack thereof by
forwarding this invitation to others.

What to send? Any means of expression is fine (paper, CDs, stickers,
popsicle sticks) but it can be no larger than 8.5” x 11” (21.6 cm x
27.9 cm) and 1/8” thick (.3 cm). It can be folded, stitched, crushed,
flattened, etc. Shrunk-via-shrink-ray submissions are okay. If you
need a theme, submissions will be compiled in publications titled
“None of the Above.” How’s that for clear direction?

How many to send? Submit 125 copies. 89 of these will go to other
participants. Additional copies will be archived, distributed to
donors/volunteers, and a small number will be sold as a fundraiser for
MCBA.

What else to send? So that we can send you your copy of the
publication, include a sheet of paper with your name and postal
address. Also include $5 in U.S. funds – checks payable to Minnesota
Center for Book Arts – to cover the cost of envelopes and postage.

Where to send: None of the Above, c/o Minnesota Center for Book Arts,
1011 Washington Ave South, Suite 100, Minneapolis, MN 55415

Deadlines: If we receive submissions by August 21, 2009, they will be
displayed as part of the associated exhibition. To be included in the
publication, submissions must be received no later than October 24,
2009.

A special collating event will occur at MCBA on Saturday, October 24,
2009. For those who would like to participate, you may bring your 125
copies that evening rather than mailing. There is no fee. Please email
Jeff Rathermel, MCBA’s Artistic Director (jrathermel@mnbookarts.org)
by October 16, 2009 if you will be participating. Arrive at 7 pm,
assembly lines commence at 7:30 pm.

If you have questions about the publication, contact Jeff Rathermel at jrathermel@mnbookarts.org
To learn more about Minnesota Center for Book Arts, visit www.mnbookarts.org.

Short, smart PSA from the government of South Australia encouraging flu shots (below or click to watch):

Dorothea Lasky is as fond of the idea of "projects" in poetry as I am. I disagree with her about "community," though.

--

A new collection of previously unpublished essays by Mark Twain, Who Is Mark Twain?, is available free from DailyLit in 55 email or RSS installments. Here's a taste:

Whenever I Am about to Publish a Book

Whenever I am about to publish a book, I feel an impatient desire to know what kind of a book it is. Of course I can find this out only by waiting until the critics shall have printed their reviews. I do know, beforehand, what the verdict of the general public will be, because I have a sure and simple method of ascertaining that. Which is this—if you care to know. I always read the manuscript to a private group of friends, composed as follows:

1. Man and woman with no sense of humor.

2. Man and woman with medium sense of humor.

3. Man and woman with prodigious sense of humor.

4. An intensely practical person.

5. A sentimental person.

6. Person who must have a moral in, and a purpose.

7. Hypercritical person—natural flaw-picker and fault-finder.

8. Enthusiast—person who enjoys anything and everything, almost.

9. Person who watches the others, and applauds or condemns with the majority.

10. Half a dozen bright young girls and boys, unclassified.

11. Person who relishes slang and familiar flippancy.

12. Person who detests them.

13. Person of evenly-balanced judicial mind.

14. Man who always goes to sleep.

These people accurately represent the general public. Their verdict is the sure forecast of the verdict of the general public. There is not a person among them whose opinion is not valuable to me; but the man whom I most depend upon—the man whom I watch with the deepest solicitude—the man who does most toward deciding me as to whether I shall publish the book or burn it, is the man who always goes to sleep. If he drops off within fifteen minutes, I burn the book; if he keeps awake three-quarters of an hour, I publish—and I publish with the greatest confidence, too. For the intent of my works is to entertain; and by making this man comfortable on a sofa and timing him, I can tell within a shade or two what degree of success I am going to achieve. His verdict has burned several books for me—five, to be accurate.

A Gaythering Storm, a funnyordie.com parody of Nation for Marriage's Gathering Storm. No one can screw up her face (in a good way) like Alicia Silverstone. I've missed her.


[or click to watch]

UPDATE: see also Reddit's edited version of NOM's PSA. And today's Shelf Check.

--



I really like this 4/19 Nancy strip [click to enlarge], not so much for its subject (which is how I stumbled across it), but for the way Nancy is portrayed speeding up across the panels--the increased swing of her arms, her face and legs in the penultimate panel as the thought of reading "the latest graphic novels free" spurs her into a full-bore trot. I love the excitement there.

--

Jodi Picoult is extremely popular in our library. I enjoyed this "Digested Read" of her current book...

Not "Waiting" But "Drowning"

On 9/17/07, the Virginia Quarterly Review blog ran a list of the most frequently-occurring titles of submissions they'd received in the past year (I blogged the list here). Yesterday, they released an update.

Here are the 10 most common titles of submissions they’ve received in the past two years:

Untitled
Aubade
Gravity
Prayer
Homecoming
Night
Drowning
Home
Sonnet
Sleep

As VQR blogger Waldo Jaquith notes, there is no overlap from 2006-2007's 10 most common titles (though I have to admit, when I first read the new list, it sounded awfully similar. Heck, it still does!):

Remember
Smoke
Revelation
Work
Grace
Waiting
Insomnia
Voyeur
Butterfly
Reunion

From "Insomnia" to "Sleep" (How many submissions were titled "Ambien"?) ! From "Work" to "Home" (reflection of unemployment rate?)! From "Butterfly" to "Untitled" (hard to say which is worse)! From "Voyeur" to "Aubade" (did someone open the window and let him/her in?)!

I love VQR for posting stuff like this.

Via Helene Blowers:

Does anyone else find it disturbing that Webster's definition of library contains a link to "morgue"? link

[cross-posted from LISNews]:

Ouch. In the May 2009 issue of Body + Soul magazine--"A Martha Stewart Publication"--"renting a book" via BookSwim is #1 on a list of "6 Simple Ways to Better Your Life and the Planet."

The magazine copy reads [bold mine], "Looking for a good read? Try renting books Netflix-style with bookswim.com. It's easier than going to the library and greener than buying from the store."

In memoriam: Janet Armstrong, 1976-2009

Traveler, adventurer, friend.
Janet died this morning of ovarian cancer.

Easter AIG Hunt

Via Urban Prankster: "The latest stencil from street artist Above has been released just in time for both Easter and the collapse of the world economy."

From "Made in U.S.A," an article by Patricia Marx in the 03/16/09 New Yorker:

"Do you remember when foreign stuff was still exotic? It used to be exciting to buy things that weren't made in America--Pier 1 Imports was like Shangri-La."

Obama Knows Storytime

Here's President Obama reading Where the Wild Things Are to kids at the Easter Egg Roll this past Monday--standing up, moving around, engaging the kids with questions about the text, and generally performing like he's had early-literacy-focused storytime training (or just has common sense when it comes to reading to kids). His "wild rumpus" sound effects are a little tame--more of a cute rumpus:

The issue with #AmazonFail isn't that a French Employee pressed the wrong button or could affect the system by changing "false" to "true" in filtering certain "adult" classified items, it's that Amazon's system has assumptions such as: sexual orientation is part of "adult". And "gay" is part of "adult." In other words, #AmazonFail is about the subconscious assumptions of people built into algorithms and classification that contain discriminatory ideas.

--Why Amazon Didn't Just Have a Glitch at The Washington Post

Pat Riot's "Toops!"

Artist Pat Riot "re-faces" baseball cards (gallery):

Try it. Do a search on "homosexuality" at amazon.com. First result: A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Also in the top five: You Don't Have To Be Gay and Can Homosexuality Be Healed?

Booksquare's Open Letter to Amazon Regarding Recent Policy Changes notes that many books lost their sales rankings and ease of searchability over the past two days. After noticing that hundreds of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their search rankings on Saturday--including his own book--Mark Probst thought, "What’s going on? Does Amazon have some sort of campaign to suppress the visibility of gay books? Is it just a major glitch in the system?" In his post Amazon Follies, he continues,"Many [GLBT writers] decided to write to Amazon questioning why our rankings had disappeared. Most received evasive replies from customer service reps not versed in what was happening. As I am a publisher and have an Amazon Advantage account through which I supply Amazon with my books, I had a special way to contact them. 24 hours later I had a response:

"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D

Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage"

Not only GLBTQ books have been affected--a search for Lady Chatterley's Lover now yields the question "Did you mean Lady Chatterley's Cover?" and you need to slog through many results in order to get to the desired book. (Note: this occurs when you search in all categories; searching only in "books" brings the book right up--missing its sales rank). That's right: Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Tropic of Cancer has retained its sales rank. Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina has not. There doesn't seem to be much method in this madness. A search in "All Departments" on "lesbians" brings up, as a first result, an "adult" movie called Girls Playing With Girls with a sales rank of 12,199, followed by three other porny-looking videos of the "really for straight men, not for lesbians" variety.

It doesn't look like any major media outlets have picked up the story yet--maybe because they're as baffled as I am in trying to figure out how Amazon chose to censor what it chose to censor--but #Amazonfail is the #1 trending topic on Twitter. Whoops, take that back--I just saw a link on Twitter to the LA Times's Amazon De-ranks So-called Adult Books, Including National Book Award Winner. There's also a bit more data about which titles have been banned at LISNews.

For the record, there are already plenty of good reasons not to shop at Amazon--or to link to a book's Amazon listing, when you mention the book on your blog.

UPDATE: 9:04 PM--Amazon has released a statement claiming this was "all a glitch"--here's why it wasn't.

Also, an article about #Amazonfail at Foreign Policy: #Amazonfail and the politics of anti-corporate cyberactivism

And, via @wilw, the phone numbers for Amazon's board of directors--as he puts it, "just in case!":

Thomas O. Ryder (914) 244-5782
William Gordon (650) 233-2750
Myrtle Potter (650) 225-1000
Alain Monie (206) 266-1000
L. John Doerr (650) 233-2750
Tom Alberg (206) 674-3000
Patricia Stonesifer (206) 709-3140

Happy Easter

(song by King Missile, compilation by Rich McNinch)

Just what I want nestled between the bunny and the Peeps--


(via Neatorama)


--and speaking of Peeps, this weekend seems like a good time to revisit Peep Research--a study on peeps' library use from Staley Library (don't miss the captions)

Everyone Poops--The Film Adaptation

Landline TV was inspired by the release of the trailer for Spike Jonze's adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are.

Really, is there any doubt left that we're related to these guys?

MIT, Penn, and Yale Get Rid of Paper Rejection Letters

Poetry journals to follow suit? Death to the SASE!

Dignity Wow! etc.

*via Resource Shelf, a neat tool to find local libraries via text message:

"Send a message containing the word library and a Zip Code to 41411 and in a few seconds a text message is returned with local public library directory info. This service uses the National Center for Education Statistics Library Search Database.

SMS Syntax:
1) Text the Word “Library” and a Zip Code to 41411
2) Example: “Library 60091″ pulls up the Wilmette Public Library in suburban Chicago."


*Cross-post from Shelf Check:

"That’s a really good question, but I don’t know. Someone should pick that up as a thesis at Hampshire College."

—Amy Poehler, on why there haven't been more openly gay cast members on Saturday Night Live. (There has only been one: Terry Sweeney. He lasted just one season, 1985-86.)

Heh, heh.
[via Queerty]

National Poetry Map

Click state, find "local poets, poems, events, literary journals, writing programs, poetry organizations, and more."

From Sweet Juniper's Collection of Terrifying Nixon-Era Children's Books come these images from the story of Eric; his pet bird, Snow; and Eric's grandfather [no title available]:

LGBTQ Libraryfolk: Call for Submissions

From Library Juice: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for LGBTQ Librarians (a working title), edited by Tracy Nectoux and published by Library Juice Press as part of the series Gender and Sexuality in Librarianship.

Seeking submissions for an anthology of personal accounts by librarians and library workers relating experiences of being gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or queer at work. This volume seeks to represent a broad spectrum of orientations and gender identities, highlighting a range of experiences of being and/or coming out at work. Also welcome are critical and historical perspectives on the challenges of navigating gender and sexuality in the library workplace.

Objective of Book

Librarians and library workers are in a singular position to discuss the difficulty—even today, even in libraries—of choosing to be out at work. Our situations are unique. We are educators, leaders, and often advocates of some of our most vulnerable citizens: LGBTQ youth. We face two enormous, yet conflicting consequences when we decide to come out: the risk of jeopardizing our own professional security while simultaneously presenting ourselves as allies to LGBTQ patrons. The discussions in this volume will be an uncommon and valuable addition to the literature of gender and sexuality in the workplace, a topic that has been little examined in library literature.

Suggested Topics:

* Personal narratives of coming and being out in the library workplace
* Personal, historical, and critical approaches to hostile environments and/or colleagues
* Accounts of supportive environments and/or colleagues
* Narratives of workplace discrimination struggles
* Narratives of coming out in rural and urban contexts
* The challenges of coming and being out in historical perspective
* When and why library workers stay closeted
* Other critical, historical, and personal perspectives related to being out in the library

Target Audience:

LGBTQ librarians, library workers, and library school students, as well as library administrators who might find such a volume helpful in creating an inclusive, diverse, and safe workplace for both employees and patrons who are sexual minorities.

Submission Guidelines:

We welcome and encourage submissions from a broad spectrum of librarians and library workers and seek to be inclusive of all ages, library types (public, academic, or private libraries), geographies (rural, urban, international), and sexual orientations and gender identities (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, transsexual, gender-queer, questioning, etc.). A range of submissions are welcome, including essays, poetry, and visual art.

Anonymous submissions will be accepted from librarians and library workers who are not out.

Deadline for summaries: May 31, 2009

Submit a brief summary (3 paragraphs maximum) and a short author’s statement or URLs where appropriate. Electronic submissions only to tnectoux@illinois.edu.

Deadline for manuscripts: December 31, 2009

One electronic copy. Black-and-white artwork may be submitted in hard copy; author responsible for securing image copyright permissions. Text may range from 100 to 5,000 words.

Contact:
Tracy Nectoux
Cataloger, Illinois Newspaper Project
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
tnectoux@illinois.edu
217-244-2498
Cell: 217-766-7984

"my inane envelopes"

I'm just tucking into Denise Duhamel's KA-CHING!, which my public library system miraculously decided to purchase, and already I want to quote Duhamel's "eBay sonnets":


Pity my rough drafts, my false starts, my trade-
mark pink SASEs I was sure would catch
a big editor's attention. But batch
after batch of my poems came back with staid
"no thanks" notes in my inane envelopes.
I worked in a rare bookstore in Cambridge,
selling first editions and unabridged
collections of Alexander Pope,
which made me think longevity was creepy—
some poets relegated to bargain bins
while other poets were like mannequins,
modeling their in-vogue verse obliquely
from their famous graves. I was twenty-one.
I worshipped every poet's skeleton.


Mannequins! You can read eBay sonnets in full at Verse Daily.

On Twitter:

elloyd74: Boy: "I need a book on myth." Me: "Greek myths?" Boy: "I didn't know there were different kinds." Turns out he'd said meth.

itsjustkate: @elloyd74 That Greek meth is hardcore. They cut it with feta.

--

Tattoo envy: Jill Alexander Essbaum's poetic feet:

From Kent Rogowski's "Love=Love":






Although puzzle pieces are unique and can only fit into one place within a puzzle, they are interchangeable within a brand...

*Addict-o-matic (tagline: "inhale the web") is an impressive new-to-me tool for creating a quick snapshot of what's currently being said/posted online about a given topic. Enter your search term and see results from YouTube, Digg, Twitter, Technorati, Flickr, Delicious, and many others, all on one page. (via Phil Bradley)


*via folderol, a clean and simple "Economy Tracker" map from CNN--mouse over a state to see its current unemployment rate


*via Julie Dill (at someecards):




*via JB (from pictures for sad children):




*via Jessy Randall, a new favorite poem--David Mason's "Song of the Powers"

La Revolution Des Crabes

A 2003 short by Arthur de Pins:

Diet Coke with Lime: "Guess What It Tastes Like"

Hmm. It looks like one now needs a password to access poems archived in Three Candles. Bummer, as one of the points (for me) in publishing online is in having stuff accessible to a wider audience than might purchase a print journal. I'm re-posting one of the three I published there here, for the fabulous Jessy Randall. It was written around the time Diet Coke with Lime came out.


Diet Coke with Lime: "Guess What it Tastes Like"

I guess it tastes like petals on a wet, black bough
I guess it tastes like the farmer's daughter
just after she's milked the cow
I guess it tastes like whatever she'll allow

I guess it tastes like the uncut hair of graves
I guess it tastes like getting your test back
and learning you don't have AIDS
I guess it tastes like the mome raths as they outgrabe

I guess it tastes like blackberry, blackberry, blackberry
I guess it tastes like riding back and forth
all night on the ferry
I guess it tastes like Diet Coke with Cherry

I guess it tastes like world enough and time
I guess it tastes like the night
of cloudless climes
I guess it tastes like nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless