The beauty of a Wednesday

Today, I did not make my bed.

I made myself a big breakfast of potatoes, eggs, and cheese with a glass of oj.

I did not get out of my pajamas until I went out to get the mail around 3 o'clock.

I spent a bit of time volunteering at the library.

And I watched a couple of episodes of NCIS, my recent time-waster.

It was glorious.

Dear Frankie

I've gotten a little behind on watching my Netflix dvds. Today, however, with no cleaning, laundry, or homework to do, I hunkered down on the sofa to watch a film: Dear Frankie. I was immediately drawn to it when I saw a preview on some dvd or other that I actually own, both because the story looked amazing and because Emily Mortimer is in it. She's one of my favorites (Lars and the Real Girl, anyone??).

The movie was great -- even better than I had anticipated it being, which is saying something. The story is fantastically moving, and I really got into the characters. Plus, the whole thing takes place in Scotland. That accent, I think, shall forever be a soft spot for me. I am definitely recommending this movie, which is uplifting in all the right ways.

I really can't think of when I enjoyed a drama this much.

Emily Post meets the internet

Everyone's always connected nowadays, it seems. Cell phone, Twitter, Facebook, Meebo, and all of that G3 whatnot. It also seems as though connectedness and social manners are inversely related; i.e., the more connected we are, the less polite we are in general. A travesty, indeed. What ever happened to consideration?

I was happy to read today that Wired magazine will be running a piece on etiquette in the digital world in their August issue. I hope people will read it and take heed. After all, if this is the direction in which communication is going, I sure hope we can be nice to one another down the line.

Here's a sampling:

Don't lie with your Facebook photo.

If you can't buy it online, feel free to BitTorrent.

Don't hesitate to haggle on Craigslist.

Don't Google-stalk before a first date.

Never broadcast your relationship status.

Texting in the company of others is OK.

Never BCC anyone.

If your call drops, call back.

Don't blog or tweet anything with more than half a million hits.

And the winner is...

I thought that, since I brought up the topic earlier this month, I would enlighten everyone as to the 2009 winners of the fifth annual Library Book Cart Drill Team Championship. Evidently the competition was a heated one. Congrats, Oak Park Public Library in Illinois!

Take a look at the Des Plaines Public Library's second-place routine. Ah, librarianship.

Words, Words, Words; Desolate, Desolate

Tonight in my library class we were talking about vocabularies. In the context of libraries, where information and document retrieval is a constant reality, that often means controlled vocabularies. You know how you'll look in a book's index for one word, and it turns out that concept is actually indexed under a synonym (i.e. "internet" instead of "World Wide Web")? That's a practical example of a controlled vocabulary, wherein a controlled set of words is used to represent information. That way, when you want to look something up, you don't have to spend half an hour reading about a, b, and c when all you really wanted to know was x. In the context of a library, it makes everyone's job easier.

But then we got to talking about whether it would be more efficient to just streamline everyday language as well; in other words, why don't we just get rid of all the fancy, longish words that "no one" knows and stick to the basics that everyone can understand?

Does anyone else have a problem with that???

I love words. I love them because they can sound beautiful in and of themselves (pastiche!). I love them because certain words trigger memories in my head. But I love them most of all because they help me to understand and communicate real things. I love words because they don't dumb down definition. They force you to truly comprehend, because each word has only certain meanings. With a real, non-controlled vocabulary, a person can express whatever he or she feels.

Without so many words, we wouldn't have the tools to express ourselves in any meaningful way. We wouldn't be able to know anything more complex than "the cat sat on the mat" (etc.). We wouldn't be able to think.

Words.

Vocabulary is such a human thing. Complex minds, complex language. Simple language... can't you see where that leaves us? Vocab is not elitest. It is not inefficient, because efficiency isn't determined by time alone. It is necessary.

Or else we shall all be in a desolate, desolate state. And we wouldn't even know how to express that.

Some Good News, and Some Bad News: The Good News

Harry Potter!

I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this morning, and despite my immensely excited anticipation, it did not let me down. Where comedy was possible, it was wonderfully funny. And where plot points necessitated certain events? Well, I cried just as much as I did reading the book for the first time.

Which is a funny story, actually. I have a history of my anxiousness getting the best of me, and such was the case when the sixth Harry Potter book came out. I had reserved a copy via Amazon.com, since my family and I would be in London at the time of the release, and I didn't want to risk Borders being sold out upon my return. It took seeing just one Underground train of Londoners reading their copies of the book to convince me to walk to Waterstone's and get a British copy of my own. During my family's afternoon rest/prepare for dinner time, I read it. And when a certain event occurred, I just started bawling. Loudly. Out of nowhere. My family, coming from the next room, asked what was wrong. Of course they hadn't read it yet, so I couldn't tell them. So there I am, crying on a hotel bed, unable to talk about it.

And I am not a pretty crier. I get all blotchy, and my voice all quivery. Luckily it's dark in movie theatres, and they frown upon talking.

But it was amazing. Go see it, immediately!!!

Some Good News, and Some Bad News: The Bad First

It seems there is a reason that no one has ever really instituted a formal Literary Quote Month: quoting something literary on a daily basis is darn difficult. Maybe it wouldn't be so hard for someone with a remarkable verbatim recall ability. But for an average reader like me, even if I'm particularly enthusiastic? It's difficult.

So the bad news is that I'm discontinuing Literary Quote Month. By all means, work literary quotes into your day-to-day conversations when appropriate and amusing. It's better then painstakingly trying to think of a suitable literary quote by the end of the day.