Happy dance of new computer and many links

[daemonluna]

My new computer, it is waiting to be picked up! *happy dance* I'm minorly annoyed because I didn't get any notification from Purolator that it was there, and found out by checking my online order status. Also, the pick-up place is only open M-F, 10am-6pm. But realistically, I still have to spend a day or so sorting out and backing up everything on my current hard drive, and cleaning up my incredibly messy desk, etc.

That being said, I have the usual eclectic mess of recs and links:

Battlestar Galactica/[Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Stargate Atlantis, Sports Night, Alias], Domo Arigato "Look," Izzie said. "We're all really stressed right now. We all handle it different ways. Cristina moved in with Dr. Burke, I'm having sex with Alex, Meredith's having sex with... everyone... [...] Look, if George needs to think he's a robot, I think that's a perfectly valid choice." Izzie smiled at him. (Insanely, cracktastically brilliant!)

Barbie, Doll Parts Femmeslash, yay! "The thing about Barbie is that she's not as dumb as she looks."

SGA, Out of Bounds Fantastically cracktastic figure skating AU. (which mockingspike should read and tell us what he thinks, because that's the kind of t hing we make him do.)
Part one: 'Get back out there.' – 'No. I'm taking up hockey. It'll *hurt* less.'
Part two: 'So why do we have to skate in the nude again?'
Part three: Naturally, John had brought the boom box but had forgotten to bring any music.
Part four: Rodney wondered if John knew 'Mustang Sally' was a favorite with strippers the world over.
Part five: 'This is hero worship, isn't it?'
Part six: 'Me coach. You student. You keep forgetting that lately.'
Part seven: It was just hockey, not a cardinal sin.
Part eight: I'm sure when we were being chased by sabre-toothed tigers we did all kinds of neat tricks.
Part nine: 'You want to be alone?' Kim-the-unutterably-stupid asked.


SGA, The Illustrated Rodneysaurus I know I've linked to this before, but this one has pictures. Pictures!

SGA fanart, Steampunk Victorian London

Dan Brown, Cover Your Eyes: Gay Porn 'Da Vinci' Adaptation to Be Released Same Day as Ron Howard's 'Da Vinci Code' (reads premise) (dissolves into helpless giggles)

This one's also for mockingspike: Flashbacky Filky Things

The Calls of Cthulhu (looking at alessar...)
SOLICITOR: Hello, Mr. Cthulhu?
CTHULHU: Yes?
SOLICITOR: Do you have good car insurance?
CTHULHU: I am an Elder God of the Damned. I don't need that simplistic mode of transportation.
SOLICITOR: Well, I understand that you, as an elderly person, must pay a high premium.

And on a tangentially related note, Living dead take prize as oddest literary title The winner of the Bookseller magazine award for the year's oddest book title is the US volume, People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders - and What to Do About It, by Gary Leon Hill, which is said to have sold 15,000 copies.

To Cuddle a Mockingbird "A new survey for World Book Day [...] found that most readers would far rather read a novel that ends happily ever after. Pride and Prejudice was voted the happiest ending in literature, followed by To Kill a Mockingbird and Jane Eyre. In that spirit, therefore, I have begun rewriting great literature to bring it into line with popular sentiment"

An excerpr from Meg Cabot's new adult book, Queen of Babble.

From library activist Sandy Berman, Classism in the Stacks: Libraries and Poor People, and a very reasonable response, On Libraries and the Homeless.

Comments

[gloss]

Sandy Berman is my god. Or one of them, anyway.

Psst: cdntvonthedl might be just the place for TiW pimping.

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

Sandy Berman is pretty damn cool. He was one of my prof's favourite people when I took a course on intellectual freedom and social responsibility.

And cdntvonthedl looks like an awesome place to pimp TiW! (And Slings & Arrows, and Made in Canada, and...)

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

The best part about the InfoShop article is what Houston has done:

"In Houston, Texas, the City Council passed a series of new library regulations that prohibit "sleeping on tables, eating packaged food, using rest rooms for bathing, and 'offensive bodily hygiene that constitutes a nuisance to others.'" It also bans "large amounts of personal possessions."" (emphasis added)

(And I'm not surprised that the Houston City Council has such a poor grasp of grammar that they can consider banning "large amounts of personal possessions."

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

What to do about smelly people = recurring problem* for public libraries, unfortunately. (Which you may already know, I dunno.) But legislating against it is a bit much, especially when you consider the awesome job various places are doing. My local public library, for all its many failings, has a program with some of the shelters and hostels in the city. If you bring in a letter stating that you're staying there, you can borrow up to five books at a time with no membership fee or overdue fines. Which I think is pretty cool.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but aren't you from a progressive part of the world? Restrictive legislation almost never works, for whatever purpose it's being employed; proactive policy change does work. I keep wanting to tell people who complain about the homeless: it's very simple, if you don't want homeless people in your town/libraries/on your streets, then enact policies that make it very difficult for people to become homeless because you've made sure they have homes. This is obviously not directed solely at you but at the world in general, and is a gloss on why I got into policy studies in the first place.

That's my problem with the response you linked to: yeah, libraries and library patrons shouldn't be subjected to things which inhibit their library experience. On the other hand, people shouldn't be subjected to things which inhibit their humanity.

[daemonluna.livejournal.com]

(Wellll, that depends on how you define progressive. Reasonably large Canadian urban centre, yes, but in Alberta.)

But on a practical, day-to-day level, public libraries are always short on resources. And I don't think that said resources would be best used trying to duplicate the work the shelters and other organizations do. (Like installing showers.)

For sure though, providing free internet, access to newspapers, online resources, alternative media, adaptive technology, free workshops on job hunting and resumes, and staff members aware of community resources outside the library--everything from local women's shelters to scholarship programs. Most everything I've mentioned is well within the mandate of public library.

And the Sandy Berman article is very idealistic. It's an incredible balancing act to meet all the needs of most library's wide range of user populations, especially on a limited budget. (Teens, seniors, ESL, people with mobility issues, visually impaired, deaf or hearing disabilities, text illiteracy, computer illiteracy, and yes, the homeless population, to name a few.)

But I don't think libraries should be doing is specifically target "undesirables" with their policies, which is what Houston seems to be trying to do. Especially because it cuts off people with next to no resources. And I think it is a question of courtesy--ask someone to leave when they're actually being disruptive instead of making generalizations and setting up barriers to access.

[thelastgoodname.livejournal.com]

Right, that's the point: it's not the responsibility of libraries, any of this; libraries are supposed to be for everyone, and that's where they should direct their resources (like for access and books and classes and books and outreach and did I mention the books?). Issues like this are the responsibility of the policy makers who fund the libraries (and the people who live in civilized places). [Assuming public libraries, which this does. Private libraries are a different matter, and one that makes me a little leery.]

It looks like the article was reprinted in Street Spirit, too, which is a fairly opinionated publication. I tend to like seeing "the other side" represented in all its biased glory, since we have to read USA Today et al., so we already know about how undesirable undesirables are. I like hearing from the undesirables themselves.