Perhaps after seeing Eternal Egypt in BC, one’s appetite would be whetted for more at The British Museum (which I hadn’t previously noticed is the home of the Eternal Egypt artifacts).

Clarence Thomas, a swing vote? I have to go lie down now.

I now have a gmail account, and have been given one invitation to issue. To preserve domestic harmony, I issued it to the other person living at my house, but I’m hopeful I will get more soon. If you want one, and I know you, drop me a line and I’ll queue you up in some arbitrary order. Ah, the power.

After reading Ursula’s post about the dispatches from the library, I decided to add another data point to the dispatch on summer movies, from my own workplace (but researched from home, on my day off):

A Slipping-Down Life by Anne Tyler
1 checked out, 3 pending reservations
movie tie-in edition: 20 being ordered, 2 pending reservations
large print: 1 checked out
on tape: 2 checked out

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (English) by J. K. Rowling
260 reservable copies (not counting the missing ones)
7 pending reservations
on tape: 53 reservable copies, 40 pending reservations
large print: 8 reservable copies, 1 pending reservation
on cd: 32 reservable copies, 139 pending reservations
in Chinese: 1 reservable copy, 5 pending reservations
Japanese, 2 copies, one checked out
Korean: 4 copies (2 each of 2 volumes, half checked out)
Spanish: 14 copies, catalog spazzed out and wouldn’t list how many checked out
Ukrainian: 1 copy, catalog still spazzed out
Russian: 1 copy, 1 reservation, catalog in death throes

At this point I start yearning for our new catalog, rumored to be coming this fall, and realize that this is going to take a lot of time to get all the numbers only to make a veiled snotty comment about the sorts of readers you get in a state with the lowest school and library funding in the first world (ok, perhaps an exaggeration) or maybe a joke about how us northern yokels are more impressed by books that they made a movie out of. Upshot: that new Nicholas Sparks movie put another nightmarishly long waiting list on that book of his, again, and the people who want to read it because of the movie don’t always have that kind of patience.

Librarians in movies that I like: It’s a Wonderful Life, mostly because of the funny comments made by Merrill Markoe in an essay on being single about how in this dystopian alternate universe, the wife seems to be getting on just fine, with a job at the library and a snappy suit, but that angel guy seems horrified that she’s (gasp) closing up the library! Which I do once a week, or more on the weekends that I work.
The Desk Set, and not just cause Katherine Hepburn is cool, but it’s librarians kicking ass with computers, and that co-worker of hers, who seems just a little too defensive about having a cat and no boyfriend. She seems to feel the need to reiterate that she likes guys, really she does. The difference today is that we don’t have to wear skirts or be quite so closeted.
Party Girl: because a trained monkey could learn the Dewey Decimal system, but only a librarian could teach information literacy in fabulous shoes and create a usable filing system for a DJ.

Found in the recycle bin: an announcement for a series of classes on “Contemplative Clowning: Buddhist-Inspired Performance”- the teacher is a “contemplative clown and new vaudevillian” and “her performances evoke life’s bitter-sweet adventures.” Ugh. Is that like those paintings of crying clowns?

They’re not closing up shop or anything, but AT&T’s announcement that they’re no longer going to compete for customers in seven states (including Washington) is also an announcement that you can get local and/or long distance cheaper elsewhere, usually from the folks who own the wire running to your house.

While I love getting traffic, I don’t think I want the kind of traffic we’d get if I were to name the product, its best-known male counterpart, or the conditions they respectively treat. I must, nevertheless, link to this press release announcing the completion of Phase II trials for a promising product, just because of this phrase: "The primary data (frequency of satisfying sexual events)".

I try to avoid linking to New York Times articles, because I disapprove of compulsory bullshit "registration", but I found this article about the pitfalls of happiness too apt and interesting to skip. Turns out being happy makes people assholes.

Every so often, something from The Grauniad will hit Blogdex, and many times (as in this case), it’s something by Python Alumnus Terry Jones. Since he’s a bright, funny guy, they’re entertaining and insightful, though he’s clearly put out by the present unpleasantness.

I could not with a clear conscience suggest that I believe prayer, qua prayer, is likely to be an effective tool in ridding the country of the current plague of plutocrats disguising themselves as theocrats and implementing a disastrous foreign policy; but this essay nevertheless reminds us of a number of chilling facts.