BibliophileBullpen

site to see • oh man this is like the coolest use of the internet EVER – the Oxford English Dictionary is sponsoring Save the Words, a website dedicated to keeping underused English language words in the dictionary. Folks can pick an endangered word and pledge to save it from extinction.

If you like that, Lifeacker has more : Best Online Language Tools for Word Nerds

This is like the forth time in 12 months, I have refunded an international order as lost only to have it returned to me months later as unclaimed. I am gonna start refusing international sales permanently, unless of course they are friends of mine. I have no idea how mail in other countries is delivered or not delivered. My mail is only held by the postal monkeys IF it is sent registered; for some reason anything I order from Asia comes registered, perhaps they are smarter than i am. But seriously folks this is getting expensive, why don’t ya’ll pick up your mail? if you order something from outside of the country, why not CHECK WITH YOUR EFFING POST OFFICE before you ask for a refund from the seller?

i have no idea what it is, well that’s not true..it’s heavier than a mouse, smaller than a raccoon, and isn’t hopping like a bat. in my building it’s probably a squirrel. they tend to come in through eaves and chimneys. I am trying to decide whether to ignore it or try to ‘rescue it’. if i go after it with a net…which i do have, what do i do with it afterward? there’s like a foot of snow out there. basically i am sitting here looking up at the ceiling and trying to tell the creature to go find another ceiling to play in.

usually i just stare at the ceiling and wonder how i can get people to books and book repair stuff and where would i get the money to pay for advertising if i COULD get people to buy stuff, and can i get the utility companies to take something in trade? Apparently you can’t get people to buy stuff by wishing really hard, believe me I have tried.

worth hearing • very rarely does news make me cry, it usually makes me angry; the kind of angry that causes me to shatter dishes against the wainscotting, but not usually weep over the general state of affairs. Brandeis University is liquidating the entire art collection from the Rose Museum. WHY? because Brandeis like all universities is hemorrhaging money and its endowments are worth about 9 dollars in S&H green stamps, all thanks to Bernie Madoff and a cast of thousands. Obviously I didn’t go to Brandeis and have never seen the Rose, however, mark my words….this is the first domino and soon enough every other institution worth its salt will be following suit. Art of all sorts that had once been available for public enjoyment will be hammered down to disappear into private collections most likely OUTSIDE of the country. It will take generations for our institutions to build up their public collections again.

dude, you SO have to check this out.

site worth seeing • Newseum.com has this map where you drag the cursor around and todays newspaper headlines pop up. Terrible shame that newspapers are on the decline, cause this rules.

obit of note • John Updike at rest

site to see • We Tweet, Therefore We Are, Library of Congress has started a Twitter Feed . . . so has the White House 2.0, for that matter so have I. But I have not found a serious use for it. Twitter with it’s limitations is ideally designed for hand held devices so yours truly hasn’t found a use for it….YET.

worth reading…well..maybe • i guess my weekend wasn’t a total loss, the local newspaper’s blog picked up my adventures in cat trapping. they used my pictures, i didn’t get an image credit . . story of my life.

I wish i was this creative, my creditors would really like it if I wrote a book that people would buy based on the title alone…..

Coming in April from Chronicle Books:

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

I spent the weekend trying to trap an elusive kitten…managed to catch one, and rescue another one from being trapped in a wall, but still there is another one out there. it’s very frustrating.

site worth seeing • Here’s something I thought was worth a giggle – over on WikiHow someone collected up a few ideas on how to …get this….‘Stop accumulating books’ and they said that like it’s a bad thing. If it wasn’t riddled with naiveté I would have ignored it; but it is seriously silly :“Generally, if you haven’t touched the book in the last 2 years, it’s probably time for it to go!” TWO years? I have books I have touched in 40 that I am not yet ready to part with. “You’ve bought another must-have book, and the last book, the one that was waiting for you on the coffee table, has silently migrated to your bookshelf, without ever getting read. You’re a book hoarder. ” ONLY TWO unread books deep and you are already labeled a book hoarder? What color is the sky where these people live? Who wants a library full of books you already read? Besides books just accumulate by themselves no assistance required. IMHO someone isn’t labeled a book hoarder until they are finally found dead beneath a toppled tower of books with at least three decades of dust ontop.

worth reading • from Gary Lutz: The Sentence Is A Lonely Place A Lecture Delivered By The Short-Story Writer Gary Lutz To The Students Of Columbia University’s Writing Program.

just in case we forgot • Taliban blows up closed girls schools

oh puhleese • John Foley, who teaches at Ridgefield High School in southern Washington, believes classics of American literature such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men should no longer be required reading for students.

I wish I was creative enough to make this kind of thing up. It’s kind of creatively insane. Yeah, lets pretend that we have always treated everyone equally all the time. There never was a time when one person was three fifths the value of someone else, there never was a time when merely being darker than a paper bag could get you jailed, lets just stop teaching our kids that it ever happened. wouldn’t it be a happier place? and we all want the world to be a happier place right?

Newsflash. Go outside and ask the 1st child you see if all men are created equal, any child, any age, any color. If they say no, I will eat my monitor. (I said created equally not treated equally) Children are the ones who think this already, it’s US who are the problem. The X and Y generation don’t have nearly as much racial prejudice as baby boomers, WHY? because we those books ARE PART OF THE FUCKING CURRICULUM, YOU DOPE!

Scuse me i have to go gnash my teeth.