The Invisible Library

Not content with moving Battlestar Galactica to Sunday Nights, SciFi has decided that what the world needs now is a reimagined Wizard of Oz:

The miniseries is a sometimes psychedelic, often twisted and always bizarre take on The Wizard of Oz. It centers on DG, a young woman plucked from her humdrum life and thrust into The Outer Zone (the O.Z.), a fantastical realm filled with wonder, but oppressed by dark magic. DG discovers her true identity, battles evil winged monkey-bats and attempts to fulfill her destiny. Her perilous journey begins on the fabled Old Road that leads to a wizard known as the Mystic Man. Along the way, she is joined by “Glitch,” an odd man missing half his brain; “Raw,” a quietly powerful wolverine-like creature longing for inner courage; and “Cain,” a heroic former policeman (known in the O.Z. as a “Tin Man”), who is seeking vengeance for his scarred heart. Ultimately, DG’s destiny leads her to a showdown with the wicked sorceress Azkadellia, whose ties to DG are closer than anyone could have imagined.

The first rule of reimagining a story is that the orignal needs to fall short of its potential. This can sometime be a hard thing to judge (I’m all in favor of a reimigined Star Trek, though I’m probably the only one) but messing with the Wizard of Oz is just asking for trouble. George Lucus re-imagining his own Star Wars movies type of trouble.

The Oz movie is a classic. It also happens to be one of the most tightly structured scripts around. The color transition, the pacing, the stylized acting all play into the fantasy of the concept. Plus and this is a biggie, the musical numbers help tell the story and move the plot forward in an economical way. Imagine each character having to monologue their missing-organ back stories. That would be the definition of tedious.

The new BSG works because the original series was, frankly, shallow and cliched. It has it’s diehard fans who don’t like the new show for going all dark and current and philosophical and real. Some people are happy with worn out cardboard and Star Wars rip offs. But the show simply didn’t live up to it’s potential. But That’s not the case here. If you have your doubts, rent Return to Oz sometime.

Librarians aren’t Sexy? Says who?:

A shake-up of Britain’s libraries has been called for by a senior spin-doctor - including a ban on the word “librarian”.

The Westminster council official said libraries should also spice up their reputation by using “good-looking” staff for press and marketing work and by stressing their range of “racy” titles.

The proposals were met with disgust by librarians, who dismissed the idea that they are not glamorous or exciting.

You know what’s not sexy? Pandering.

Look, we librarians are a damn sexy bunch, especially the up and coming generation of librarians. We’re tech savvy, in touch with the world both online and in real space, we know what’s going on, mostly because we came to this profession later, after getting out and doing other things. We aren’t your grandma’s librarians. We’re not spinsters or wilting violets. And yeah, if you want to look at the nudey books I’ll show you where they are and if you want to read banned books, I have some recommendations  in that department, too.

All this does is lower the standards of how we do our job. if we have to start altering procedures to whatever is popular this week, we’ll never get any actual work done because we’re worrying about our image. How about you just let us brainy, sexy librarians get back to work. We might suprise you.

Seems the cop that tasered the kid at the UCLA library has a bit of history:

The UCLA police officer videotaped last week using a Taser gun on a student also shot a homeless man at a campus study hall room three years ago and was earlier recommended for dismissal in connection with an alleged assault on fraternity row, authorities said.

UCLA police confirmed late Monday that the officer who fired the Taser gun was Terrence Duren, who has served in the university’s Police Department for 18 years.

We’re off to visit the folks so the blog is on vacation until next week. Enjoy your turkey coma, everyone!

Theft of library materials is an unfortunate but common problem. It’s just the reality of the world I which we live in, that books that contain certain knowledge that is considered by society at large to be embarrassing or controversial will disappear from a library shelf for a verity of reasons.

Maybe you’re too embarrassed to be seen checking out a book of photos by Mapplethorpe of big black cocks. So you take an exacto knife and slice out a dozen or so of your favorite photos, set the book back on the cart to be reshelved and walk out with your head hung low.

Perhaps you don’t think that a library should have that book by Jock Sturges or Richard Dawkins. So you steal it. That way, no one will be able to check it out. As if that will make Jock Sturges or Richard Dawkins go away, stop taking naked pictures of preteens or writing about evolution.

A common practice among some church groups is for their members to go to the public library, check out all the books on witchcraft and paganism. They keep them the full amount of time possible, renewing them as often as they can and returning them, only to have another member of their Bible study group check it out five minutes later. That way, no impressionable teenager will be able to read that particular book and learn anything but what they hear in Sunday school or in their home school class.

It doesn’t work of course. Libraries will eventually replace those books. They will get in the hands of those who are curious and want to read them and appreciate them. So, stop steeling our fucking books, umkay? Or else a gang of pissed off librarians will come for you.

Senator Headuphisass thinks that reinstating the draft will stop the Republicans from waging any more illegal wars. That’s a hell of a fucking gamble with other people’s lives, I must say. This is all based on the preposterous assumption that the rich and powerful won’t find a way to get their kids out of the draft. We’re talking about an administration filled with people form the top down who did just that to avoid service in Vietnam.

We instate a draft, Jenna and Babs will be not showing up for duty at the Texas Air National Guard, just like daddy. Joining the army isn’t the way to end the war. You do that by stopping the fighting. By bringing the troops home.

Anyone who thinks that reinstating the draft will take the wind out of the Neocons’ sails is smoking crack. They haven’t let reality stop them yet, what makes you think they’re going to start with a draft? All that will do is give them the extra bodies to throw around without care that they’ve been wanting for the last year.

Ursela K. Le Guin really likes libraries:

[…] I feel above all that I’m here as a proxy, a stand-in, for Literature. Literature is too busy to come collect her prize, and she’s too big to get into the building, even this building which was built for her. Literature is huge — they can’t fit her even into the Library of Congress, because she keeps not talking English. She is very big, very polyglot, very old, even older than I am by about 3000 years, and she weighs a lot. When we come to judge civilisations we see how heavy Literature weighs in the balance. Whole peoples are dismissed as ’savage’ or ‘primitive’, meaning they didn’t write things down, while others are seen as supreme because they left a literature. Take the Ancient Greeks. If it weren’t for Homer and Sophocles and Thucycides, all we’d know of them is that they were awfully good with marble. We wouldn’t know that they invented tragedy and democracy. We might not even know that democracy had been invented.
There have been governments that celebrated literature, but most governments dislike it, justly suspecting that all their power and glory will soon be forgotten unless some wretched, powerless liberal in the basement is writing it down. Of course they do their best to police the basement, but it’s hard, because Government and Literature, even when they share a palace, exist on different moral planes. Each is the ghost in the other’s bedroom. A government can silence writers easily, yet Literature always escapes its control. Literature cannot control a government; poets, as poets, do not legislate. What they can do is set minds free of the control of any tyrant or demagogue and his lies and disinformation.

Librarians like her, too. And librarians, for that matter. Alas, our library has none of her books. I’ll have to work on that…

link via Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny revolution.

Ever wonder what it’d be like if Stan Lee and Jack Chick had collaborated on a tract? Wonder no more!

Just in case you needed more proof that the Patriot Act was a bad idea:

UCPD officers shot a student several times with a Taser inside the [UCLA] Powell Library CLICC computer lab late Tuesday night before taking him into custody.

No university police officers were available to comment further about the incident as of 3 a.m. Wednesday, and no Community Service Officers who were on duty at the time could be reached.

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately. 

Eyewitness reports claim that the officers continued to use the Taser on him after he was handcuffed and subdued and that they threatened bystanders who were looking a little too concerned. But hay, I’m sure he was really a terrorist, not just a swarthy student.

This madness has got to stop and unfortunately, I have serious doubts as to weather the new Democrat-controlled Congress will have the balls to challenge the constitutionality of the patriot Act. Which means we librarians are going to have to find ever-elaborate ways to protect our patrons (and ourselves) from the more inane and despicable aspects of this fruitless law.
Hat tip to Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Making Light.

Wil Weaton answers some of the age old Questions regarding Star Wars:

After about eleven hours of Star Wars movies, though, I wondered: why exactly is the Star Wars trilogy such a big deal to some of us, even though it’s clearly flawed, and ends with a bunch of muppets singing around the campfire? Why do so many of us love it so much? Why did so many of us take it as a personal affront when the new movies and re-releases didn’t meet our expectations? Why did most of us go back twice after Phantom Menace, like we were in a dysfunctional relationship, hoping that if we just worked a little harder, we’d find a pony?

I’ll just add that his criticism is spot on and even though he later recants his criticism of Hayden Christianson’s acting ability (Mr. Weaton is an actor after all, gotta keep it in the family) I will not. He sucks the life out of scenes faster than a Wookie with Bronchitis.

And this marks the last post ever about Star Wars. I’m over it. I have my original theatrical version DVDs and as far as I’m concerned that’s all there is. Han will always shoot first and there is no such person as Jar jar Binks, do you hear?

Besides, we have batter, faster, stronger Sci-fi now and it’s named Battlestar Galactica.