some fridays are worth the wait

I spent thursday churning out a large order for a special customer...well technically it took all week and as profitable as it was - it's all spent every penny on frivolous things like insurance and utilities. But after I had washed my hands of the entire thing and before I wrote the 1st check, I celebrated with a trip to McIntyre and Moore in Cambridge. Granted the shop has changed locations more times than Nathan Detroit's crap game, and has even changed hands...for me there is ALWAYS something to buy. ' I wasn't looking for anything to resell just books for myself and I kinda had to stop after an hour or so, because the longer I looked, the taller my pile became. (M&M likes that, they give discounts on the height of your book stack...no shit.) I came away with much to read: A Great Idea at the Time by local boy Beam is the history of the Great Books series; The WPA Guides: Mapping America...the history of the WPA Guidebook series; Writers, Plumbers and Anarchists: the WPA writer's project in Mass; Swindler, Spy, Rebel: the Confidence woman in 19th century America; a contemporary travel book about a guy who rode from Turkey to Wales on horseback; and a UK travel book that follows the BBC shipping forecast route...I kid you not; and a copy of Barbara Ehrenreich's 1973 monograph on Witches, Midwives and Nurses. [the copy of McCaffrey's Hound came in the mail from Old Bag Lady books] . So all in all it was a good day for the pile on my sideboard.

we buried my cousin last week..you know the one, the younger, happier, friendlier, more successful cousin, the yardstick i have been compared to most of my life. i am sure we could have been fast friends if we hadn't been family. she was killed slowly and horribly by stomach cancer. the universe is awful funny like that. this is Franklin, he was grabbed up by dog, found sick and injured and THEN put outside in a box by the trash. he still wobbles when he walks but he's doing alright. just in case, i made arrangements to be planted in the yard with the pets when the time comes.

special sauce

Catablogs...nope nothing feline about them... i had visited a couple and added an RSS feed to my list but i hadn't given them much thought until now. The special collections librarian one city over has started blogging their catalog...cata-blog get it? Queen City Massachusetts - which i find awesome...every object has a story and with catablogs, the object, pamphlet or image gets its fifteen minutes of fame too. Here's a nice little blog post from Geneaology Insider with a sweet list of other Catablogs. Stupid publisher tricks • Scholastic has no love for Luv Ya Bunches...a young adult title about four elementary school girls named after flowers...but OOPS...one of them has TWO mommies! and that's apparently one too many for Scholastic. WTF? I can't really comment on it properly..because when I try i start using expletives and hitting the keyboards like I am punishing them. blog of note • if you haven't seen it you HAVE to check out Letters of Note blog... it rules.."Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. " Seriously i haven't read one thing there that wasn't fascinating.

just along for the ride

I wish I had staged that shot..but nope.....the cat sauntered out of one yard across the road in front of me and into another yard. When the universe does that to you all you can do is sit there and watch your life unfold. I've been watching a lot of other people's lives lately...the spaghetti and bean feasts, the fleas and forums etc . . i shot images of a town hall forum the other night and if you eliminate the pols and the journos i didn't know anyone else in the room. Life looks different through the camera lens . . . i am still uncomfortable shooting humans..with a camera...i spent 20 years shooting things that don't ask you why. ...i watched the 'real' news photographer fly about the room like a hungry hummingbird - perhaps one day i will be less self conscious.

irony ain't dead...just a bit snarky

isn't that the most beautiful thing you ever saw? to me it looks like puppies and kittens dipped in chocolate... Technically she is called a percontation point - a 'rhetorical question mark'. . . an irony mark also called a snark or zing. Created by Henry Denham in the 1580s, it pops up in literature every century or so, but never really caught on. I can't be the only person who thinks that is a terrible fate for such an incredibly useful invention. I'm gonna make it my mission in life to use this sticky puppy as much and as often as I can. Let's take back the snark people, we need her, we live in an age where irony is pretty much a contact sport. I may even get it tattooed somewhere. What do you think؟

1001 uses for books - still MORE jewelery

From BlackSpotBooks on Etsy Library of antique and scrap leather books for the neck - eleven miniature books $325.00 USD alas it is sold out.

back to the future

Hmm . . . i forgot how uneventful my regularly scheduled programming is . . . if there are any orders i pack em . . . list books online if i have any. . . rinse lather and repeat. But I am breaking up the day by caulking all the windows in the joint and some of the walls and doors too. I really loathe giving up hard won cashy money to the utility vampires. This year I even had the stove permanently disconnected...the idea of a pilot light burning night and day in an oven i don't use was making me crazy. I have a counter top oven and a microwave i won't starve. When facing a long winter's indebtedness to the Gas company, global warming doesn't look so bad. To be fair the weather these last couple of days was rather nice, if you don't count the snow squall the other day...in New England we hardly notice such things.. I finally went through most of my mother's mystery boxes and culled them down to just 'nice' things...yellow ware bowls, cut crystal creamers etc... I guess ebay will get some of my business...those aren't things I will EVER use. Her clothes are the only things I still haven't donated, but that I can do anytime. Many place still smell like her....este lauder and mothballs. I have been putting a lot more effort into MethuenCommon.com perhaps it gives me the illusion that i have a life. I now have an eye on revamping this website using the new software and collating all the practical information into findable form, and relegating all my ranting and babbling to a less prominent position. I think this used to be a bookish blog. worth reading• From TIME.com Plagiarism Software Finds a New Shakespeare Play "Plagiarism-detection software was created with lazy, sneaky college students in mind — not the likes of William Shakespeare. Yet the software may have settled a centuries-old mystery over the authorship of an unattributed play from the late 1500s called The Reign of Edward III. Literature scholars have long debated whether the play was written by Shakespeare — some bits are incredibly Bard-like, but others don't resemble his style at all. The verdict, according to one expert: the play is likely a collaboration between Shakespeare and Thomas Kyd, another popular playwright of his time. (continue reading)

kmart rules

....my time with the census is almost up, not that it hasn't been a blast, but it was very much like watching sausage getting made: kinda icky and uncomfortable. Back to living hand to mouth, like everyone else. It seems that invisible timer went off and all my mechanical items broke at once....my postal scale, my dvd player, my laptop, even my bestest sunglasses snapped in half. I mailed the sunglasses off to the first fix it place I found online, and picked up a replacement dvd player off ebay, but believe it or not the postal scale was a pain in the ass...Staples sells nothing but overpriced and digital crap, none of which are ever in stock...but after trying 4 stores one night I found that regardless of their website info, slow and steady K-Mart stocks the genuine USPS Postal Scale for a reasonable price no less. saved my ass I will tell you. Now that i have the laptop back I am making up for lost time things i found online today: - the Impossible Project is making great strides trying to resurrect Polaroid's instant photography technology - WWII Huts Rescued!! Bletchley Park has been awarded a grant by the National Lottery of £460,500. There's still a long way to go - which is why it will be the focus of fundraising efforts as the main charity for National Shed Week 2010 - but it's a great start. - Ann Frank video is on Youtube, the only known film footage of Anne Frank has been added to youtube by the Anne Frank Museum. - from NPR, This American Life "Books that changed your life" I may have posted this before, but it doesn't suck. and from the I am not making this up department.... Amazon Launches Same Day Delivery in Seven Major Cities and Expands Saturday Delivery Options ....no shit... Items ordered before the following local cut-off times will be delivered the same day: New York City – Order as late as 10 a.m. Philadelphia – Order as late as 10 a.m. Boston – Order as late as 10:30 a.m. Washington D.C. – Order as late as 10:30 a.m. Baltimore – Order as late as 10:30 a.m. Las Vegas – Order as late as 11 a.m. Seattle – Order as late as 1 p.m. WTF? who needs things THAT fast ...better than that..who has all this excess money to spend on same day delivery?

57 percent of new books are not read to completion.

worth reading • From Consumerist.com "Walmart is also now selling over 200 current best-sellers at at least half off the list price." WTF? aren't books pretty much dirt cheap now? why bother printing prices on them at all, lets just sell them by the pound cause: 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college. 80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year. 70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. 57 percent of new books are not read to completion. 70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance. 70 percent of the books published do not make a profit. (Source: Jerold Jenkins, www.JenkinsGroupInc.com) So who is BUYING all these crap books anyway? ya gotta admit most best sellers are pretty much crap... interchangable authors and titles but basically the same content from year to year....thrillers, bio, feel me up good books etc.... I can see they have a purpose just like iceberg lettuce and beige paint but seriously you read em you forget about em almost immediately. I am torn between paying full price for these books being a crime against man and the fact that there are so many copies printed that they are nearly worthless being a crime against nature. and if you say "save the trees read em on Kindle", so help me I will throttle you. Come to think of it, when's the last time we got the recycling guys to pick up a box of best sellers? never. that's when. the only time you see em after they leave Walmart and BJs is when they show up at yard sales for a buck a piece. I say print fewer of the damn things and charge more money...suddenly you will see the quality and value of books improve.

worth hearing • This American Life did this great episode on the Book that Changed your Life, oh yeah..WHY I enjoyed this...it makes mention of Bill Reese.

well that was fun

In the last four days I have written four incredibly witty, and helpful blog posts, each funnier than the last, you shoulda read them, they rocked. ....alas they all ocurred inside my head while I was driving from one place to another, ticking off the list of things I was NOT getting accomplished. All those lovely words evaporated well before I had a chance to type them. My remaining time with the Census folk can be measured in hours now - not that it wasn't fun..well payday was fun...i know i know a lot of self pity for someone WITH a job when so many folks have none. I was just getting stressed trying to keep all those damn balls in the air..i like to know exactly where my balls are at all times. Besides i felt awful, long hours, bad food, I haven't had time to ride my bike for over a month and all that high fructose Red Bull was making me squirrely - correction squirreliER...it was like having a real job. <> Hopefully I can get back to my life...my remaining cusomers will be very happy, I STILL have not been able to dig myself out of the backorder hole I slide into when my mother passed away. Good thing I have run out of ancestors or I would never get anything accomplished. Oddly, while glad handing folks around town in the name of MethuenComon, I seemed to have backed into a night life. This week, with my camera beside me, I have been to a ham and bean supper and the Rod and Gun Club, Ballroom dancing at the Senior Center, a 45's (that's a card game children) night and a Jazz Club...who knew we had a jazz club? A little Stranger in a Strange land meets middle America., not to mock but to observe...well there's a little mocking.. but I get my fill of that at Walmart on Saturdays..I think of it like white trash anthropology. I have to do the write up on the Jazz club now...i was probably the only local present, save the club owners...and being marginally mediarific, I was treated with celebrity status...I had a good gig going, if Iwanted to cage drinks all night. Here's hoping I get back to regularly scheduled programming...you wouldn't want to buy any tickets to an animal rescue benefit would you? thought so.

different day, same nutjobs

I always do what the writing on the truck tells me..... one of these days these guys are gonna figure out i am only there for the paycheck...but alas today was not the day. another day hauling around what amounts to a small dead forest in the name of statistics; the carbon footprint on this exercise is grotesque. a typical three red bull day 5:45 sift the net for anything I can feed to methuencommon.com 8:00am prostitute myself to the usgov 7:00 pm meet with rail trail people or animal rescue people or some other people... 9:00pm filter emails for anything remotely imperative 10:00 fed and clean up after flea circus 11:00 pack and any orders for shipping 12:00am write blog fodder