Wherein I'm going to talk some more about the whole book disposal thing, providing you with pictures and titles I've jotted down for your amusement. Yes, dear readers, I did this all for you.

Pictures first.

As a counterpoint to the Royal Society cover, we also have:

Somebody was...irate...

Our entire collection, and yes Sarah this is for you, of Phillip Pullman books was gutted by the Flood. I think we maybe still have The Amber Spyglass, and that's it.

I also destroyed our entire collection of Robin Hood books. We now have ONE, which I know because I reshelved it today.

The following is in Chinese. There are in fact about ten of these books, which I guess are probably very important works. I don't know. I can't even read the card pockets, which is all the record they have.

But they look cool.

Now for the titles.

Treating Non-Offending Parents In Child Sexual Abuse Cases - Which just sounds odd, somehow. Perhaps vaguely as if the nonoffending parents are also tarred with the same brush as the offending ones. But it intrigues me.

Coca Exotica: The illustrated history of cocaine - Which, if it hadn't been so water damaged, I'd want to read, because it sounds interesting.

When France Was King of Cartography: The Patronage and Production of Maps in Early Modern France - Which is esoteric as all hell, but sounds kind of interesting, actually. And must be, considering the size.

Research on the "Cost of Non-Europe": The Benefits of Completing the Internal Market For Telecommunication Equipment And Services In the Community - Which is a European Economic Community document, which should go a long ways to explaining the title. I still want to know what the "Cost of Non-Europe" part means, though.

Journeys In Microspace - Which I don't even know what it's about, but sounds really cool.

Nine Tomorrows - Which is an Asimov short story collection chiefly notable for having a picture of a chimpanzee in a space suit on the cover, which is hilarious, but alas unfindable on the internets.

Palynological Correlation of Major Pennsylvanian (Middle and Upper Carboniforous) Chronostratigraphic Boundries in the Illinois and Other Coal Basins and also The Nature and Timing or Orogenic Activity in the Caledonian Rocks of the British Isles - Which demonstrate the pure excitement inherent in working in geology. There's something rather appropriate about all our geology books getting washed away by the Flood.

Fay - Which is essentially a high-priced coffee table book which you buy because it's some guy taking pictures of his dog. Granted that the dog is sometimes dressed in silly costumes and appears to be a very good sport, but people, it's a $50 book filled with dog pictures. I NEED that kind of job.

Related to that, I was pondering art books, as I often do, considering we lost so many of them, and I noticed that quite a few of them are essentially excuses for some random artist to paint a whole bunch of naked women. Which, being male, I can applaud - yes, they look like pervs, but it's hard to go wrong with naked women here. That having been said, it does seem rather pretentious to, say, paint an entire book's worth of paintings of your naked wife and sell it people for $50. Which has a lot of interesting facets to it if you think hard enough. I assure you that I have the time to do just that.

Etchers and Etching - Which is chiefly notable for an inscription by one Marguerite D. Peterson, 1936. Which is actually relatively recent, considering our collection.

Evolution of the Archean Supracrustal Sequences - Which means what to us normal people, precisely?

Numerical Experiments in Stratigraphy: Recent Advances In Stratigraphic and Sedimentologic Computer Simulations - Which features both overly large geologic terms AND overly pretentious academia titling! A sure hit!

There is apparently an author going by the name of Crescent Dragonwagon. Children's books, mind you, not geology. Though the possibilities could be interesting.

Rattlesnakes and Scientists - Which, regardless of actual content, conjures up images of that epic struggle to the death between white coated lab scientist and cobra. Or perhaps Raiders of the Lost Ark. Nevertheless, I quite like it as a kid's science book title.

New York 1880 and New York 1900 - Which are books Sarah might like, being as they discuss, albeit in a now water-damaged state, architecture and the city of New York in the 19th to early 20th centuries, and which looked quite interesting, albeit in a very large and unwieldy fashion.

The Labour Cost of the World War To Great Britain, 1914-1922: A Statistical Analysis - Which wins the Archaic Titling Award for being published in...1940, during the SECOND World War.

More About Geothermal Steam: Or the Hottest Energy Prospect Ever - Which should make you laugh.

Japanese Spoons and Ladles: The Beauty of Everyday Objects - Which was published in 1979, which ought to explain an awful lot, really. Those wacky 70s folk and their wacky 70sisms.

Which has nothing to do with anything other than I said I was going to use it as a post title, and I did. Because 87 degrees with high humidity? Just say no. Friends do not let friends experience this sort of thing, and where this leaves my friendship with Sarah, I don't know.

On the other hand, she took me to this comedy show at Yale a few months ago, and I've been telling a joke from that ever since. Well, she found a video of it, which you should watch, because OMFG.

Also, I should note the whole Talks At Google thing, which is basically Google saying "Hey, awesome or important person, come talk to our people!" John Scalzi gets his day, as do most of the current Democratic presidential candidates plus John McCain.

Yes, I watched all of these after work. Why do you ask?

The quick analysis:

I don't think I've heard Hillary Clinton speak previously, and I came off impressed. I don't always agree with her, but she's clearly very smart, and I agree with enough that I don't feel uncomfortable about the idea of her as president.

I thought better of John McCain than I thought I might, which is to say that, frankly, I was inspired by almost everything he said. That I seem to agree with him on Iraq is of some comfort to me.

I don't think much of John Edwards as a presidential candidate, but he WAS very good at the speaking part, much better than I thought he might, and he has a lot of charisma. And on the things he knows about, he's smart. But I still think he'd be a better VP.

Bill Richardson reminded me, and this is probably unfair to the man, but he reminded me of a certain politician from Old Man's War, and those of you who've read it will know who I'm talking about. Annoying, probably misguided, but also fairly right. It was kind of odd.

Not that Michael Bloomberg was there as a candidate, but I think if he was running, I'd vote for him. He's a great speaker, he's smart, and he said a lot of things what needed saying. That's true for all of them, actually, but he did it best.

But Scalzi gave a cool talk. I need to watch Neil Gaiman's now.

[21:53] TontoMarius: Well, I cooked dinner. That was a mistake.
[21:53] serenadingwords: This is why around here, we keep mothers.

Let's do some before-work story discussion. First, by nodding at this post of Regina's, which in its last moments asks a question that I think is particularly interesting.

That aside, I finished two things last night. The first of them is Trigun, an anime about which some of you may have previously heard, and which I watched for the second time. It's a bizzare show, in that the first thirteen or so episodes are just generally ...there, and one gets the sense that they could have made a much better series at about half the length, since the second half of the series is, well, quite good, if sometimes nonsensical. It also puts me in the position of utterly disagreeing with the philosophy of the main character (Vash the Stampede), while at the same time rooting for him, because Vash is cool. I also love the world building. I'm a sucker for great world building.

But the slapstick. Oh dear gods. Also the sand steamer episodes, which need to be excised from history, they're so bad.

I needed to burn a couple hours before sleep, and the internets are only so exciting, so I picked up SM Stirling's The Sky People, intending to read it for a couple hours, which of course means that an hour and a half after my bedtime, I finished it, put it down, and said "That was COOL!" And so it was. One of the things I like about SM Stirling is that he comes from that tradition where its perfectly acceptable for a few guys (and girls) and a dog can set out and Have Adventures in the Unsettled Wilderness, which takes me back in particular to my early Tom Swift days, among other things. And so this book is all about that, not to mention being sort of an extended tribute to a bunch of classic SF authors I never read, but heard about.

Anyway. So, take Venus. Give it an earthlike atmosphere, make it swampy, and give it culture somewhere between Jurassic Park, Ben-Hur, Guns of the South, and Clan of the Cave Bear. We have bronze age dudes. We have Neanderthals. We have scientists from Earth riding around on a friggin' triceratops (which wins right then and there, to be honest), and a particular scene that creates something I've wanted to do roughly since I read The Valley of the Horses.

Let me put it like this. Either riding the triceratops is cool, or it's not cool. If it IS cool, you should be reading this book right now. If it ISN'T cool, you should also be reading this book in an effort to salvage a childhood that you apparently never had.

Dinosaurs are COOL. Riding them is COOL. This book needs a sequel. Which I don't see one of on Amazon, though I do see the beginning of a second Dies the Fire trilogy, which I'm perfectly ok with, to be honest.

That aside, and going back to that whole discussion of old about the quality of SF/F vs stuff set in reality, I was recalling the intro to my fiction writing class lo these five years ago, which was basically "no genre. We are better than this, and besides, anything you can do in that we can do in reality."

So I got to thinking about that, and came to the conclusion that:

1. Well, really, setting is most of the time just window dressing anyway, so there's some truth to that.

2. On the other hand, while that's true, there's so many stories that would be less than they actually are by taking them from their given setting and putting them in "reality." Cowboy Bebop, for instance, could be done as, say, a sort of rough streets of New York film, but doing so would make it so much less than what it is, because the setting and the ways people interact with that setting are so important.

3. And then I started thinking "Well, are there any stories that literally cannot, when stripped down to their core elements, be placed in the real world?" A quick scan of my bookshelves produced:

- The Lord of the Rings is perhaps debatable, in that you could take most of the things at the heart of it (quest story, save the world, etc) and translate them. And it might actually be worth doing that, considering the fundamental greatness of the source. But again, to do that in any but the most imaginative way would make the story less than it actually is.

- Highlander, insofar as between the swordfights its a meditation on the nature of immortality, would be utterly impossible without the fantastic elements. That having been said, there's really only one fantastic element to it (two if you count the swords), so it's most of the way there already. That one element is kind of big, however.

- The whole Island In the Sea of Time/163x genre, insofar as they're meditations on technology, society, and history that really can't be done in this day and age, outside of writing a novel about, say, African jungle-dwellers getting ahold of a bunch of European tech, which would then be a historical novel, and that's genre, now isn't it?

I could go on, but work calls. Feel free to add more to the list.

Because some insanity needs sharing with the world.

[22:57] serenadingwords: *clutches my bear* I will take Yuki and her bear ON.
[22:57] TontoMarius: "Bearfight!" just doesn't have the same ring to it.
[22:58] serenadingwords: Magical bear fight?
[22:58] TontoMarius: It's got more of a "bear vs guy with pocketknife" feel to it.
[22:58] serenadingwords: Ew.
[22:58] TontoMarius: Than "catfight", which is, well, yes.
[22:59] TontoMarius: Magical bears fighting would be like...care bears going apeshit with katanas.
[22:59] serenadingwords: You just won today.
[22:59] TontoMarius: Which, actually, I want to see that now.
[22:59] serenadingwords: Ask Suzanne. :P
[22:59] TontoMarius: *laugh*
[23:00] serenadingwords: I'm still laughing, not least at the fact that katanas are like 4x the size of Care Bears.
[23:00] TontoMarius: They might be small katanas.
[23:00] TontoMarius: But then they do a dice less damage...hrm.
[23:00] serenadingwords: So I'm getting this mental image of one just holding it straight out and spinning around and going "ahhhhhh!"
[23:00] serenadingwords: On a cloud, of course.
[23:00] TontoMarius: lol
[23:00] serenadingwords: Wow, that's like the best mental image I've had in ages.
[23:01] TontoMarius: Wow. I just for some reason threw Winnie the Pooh into that mix.
[23:01] serenadingwords: Ahhhhhhh!
[23:01] serenadingwords: Not magical.
[23:01] TontoMarius: Pooh with a katana is pretty fucking hilarious.
[23:01] TontoMarius: Facing an army of spinning Care Bears. :P
[23:01] serenadingwords: Does not compute.
[23:01] TontoMarius: So good.
[23:01] serenadingwords: *explodes*
[23:01] serenadingwords: Pooh would just be like "...what?"
[23:02] TontoMarius: Or "Oh, bother." as he cut down Care Bears right and left.

With regards to everyone who sent me a link to today's xkcd, thanks. I laughed. In a kind of evil way, evilly. Because, well, it turns out that, as I have discussed previously, a large part of my job has me acting as what amounts to the curator of a death camp for books. If there are ever war crimes trials for this, I'm probably going down. Because, let us examine:

Here's a typical box of children's books that comes to me for disposal. I like dealing with these because they're lighter to move and generally can be disposed of faster.

This is a box of oversize books. I don't like these as much because, while there are less books and each book is more interesting (I dispose of a LOT of Rennaisance art books), they're all bloody well heavy.

Note the Russian art book there in the blue.

Here's the damage from one box. Top one looks ok except for a bit of wrinkling and the fact it's bowed into a U shape now. Book under it would be ok except for the interior staining and wrinkles. Book under THAT dissolved, and the rest are water damaged pretty badly.

There's the bottom book a little more closely. It's done. You're not ever reading that again without some effort.

This interesting book on manuscripts is not only very badly stained, it rips apart easily.

That having been examined, there are upsides to the thing, such as seeing this sort of highly System of the Worldesque guy here:

There are also various other entertaining titles, but I shall save them for a later post.

Segueing into more pictures...

[23:11] TontoMarius: And I found out a bunch of boxes I thought I had to do were actually all journals. FTW.
[23:11] serenadingwords: journals!
[23:12] TontoMarius: *is awash in journals*
[23:12] serenadingwords: journals!
[23:12] TontoMarius: Why are journals good?
[23:13] serenadingwords: To read.
[23:14] TontoMarius: Uh, what the crap journals do YOU read?
[23:14] TontoMarius: All mine usually suck. :|
[23:15] serenadingwords: What're you reading?
[23:15] serenadingwords: Well, you're talking to the girl who likes reading letters, so.
[23:15] TontoMarius: Nothing in particular.
[23:15] TontoMarius: Letters != scholarly journals.
[23:16] serenadingwords: oh, scholarly journals.
[23:16] TontoMarius: Not like, "I sat down today and drove across 200 miles of prairie to Oregon" journals. Journals full of scholarly articles.
[23:16] serenadingwords: i thought you meant like diaries.
[23:16] TontoMarius: No.

We gots journals and journals and journals. This used to be a cafeteria, by the by.

And this is the kitchen, where the people sorting books into the live and die piles work.

Book. It's what's for dinner.

In that vein of telling everyone about our awesome library jobs, I'll just go ahead and tell you about mine.

Originally, it was supposed to be an internship, which, mostly due to my being lazy, didn't happen in a timely fashion, which turned into a conversation between my department chair and I along the lines of:

Her: So how's the internship?
Me: Well, actually, I've been a little slow, and don't really have one, and...
Her: Oh, well, we'll just line you up with some work downstairs in the library! Come with me!

...a short time and 3 floors later...

Her: Tech Services people! This is Erik! Hire him!
Them: We are powerless to stop your Jedi mind powers.

And that's roughly how I wound up working in Buley Library's Tech Services department. Which has, contrary to popular belief, little to do with, say, computers in any way shape or form besides database access, and everything to do with being the folks who catalogue, label, prep, and do minor repairs on books. Thus far I have:

- Labeled books, which involves getting a sheet of labels and matching them with the correct book via penciled in call numbers or a printout, then taping the label in place using one of a couple of trillian different sizes of pre-measured tapes, which prompted this conversation:

Mary: Yeah, we used to get one size tape and it worked great. Now they changed it and we have to get all these different sizes.
Me: Man, they must make a killing off that.
Mary: ARGH! I never thought about it like that!

I note that this has so far involved children's books, meaning there seems to be some law that no matter what library I work out, I will always be the guy working with the kids' books. I don't know why.

- I've deleted old books from the system, in particular the entire US legal code circa 2000-2005 or so, which aside from the Very Heavy Books was pretty awesome, and presages the reign of revolutionary lawmaking that Marechal and I will usher in upon our ascension to power. I also got to throw them all in a dumpster, which everyone else finds a strange part of the job, and I was like "Woohoo! Throwing out law books! Rock on!"

- The third and most involved part of my job involves a little backstory. You see, Buley library is getting a whole new building constructed in back of it, and has for a while now. This necessitated moving some books from where they were and putting them into storage elsewhere in the library, which happened to be an auditorium on the ground floor of the library, where things like journals are also stored. So far so good, right? Well, the Monday before Thanksgiving, some construction guy broke a water main, which then leaked into the library. Ultimately by the time it got turned off, most of the journals and such took about 6 inches of water - enough to screw up every bottom shelf ever.

Remember that auditorium with all the books stored in it? It took seven FEET of water.

The recovery process involved bringing in a fleet of refrigerator trucks, freeze drying all the books, and then some company went through and tried to fix some of them. But some things you just can't fix, which is where I come in. It's my job to delete all of the books we can't keep, be they water damaged, moldy, dissolved, or what have you. It's a tragic sort of job, which brings us to the pictorial section of our post.

We're set up in what used to be the old student center cafeteria. Those are journals all stacked up in what used to be the faculty dining hall. Others are on the student side, and the kitchen is now a work room for the company that's triaging books and journals and for us library folks.

See all those boxes? That's about 20 books per box, all the way down the hall. All of those books are done, finished, dead. Some of them have almost literally dissolved.

My job is to grab a cart, get a couple few boxes, bring them to my computer there, scan them into the system, and withdraw the item from our catalog. There's another step involving withdrawing from OCLC as well, but I don't do that because it's a gigantic slowdown, so people who aren't me do that step.

Some of what we lost is pretty tragic. Buley, as a rule, has a pretty high proportion of pre-20th century books still on the shelves (or in a rare book collection, as these were), which is why I have an 1888 copy of Phil Sheridan's memoirs waiting for me to read. These are a collection of English theater of some sort or another from 1796. All in all, I've come across about 15 boxes of this sort of thing thus far, which is monumentally tragic. Perhaps fortunately, we may be able to save some of them. I hope so.

And now instead of talking about work, I must get ready for work.

The management would like the readership to know that it IS alive, though rumors may have suggested otherwise. I should have a couple of posts worth of material here...shortly, since:

1. I've been playing BG2 again, and I know you all love hearing about it.

2. In addition to taking an online class, I have two jobs, one of which I've started and one of which I have not. The one I HAVE started involves tech services work in the SCSU library, which is wildly interesting thus far, but I'm only on Day 3 as of about an hour from now. I promise I'll have much to say later. Also pictures, hopefully.

Let us ponder the transcendant greatness of kittens. Also of sleep, and of climates without high humidity rates.

Brought to you by a vicious bout of insomnia last night before I had to be up at 8:30 am, I bring you Yesmalin, Child of Bhaal and my favorite BG2 PC, converted to 3.5 edition D&D stats.

Yesmalin: Male moon elf Ran19/Rog10; CR 29; Medium humanoid (elf); HD 19d8+10d6+116; hp 238; Init +9; Spd 30 ft.; AC 28, touch 15, flat-footed 28 (+5 dex, +10 armor, +1 feat, +2 items); BAB: +22; Grapple +31; Atk Flail of Ages +38 melee (1d8+1d6+1d6+1d6+1d6 plus poison); Full Atk: Flail of Ages +35/+30/+25/+20 melee (1d8+16+1d6+1d6+1d6 plus poison) Celestial Fury +33/+28/+23 melee (1d10+14+1d6); SQ: favored enemies (vermin/undead/dragons/evil outsiders), wild empathy, woodland stride, swift tracker, improved evasion, camouflage, hide in plain sight, trapfinding, trap sense +3, improved uncanny dodge, DR 10/magic, fire/cold/electric resistance 20, SR 15; SA: Sneak attack +5d6; AL NG; SV Fort +27, Ref +31, Will +21; Str 28, Dex 20, Con 18, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 14; Skill and Feats Hide +37, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +19, Knowledge (geography) +19, Knowledge (nature) +19, Listen +34, Move Silently +37, Spot +34, Survival +24; Cleave, Great Gleave, Improved Initiative, Leadership, Exotic Weapon: Katana, Power Attack, Quickdraw, Weapon Focus: Flail, Weapon Focus: Katana, Two Weapon Fighting*, Improved Two Weapon Fighting*, Greater Two Weapon Fighting*, Two Weapon Defense, Track, Endurance; Spells per Day: 4/4/3/2; longstrider, jump, entangle, detect poison, 4 cure light wounds, 3 cure moderate wounds, commune with nature, tree stride; Equipment: Studded Leather of Thorns +6, Helm of Balduran, Fail of Ages +5, Celestial Fury +3, Ring of Gaxx, Ring of the Ram, Amulet of the Seldarine, Belt of Strength +6, Boots of Speed, Cloak of Mirroring, 3 Potions of Cure Critical Wounds, 5 Potions of Cure Serious Wounds, Bag of Holding (Type IV)

For the sake of convenience, we're ignoring his Slayer form, which is probably actually less powerful than he is now.

But we ported in the SR 12, resistance to fire/cold/electric 20, and the DR 10/magic he gets.

A few EQ items:

Helm of Balduran: +1 AC, +1 BAB, +1 saves, +5 HP
Studded Armor of Thorns +6: does 1d4 damage to opponents who hit (woohoo!)
Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization: +1/+2 attack/damage with all weapons
Amulet of the Seldarine: SR 13, +1 saves
Cloak of Mirroring: Acts as a Ring of Spell Turning
Ring of Gaxx: +2 AC, +2 saves, SR 13, immunity to disease/poison, regen 1, invisibility 1/day, haste 3/day

Flail of Ages +5: Flail, +5, corrosive, shocking, frost, flaming, venomous, acts as a Ring of Free Action
Celestial Fury: Katana +3, shocking burst, thundering, CL 12 lightning bolt 1/day, CL 12 blindness/deafness 1/day

Also found with wife Aerie (LG female elf clr10/wiz10/mystic theurge 8), sister Imoen (NG female human rog4/wiz24) and sometimes Jahiera (N female half-elf fighter 16/druid 12) and Sarevok (CE male human fig28). Keldorn (LG male human pal28) we assume went home, because he's had a very long day.

Anyway.

You must gather your party before venturing forth.
---Baldur's Gate