Best author names - a collection

I don't think I've posted a comprehensive list of amazing author names I've found in our catalogue in the past, so I wanted to do that now! Some of these names I have mentioned before, but not very many.

So, without further ado, here are some of my favourite author names discovered in our system:

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Authors with BEST names

• Beaglehole, T. H.
• Bignold, H. B. (Hugh Baron), 1870-
• Blanco White, T. A. (Thomas Anthony)
• T. A. white white!
• Cressy, Serenus, 1605-1674
• only funny because I say "cressy" instead of "crazy"
• Dickhut, Harold
• Gawkrodger, D. J. (David J.)
• Hankey, Maurice Pascal Alers Hankey, Baron, 1877-1963
• Hurtig, Howard I.
• only funny because my mum says words like she's got a cold for a joke, e.g. "hurting" = "hurtig", "Bunnings" = "Buddigs"
• Leakey, L. S. B. (Louis Seymour Bazett), 1903-1972
• Louis Leakey!
• Oldcorn, Roger
• Powdermaker, Hortense, 1903-1970
• Sherwood, Polycarp, 1912-
• Shivers, Alfred S.
• Smith, Mortimer Brewster, 1906-
• Sox, Harold C.
• Wanklyn, William McConnel, 1866-1929
• Whitehead, Evelyn Eaton
• Willoughby, Westel Woodbury, 1867-1945
• Woodson, R. Dodge (Roger Dodge), 1955-

Question: Is your name as cool as any of these?

New post because it's 2018 - new additions to the Fesaurus!

Hello!

...

... ... ...

Right, so I guess that means I have nothing to say, so I'll just leave these new Facetious Fesaurus (half fesaurus, half prickshionary?) entries here for your perusal:

mofoments

• moments that involve mofos - not to be confused with mo-faux Mondays

Nuromole-y-mole-y-mole

• the verbal reaction that occurs when one gets told they can't get Nurofen or Paracetamol anymore because they only have Nuromol to choose from

Library Bastards, Broken Homies, Supreme Overlord and an Ewok

Many years ago, two of us started our own club called Library Bastards - the rules being that you had to:

1. Work in a library and,
2. Be a bastard (as in, born out of wedlock).

We only ever had two members of our club (us), and up until recently I had forgotten all about the club (whose Facebook page died the death of the chronically neglected years ago). Now that the idea of Library Bastards has been (for the moment at least) revived, something a colleague said during our lunch break caught our ear: she's a bastard too!

It was quite gratifying to realise that we now have a third member of our Bastard club on board. We were discussing the club over lunch and I claimed to be the Supreme Overlord of Bastards since my parents were never married. Technically our newest member is in the same boat, since her father was never married to her mother, and instead her mother married her stepfather soon after she was born. So then I claimed to still be the Supreme Overlord of Bastards because my parents have never been married to anyone, ever, let alone each other.

I win, folks.

My original fellow Bastard was referred to as a stormtrooper to my Vader of Bastards, but she doesn't want to be a stormtrooper - she wants to be an ewok. I just thought that was unfair 'cause she gets to be too cute and fluffy, while I have to be DAAAARKNESS incarnate. But hey, I wanted the mantle of Supreme Overlord so I guess that's what you get.

The story isn't over, in case you wondered. Because what happened next was that a fourth colleague in a fit of envy requested to join our club. The problem, though, is that she's never actually been a bastard. She simply doesn't qualify. if you're going by those two rules up above. However, there is now a new club of which she is the head - the Broken Homies club - because she's from a broken home.

I tried to join her club since technically my home is/was broken too, but this new Supreme Overlord of Broken Homies brutally rebuffed my advance by claiming that her club is only for children of broken homes whose parents were married and then divorced. Hmph. I find that discriminatory, but oh well, we've created a monster now and it's loose in the world, rampaging.

So why am I discussing these clubs today? Well, I popped over here to find out if we had ever written about Library Bastards before, and it seems we hadn't. So I thought it was about time we did - particularly as we now have Broken Homies to talk about as well.

And will you look at that! We have two blog posts for 2017.

EDIT: S.O.B. = Supreme Overlord Bastard.

IELODSIWGWB - an acronym

While checking emails at work this morning, I stumbled across a most intriguing sight - the longest 'working group' name I ever remember seeing in all my history of checking out funny working group names and even funnier acronyms. This group's name actually had enough words in it to form an acronym longer than most words!

The group was calling on email readers to give a small bit of their time to make some comments on a particular topic of interest - however, my colleague worried that it might take all that requested time just to get through reading the group's name, leaving no time whatsoever for comments at the end!

P.S. Happy New Year.

I swug this (new version of "I got this")

Hello again,

It isn't far off the end of 2016, and so we're getting in just in time with a post for the year. There isn't much of interest to say, except we always get a kick out of popping back to this blog and checking out the sheer madness of years past, captured in wacky blog posts for all the world to see.

We just hope there is no global disaster that ends up killing the interwebs, and therefore our wonderful blog of stupidity.

This time I have a new Facetious Fesaurus addition to report:

swug

• past tense of swig when you can't be bothered using extra letters to write "swigged" - "I swug that coffee."

And here is the last photo we took of the whiteboard prior to it being wiped (the most recent time):

Since this most recent wipeage, we have actually encountered the most extraordinary word in an unknown language in one of our metadata records, and our interpretation of its definition (to be added to the Fesaurus after this post is published):

• TNANAGETNENT: 
  
  a tangerine on a tangent at Plantagenent .... O.O huh??

In closing, may we just say... "Happy New Year and Merry 'All That Stuff'!"

A list of 'whiteboard things' from May 2015

We agreed we should probably make a public record of 'stuff' that is on our whiteboard currently, because it's getting pretty chockers and that means it's going to be wiped clean sometime soon!

Ironically there isn't really anything work related, though I guess this one is a little bit related to some of the work we do:

Summotes!

Mostly though, it's things like:

Micro-working

-The absolute minimum of work that can be done

before it's seen as "not working"

"May the junk food fairy be with you"

- Trisha, 2014

The tedium of a tedious task is tediousness

.... tediously ....

MEGA - SLIVER

- a really small piece of a really big cake

* STUPIDUS MAXIMUS *

There's more where that came from, but I

want a piece of mud cake with whipped

cream and a San Churro's hot chocolate

drizzled over it all. And I can't have one.

So here ends the blog post!

It's been a long time between rants

Hello everyone who isn't reading this!

I wanted to post something at least in 2014, so that this blog could have some TLC at least once a year. I have just added our latest word to the Facetious Fesaurus: "tawse". Go to the fesaurus to find out what this fascinating word means!

I have to admit to one of our favourite pastimes of late - looking up funny and ridiculous personalised numberplates on this site. I also keep a collection of personalised numberplates spotted out on the roads, which I update in a secure location where only friends can see. And I have a lot of people who help in that they report their own sightings of numberplates.

The latest report was of a number plate reading XTRAHOT.

Some of the worst ones are just too naughty to write in public, so I won't write them here. But they really do make a person wonder ... what are some people thinking?!

Electronic calculating-machines

Source: tumblr

Today I want to draw attention to a very special (dusty and possibly moldy) old book we have in our collection, a book about electronic calculating-machines. Yep, that hyphen is meant to be there.

Electronic computers : fundamentals, systems, and applications / with the cooperation of Hans W. Gschwind, Martin G. Jaenke, and Robert G. Tantzen. Vienna : Springer ; Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice-Hall, 1961.

This book is apparently 235 pages long, has illustrations and diagrams, and has a spine length of 23 cm. It also includes bibliographies. Most importantly, though, it has a subject heading of "electronic calculating-machines". Totally avec hyphen.

I looked up this subject heading on Library of Congress Authorities and found that, unsurprisingly, it's been superseded by a brand spankin' new authority heading:

C o m p u t e r s

A new year...a new office space...and a new whiteboard!

It's that time again - the time when we clear off our wondrous whiteboard full of groovy things and start afresh. Fitting, really, since we're now in our new office space after spending endless weeks in what we called "library camp". The ants are gone, we have running water and we're seated within sight of a window... Yes, fresh air is the name of our game, and if it wasn't ridiculously stinkin' hot (I hate summer) we'd actually be enjoying some of it.

Anyway, the white board needs cleaning off, but some things will remain, for e.g. our time-map for each day:

• 8am - 9am - Breakfast
• 9am - 10am - Brorning Tea
• 10am - 11am - Morning Tea
• 11am - 12pm - Munch
• 12pm - 2pm - Lunch
• 2pm - 5pm - Postmunchitis

Possibly everything else will go, though we might actually keep the lists of items of work we're meant to be doing... I dunno.

Did I mention that Mo-faux Monday occurs every Monday?

I'm looking for slow cooker recipes that take almost zero effort to prepare...

...and one such recipe makes reference to tomatillos! I was like, "What the hell is a tomatillo? A tiny tomato?" and my esteemed colleague said "Tiny armadillos that look like tomatoes?" So now, here is the real question:

Where the hell do I find tiny little armadillos that look like tomatoes to put in my slow cooker?

Edward Joseph Doherty...or "Eddie" to his mates

Image from Amazon.com

I came across this author in the library catalogue today, and thought nothing much of him till Library of Congress Authority Headings informed me his name should be written as "Doherty, Eddie, 1890-1975" instead of "Doherty, Edward Joseph, 1890-1975." Funny how a little bit of informality can change one's perception of a guy. But I still didn't get really intrigued until I checked out his books on our catalogue and found:

1. Splendor of sorrow : for sinners only (1943)
2. Psalms of a sinner (1976)
3. Lambs in wolfskins : the conquering march of don John Bosco (1953)
   
   and my personal favourite:


4. A hermit without a permit (1977)

Seems as if half his books were published posthumously. Seems also like the guy led an interesting life. But really, I just wanna know more about the hermit who has no permit! Especially after I just looked at the Amazon.com product description:

"Meditations fun and frolicsome, by an elderly Irish hermit!"

There's more, too, like what may be chapter titles: "God is a Pushover", "The Most Unmortified Christian Mystic" and "Beware the Divine Pickpocket!"

Sounds to me like this Eddie guy lived a life of great vivacity!

Are you a floor crumber or a bin crumber?

A matter has arisen in the library today - actually, in the library lunch room, to be specific - about people who are floor crumbers (they'll just sweep their crumbs straight onto the floor with blatant disregard for the folks who have to clean it up at 4am or whatever time the cleaners come here each morning ;)) vs. people who are just a little more thoughtful than that. In this particular office we have one Floor Crumber, one Bin Crumber and one person whose crumbing inclinations are currently unknown (we haven't asked her yet).

What kind of crumber are you?

Library tangles and library cats

Last night, in between bouts of lying awake in the pitch black, wondering what would happen to an item that's been flagged for Reserve, put on and then off Reserve before the end of day system process has run, checked out to a borrower, and checked back in, but that also happens to have a request on it - in short, ARGH! - I dreamed at one point that my kitty cat Smog was...wait for it...a library cat!

There are no sleeping bags
in the library.

He was actually a fill-in library cat for the Law Library, because they had apparently had another library cat who had gone missing. My Smoggy had been doing temp library cat duty for a few months. In my dream, the day had finally arrived when somebody came by to announce that the lost library cat had returned, and so Smog's services were no longer needed. A guy who worked at the library (who doesn't work at that library in reality) got so emotional he started crying, 'cause he was going to miss Smoggy. Personally I can understand the pulling power of this kitty, but I also think that realistically, that library guy would also feel a little relief that he would finally stop being pestered at lunch time...and morning tea time...and afternoon tea time...by this naughty, naughty cat.

Anyway, in the dream I gave the crying guy a hug and said, "Don't worry, you can visit Smog at my place!" and he said back, "It's just been a really bad day..."

It's tough being a cat sometimes (and yes,
that is a paw in the bottom right hand corner).

I've only ever read a book about one library cat - Dewey - and of course as a result of that read, I've heard of other library cats. But knowing what I do about my Smoggy boy-o, it'd probably take him a while to warm up to people in the library. Not as long as it'd take my other cat, but she's not a dream library cat so she doesn't count.

"Did you mean...holy mofos batman?"

Google tells us that "holy mofo's" should not have an apostrophe. But what if we're talking about a holy mofo's right to free speech? In that case, a holy mofo certainly has the right to an apostrophe in his or her sentence.

Source

After I commented with "holy mofos" on a colleague's Facebook status (as one does while in the office, when discussing coming wild weather that will send us all home from work early), said colleague commented in response: "...Batman!" After which she set out on a mission to discover whether or not anyone else in the world had ever said "Holy mofos, Batman" before.

She found 5 results with an early search, but then the question came up: do you include that comma or not? Do you include an apostrophe, in which case you're actually talking about a holy mofo's Batman - maybe a Batman figurine in a holy mofo's possession? Oh, the possibilities are endless...but now I must check if she's still Googling holy mofos and Batman.

No, she's not. She's Googling what "kts" means, and it means...not what is in the Wikipedia article, which turned out to be WROOOONNGGGGGG.


See, kids? It's like the librarian told you. Don't trust Wikipedia.

P.S. Does Spiderman have a car?

Are you webist?

webist: racism against websites. any websites. anywhere. any time.

Yep, we were discussing what it means to be webist today. Because she was writing an email about websites, or rather "the website", and she accidentally (Freudian slip?) wrote 'webist'. Is she a webist? Not bloody likely. Am I a webist? Well, if I was I'd probably be shunning this blog with some serious gusto.

What about you? Are you a webist? Have you come here just to hate?

Webist! (I don't think those guys are webist)

In other very hateworthy news, a friend challenged me to watch this video:





I got to 35 seconds and had to have a break. Then I watched a bit more, and had to give up entirely. My brain is still not fully cleansed. I'm not sure it ever will be.

"Animals worth knowing" - a nice read for a Friday arvo

Favourite book title of a Friday afternoon:

Animals worth knowing, selected from "Life histories of northern animals" (1934), by Ernest Thompson Seton

I'm thinking that a lot of animals are worth knowing, 'cause ya know, they're all cute and stuff! Some animals may be less cute than others. For instance, if you compare a koala with a cockroach, well, okay, I guess it depends on your definition of cuteness. For some, feelers and fluttery cockroach wings may be super cute. For others, like me, fluffy koalaness is more cute.

But this isn't even about what's cute, it's about what is worth knowing. I'm curious about this book. We supposedly have it on our library, so I'm going to have to check it out and see if I agree with Seton's opinion on which animals are worth knowing.

A slight spanner is thrown into the works, however, when we see that on Amazon.com, this book is listed as Animals (worth knowing), rather than Animals worth knowing. This suggests to me that the book could be basically about animals, and the information we're given in the book is worth knowing.

I'll let you know what I think when I find the book.

"I feel a blog post coming on"

"How do you spell that? Preposterousness."
"Preposteration?"
"Preposterivity?"
"It's positively preposteracious!"

This is the stuff we talk about when we've got sore brains and it's too early even for three-thirtyitis to kick in with any reasonable excuse!

This is the office of brain hurtiness at present. At the very least the majority of people in this office have sore brains from the work we're looking at in our inboxes (or, at times, not in our inboxes but elsewhere). Particularly as my colleague isn't even doing her "real work" but work that shouldn't really be hers that she's doing 'cause nobody else in this place knows how to do it. Or at least nobody who's been able to be roped into doing it.

Ssshh don't tell her I said that.

I think my work here (making your brain hurt too) is done.

Sugar Plum Fairies, dancing all around

If you feel the urge to swear but don't want to offend sensitive colleagues' ears, why not yell out, "Sugar Plum Fairies!" at the top of your lungs?

Sugar Plum Fairies is an inhabitant of our newly-cleaned-in-2012 whiteboard. Other things on the whiteboard include a map of all the different times of the day in which one can pause to eat:

• 8am-9am - Breakfast
• 9am-10am - Brorning Tea
• 10am-11am - Morning Tea
• 11am-12pm - Munch
• 12pm-2pm - Lunch
• 2pm-5pm - Postmunchitis

Some of these you may recognise from previous blog posts around here.

Also on the board at present is a note pointing to the "Naughty Fan Corner", where our fan sits sulking 'cause we made it face the wall (prevents unseemly blowing of air into library employees' eyeballs and/or carefully coiffed hair). The fan did have an outing one day, when it was loaned out to another colleague just down the corridor a little way. But the fan had been naughty once again so it's back in its corner. Sulking.

I'd go on, but I want to mention a very special author featured in our library catalogue: one William McConnel Wanklyn, who authored the works:

• The administrative control of smallpox : how to prevent or stop an outbreak (86 p., 1913)
• London public health administration : a summary showing the principal authorities, with their origin, services and powers (59 p., 1913).

It seems Mr. Wanklyn was a pretty busy guy in 1913!

To relieve crapback, butter your stuff with rock hard ButterSoft

image source

That's all I'm sayin'.

Except... Don't knock it till you've tried it!

And by "it", understand that I don't know what I'm talking about here. It's potentially all euphemism, or none of it's euphemism. It's really up to the individual!

Post munchitis brought on by kettle lack leads to crapback

If you slouch too much, it gives you crapback. If you've lacked a kettle for most of the day, you're liable to slouch (even after an emergency temporary kettle has been delivered, STAT!) (except it wasn't really stat, in fact it took a few hours...the guys who brought it claimed to have been "testing it" before delivering it to us. I think they were testing it on mulled wine). And, as mentioned previously, slouching can lead to crapback. Therefore it follows that lacking a kettle leads to crapback. Via kettleless-induced post munchitis.