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.