Today: links from others! Thanks, everyone!

From the Club Creatures: dance the old year away at Jacobs on New Year's Eve, with a night which celebrates the old and the new! (Incidentally, dancing may be a sign of superior genetics. You never know what could happen on the dance floor.)

From Glenna: the Dave Chappelle Theory, while not true, is hilarious and tinfoil-hat-wearing worthy.

From Holly: we get an extra second this New Year's Eve! How will you spend yours?

From Danny: after seeing the Dead Body Guy's abilities (and hey, did you see that DBG actually posted a comment below? How cool is that? Consider starting your career at Meet Cleaver Theatre, DBG!), check out Patrick Musimu's site. Amazing stuff.

Have a safe and happy New Year's, everyone! Back on Monday or Tuesday, depending on how the weekend goes.

I'm going through all my saved-up stuff, trying to get organized before the new year (when the main Spooky Librarians page will undergo a redesign - Folderol shouldn't be affected, though). Tomorrow brings you links from others, and there are some fun ones, so stay tuned!

'Tis the season for "year in review" articles, and there's a gigantic list of them to help you remember everything that happened in 2005.

Alert to law librarians! If you're discarding books, consider the International Law Book Facility before calling in the dumpster, won't you?

A report on America's "most literate cities" is out, and I just discovered that Cincinnati is #9 on the list. Finally, something we're doing right!

Attention, all you pessimists: It's a Wonderful Internet. Really, it is.

And last but not least, one of the best uses for wiki technology ever: The Muppet Wiki!

Photos of the trip - plus donkeys and sheep! - are up over at Flickr.

Today the papers are running a story about an Ohio man who wants to be a corpse in a film. Directors, take note. He can hold his breath for 45 seconds, he says.

If you're free this week, why not visit a reindeer herd in Scotland? Or you could prepare for the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia.

And lastly, everything at DIY Media is cool...but their political "truth collages" are the best.

Hi, I'm back! Photos from the trip east should be up shortly. In the meantime, here's a link to one of my presents. Hee.

The Guardian ran a contest in which people were asked to send in photos of their office holiday celebrations. There's a summary of the best ones, but the whole gallery's up as well. (Page 3 has a Dalek nativity scene!)

Possible belated xmas or upcoming Chanukah gift ideas: Nabaztag, a little rabbit that can tell you the weather or read your email, and cakes from Debbie, who constructs amazing confections like a dead rat cake and a treasure chest cake. Ooo. Ahhh.

Fun for a slow week at work: the Patent Room is filled with wacky (true!) ideas. Who knew people could be so creative?

And finally, a correction to an earlier post: it's turned out that the story about the Dartmouth student getting a visit from the FBI over a book was a hoax. That's a relief.

Meta announcement! I leave for Massachusetts on Wednesday and will be back next week. Folderol will be going on all next week, but will be spotty until then. So today we have a mishmash of Monday links and links that have been waiting patiently in folders for who knows how long. Onward!

First off: Happy birthday, Mom! See you tomorrow!

If you've ever wondered what toys do when no one else is around, here's one answer. Playmobil figures perform AC/DC's "The Girls Got Rhythm."

A Dartmouth student got an unexpected visit from the FBI after asking for Mao's Little Red Book via interlibrary loan. This is why the Radical Militant Librarians are ever vigilant, you see. We're fighting the good fight here. I'm seriously considering making some stickers of my own.

Swiped from the Secret Library Workers Union: get ABOLized at Automata Design. Wowzers.

Getty puts out Edit Magazine for all those interested in working with images. Good stuff.

Long ago, the PostMod crew debated whether geeks or nerds were more evolved. The Graveworm just pointed me to a site which seeks to answer this age-old question. I think someone needs to stick up for the geeks, myself; I've always identified more with them than with nerds.

Today: links from others. Thanks, everyone!

From Dr. Matt the Commenter: Bjork is sailing a ship right now. Really! "Captain Bjork" has a nice ring to it.

Holly sent me the link to Natalie Dee's site a long time ago and I keep forgetting to put it up. We both think the "stupid Ohio" drawing is fabulous.

From the good people of ookee: a music recommendation gizmo named Pandora.

From somewhere in my RSS feeds: Billboardom, a site dedicated to the strange and wonderful world of billboard advertising!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

Bleargh. Today we are featuring a lovely mix of rain, ice and snow! Enjoy this seasonal combination during your drive home tonight!

Anyway. Many happy tidings and birthday wishes to Zazoo! The Club Creatures will be DJing New Year's Eve at Jacobs. It's never too early to make plans.

The big news in library land is that the FBI is complaining about "radical militant librarians" and their reluctance to give up patron library records. Because, you know, privacy is radical these days. It didn't take long for the t-shirts and stickers to start popping up, which is fantastic. (While looking for these, I found dozens upon dozens of great librarian-related merchandise items on CafePress, ranging from the sweet and innocent to the cynical and slightly deranged. Great stuff for the librarian(s) in your life.)

Beyond the radicalism and the cynicism, there's a new concept among librarians: Library 2.0. Give it a look and see what you think.

Tomorrow: links from others!

Happy Monkey Day! Yes, really, it's Monkey Day. Who knew?

If you've had it with the holiday season, you may find some joy in this psychotic Santa display in New York City, complete with decapitated figurines. Or you could check out some of Bloody Disgusting's recommendations for holiday horror flicks. Or you could mock this year's light displays via Ugly Christmas Lights. (Most of these don't strike me as all that bad, but I do live in an area known for its tendency to take Christmas lights to an extreme.)

If you're traveling, you can vicariously live the life of a baggage screener and test your skill at identifying potential weapons in carry-ons. Wheeeeee.

I spent way too long on this dollmaker, only to find that they have no long black skirts (what's up with THAT?) and that once again I can't get the hair right. No avatar maker seems to feature the "brown/black/reddish, wavy medium-length with messy bangs" style. Mmph.

Today it's all about the kids. If you grew up in Cincinnati, you probably remember the Shillitos Christmas display with the animatronic elves in Santa's workshop. Someone has found the old displays and resurrected them in Mariemont! Time to organize an excursion!

Many people go on about their childhood memories HR Pufnstuf. I managed to miss this somehow, but have caught up on the show since then. Now there's a weblog dedicated to that weird, weird program.

Coca-Cola will roll out their new invention, Coca-Cola Blak, in Europe soon and then try it out in the States. Coke plus coffee. This is going to be...odd.

And lastly and leastly, Bush Baby Toys features several toys for your completely average urchin. I like the Terror Level Xylophone the best. Heh.

Pix of Bowie Night will be up shortly. Watch the morphing Flickr badge for details.

Finally, someone's gone and analyzed Christmas carols. Some of those classics are downright weird.

If your song preferences are more secular, why not send a Waffle House web card to someone? Sadly, no Waffle House jukebox hits are available in the music selection.

For the bored and/or geometrically obsessed: TryAngle. You can design quite the optical illusion if you want. Or design your kitchen floor, maybe.

Lovecraft seems to be everywhere these days. Now there's even Lovecraftian jewelry. This stuff is amazing. No word yet on whether it preserves your life or sanity against the Old Ones, though.

Today's links from others post is sponsored by the Netherlands, Sweden, and names which begin with Da-. Thanks, guys!

From Danny: LaCie designs new hard drive disks that look like Legos!

From Daniel, a slew of great video links:

• Russian kids take urban climbing to a whole new level. I think these kids are the new X-Men. Seriously.
• Victor Wooten shows why he's the best bass player in the world. Says Daniel: "Keep your peepers peeled for him playing the melody by just touching the strings without actually pressing them to the fretted neck. Resulting notes are pure overtone harmonics - right on the desired pitch."
• Blixa of Einsturzende Neubauten reads a housewares catalog for several commercials. These are absolutely brilliant. Watch them in order - first, second, third and fourth - to see an increasingly manic Blixa. Genius!

From Dave: The Hollywood Librarian. Woot!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. If you're in town, the annual ReinDog Parade goes on tomorrow, along with Zazoo & Satori's Bowie Tribute Night at Jacobs. Come out and say hi!

Lately there's been a brouhaha in the library world about Wikipedia and its accuracy (or lack thereof), which has raised some interesting questions. It's also pointed me to the Uncyclopedia, which is just plain hilarious.

Search engine news: GoodSearch donates money to charities every time you search the web, which is great for library types who do approximately 4598 searches every day. Also, the Xooglers weblog is authored by ex-Google employees, so there's some Google analysis, some background stories, and only a smidgen of bitterness to be found.

I cannot wait for ArchiveGrid to make its debut next year. Genealogists, get ready!

The DaVinci Institute has futurists on staff. How cool is that? One of them writes about the future of libraries, which sounds promising from his viewpoint.

Here's something I think we could use over at MCT for movie reviews: Structured Blogging, a way to write reviews with stars, asterisks, or whatever else you want to use.

And lastly, if you haven't gotten your holiday cards yet, consider the San Francisco Gate's downloadable card images. The 2004 ones are particularly good!

Tomorrow: links from others, weather permitting. (We are under a HEAVY SNOW WARNING, which means 3-6 inches. We tend to panic here in southern Ohio. I don't really know why; it snows every year.)

First off: the Reds trade Sean Casey to Pittsburgh in exchange for an okay left-handed pitcher. The hell? No one seems too happy or enthused about this, in either city. Argh.

Anyway. On to the regularly scheduled links...

This is not a real great week in history. Today's the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor bombings, tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of John Lennon's death, and on Friday the iconic double-decker buses of London will disappear. Routemasters will be replaced with regular boring-looking buses, more's the pity. (A nice tribute to the buses, complete with photos and music, is online as well.)

In 31 years a meterorite is going to hit Earth and we're all going to die! Well, maybe.

An archaeologist may have discovered King David's palace in Jerusalem. The find is causing all sorts of controversy among scientists and scholars.

Fun and strange activities: you can now ski in Dubai (really! or ice skate!) or, if you're in Philadelphia, you can see the latest amazing installation by ArtLumiere, a company which turns buildings into stunning works of art, if only temporarily.

Glenna sent me the "What Animal Are You?" quiz and it's been a hot topic here at Spooky Librarian HQ. I am a bat (shocking, I know) and Bunny is a wild dog. The descriptions are rather eerily accurate. Take it and post your results!

If you wanted to know what Aeon Flux was all about, wonder no more. Now you don't have to see the movie in order to sound knowledgable (and, judging from the reviews, seeing the movie wouldn't help anyway).

The Sesame Encyclopedia is comprehensive and pretty and FUN. I miss Roosevelt Franklin!

The oddly named Klong is a sort of creature-esque security blanket substitute for kids, evidently. I think it looks frighteningly like a face-hugger alien, myself. Eeeep.

Johnny Five is alive! Well, he is on the internet, at any rate. I wonder if Ally Sheedy knows about this site.

'Tis the season to acquire, but why not consider Discardia this year instead?

Hi there. Today is awfully chaotic. But still, there are links!

• Banksy is at it again.
• Best book storage idea I've seen in a while.
• More Fun with Flickr from Flagrant Disregard: Name That Contact!
• A while ago, I linked to '80s arcade games. Now you can enjoy the various sounds on their own as well!

RIPs to Stan Berenstain (of Berenstain Bears fame) and Wendie Jo Sperber (of Bosom Buddies fame).

From Bunny: join God's Puppet Army! Yikes. Puppet debriefings are needed, and how.

Speaking of godly things, the New York Times discovered our local monstrosity...er, Jesus statue. I hadn't heard the "MC 62-Foot Jesus" nickname before, but I am so calling it that from now on.

One New Orleans Christmas display showed a great sense of humour. So, of course, some people got offended and they had to change it. Fortunately, there are photos to show the original design.

And lastly, for no real reason, a whole assortment of great Cthulhu links. Huzzah!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

Once again, it's World AIDS Awareness Day. I hope that one day, this won't be an annual observance, because it won't be a major issue any longer. I've been hoping for this for a while now.

A few interesting links, not related to the above:

• MoveOn has a Flickr site where people can put a human face on their situations and opinions. This is a neat idea.
• For the first time since Gutenberg invented the printing press, an illuminated Bible is being crafted by hand.
• The UK has begun a massive project - a national memorial inscription database.

Tomorrow: links from others!

Who knew that Frankenstein and Dracula actually encountered one another in reality long ago? How cool is that?

Moving westward from Transylvania...the Rosslyn Chapel, mentioned in the DaVinci Code and in oodles of Templar lore before that, is "deciphered" and the many facets of Untold London are unveiled to online readers.

Closer to home, the Mothman legend lives on in Athens, and hey! why not check out the pig, chicken and cow population of America?

And lastly, the Magician's Hidden Library features a wealth of information for the aspiring magician.

Today's entry ended up as a hodgepodge of pop culture history. We start off in the 1960s, when Richard Scarry's books were well-read and well-loved by kids. They're still well-read and well-loved, of course, they're just a little different these days. (The comments are great, too.)

Moving on to the 1980s, nearly every game you played at the arcade seems to be online now.

In the 1990s, there was RuPaul. Who knew there were so many different RuPaul dolls?

And nowadays, we have impromptu dance parties/protests at Wal-Marts (this is brilliant, and one of the very few reasons I'd go to a Wal-Mart these days) and DVDs may be made obsolete. Soon people will be spending more time transferring their media to different storage systems than they will actually watching or listening to said media.

Knitting will always be around, apparently. Now you can use the Random Stripe Generator to create patterns!

Hi there. While I get over travel lag (which included a non-starting car - not mine, but my dad's, which meant driving him back to his place out in the middle of nowhere last night), check out the splendiferous Altered Books. Back tomorrow!

Today is one big crazy travel day for most Americans. Yeehaw. Therefore...

You can play Airport Insecurity if you have a mobile phone or a Palm or some such gadget, and unnerve suspicious fellow travelers. Or, if your travels involve subways instead of airports, there's Subway Scramble for the downloading.

In olden days, travel was more fun. Or, at least, they tried harder to make it seem fun.

If you'd like a surreal t-shirt to wear on the plane or train or at the family dinner table, try the Hipster T-Shirt Generator. I ended up with the phrase "I like spines" below a picture of a house. Bonus points if you can figure out a meaning to the shirt and explain it to others successfully!

And when you just want to imagine that you're somewhere else, there's PyramidCam and an interactive map of Narnia. Good luck, happy Thanksgiving, and I'll see you Monday!

The posting schedule this week is going to be erratic due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Tomorrow I set off for Chicago to spend the weekend with my dad's side of the family. Hopefully I won't be driving through a blizzard to get there.

At any rate, today's links skew toward the geeky. Want to build a robot for an office war? ReadyMechs to the rescue! If you're ready to move on to a higher level, you could build a Dalek. Extermination functions not required, but a plus. If your Dalek (or other mechanized instrument of destruction) runs on electricity, world domination might be an issue unless you have this handy World Electric Guide.

For scientists tired of explaining why science is not always the way it looks in the movies, LabLit does a great job of exploring "the culture of science in fiction and fact."

The I Dare You candy collection is perfect for the 12-year-old boy in your life...or perhaps the person in your life who acts like a 12-year-old boy. I know oodles, myself.

And lastly, a real-life scientific horror story: one man's search for the truth behind his lobotomy. He survived the procedure without much damage, but he was one of the few lucky ones.

More fun with Flickr: librarian trading cards! You can see ours in the pool; if you're a librarian, make your own and add it to the group. (Fd's Flickr Toys also has calendar, badge, and motivational poster options among its many fun features.)

Welcome to life in the 21st century, where you can choose to read the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet via emoticons or text messaging, depending on your preference. I think I like the text messaging option better. If you're reading the full text of classic novels and thinking that perhaps they're not so classic, you can see which Amazon reviewers agree with you. (I do agree with the Faulkner reviewer. Someday I will try again, but I have never really understood Faulkner at all.)

Behold, Stick Figures in Peril! Will no one think of the stick figure stunt workers who risk their two-dimensional lives every day?

And for your arty (if slightly disturbing) quota of the day, I bring you Mouse Angel. I think the Lakshmi mouse is my favorite. (It's Lakshmi, right? Not Kali or Shiva or some other Hindu deity?)

This weekend there's a psychic festival in town, and if Glenna has her way we'll be there to get our past lives critiqued or our auras recolored or whatever. Good times. Say hi if you're there!

From the Graveworm: are ghosts really all that scary? Also, an interview with Daniel Ash. (Bauhaus is in Cleveland tomorrow. Ooooh. Ahhh.)

The rest of today's entry consists of some truly odd links I've been saving up and can't fit in anywhere else. Random Friday fun! Have at them!

• Pringles WiFi!
• The effect of cheese on one's dreams!
• A campaign to rename rats Great Pointed Archers. With Frogger-like game included!
• Hand grenade oil lamps!
• The 1-hour Circle, which, um, draws a circle in an hour!
• An actual paper titled "The Contribution of the Infield Fly Rule to Western Civilization (and vice versa)"!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

Today, we bring you library news from around the country.

• A librarian from Yahoo! was at the Internet Librarian conference in Monterey, and gives his recap of the experience.
• Making Visible the Invisible is a stunning art installation at the circulation desk of Seattle's central public library. It's also reason #34598 why I need to visit the Pacific Northwest ASAP.
• Attention preservationists: watertight vaults are not always truly watertight, as many Louisiana and Mississippi librarians discovered after Hurricane Katrina. Double-check your disaster plans.
• Analygis mashes Google Maps with census data to give you all sorts of information on a town or zip code. There are apparently fourteen Native Americans living within a mile of me. Interesting stuff.
• Librivox is looking for volunteers to record books that are in the public domain. I am totally signing up my dad for this project.

And lastly, if you're as sick of people misusing the word "literally" as I am, you will love this weblog which points out the craziness as it happens.

Tomorrow: links from others!

Today: spooky tech. The exception is the Lego 3D Designer, which lets you create anything you want and then order the bricks to make your design a reality. This is not to say that you couldn't create something spooky, of course...

I think the new Olympic mascots are kind of spooky, myself. I also think the Chinese have a lot of nerve including a Tibetan antelope in the mix, seeing as how they are not exactly great protectors of all things Tibet. Grrr.

You can pretend to battle the mascots, or anyone else you want, courtesy of the Surrealist monster battle. According to the surrealists, my monster is an armored blob. Er.

In a great parody of a Chick tract, the Cthulhu witnesses convince the nonbelievers that yes, you do want to be among the first to die. Lovecraft would be so proud.

The Graveworm beat me to posting this, but this study of the effectiveness of tin foil helmets should be widely disseminated, I believe.

Forbes is giving you an opportunity to email your future self. Yes, really! Remind yourself of what 2005 was like. You'll either cry or laugh about it twenty years from now.

Alternatively, you could go all Back to the Future-esque and email yourself plans to build a flying saucer. The flux capacitor plans are optional.

In London, you can dine at the Cafe in the Crypt at St. Martin's. How cool is that? Over on this side of the pond, the secrets of the Haunted Mansion are online for the brave and/or the inquisitive.

I've been felled with the sinus headache from hell all day. But I did find a fun time-waster:

You can make your own at the TekTek Dream Creator.
(This does look like me, actually. I had different hair, but Bunny said it needed to be "messier." Thanks, sweetheart.)

Have you ever looked at a book cover and thought that you could do better? Well, here's your chance! Penguin is looking for photographs to illustrate the covers of a few books by Hunter S. Thompson, Virginia Woolf and others. It's like Jones Soda, only with a more literary (and potentially more permanent) bent.

Synesthesia alert! If you've ever wondered what color a word is, the Color Code uses web images to give you an answer. The only problem with this idea is that all the colors tend to blend into a beige brown blah. Folderol looks sort of like a cool taupe.

When an artist starts working on Barbies, great things happen. Check out the version of Death!

We went out to dinner with some friends over the weekend, some of whom smoke, and they nearly walked out with the chef's lighter accidentally. With this in mind, the Six Degrees of Smoking project, in which lighters travel from person to person with photographic evidence, seems like a good plan - if the people remember to take the photos, at any rate!

Remember actress Daryl Hannah? She's gone off and invented a board game called Liebrary. It's true!

Help, I've been seduced by Sudoku. Supposedly it's good for my brain, but I'm not so sure...

Speaking of being seduced by strangeness...I try to stick up for George Lucas, really I do, because Star Wars was an integral part of my childhood. I have to admit, though, that when I watched Revenge of the Sith, this was very close to what was going through my head.

And now, on to the links from others. Thanks, everyone!

• From Glenna: the Taurid meteor showers are supposed to peak Saturday night.
• From Holly: a totally rad '80s night in Chicago.
• From Todd: the Daiichi Hanyu hotels in Japan are going to start offfering Hello Kitty-themed weddings. Wow.

And finally, one more reason I wish I lived in Seattle, or thereabouts: the Salon of Shame.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday!

If you are, have been, live with, or want to be a librarian...

• read the Stick Library comics!
• play the shelving game to see how well you know your LC skills.
• check out the new PubSub community lists, especially the library list.
• if you have a weblog, put yourself on the blogging librarians Frappr map.

For those not necessarily obsessed with librarianship: find out what the most stolen car is in your state. Honda Civics are the most stolen overall, but in my state they didn't even make the top ten - Oldsmobiles are apparently the cool thing here.

Also, a computerized effort to recreate the Byzantium of 1200 A.D. This is super cool.

Tomorrow: links from others. As a preview, consider setting aside two minutes of silence tomorrow to think on those who have died as a result of war around the world recently.

Okay, today we have Tuesday links to make up for yesterday's Wednesday links. Got it? Before that, however, we have some local news. I saw the photos of a goat on a trampoline last week when it ran on the front page here, but now Deadspin has got hold of it and is pointing out the "goat poll" and accompanying hilarious comments. (The best part is that the goat-on-a-trampoline angle isn't even the focus of the original story. Do goats normally cavort on their hind legs on trampolines?)

If you like goats on trampolines, you will probably love sheep playing volleyball. The site's in German, as it's for Mentos, but it's pretty easy to figure out.

Fun with Flash: you can decorate a cake with gel and sprinkles on one site, or create a space robot at another. I think my SpookyBot would make a perfect explorer.

There's now a root beer-flavored energy drink. I'm having a hard time envisioning this. BrightFeet Slippers, on the other hand, I can imagine easily. As long as you don't run into any obstacles above ankle level, they should work perfectly!

And finally, for something completely different: Puppet101 shows you how puppet magic is made.

Hey, I finally updated the Steampunk Librarian, and will hopefully be on a more regular schedule there, maybe 2-3 times a week or so. Comments/suggestions/complaints are welcome!

RIP, Mana ("China") Nishiura. Shonen Knife won't be the same without you.

I didn't have any coffee this morning and thought today was Wednesday, so you get spooky stuff instead of techy pop culture links (I do try to stay on topic every day, believe it or not). So tomorrow we'll pretend it's Tuesday. We should all be thoroughly confused by the end of the week.

They've found the remains of Copernicus under a medieval Polish cathedral. How cool is that? In other underground news, a secret British "city" constructed during WWII is now public knowledge, and the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society has created a silent film version of Call of Cthulhu. (What? Cthulhu lives underwater. The segue sort of makes sense.)

The Dead Puppet Show is beautiful and disturbing in a David Lynch sort of way. David Lynch himself is busy immersing himself in transcendental meditation. This seems fitting, somehow.

Today's theme, although I didn't plan it, seems to be something along the lines of "everything old is new again." Without further ado...

• The Pet Shop Boys composed a new score to Battleship Potemkin.
• Nick Cave writes a Western movie. (Nice mustache at the premiere, Nick.)
• David Kime uses melted crayons and dolls to create new art pieces.
• Coke has commissioned artists to create new designs using the old Coke bottle shape, and then the new bottles will be sold at clubs so designated drivers can look ultra cool. Or something like that, anyway.
• Pierre et Gilles, a French art duo, are not old, but the news here is that they have an exhibit going on right now in Shanghai, where homosexuality is banned. Interesting, no? (More of their work is here, although the site's in French. But since it's mostly photos, the language doesn't matter much.)

It's Links from Others Day! Thanks, everyone.

From Glenna: Wild Mood Swings, where your mood takes you to a random website; Moonscopes from Yellow Springs; and a punch in the stomach over the 2,000 dead in Iraq.

From Holly: a camel library! Cool!

From Bunny: Meet Cleaver Theatre has been reviewed in the Secret Scroll Digest. They like us! They really really like us!

From a few different places: What Kind of Cheese Are You? (I am Brie. Woo!) and the ultra-cute story of Finnegan the squirrel, who is being raised with a litter of Pomeranians.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

Meta-librarian geekout moment: So I've been wondering why my (admittedly crappy) photo of Grokker pins from Internet Librarian has been getting so many hits...and then this morning I looked at the IL Blog to find that Marydee Ojala had linked to it! (Marydee is the editor of Online Magazine. She was also on our flight out from Monterey to Salt Lake City and was happy to see that someone else was a fan of Kraftwerk.)

Grokker was the big hit of the conference, judging from the crowd around its booth at the exhibit hall. A similar visually-oriented way of using the web is at Mooter.

Happy Worldwide Usability Day! There are events going on in 35 different countries. Go and spread the word, and share your opinions on technology, usability, and humanity.

From a library list which labeled this "how to drive your shelvers crazy," I bring you...broken shelves. Purposefully broken, that is. It's a German company, which makes sense because I'd expect these shelves to be in the background of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or some similar expressionist film.

For the legal librarians, LLRX has a good summary of what's going on with the various courts affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Walt Crawford examines the recent phenomenon of life trumping blogging. Folderol readers, here's a serious question: would you prefer quality over quantity, or do you like the current setup?

For the geographically geeky (and I'm including myself here), check out Earth Contest. With prizes, even!

Tomorrow: links from others. Stay tuned.

Geek alert: Worldwide D&D GameDay is this Saturday! Prepare your character sheets and polish your dice! (I say this with love. I'm a geek myself, if not a D&D-playing one.)

You could also theoretically drink absinthe while you play, although your character might die awfully quickly. Absinthe is making a comeback in the U.S. Hooray!

By the end of this month, British pubs will be able to stay open as late as they want to, which will be a radical change from having to close at 11 every night. No word yet on whether they'll serve absinthe eventually.

If you work at a place that goes by Mystery House, you should most definitely put out a weblog detailing what goes on there.

Finally, Poly9 uses Google Earth to solve the pesky problem of "where was that UFO again?" Hee.

And verily, the Great Wall of Bread appeared, and there was much rejoicing throughout the land...until those who worshipped toast learned of the Great Wall...

First it was knitted robots zombies. Then it was knitted zombies. And now, there's a whole knitted digestive system on the loose. When will the madness end?!?

Has anyone experimented with the cold heat soldering iron yet? Does it work? Does it break immediately?

And lastly, I would have bid on this if I'd had a way to play it. This was the Holy Grail of Thompson Twins devotees back in the day!

Man, going to a conference - even a very cool one like Internet Librarian - really wreaks havoc with posting good Halloween links. Here it is Halloween already and no time to write anything! I also missed the local horror festival. Dang.

(Incidentally, the photos from last week are up - click on the Flickr badge to see them.)

AMC finishes its Monsterfest marathon tonight, and their site has various games and other fun ways to occupy your time if you get bored - or too scared - to watch.

Glenna warns that the Landover Baptists are on the scene, hunting wiccans and doing their doggone best to stop Halloween. (It's not serious, don't worry.) In a similar vein, the Onion tells us to watch out for Homeland Security officers searching trick-or-treat bags.

Fun spooky art for the holiday: Deviant Art, of course, and also Dan Henderson's Tyranny of Confection.

And for those of us who went to school in Athens, home of an amazing Halloween celebration, there's a documentary entitled "Athens Asylum" all about the Ridges. Oooo.

Have a great Halloween, everyone! See you tomorrow.

We're back! Photos from Internet Librarian will go up on the Flickr account soon - I caved and got a pro account, so expect an avalanche of images!

Friday! We'll be gone all next week - I may post next Friday, depending on jet lag and the like. On to the links from others!

From Danny: the progress of someone building the Lego version of the Star Wars destroyer. We have something very similar to this that we haven't built yet. We may be using this as a cheat sheet in the future!

Also from Danny: "Academia Embraces Spooky Studies." Woo!

From Glenna: Breast Cancer Action, for people who are more activist-oriented, I suppose.

Bootsy Collins, funkmaster extraordinaire and native Cincinnatian, has recorded two songs cheering on the Bengals. Truth is stranger than fiction...

Survivor Toyland: full of drama, injuries, and action figures in compromising poses.

Happy 40th birthday to the Slurpee! Did you know that the man who first created the Slurpee was a convenience store owner named Omar Knedlik? Sounds like something out of the Simpsons.

Have a spiffy weekend and week, everyone! See you next week, or maybe the Monday after that.

Next week, the Spooky Librarians will be living up to their name by being at the Internet Librarian conference in Monterey (we're staying at the Portola Plaza Hotel, come by and say hi!) and also running around with Remo D. and the other crazed denizens of the Manor of Mayhem. We'll take lots of pictures and share them when we get back!

Meanwhile, it's time to safety-proof your Halloween costume. (I love the illustrations here, but I really think they should have done a "Goofus & Gallant" style comparison of safe and unsafe costumes.)

I hadn't heard of blog carnivals until now. Have I been under a rock or something?

I know that articles on libraries and librarians can get awfully repetitive (exhibit A: the saga between Google Print and libraries and authors), but this article celebrating libraries has the great descriptive phrase "book worms and journal raccoons" which I'd never heard before. I like the journal raccoon label and want to adopt it for my own!

Fortunately, Kurt Vonnegut has our back. (Thanks to the Graveworm for sending this in.)

The Flickr group of Libraries & Librarians (which I'm a part of, marginally - I have to take more photos!) meets Google Maps. We are legion. Muhahaha.

Finally, the always-cool Library of Congress has a new online exhibit of women's suffrage scrapbooks. Very cool.

Tomorrow: links from others! Thanks to everyone who's sent in stuff already!

I can definitely think of times when a secret room would come in very handy. Maybe I'll make one!

Coming up this weekend: seasonal festivities like the annual Pumpkin Festival in Circleville, along with non-season activities like the International World Rock Paper Scissors Championship in Toronto. You can even check out the current league champions. Go scissors!

Tis the season for both superstitions and the World Series, and of course there's a link. Baseball players are crazy superstitious. Or they suffer from OCD. Or both. (I am sort of torn on the World Series. I think I'm pulling for the White Sox, if only to have a Red Sox/White Sox back to back World Series championship occurrence that will probably signify the coming of the apocalypse.)

Great reading: Esoterica, the Journal. Hey Mr. Graveworm, check this out.

Fun random link of the day: create your own giallo! Or rather, have a giallo randomly created for you. The plot of mine: "A man is butchered. A blind student is mistaken for somone else by the perpetrator of the the crime, and after discovering an old painting, she must prove herself innocent, even though the detective may be involved in the crime." Whoa.

Now THIS is cool. As a way to raise funds for CanTeen, a New Zealand organization working with teenagers who have cancer, the Muppets have redone their "Mah Na Mah Na" song for a 60-second commercial. (The new title: "Bandanana," for the bandannas they're selling.) Rowlf and the Swedish Chef and Kermit and the Electric Mayhem Band all make appearances in the ad, which you can watch online. Bandanana!

Also cool: little knitted robots, conquering the world one stitch (purl?) at a time. Soon they will set out to battle the frightening knitted zombies. Yarrrrrrrrn! Yarrrrrrrrrn!

October is National Cider and Perry Month. Drink up! I had no idea what perry was, being an American and all. Perry, it turns out, is made from pears. Ooooh. I so want to try this now.

In a faint nod to the overcommercialization of the holiday season, I am putting up a link to a Christmas tree. But this is not just any Christmas tree. This is a Very Electronic Christmas Tree which teaches you how to solder! (It's also from American Scientific & Surplus Store, which gives it added cool points.)

Bunny sent in a link to the new DigiMemo pad software, which lets you use ordinary pens and paper to put handwritten notes online. This looks pretty cool.

And lastly, in scary pop culture news: Marilyn Manson is creating a perfume and cosmetic line. Smells Like Heresy? Dope Show Scent? Sweet Dreams (of Ritualistic Killing and Other Pretensions?) Who knows?

It's always nice when my hometown gets in the news. Er, well, maybe not so much.

Today we are all about art at Folderol HQ. To wit:

• nature art via the New England foliage!
• science art via Visions of Science!
• art to tell the story of Burning Man, which is art in itself!
• art mobs! (This is a great idea.)
• an art project - black mail boxes, i.e. black mailboxes, i.e. blackmail boxes! Brilliant!

Wow, today is busy. Thanks to everyone who sent in a link!

From Bunny: the freefall of George Bush. This is oddly satisfying and calming.

From Glenna: The Basic Laws of Stupdity.

From Nicole: fun robots and skulls and whatnot for your home!

From a mailing list I'm on: Haunted Times magazine is on the stands!

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday!

First off, apologies to Dr. Matt for forgetting to post about National Coming Out Day on Tuesday. Here's hoping it was a good day for everyone!

News from the Obvious Department: classes are getting increasingly high-tech, and librarians aren't your typical shushing spinsters any more. (One of the librarians interviewed was Jessamyn of librarian.net, who's going to be among the presenters at Internet Librarian. This is exciting!)

Google now has a feed reader, which I haven't tried out yet (I am still loyal to Bloglines), but may be interesting for the future. Also, in other techy news, meebo is a web-based chat aggregator of sorts, which seems pretty cool and minimally invasive, and Common Times shows the news in a cool new way.

For the law librarians and personnel among us: The Graveworm is now hosting a page for random weirdness found in legal publishing. There's going to be some good stuff there soon - I got a preview yesterday!

And lastly, cookbooks for the literary-minded. I could get into those, I think.

Tomorrow: links from others!

Wow, the Halloween season is chock-full of great stuff this year. Chicago is putting on the Music Box Massacre this weekend, and AMC begins Monsterfest the weekend after that. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has an exhibit titled Photography and the Occult that looks fantastic as well.

Meanwhile, for those of us stuck at our desks, there's all sorts of good stuff to read and experience on the interweb. Dark, But Shining continues its countdown of monsters (and even Animal from the Muppets gets a mention!); Tales to Astonish reviews several horror movies (and, in the process, points to one of the best t-shirts ever); and for the gameplayers, Lovecraft Country and Vampires! is there to enthrall. This is the best time of year, no question.

The annual Ig Nobel Prizes have been handed out! I think my favorite was the one involving locusts watching Star Wars. It's true!

Today's argument between the Graveworm and myself (we have one every other day or so) concerns the Three Investigators, which (whom?) we both love, and the news of upcoming movies and TV shows featuring the Investigators, which fills me with fear. The Graveworm is trying to tell me that it may not be so bad, Harry Potter films well, blah blah blah, but I remain unconvinced. (Incidentally, Tunnel Two is a neat Investigators site, although it hasn't been updated for some time.)

Muslim girls have fallen in love with Fulla, an Islamic answer to Barbie. I think Fulla looks pretty cool, myself. Apparently she comes with a prayer mat as an accessory!

Meanwhile, Playmobil is currently featuring a rather inexplicable security checkpoint set, complete with security staff and traveler/potential suspect. The comments on the toy are pretty funny.

Project Puppet! For all your puppet project needs! This is awesome. I may make use of this for Meet Cleaver Theatre.

On Thursday you can pay tribute to and celebrate the life of legendary DJ John Peel, as it'll be John Peel Day in the UK. See, I'm telling you in advance so you can get there!

While you're in London, you could check out the Sherlock Holmes Society as well. They seem to be having all sorts of reenactment fun. And for the more introverted, there's the Baker Street Dozen site.

Great Flickr collection of the week: an assortment of photos taken by someone who worked as a still photographer in Hollywood from 1914 to 1932.

The Bubble Project uses speech bubble stickers to create art and humor and all sorts of emotional responses. Some are hilarious.

The Ephemera Society celebrates the assorting of various sundry objects. Hooray!

Today: links from others! Thanks, everyone.

From Zazoo:

• Here's your scary news article of the day. There's a new bill in Indiana that would prohibit gays, lesbians and single people in Indiana from using medical science to assist them in having a child. Ahh!!! Very "1984", don't you think?
• Check out this concept car. Amazing, and very, very weird...
• Great interview with Kermie!

From Nicole: Do They Know It's Halloween?

From some random website: The Personality Defect Quiz. I took it and discovered I was the following:

Emo Kid

You are 42% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 42% Brutal, and 14% Arrogant.
You are the Emo Kid, best described as a quiet pussy!

(The best part about this is that I was arguing about emo with the Graveworm yesterday. Hee.)

Have a good weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

Also! The big library news: The Spooky Librarians (yes, both of us!) are going to Internet Librarian in Monterey at the end of this month! If you're going to be there, let us know!

So I was wondering why every other news story this week seems to be about bird flu and flu shots and the influenza epidemic of 1918 and the any-moment-now bird flu pandemic which will wipe out a few million...and it turns out that it's Pandemic Flu Awareness Week. Well, there you go.

Bunny has a new office (with a door! Ooo! Ahh!) and is looking for some good posters. I suggested Neil Gaiman's ALA poster because Bunny has been known to stand in that same position (with that same "yes? can I help you?" expression) while wearing a leather jacket. Any other ideas? His library is mostly full of hard science and death-related books, so the Muppets or Stellaluna don't really fit in too well.

Some libraries let you check out bicycles now. How cool is that?

In response to Google Print (or it may be a coincidence, but I doubt it), the Open Content Alliance has sprung into being. The future of information is going to be verrrry interesting.

Some browsing fun: Leaf through Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks! Explore the seedy world of mid-century Canadian pulp fiction! Study the plethora of weblogs authored by and for law professors!

Tomorrow: links from others. Stay tuned.

We begin today's Folderol with Bunny's touching poetic tribute to Nipsey Russell.

-------
There once was a man named Nipsey
Whose jokes made him seem rather "tipsy"
He contracted the "C"
Found it difficult to "P"
He's now underground in Poughkeepsie!
-------

(Bunny could not believe I didn't mention Nipsey's death yesterday. Consider it remedied.)

Today is Dine for America Day. Go to a restaurant and help out hurricane victims. It's a win-win situation!

It's October, which means that a whole slew of horror-related weblogs are celebrating in style. Dark, But Shining points out several great sites to check out this month.

News of the Weird: there is now a patron saint of Russian nuclear long-distance bombers. Be sure to construct a small shrine to Saint Fyodor in your underground bunker.

The Airplane Book shows you - in brilliant 1970s color - how much fun air travel is. Wheeeee! If you'd rather be under the ground than above it, check out Gallerisation Underground for some incredible map paintings. And if it's maps you like, Adrian Leskiw's Fictional Road Maps make for great studying.

[Updated to fix some links which Blogger impolitely broke during publication yesterday. Thanks to Mr. Graveworm for pointing this out!]

The local Kroger already has Christmas items at the front of the store. This is getting out of hand. Toys R Us has gotten in on the action as well by releasing a list of their top ten picks for the season's best toys. I've only heard of a few of them, but am eager to see what the Lego Viking ship looks like.

Also, CNet lists the ten worst products of the last decade. The best part is that this list actually has one item in common with the Toys R Us list, which is rather bizarre. Hee.

Retro moment: remember the original Scooby-Doo cartoon which had those groovy songs during the chase scenes? Now they're all together on a CD! I always wondered who Hanna-Barbera had locked up in a studio somewhere to sing all those '60s-esque pop ditties.

Retro moment 2: if you liked those strange little kids' books which featured Mr. Cranky and Little Miss Chatterbox and the like, you will love the official site where you can create a "Mr. Man" or "Little Miss" of your very own. (Warning: the site has sound; a British male voice walks you through the creation process. Maybe you can pretend you're listening to the BBC.)

For the role-playing geeks: Katrina, The Gathering. Heh.

For the arty geeks: The GrooveTube turns your TV into a sort of abstract Lite-Brite. Why you would want to do this is a little beyond me, but hey, it looks cool.

For Bunny: Words created by the Simpsons. You mean cromulent isn't a real word? D'oh!

Hi there. Welcome to the new redesigned Folderol, which has been a long time coming. There may be bugs in the system, and there are two important changes:

1) I'm trying out Blogger comments instead of HaloScan. If you don't like them, though, let me know and I'll switch back.
2) The RSS feed may have changed - check the XML graphic on the left if you think the subscription may have gotten wonky in the changeover.

If you like/hate/want to change something, let me know - like most Spooky Librarians pages, this is a work in progress!

Anyway. On to the links!

Lego figures are always wonderful. Lego figures portraying an opening night at a modern art exhibition are absolutely fantastic. Be sure to check out the Warhol offering, and also the shark tank!

It's October, and officially Halloween season. GoreyDetails features all things Gorey, plus those great haunted portraits and more! The Society for Art of Imagination is not solely composed of spooky art, but the fantasy angle can definitely veer in that direction. Meanwhile, a huge collection of literary figures, as portrayed by various artists, will take up some hours of your time. (In keeping with the spooky angle, Lovecraft and Poe are among the authors.)

And lastly, art made fun: water sculpture (oooh, ahhh) and balloon lamps (wow!).