One last thing, suggested by the Graveworm...





I don't look like ANY of these people! But it's fun anyway. (Note the frazzled expression in my photo. See, I need a break for a few days.)

I'm leaving again! That's right, I just got back and now I'm going to be gone tomorrow and Friday. Life gets back to normal, sort of, on Monday.

For now, some cool links that range all over the week's daily themes:

• for Tuesday's toy theme: what are the ten worst (i.e. most unsafe) toys out this year? Man, back when I was young we had steel jarts and no helmets and...hey there! Get off my lawn!
• for today, the ultimate spooky librarian site: Death Reference.
• for tomorrow's library-themed day: temporary reading tattoos and a huge organized repository of found photos.
• for Friday, Dec. 1: the AIDS poster collection. Take some time on Friday to think.

Have a safe & spiffy weekend, everyone. Back on Monday!

And we're back! A belated RIP to Robert Altman, too.

Can you balance art with family life? This is a long-standing question, but here's another stab at finding an answer. If you want to steal art, on the other hand, you have a whole other set of questions going on in your brain.

Play with your food: make a Rubik cake! Or play with your photos and Warholize them! Or buy tiny souvenirs and set them in real-situation photos, like this photographer.

And finally, for those of you who (sometimes deservedly) laugh at Ohio, look out: the movie stars are coming to Cleveland to film.

Hey, it's almost that day! Soon I will be in Chicago, watching not the parades, not the football, but the dog show. Heh.

Speaking of, the San Francisco Macy's has adoptable kittens and puppies in their Christmas windows this year. Are they not adorable?

In case you decide to decorate the house this weekend, the Antique Christmas Lights Museum might offer some inspiration.

And if you're visiting others for the holiday and want to get away from said others for a little while, DropSpots is a new activity that's similar to geocaching and letterboxing, only with Google Maps as a guide. They started out a little while ago and have been adding spots pretty quickly, so there may be one in your area!

For the spooky among us: here's a whole raft of creepy-looking Bollywood horror posters, and here's a strange true story about the Winchester House in California. (Apparently they're making a movie out of this story, or so the rumor goes.)

Have a great holiday and/or weekend, everyone! Folderol will be back on Tuesday.

Since this will be a short week due to the Thanksgiving holiday, I'm throwing the theme days out the window and putting out a smorgasboard of items.

From Satori: London is, once again, the hip place to be. My favorite quote from the article: "Everyone wants to look more Day-Glo and loonified than the next person.”

From Zazoo: the Beatles are back, this time in mash-up format.

From Danny (hi, Danny, good to hear from you again!): the face of Jack the Ripper has been revealed. (I don't know if this helps any, though - it looks pretty generic to me.)

From all over the web: how familiar are you with some very familiar logos? Play Guess the Logo and find out! (I suck at this; I got 27.52%.)

Every year, the Penny Arcade rulers prove that geeks have huge hearts via the charity of Child's Play. Think about it, won't you?

And finally, speaking of nothing, why not consider a giant inflatable iceberg for your enjoyment next summer?

First, a moment of silence for the VHS, which died earlier this month. At least, that's what some people say. Vinyl is making a resurgence in the music market, so who knows what might happen in the future?

On to perkier news. Motorhead is sponsoring a kids' soccer team! How awesome is that?

Also, the winners of the "Encyclopedia Brown for District Attorney" contest have been announced. I always suspected that Count Olaf was a Republican...

Remember the Spirograph? Now it's available in pen form. Weird.

If you're casting about for new stuff to read, I agree with the NY Observer's recommendation of Philip Kerr. It's not happy fluffy material, but it's good and layered and damn interesting.

Today: links from others! Thanks, everyone.

From several library sites and also from Susan (Susan! What a blast from the past! Thanks so much for writing!): a student gets tasered in a library. Video of the incident is here (thank God for YouTube and technology - otherwise this might get dismissed as a wild rumor).

From the Graveworm: in keeping with Wednesday's post about Tesla, the BBC has an article about the promise of wireless power.

Also from the Graveworm, who is sort of obsessed with 1111: what it means when you see a series of ones all the time. (Fortunately, Mr. Graveworm doesn't put too much stock in this story.)

From Courtney: do men use cell phones like birds use their plumage? I have to say I've never noticed a man's cell phone in that way. I wonder if I'd be oblivious to pretty feathers if I were a bird.

From Bunny: which tarot card are you? Apparently I am the Moon. (Bunny was the Devil. Hee. Together, we are mega-spooky!)

And finally, a reminder from AdBusters: Buy Nothing Day is only a week away.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

Okay, I know about LibraryThing (and have even started cataloging a few of our books - a very few, that is), but has anyone tried Shelfari yet? It looks very similar, but there must be some differences.

While we're asking around, has anyone tried MediaConvert? Evidently it lets you convert practically anything - audio, images, documents, you name it.

Librarians of the Week: the Butt-Kicking Librarians (who study martial arts) and the Men of Texas Libraries (who have put together a calendar for 2007).

The libraries of Timbuktu are falling apart and need your help. I think we should have a program like the PeaceCorps, only for renovating/restoring/creating libraries.

And finally, for the book collectors among us: the Bookplate Junkie shows off some gems.

Tomorrow: links from others!

Hey, it's Geography Awareness Week! Are you geographically aware? If not, we'll try to help out a bit today, but only in terms of aerial travel. For instance, soon you'll be able to listen to your iPod on a plane without draining the batteries (woohoo! My Ipod died on my flight back from Monterey, and I was sad).

Also from the air: roof design - and advertising - is suddenly becoming much more important, thanks to Google Earth.

The ultimate air traveler, civilian-turned-space explorer Anousheh Ansari, has a Flickr account depicting her trip into space. (At least, I think this is her account; at any rate, the photos are neat.)

If you'd rather travel virtually, SynthTravels is for you. This is just plain weird. Cool and far-out, but weird.

And for those of you impatiently waiting for something spooky rather than geographical: how about Nikolai Tesla's possible involvement in the 1908 explosion/detonation/meterorite crash in Tunguska, Russia? (Thanks for the pointer, Mr. Graveworm!)

News from the past: a Roman shipwreck has just been discovered!

News from the recent past: The IgNoble ceremonies were last month, and I completely missed it. Sorry about that. Happily, you can read all about it.

In the future, we will all have vendomat restaurants, just like they thought we would in the '50s! And what's more, we will have reverse vending machines! And we will have pizza in cones! And we will have doors on cubicles! (Actually, the cubicle door is reasonably priced, considering the psychological benefits it would provide.)

Art tricks for the non-arty: mypictr takes a photo and turns it into a profile pic for Flickr, MySpace, Gmail, etc. This can be useful if you don't have photo editing software!

In Venice, they're finally designing a plan of floodgates to protect the city. They're lucky they haven't had some disaster yet, really.

This one's for Glenna: the role of female villains on the stage, and how they always had to get their comeuppance. (They also point out that villains, of course, are much more interesting.)

If you like the idea of fantasy leagues, but would rather watch movies than sports, perhaps Fantasy Moguls is for you!

And finally, some nice pretty escapist art: clothespin dolls and lovely scenery behind them.

Links from others today. Thanks, everyone!

From the Graveworm: A real-life Fox Mulder warns that aliens could attack us any second! Also from the Graveworm: a small-scale Foucault's Pendulum (check out the video) and a call to arms against Wal-Mart.

From Joseph: the International Lyrics Playground.

From Chuck: another dead person wins an election. We should just start voting zombies into office.

From Zazoo: Culture Club at war!

From several library blogs: Ms. Dewey, Microsoft's sort-of virtual sort-of librarian. I wouldn't exactly recommend her for serious research, but she can be pretty funny, depending on what you type in. It also gets entertaining if you ignore her for a while.

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone! See you Monday.

Hey, want to know how much the staff of various Congressional representatives make (or were making up until this week)? LegiStorm can tell you, although it's a twisted maze of lists (it's interesting to click on a name and see if they work for more than one politician, however).

In more DC-related research news, the Library of Congress is debuting a new search engine. It's in beta, of course, so be prepared for wacky wonkiness.

Stuff I learned from Internet Librarian, part 1 of a series: Nationmaster has all sorts of neat stats and graphs and whatnot for research geeks. (For instance, South America and the former Soviet Union are good places to get murdered; Saudi Arabia, not so much. Interesting, isn't it?)

Also from IL 2006: Zibb is an all-business search engine, which can be handy when you're trying to find information on a company with a rather non-corporate-sounding name.

Proof that there really is a weblog for everything out there: behold, the babes with books blog.

The MLS vs. no-MLS debate goes on all the time in libraries. I dutifully went back to school and got my MLS, but I think that experience counts just as much (probably more) than the degree. (I also think that an MLS program should have classes like "How to Fix Copiers" and "How to Prevent Back Injuries" and "How to Deal with Really Annoying People" and "Budgets 101," but that's a whole separate rant.)

And lastly, LisZen searches librarian weblogs, or the biblioblogosphere, if you prefer. Hee. (I want "biblioblogosphere" to be a spelling bee word one day.)

Tomorrow: links from others!

Regarding the elections: Woohoo!!! Ted Strickland was my representative when I lived in Athens. It's lovely to have him as a governor.

A belated post-Halloween link, courtesy of Google: scary stories to read out loud by candlelight.

Spooky find of the week: a weblog all about cemeteries and gravestone symbols. From there, I learned what the Hebrew inscriptions on Jewish tombstones say, and also that the Vulcan greeting gesture derives from a Jewish blessing. Wow, the stuff you learn!

For more current media-meets-religion news, The Revealer has some interesting material.

Just what are those mysterious lights on Brown Mountain, anyway? Some determined people want to find out, for once and for all.

I thought this article on turning one's iPod into a Ouija Board was funny...until I read the comments and saw how seriously people took it. Now I'm just confused. Maybe it'd just be better to use technology

Okay, Americans, go out and vote today. Ask.com has a good breakdown of information and resources by state (just pick your state in the drop-down box). Have fun with potentially wonky voting machines, and in case you're not sure why you should vote, well, here's a brilliantly done video to help on that. (Seriously, if this person is not a film editor, he/she should be.)

Meanwhile, the Muppets are educating kids about landmines, SeeJane is researching gender portrayals in film for kids, and the UK's Science Museum has an amazing exhibit on video games going on.

And for the really random, there's now a weblog chronicling Wikipedia entries on the verge of deletion. You can learn through serendipity!

Arty links begin...now!

Literature: a previously unpublished Sylvia Plath poem has been discovered, and Garrison Keillor has opened a bookstore in St. Paul. These two are unrelated. I think.

The art of the book jacket has a long and occasionally distinguished history. Someday I'd like them to invent a book jacket that doesn't rip easily when you jam the book into a bag.

Fairy tales and mythology in pop culture (there's a niche arty category for you): exploring the various incarnations of Red Riding Hood through the years.

Music: Forget J-pop, will Korea's K-pop conquer the western world? And when we dance to it, can we do it at a sustainable dance club like they have in Rotterdam?

Links from others today! Thanks, everyone.

From the Graveworm: glow-in-the-dark mushrooms.

From Satori: it's not just the cod, it's all the seafood that's in danger of disappearing. Eeek.

Also from Satori: according to the Onion, the Spirit explorer is really sick of Mars.

From Bunny: possibly the best current political ad running (and I think I would say that regardless of which party it supported). Also from Bunny: a quarantine room will be in effect on Election Day. Sounds futuristic. And not in a good way.

From Holly: a clown conference in Mexico!

From Zazoo: exotic travel is on the rise.

And lastly, why not consider a children's book about how tattoos are nothing to fear? (Hey, Mr. Graveworm, I thought of you!)

Have a spiffy weekend, everyone. See you Monday.

The best thing about the Electoral Vote map right now is that lovely dark blue "strong Democrat" they've currently painted Ohio. Keep fighting the good fight, everyone!

Wessex Archaeology is not at all stuck in olden times - they have a blog, they have a Flickr account (with some really great photos of recent digs), and they even have a podcast. Wow.

I had already planned to link to Jimmy Atkinson's page on Research Beyond Google (seen originally on Library Stuff)...and then Jimmy emailed me himself to point it out. It's definitely worth perusing, even if you don't research for a living!

Swiped from Geistweg: inspired by Hemingway's famous six-word "story," Wired challenged other authors to try the same. I like Neal Stephenson's, personally...

And lastly, to keep the spookiness alive: the Men of Mortuaries 2007 calendar! Mrow!

Today's the Day of the Dead in Mexico, so the spookiness continues!

From Holly: there's a tour which takes you to abandoned Paris Metro stations. Oooooo. Meanwhile, for those in the U.S., Holmesfest is afoot in New Jersey!

If you think you've seen something odd, you can check it against this list of the top 50 cryptids. However, if you're a skeptic (and into some hard science), you can peruse a physics-heavy refutation of ghosts, vampires and zombies.

And even in small towns, there are fascinating people with intriguing artifacts!