I go home, eat something, dully read blogs or reviews of bad B-movies or summat until my eyes water, at which point I go to sleep.

Then I wake up, shower, dully read blogs or reviews of bad B-movies or summat until it’s time to go to work, at which point I leave the house.

Then I…well, you really don’t want to know what I do all day. Rest assured that it involves lots of dully reading things, things that are less interesting than blogs or reviews of bad B-movies.

Then I go home, and rinse lather repeat.

Occasionally there’s something good, like a new episode of Doctor Who or a chance to hook up with an attractive guy or some tasty, fattening, guilt-inducing Italian nachos, but mostly it’s just quiet, dull desperation.

Bleargh.

(And hosed, the comments still are.)

(Comments are still hosed, btw. Grr.)

With the catalog upgrades we’re doing over the next month or so, we’ll be implementing a feature that will allow users to enter the information from a known citation and be given 1) a direct link to the resource if it’s available electronically through the library; 2) information on the location of the physical materials if the article is available in print at the library but not electronically; or 3) a fully-populated interlibrary loan request form if the article is not available at this library.

Living in the future really rocks sometimes.

…I’ve been way, way bummed lately. Like, WAY bummed. I’ve totally lost control of my eating, which is both cause and effect of the bummedness, and have gained about 20 pounds since moving to Rolla.

I’m working on getting it off and am being forced to confront one of the underlying reasons for the bummination: I’ve lost (factoring back in what I’ve gained) 120 pounds at this point. I’ve lost a waif, as Zero put it, and so I have a waif’s worth of unused skin sort of hanging around my body. Literally hanging, actually.

Sooooo even if I were to take off another thirty pounds and get down to something approximating an acceptable-for-gay-men weight, I would still look practically obese. Especially when naked, which is of course when it matters most.

There’s surgery, of course, but do you have any idea what a body lift (which is what I need) costs? Lowball is $10K. Cripes.

It’s enough to drive somebody into the welcoming arms of Ben and Jerry. Or Jim and Jack.

I spent some time poking around yesterday, trying to figure out the problem, but Short Attention Span took its toll on my efforts. Will try to address it again this weekend.

If anybody wants to get in touch and doesn’t already have an email address for me, you can write to blog AT impy D0T org.

From an article[1] I’m currently reading:

If you’re a dedicated multitasker, you’re certainly not alone. A 2005 Kaiser Family Foundation report found that 62 percent of respondents said they did any combination of the following most of the time or some of the time while they did their homework: “talk on the phone, instant message, watch TV, listen to music, or surf the web for fun.”

Multitasking? Bollocks. Any reasonable definition of multitasking precludes, to my mind, any combination of things that are not inherently in conflict. As anyone who has been alive since the invention of the radio receiver can tell you, at least if sie’s being honest, “listening to music” and “doing homework” are non-overlapping; to do both at the same time is not to multitask, it’s simply, y’know, doing stuff.

Ditto, frankly, “watching TV”. I mean, soaking up some television is typically described as a passive activity, isn’t it? “Talking on the phone” just might possibly qualify, depending on the level of involvement required by the homework involved, but probably wouldn’t conflict with typical busywork tasks.

“[Surfing] the web for fun”? Here’s where I call bullshit. If the doing of the homework requires neither hands nor eyes, both of which are required for surfing, then it’s not really much of a task at all. If the student is switching between surfing and doing homework, sie’s not multitasking but instead taking little breaks, yeah?

So what is multitasking, under my stricter-than-typical definition? I honestly have no idea, so I suspect it may be a mostly meaningless term. I guess if one were, say, writing at least moderately complex code while conducting a teleconference with hir stock broker, that would count. If all activities being performed do not require a significant amount of mindfulness at all times by the performer, though, the performer is not what I would call multitasking.

[1] Zimmerman, Devin. “Metatasking vs. Multitasking.” Library Journal 132.7 (Apr 15, 2007): 60.

Grr grr grr.

(Here’s something probably worth writing about.)

I am, in Michael P’s words, now an Enemy of the State: Yesterday afternoon, I had sex on an Army base.

That’s got to be worth at least 5,000 cool points.

Practically illiterate. Which, irony.

Looking at the front page here, I’m seeing that the most recent dozen or so entries spans well over a month. That is unconscionable. I gots to get back in the swing of things. I’ve just felt so unmotivated since moving to Missouri–not just unmotivated to write, unmotivated to do just about anything. I’ve also gained 20 pounds, and consistently broken diets the day after I tried starting them.

And I’ve done nothing, absolutely nothing, the least bit artful.

I think my soul is dying, or dead. Maybe writing more would help kickstart the healing process, if there’s anything left there to heal.

Lacking inspiration, I’d appreciate any topic suggestions from you lovely people reading this.

Oh, and Pete Gontier rocks. Thanks for the package!

So my current ambiguous assignment is to identify resources that would support interest in some of the multiple literacies. You know, historical literacy, mathematical literacy, cultural literacy, and so on.

In doing some prep work, I have been surprised to discover exactly how many literacies are floating around these days. None of them, of course, have anything directly to do with actual reading, but, y’know.

There are so many literacies that I think we are on the verge of needing recognition of an entire new capacity of understanding: literacy literacy, knowledge of and ability to navigate within the huge number of (so called) literacies.