Some Star Wars Linkage

"R2D2 with Other Droids" photo by Flickr member Mr. T in D.C.

"On the Implausibility of the Death Star's Trash Compactor" at McSweeney's.

A lengthy, but good, essay suggesting an efficient and more entertaining order for the Star Wars movies.

Star Wars characters in yoga poses.

Death Star cake.

Speed of Change

Some teen staff met yesterday and one thing semi-hashed out was a Facebook page for library teen stuff. I feel like we've been asking for it forever; I started telling the kids "soon" in November or so -- which was totally my bad. Attention-to-Detail Boy asks me about it every single time he sees me. Then he tells me it's not hard to do; he can help.

Before that, we'd been asking for a blog for forever, so kids could type in their own words and see them, instantly. We don't call it a "blog," but what we have is nice and it allows teen staff and kids under our supervision and sign in to make changes and share stuff instantly. We've had it up for a year, now.

What I'd nearly forgotten about was the struggle before that to have a regular webpage for teens assigned and designed - that must have been eons ago that we were satisfied with that. Well, I'm tossing old meeting notes and one page is sticky note-flagged: April 2009 we hashed out the contents. Not even three years ago and it's already a dated platform.

Ref Grunt

- She wants to give me her credit card to look up library card number; -No, it needs to be a picture ID. Sighs, goes to car, returns with her library card
- Got a guy going on the resume template in Word rather than show him how to make it stop double spacing. And now I have changed my mind and gave him a blank page again. (Help him several more times. Yay, he got it printed before being timed out! Aw - typos; at work again.)
- Horoscope Man called: read Taurus, Libra, Capricorn to him.
- Needs books for college-level work: WorldCat indicates they are held by universities, except one is in the City library. Give her their address, hours.
- Computer available? x3
- W00T! Question about a book, before hour 2 on desk.
- Copier
- Nicholas Sparks book about (with?) his brother
- Sign thingie for FedEx driver: small Demco box. I'm guessing some kind of spine labels.
- Add money to card to print
- Confession: I might have bent a rule if he hadn't approached the desk and said "Hey sweetheart, I need a computer."
- Holds
- PIN

Not That There's Anything Wrong with Girls

I've been following with enjoyment Hank & John Green's Tour de Nerdfighting and am struck by how full of screaming girls their audiences are. (The video at this post seems typical.) I can figure out lots of easy and even complicated reasons for this having to do how we've socialized girls to shriek at males they find compelling and/or cute and socialized boys that showing enthusiasm for other males isn't a good idea.

But given stats about boys falling behind in their ability to do sustained reading and given promising projects like Guys Read and excellent blogs like Guys Lit Wire it seems like an opportunity to give regular guys two great role models of writing, creating, and reading young men has gone to waste.