Heute hatte ich Termine mit Marcs Klassenlehrern Fr. Sch. und Herr M. Beide sind zufrieden mit ihm, er macht mit wobei es mich gewundert hat, daß er in Englisch aktiver ist als in Geschichte… Ich hätte gedacht, daß Geschichte ihn mehr interessiert *grübel* So kann man sich täuschen.. Ich habe die Lehrer aber auch darüber informiert, daß

• er Probleme mit den Ohren hat
• in der alten Klasse gehänselt wurde wegen seiner Größe
• und das er oft wegen Niklas zurückstecken muß

Bis jetzt scheint er sich aber in der Klasse wohl zu fühlen, wäre immer gut drauf – also: Alles wird gut!

So today, or rather, yesterday, my friends and I wandered into Crossroads Trading Company to try to rid our blues. I bought three dresses, a beautiful print knit bolero, and a bright blue peacoat. (I’m satisfactorily happier now.) On the way out, I spotted Red Marc Jacobs Wedges and a stunning pair of Gray Stella McCartney Boots. (Thank the lawd they weren’t my size, or i’d probably be out $250 by now.) But they were pretty reasonably priced at $100 (MJ) and $150 (SM). So if ever you are in the vicinity of a Crossroads, go check it out in all its glory.

Speaking of two of my favorite designers in the history of HUMANKIND, below are some of my favorite looks from their Spring 2010 runway shows. Stella McCartney’s collection was magnificent and by gods, I swear I will be there one day! Marc Jacobs’ collections (both Marc by March Jacobs and Marc Jacobs) were BOTH marvelous, although I tend to shy away from the more (dare I say it?) young-y looks of Marc by Marc Jacobs. Still beautiful to behold, however. Onward maties!

Stella McCartney;

Marc by Marc Jacobs;

Pretty much enthralled by this blouse and pair of shorts. Aren’t they just so cute?

Marc Jacobs;

Ahh, not only am I thankful for wonderful thrift stores, I’m thankful for the likes of you, Stella McCartney and Marc Jacobs. (Really! Your designs make me so excited I probably would pee my pants if I saw them in person!) Your dominance in the fashion world is only evidence of your brilliant minds and ongoing greatness. I cut my Turkey in honor of you! (OK maybe not true, I don’t eat Turkey. Or meat for that matter… hm I should get that checked out. ) Have a great Thanksgiving, peoples! And don’t forget to be thankful for your bestest designers. (:

Yours truly,

Lili Darling

Marc treats historical artifacts with respect

Greetings from La Guardia airport! Your highly esteemed (ok, ridiculed) co-blogger is sitting on the floor with her dog and her laptop, bored and cranky because her flight has been delayed two hours due to, get this, the anticipation of rain. Not even real rain. What the hell is that? The airlines aren’t even trying anymore.

I just watched a small child drop a piece of cheese on the airport floor, pick it up and then feed it to her father. Ew.

In honor of this ridiculous travel holiday and the highly caloric meal that follows it, Marc has agreed to do a Thanksgiving-themed Either/Or. I provide the subjects, he makes hasty and uninformed opinions. Everybody wins. Well, except the Indians.

Buckles on Hats vs. Buckles on Shoes

Buckles on hats are nice, but are they anything more than a passing fad among a group of uptight Puritans? Is that who I want to be associated with? Absolutely not. Buckles on shoes, on the other hand, have been around for centuries, maybe more. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Jesus had buckles on his sandals. They are timeless and practical. Putting metal on your hat isn’t practical. It’s just the fast track to getting struck by lightning.

Smallpox Blankets vs. Sending Everyone to a Reservation

Well, ignoring the white elephant of abject genocide, I’m going to go with sending everyone to a reservation. If you’re trying to contain a population, smallpox just isn’t the way to go. It may be confined to a few blankets at first, but you never know how fast the disease is going to spread. You could end up taking out your allies and trading partners. It might even spread to YOU. A reservation allows you to keep track of where everyone is and what they’re doing. You can encourage them to farm the stony rocks you’ve given them, or produce casinos for their benefit and your debauchery. I’d rather be an imperialist jackass than a murderer.

Thanksgiving Dinner vs. Leftovers

I’m going to wager that, like me, every one of you has thought about this question before. Dozens of times. You probably haven’t come to a clear conclusion, so I’ll save you the trouble. It’s Thanksgiving dinner.

The thing about leftovers is that they’re great, but they’re really all about one thing: that giant, amazing turkey sandwich. And man, it is ever amazing.  You pile on that cold turkey, throw some dressing or cranberry sauce on it, toss it between a big Kaiser roll and you’re stuffed for hours. It’s great.

But look, at the dinner not only do you have the turkey and the sauce, you also have all the amazing sides. Mashed potatoes, corn, fill-in-the-blank casserole and fresh rolls. That’s the kicker right there, isn’t it? Sure, you have the sides with the leftovers but they’re not fresh. Everything is fresh at Thanksgiving dinner, especially the rolls. Not to mention that after dinner you’re probably heading for the absolute King of Naps, the post-Thanksgiving slumber. To put the nail in the coffin, what night did we all hate as children? Leftover night. Check and mate.

Gelatinous Cranberry Sauce vs. The Kind With Real Cranberries in It

There is something inherently amusing about a cranberry sauce that comes out of the can in a solid, gelatinous cylinder. There is also something inherently disgusting about that. I generally don’t like my sauces to involve jiggling, so I’m going to go with the real thing here.

Note from Claire: False. Gelatinous is better, especially when it slides out of the can as one solid mass: Thhhwwuuuk!

Thanksgiving Football vs. Thanksgiving Movies

Ignoring the fact that you can do both of these quite easily (that’s what she said!), if I had to pick I would go with the football. Yes, Thanksgiving movies are typically a fun, family outing. You still have to deal with traffic, parking and all the other families that are going to see the exact same movie. You will inevitably struggle to find seating together. And if you blunder into picking the wrong movie, well shit. You’ve just wasted 2-3 hours of your life and $8 that could have bought booze.

Thanksgiving football almost always involves a horrid game played by the Lions, a mediocre game played by the Cowboys and a wildcard. And you have the option to take the best nap of the year at any time, something your movie cannot offer you. I’m going with sports and naps.

Black Friday vs. Black Tuesday

One of these is the death of fun, the other is the fun death. There’s a surprisingly small amount of difference between the two. Each mass hysteria, loads of money exchanging hands and at the end of the day the loss of most of your savings. The bonus to Black Friday is that you’re killing on the ridiculous sales, and most likely someone is buying YOU presents. The bonus to Black Tuesday is…well there aren’t any bonuses. That was the whole point; everyone lost all their money. Black Friday wins.

Growing Corn vs. Starvation

Remember Bubba, from Forest Gump? That’s me, except with corn instead of shrimp. Also, I’m white and I didn’t die in ‘Nam, but details. If you didn’t know, corn is god’s food. There’s cornbread, corn on the cob, creamed corn, corn chowder, corn syrup, popcorn, candy corn and dozens of other concoctions. There are ways to prepare corn that I don’t even know about. Hell, you can even power your car on it. If you were starving, and all you had was a boatload of corn, you could turn it all into ethanol and drive yourself to a grocery store. It’s simply amazing.

Pumpkin Poo jokes vs. Turkey Breast Jokes

This photo was sent to us by Janice

Case closed.

Christmas Decorations in October vs. People Who Don’t Like Christmas

Ugh. Putting up Christmas decorations pre-Halloween is an absolute joke. First of all, it completely overshadows and disrespects All Hallows’ Eve—or Candy Day as it is more widely known. Secondly, you still have Thanksgiving to contend with. And finally, it makes you think about having to go shopping for Christmas presents. I do not want to think about that in October. I want to think about football, eating candy and delicious holiday pies.

People who don’t like Christmas: The Grinch, Ebenezer Scrooge, Mr. Potter and the Jews. One guy loves dogs and ends up saving Christmas; one guy is massively wealthy and ends up saving Christmas; one guy is just massively wealthy; and the Jews, well, they love presents so much that they have eight days of them instead of just one. Even the people who don’t like Christmas actually like Christmas. I’m going with them.

Dying on Thanksgiving Because You Choked on a Turkey Bone vs. Dying on Thanksgiving Because You Were Attacked by a Balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

Wow.

I’d like to think that choking on the turkey bone means I have already enjoyed a delicious meal and am polishing off the turkey by ripping apart the bone like a greedy dog. I’d also like to think that being attacked by a balloon means I am in the parade, like Mr. Pitt in Seinfeld. That would certainly be very exciting. I don’t know these things, though. What I do know is that my death by turkey bone would ruin Thanksgiving for my whole family, and that’s simply not fair to them. If I were killed by a Macy’s balloon however, it would be immediate national news. I would live in infamy, and might even usurp the name “Balloon Boy”. Or even better, some people would think the real Balloon Boy was the one who died. I can already picture the Time cover with a deflated balloon, my legs sticking out and a “WHOSE FAULT IS IT?” headline. This is just too good.

Thanksgiving with Marc’s Dad vs. Thanksgiving with Janice

This one needs a brief preface. We all know about Janice and her wonderfully endearing, quirky ways. What we don’t know is that my father, in many ways, is just as quirky and bizarre as Claire’s mother. He once washed his shoes accidentally, then continued to wear them even though they had shrunk an entire size. He once added a cell phone on his plan and mailed it to my brother, so that he could talk to him for free. This is the man that asked me if he could take cough syrup for his cold, despite the fact that the bottle in question was not cough syrup, and it was 16 years expired. Needless to say, he’s an odd cat.

That said, around Thanksgiving, my dad is fairly normal. He smokes a good Turkey, talks his way into doing nothing and eventually takes a nap. Pretty standard fare. In Janice’s corner we have the fact that she just recently sent Claire a recipe that turns your Turkey into boobies. I’m going with Janice.

I always manage to develop a deep attachment to my characters -

The Characters I’ve Raised by Chelle Cordero

“I gave birth to my two fantastic kids in the 1980’s. I nurtured them, taught them, listened to them, and was surprised when they did the unexpected.” …read the rest

This is based on an earlier post but with additional favorites:

I am a huge art fanatic, dedicating as much time to it as writing and music. These aren’t new artists. They are the masters from the past who I’ve admired for years and years. My all-time favorites.

…

Name: Henri Matisse

Country: France

Style: Fauvism, Modernism

…

Name: Salvador Dali

Country: Spain

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Hieronymus Bosch

Country: Netherlands

Style: Renaissance

…

Name: Rene Magritte

Country: Belgium

Style: Surrealism

…

Name: Giorgio De Chirico

Country: Greek, Italy

Style: Surrealism

…

Name: Diego Rivera

Country: Mexico

Style: Mexican Muralist, Social Realism

…

Name: Paul Klee

Country: Germany, Swiss

Style: Expressionism, Surrealism

…

Name: Edvard Munch

Country: Norway

Style: Expressionism

…

Name: Pablo Picasso

Country: Spain

Style: Cubism

…

Name: Rufino Tamayo

Country: Mexico

Style: Muralist, Mixografia

…

Name: Wasily Kandinsky

Country: Russia

Style: Expressionism, Bauhaus

…

Name: Franz Marc

Country: Germany

Style: Expressionism

…

Name: Eugene Delacroix

Country: France

Style: Romanticism

…

Name: David Alfaro Siqueiros

Country: Mexico

Style: Mexican Muralist, Social Realism

…

Name: Marcel Duchamp

Country: France, U.S.

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Francisco Goya

Country: Mexico

Style: Romanticism

…

Name: Juan Gris

Country: Spanish

Style: Cubism

…

Name: Willem de Kooning

Country: Netherlands

Style: Abstract Expressionism

…

Name: George Grosz

Country: Germany

Style: Dadaism, New Objectivity

…

Name: Joan Miro

Country: Spain

Style: Dadaism, Surrealism

…

Name: Paul Signac

Country: France

Style: Pointilism, Neo-Impressionism

…

Name: Georges Rouault

Country: France

Style: Fauvism, Expressionism

…

Name: Wilfredo Lam

Country: Cuba

Style: Modernism, Cubism, Surrealism

…

Name: Vincent Van Gogh

Country: Netherlands

Style: Post-Impressionism

‡biblios.net is a free browser-based cataloging service with a data store containing over thirty-million records.  It grants the user a “nonexclusive right to use Data under the terms of the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence.”

I searched for Cluetrain Manifesto and came up with ten MARC records, including this one:

Typically when a library obtains a book, they go to OCLC to obtain the record.  Then the cataloger might add data specific to their library – for example an 099 local call number if it doesn’t use Dewey or LC.  OCLC is not free, however.  Also, the library cannot edit OCLC records.  It is not a collaborative effort, but a hierarchal procedure.

‡biblios.net, however, makes it possible to have collaborative records.  In the case of Cluetrain Manifesto, for example, there were 10 records from which to choose.  The library could choose whichever record suited its needs, and in fact submit a different record if it so chooses.  This is harnessing the collective intelligence – the “wisdom of crowds.”

Even a source seen as “authoritative” is not necessarily always correct.  Back in the 1960s when my husband was a teenager he was clamming in the bay near Westhampton with his father.  A small airplane caught its pontoons on some electric lines and crashed in the bay.  There was no one else around, so he and his father rowed over to the airplane and rescued the occupants, leaving them on the shore.   In the next issue of the local paper in the fire department blotter was a story about how the fire department had rescued the occupants of that plane!  This is just one example of why one cannot rely on any resource by itself as “the truth.”

Collective cataloging (like what is beginning to happen on ‡biblios.net) and moving away from a system where one source is seen as canonical, is perhaps a path to greater overall accuracy than the current dependence on traditional cataloging procedures and systems.

I would encourage you to listen to the podcast produced by the Library 2.0 Gang entitled The Cataloging Services Landscape, where they discuss this issue and the ramifications of a more competitive cataloging landscape to libraries.

It began with a picture of me. A picture of a stick figure girl with pigtails and a smile in a spotted triangle dress drawn in purple ink on a sheet of plain paper. More drawings are added to this picture of me and some are taken away as I change and shift, moving through life. Shadings, colours, symbols, friends, accessories are played with on this piece of paper which represents my world. These pictures are made up of all sorts of materials; grey lead, pencils, crayons, glitter – oh, there’s certainly glitter! There is also those magic markers which are invisible until you scribble over it with another colour and, like magic, it appears! – part of me hiding below the surface, not to be seen, until something comes into my world that reveals it, and there it is, a part of me. It began with a stick figure girl and it has built to so much more and continues to do so.

A lot of drawings were added to this picture of me when I was with Cam. Those were my adolescent years, a lot happens to one during that time; exploring who one is and discovering many things. A lot of drawing and rubbing out and drawing again was done in this time. The relationship with Cam, especially, gave me plenty to add to my picture. Beginning with love hearts floating in the air. The girl in the dress had many additions representing who she is as she grows and changes. A boy with dreadlocks and a top hat was drawn standing next to her. Additions were made to the background as well – a house with a chimney and a garden path and a dog wagging his tail.

When Cam and I broke up I rubbed out a lot of things, which wasn’t so much of a bad thing, just part of the ever changing picture. I’d rub out what was drawn in grey lead, the things that were lost when I lost Cam. The man in the top hat no longer held the pigtailed girl’s hand, instead, perhaps he was drawn chilling in the background. There was a blank space where he once stood, in this area you can feel that the paper is thinner and roughed up because of the rapid rubbing. After the mass rubbing out took place there was faint colours left on the page from when you try to rub out coloured pencils but you can never fully get it all. These faint colours that are left are the parts of me that will always be affected by Cam and our relationship, although no longer prominent. There are things that couldn’t be rubbed out that came from that time too, they were drawn in ink. Permanent additions to me and my world, just as it should be. So the picture continues to change around the girl in the dress.

Someone else was drawn in that blank space the other week. Marc is his name and he now stands by the girl’s side, holding her hand. There are love hearts in the air and colour floating around the page. I think he will be someone who significantly affects the picture as well, as time goes on.

I didn’t realise that there are still left over bits of rubber on the page from previous rubbing out. Until Marc was drawn in that space, I didn’t realise that there was left over stuff from the relationship with Cam still hanging around in the form of rubber bits that needs to be blown or dusted off the page. I got most of it off in the last year, a big blow of air on the page to rid it of the rubbing out. But some sticks and as I drew Marc I realised that there were still bits, small bits, left where the new drawing was to be. These left over bits on the page are hesitations, insecurities and uncertainties. Thoughts and feelings that have come up just because there is someone new being drawn in that space, which is a weird thing in itself. These thoughts are all still faint and undeveloped, so insignificant it is not worth exploring here although interesting enough to be notable.

I’ll end this post by welcoming Marc to my blog space and, with great joy, to my picture.