Shaking through my skull

I’ve got a huge backlog of blogs that I want to do. Random thoughts on things, the standard. Sadly they must all wait until I actually manage to find time to sit down at my laptop and not get distracted by other things.

Until then, we shall continue with spur of the moment work blogs. I think I may have been too harsh on Jared Leto and maybe I should give him a second chance…I mean, surely someone who is friends with my darling Mat Devine (and Amanda Palmer? I think?) can’t be all bad. Right? It’s not like I actually know the guy, so being annoyed by him is a bit silly really, isn’t it? Look, I just need to reconcile the fact that I can be so obsessed with someone I find rather annoying. I’m appalled too, don’t worry, I never knew I had such shallowness in me. Live and learn.

Can’t really blame me though, can you? He’s even pretty in black and white
and you can’t even see how blue his eyes are. It’s so fucking unfair.

And he's 16 years older than me. Hang on, that means he’s turning 40 this year. Holy mother of Frodo. Also, I need to clarify that it’s not the first time I’ve been taken by his prettiness, this is more…a relapse. Last time it involved sitting through a lot of 30STM videos, and I promptly stopped doing that after the gig. But whatever. Props to Jared all the same, I did copy his hair after all.

Moving on.

After work last night I went to our council’s main library for the first time since moving to the area. I was pleasantly surprised – it was super organised, had friendly staff and actually had a good library vibe. It brought on a case of library reminiscing.

Truth is, I don’t go to the library a lot. These days I tend to just buy what I need, or find it online if I must (for uni, usually), and the only reason I went last night was because I can’t actually afford to buy books at the moment. The most significant amount of time I've spent in the library in recent memory was when I did honours, and that was hours spent in the State researching – a habit I’m glad I picked up as I still like to do that, I’m much more productive there than anywhere else. But an actual local library?  Haven’t used one in years.

When I was younger I practically lived at the library. I exhausted the local one near our house by the age of nine, and we had to go to the municipal one instead. This was pretty much a steady aspect of my life until we moved here. Of course, I wanted to keep borrowing books, but visiting our local library left me completely deflated. It sucked. End of. So I formed the opinion that Australian libraries were clearly deficient and started buying stuff instead. At the time I didn’t really understand how the system worked here and I was feeling too sorry for myself to bother figuring it out. Anyway, once I started buying books (and borrowing from R), I never really looked back.

Until now. Because I have all of $6 to my name, a car that needs a new exhaust, a speeding ticket to pay (no, it’s still the same one, I’m leaving it till the last minute), bills, and a year long adventure to save for. So books, though they are the very foundation of my soul, have become a bit of a luxury item. Temporarily.

I was actually a bit offended that the librarian wanted to teach me how to use the library, and then told me I could only borrow three books because I’m a new member. Like I haven’t ever used one before! Don’t they know who I am? Delusions of grandeur, I have them. Anyway, I was reading one last night and I completely forgot the peculiarities of reading a library book. Like finding random things in them. Or the way they are sometimes so old and well-read, it’s like reading some ancient manuscript. Or the date stamps in the front. Remember when they still used to stamp books? That takes me back. The one I’ve got now was first taken out in 1982, although they might have replaced the paper before that – there’s clear glue evidence on the title page to suggest this.

Long story short, I’ve borrowed my three books, and I’m speeding through them so I can return them on Saturday and get the remaining 11 that was on my list. I'm beginning to suspect I'm a bit of a book hog. According to Twitter, eveyone is encouraged to support their local libraries on February 5, so I figured what the hell, it works out well. As it turns out, book depositories face a real risk of extinction (ironically, the book depository no doubt has a hand in that) and I guess people don’t realise that they still serve a purpose. Even though I haven’t visited mine very often in recent years, I would hate to think that there would ever be a time without libraries. I don’t know what my 9 year old self would have done without them, and even though the internet can find anything you want, nothing really compares to that feeling you get when browsing a collection of books. As they say on the Simpsons, won’t somebody please think of the children!?

On another note, have I mentioned how much I love Twitter? On one hand, I find it a bit creepy when I complain about a service provider on there and said service provider tweets me back, but then they usually offer such excellent customer service, it sort of outweighs the creepiness. I've gotten more queries sorted through twitter, quickly and smoothly, than I ever have by actually calling them. Welcome to the future, I guess.

Music: Blinding – Florence & The Machine