a glowing Aurora overhead

This is one of my favorite pictures from today. New York State is a beautiful place sometimes.

I have a confession to make: when I read the news online, I, more often than not, just read the summary version in my RSS feed. However, today I read a bunch of articles. (Award, please!) Some of these articles include:

• Palisades Rathouse: Unchallenged by Health Officials, Elderly Twins Fed Local Vermin Population, wherein a couple who just moved into their house in LA discover that their neighbors feed (with dog food) and house thousands of rats. Ew!
• Judge Ruled White House Can Be Subpoenaed, wherein the AP reports that a judge appointed by Doubya, himself, says "Hell to the naw" regarding Doubya's assertion of "executive privilege." Strange thing, this. Doubya actually appointed someone who did the right thing? Huh? Well, I just hope the judge's ruling is upheld through appeals, and that the subpoenas are reissued in January, as Congress sucks at getting things done in a reasonable amount of time.
• Devendra Banhart's "Carmensita" video, wherein Natalie Portman is dressed up like an Indian princess, dances, and turns into an octopus. Freakin' awesome.

Technically, this is from yesterday, but it's noteworthy:

• Are Econimic Woes Pushing Up Library Circulation?, wherein the author explains that Queens Library is, once again, the library system with the most items in circulation for the fiscal year, with over 21 million items. In their statement on their circulation statistics, Queens Library suggests that their high circulation numbers have a correlational relationship with the country's economic downturn since September 11, 2001. If only this fact made public libraries more stable institutions in this country. Budget cuts be damned!

Also, I started reading a book last night (that I got in the mail yesterday). I got it from MiniBookExpo for Bloggers, and it cost me nothing, like LibraryThing Early Reviewers books. I just have to blog about this book within the month after I receive it (so, for me, by September 1st). The book is Be Good by Stacey May Fowles, and I'm halfway through it. I think it's pretty good. It's got a very nice cover, too, and is about the size of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. It's got a bit of that Catcher in the Rye thing going for it, too, but only for girls. There's a lot of cursing in it, so I think it would be best for older young adults. It's not challenging by any means, but I'm comparing it to Pynchon (so that's not really fair).

What are you reading right now?

Are you planning on getting an iPhone 3G on Friday?

I've changed my LJ name from _overhead to librarychan... Just so you know. ;)

I was recently linked to this video through Joe. It's a music video for "Again & Again" by The Bird and the Bee. Someone made this video in an attempt to build their portfolio, but it's really neat and highlights a lot of the features on a Mac.

I've been pretty obsessed with making bento box lunches lately, ever since the LiveJournal community, eat_my_bento, was spotlighted on the LiveJournal main page. I'm normally a Japanophile anyway, but the community sparked a more intense interest. (Cute food + artistic expression + Hello Kitty + tasty things = win!)

So, after a long time of fussing over what in the world I'd put into my bentos, I finally made some today. Each of our bentos (one for Joe and one for me) contained 2 pieces of onigiri (triangular rice balls) flavored with Sencha (green) tea and the traditional piece of nori (roasted seaweed) on the bottom as well as a sweet omelette on the side (egg, milk, sugar). My bento contained some green grapes and strawberries, as well. In place of the fruit, Joe's contained left-over Per Se take-away candy bars (which were sliced almonds, pistachios, and apricot with dark chocolate) and 2 of the chocolates the Michelangelo Hotel left on our pillows when the cleaning lady got our room ready for sleep this past weekend. Additionally, I packed each of us one of the Japanese pastries we got from Minamoto Kitchoan in the city.

We went to a nearby park, laid a blanket out, and had a picnic with our bentos. It didn't come out as well as I would have liked, but I learned more for next time. For one, the Sencha flavor was weak and a little strange. Rice tastes so good as it is, but I thought it would have a different color and be cuter if flavored with tea. Usually we put lox and cream cheese in our onigiri, but since we're going away soon and having salmon tomorrow night, I thought it would be better to have plain onigiri. Next time, lox and cream cheese again! The sweet omelet was tasty, but I had trouble cooking it without it burning. It still tasted good, but it didn't look as cute. Also, Joe's not a fan of fruit, so next time, I should include some sauteed or stir fried vegetables and less chocolate. (His wasn't so healthy because I was so limited.)

Since I'm talking about food, I should explain how our lunch at Per Se on Saturday went.

It was pretty crazy. First of all, a nine course chef's tasting menu at Per Se, even for lunch, is $275 per person. If you decide you want the foie gras option, it's an additional $30. Needless to say, all four of us got the chef's tasting menu with the foie gras.

So, it was a fun experience. I had finished Service Included a few days before we left for the city, so it was fresh in my mind, and I was constantly referring to it before and during our meal. I was so pumped! And though there were a few things I didn't particularly enjoy, I loved most of what I ate. Some things that bothered me after the fact were: the animal treatment. I heard about the duck thing after the fact, which I won't repeat here, and the fact that the poussin is made out of baby chickens, which is what makes it so tender. I don't think I'll eat much more foie gras or poussin in the future.

I'm currently reading Service Included. I'm also going to Per Se on Saturday. Oh. My. God.

Inspired by this article from the NYTimes...

Draw Yourself as a Teen, too!

And yes, I finally got to use the tablet again. :)

Stars
@ The Tralf, Buffalo, NY

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Why is it that EVERY professor distributes their workload the same way? Is it some sort of we-hope-you-fail conspiracy? Procrastinator discrimination?

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.
(Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, 17)

The title of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury's great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury's novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, their powerful political connections or great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.
(Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country, 102-3)

'The modern city,' Otto Cone on his hobbyhorse had lectured his bored family at table, 'is the locus classicus of incompatible realities. Lives that have no business mingling with one another sit side by side upon the omnibus. One universe, on a zebra crossing, is caught for an instant, blinking like a rabbit, in the headlamps of a motor-vehicle in which an entirely alien and contradictory continuum is to be found. And as long as that's all, they pass in the night, jostling on Tube stations, raising their hats in some hotel corridor, it's not so bad. But if they meet! It's uranium and plutonium, each makes the other decompose, boom.'
(Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, 325)