no effing way man!

blog of note • Seriously dudes you HAVE to check this out ..... Brian Cassidy's blog gave us the head up about: LOLmanuscripts blog, the evil span of the internet's LOLCats. why the hell can't I be that clever?

Still, life with bottle

So, let me explain about the cleaning thing . . . it's not that I have a clean fetish, quite the opposite really. On the whole I'd say my hovel is no filthier than any other person of the bookseller persuasion. You probably shouldn't eat off the floor, or any other flat surface just to be safe, but certainly over the counter is safe enough. It's not really 'cleaning' cleaning anyway, it's the kind where you root around through a dark cluttery corner of your life and decided there are a lot of things in there you can do without and discover some things you didn't know you had. Since I passed 45 at like, mach 1 and started heading for the far turn, I have been in a divesting phase. I got tired of constantly taming my inner pack rat and started envying those people at the other end. The ones who DON'T have cardboard boxes in their living room and actually have dishes in their cupboards instead of books. So, when I get frustrated or anxious I start shifting the things in my cage around. Sorting things into those classic piles, keep-give-throw but in our case we have keep-give-throw-sell. I haven't managed to get rid of the boxes, I still have transient ones around. One marked "ebay", another marked "donate" and still another marked - "find someplace to hide so I don't have to decided what to do right now." After a few weeks of sudden bursts of energy, I have managed to get close to my goal. I moved anything related to buying and selling and shipping out of the apartment and into the room in the basement - now if I run a Cat 5 cable from the modem down to my new 'office' I can actually process orders without running the risk of a cat walking across the keyboard mid-postage. Now the workroom can go back to being a place to 'work' and my office can well - still accumulate clutter but with more room to stack it. I did find a lot of things I had forgotten about while I was at it. What I had thought was just me hoarding poster tubes, turned out to be two promo posters for Ralph Steadman's Still Life with Bottle. Cheers.

I added some stamps to the Literary Stamp blog, not many but a few... I posted this under Dunbar, but with all the neat cinema stamps, I am leaning towards starting another blog.

1001 uses for books # 7 - clothing

from Found in Mom's Basement - the vintage advertising blog. (see more)

just the facs

Facsimile Dust Jackets - I love them. You just spent $$ on Good to Very Good copy of a book because it bears a signature of some dead guy you admire. No, you didn't get a F/F with an florid inscription because you can't afford $$$$, but you are very happy with your $$ VG/ndj. Now what do you do with your new baby? You could put a dust jacket cover on a book that has no dust jacket - well technically it's just a sheet of polyester without a lining, and that has to be creased JUST so, in order for it to cover your book snuggly. But then it becomes just a shiny naked book on your shelf and the odds are very good the spine can't be read from a distance. So, all those friends you want to impress, when you whip it off the shelf and say "look at this!" are just gonna screw up their noses and say, yeah but it's ugly. For about $22 bucks you can usually get a spiffy reproduction of the dust jacket, clearly but subtly labeled facsimile, to wrap around your prize. It will then do what a dust jacket is supposed to: protect your book from the dust in the air, the light coming through the window and various and sundry other possible household dangers. It also proclaims from a distance the title of your prize possession. And for good measure you can slap a dust jacket condom over it. Maybe it's just me, but fake jacket or not - I think a naked book feels better when it's dressed.

zipper

DSCN1066 Originally uploaded by jgodsey. Just in case you were wondering, Yes, I spent the day with this little guy in my cleavage. Once he was warmed up he drank a good chunk of his bottle. He is now with a licensed wildlife rehabilitator who has 2 other baby squirrels to nurse. I called the state and they are sending me the rehabilitator packet. Apparently it's a pretty hard license to get. more pictures.

Squirrel in a hat

Squirrel in a hat Originally uploaded by jgodsey. This is the culmination of my week. On the whole it was very good...i mean very in a non crises everything is going as it should kinda way. On one job front, the insurance job with the 2 hour drive is over - cept for one day of catchup. On the freelance job, that one may be heating up. And then there was the cleaning...i am not sure what set it off, I started with the bookcases and then segued into moving the entire 'business' into the work room in the basement. Perhaps I just got tired of opening boxes in my living room, or sharing my office with hundreds of pounds of cardboard. Anyway, now I am eyeing my office with a total revamp in mind. As for the squirrel....when i could no longer avoid visiting my mother for 'mother's day. I found the little tyke sitting in traffic. He's sleeping in my hat in a locked cage behind a locked door, so i think he's safe from my room mates for now.

Bibliophile essay contest - Winners

You knew I would chicken out didn't you? NO I can't pick a winner - I even tried passing the buck a few times and no one would take the bait; and I am usually so damn good at avoiding responsibility. YES, they are all winners, and I have a list of prizes that they will pick from in the order they were posted. [by 'prizes' I mean books and junk I found laying around while I was cleaning, so don't get excited.] But I HAD to pick a winner just to get rid of that damn book! And I am arbitrarily picking Lahana Shaw and her "How Books Saved My Life". All the entrants displayed a passion for books and bookselling, but Lahana's had one thing the others didn't have "drama". Passion, drama and books, what more is there to life? Hey, I said 'the' weekend, so I took that to mean any weekend, I got around to it. 8

smucking fart

hacked bookcase Originally uploaded by jgodsey. some days I even impress myself...i don't know if it was cleverness or just plain laziness. Eons ago, I built this 9+ high bookcase specifically for paperbacks. Since then I have sold off half of them and now desperately need bookshelves of a taller variety. The thought of taking the whole thing apart and resizing the shelves filled me with ....ennui. So after starring at it for a good long while, I got the idea to pry up a couple of the shelves to make very tall ones. Little did I know that I only had to pry up the front screws and then the shelves just tilted back....ppppuuuurfect. I'm a genius. You know I could have easily destroyed the entire thing and had it come crashing down on my head. but that will be tomorrows entertainment.

shadows

times like this I wish I could read Japanese... There was a heads up about these on Boing Boing . . . the website is Happy Mundane, perhaps I could make me some...

Cool tool

Reading early American handwriting by Sperry, Kip. Baltimore, Md. : Genealogical Pub. Co., c1998. c1998. ISBN: 080630846X Where the hell has this book BEEN all my life? Well, to be fair it wasn't written until 1998 and I had already been trying and failing to read inscriptions and marginalia for a hell of a long time. I don't get to do that much anymore, but basically I had given up. This nifty book has many examples of varying styles and spelling conventions. Too bad now I wish I had a reason to buy it.

funny story

box o books Originally uploaded by jgodsey. . . . it's all in how you look at it. Someone dropped 8 boxes of kids books on my stairs and drove away . . . as people are known to do. So, I shoveled them into the back of the pickup and paid a call on one of my oldest bookish friends. Anyway, we spent an hour divvying the spoils between her grand kids and my brothers rugrats. Then We both had a simultaneous flashback to an afternoon about 15 years ago. Weird eh? She and I and another buddy have been friends for about . . . . ohmyhgod, 27 years now, since we did time together in a Waldenbooks. And15 years ago when she had her own store, the three of us would get together and shelve...it's not as stupid as it sounds, we shot the shit while we worked and she bought us pizza. We can't remember the particular afternoon at all, since there we so many afternoons, but we remember the book vividly. It was one of those easy reading books for six year olds. but it was the damndest thing. I read it aloud, and we laughed hysterically, then Steve read it aloud and we laughed again, then Anne read it, then I read it again and so on. We couldn't stop. We sat on the floor eating pizza reciting this silly sing song descendant of Dr Seuss and laughed until we hyperventilated. I thought i had a copy of it in house, but i can't find it. I probably gave it to someone who had kids. I think the ,local library has one... but I am uncertain if i want to read it again...it can't possibly BE as good as the memory of it. Things never are. BTW it was Toad on the Road by Susan Schade. and Jon Buller. From memory (the author I had to look up) "Hands on the Wheel, eyes on the Road I'm a careful driving toad!" "Stop on red! Go on green! Drive in the carwash! Come out clean! " I don't know why it was so funny then, but it sure makes me giggle now.