Boy Banned From Prom After Asking for Date, Learns Irony

James Tate asked Sonali Rodrigues to prom by hanging foot tall letters to the side of the school during the night.  The school board said no.  Tate and the other boys who helped him were banned from the prom and suspended from school for trespassing on school grounds after hours and being unsafe.

Ah, youth.  I remember one time in the mid-nineties a similar situation happened.  My girl and I had been in a fight, something stupid about her giving me a pen.  I stood outside her house in my long tan overcoat holding a boombox over my head, blasting the song we fell in love to.  Then, just as the chorus reached its peak, she looked out the window and smiled.  Then her father hit me with the water hose.  Because the boombox was plugged in to the outside socket, I was electrocuted and my Def Leppard CD was ruined.  My family sued her family, we got millions and I lost the love of my life.  I will never hear Pour Some Sugar on Me without remembering her.

Let James Tate Go to the Prom Facebook Community
SFGate

Ms. Rodrigues did say yes, in case you were wondering.

Losing 2,500 Books Not That Uncommon

Woodrow Wilson High School library in Washington, D.C. was moving in the summer of 2010 to a temporary facility when around 2,500 items were misplaced, roughly the entire nonfiction collection, according to the Washington Post.

Hell, that ain't too bad.  I remember one time we lost a whole librarian.  She got a staple stuck in her finger and we figure it got infected cause she got kinda ornery and would snap when anybody got near her.  Then one day she just kinda waundered off into the stacks alone.  We found her a month later, passed away dead behind the true crime section.  We figure she just wanted to die with some dignity.  In her will she expressed she be buried like she lived, so we all got drunk as hell, put her on a boat and took turns shooting flaming arrows until she sank to the depths in a blaze of glory.  Here's to you, Brenda from Reference, the finest Viking Librarian I ever knew!

Dramatic representation of Brenda's average reference day courtesy of Long Beach City College.

"Go the F(moon)k to Sleep" Optioned as a Movie

Variety reports that the adult child rearing book Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach has been optioned as a movie by Fox.

Self help books and twitter feeds, those make great film, ain't that right "Sh@t My Dad Says" and He's Just Not That Into You?  (Actually, I kinda liked that movie.)

Variety

Library of Congress to Rock Around the Clock

The Library of Congress and partner Sony Music Entertainment are set to release the website "National Jukebox" to the public today.  The website is a streaming service of licence free American music classics.  Users will be able to do just about everything they can do with every other music service, download, playlists, blah, yadda, and sha-mon.  

For all the ladies out there, Harry Connick, Jr will be on hand to rock the LoC with a classic song featured on the site.  Aaand swoon.  Yeah, I'm a guy and even I can say when that dude plays his version of "If I only had a brain" from Wizard of Oz I get teared up.  For cereal.

No site available right now but keep up @librarycongress.

UPDATE:  It's alive!

Washington Post

Comic Conservator Blackbeard Dies: Totally Not a Pirate Thing

 

Too soon, Mark Trail, too soon

Bill Blackbeard, known as the scholar of newspaper comics, died at 84 years of age on March 10th. 

Banned Library tends to look to the lighter side, sometimes in a mocking and neener-neener kinda way, but what this guy did was pretty cool.

When the awesomely-named Mr. Blackbeard saw there was no archive of newspaper comics, he started one.  His appreciation for the art form lead to the preservation, knowledge and recognition of comics in general.   Mr. Blackbeard wrote scholarly papers on the subject, even a collection of comics published by the Smithsonian.  Even if you do not enjoy comics, we should celebrate anyone who attempts to hold on to any part of our culture and traditions, especially those that are fading away as we head towards newer technologies.

One of my favorite things as a kid was grabbing the big Sunday paper and pulling out the "funnies."  While that may never again occur in this society, I am thankful Bill Blackbeard was thoughtful enough to hold onto all those items. 

LA Times

The Tea Party and ACLU Join Together to Form Leaftron

Superior Court Judge Monica Marlow ordered a halt on the Shasta County Redding Library's policy that states groups handing out leaflets must stay in a special 66 square foot area outside the library after the library was sued separately by the American Civil Liberties Union of California and the North State Tea Party Alliance.

Damn, that was a long sentence.

Seems the library wanted the annoying people handing out political materials to stop annoying their patrons, wrote up a policy, and got sued for the policy by the annoying people and a normally clear-headed organization that is not the Tea Party.  The argument is all about free speech, which is great, but also about solicitation, which is arguably not great.  I am fine with people handing out leaflets and flyers and whatever else they want, but get the hell out of my face when I am looking for a book or want some peace and quiet with my laptop in the library.

Yes, free speech should reign at the library.  No, I should not have to have someone pushing the information in my face unless I ask a rather tenacious librarian for it.

Redding.com

Get Ready to Flex: Paper-thin Phones In the Works

Fat ass

Ever looked at your phone and thought, "You could lose some weight with that chunky butt?"  Well, so did the researchers at Arizona State University and Queen's University in Canada.  They started working on a smartphone that uses the same e-ink technology found in eReaders.  The phone has all the functionality as a modern smart phone, except, you know, color. 

Check out this link to eBook Magazine for more on the story and a video.