Random Thursday: Literate Tattoos, Library News, and Thug Clues for Questionable Reviews

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Random Thursday (ˈrandəm ˈTHərzdā): the day on which Sarah plunks down all the odd bits and pieces she’s been sent by friends or has otherwise stumbled upon this week in an effort to avoid writing a real post, the assembly of which usually ends up taking twice as much time as sitting down and creating actual content.

Janie is off to Concordia Language Camp, so I have half an empty nest, a missing MP3 player, and a seven-year old who claims she needs to move into her sister’s room because she’ll miss her SOOOO much—though from Jane’s reaction to this during the morning commute, I’m thinking Sunny was just getting in one more dig.  Guess we’ll see tonight.

I accidentally used Janie’s body wash this morning—through blindness, rather than sentiment—and now I smell like a rainforest as interpreted by Suave’s scent chemists, who appear to think rainforests are made of grapefruit trees and Douglas firs.

It’s not bad.

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Reading Ink

Found me a new Time Suck, y’all.

I’ve been thinking about getting more ink for a few months now—which means I’ll have a final design decision by this Thanksgiving, maybe*—and while I was idly clicking through some images of literary tattoos, this homage to Matilda led me to Contrariwise, which bills itself as the original literary tattoo site.

 Even when I started skipping over all the variations of “So it Goes”—not because I don’t appreciate those words, but there are only three of them—I lost about an hour looking at the other quotes and images and symbols from literature that made such an indelible impression on people’s imaginations that they made them a permanent physical part of themselves as well.

Regardless of how one personally feels about body art, it’s a fascinating study.

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R.I.P. Reading Comprehension

A librarian friend shared a link to a list of one-star reviews of classic or prizewinning works of literature that say far more about the reader—and for most of them, I use the term ironically—than the book.

This one is my favorite:

“Mr. Beowulf should be required to repeat his nighttime writer’s class at the learning annex.”

I’m sure Mr. Beowulf would be devastated by this harsh criticism, if he weren’t the main character in a story written by some other guy about a thousand years ago** and if he hadn’t died at the end of it, making any claims of autobiographical elements in the subtext  just a tad problematic—by which I mean, of course, that the reviewer is box o’ rocks stupid.

Having said that, I have to agree with the person who said that s/he would “never read another Shakespeare novel again.”

Neither will I, though mostly through lack of opportunity.

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Check This Out

Springwater Library in Elmvale, Ontario,
I salute you.

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Geek Ink

Turns out, there’s a site for geek tattoos, which is called—wait for it—Geeky Tattoos.

Who knew?

The Geek Virus, designed and inked by Fien-X at Houston Body Art and proudly worn by IT Manager Eric.

Thanks for the suggestion, Kev.  I’ll keep it in mind.
Yes, that probably means no—it’s awesome, but my kind of geekery has more Kudzhul, Sindarin, and Sherlock Holmes in it.

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 Thug Help for the Hapless Reviewer

Need help understanding epic Scandinavian poems written down between the 8th and 11th centuries,
without losing your gangster cred?

Sparky Sweets, Ph.D  is all over that $#!%.

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*Hey, Mom—you still game for that apple on your shoulder?

**Seriously.  Somewhere between 700 and 1100 A.D.