Rumor was he’d murdered someone. And we knew he was up to something. Something really wierd. Why else would he have all those bizarre antennas on his car and on his lanai in his backyard. And, why else would he and his clone-gigantor son keep the drapes drawn at all times of day. And, why else would he be bald? I mean, there’s something up with people who take time out to shine their heads. And his was so perfectly round.
We would spy on him on our way to the park, on our bikes. We’d never, ever, walk by his house. Not ever. Or we’d climb a tree and peer into his backyard from the greenbelt. Always looking for something, anything to prove our theories about him. And they were always changing. At least every day. But we would get so super spooked any time he ACTUALLY looked at one of us. It was like his stare was toxic with the power to curse us. And since we hadn’t spied on him holding anything bloody, or any weapons even, we figured that’s how he did it. One look and you’re a goner.
So it was early August and it was hotter than hot, which might explain why Jane was so slow. She made the mistake of sitting in the tree a little too long. Looked over the adobe wall a little too far. And caught his eye. She screamed bloody murder, like it hurt. Then she fell out of the tree and said she couldn’t breathe.
Jane wouldn’t see the fifth grade. We knew it. And since we didn’t want Jane to die alone, the rest of us, all four of us, put our feet in the middle and made a circle and did the only fair thing we could think of to decide who’d next spy on the killer of Calle Las Colinas. Dana put her finger on my foot first and said, “Inky, Binky, soda cracker. Inky, Binky, Boo. Inky, Binky, soda cracker, out goes you.” And just like that I’d been picked to climb up in the tree next.
That’s how it all started.
I’m still wrestling with this new blog format. I worry that a lot of you are checking the old links or the old RSS feeds and are simply under the impression that I’m not updating anymore. Aside from Facebook, Twitter, and various Group updates (social networking has never been so useful) I’m not sure how to let folks know about my new location. I sort of feel like I’m whistling into the wind. But we’ll figure it all out. No migration goes perfectly the first few weeks, right? The kinks with out kinkify themselves. In the meantime, have a bit o’ Fusenews.
- I was rather taken with this recent profile of children’s author and adult satirical cartoonist (amongst other things) Jules Feiffer at CNN. It has never really occurred to me, but it makes sense that he would have influenced Doonesbury in some way. Never really thought it through, though. The comments about his thoughts on Charles Schulz are also fascinating. Good reading!
- Some days, you just feel like screaming. Other days, you scream and it ends up in blog posts called Why Is Fuse #8 Screaming? I’ll explain more about the reason for the less than impressive shriek (there are reasons I never became an actress) in an upcoming Lerner Librarian Preview, but for now I thought the blog post’s title funny enough to link to.
- Oh man. I almost made this a Daily Image before I figured it wouldn’t be fair to Leila. Have you seen some of the awesome library posters from the late ’60s/early ’70s she’s been putting up? Honest-to-Murgatroyd, they are amazing. You can see most of them here, and an additional bit of magnificence here.
Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK
For the first time in over 30 years, the British general election last week resulted in a hung parliament. The news is full of the latest rounds of negotiations between the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats, and at the time of writing, we still don’t know who will form the next government.
But what does ‘hung parliament’ actually mean? I turned to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics to find out.
[Hung parliament is the] name for the situation when after an election no political party has an overall majority in the UK House of Commons. Without a written constitution the response to such a circumstance is governed by statements by courtiers and senior civil servants as to what the constitution requires the monarch to do. The most famous of these statements were by Sir Alan Lascelles, private secretary to George VI, in a letter to The Times in 1950, and by Lord Armstrong, secretary to the cabinet between 1979 and 1987, in a radio interview in 1991.
The incumbent prime minister may continue in office and offer a queen’s/king’s speech: that is, a speech delivered by the monarch but written by the government, outlining its programme. This is likely only if the prime minister’s party still has the largest number of seats, or a pact with another party can be engineered to ensure an overall majority. If the prime minister cannot command the largest party in the Commons and has no pact then the prime minister may ask the monarch to dissolve Parliament and call a further election. In the absence of precedent it remains unclear whether the monarch would be obliged to accede to this request. More likely, the prime minister would resign and advise the monarch upon a successor. Usually the monarch would heed that advice, although in the last resort the monarch is not bound to do so. The new prime minister would then form a government and if a working majority could again not be sustained, a dissolution of Parliament and calling of a second election would be sought and gained from the monarch.
My feed found you just fine! Glad you’re back in business.
one wish for the new website: I used to be able to type in http://www.slj.com/fuse8 to get here, but now it doesn’t work. any chance this will work again? it’s nice to only have to remember that bit when i’m not at my home computer.
also, a few of your links on the side bar are out of date. I.e. Read Roger.
See you at ALA!
My hope is that eventually we get to the point where the old site at that address automatically redirects you to this nice new one. As it stands, it’s difficult to find my old posts right now. Not impossible. But definitely difficult.
Yeah, Read Roger’s out of date. I can’t change my sidebar myself. And something tells me my IT folks might not appreciate it if I bring up the idea of a new sidebar right now. Put it in the old To Do pile…
I found you fine, but didn’t realize until someone pointed it out just now that the move meant our blogroll link to you had stopped working. Oops.
There you are, Betsy! I missed you for those few days there.
Dunno if this is related to the switch to the new platform, but all the images from this post seem to be gone now: http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/afuse8production/2010/05/26/librarian-preview-simon-schuster-fall-2010/
Found you found you, that’s enough for tonight…
My hope is that the images from past posts will reappear in the near future. In the event that they do not . . . oog. Problematic.
aw, man. I thought this post was really gonna be about the Kinks. I was ready to geek out about Waterloo Sunset and Sunny Afternoon and You Really Got Me.
Cool links and all, but you really can’t tease me like that!
Yeah, I know. If it’s any comfort, the resident husband and I are huge Kinks fans. Just figured I’d throw them in there for the heckuvit.