What have I gotten myself into? In class tonight, I learned that
AACR2 has specific rules for cataloging books by dead people. No, not people who wrote books when they were alive, but people writing books after their death. By being channeled by a
spirit medium. Yes, like that
Crossing Over idiot. I shit you not:
21.26. SPIRIT COMMUNICATIONS
21.26A.Enter a
communication presented as having been received from a
spirit under the heading for the spirit (see 22.14). Make an
added entry under the heading for the
medium or other person recording the communication.
22.14. SPIRITS
22.14A. Add
(Spirit) to a heading established for spirit communications (see 21.26).
Parker, Theodore (Spirit)
Beethoven, Ludwig van (Spirit)
Espirito Universal (Spirit)
I have yet to decide if this is really creepy, really cool, or really
anal retentive. Probably a combination of all three. The next year might be a lot more interesting than I thought.
Cataloging class seems to be my designated
day log whipping boy, which is a product of my love-hate relationship with my class. My other three classes are pretty straightforward, but this one is difficult not because it’s the hardest of the four, but paradoxically because it’s the easiest. Conceptually, the material itself is relatively easy (though not as easy as it might seem to the
layman), but because it’s so easy I find it difficult to concentrate on
power point slides and what indicators to use in the 245 field and the professor’s
Korean accent. So I spend much of the class reading e2 and
Slate and
Salon and my email. Then when it comes time to remember what goes where, I spend an hour looking up stuff in my copy of AACR2 and the
OCLC website. Whine, whine, whine, I know, the solution is just to buckle down, which I will do on Sunday with a study group from the class. But between that and the campus
College Bowl tourney on Saturday, I wonder when I’ll find time for that paper for my Government Documents that’s due on Monday…
After checking out a trio of books by and on
Nicolás Guillén (I don’t have time, but how can I resist
poetry?), it was off to
Olive Garden with some friends for banter with the waitress and a never-ending pasta bowl – the pasta doesn’t end but the room in your stomach does. And then we went to
Mer_Girl’s place and made plenty of jokes about her interesting new line of work. (I’ll let her tell you about that one.) After the early birds went home, Mer_Girl and I fired up
Grand Theft Auto III and gleefully spent what seemed like hours running over
hookers and other assorted
pedestrians, shooting down police helicopters with
rocket launchers, and picking off old ladies and joggers with a
sniper rifle like it was
Maryland. And yet, I was troubled by the fact that we took such glee in wanton slaughter, but when she switched off the
Playstation, I knew why the instant I saw the
infomercial. The banality of this empty culture drives us to seek pure, visceral
experience, no matter how
amoral or brutal. Or at least this is the best theory I can come up with at 6am. Besides, the game rocks, especially when you get a
tank.