I saw a great movie today: “The Proposition,” a gritty, violent western set in Australia at the end of the nineteenth century. It’s the story of three outlaw brothers wanted for a brutal rape and murder, and the lawman that tries to bring them to justice.

Both the screenplay and the score were written by Nick Cave, formerly the frontman for The Birthday Party and later Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and the author of “And the Ass Saw the Angel.” I was a big fan of The Birthday Party in my youth, and “And the Ass…” is one of my all-time favourite novels.

Although the story is typical western fare, everything about The Proposition is superlative: A great dramatic arc, good pacing, amazing cinematography, brilliant casting and acting, an excellent score, etc. etc. If you like westerns and can stomach the violence (I’m quite squeamish about movies but I didn’t have too much of a problem with The Proposition because of the way it was paced), you should see this movie.

My favourite bit of dialogue:

“Are we misanthropes?”

“Hell no! We’re a family.”

Today is my birthday, and I just got a great present — I learnt that my Dad, who had been in hospital for the last week after having a suspected stroke, hadn’t had any kind of “cerebral incident” after all, and was sent home today.

Just a few hours after I posted my previous entry about the RLG/OCLC merger, it was picked up and cited (with my permission) by Paula Hane, a journalist and News Bureau Chief for Information Today Inc., in her 8 May NewsBreaks article “RLG to Merge with OCLC.”

I was amazed that she found my blog posting so quickly — long before it could have been indexed by any of the major search engines — so I asked her how she had come across it (I’m always amazed that anyone actually reads this blog, let alone journalists researching serious topics!). She told me she’d found it through a blog search engine called Sphere.com.

I checked it out by searching for the same topic, and sure enough, I was able to find dozens of blog entries about the RLG/OCLC merger, just hours after the official announcement went out.

So I guess my online ramblings here are in fact a bona fide part of the blogosphere now.

After 32 years RLG (formerly a.k.a. the Research Libraries Group), my former employer in Mountain View, California, announced yesterday that it is merging with OCLC (still a.k.a. the Online Computer Library Center).

Both RLG and OCLC are often known as “library utilities,” because they provide products and services to libraries around the World — most notably the “union catalogues,” massively aggregated bibliographic databases with hundreds of millions of records about the book holdings of libraries everywhere. Now RLG’s Union Catalog (known to librarians almost universally, albeit incorrectly, as RLIN) will be merged into OCLC’s WorldCat database.

The part of RLG that I used to work for, Member Programs, will continue as RLG-Programs, a division of OCLC Programs and Research. It’s unclear at this point what will happen to the rest of RLG.

This merger is big news in the library world, at least in the world of academic/research libraries. Until now, they have always had a choice of two competing utilities, and two different union catalogues (and some used both). Now, “there can be only one.”

I’m sure there are many good and valid business reasons for this merger, many of which are set out in the press release, “RLG to combine with OCLC.” Still, for the library world, it feels a bit like the equivalent of Apple and Microsoft merging. And I feel bad for my friends and coworkers at RLG, who must all be facing a period of great uncertainty right now.

My friend Merrilee was berating me yesterday for not providing an RSS feed of my blog; she couldn’t understand why anyone would publish a blog and then not make it available as a feed that people who use content aggregators (e.g. Bloglines) could subscribe to.

I’ve never really got into web content syndication tools myself, and pointed out that I’ve had this blog since 2002 — before RSS feeds were in widespread use. Besides, I couldn’t believe anyone would actually want to subscribe to my inane ramblings — surely people just come here when they’re bored and have some time to kill?

However, she was adamant that I should provide a feed, so after a bit of faffing I’ve (hopefully!) set it up. First I had to activate the Atom feed feature on my Blogger account, then I created a Feedburner account to convert the feed into other formats such as RSS.

So now clicking on this little orange icon should enable my dear devoted readers to subscribe to my blog in a variety of feed formats:

Alternatively, the Atom feed can be accessed directly (without going through Feedburner) here: http://blog.tonygill.com/atom.xml

I went to an immigration protest demonstration in Union Square briefly today, although I didn’t boycott work — it was my first day back after my two-week vacation, so I went on my lunch break.

Immigration is a very complex issue, and nowhere more so than in the United States, a country that was built and populated (some would argue “invaded,” with some justification) by immigrants.

The nationwide demonstrations and protests were intended to raise awareness of the contribution made to the U.S. economy by immigrants — including an estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants — as controversial new immigration legislation makes its way through Congress.

Personally, I think the American economy would grind to a screeching halt without illegal immigrants — so much of the country’s underlying infrastructure relies on undocumented workers, who are often forced to work for considerably less than the minimum wage.

For many Americans, the idea of “illegal immigrants” conjures images of hordes of central and south Americans swarming across the Mexican border in the dead of night. And it’s true that the majority of illegal immigrants in the United States enter the country in this way.

But having been an illegal immigrant myself briefly in the past because of a “Catch-22” style administrative error by the Bureau of Citizenship & Immigration Services, I know first hand that it isn’t always as simple as that. These administrative errors are not uncommon, but they are always stressful for the individual concerned.

I was lucky — in addition to being white, educated, single and employed, I could also afford to spend the significant time and money (several thousand dollars) on legal processes necessary to rectify their error.

Ultimately, though, immigration is not a single nation’s problem; individuals will always seek the best quality of life possible for themselves and their families — it’s just human nature. Until there is a more equitable global distribution of wealth, people will continue to migrate from poorer countries to richer countries. And if they can’t do it legally, they will continue to find alternate routes.

The title says it all really — Sheffield United, the team I’ve half-arsedly supported for the last two decades or so, will play in the Premiership next season, after beating Crystal Palace 1-0 to finish second in the Championship.

I’m back home in Brooklyn again, after a marathon 19 hour plane journey from Mumbai to JFK via Heathrow in London.

The first thing I noticed getting out of JFK was how fresh and clean the air in New York smelled compared to India — no more wood smoke, diesel, two-stroke engine or effluent smells in the air!

It’s 3:45am on Saturday 29 April, and yet again I’m killing time by messing around online — this time at Mumbai International Airport.

Getting out of Goa was only slightly more complicated than I expected — after assuring me that they took credit cards yesterday, Camilson’s told me today that the machine had been “broken” (i.e. they probably stopped paying the fees) for a month, so I had to go and borrow money off my credit card to pay the bill. Grrr!

My brief sojourn in Mumbai has been very interesting, however. After landing at the domestic airport, I took a taxi (who tried to rip me off) to the international airport and dropped my rucksack off at the left luggae facility. Then I took a pre-paid taxi to the Gateway of India in Colaba, a triumphal arch built in 1924. It wasn’t illuminated, though, so it wasn’t especially interesting.

What was interesting, although also disturbing, was the extreme poverty that I saw from the taxi on the way into town. Every time we stopped in traffic near the airport, young women with infants would appear at my open window almost instantly, begging for money. I couldn’t understand exactly what they were saying, but it was very distressing nonetheless, involving food for the babies. I didn’t have any change so I gave the first woman half a packet of butter biscuits, although she didn’t seem very happy with that. I didn’t give anything to the others.

A little later we drove past mile upon mile of roadside shanty towns, with people living in tiny shacks made of tin and wood and concrete (sometimes with less than four walls, so that their lives were exposed to the passing World).

When we finally arrived at the Gateway to India, I had a quick look around and then immediately went in search of Leopold’s (a tourist hang-out recommended by Johnny, the restaurant manager at Camilson’s. I had paneer tikka masala with garlic nan and rice, and it was good.

Then I went upstairs to the bar, and had another beer before decamping to Indigo (chi-chi wine bar around the corner) for a dirty vodka martini. After Indigo I jumped into a cab to the airport, checked in, and here I am!

By the way, if, like me, you’ve long been puzzled as to why Bombay became Mumbai, here’s the Rough Guide’s explanation:

“In 1996 Bombay was renamed Mumbai, as part of a wider policy instigated by the ultra-right-wing Shiv Sena Municipality to replace names of any places, roads and features in the city that had connotations of the Raj. Mumbai is the Marathi title of the local deity, the mouthless “Maha-amba-aiee” (Mumba for short), who is believed to have started her life as an obscure aboriginal earth goddess.”