Dear Fatty Manchild... (or "AHHHH!!! MY EYES!! MY BEAUTIFUL, PRECIOUS EYES!!! WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY?!!! WHY, WHY, WHY?!!!: 2007")

... our patron who we believe went into a coma as a small boy in the mid 1980s only to emerge with a wicked case of arrested fashion sense more recently.

While I've seen you make some remarkably dumb clothing choices in the past, yesterday your outfit bordered on the states of both inappropriate and irresponsible.

Let me paint you a picture of what I saw you wearing. You came in, of your own free will, clad in a sleeveless muscle shirt, the kind with the big, open, split sides that were all "da bomb" in the `80s, slit nearly to the lower edge of the shirt fabric itself. I presume this was to allow your no doubt glistening "muscles" to be viewed by one and all as well as provide much-needed ventillation for them. Oh, but you didn't stop there. Paired with this top, Mr. F. Manchild, you had somehow squeezed yourself into a pair of black lycra bicycle shorts, the spandex of which looked to be straining at the very limits of tensile stress. I must confess that I averted my eyes at this point, lest the form-fitting nature of your bicycle shorts reveal any forms that might have caused my eyes to seek out the brisk and loving embrace of oven-cleaner.

Now, sir, in case you're offended at my remarks and believe I am somehow ridiculing you for being a tad obese, if you will but tear your gaze away from your computer screen and have a gander at me, I believe you will note that I am something of a fat guy myself (or am at least pleasantly chubby). And please take further note that while it is blisteringly hot out of doors, I am clad in trousers and a shirt that does not expose an unnecessary amount of my torso. And while I will admit to having worn worse clothing than yours whilst lounging around my home, (where it is indeed hotter than an ass-brownie fresh from the oven), I think it should also be noted that I always keep such attire within the confines of my home and don't venture out to inflict it on the public at large.

Please have the courtesy to do the same during future visits with us.

Your swell pal,

--juice

Summer Reading Day 5 (or "AHHHH!!! MY EYES!! MY BEAUTIFUL, PRECIOUS EYES!!! WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY?!!! WHY, WHY, WHY?!!!")

Summer Reading Day 5 was suspiciously unchaotic. We didn't even have any of the usual Monday Madness. It was downright peaceful.

"Well, I guess that means we won!" Mrs. A said.

"Looks like it," I said. "Word has finally gotten out not to come to the library on Monday."

Course the fact that we had most of the parking spaces out front blocked off with bright orange road cones so the kids would have space to draw with their chalk might have had something to do with it too. We decided that, if we'd known that before now, we would have been using cones on Mondays LONG ago.

Toward the end of my shift, the door opened and Parka came through it. Instead of his namesake puffy white Michelin Man parka (which he hasn't actually worn since late April) or his usual too thin white t-shirt, Parka was wearing a bright red tank top. While I'm all for diversity in clothing, I SO did not want to see the shag carpet of body hair covering the entirety of his torso that was accented, nay HIGHLIGHTED, by his low cut red tank-top. We're talking front AND back covered in an inches-thick layer of dark fur. You could not see the man's skin from the shoulders on down.

I equate the sight to that old Saturday Night Live sketch with Jon Lovitz impersonating Today Show movie critic Gene Schalit where they showed a closeup of his chest hair with bugs crawling through it. It was exactly that nasty.