We were paid a visit by none other than Wal-Mart Jesus today. I almost didn't recognize him, though, because he wasn't wearing his usual white and blue striped table-cloth-esque
robes. Instead, Wal-Mart Jesus was sporting the same basic flowing robe
& turban but this time cut from a beautiful thick black cloth
that looked nice and warm. It's a good look for him. In fact, I dare say he looked really cool.
It did, however, raise paranoid concerns within my
head. Such as, what if someone who knows Wal-Mart Jesus found this blog
and read my critique of his previous outfit and told him about it. They
might have said something like, "Dude says you look like a picnic table.
He spread the word to international winds. Maybe it's time for some new
threads, eh?"
If this was the case, Wal-Mart Jesus didn't let on, though.
Showing posts with label Wal-Mart Jesus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wal-Mart Jesus. Show all posts
Friday, January 28, 2005
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
WWWJD
Yesterday was our new "liberry" assistant Miss K’s first day on the job. (Miss K is, by the way, no relation to Kammy K: the Book Hoarding Bizatch.) She's pretty green, as this
is maybe her second job ever and certainly first at a library, so
there’s lots of stuff to be imparted to her. Mrs. C has mostly been
training Miss K, but I've thrown in a few logs of advice here and there
too.
One of my main objectives is to warn this naif employee about some of the patrons--of the regular, rogue and crazy varieties--she will likely encounter. The subject of one regular in particular came up when I noticed that Mrs. C had a new book of Hebrew essays over by her desk, ready for cataloging. Turned out it was for another area library, whose cataloging Mrs. C is assisting with. However, it struck me as just the sort of book Wal-Mart Jesus would probably enjoy.
"Do you know about Jesus?" I asked Miss K, grinning. Beyond the obvious humor at asking, it was a fair question. After all, having grown up in the area, Miss K was already familiar with the Purple Nun. She admitted, however, she was unfamiliar with Jesus. So I explained who Wal-Mart Jesus is, paying particular attention to details about how he always wears his Low-Rent Arab Sheik robe and flappy turban that appear to have been pulled off a roll in Wal-Mart's fabric department. I also mentioned how he tends to carry a black leather satchel with a large home made tree-limb cudgel to defend himself against folks who mistake him for a terrorist.
"He's a really nice guy," I said, "but he can be a handful when he wants lots of photocopies made and wants you to do it."
Miss K nodded and laughed and looked nervous about it all.
At 3 o'clock I took my break and headed down to the comic shop for this week's goody bag. (Amazing Spider-Man # 515, Tom Strong #30, Concrete: The Human Dilemma #1, Supreme Power #14, Invincible Iron Man #2 and Books of Magick: Life During Wartime #6.) When I returned, Mrs. C grinned and pointed at a familiar black satchel resting behind the counter, minus the cudgel.
"Guess who she got to meet today?" Mrs. C said.
I've learned that it is not at all uncommon for patrons to magically appear at the sound of their own name. They could be absent for months, but if I mention them in common conversation or even blog about them they magically reappear. (I'm now awaiting a new visit from the Evil FedEx Guy in exchange for all the words I lavished on him. Somewhere, I'm sure his ears are burning. I hope it hurts.)
Wal-Mart Jesus's visit was uneventful. He's almost completely given up on finding a seemingly non-existent on-line copy of a particular obscure Hebrew text and is now of a mind to contact the out-of-state university that he knows owns a copy and asking if they can photocopy bits of it for him. (This has been his ongoing project for the past several months, one which I've probably spent an hour and a half total trying to help him with. We've looked and looked and what he wants does not appear to be on-line. Further complicating matters is that I can't always help him search for it because I can't read Hebrew. Fortunately, he can, but his web skills are pretty rudimentary. We make a great pair. Also, we have tried to help him locate what he wants through more traditional library means, but there are just not a whole lot of Hebrew Universities in West Virginia. I still think there's more we can do, but I'll have to consult with someone who has skills.)
One of my main objectives is to warn this naif employee about some of the patrons--of the regular, rogue and crazy varieties--she will likely encounter. The subject of one regular in particular came up when I noticed that Mrs. C had a new book of Hebrew essays over by her desk, ready for cataloging. Turned out it was for another area library, whose cataloging Mrs. C is assisting with. However, it struck me as just the sort of book Wal-Mart Jesus would probably enjoy.
"Do you know about Jesus?" I asked Miss K, grinning. Beyond the obvious humor at asking, it was a fair question. After all, having grown up in the area, Miss K was already familiar with the Purple Nun. She admitted, however, she was unfamiliar with Jesus. So I explained who Wal-Mart Jesus is, paying particular attention to details about how he always wears his Low-Rent Arab Sheik robe and flappy turban that appear to have been pulled off a roll in Wal-Mart's fabric department. I also mentioned how he tends to carry a black leather satchel with a large home made tree-limb cudgel to defend himself against folks who mistake him for a terrorist.
"He's a really nice guy," I said, "but he can be a handful when he wants lots of photocopies made and wants you to do it."
Miss K nodded and laughed and looked nervous about it all.
At 3 o'clock I took my break and headed down to the comic shop for this week's goody bag. (Amazing Spider-Man # 515, Tom Strong #30, Concrete: The Human Dilemma #1, Supreme Power #14, Invincible Iron Man #2 and Books of Magick: Life During Wartime #6.) When I returned, Mrs. C grinned and pointed at a familiar black satchel resting behind the counter, minus the cudgel.
"Guess who she got to meet today?" Mrs. C said.
I've learned that it is not at all uncommon for patrons to magically appear at the sound of their own name. They could be absent for months, but if I mention them in common conversation or even blog about them they magically reappear. (I'm now awaiting a new visit from the Evil FedEx Guy in exchange for all the words I lavished on him. Somewhere, I'm sure his ears are burning. I hope it hurts.)
Wal-Mart Jesus's visit was uneventful. He's almost completely given up on finding a seemingly non-existent on-line copy of a particular obscure Hebrew text and is now of a mind to contact the out-of-state university that he knows owns a copy and asking if they can photocopy bits of it for him. (This has been his ongoing project for the past several months, one which I've probably spent an hour and a half total trying to help him with. We've looked and looked and what he wants does not appear to be on-line. Further complicating matters is that I can't always help him search for it because I can't read Hebrew. Fortunately, he can, but his web skills are pretty rudimentary. We make a great pair. Also, we have tried to help him locate what he wants through more traditional library means, but there are just not a whole lot of Hebrew Universities in West Virginia. I still think there's more we can do, but I'll have to consult with someone who has skills.)
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Running tally
Much "liberry" craziness did ensue today during my 10 hour shift.
The short version: Today we were seiged by two computer neophytes at the same time, both of whom were determined to write highly detailed last minute research papers and/or work-related reports with precise spacing requirements, and neither of them had brought a clue as to how to operate a word processor. In an act of service-oriented chivalry, I helped them both, showed them how to accomplish their goals and made them happy, all the while manning the circ-desk and answering the ever-ringing phone solo. I didn't even resent them once. I rule!
We were also paid typical though unexceptional visits by both Wal-Mart Jesus and Chester the (Potential) Molester. Wal-Mart Jesus wanted copies made. Chester ostensibly came in for more FAFSA forms, but then asked if we had any computers free. I told him they were all full, which was true. Chester failed to ask, however, if any of the computer users were out of time so he was SOL on that front and left.
And with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C out of the building we were, of course, phoned by Mr. Kreskin.
Then, just when I thought I would go completely mad from hunger and sore legs, my sweet wife dropped by unexpectedly with take-out and we were able to dine together. I was so calm and at ease that I even let Brice use the computer. (Hey, he paid for his copies; that's all I really ask.)
All in all, though, it was an okay day and frankly could have been a lot worse. But I got it all done, pretty much by myself.
However, if I hear another phone ring it's getting lobbed in the road.
The short version: Today we were seiged by two computer neophytes at the same time, both of whom were determined to write highly detailed last minute research papers and/or work-related reports with precise spacing requirements, and neither of them had brought a clue as to how to operate a word processor. In an act of service-oriented chivalry, I helped them both, showed them how to accomplish their goals and made them happy, all the while manning the circ-desk and answering the ever-ringing phone solo. I didn't even resent them once. I rule!
We were also paid typical though unexceptional visits by both Wal-Mart Jesus and Chester the (Potential) Molester. Wal-Mart Jesus wanted copies made. Chester ostensibly came in for more FAFSA forms, but then asked if we had any computers free. I told him they were all full, which was true. Chester failed to ask, however, if any of the computer users were out of time so he was SOL on that front and left.
And with both Mrs. A and Mrs. C out of the building we were, of course, phoned by Mr. Kreskin.
Then, just when I thought I would go completely mad from hunger and sore legs, my sweet wife dropped by unexpectedly with take-out and we were able to dine together. I was so calm and at ease that I even let Brice use the computer. (Hey, he paid for his copies; that's all I really ask.)
All in all, though, it was an okay day and frankly could have been a lot worse. But I got it all done, pretty much by myself.
However, if I hear another phone ring it's getting lobbed in the road.
Friday, October 08, 2004
Ministry of Bread & Fury
You ever have that feeling where you just can't seem to get your job done because of your job? Had one of those days today.
I thought my stress level would have ebbed after my Hitchhiker's speech was past me, cause that thing's been hanging over my head all month. However, now that it's gone, I can clearly see all the other giant weighty responsibilities that had been hanging there too.
A while back I mentioned here that I was putting together an online auction to benefit the local literacy group. Well, that got postponed twice because we didn't have any publicity arranged and is now due to start next week. Have we got the publicity arranged? Not before today, we didn't. (Competely my fault. I have to own that one.) So yesterday I wrote a piece about it for the library's newspaper column, which Mrs. A put in the column along with two other items she was already going to talk about and told me to edit the whole thing as I saw fit. She then fled the building never to be seen again.
Happy with the column, I took the disk on which the column was saved and used the information in it to write a press release. Only I managed to overwrite the newspaper column with the press release, closed it and reopened it so I couldn't undo any of my damage. Shortly after this, I noticed a huge glaring error in the supposedly camera-ready newspaper column I'd already printed, which had been my only backup saving grace. In order to fix my mess, I had to track down all of the additional material Mrs. A had gathered to reconstruct the column from the ground up.
That wasn't so hard.
What was so hard was not shitting out a monkey in my fury at all the interruptions to the task. Every time my butt hit the chair in front of the computer, someone came in or the phone rang. Who was calling? People who wanted to talk to Mrs. C, of course, who was also unavailable.
Why was Mrs. C unavailable? Well, see, tomorrow brings a big annual festival in Town-A. Area restaurants and civic groups line main street selling food items as a fund-raiser for themselves and a portion of the proceeds from each booth goes to benefit a local historic performance hall. We always have a booth and sell quick breads, which our loving patrons bake and donate to us to sell. We also bake quite a lot of the bread ourselves. Even me. However, quite a lot of the bread from the patrons does not come wrapped properly or labeled so Mrs. C had to go over to our activities room to see to that chore for a couple of hours, leaving me to run the desk alone.
So while I'm trying to get my shit together for the auction I was constantly interrupted by patrons coming in to bring us bread, or the phone ringing with people asking for Mrs. C, or asking what time we closed, or patrons with unholy thirsts for a computer, or books to check in or books to check out. (And on this front, I noticed today that, to a person, our patrons could pace the room for twenty minutes with an armload of books, but they would NOT make a move for the desk to check out until I gave up waiting on them and went to sit back down at the computer to work. Then it was suddenly a stampede to get out. And this happened EVERY time those circumstances occurred.)
I also had to work on the auction website during all this, trying to get it whipped into shape enough to deserve publicity. Working on the website when I'm alone at the desk is often infuriating and the cause of more monkey shitting. Our webserver is located at the circ desk, but is on the floor in the bottom of a small cabinet beneath the desk itself. To use it, you have to sit on the floor with the keyboard resting on your lap and the world's dirtiest mouse suckin' up the dust bunnies every time you move it. It's nearly useless to try and get anything done with it when you're alone, though, because as soon as you sit down the door opens and needy patrons start pouring through it, or the phone rings, etc., and you have to get up to take care of it. I hate it, and I long for the day when we can have a REAL computer in a REAL office dedicated to the task with a damn lock on the door and no phone!
Of course, you can't have Mrs. A and Mrs. C both effectively gone without an appearance from Mr. Kreskin, our board president. He rolled in around 3 with a goodly number of pages he wanted me to photocopy for him. Oddly, he didn't even ask about Mrs. A or Mrs. C or their whereabouts. And he insisted on paying for his copies.
Finally, around 4 p.m., Mrs. C returned, saw the demented gleam in my eye and the fact that I was air-stabbing patrons behind their backs and told me to go on break. I grabbed the finished press release and column and walked `em down to the paper.
When I came back a half hour later, Mrs. C left for good, failing to alert me that Wal-Mart Jesus was in the building. He didn't have a lot of time to hang around, though, so I didn't have to teach him how to use the internet again. He only had me photocopy four pages from the encyclopedia for him before he gathered up his cudgel and bag and left.
I thought my stress level would have ebbed after my Hitchhiker's speech was past me, cause that thing's been hanging over my head all month. However, now that it's gone, I can clearly see all the other giant weighty responsibilities that had been hanging there too.
A while back I mentioned here that I was putting together an online auction to benefit the local literacy group. Well, that got postponed twice because we didn't have any publicity arranged and is now due to start next week. Have we got the publicity arranged? Not before today, we didn't. (Competely my fault. I have to own that one.) So yesterday I wrote a piece about it for the library's newspaper column, which Mrs. A put in the column along with two other items she was already going to talk about and told me to edit the whole thing as I saw fit. She then fled the building never to be seen again.
Happy with the column, I took the disk on which the column was saved and used the information in it to write a press release. Only I managed to overwrite the newspaper column with the press release, closed it and reopened it so I couldn't undo any of my damage. Shortly after this, I noticed a huge glaring error in the supposedly camera-ready newspaper column I'd already printed, which had been my only backup saving grace. In order to fix my mess, I had to track down all of the additional material Mrs. A had gathered to reconstruct the column from the ground up.
That wasn't so hard.
What was so hard was not shitting out a monkey in my fury at all the interruptions to the task. Every time my butt hit the chair in front of the computer, someone came in or the phone rang. Who was calling? People who wanted to talk to Mrs. C, of course, who was also unavailable.
Why was Mrs. C unavailable? Well, see, tomorrow brings a big annual festival in Town-A. Area restaurants and civic groups line main street selling food items as a fund-raiser for themselves and a portion of the proceeds from each booth goes to benefit a local historic performance hall. We always have a booth and sell quick breads, which our loving patrons bake and donate to us to sell. We also bake quite a lot of the bread ourselves. Even me. However, quite a lot of the bread from the patrons does not come wrapped properly or labeled so Mrs. C had to go over to our activities room to see to that chore for a couple of hours, leaving me to run the desk alone.
So while I'm trying to get my shit together for the auction I was constantly interrupted by patrons coming in to bring us bread, or the phone ringing with people asking for Mrs. C, or asking what time we closed, or patrons with unholy thirsts for a computer, or books to check in or books to check out. (And on this front, I noticed today that, to a person, our patrons could pace the room for twenty minutes with an armload of books, but they would NOT make a move for the desk to check out until I gave up waiting on them and went to sit back down at the computer to work. Then it was suddenly a stampede to get out. And this happened EVERY time those circumstances occurred.)
I also had to work on the auction website during all this, trying to get it whipped into shape enough to deserve publicity. Working on the website when I'm alone at the desk is often infuriating and the cause of more monkey shitting. Our webserver is located at the circ desk, but is on the floor in the bottom of a small cabinet beneath the desk itself. To use it, you have to sit on the floor with the keyboard resting on your lap and the world's dirtiest mouse suckin' up the dust bunnies every time you move it. It's nearly useless to try and get anything done with it when you're alone, though, because as soon as you sit down the door opens and needy patrons start pouring through it, or the phone rings, etc., and you have to get up to take care of it. I hate it, and I long for the day when we can have a REAL computer in a REAL office dedicated to the task with a damn lock on the door and no phone!
Of course, you can't have Mrs. A and Mrs. C both effectively gone without an appearance from Mr. Kreskin, our board president. He rolled in around 3 with a goodly number of pages he wanted me to photocopy for him. Oddly, he didn't even ask about Mrs. A or Mrs. C or their whereabouts. And he insisted on paying for his copies.
Finally, around 4 p.m., Mrs. C returned, saw the demented gleam in my eye and the fact that I was air-stabbing patrons behind their backs and told me to go on break. I grabbed the finished press release and column and walked `em down to the paper.
When I came back a half hour later, Mrs. C left for good, failing to alert me that Wal-Mart Jesus was in the building. He didn't have a lot of time to hang around, though, so I didn't have to teach him how to use the internet again. He only had me photocopy four pages from the encyclopedia for him before he gathered up his cudgel and bag and left.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Wal-Mart Jesus Vs. The Internet
Things were going along swimmingly for once; not too much patron traffic, not too much work for me. Then Wal-Mart Jesus
came in and the patron floodgates opened up. Wal-Mart Jesus wasn't even
the trouble. He just set his bag and cudgel down, then disappeared into
the reference hall without a word. It was everyone else in the room
that were suddenly desperate for my attention! I felt like the main
brain buffet for Night of the Living Dead. Still, I blame him as the chaos didn't begin until he arrived.
All at once, somebody wanted to interlibrary loan some Finnish language tapes, another wanted a computer, two others wanted to check out, one wanted a library card and a late middle-age white lady with a slightly manic look about her wanted Ulysses by James Joyce.
Where the hell was Mrs. C when I needed extra hands? Oh, that's right! She'd disappeared upstairs fifteen minutes before and hadn't been seen since.
I tried to deal with the patrons in order, but our computers were all full so the computer patron would have to wait. Then I couldn't look up the Finnish tapes on ILL because our brand new Dell circulation computer--which is allegedly superior to our old one, yet still somehow manages to run just as slowly and freeze up just as much--no longer had access to our statewide catalog and no one in our smaller 20 county library system owned any Finnish tapes.
"Oh, and do you have Kitty Kelly's new book?" the manic Ulysses requester asked. "I think it's called The Bush Dynasty."
"Uh, no. Not that I'm aware of, ma'am. I couldn't even say if we've ordered it."
She looked appalled that we could call ourselves a library and not have the full Kitty Kelly catalog on display by the front desk.
"We do have Ulysses," I offered, seeing that it was available in our computer. "Looks like it's upstairs."
"Oh good. Could you go get it for me?" Mrs. Manic said.
I wanted to tell her to gnaw on a loin, but opted to just go get the book for her upstairs. It would give me a chance to hunt down Mrs. C, who it turned out was indeed upstairs having a chat with Mrs. B.
"The desk is swamped," I said, dashing over to the 823's in search of Joyce.
Mrs. B made for the stairs while I grilled Mrs. C about Kitty Kelly orders, our computer catalog access and Finnish tapes. Came up zero on all three and then Ulysses too, as it was missing from the shelf.
We went back downstairs. On the way, I spied an open computer I could plug our computer-wanting patron into, so I went to tell them but was accosted by Mrs. Manic first.
"I'm sorry. We don't seem to have Ulysses on the shelf," I said. "And our librarian hasn't done a book order in a couple of weeks, so Kitty Kelly's book isn't here yet and hasn't been ordered. I'm not even sure if we're planning to order it, but if we did it wouldn't be until next week cause our librarian's still on vacation."
Again, Mrs. Manic looked aghast. "It's a huge, huge book. Kitty Kelly... Very big," she said, practically shaking her finger at me. "Could you put me on hold for it?"
"No, I'm sorry, but we can only put people on hold for books that are currently in our system and, like I said, I'm not even sure we're going to order it." Again with the look. "I can put you on for Ulysses, though."
She seemed delighted at this, so I went around the desk where Mrs. B was helping the patron who wanted a library card. I was about to sigh and take a break since I couldn't get at the circ computer for holds anyway when I remembered our waiting computer patron. Well, remembered isn't really accurate as I only recalled her when she walked up to my side of the desk and looked hopeful at me.
"Oh, yeah. I've got one ready for you," I told her. We both went to the computer hall where I found Wal-Mart Jesus had commandeered the empty computer. I wasn't exactly sure if he was there legitimately or if he'd just plopped down for a surf without signing in first. Turned out he hadn't signed in, so I asked him to let me put my patron on since she had signed in first and told him I'd get him on the first available one. Another user was just leaving, so I suddenly had one open for him. Screw the sign-in, I thought. Who's really gonna complain that the guy who looks like Jesus and carries a cudgel didn't sign in?
Back up front, I was finally able to get to the circ desk to put Mrs. Manic on hold. Then, the question I should have asked her in the first place hit me.
"Um, do you have a library card with us?"
Mrs. Manic blinked at me for a while, then admitted that she didn't think so. ARGH!!!
I couldn't put her on hold without a card, so I directed her toward the applications. A sort of worried look came across her face at that point. She didn't seem to want to take the time to fill one out. Fortunately for her, the man who had just received a new library card from Mrs. B was her husband, and he agreed to let her put Ulysses on hold on his card. (I tell ya, I'm really getting sick of patrons and their card-issues.)
About that time, Wal-Mart Jesus reappeared wanting help with the internet. I moseyed on back with him. Seems he was looking to expand his usual quest for obscure Judaic philosophical texts that no one owns to the internet. He even had a site written down that someone had told him about, but he didn't exactly know how to go about getting to it. Admirably, he had brought up Internet Explorer, but he had somehow managed to delete the address field, all of the toolbars and indeed the pull down menu bar, plus he'd moved the task bar to the top of the screen in such a way that I couldn't move it back. He'd also managed to change the appearance of the program itself, causing the IE window to appear far more colorful and shaded than it normally does. I just don't understand how people who are such internet neophytes can cause such havoc with our systems, yet can't seem to type a damn address into the one field clearly labeled "ADDRESS."
Since I couldn't seem to undo his damage, I just rebooted the system so it would reset everything. Then I Googled the Jewish studies university library he was looking for. He explained that he heard they had a really wonderful database on CD Rom and was hoping to access many obscure Jewish texts this way. I hated to tell him, but usually when people have databases on CD Rom, it's because they want you to buy them. This turned out to be exactly the case, though I didn't know for sure right away as the entire site was in Hebrew. Fortunately, being a devout Chasidic Jew, Wal-Mart Jesus can read Hebrew so he was able to translate and guide me where to click. After nearly five minutes of doing the clicking for him, I decided that it wasn't doing him any good for me to navigate for him and it would be much better on us in the future if he had some skills for searching on his own. He took over the mouse and I stood by to answer any questions. I didn't actually have many answers, as most of his questions were geared for someone with more familiarity with the site and I, as I kept explaining to him, had never been to it before and couldn't read it now that I was there. Still, I did at least have internet intuition on my side and steered him away from obvious pay services and back toward the on-line database it listed, which he kept avoiding because it had far too much information to take in at a glance.
That's the thing about searching for information... you're gonna have to wade through a lot you don't want to get to something you do.
Once he was headed in the right direction, I left him to his search, coming back only to remind him that his bus would soon be leaving 20 minutes later.
All at once, somebody wanted to interlibrary loan some Finnish language tapes, another wanted a computer, two others wanted to check out, one wanted a library card and a late middle-age white lady with a slightly manic look about her wanted Ulysses by James Joyce.
Where the hell was Mrs. C when I needed extra hands? Oh, that's right! She'd disappeared upstairs fifteen minutes before and hadn't been seen since.
I tried to deal with the patrons in order, but our computers were all full so the computer patron would have to wait. Then I couldn't look up the Finnish tapes on ILL because our brand new Dell circulation computer--which is allegedly superior to our old one, yet still somehow manages to run just as slowly and freeze up just as much--no longer had access to our statewide catalog and no one in our smaller 20 county library system owned any Finnish tapes.
"Oh, and do you have Kitty Kelly's new book?" the manic Ulysses requester asked. "I think it's called The Bush Dynasty."
"Uh, no. Not that I'm aware of, ma'am. I couldn't even say if we've ordered it."
She looked appalled that we could call ourselves a library and not have the full Kitty Kelly catalog on display by the front desk.
"We do have Ulysses," I offered, seeing that it was available in our computer. "Looks like it's upstairs."
"Oh good. Could you go get it for me?" Mrs. Manic said.
I wanted to tell her to gnaw on a loin, but opted to just go get the book for her upstairs. It would give me a chance to hunt down Mrs. C, who it turned out was indeed upstairs having a chat with Mrs. B.
"The desk is swamped," I said, dashing over to the 823's in search of Joyce.
Mrs. B made for the stairs while I grilled Mrs. C about Kitty Kelly orders, our computer catalog access and Finnish tapes. Came up zero on all three and then Ulysses too, as it was missing from the shelf.
We went back downstairs. On the way, I spied an open computer I could plug our computer-wanting patron into, so I went to tell them but was accosted by Mrs. Manic first.
"I'm sorry. We don't seem to have Ulysses on the shelf," I said. "And our librarian hasn't done a book order in a couple of weeks, so Kitty Kelly's book isn't here yet and hasn't been ordered. I'm not even sure if we're planning to order it, but if we did it wouldn't be until next week cause our librarian's still on vacation."
Again, Mrs. Manic looked aghast. "It's a huge, huge book. Kitty Kelly... Very big," she said, practically shaking her finger at me. "Could you put me on hold for it?"
"No, I'm sorry, but we can only put people on hold for books that are currently in our system and, like I said, I'm not even sure we're going to order it." Again with the look. "I can put you on for Ulysses, though."
She seemed delighted at this, so I went around the desk where Mrs. B was helping the patron who wanted a library card. I was about to sigh and take a break since I couldn't get at the circ computer for holds anyway when I remembered our waiting computer patron. Well, remembered isn't really accurate as I only recalled her when she walked up to my side of the desk and looked hopeful at me.
"Oh, yeah. I've got one ready for you," I told her. We both went to the computer hall where I found Wal-Mart Jesus had commandeered the empty computer. I wasn't exactly sure if he was there legitimately or if he'd just plopped down for a surf without signing in first. Turned out he hadn't signed in, so I asked him to let me put my patron on since she had signed in first and told him I'd get him on the first available one. Another user was just leaving, so I suddenly had one open for him. Screw the sign-in, I thought. Who's really gonna complain that the guy who looks like Jesus and carries a cudgel didn't sign in?
Back up front, I was finally able to get to the circ desk to put Mrs. Manic on hold. Then, the question I should have asked her in the first place hit me.
"Um, do you have a library card with us?"
Mrs. Manic blinked at me for a while, then admitted that she didn't think so. ARGH!!!
I couldn't put her on hold without a card, so I directed her toward the applications. A sort of worried look came across her face at that point. She didn't seem to want to take the time to fill one out. Fortunately for her, the man who had just received a new library card from Mrs. B was her husband, and he agreed to let her put Ulysses on hold on his card. (I tell ya, I'm really getting sick of patrons and their card-issues.)
About that time, Wal-Mart Jesus reappeared wanting help with the internet. I moseyed on back with him. Seems he was looking to expand his usual quest for obscure Judaic philosophical texts that no one owns to the internet. He even had a site written down that someone had told him about, but he didn't exactly know how to go about getting to it. Admirably, he had brought up Internet Explorer, but he had somehow managed to delete the address field, all of the toolbars and indeed the pull down menu bar, plus he'd moved the task bar to the top of the screen in such a way that I couldn't move it back. He'd also managed to change the appearance of the program itself, causing the IE window to appear far more colorful and shaded than it normally does. I just don't understand how people who are such internet neophytes can cause such havoc with our systems, yet can't seem to type a damn address into the one field clearly labeled "ADDRESS."
Since I couldn't seem to undo his damage, I just rebooted the system so it would reset everything. Then I Googled the Jewish studies university library he was looking for. He explained that he heard they had a really wonderful database on CD Rom and was hoping to access many obscure Jewish texts this way. I hated to tell him, but usually when people have databases on CD Rom, it's because they want you to buy them. This turned out to be exactly the case, though I didn't know for sure right away as the entire site was in Hebrew. Fortunately, being a devout Chasidic Jew, Wal-Mart Jesus can read Hebrew so he was able to translate and guide me where to click. After nearly five minutes of doing the clicking for him, I decided that it wasn't doing him any good for me to navigate for him and it would be much better on us in the future if he had some skills for searching on his own. He took over the mouse and I stood by to answer any questions. I didn't actually have many answers, as most of his questions were geared for someone with more familiarity with the site and I, as I kept explaining to him, had never been to it before and couldn't read it now that I was there. Still, I did at least have internet intuition on my side and steered him away from obvious pay services and back toward the on-line database it listed, which he kept avoiding because it had far too much information to take in at a glance.
That's the thing about searching for information... you're gonna have to wade through a lot you don't want to get to something you do.
Once he was headed in the right direction, I left him to his search, coming back only to remind him that his bus would soon be leaving 20 minutes later.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
BUSTED!
When I went to work yesterday, having my secret identity as a
"liberry" blogger unearthed was the furthest thing from my mind. It was
about to happen all the same, though.
Nearly nine months ago when I first started writing this blog I knew in all likelihood I was eventually gonna get caught. Sure, I tried to be careful about who and what I wrote about. Well, a little careful. I did rename most of the people and places that showed up—sometimes thinly—to limit the clues within the blog itself that could lead back to me. However, I've been plenty sloppy in a lot of ways too. Sometimes this has been intentional. Sometimes not.
It's one thing, however, to not care if readers in other states and indeed other countries know my secret identity. It's a whole other ball of dung for someone here in the Tri-Metro area to find out and that's where the sloppy comes in.
I didn't realize just how sloppy I was in other less obvious ways until a few months ago when I started checking my stats and saw the kind of search engine searches that sometimes lead people in my direction. (And by the way, what the hell kind of person does a subject search for "Chris Farley's Dead Ass," anyway?) The stats showed me that even having such words as "West," "Library"and "Virginia" in proximity to one another on the same page could lead people right to my door if they were merely doing a search for something using those words. There are plenty of other words that, while innocuous enough on the surface, could lead someone local to the blog. So I went back and changed some references, eliminated others and tried to tart the place up a bit to further decrease the chances of someone accidentally stumbling in.
Still, there's only so much you can do to disguise yourself if you're writing a blog about working at a "liberry" in WV to keep those terms from coming up. Eventually, the state and the word library are gonna get together and someone is going to find them in a search. With that in mind, I figured it was likely that someone from library HQ would eventually find me. They may already have. If so, they don't seem to be inclined to rat me out to my boss, Mrs. A.
Frankly, though, I wasn't too concerned about being ratted out that way. I think most of my co-workers would really dig the blog and would quickly become some of my more avid readers were they to learn of it. I've even considered letting them in on it if only to get more accurate reporting out of them on the crazy stuff that happens while I'm not at work. I decided, though, that doing so would cause a chilling effect on what I could say. Granted, I've always made it a point not to talk too much trash about my co-workers, (except, of course, for those who abandon their jobs and make me have to pack up all their interlibrary loans on a day I would otherwise not have been at work—thank you oh so very much, Miss E). Still, I'd much prefer the freedom in which I have the choice to behave myself.
I figure they'll eventually learn of it, either by admission or by someone ratting me out. My hope is that if they're angry at me, it will be because I didn't tell them about it sooner.
No, my imagined worse case scenario was much different. In it, I would go in to work one day, walk back to the computer hall and find somebody there reading my blog. They would turn and look up at me with realization in their eyes and then either wink knowingly or give me the finger. Worse yet, what if they came up to the circ desk and yelled at me about it? Even worse still.... what if it was PARKA? That chest hair entry alone would net me at least a bloody nose. Hell, the rest of my rogues gallery practically rivals Spider-Man's already! Sure, I might do okay one on one with most of them, but what if they ganged up? Carol Satan would tear me to shreds with her talons! Wal-Mart Jesus would clock me with his cudgel! Ron the Ripper would try to rip me, or at the very least fart on me! And Cap'n Crossdresser would hit me with his purse!
No sir... I don't like it.
Like I said, though, when I went to work yesterday, I wasn't thinking about any of the above scenarios. And when I left to go on break, I still wasn't thinking of them. So when it happened, it took me by surprise.
As per my usual Wednesday afternoon routine, I ambled down to the local "mall" comic book kiosk, to see what the new shipment had brought. Garin the comic book guy was there at the desk as usual. For some reason, he seemed especially happy to see me. He just kept saying my name over and over, taking an unwholesome amount of glee at some unrevealed nugget of information. I was oblivious.
"You will NEVER guess what I saw... on... the... internet," he said with a devilish grin. Still, I was clueless. I was somehow picturing that he'd found stills from the new Sin City film adaptation, or the full script for Spider-Man 3, or clips from Catwoman: The Version that Didn't Blow Goats.
Garin continued, slowly letting out his verbal fishing line in preparation for yanking it back suddenly. "I found a website that mentions me and my shop."
That's when it hit me and I instantly knew I was busted.
I always expected such a busting to come with the requisite chills and stomach vertigo that usually accompany major revelations. I didn't get so much of that, though. I must have at least looked properly shocked for a few moments, because Garin just continued grinning triumphantly. Pretty quickly, though, I settled into my new role as the grinning little low-carb dieting kid caught with his hand in the Nutter Butters but who knows he's far too cute and adorable to be punished.
What had happened, as Garin explained it, is that one of his customers decided to look his shop up by name and see if it had a website. They typed the name into a search engine and came up with some ebay entries as well as a little blog entry called The Fix Is In. They took a gander at it and alerted Garin that someone was writing about him on the internet.
"So I see this Tales from the `Liberry' site that mentions my shop," Garin said. "I knew immediately who had to have written it! Just the language you used was SO EXACTLY YOU."
Not only did Garin read his own initial appearance in the blog, but read most of the other entries as well and liked them. (Hey, I told ya I was cute and adorable!) Even my slightly less-than-favorable early review of his store, ("I can't say this one ranks with the best of them. But then again, it's only a kiosk store—what can you really do with a kiosk store?"), written a mere one month after he opened for business was met with smiles and appreciation for my honesty. (And just for the record, I also predicted that his store had a lot of potential and in the ten months since then he's proven just what you CAN do with a kiosk store. It's become quite the quality comic retail outlet. *WAVES TO GARIN* In fact, Garin's search engine search also turned up an award he'd won from Marvel Comics themselves, but which no one at Marvel thought to tell him about.)
Garin's one complaint to me in the whole matter: "So why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"
I explained that I was trying to keep things on the Q.T. as far as local publicity went. As much as I didn't care that he knew about it, I'd much prefer most other locals NOT knowing about it. Particularly the mentally-unbalanced locals who occasionally turn up as subject matter.
Then, as if somebody rang the crazy bell, who should show up at the kiosk right on cue... Doc Oc-Fetishist Woman!
This time she wasn't looking for the New Doc Ock or the Old Doc Ock or any Doc Ock. Instead, she had come to see if Garin had any other toys for her husband. Sure enough, a great huge Fantastic 4 Four Pack set of figures has been released, including figures of all four members of the FF plus Franklin Richards, Doctor Doom and even Robbie the EFFing Robot. This, apparently, is what DOF Woman's husband had ordered and she was overjoyed at its arrival.
Naturally, there had to be a wrinkle, though. In addition to the Fantastic Four Pack, a brand new Thing figure had also been released, which was a different sculpt than the version of Thing already in the pack. Garin just wanted to call her attention to it in case her husband was interested, as he knew the guy liked the FF characters. This completely threw Doc Ock Fetishist Woman into a tizzy, though. Garin had to explain to her several times that her husband hadn't ordered the extra Thing so she didn't need to buy it, but if her husband was interested it was there. I had to walk out of sight of her to keep from cracking up laughing as DOF Woman struggled with these concepts for a couple of minutes, dancing perilously close to but never actually crossing the line into understanding. Finally Garin took the extra Thing away from her and told her he would hold on to it and save it for her husband should he want it.
"You'll save it for him then?"
"Yes."
"You'll save it for him then?"
"YES."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I cannot make up shit that crazy!
So guess what, Garin... If I do get drummed out of the library for this blog, I'm moving into your comic shop and starting a new blog there. Seems like it's just another station for the local Crazy Train.
Nearly nine months ago when I first started writing this blog I knew in all likelihood I was eventually gonna get caught. Sure, I tried to be careful about who and what I wrote about. Well, a little careful. I did rename most of the people and places that showed up—sometimes thinly—to limit the clues within the blog itself that could lead back to me. However, I've been plenty sloppy in a lot of ways too. Sometimes this has been intentional. Sometimes not.
It's one thing, however, to not care if readers in other states and indeed other countries know my secret identity. It's a whole other ball of dung for someone here in the Tri-Metro area to find out and that's where the sloppy comes in.
I didn't realize just how sloppy I was in other less obvious ways until a few months ago when I started checking my stats and saw the kind of search engine searches that sometimes lead people in my direction. (And by the way, what the hell kind of person does a subject search for "Chris Farley's Dead Ass," anyway?) The stats showed me that even having such words as "West," "Library"and "Virginia" in proximity to one another on the same page could lead people right to my door if they were merely doing a search for something using those words. There are plenty of other words that, while innocuous enough on the surface, could lead someone local to the blog. So I went back and changed some references, eliminated others and tried to tart the place up a bit to further decrease the chances of someone accidentally stumbling in.
Still, there's only so much you can do to disguise yourself if you're writing a blog about working at a "liberry" in WV to keep those terms from coming up. Eventually, the state and the word library are gonna get together and someone is going to find them in a search. With that in mind, I figured it was likely that someone from library HQ would eventually find me. They may already have. If so, they don't seem to be inclined to rat me out to my boss, Mrs. A.
Frankly, though, I wasn't too concerned about being ratted out that way. I think most of my co-workers would really dig the blog and would quickly become some of my more avid readers were they to learn of it. I've even considered letting them in on it if only to get more accurate reporting out of them on the crazy stuff that happens while I'm not at work. I decided, though, that doing so would cause a chilling effect on what I could say. Granted, I've always made it a point not to talk too much trash about my co-workers, (except, of course, for those who abandon their jobs and make me have to pack up all their interlibrary loans on a day I would otherwise not have been at work—thank you oh so very much, Miss E). Still, I'd much prefer the freedom in which I have the choice to behave myself.
I figure they'll eventually learn of it, either by admission or by someone ratting me out. My hope is that if they're angry at me, it will be because I didn't tell them about it sooner.
No, my imagined worse case scenario was much different. In it, I would go in to work one day, walk back to the computer hall and find somebody there reading my blog. They would turn and look up at me with realization in their eyes and then either wink knowingly or give me the finger. Worse yet, what if they came up to the circ desk and yelled at me about it? Even worse still.... what if it was PARKA? That chest hair entry alone would net me at least a bloody nose. Hell, the rest of my rogues gallery practically rivals Spider-Man's already! Sure, I might do okay one on one with most of them, but what if they ganged up? Carol Satan would tear me to shreds with her talons! Wal-Mart Jesus would clock me with his cudgel! Ron the Ripper would try to rip me, or at the very least fart on me! And Cap'n Crossdresser would hit me with his purse!
No sir... I don't like it.
Like I said, though, when I went to work yesterday, I wasn't thinking about any of the above scenarios. And when I left to go on break, I still wasn't thinking of them. So when it happened, it took me by surprise.
As per my usual Wednesday afternoon routine, I ambled down to the local "mall" comic book kiosk, to see what the new shipment had brought. Garin the comic book guy was there at the desk as usual. For some reason, he seemed especially happy to see me. He just kept saying my name over and over, taking an unwholesome amount of glee at some unrevealed nugget of information. I was oblivious.
"You will NEVER guess what I saw... on... the... internet," he said with a devilish grin. Still, I was clueless. I was somehow picturing that he'd found stills from the new Sin City film adaptation, or the full script for Spider-Man 3, or clips from Catwoman: The Version that Didn't Blow Goats.
Garin continued, slowly letting out his verbal fishing line in preparation for yanking it back suddenly. "I found a website that mentions me and my shop."
That's when it hit me and I instantly knew I was busted.
I always expected such a busting to come with the requisite chills and stomach vertigo that usually accompany major revelations. I didn't get so much of that, though. I must have at least looked properly shocked for a few moments, because Garin just continued grinning triumphantly. Pretty quickly, though, I settled into my new role as the grinning little low-carb dieting kid caught with his hand in the Nutter Butters but who knows he's far too cute and adorable to be punished.
What had happened, as Garin explained it, is that one of his customers decided to look his shop up by name and see if it had a website. They typed the name into a search engine and came up with some ebay entries as well as a little blog entry called The Fix Is In. They took a gander at it and alerted Garin that someone was writing about him on the internet.
"So I see this Tales from the `Liberry' site that mentions my shop," Garin said. "I knew immediately who had to have written it! Just the language you used was SO EXACTLY YOU."
Not only did Garin read his own initial appearance in the blog, but read most of the other entries as well and liked them. (Hey, I told ya I was cute and adorable!) Even my slightly less-than-favorable early review of his store, ("I can't say this one ranks with the best of them. But then again, it's only a kiosk store—what can you really do with a kiosk store?"), written a mere one month after he opened for business was met with smiles and appreciation for my honesty. (And just for the record, I also predicted that his store had a lot of potential and in the ten months since then he's proven just what you CAN do with a kiosk store. It's become quite the quality comic retail outlet. *WAVES TO GARIN* In fact, Garin's search engine search also turned up an award he'd won from Marvel Comics themselves, but which no one at Marvel thought to tell him about.)
Garin's one complaint to me in the whole matter: "So why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"
I explained that I was trying to keep things on the Q.T. as far as local publicity went. As much as I didn't care that he knew about it, I'd much prefer most other locals NOT knowing about it. Particularly the mentally-unbalanced locals who occasionally turn up as subject matter.
Then, as if somebody rang the crazy bell, who should show up at the kiosk right on cue... Doc Oc-Fetishist Woman!
This time she wasn't looking for the New Doc Ock or the Old Doc Ock or any Doc Ock. Instead, she had come to see if Garin had any other toys for her husband. Sure enough, a great huge Fantastic 4 Four Pack set of figures has been released, including figures of all four members of the FF plus Franklin Richards, Doctor Doom and even Robbie the EFFing Robot. This, apparently, is what DOF Woman's husband had ordered and she was overjoyed at its arrival.
Naturally, there had to be a wrinkle, though. In addition to the Fantastic Four Pack, a brand new Thing figure had also been released, which was a different sculpt than the version of Thing already in the pack. Garin just wanted to call her attention to it in case her husband was interested, as he knew the guy liked the FF characters. This completely threw Doc Ock Fetishist Woman into a tizzy, though. Garin had to explain to her several times that her husband hadn't ordered the extra Thing so she didn't need to buy it, but if her husband was interested it was there. I had to walk out of sight of her to keep from cracking up laughing as DOF Woman struggled with these concepts for a couple of minutes, dancing perilously close to but never actually crossing the line into understanding. Finally Garin took the extra Thing away from her and told her he would hold on to it and save it for her husband should he want it.
"You'll save it for him then?"
"Yes."
"You'll save it for him then?"
"YES."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I cannot make up shit that crazy!
So guess what, Garin... If I do get drummed out of the library for this blog, I'm moving into your comic shop and starting a new blog there. Seems like it's just another station for the local Crazy Train.
Friday, June 04, 2004
...to the Seefiles, the Seefiles of Love
Welllllll, my evil joy at Seefiling may have come back to bite me.
Turns out, that stacks of overdue slips I Seefiled yesterday were only for patrons with bad addresses and phone numbers who we could otherwise not have contacted. There were two even bigger stacks covering 2003 and 2004 overdues yet to work with. Now, I'm all for Seefiling them too, but Mrs. A wants to give the patrons one last chance to produce the books and to know what the stakes are in case they don't. This kind of annoys me, because these are the same cats I had to phone, write or otherwise contact LAST MONTH regarding extreme overdues. Seems like if they haven't brought em back yet, they deserve all the Old Testament wrath the "liberry" can dish out. But, Mrs. A wants us to be a benevolent and loving "liberry" one last time, so now we have to check the shelves to make sure the books aren't hiding there and send the overdues out again.
Mrs. C approved my request to include a FINAL NOTICE note with each overdue explaining that if the patron's don't produce these books or otherwise pay for them by June 30 they won't be able to check out ANY books from ANY of the 33 libraries in our new regional library network. So nyeah!
There were a few patrons among these overdues that I took the liberty of shitcanning in advance, though. One was "J. Fagin", a child of the dreaded Fagin "fambly" who had three books out from 2003 that he has no intention of returning. I tell you, stealing books from the library is a way of life with these people. Pa Fagin has been at it since he was in highschool and he's raised all four of his yunnguns, not to mention his wife, to follow in his footsteps. Pa Fagin's been banned for life outright. He doesn't even have an official Seefile entry, he's been banned so long. His kids, however, are sneaky little bastards. Each one of them and their Ma too has AT LEAST two patron records with us and they've all been Seefiled at least once already. This should have precluded them from getting another card in the first place, but they like to sneak in whenever we have a new employee who doesn't know their evil ways and try to get a new card. They'll swear they've never had a card with us before, look pitiful and on the verge of tears and suddenly they'll have a new card and 10 more of our books which we'll never see again. We're gonna make Wanted Posters for them to hang around the desk.
So I added young Mr. Fagin to our DO NOT GIVE CARDS TO THESE DEADBEATS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list and, while I was at it, I added the rest of the Fagin clan too.
Other interesting overdues: Matilde the Cranky Wiccan has an overdue for a Bible she checked out in 2003. I didn't realize she even had a card with us, let alone checked anything out. Maybe if we started requiring the Internet Crowd to have clean upstanding cards before they could use the computer they'd be less apt for overdues.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Jesus came in to photocopy lots of things. Mrs. B wound up helping him for the most part, while I struggled with overdues.
And, of course, Parka came in and did his whole schpiel. The man types louder than any human being I've ever heard. (My wife would argue that I hold that title already--I argue that I don't type loud, I just type fast.) He left a full two minutes from closing time. As he lurched through the main room toward the front door, I waited with breathless anticipation for the moment I knew was coming...
Wait for it... wait for it... WAIT FOR IIIIT.
"What are your hours tomorrow?"
Ahhh, there it is!
"Nine to seven," I told him for the 63rd time.
Turns out, that stacks of overdue slips I Seefiled yesterday were only for patrons with bad addresses and phone numbers who we could otherwise not have contacted. There were two even bigger stacks covering 2003 and 2004 overdues yet to work with. Now, I'm all for Seefiling them too, but Mrs. A wants to give the patrons one last chance to produce the books and to know what the stakes are in case they don't. This kind of annoys me, because these are the same cats I had to phone, write or otherwise contact LAST MONTH regarding extreme overdues. Seems like if they haven't brought em back yet, they deserve all the Old Testament wrath the "liberry" can dish out. But, Mrs. A wants us to be a benevolent and loving "liberry" one last time, so now we have to check the shelves to make sure the books aren't hiding there and send the overdues out again.
Mrs. C approved my request to include a FINAL NOTICE note with each overdue explaining that if the patron's don't produce these books or otherwise pay for them by June 30 they won't be able to check out ANY books from ANY of the 33 libraries in our new regional library network. So nyeah!
There were a few patrons among these overdues that I took the liberty of shitcanning in advance, though. One was "J. Fagin", a child of the dreaded Fagin "fambly" who had three books out from 2003 that he has no intention of returning. I tell you, stealing books from the library is a way of life with these people. Pa Fagin has been at it since he was in highschool and he's raised all four of his yunnguns, not to mention his wife, to follow in his footsteps. Pa Fagin's been banned for life outright. He doesn't even have an official Seefile entry, he's been banned so long. His kids, however, are sneaky little bastards. Each one of them and their Ma too has AT LEAST two patron records with us and they've all been Seefiled at least once already. This should have precluded them from getting another card in the first place, but they like to sneak in whenever we have a new employee who doesn't know their evil ways and try to get a new card. They'll swear they've never had a card with us before, look pitiful and on the verge of tears and suddenly they'll have a new card and 10 more of our books which we'll never see again. We're gonna make Wanted Posters for them to hang around the desk.
So I added young Mr. Fagin to our DO NOT GIVE CARDS TO THESE DEADBEATS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES list and, while I was at it, I added the rest of the Fagin clan too.
Other interesting overdues: Matilde the Cranky Wiccan has an overdue for a Bible she checked out in 2003. I didn't realize she even had a card with us, let alone checked anything out. Maybe if we started requiring the Internet Crowd to have clean upstanding cards before they could use the computer they'd be less apt for overdues.
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart Jesus came in to photocopy lots of things. Mrs. B wound up helping him for the most part, while I struggled with overdues.
And, of course, Parka came in and did his whole schpiel. The man types louder than any human being I've ever heard. (My wife would argue that I hold that title already--I argue that I don't type loud, I just type fast.) He left a full two minutes from closing time. As he lurched through the main room toward the front door, I waited with breathless anticipation for the moment I knew was coming...
Wait for it... wait for it... WAIT FOR IIIIT.
"What are your hours tomorrow?"
Ahhh, there it is!
"Nine to seven," I told him for the 63rd time.
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Freaky Friday
So the couple camped out at the copier with a stack of books. Every minute or two one of us would have to go over and unjam the copier for the couple.
While this was going on, Wal-Mart Jesus came in and went to the reference hall. After 20 minutes or so, he came into the main room with a stack of books of his own, which he was planning to have us copy pages for him. After standing in line to get to it for a few minutes, though, he abandoned his plan, gathered up his bag and cudgel and left.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Wal-Mart Jesus Won't Leave Me Alone
Mrs. A and Mrs. C will be away for the next few
days as they attend the Spring Fling the WV Liberry Assoc. throws every
year. For something being billed as a "fling" the reality of it is not
nearly as exciting as one might expect.
They lit out about midway through the day shortly after I arrived, assuring me that they'd contacted our board president to alert him to the fact that they'd both be away and where they were should he suddenly develop a desperate need to get in touch with them. That's probably the most of our worries, as all the other librarians and sundry state-office officials who might want to call them will be at Spring Fling and can bloody well hunt them down at their leisure.
Before leaving, Mrs. C gave me a sympathetic look and whispered, "By the way, Jesus is in the reference room."
"Really? Wow. Haven't seen him in here in a while."
That's right, it's the return of one of our oldest rogues at the "liberry", none other than Wal-Mart Jesus.
Wal-Mart Jesus has been coming into the library at least as long as I've worked there. He's called Wal-Mart Jesus because... well, he looks an awul lot like the real Jesus, or at least how our Western sensibilities have come to think Jesus looked. He's not Jim Caviezel, but not too far. Plus, he stokes his general air of Jesusness by dressing like a low-rent Arab sheik, with the long flowing robes complete with a long flappy turban. However, his robes look as though they were pulled directly off a roll in Wal-Mart's fabric department. They're white with blue stripes and look like they'd be more at home covering, say, a picnic table than a man. Wal-Mart Jesus also has the full beard and peyo curls, which I believe denote him as a Chasidic Jew.
Now I've visited parts of this country where he wouldn't look terribly out of place, (well, provided someone got him a decent set of robes), but small town West Virginia is NOT one of those parts. I didn't even know the man was simply Jewish at first. The first time I saw him was not too long after 9/11 and I initially thought his mode of dress was some sort of overt statement of pro-Islamic protest. I wasn't angry about it, but I did worry that the local bubba population might not take kindly to it and might administer a beating upon the man's head. I couldn't have been more wrong, though, at least the part about pro-Islamic protest.
Wal-Mart Jesus isn't actually a "liberry" rogue, per se. He's just barely makes it as a benign irritant. I actually kind of like him, cause I'm all for colorful library patrons and he certainly qualifies. Wal-Mart Jesus is, as you might expect, a pretty nice guy to deal with, even though he seems a bit on his guard much of the time. Every time he comes in, though, he's deeply involved in researching a wide variety of topics the reference material for which he has no prayer of finding on the shelves of our tiny library. He's often in the market for lots and lots of information about centuries dead Jewish philosophers that can only be found in a Centuries Dead Jewish Philosopher Encyclopedia which we don't own. We've searched around and found one at another WV library, but they're not keen on loaning it out to us. We've subsequently made requests on his behalf that the other library simply photocopy the pages from their encyclopedia pertaining to the centuries dead philosopher he wants and send them to us. Despite repeated attempts at this, it has yet to come off properly. Usually the other library conveniently loses our request, which annoys both Wal-Mart Jesus and us. And if they actually manage to photocopy what we want they don't actually manage to send it to us, as though we're planning to drive seventy miles to come pick it up. And, on the one occasion they managed to both photocopy it and send it to us, we had already managed to lose the by then crinkly and ancient Interlibrary Loan slip on which we'd written Wal-Mart Jesus's real name and home number and so we couldn't call him about it. I think he may have given up on us at that point, cause until today he'd not been in for several months.
Wal-Mart Jesus can be something of a needy patron. He's back and forth from the reference hall, dragging out volume after volume of the encyclopedias for photocopying, which he doesn't like to do himself. That's okay, though. Serving needy patrons is what I'm there for, so serve I do. Sure, it's a bit irritating to have to drop what you're in the middle of to go run off pages on our devil copier every five minutes, but frankly I can manage to be irritated at just about anything so it's no great slam against Wal-Mart Jesus.
Today I made several photocopies of West Virginia Code regulations, encyclopedia entries on Frederick Nietzsche and some pages from a West Virginia history book. This was pretty much par for the course with Wal-Mart Jesus. However, when he made an interlibrary loan request for a non-specific book that specifically had to contain photos of Nietzsche's Aunt Rosalie, I knew we were in for some fun. Not only did he want Aunt Rosalie but he also wanted a few other Nietzsche family photos and some pictures of Nietzsche's friends, including Lou Andreas-Salome, Rainer Maria Rilke and a few others. He had no idea what book these might be found in, but he wanted the book all the same.
"Have you tried the internet?" I asked. I was already envisioning the headache we were about to send to some other poor bastard reference librarian, not to mention Mrs. C who would have to coordinate this from our end.
"No, I've not tried that yet," he said. "I don't have time right now. I have to catch a bus." Much like the real Jesus, Wal-Mart Jesus doesn't drive.
"How bout this," I said, "I'll dig around on the internet and see if I can find pictures of these folks. If they're out there, I should be able to find them."
Wal-Mart Jesus thanked me, then departed after gathering up his leather satchel as well as the stout, cudgel-like section of a tree branch he carries--one with the stumps of smaller branches spiking out from its gnarled head just perfect for laying a beat-down on any Temple sales-clerks he comes upon. (Perhaps the Bubba Patrol hasn't left him alone after all?)
A few minutes of work on the internet and I'd located pictures of everyone he was looking for. I printed them out, clipped his ILL slip to them and left a message on his answering machine about it. He called back later and seemed very pleased to hear of my success.
Seeing him back, though, reminds me that soon I need to chronicle the tale of our late lamented quintessential "liberry" rogue the Purple Nun.
They lit out about midway through the day shortly after I arrived, assuring me that they'd contacted our board president to alert him to the fact that they'd both be away and where they were should he suddenly develop a desperate need to get in touch with them. That's probably the most of our worries, as all the other librarians and sundry state-office officials who might want to call them will be at Spring Fling and can bloody well hunt them down at their leisure.
Before leaving, Mrs. C gave me a sympathetic look and whispered, "By the way, Jesus is in the reference room."
"Really? Wow. Haven't seen him in here in a while."
That's right, it's the return of one of our oldest rogues at the "liberry", none other than Wal-Mart Jesus.
Wal-Mart Jesus has been coming into the library at least as long as I've worked there. He's called Wal-Mart Jesus because... well, he looks an awul lot like the real Jesus, or at least how our Western sensibilities have come to think Jesus looked. He's not Jim Caviezel, but not too far. Plus, he stokes his general air of Jesusness by dressing like a low-rent Arab sheik, with the long flowing robes complete with a long flappy turban. However, his robes look as though they were pulled directly off a roll in Wal-Mart's fabric department. They're white with blue stripes and look like they'd be more at home covering, say, a picnic table than a man. Wal-Mart Jesus also has the full beard and peyo curls, which I believe denote him as a Chasidic Jew.
Now I've visited parts of this country where he wouldn't look terribly out of place, (well, provided someone got him a decent set of robes), but small town West Virginia is NOT one of those parts. I didn't even know the man was simply Jewish at first. The first time I saw him was not too long after 9/11 and I initially thought his mode of dress was some sort of overt statement of pro-Islamic protest. I wasn't angry about it, but I did worry that the local bubba population might not take kindly to it and might administer a beating upon the man's head. I couldn't have been more wrong, though, at least the part about pro-Islamic protest.
Wal-Mart Jesus isn't actually a "liberry" rogue, per se. He's just barely makes it as a benign irritant. I actually kind of like him, cause I'm all for colorful library patrons and he certainly qualifies. Wal-Mart Jesus is, as you might expect, a pretty nice guy to deal with, even though he seems a bit on his guard much of the time. Every time he comes in, though, he's deeply involved in researching a wide variety of topics the reference material for which he has no prayer of finding on the shelves of our tiny library. He's often in the market for lots and lots of information about centuries dead Jewish philosophers that can only be found in a Centuries Dead Jewish Philosopher Encyclopedia which we don't own. We've searched around and found one at another WV library, but they're not keen on loaning it out to us. We've subsequently made requests on his behalf that the other library simply photocopy the pages from their encyclopedia pertaining to the centuries dead philosopher he wants and send them to us. Despite repeated attempts at this, it has yet to come off properly. Usually the other library conveniently loses our request, which annoys both Wal-Mart Jesus and us. And if they actually manage to photocopy what we want they don't actually manage to send it to us, as though we're planning to drive seventy miles to come pick it up. And, on the one occasion they managed to both photocopy it and send it to us, we had already managed to lose the by then crinkly and ancient Interlibrary Loan slip on which we'd written Wal-Mart Jesus's real name and home number and so we couldn't call him about it. I think he may have given up on us at that point, cause until today he'd not been in for several months.
Wal-Mart Jesus can be something of a needy patron. He's back and forth from the reference hall, dragging out volume after volume of the encyclopedias for photocopying, which he doesn't like to do himself. That's okay, though. Serving needy patrons is what I'm there for, so serve I do. Sure, it's a bit irritating to have to drop what you're in the middle of to go run off pages on our devil copier every five minutes, but frankly I can manage to be irritated at just about anything so it's no great slam against Wal-Mart Jesus.
Today I made several photocopies of West Virginia Code regulations, encyclopedia entries on Frederick Nietzsche and some pages from a West Virginia history book. This was pretty much par for the course with Wal-Mart Jesus. However, when he made an interlibrary loan request for a non-specific book that specifically had to contain photos of Nietzsche's Aunt Rosalie, I knew we were in for some fun. Not only did he want Aunt Rosalie but he also wanted a few other Nietzsche family photos and some pictures of Nietzsche's friends, including Lou Andreas-Salome, Rainer Maria Rilke and a few others. He had no idea what book these might be found in, but he wanted the book all the same.
"Have you tried the internet?" I asked. I was already envisioning the headache we were about to send to some other poor bastard reference librarian, not to mention Mrs. C who would have to coordinate this from our end.
"No, I've not tried that yet," he said. "I don't have time right now. I have to catch a bus." Much like the real Jesus, Wal-Mart Jesus doesn't drive.
"How bout this," I said, "I'll dig around on the internet and see if I can find pictures of these folks. If they're out there, I should be able to find them."
Wal-Mart Jesus thanked me, then departed after gathering up his leather satchel as well as the stout, cudgel-like section of a tree branch he carries--one with the stumps of smaller branches spiking out from its gnarled head just perfect for laying a beat-down on any Temple sales-clerks he comes upon. (Perhaps the Bubba Patrol hasn't left him alone after all?)
A few minutes of work on the internet and I'd located pictures of everyone he was looking for. I printed them out, clipped his ILL slip to them and left a message on his answering machine about it. He called back later and seemed very pleased to hear of my success.
Seeing him back, though, reminds me that soon I need to chronicle the tale of our late lamented quintessential "liberry" rogue the Purple Nun.
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