Mr. Crab Finally Poops

Mr. Crab, third grumpiest old man in all the world, happened in this week, approached the circ-desk and inquired to Mrs. B as to the whereabouts of our copy of the Wa11 Street J0urnal. Now, it might seem odd that Mr. Crab would ask about the location of our Wa11 Street J0urnal copy when we have a perfectly good and well-identified periodicals section upstairs where one might expect to find such things as, say, periodicals. No, Mr. Crab's reasoning behind his question is two-fold: A) he firmly believes that, two years ago, we spent six full months without a subscription to the Wa11 Street J0urnal and he enjoys broaching that particular subject even though reality reflects that we only spent about a month and a half without it; and B) at our "liberry" the mail does not arrive on a schedule preferable to anyone, except, I assume, our postmaster.

For years, our mail used to arrive faithfully each morning at around 9:30. In the past few months, however, our mailman's route has been fiddled with by the postmaster on a number of occasions, causing it to arrive later and later in the day. (We know this because our mailman doesn't like it either and ratted out his boss to us.) First we started getting our mail around 1p. Then, it arrived closer to 2, then 3. Now it can come anywhere between 3 and 5 o'clock and arrives earlier only when the mailman has several large and heavy packages for us and doesn't want to have to lug them around all day.

Still, when the mail does finally arrive, we're rarely in any hurry to put the Journal in its place on the newspaper rack. The only people I've ever known to actually read it are Mr. B-Natural (first grumpiest old man in all the world), Mr. Smiley (second grumpiest old man in all the world, but who hasn't graced us with his presence for over a year now), Mr. Crab (the aforementioned third) and a long unseen patron who used to refer to the Wa11 Street J0urnal as "the Capitalist Tool," which, in turn, was how I came to refer to him. Often, the Journal just stays on the lower shelf of our downstairs shelving cart awaiting some good soul to haul it upstairs. Often, it remains there until closing time, when we finally do haul it upstairs and lob it atop the pile of its brethren. Also, due to rapid circ-desk duty employee turnover, the person manning the desk doesn't always know whether or not the mail has arrived, so if anyone comes in seeking the Journal, (i.e. Mr. B-Natural or Mr. Crab), we tell them to first check the shelving cart and if it's not there then it's either in the periodicals section upstairs or it hasn't arrived yet. It's a pretty simple formula, but these two horse's asses don't care to remember it and ask us every time.

During Mr. Crab's visit, Mrs. B happened to know that the mail had not arrived. She explained this to him and noted that the mail might not arrive for hours yet. Mr. Crab was, naturally, quite grumpy about this. Mrs. B told me that she had expected he would next probably complain about the lateness of the mail, but instead he complained about something else.

"Do you know what your library director said to me the other day?" Mr. Crab said, leaning closer.

"What?" Mrs. B asked.

"I asked her if the Wa11 Street J0urnal had arrived and she told me to look on this cart and if it wasn't there it might be upstairs." And he said this in a tone that suggested any right-thinking person should be appalled. Then he finally uttered the words we've been waiting to hear for years: "She won't be getting a donation next year."

Why Mrs. A's suggestion set Mr. Crab off when the rest of the staff have told him the exact same thing on multiple occasions, I'm none too sure. Mrs. A is not a fan of Mr. Crab, so perhaps his finely attuned senses detected her dislike. Whatever the case, Mrs. B didn't know how to respond to him. When she told me about it, though, my brain nearly hemorrhaged from the amount of possibilities that flew through it.

"You should have told him, `Oh, thank God it's finally over! At last, we can stop living in fear of you!' "

Mrs. B laughed.

"No, wait! You should have dropped to your knees, burst into tears and wailed, `Ohhhh no! Oh, dear God, no! Pleeease don't take away your donation! Please, please, pleeeeaaaaase! How can we possibly go on without all two hundred of your dollars?! Ohhh, our poor poor budget! We'll have to fire the staff!' "

" `And then who will let you check things out on their cards when you forget yours?' " Mrs. B added.

"`Oh, lordy lordy, what will we do? What WIIIIILLL we dooooooo?!!!' "

"Oh, the Irony!!!" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 5)

In addition to working at the "liberry" part time, our perpetual Newbie Greenhorn, Ms. S, also works in the fast food industry. Often she comes directly from a shift at her fast food job for a shift at the "liberry." You might think this would cause us problems of having to smell that fast-foody smell that tends to sink into your pores and follow you around (believe me, I've worked in enough pizza joints to know), but, both fortunately and oddly, she doesn't smell that way at all.

The rest of our staff have often speculated on the many ways she probably handles her fast food job, imaginging much the same behavior as we witness in her "liberry" job. None of us, however, have been brave enough to venture to her particular restaurant since we learned of her employment there.

Last week, while Mrs. B and I were engaged in some book processing, Ms. S arrived for her shift. She soon announced that she had been very annoyed at her fast food job. Mrs. B inquired as to why.

"There's this new girl there and I had to train her," Ms. S said. "I was showing her how to take orders and I took a few orders and was showing her how and then I told her to try a few on her own. Well, she kept stopping to ask me questions and ask the manager questions. It was just one question after another until I wanted to scream!"

Mrs. B and I became very silent at this point. I kept my eyes locked onto the circ-desk computer screen. I knew that if Mrs. B and I were to make eye contact at that point, we would both completely lose our shit due to having just been subjected to the most ironic statements we're likely to hear all year.

Yes, Ms. S—an employee who after 9 months on the job still has to be told and retold some of the more basic functions of her job—was complaining about a brand new employee not having mastered the finer points of taking a fast food order.

Yes, Ms. S—a person who thinks up the most inane and obvious questions, holding them like a pool of mercury in the hermetically-sealed vault of her little pea-brain, saving them until 5p when we are all headed out the door to leave her on her own, then releasing them upon us in a blinding, drowning, takes ten minutes to answer `em all torrent—had just complained about someone else asking too many questions.

Yes, Ms. S—the author of some of the dumbest questions on record, with the most painfully apparent answers, not to mention the same newbie greenhorn who thinks nothing of phoning up Mrs. C at home, repeatedly, over the course of an entire weekend, to ask said moronic questions, ("Uhhhh, hey, whut do I cover books with when I run out of ten inch book wrap?"; "Uhhhh, hey, whut am I supposed to do with the interlibrary loans that won't fit in our already overstuffed mail pouch?"; "Uhh, hey, one of our patron computers isn't working; should I keep putting patrons on it, anyway?")—was complaining about dumb questions being asked by a newbie greenhorn.

During the midst of my fight to keep from belting out cackles of irony-spawned laughter, Mrs. C entered the room and gave my quivering dam of a face a quizzical look. I tried to convey, "I'll tell you later" using only my left eyebrow, but didn't think the message quite communicated through my barely-contained amusement.

"I'm... going to go... take some books... to the basement," I said.

"Oh, take MS. S with you and show her where we keep the bindery books," Mrs. C said.

O.T.I.

"Get out of Blog Free" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 4)

Found out today that I fudged up in my reporting of yesterday's story.

It's become something of a weekly tradition for the staff to share stories about Ms. S on Thursday mornings. This is because we have the highest concentration of staff members at that point and also because Ms. S is never among that concentration. Today's discussion was jumpstarted by the fact that despite both I and Mrs. C having told Ms. S to stop cutting up the spine label sheets because they gum up the typewriter, we found yet another pile of her brutal label leavings. It looked like some kind of gruesome, mishapen paperdoll chain. Mrs. A left it by the typewriter and slapped a note on it reading, "There will be no more spine labels cut this way. It is wasteful and they stick to the typewriter."

My conversation with Mrs. C and Mrs. B progressed a bit more and I asked, "Has MRS. A said anything about why we haven't just gotten rid of MS. S?"

Both shook their heads. We then talked about the prospect somewhat. I wondered if perhaps Mrs. A, knowing how unskilled and newbie greenhornish Ms. S is, was just giving her the necessary time for our on-the-job training to finally kick in. After all, it took former Newbie Greenhorn Ms. M almost a full year to finally stop screwing things up on a near habitual level and become a cherished fellow "Liberry" Ass. Eight months ago we were calling for her head too, but now we love her and think she's doing a respectable job. There is kind of a learning curve to the job and even those of us who've been at it for years still get called up short by some new patron-spawned twist, on occasion. Getting into the rhythm of things can take a long time for skilled people, let alone someone with no discernible customer service skills such as Ms. S. That said, though, all evidence seems to point to Ms. S being a sour mixed drink composed of two parts lazy to one part incompetence, with a generous chaser of stubborn refusal to follow directions no matter how many times they're given.

"Did MRS. A hear the story about MS. S ignoring the patron while she made a greeting card?" I asked. To me, this was the latest prime bit of evidence that Ms. S just doesn't "get" it.

"A greeting card?" Mrs. B asked. "You didn't tell me about her making a greeting card."

I was taken aback. For a moment, I thought I'd slipped into a parallel universe in which Mrs. B hadn't been the person to tell me the greeting card story.

"No. Wait. You told..." I began.

"Ohhh, no. She wasn't making a greeting card," Mrs B said. "She was making a library card."

Thinking about the retelling I'd heard, Mrs. B had not actually said greeting card, but had only said that Ms. S had been making a card. My brain was the one that made the leap to greeting card. A library card at least made more sense. I can kind of see how Ms. S might be so absorbed in making a library card that she would ignore a patron. Not to say that this is at all excusable, it's just that the way her brain seems to work she would feel completely justified in ignoring her customer service responsibilities because she was so engrossed at "doing her job."

So, it looks like I reported the event incorrectly here through my own faulty journalism. I'm tempted to give Ms. S a "Get Out of Blog Free" card to make up for it, though at this point in the entry that's a bit moot.

"Get Well Soon!" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 3)

My intrepid reporter, Mrs. B, often gives me the best Ms. S stories, mostly because they have to work together more often.

Mrs. B related to me that one day, while Ms. S was working the circ desk, she became engrossed in creating an online greeting card using the circulation computer. Ms. S spent quite a bit of time at it, getting the details just right, and was so thoroughly absorbed with her task that when a patron stepped up to the desk for help, Ms. S completely ignored him. Mrs. B, watching from afar, kept waiting for Ms. S to pause and ask the gentleman how she could help him, being as how he was standing a foot and a half away from her, clearly waiting to be assisted. She didn't. As for the patron, he didn't interrupt her, cough politely, or even say "Excuse me" or anything. He just stood there, waiting for Ms. S to wrap up what she was doing and ask if he needed help. Again, she didn't. She just kept right on plugging away at her greeting card.

Seeing that Ms. S was entranced, Mrs. B dashed behind the desk herself and asked the patron if she could help him. He explained that he was looking for a particular book and had been unable to find it on the shelf and wanted help to make sure we even owned it. Since this was all said aloud, in direct proximity to Ms. S, Mrs. B waited politely for Ms. S to catch wind of the conversation and realize she was hogging up the circulation computer that Mrs. B needed for this search. She didn't. Mrs. B finally had to tap her on the shoulder and tell her to get out of the way.

Now, I'm no stranger for using the circulation computer to do non-work related projects. However, I do not do them to the exclusion of my job. Neither Mrs. B nor I could think of any reason beyond sheer, pig-headed stupidity that Ms. S would so actively ignore a patron like this. I shudder to think of what goes on during her solo shifts on the weekends.

"Label me Pissed" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 2)

It's pretty much been confirmed that the origin of nearly every problem we have with Ms. S can be traced back to her extreme laziness. She will actually do phenomenal amounts of work to get out of doing only a little work.

For instance, a few weeks back Mrs. C and Mrs. B went through our entire biography section to check which books had been inconsistently spine-labled with "BIO" instead of Dewey "92" by previous catalogers. They then printed new spine labels to replace the faulty ones. As Ms. S is ostensibly responsible for order in the nonfiction shelves (BWAH HA ha aha ahaaaah!), the task of affixing those new labels was given to her. It took her DAYS to accomplish this, because she insisted on cutting out each individual spine label from the two and a half larger computer generated sheets of printed spine labels. She left the wax-paper backing on each label so they could remain loose and not stick to anything, then arranged them pleasantly across the surface of one of our tables before even attempting to look for books on which to affix them. These extra steps, you see, allowed her the maximum amount of time for her ass to remain planted in a chair rather than pacing the bio wall, simply cutting the labels off the larger pages and affixing them to the spines with a bit of book tape, as needed. I was sent up to help her, at one point, and blew through an uncut page of labels in under an hour.

Even after Ms. S finished those label pages, we discovered that not all the incorrectly labeled books had been present and accounted for when Mrs.es C and B did their original survey. It became Ms. S's task to type up more labels for the missing books, which she was told to do using our typewriter and some of the narrow sheets of labels we normally use to do spine labels. Of course, after she'd typed some of them, she found it gave her more chair time to cut all of those labels out too, wax-backing and all. This gave her neat little loose labels, but left holes in the overall label sheets, rendering the blank labels left there unusable because they were then incapable of being fed back into the typewriter without gumming up the whole works. She tried anyway, of course, and then left a note to explain that the reason she hadn't finished all of her labels, nor affixed any of them to actual books, was because the typewriter was utterly jammed up and she couldn't get the labels sheet out no matter what she tried.

The following morning, Mrs. C was fuming about this. It was just one more log of poop on the fragrant pile of excuses Ms. S has used to get out of doing her job. Mrs. C marched right over to the typewriter and, with barely a tug, retrieved the allegedly utterly jammed sheet of labels with almost no effort. She then gathered them up, along with all the biographies to be relabeled, and left the whole towering pile of them for Ms. S to do. (We'd like to think Ms. S is quickly learning that the jobs she is assigned do not go away just because she manages not to do them immediately, but we too have long since learned from history.)

When Ms. S returned, a day later, she eventually noticed her pile of books and the instructions taped to them. "How'd they get the labels out of the typewriter?" she asked me.

"I'm not sure," I said. Then I spied Mrs. C coming into the room. "How did you get the labels out of the typewriter, again?" I asked her.

"Just pulled them out," she said. "Yep, they came right out. Riiiight. On. Out. Just gave `em a tug, really, and they came out. No problem. Easy. Right out."

Ms. S mumbled something about them being utterly stuck when she'd tried it, but she decided to drop the subject. After all, she had a dozen freshly typed labels to cut out of the paper. We told her to stop doing that because it gums up the typewriter. We also had to explain to her YET AFRIGGINGAIN that the spine labels are actually supposed to be placed on the SPINES of the book, rather than on the front cover of the book where no one can see them without pulling the book off the shelf, further tempting patrons to reshelve it incorrectly.

"Oh, but I was just--"

"No, no. They go on the spine."

"Deposit One Brain" (L is for Lazy Week: Day 1)

One day, a couple weeks back, my boss Mrs. A was scheduled to be in meetings in her office for most of the day. Likewise, Mrs. C had pressing business to take care of via phone and Mrs. B needed to process the backlog of book donations for our booksale. When Ms. S arrived, she was told she would need to work the desk to free everyone else up for their tasks. Almost immediately upon clocking in, though, she fled the desk for the nonfiction shelves to "read" the sections she's responsible for keeping in order. (And I shudder at the thought tht I may one day be sent to check her work.)

Mrs. C sent Mrs. B to drag Ms. S back to the desk and repeated to her that she was to stay there. Everyone then went to their tasks, some close by, some far off, and left Ms. S to it.

Shortly after this, the wife of one of the warring parties in our ongoing battle for the c0ntract0r's manuals came in to inquire about their status. The wife mentioned to Ms. S that she'd phoned about them earlier in the day. Ms. S, who lives in fear of our deposit books, because they are a hassle and require attention to detail, immediately denied all knowledge of anything this lady might or might not have been told about the books and tried desperately to weasel out of having to deal with the situation by pleading ignorance to Mrs. C. Mrs. C, who was by then very much on the phone in the midst of her business, indicated, using her eyebrows alone, that she would, in fact, slaughter Ms. S if she didn't go deal with the situation and answer the wife's question, which was merely to see if we had any of the deposit books on hand that she wanted. As it turned out, we didn't have all of them, but it took a long time for Ms. S to determine this because she kept nervously and unsuccessfully trying to check the computer for them rather than simply walking to the shelf and having a gander. Mrs. C had to put her call on hold for a moment to alert Ms. S to this shortcut, at which point Ms. S finally went and retrieved the books we did have on hand.

That done, Ms. S still seemed at a complete loss as to how to tell which books among those required for the c0ntract0r's exam were currently checked out and not in the stack she'd brought to the desk. Mrs. C finally had to put her call on hold again, drag Ms. S over to the c0ntract0r's manuals MANUAL (hanging exactly where it always is, right where Ms. S has been told it can be found at least twice before), then show her how to turn to the big obvious bookmarked page to find the list of required books for the c0ntract0r's exam, and show her how to read the spines of the stack of books there on the desk, comparing them against those listed in the manual to see which one's weren't present. Ms. S still screwed it up, declaring to the patron that we didn't have the very book that was sitting RIGHT THERE on the top of the stack--a book, I might add, that Mrs. C had JUST used as an example to show Ms. S how to do the job.

Mrs. B walked back into the room then, prompting Ms. S to gratefully explain to her patron that Mrs. B had been the employee to whom she'd spoken on the phone ealier. Then Ms. S tried to make a break for the nonfiction room in order to ditch the whole matter in Mrs. B's lap.

Mrs. C again had to put her call on hold and explain to Ms. S that she would not be escaping her duty and that she would be the person who to finish the transaction.

Upon hearing this tale recounted, I suggested that we need to get Ms. S her own Unobstructed Doors aid on the grounds that she's clearly retarded.

L is for Lazy Week

We've had a lot more fun from our perpetual newbie greenhorn, Ms. S, over the past few weeks (and by "fun" I mean "shit"). In fact, I have something of a backlog of Ms. S stories. I've been hesitant to share them, though, because every time I post a Ms. S story, people leave comments asking why we haven't fired her yet. I'm afraid that's possibly a mystery for the ages to be speculated upon by future historians with better minds than mine. Granted, I'd really prefer it if she was fired, cause it would make my job easier and my desire to strangle people somewhat less strong. However, there's also something to be said for the entertainment value of keeping her around, which may yet prove to be the ultimate reason for not firing her in the mind of my boss.

So how `bout let's all just take it for granted that Ms. S is here to stay, she'll not be fired and will never leave of her own accord. This way, we can just sit back, relax and enjoy the show...

I'll take "Recently Deceased Actresses—the Older, Better Ones, Mind You; Not These They Got Today" for $100, Alex.

On Friday, shortly after I arrived for work, the entire staff fled the building once again for lunch. This is usually when the floodgates of people phoning to speak to either of our librarians occurs, but no such calls came through. Instead, Birthday Lady phoned to ask the date of birth of recently deceased actress Betty Hutton.

I must confess, before today I'd never even heard of Betty Hutton. But I Googled her up and found a Wikipedia entry for her. She was born February 26, 1921 and passed on March 11, 2007. I gave this information to Birthday Lady. She dutifully repeated the information back to me to make sure she had it spelled right in her scrapbook of obituaries for famous celebrities known only to people born before 1972.

"I phoned earlier, but I suppose the girl I spoke to didn't get a chance to call me back," Birthday Lady said. Then she added, "I keep up with the older actresses—not these they got today."

"Ah," I said.

"I think the older actresses were better, really."

"Probably so," I said.

After I hung up the phone, I noticed that someone had already written Betty Hutton's pertinent dates on a piece of scrap paper, along with Birthday Lady's real name and phone number. Once the staff returned from lunch, I learned that they actually had attempted to return her call several times, but it always just rang and rang and rang.

"She was probably on the phone, trying to get the information from a competing library," I suggested.

It's good to know Birthday Lady's contact information, though. Puts me in a mind to phone her up and ask if I could see her scrapbook.

If you put the forms out, they will come.

Yeah, I figured that would do it. Writing that we haven't had any problems with tax form people is the easiest way to summon precisely that sort of problem. Sure enough, today, just after everyone else on staff had left the building to go to lunch, a big ol' wingnut of a form-seeker ambled up to the desk.

"I need state tax forms."

"We have those," I said, warming up to direct him to the large display of forms he'd just walked past.

"I need s-corporation state forms for 2003, 2004 and 2006. And personal forms for 2003, 2004 and 2006."

Already I was at a disadvantage, for I've never heard of an s-corporation before, but I figured I could find it on the state's tax form page.

"Well, the personal forms we already have. At least, for 2006," I explained. "The rest I'll try to find for you from their site."

"Yeah, they said you'd probably have to look `em up," he said. Ah, yes. The mysterious THEY. "You say you got personal forms here?" he added.

"Yes," I said, pointing at the top of the floor shelf behind him. "They're on the other side of that shelf, in the bins."

The man walked around to the other side where he began staring at the piles of federal tax forms stacked directly next to the three bins containing state booklets. "Oh, in the bins," he said with the tone of a statement. He still wasn't seeing them.

"No, in the bins," I said. "In the plastic bins," I added. "In the yellow, white and black plastic bins," I continued. He looked in every conceivable place EXCEPT at the bins.

"The bins?" he said.

"Yes, the plastic bins... The bins.... No, the BINS... The PLASTIC bins," I said.

I don't know why I expected more from a man who, apparently, had failed to pay his taxes for the past four years for either himself or his business (except, apparently, for 2005). After a few more tries, he finally spotted them. As he dug around, I brought up the state's tax form site and began looking for s-corp forms. There were none to be found on just a cursory glance so I started a search for them. I did note, though, that the site only offered forms for years since 2004.

Another man came up to the desk while I searched, so I paused to ask if I could help him.

"Yeah, you're holding some c0ntract0rs books for me," he said. Aw great. As if searching for obscure forms wasn't keeping me busy enough during my solo desk time, I had to deal with deposit books and all the headaches they entail.

I hate the c0ntract0rs manuals and I'm usually none too fond of the people who seek them. I had nothing against this particular guy, except that he and another would-be-c0ntract0r have been competing for the same set of books for the past three weeks. They've been driving us crazy by phoning to place holds on them, then not picking them up by the prescribed pickup time, then getting pissy about it when the books aren't there for them when they roll in two days late, then the guy who did get the books gets pissy that he has to bring them back after his week's loan time has passed cause the other guy now has them on hold again too, then getting pissy again when told he will lose his deposit if he doesn't, etc., etc., etc. The checkout process on the books is also an enormous hassle, cause we have to calculate the deposit amount (over $500 if they want the whole set), make them sign two identical deposit book policy forms (one for us, one for them), then we have to make them go back and actually READ the frickin' forms they just blindly signed, not to mention TAKE their copy of the form, so they have no excuse to give us enormous amounts of shit a week later, etc., etc., etc. This guy was very patient, though, even after I told him it was going to be a minute due to my tax form search.

I came up goose eggs on the s-corps search. Then Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine came in and signed up for a computer. He looked impatient to begin searching for members of his fambly. I ignored him.

"Um, do you happen to know a form number for these?" I asked the tax form guy.

"No. I don't even know if there is a form," the man said so very helpfully three minutes after he should have. He offered to go home, call someone who knew and return better prepared. Of course, I had to look up the number for someone who knew, but I'd already assumed that much.

I found the number, printed some forms for him and sent him on his way. I then dealt with c0ntract0r wannabe, calculated all his crap for him, having to do it twice cause our tiny calculator has even tinier buttons, spouted a few euphamistic curses, then found out that the dude already knew how much all the books would be because he was just going to reuse the same check he'd given us two weeks ago. Yes, helpful our patrons be.

I started to apologize to Gene for the wait, but he insisted on telling me about some long lost female relative he was trying to pin down all the way back to the computers. Instead of apologizing, I demonstrated the politeness of not kneeing him in the gut.

Taxing My Patience 2007, Suspiciously Not

I realize we're still a month away from the deadline for taxes, providing plenty of time for things to go awry, but so far we've had surprisingly few problems with the tax form crowd this year.

In fact, yesterday was the first time all year that someone asked me where the state tax forms were located, prompting me to direct them to the glaringly obvious state tax booklets in the plastic bins directly beneath their nose. And, in their defense, they were looking for individual forms not booklets and were somehow unaware that our state preinserts the forms into the instruction booklets and issues them no other way, unless you print them from their website.

No one has yet come in asking us for W-2s.

No one has even futilly asked for a 1099 form.

And Amateur Accountaint Tax Form Lady Who Plagues Us Every Year has only been in a couple of times so far and was apologetic at asking us to print out of state or otherwise obscure forms for her.

One might even say it's been suspiciously quiet on the tax form front. Almost as if the tax form people are lying in wait to leap out at us later. I'm thinking April 13.

I was supposed to write a post today...

...but that optometrist dialated my eyes adn now i'm darn nera blind.

Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #75

SETTING: My "liberry." A late middle-aged lady with long salt & pepper hair tied up in a bun, wearing glasses with the largest and thickest frames I've ever seen, comes up to the circ/ref desk. I'm not real sure what crawled up this woman's butt, but it was making her extremely cranky.

ME: Can I help you?

CHAPTER PRESIDENT OF THE MOST IRATE HOLOCAUST RESEARCHERS OF THE WORLD, UNION 756: I need help finding a book.

ME: Okay.

CPMIHRWU756: The author's name is Gold. Alison Leslie Gold. Leslie Gold... Leslie Gold.

ME: (Confused as to what the author's name actually is since the lady repeated and seemed to emphasize the last two names twice. So I do an author search for both "Gold, Leslie" and "Gold, Alison Leslie." Nothing comes up.) I'm sorry, we don't seem to have any books by Leslie Gold.

CPMIHRWU756: (Practically screaming) I said `ALISON Gold'! It's ALISON Leslie Gold!

ME: (Pause) Her either.

CPMIHRWU756: (Huffs snootilly) Do you keep all of your books together?

ME: Um... huh?

CPMIHRWU756: I was in the children's room and couldn't find anything by her.

(Ahhh, now I get it. Despite the fact that I just told her we don't have any books by Alison Leslie Gold, this lady thinks I was lying about it and that we're hiding all of them somewhere other than the children's room. Ms. Gold was evidently a children's author.)

ME: Uh, ma'am, like I just said, we don't have any books by that author in the entire library. If you'd like, we can probably get an interlibrary loan for one.

CPMIHRWU756: You're telling me you don't have ANY books by Alison Leslie Gold?

ME: Yes ma'am. I did an author search for Leslie Gold and Alison Leslie Gold. (I turn the monitor toward her and demonstrate author searchs for both GOLD, LESLIE and GOLD, ALISON LESLIE.) See, the only "A. Gold" author we own is Arthur Gold.

CPMIHRWU756: (Huffs snootily again) Well. Do you have any other books about Anne Frank?

(Ahhh, now I truly understand. Alison Leslie Gold must have written a juvenille non-fiction book about Anne Frank, which this lady somehow thought she was going to find it in our children's fiction room and was now unhappy that we don't own it at all.)

ME: Oh, certainly. (Types in a subject search on FRANK, ANNE.) Looks like we have five books about her.

CPMIHRWU756: What's the first one?

ME: "Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl"

CPMIHRWU756: (Again, practically screaming at me) No! I already HAVE that one!

(How I'm supposed to know what she does and doesn't have, particularly to the point that it would justify screaming at me about it, I'm none too sure. I'm on the brink of just showing her either the door or the OPAC, so she can do her own search if she's going to be all irritable about it, when I notice that the other four books on Anne Frank are actually pretty much different versions of the same book, Diary of a Young Girl. Instead of breaking this news to her myself, I just write down the call number for the general Anne Frank section in nonfiction and invite the lady to go have a look herself. She goes, but never returns to the circ-desk, so I can only assume her hope of finding our secret hidden room where we have the complete Alison Leslie Gold catalog on display with Alison Leslie Gold herself autographing books and passing out espressos, failed to happen.)

Yeah, I've got your 14" book wrap, right here!

At work, Mrs. C told me I should go look at the book lying in the back of the circ-desk area. It was a copy of the Theodore Geisel Award winning book N0t a B0x, by Antoinette Portis.

Attached to this book was a note that read: "Did not know if this needed a cover or not? Ms. S"

Those of you in libraries who've added this to your collection and have handled this book will know that this book, though a hardback, does not come with a book jacket. It's meant to look like the outside of a cardboard box. So what Ms. S appeared to be concerned about was how exactly she was supposed add book jacket book wrap to this particular volume during processing when it had no book jacket.

Below Ms. S's note, Mrs. C had angrilly scrawled "IF there is no jacket to cover then there is NOTHING to cover. Just tape."

"I had to write that note on there," Mrs. C added, "because if I have to tell her in person I might have to hurl the book at her head."

As with all lessons, this is not the first time we've had to impart this one to Ms. S. It wasn't even the first time in that book processing session. She'd actually had the same question about an oversided paperback book. Granted, it was the kind of paperback with covers that are folded over inside to form kind of a faux book jacket look, but again there's nothing there to cover with book wrap in the first place. Ms. S later explained that she'd asked about N0t a B0x thinking that someone had somehow run off with the jacket, so she didn't know what to do about it. (Nevermind that the person who'd typed the spine labels—someone always other than Ms. S, who is not to be trusted with a typewriter—had already affixed it TO THE FRICKIN' BOOK, adding a further clue as to its natural uncovered state.)

How, I cannot say, but Mrs. C was able to prevent herself from hurling any books at any heads.

Stork Alert!

No, not for me. Calm down, Dad.

Instead, this morning round 12a, my pals Joe and Lorna Abbigail were the ones to grump out a critter. Unfortunately, the two epidurals the stork administered didn't quite take, so the "arrival" was quite a bit more dramatic than originally hoped.

The new one's name is Jonah David.

Nonactual Conversations Not Actually Heard in any Libraries #74

THE DUFUS— Hey, guys, look... it’s a beautiful sunny day!

GENE GENE THE GENEAL0GY MACHINE— Sure is. In fact, it’s the first day in over two months that it’s not snowing, raining, windy or otherwise cold as ass. I even saw Fatty Manchild wearing a pair of 80's style jam shorts.

MR. B-NATURAL— That's all that piece of crap ever wears.

GENE— Oh, yeah.

DUFUS— Anyway, since it's such a nice day, what say we go for a picnic?

(long silence)

DUFUS— Just kidding. Let's head down to the “liberry” for several hours of innanet time, instead.

BRENT & BRICE: THE NEW DEVIL TWINS— Yayyyy!

GENE— I don’t know, guys. I saw an awful lot of cars out front. I think it’s probably pretty busy in there. It is Friday.

DUFUS— So we’re supposed to just sit by while other people use the innanet? That shit is ours by right!

GENE— You have a point. Okay, I'm in. But only if we all sign up at once.

DUFUS— Of course we’re all going to sign up at once.

MR. B-NATURAL— And I’m not going unless I can get all cranky about having to wait 15 whole minutes. Then I'll demand the Wall$treet Journal, leaf through it at the circulation desk, in the way of God and everybody, until I find the cr0ssw0rd puzzle, which I'll then demand the staff photocopy for me. Then I'm going to stand at the circ desk and grunt and growl and do my puzzle until the staff are crazed and on the verge of kicking me in the junk. And every time any of the staff go back to log on one of the two people waiting ahead of me, I'll assume they're doing it for me and follow them back, then growl some more when it's not for me after all.

DUFUS— Sure thing.

GENE— I'll sign up last so I can have plenty of time to sit around the main room and torment the staff, too. I'll tell them long-winded stories about each and every one of my ancestors that I've been able to find geneal0gy records for. Like my Great Uncle Stan, who once worked for a guy who sold tools to a man who worked as a mechanic for a crop dusting pilot until he got an infected hangnail and had to go on unemployment—that’s my uncle, mind you, not the crop duster. Except they didn’t have unemployment back then, so he just died, leaving a wife and nineteen kids, each of whom was a fascinating character on their own. Like his daughter Loofie, who…

MR. B-NATURAL— God, shut him up before I sic my dog on him!!!

DUFUS— Um, Gene, how `bout saving it for the library, huh? I mean, I'm all about the name-dropping myself, but damn.

BRICE— What about me? I’m still banned from using a computer until I pay for that book I lost.

BRENT— Hah! I paid my fines off, so I can use a computer again! You know, after waiting 20 or 30 minutes for my turn, and all. I'm gonna MySpace like there's no tomorrow! In your face!

DEVIL TWIN AUXILLIARY MEMBER TONY— I’m going to sign up for a computer too! They still let me use them even though I stole $20 from the cashbox that one time. In your face twice, Brice!

MR. B-NATURAL— What, are you kids green or something? No, Brice, listen. Just sign up for a computer anyway. The staff can never tell you and Brent apart, even though one of you is clearly a head taller than the other. And even if they catch on, they’ll just be pissed off you had the sac to try and sign up again after all the times they've told you were banned because of fines. It's win-win!

BRICE— I know, I’ll sign up with my middle name. Then they might think we have a third brother.

MR. B-NATURAL— That's the idea! You're catching on, now.

TONY— Yeah, and if they do call you on it, I’ll help run interference by signing up for computers repeatedly throughout the afternoon, often returning to the desk to sign up again before my time has even run out. You’ll always have a shoulder to look over.

MR. B-NATURAL— Oh, that’ll squeeze a Cleveland Steamer in their Wheaties real good! The only thing that could make it better is if you tried to sneak some coffee back, too.

GENE— And because the staff will quickly learn to avoid me, as though I were coated in dog feces, I'll lie in wait for them in other rooms, jumping out to tell them about all the lists of my relatives I wasn't able to get the computers to print properly last time and to show them the many lists I was able to print. Like this one that has my uncle Stan's daughter Loofie's name on it. I remember that my grandmother once told me about this time when Loofie stumped her toe on the edge of the tub and...

DUFUS— Gene!!! You know I love ya, guy, but I swear to God I'm going to hit you throat with a rolled up New Y0rker if you don't shut the hell up! In fact, when we get to the library, I'm going to wait for my computer far away from you. I'll go upstairs, where I can flip through Newsweek's entertainment section and catch up on all the people I used to be close personal friends of back when I was a demi-god in California. I'll flip from page to page and sigh longingly. And, every now and then, I'll look up to watch that exceptionally slow staff member as she takes the better part of three hours to put new spine labels on only a couple of dozen books.

RANDOM MALE PATRON— I’m just going to come in repeatedly over the course of the entire afternoon and act all impatient and give the staff dirty looks that there aren’t any computers free. I won’t actually sign up for one and wait my turn, of course, but will instead leave for half an hour and come back to do it all again.

MR. B-NATURAL— Also a very good tactic.

THE COOT— I don't care about no compooter gigitygatchets. I'm going to set up shop outside the noisy lady's office, slouched waaay down in the chair until my legs block the entire walkway. And I'm going to grunt and sing and fart all the live long day.

DUFUS— Knock yourself out.

THE COOT— *FAAAART*

(Twenty minutes to an hour later)

DUFUS— Hey, this keyboard has flaky white stuff in the keys. What gives?

CRUSTY THE PATRON— Oh, sorry. That was me. I was in for several hours before you arrived and got booted from computer to computer, so they're all pretty much contaminated with my buttery, flaky, beard crust.

EVERYONE— Ewwwwwwww!

(While the above dialogue is fiction, the events described pretty much went down exactly like that.)

The Prestige Departure

Finally saw two very good movies I've been waiting to see, last night. The wife and I did a double feature of The Prestige and The Departed. Of course, most of you know that The Departed won best picture. I think of the other movies nominated for that, I'd only seen Little Miss Sunshine. And while I really liked Sunshine, Departed was the better film for me.

The Prestige, however, was the film I was more jazzed up to see. I read the book it's based on, by Christopher Priest, back around Christmas and was really interested in seeing how they pulled it off. The answer is: they did a very admirable job of it, perhaps even improving on the book by making certain elements of it far far darker.

Because I already knew what was supposed to happen from the book, most of the major plot points were not surprising. However, the film is not an exact adaptation of the book and there are some very significant differences that make the film its own creature. I'm really tempted to go into a play by play comparison of the two works, here, but frankly the less I say about either the better off any of you are who want to see the film or read the book. I'd recommend both.

I will say, on just a superficial non-spoilery level, that it took me a bit to stop being so distracted by the casting of the film. When I read the book, I didn't really know who was in the film because the casting of it kept getting confused with that of The Illusionist for me. So I didn't have any preconceived notions as to which actors were playing the characters. After I'd finished the book and looked up who was starring in the film, I only noted the main actors in it, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman (which I thought was funny, cause you've got Batman costarring with Wolverine). However, not noting which characters they were actually playing, I envisioned that they would be playing opposite characters from the ones they turn out to. Visually and personality wise I'd assumed Bale would have been Angier, as he looked and tends to play parts more like that character in the book looked and acted in my head as I read it. Jackman, in turn, I saw more as Borden. So it took me a bit to get around that. Both men did an excellent job in their parts, though, and by the end I'd forgotten most of my distraction.

And David Bowie and Andy "Gollum" Serkis were also exceptionally good as Nikola Tesla and his assistant Alley.

Ahhhh, so that explains a few things!

My boss, Mrs. A, announced that she's going to hold an intensive reference interview training session for everyone on staff. Not that most of us need it. Just some of us. Well, okay, one of us. And, no, not me. It's the usual Suspect.

The other day, Mrs. A found a lady wandering around our upstairs nonfiction room, going from shelf to shelf and looking very lost. Mrs. A asked the lady if she needed help and was told by the lady that she was looking for books about the history of two different local counties and had been told they would be found upstairs. As it turns out, the county histories are actually downstairs in our closed case collection, but that didn't matter so much since the lady hadn't even been given any call numbers to begin with. Just told that she could find the books upstairs in the history section. Nevermind that our history section is the largest section about a given topic in our entire library and sprawls across three different walls. Can you guess the name of the person who sent her upstairs? Why, yes, you are correct in guessing Ms. S.

Mrs. A was naturally unhappy about this turn of events and went down to get Ms. S's side of the story. Surely things could not be as bad as they seemed. No, they were actually worse. She came to find out that Ms. S had no idea that the lady was looking for county histories in the first place. According to Ms. S, she'd been shelving books when the lady came in and asked where she could find histories. Ms. S, rather than going to the OPAC and conducting a reference interview to narrow down the subject to see what precisely the lady was looking for and where precisely on the three walls of history it might be located, didn't even leave her shelving but just told her that history was upstairs and waived a hand in the general area of the ceiling, above which the books were located. (She actually admitted to this, oblivious to the inherent problems.)

Mrs. A explained to her that this was unacceptable and that she should have gone to the OPAC and helped the woman narrow it down, because when it comes to history seekers they're always going to be looking for something specific. And besides that, the books the lady wanted were not upstairs in the first place.

"But I was busy," Ms. S reportedly responded. Yes, that's right: Ms. S, dog turd smeared in thick carpet, carried in on the bottom of the shoes of the very name of good shelvers planetwide that she is, was too busy shelving to help a patron.

"And she has a degree in this," I reminded my coworkers who had gathered to hear Mrs. A's tale.

"Actually, no," Mrs. A said. See, we had been lead to believe that Ms. S had some sort of undergraduate degree in library sciences because she had told us that she'd gone to school for it and had previously worked in a library. However, according to Mrs. A, Ms. S actually has a general studies associate's degree with a library science emphasis. This doesn't actually mean she took any sort of classes about library science. What it means is that she was allowed to intern at a library during her 2 years at school. The particular library she interned with put her on the circ desk where her sole job was to check books in and out. And that was the extent of her training before darkening our door.

"Ahh, so that explains a few things," I said.

"I just can't imagine it," Mrs. A said. "Do you think that if she worked in a restaurant and refused to go over and help a customer because she was busy with something else, they'd let her get away with it?"

I allowed a slight pause.

"Well, she does work in a restaurant," I said. "And I imagine if we went there, we'd see her doing precisely that."

Mrs. A bit her lip. "You're probably right."

Leaving on a Midnight Train to Dumbass

It's been a while since Paranoid Rick James has paid us a visit. And it may yet be a while longer. His absence itself is easily explained in that he checked out a couple of books on tape nearly a year ago and never returned them. In the intervening months, we've had occasion to send him overdue notices about the tapes to which he has chosen to respond by first denying that he still had them, asking us to check our shelves because he knew he had returned them, and then by then denying that he'd ever checked them out in the first place. So we have continued to alert him that the tapes are still not on our shelves and are therefore still checked out on his card, a situation in which we do expect either the tapes be returned to us or properly paid for. To help make this stick, we blocked his account and put notes all over his card. Rick, for his part, has continued to spread his cheeks and vent in our general direction. He won't come in himself, mind you. Instead, he sends his emmisary, his girlfriend Gladys Knight.

Gladys came in this week with a small stack of books on tape and a plastic baggy full of loose cassettes. Mrs. A happened to be working the desk at the time, was familiar with the case and figured Rick had finally found his books and had sent them in. Gladys slid the items across the desk and said she was returning them for a friend. Mrs. A's attention was drawn immediately to the bag of loose cassettes. Evidently, Rick had destroyed or otherwise lost the case the cassettes came in, therefore losing their item barcode in the process. Mrs. A told her that the baggie was not one of our usually acceptable methods for receiving media item returns. Not only did it make checking the item back in problematic, due to the lack of a barcode, but now we'd have to replace the case and barcode before we could circulate the set again. Gladys said she had thought it wouldn't be a problem since we could just keep the tapes in the baggie. Mrs. A said that, no, we wouldn't be and furthermore we would need to charge a case and barcode replacement fee.

Still, finding out the barcode for the set wouldn't really be a huge problem as Mrs. A would just check in the other items on Rick's card and then see what remained and would be able to choose the proper barcode from his record. Only when she went to check in the other two boxed books on tape sets she found that the first one actually belonged to Town D's library and the second one wasn't library property of any kind; it had no barcode, no stamps and no date due slip. It was, however, a copy of a similar book on tape Rick had checked out from Town-D's library, but it was not the original item. Apparently when Rick had told Gladys to take his tapes back, he'd failed to alert her as to which library she was supposed to take them to. He may even have failed to alert her to the fact that he'd replaced a set of tapes that, I'm guessing, he lost with a used set that he probably got off ebay.

Regardless, none of the tapes were ours, which Mrs. A pointed out for Gladys, adding that Rick still owed us for two sets and wouldn't be allowed to check anything else out until he paid for them.

"Oh, I don't think he ever had those," Gladys countered.

Mrs. A said that it seemed pretty unlikely that the tapes would be on his card had he not checked them out personally, particularly considering that we don't check materials out to people who don't first supply us with their library card. (A fact that Rick is well aware of, having clashed with us repeatedly on the issue.) It also seemed pretty unlikely that, had Rick not checked them out himself, we would just randomly check out the very sort of books on tape Rick happens to prefer, by the same author an example of whose other work Gladys Knight had just attempted to return on Rick James's behalf, on Rick's card, completely by mistake. Furthermore, Mrs. A explained, in addition to the money Rick owes us for said mystery books on tape, he will now also owe a case and barcode replacement fee.

Gladys Knight, who isn't exactly a dummy, must have realized at that point that being as how none of the tapes she was attempting to return were even ours, we could hardly charge any fees for them at all. So she reached across the counter, gathered them all up and said she would just be returning them to their proper library on her own. Mrs. A told her it wasn't a problem for us to return them, but Gladys insisted that she wanted to do it herself. Her selections in hand, Gladys left.

Mrs. A's theory is that Gladys thinks Town-D will be a much easier mark to hustle. That being the case, she phoned them in advance to warn them what was on the way and to suggest they charge Gladys and Rick every fine and fee they possibly could. Town-D's librarian, Ms. H, a former "liberry" ass. at my branch, readily agreed. Ms. H also added that she didn't see any reason for her branch to continue checking out their materials to Rick until he pays us for our missing tapes. This will hardly stop Rick, who will just have Gladys check out things on her card for him, but it warms my dark little heart to think of just how much it will piss him off.

Mrs. A vs. The Coot

Our patron known as The Coot has, over the past few months, rapidly become one of our our most frequent patrons. In fact, without ever touching a keyboard himself, he is encroaching on the visitation frequency and duration of such innanet crowd luminaries as Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine, Crusty the Patron, Mr. B-Natural and even he who must really really not be named, because he hasn't been seen for nearly a year and we'd like to keep it that way, and who favors puffy white winter wear. And. as I've said before, the Coot is a library patron who actually uses the library for reasons other than internet access. Sure, he might spend several hours a day, several days a week in our presence, but he spends that time reading, often from classics and works of philosophy. And other than the fact that he often leaves his reading material stacked around whatever chair he spends his time in, so that we the staff have to clean up after him later, he's mostly inoffensive. Well, except to Mrs. A.

Mrs. A does not like the Coot very much because it's outside her office that he likes to plant himself for his hours-long reading sessions. This too would be okay, except that the Coot tends to make a lot of noise, usually in the form of painful moans and groans, coughs, snorts, loud yawns, and occasional bursts of song. Over the few months he's been doing this, we've determined that he's usually at his most vocal when Mrs. A is on the phone or otherwise making noise herself. In other words, he's doing it in protest of having his reading disturbed by phone conversations near his chair of choice. The thing is, Mrs. A is the library director and as such has to take and make numerous phone calls throughout the day, not to mention frequent in-person meetings in her office. The other thing is, there are seats and more comfy areas to sit elsewhere in the library that are not in proximity to Mrs. A's office. The Coot just happens to like sitting outside her office. And as long as he's there, the two of them wind up creating a duet mixture of speech and painful groans resulting in annoyance to one and all.

One day, Mr. A came to visit Mrs. A at work and the two of them were speaking in her office. In protest to the normal conversational volume of their voices, the Coot let loose with a horrible-sounding groan. Mrs. A later told me that Mr. A looked at her and asked what was up with the mortally-wounded-sounding man seated outside her office.

"Oh, he just does that whenever I'm talking," she said, not even trying to keep her voice down. And to give an example, Mrs. A let fly with her own horrible-sounding groan at full volume. With that, the Coot stood up and went into the nonfiction room to find a quieter chair.

Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #73

(A father and daughter approach the circ-desk. The little girl, cute as anything, puts her books up on the desk and looks up at me.)

ME-- Do you have your library card?

DAD-- She doesn't have one. I don't have mine either. Matter of fact, I don't think I ever got one.

ME-- (Thinking, I'd better check the computer just to be sure before I have him fill out an application...) Well, what's your name?

DAD-- Ignernt Q. Patron

ME-- (Ignernt Q. Patron pops right up, but I'd still better confirm...) And your mailing address?

DAD-- Route 1, Dumbass Holler.

ME-- Yep. We've got you in the computer.

DAD--Yeah, I know ya have me in the computer. I'm saying, I never got a card.

ME-- Sir, we don't create patron records without issuing a card to the patron in question. And we do require a card in order to check out materials.

DAD-- Can I get anuther?

ME-- We charge $1 for a replacement card.
Dad opens his wallet and throws down a dollar with something of a defiant air.

ME-- All righty.
After confirming some contact information, I get busy putting a new barcode into dude's record. While I do this, he starts digging around in his wallet until he stumbles upon, surprise surprise, his library card.

DAD-- (Adopting a tone of voice similar to one he might have used had Library Card Gnomes snuck the thing into his wallet) Oh. Uh, here it is here.

ME-- Ahhhh. (I take it from him and scan the old barcode over the new one I'd just done) Here's your dollar back.

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #72

*RING*

ME-- Tri Metro County Library.

CALLER-- *mumble*mumble*mumble* tax books.

ME-- I'm sorry, what?

CALLER-- Do you all have tax books?

ME-- Yes, we do.

CALLER-- You do? You do have tax books?

ME-- (Did I stutter?) Yes. We. Do.

Bad case of the Crabs

Mr. Crab, third grumpiest old man in all the world, came in yesterday at the very end of my shift. As he scuttled over to the new nonfiction, a lady came up to check out then had difficulty finding her card. I was hoping she had left it at home so I could loudly explain to her the rules about patrons having to have their cards in order to check out and offering to make her a replacement card if she needed, just for his benefit. But then she found her card and my object lesson was no more.

Mr. Crab came up to the desk a minute later. I was hoping he was going to announce to me that he had lost his card again and then dare me to try and make him purchase another, but he didn't. Instead he wanted to know if we had the Wa11 Street J0urnal. Our early afternoon mail had already arrived, but I didn't recall seeing the Journal in the stack.

"Well, we get the Wa11 Street J0urnal, but I'm not sure if today's issue came."

"You do get it?" Mr. Crab asked in a tone of disbelief.

"Yes. We do. I'm just not sure if today's issue came in earlier."

"But you DO get it regularly?"

Have I stuttered?

"Yes. We get it regularly. Usually daily."

"Because two years ago you went six months without getting it at all."

I have no recollection of that but I knew better than to try and argue the point with Mr. Crab, who probably keeps a diary about it, dutifully recording each and every time he has visited us, whether or not we demanded his library card in order to check out books to him, the amount of shit measured by exact volume that he was able to give us over the matter, whether or not the Wa11 Street $%#&ing J0urnal was in its proper place on the newspaper rack and a small memo reminding him to be sure and threaten not to send in his annual $200 donation.

"I can't speak to that," I said. "All I'm saying is that while we do receive the Wa11 Street J0urnal regularly, we may or may not have received one today. If we did receive it, it is likely upstairs on the newspaper rack. If not, it's not."

"Six months! You went six months without getting it, two years ago," he said, his red legs clattering across the floor as he moved sideways toward the stairs.

Mrs. A returned just before I was to leave. I warned her who was in the building and that she should be prepared to receive shit about the Wa11 Street J0urnal's six month gap, two years ago.

"Oh, we did not!" she said, referring to the alleged 6 month absence. She explained that there had been a problem with our subscription and we didn't receive any J0urnals between November 04 and January of 2005.

"Did he ask about his card?" she said.

"Not yet."

Unfortunately, I had appointments elsewhere, otherwise I would gladly have stuck around off the clock to deal with the storm of feces that no doubt happened after I left.

Rumors & Returns

It's been kind of a slow week, though not exactly uneventful.

Crusty the Patron has returned. So has his crust and odor, though a bit less of both than we've seen in the past. He's been gone since October, but then again he'd disappeared for a couple of years before that, back when he was only known as Nearsighted Dave. My theory is that he has relatives, perhaps even a son, in the area, as we've seen him with a kid in the past. So far he hasn't given us near the trouble we've had from him before, though he's certainly not as clean as we'd appreciate.

"Crusty the Patron is leaving crust again," I told Mrs. A, scratching my own beard to demonstrate Crusty's dandruff harvesting habit.

"Is he on the computer now?" she asked.

"Well, some of him is."

The other major revelation of the week is a rumor picked up by Mrs. A, to the effect that Mr. Crab has "lost" his "liberry" card yet again. Mrs. A didn't elaborate where she heard the rumor, but I suspect he probably came in over the weekend and gave one of the greenhorns hell about it and they told her. She relayed the rumor to me knowing full well I will probably be the one manning the desk when he attempts to bully his way out of having to have it, knowing full well I, of all employees, won't back down for him. Frankly, I think he "lost" it on purpose just so he'd have the excuse to raise hell. Well, that and his never-ending quest to achieve his ultimate dream of being allowed into the legendary, yet still no less mythical, club of special patrons who don't have to have their cards to check out books. (We give `em free coffee too, which they may leisurely drink, without a lid, at the computers.) Mrs. A threatened to leave an extra dollar in the cash box, earmarked to pay for the man's replacement card, just so I wouldn't have to put him in the hurt locker.

"Oh, no," I said. "I believe our policy states you have to pay $5 for a second replacement card."

Still, I might just let her leave the dollar, just so I can gleefully inform Mr. Crab that he's now in dutch to us for a dollar, which he can pay back by increasing his much remarked upon annual $200 donation all the way to $201.

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #71

(It should be noted, as it has in the past, that I do not like Caller ID People. Yes, those souls who rush right for their caller ID box the moment they get home and start phoning all the numbers that have appeared on it, regardless of whether or not they're familiar numbers and regardless of whether or not any of those numbers correspond with messages that may or may not have been left on their answering machines already, piss me off. For the record, my wife thinks it's all perfectly logical to use your caller ID box in this manner, and I can kind of see her point; I mean, it's one thing to see that your friend Bubba called you but didn't leave a message and to then surmise that Bubba, perhaps, wished to speak with you and might enjoy a call back. Fine. However, when you get a message from a business and/or institution with multiple employees, it makes no sense to me to phone them up and have any sort of expectation that the person who answers the phone will have ANY possible way to know why someone phoned you from that number. I am, therefore, a Caller-ID-Person-Detractor, cannot abide their behavior, and go out of my way to make things difficult for them when they phone the "liberry." Does this make me an asshole? Perhaps. Does it sometimes come back to bite me? You be the judge...)

*RING*
ME— Tri-Metro County Library.

CALLER— Yeah. This number showed up on my caller ID and I was just calling to see why?

ME— I have absolutely no idea.

(Pause)

CALLER— Huh.

ME— Did the call occur today?

CALLER— No. Yesterday.

ME— Ahhh. I wasn't here yesterday, so I really couldn't say why you were called from this number. Yesterday.

(Pause)

CALLER— Er. Would it make a difference if I gave you my name?

ME— Again, I have absolutely no idea. It suppose that it might.

(Pause)

CALLER— Um...

ME— What's your name?

CALLER— Mr. Caller ID Guy.

ME— (Bell goes off in head as I recognize the name) Ah! Yes! Yes, it does. (I dig in the hold bin, where I had earlier spied an interliberry loan with his name on it.) We have a book on hold for you here.

CALLER— Oh? What is it.

(Book in hand, I tell him the title. I also see that Ms. S had noted on the book's ILL slip that she had already left a message on the man's machine telling him we had this book on hold for him, hence why it was in the Hold Bin and not the pre-call Hold Shelf. In other words, this guy hadn't even bothered to check his messages AT ALL before heading for the caller ID! What an asshole!)

Encroaching on Second

Mr. Crab, third grumpiest old man in all the world, was in yesterday. He left the lights of his vehicle on despite its patented "Hey, Jerkweed, Your Lights Are On!" *bing*bing*bing* automatic alarm. I didn't know any of that, though, until a succession of patrons came in to tell me about it. Still, this is Mr. Crab we're talking about, so I wasn't in any big hurry to let him know. Nearly an hour later, another patron mentioned the lights and alarm, so I finally decided to go tell Mr. Crab, just so people would leave me alone about it.

On his way out the door to go check on his vehicle, Mr. Crab dropped a book onto the circ desk, saying, "I'll be back for that in a minute." True to his word, he returned a minute later. By then, I was was busy helping another patron, so I didn't notice immediately that Mr. Crab had come up to the desk, picked up his still uncheckedout book and was headed for the door until he was nearly there. It was exactly as if he thought I had somehow magically checked that book out to him without the benefit of his having first supplied his library card. (And this, I'm certain, is Mr. Crab's greatest fantasy.)

"Excuse me," I called. "Excuse me?!" I called again. Mr. Crab stopped, scuttled around and gave me a dirty look, as if to say, What?

"I didn't check that out to you, yet," I said.

"What?"

"I haven't checked that book out to you, yet."

Mr. Crab grumbled something under his breath and returned to the desk to wait his turn. When I finished with the previous patron (coincidentally, the same lady he nearly ran over during my last encounter with him) he stepped up to the desk, set the book down and, as in accordance with tradition, stood there as though the next move were somehow mine.

"I'll just need your library card," I said.

Mr. Crab didn't actually make any negative comment on my asking him for his card, (you know, like mentioning how he was going to deprive us of his annual $200 donation for making him fish it out), but his expression said volumes about how much he really really wanted to and how much I was crushing his fantasy of not having to have it to check things out, (being as how, of course, he's such a major donor).

As he was digging in his wallet, he gestured toward our circ-computer and said, "You know, when people have a library card here, there ought to be something you could just click there that would tell you they have a library card without them having to tear up their wallet."

I had the sudden and nearly overwhelming urge to say, "Oh, but, sir, we DO have something we can click to tell us whether or not you have a patron record with us. It's called A LIBRARY CARD!!!! Whether or not you `tear up' your wallet in retrieving it is entirely your business, but retrieve it you shall, you cantankerous, great, honking asspipe."

I don't know how I managed it, but my lips remained tightly tightly sealed in a rigor mortis-like smile.

Mr. Crab regarded me for a long moment before saying, "No comment?"

I shook my head silently, in the negative, smiling like a maniac. Mr. Crab nodded back and scuttled out the door.

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #70

*RING*

ME— Tri-Metro Public Library.

CALLER—Yes, is Mrs. A there?

ME— No, I'm sorry. She's not in today. Can I take a message?

CALLER— Huh? But, I talked to her this morning.

ME— Yes. She's only in for half a day on Mondays.

CALLER— So, she'll be in later?

ME— No. She's only in for half a day on Mondays. That half was this morning.

CALLER— Oh. So, she'll be in tomorrow afternoon, then?

ME— No. She's only here a half day today. She'll be in all day tomorrow.

CALLER— Oh. So, I could call tomorrow morning?

ME— (Trying not to sigh exasperatedly) Yes.

The Jungle Boogie (a.k.a. "Stop, thief, or we'll call your neighbors and have them ask you to stop.")

While I was out, we had a bit of very slow excitement at the "liberry." The Alphabet Squad of Mrs.es A, B & C told me about it today, since they all played a part in it.

Mrs. A began by saying that on Wednesday a fellow stepped into Mrs. A's office upstairs and asked if we had The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair. This is a bit unorthodox to begin with, as having patrons step into her office to ask reference questions isn't a typical occurence for Mrs. A. However, she is a librarian and helping patrons comes with the territory, so she fired up the OPAC on her computer to make certain of the floor on which the book was located and then told the fellow that if he were to go to the circ desk in our fiction room downstairs, someone there would direct him to the book.

At this point, Mrs. B chimed in saying that the fellow did come downstairs and asked for direction to The Jungle. She led dude to the shelf, pulled the book for him and passed it to him. He thanked her and returned to the children's room, where a lady Mrs. B assumed was his wife and a kid Mrs. B assumed was his kid, were at.

Mrs. C then joined the narrative saying that after a while the dude, lady and kid wrapped up their browsing, rounded the corner of the children's room, bypassed the circ desk entirely and walked out the front door. Mrs. C and Mrs. B looked at one another, thinking it was odd that dude had left without checking his book out and wondered whether he'd actually taken it with him. They quickly checked the book cart and the kids room, but didn't see The Jungle anywhere. So Mrs. C ran outside where she found the group getting into their car. Not knowing quite how to approach the subject, Mrs. C asked the man if he needed to check out The Jungle after all. He said, no, he didn't. Mrs. C then pointed out that she had not found it on the book cart and was trying to make sure he hadn't simply forgotten to check it out. Oh no, he said. He'd laid it down in the children's room. Taking him at his word, Mrs. C went back inside.

There followed a lengthy and exhaustive search of the entire library for The Jungle, enlisting the aid of all available library employees. Carts were checked. The tops of shelved books were checked. The actual spot in the General Fiction S's where the book normally lives was checked. The book remained unfound.

The Alphabet Squad considered this. The man had clearly stolen the book, but what could be done about it? He didn't have a library card, so there was no contact information for him. Then someone remembered that the woman the man had left with, presumably his wife, had applied for and received a library card during their visit, though she had not actually used it. So Mrs. A phoned her up at the number on her application, reached her and asked to speak to her husband. The lady explained that the man who'd been in with her wasn't her husband but was, instead, a neighbor she'd given a lift to. This being the case, Mrs. A explained the situation and her thoughts about the book and its likely status as being borrowed outside proper channels. Hearing the dilema, the lady offered to go next door and ask her neighbor if he had the book and phone Mrs. A back. And, after a while, she called back and told Mrs. A that her neighbor still insisted not to have the book and that he'd laid it down in the children's room.

More searching commenced. No book was found. Hours passed.

At some point in the afternoon, Mrs. A and Mrs. C were standing at the circ desk when the man from earlier returned. He didn't approach the circ-desk, but instead hugged the far wall, making his way to the children's room. Mrs. A and C looked at one another then made a break for the kids' room themselves. As they rounded the corner, they found the man stooped over, trying desperately to cram our copy of The Jungle into one of the Easy Reader shelves. Unfortunately for him, the shelf was so tightly packed with books that he couldn't open enough space to fit it. Catching sight of Mrs.es A and C, he quickly threw The Jungle on top of the books on that shelf and nervously stood up.

"See. I laid it down in here," he offered, pointing to it for them.

Mrs. A didn't elaborate on any consequences to the man, so I imagine they just let him go. Maybe he was addled about the head. The question arises, though, that if he'd had to get a lift from his neighbor to come to the library earlier, had he done so again to return the stolen book?

The Drama Queen

Back in late December and in the early part of January, we were paid several visits by a girl I like to call the Drama Queen. The Drama Queen is a college-aged girl who grew up in the Tri-Metro area but is now firmly in college elsewhere in the country. However, being as how school was out for the Christmas holidays, she was at home with her mom.

Apparently things around Tri-Metro just aren't exciting enough for the Drama Queen, for she seemed determined to bring some kind of, well, drama, to our otherwise dullish community, even if this meant she had to force some to happen.

During my first encounter with the Drama Queen, she began a conversation with me in mid-conversation, walking through the door and then, as though we'd been talking about it for the past ten minutes, mentioning that her family was STILL painting the interior walls of their house. She said this with exactly that attitude too; that her family was so intolerably slow at home decorating that they were STILL engaged in painting the walls after ALL this time. I'd never met the girl before, as far as I knew, let alone discussed her family's decorating projects, but the Drama Queen's end of the conversation seemed to be a continuation of one she'd been having with someone and it may as well have been me.

Over the course of the following two weeks, the Drama Queen returned again and again. One day she was followed by her mother, a small woman who looked pained as her daughter wildly gestured and went on and on about some small item of trivia that she was determined to inflate to enormous proportions. Other days, her brother accompanied her and looked similarly pained. Sometimes the Drama Queen would arrive alone, restart previously unstarted conversations with us, as though we had all been waiting in breathless anticipation for the next installment of The Exciting World of the Drama Queen and I'm sure we too gave pained expressions.

The Drama Queen would be an ideal candidate for such programs as The Real World, or, better still, Flavor of Love, because she seems to exist in that same sort of hyper-reality those shows aim to capture. Everything revolves around her. We're all supposed to be terribly excited about her life and what's happening in it, regardless of how minor those happenings might be.

It took me a while to really quantify this behavior. It seemed familiar somehow, yet not exactly in the right context. Only after some thought did I finally realize where I'd seen this before: The Drama Queen was a Cell Phone Person without a cell phone; the very kind of soul who goes about loudly and publicly narrating the intricacies of their existence over their cell phone for all to hear, because damn if they aren't living interesting, complicated and, all-importantly, dramatic lives.

(As opposed to those of us who just blog about it--which may be the other reason this seemed so uncomfortably familiar.)

Real Life Interruption

Gonna be a bit of radio silence here for the next couple of days. We're back in North Carolina. Ashley's grandmother, Nonnie, passed away around 1 Monday morning. It wasn't exactly an unexpected passing, as her health had been rapidly declining over the past month. Tell the truth, it's not been so hot over the past ten years since she had her first major stroke, or the past five years or so since she's had to live in assisted living homes and, finally, a nursing home. Mostly, it's come as a relief, as the past couple of weeks have been rough going for her health-wise and it's been pretty upsetting to her family. In the end, she went out fairly comfortably.

According to Nonnie's roommate, Nonnie sat up in bed Sunday afternoon and said, "I'm going home, today." Within hours, she had.

Ad Infinitum

Yesterday morning, a lady patron came in, signed up for a computer, then turned to me and said, "By the way. I was here last night and had to buy a computer disc to save what I was working on, but the girl at the desk wouldn't let me pay her because she said she had closed out the cash box already. So, I owed her 50 cents." The lady then passed over the 50 cents.

Now, I knew that newbie greenhorn Ms. S had been on shift the night before and I knew that she has a penchant for tallying up the cashbox as early in her shift as she possibly can. So I asked, "About what time was that?"

"Oh, right at 7," the lady said, though she could have said anything from 4:30 on and I would have believed it. While I wasn't surprised to hear of Ms. S refusing money for services rendered in order to get out of having to retally the cashbox, we've repeatedly—allow me to further stress, *REPEATEDLY* (and, if I were any kind of real web coder, that word would appear to be aflame, shooting fireworks from its ass and singing Deee-Lite's "Groove is in the Heart")—explained to her that if someone pays her for something after the cash box has been tallied, she is welcome to take their money, deposit it into the cash box, take out a new date due slip and stick it to the counter beside the fines and copier tally slip of the current day, forward the date due stamp ahead one day, stamp the top of the new slip and then write down the amount paid on it so that it will be accounted for the following day. Doing that, however, would have required effort, so it didn't get done.

The patron wasn't finished with her tale, though. As I logged her onto her computer, she explained that the reason she had to purchase a disc in the first place was because she had been cutting and pasting vital information from websites into a Word document for quite some time, but when Ms. S came back to tell her the library was soon to close she also told the lady that she couldn't print any of what she'd been pasting because "I've already shut off the printer for the day." Okay, this was a flat out lie because we never—NEHehehHEHHHVER— shut off the printer. It simply doesn't happen. It stays on all the time and was, in fact, on this morning when we opened. The last time that printer's off switch saw any action was over two years ago when the damned thing refused to print for us one day and I was forced to reason with it using something other than a stick. What Ms. S was really saying was, "I've already tallied up the cash box for the day, which I probably did at 6:02, and I'm too lazy to do any more math tonight so I don't want to accept any of your money for prints made. Instead, I'm just going to say I shut down the printer already, a lie I hope you'll completely swallow before going away."

I smiled as I listened to the story. The lady wasn't even complaining, though. In fact, she thought that she herself was in the wrong for daring to want to print something so close to closing time. She even commented that Ms. S was very nice about it all and had been very patient with her. I decided not to tell her that Ms. S was full of shit. Instead, I ran and tattled to my boss Mrs. A, who, in turn, became delighted to have more evidence—from a patron, no less—to prove that Ms. S STILL isn't doing her damned job right.

Later, when the other alphabet squad arrived, we discussed it.

"I think we're going to HAVE to tell her she's not allowed to count the cashbox until 7 p.m.," Mrs. A said.

"Well, no," I said. "She could count it earlier if she'd just put it on a new tally slip like we've told her to do again and again."

"No, no. That's something YOU can do if you count the cashbox early," Mrs. C said. "MS. S has to do it at 7. It's a special rule for her."

"Ah."

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #69 ("Awww yeah!")

*RING*

ME: Tri-Metro County Library?

BIRTHDAY LADY: Yes, could you tell me what year Yvonne DeCarl0 was born?

ME: Oh, did she die?

BIRTHDAY LADY: Yes. Yes, she did.

ME: Aw. (Types) Hang on just a sec... (Googles Yvonne DeCarl0 and brings up her entry in IMDB.) Looks like September 1, 1922.

BIRTHDAY LADY: Oh, good. (Writing) Sep-tember... first... What was it?

ME: 1922.

BIRTHDAY LADY: Nineteen... twenty... two. Did you ever see her in that picture with Clark Gable?

ME: No, I'm afraid not. I'm mostly familiar with her from the Munsters.

BIRTHDAY LADY: Yes, she played in that too, but she was in a picture with Clark Gable that was very good.

ME: I can imagine. I have an early picture of her on the screen here and she was quite beautiful.

BIRTHDAY LADY: Thank you so much.

Finding Nanci

For Christmas, my wife got me a Creative Zen Vision-M. It's a 30 gig (welllll 27.3 gig, really) digital music playing wonderment. Thus far, I love it dearly. My only complaint is that it is incapable of playing files ripped in either of Windows Media Player's lossless digital formats, which is what I'd ripped nearly my entire CD collection into some three months back. I sulked about this for a day or so, figuring I'd have to either convert all those files to something different, or re-rip everything in a slightly less lossless format.

I opted to rerip.

I know, I know, I can already hear the cries of "Don't do it! There's an easier way!" ringing out. You're far too late to sway me, though, for as of the writing of this very sentence, I have now reripped everything in the highest possible quality otherwise that the player will play and soon 98 percent of my CD collection will be stored on this fabulous little device. (Even now, the CD drawer has popped out, having successfully ripped You Are Here #5, a compilation CD given to me as a bonus for spending so much money at Criminal Records in Atlanta, some eightornine years ago.)

The thing about CDs, though—actual CDs—is that every once in a while you lose one. Or you lose its case only. Or you lose the liner notes. Whatever. For a good while now, I have been missing the CD to Nanci Griffith's album Flyer. I had the case and the liner notes, but couldn't figure out what I could possibly have done with the CD that would cause it to become so lost. My only thought was that, some seven years ago, I'd somehow left it in my old car when I traded it in for the current one. But that didn't make sense, either, as I clearly remember listening to it since then. Perhaps not since I'd moved to WV, mind you, but certainly since the advent of the Malibu in early 2000. So, as you can see, years have passed with this empty case in my possession, hauled along with all 360 or so of my other CDS, from house to house and state to state, every time we've moved.

This morning, as I entered the home stretch of CD ripping, I found Nanci. The little minx had apparently been shacking up with the boys from The Why Store, for I found her snuggled up beside their album Two Beasts as I was about to rip that. I hadn't ripped Two Beasts during my original, ill-fated CD ripping project, three months ago. I had, however, finally tossed the case and liner notes to Flyer figuring 6 years was long enough for Nanci to have returned on her own. If you love something, set it free, and all that.

So now, Nanci Griffith is homeless.

Maybe I can get Toad the Wet Sprocket's Dulcinea to take her in.

Johnny "Print-Server" saves the day

Since I started working at the "liberry" in 2001, every coupleathree months, or so, one of our computer patrons prances up to the circ-desk, asks for the prints they just made from their computer and then deposits a square brick of poop into their undies when we pass over the half ream of paper they printed.

"But I didn't print this much," they invariably say. And we always know what will follow... "I just wanted to print that one little paragraph."

"Uh huh," we say. And, again, we know what will follow, for this is the point at which they tell us that they highlighted the one little paragraph of text they wanted to print on the massive website they wanted to print from and then hit print, honestly expecting that only the one little paragraph would print.

The last time this happened, I was finally fed up with it.

"Yeah," I said, "people keep telling us that highlighting and hitting print works, but I have never—NeHeHEHHHHVER—actually known it to. It prints the entire website EVERY single time."

"Oh. But I was told..."

"EVERY. SINGLE. TIME."

That's when a separate and unrelated patron, who happened to wander in and overhear this transaction, stepped over and said, "Did you set the print range to SELECTED?"

"Um. What?"

The eavesdropping patron then explained something I'd never heard before: when you only want to print only your highlighted text, you have to go FILE > PRINT > and within the PAGE RANGE part of the print menu, click the dot by SELECTED. Then and only then will it print exclusively your highlighted selection.

"Huh. I did not know that," I said. "Thanks, Wandering, Eavesdropping Print-Advisor!" Okay, I didn't say that last part, but I was thinking it.

This, of course, won't put a stop to the problem at hand of patrons printing entire websites when they only wanted a sentence, but at least when they complain about doing so, I'll now know precisely how to convey how much it is still their their fault.

Yosemite Sam vs. Mr. Little Stupid

An event too bizarre to not chronicle occurred in the "liberry" this week. ("What? Only one?")

Granny & Grandson arrived for some mid afternoon browsing and incessant whining, respectively. Grandson is perhaps the whiniest child I've ever encountered. He moves from shelf to shelf among the videos and kiddie books on tape and WHHIIIIIIIINES about what he wants what he wants what he wants. And Granny follows along telling him what he can't have and what he can have and not to pull down all the bagged books on tape while trying to get just one and to stop pulling down all the bagged books on tape AGAIN now that he's decided to do it anyway and to pick up all the bagged books on tape that he's now pulled down. He doesn't listen. He's already whining about something else.

As in accordance with tradition, Granny and Grandson began approaching the circ desk with their choices only to veer away at the last second and stay another five minutes browsing elsewhere. I knew the longer they stayed the better the chance that Yosemite Sam, no doubt waiting in the car, would get tired of waiting and come inside to find someone to inflict his presence upon, i.e. me. When the door opened, though, it was only Mr. Little Stupid who entered.

I've not mentioned it until now, but Mr. Little Stupid has been a more frequent sight at the "liberry" as of the past few months. It took me a little bit to realize who he was, as he's gained a bit of weight, now dresses in clothing other than overalls (for instance, the fetching Carrie Underw00d concert T-Shirt he had on during this incident) and no longer habitually carries the Girl Scouts binder. These days he still comes in to use the computer, but no longer requires a lengthy and identical tutorial before every session.

Mr. Little Stupid was on his way to the computer sign in sheet when Granny & Grandson decided they were indeed finished and hauled their choices up to the desk, blocking Mr. Little Stupid from access to the sheet.

The door opened and Yosemite Sam stepped in, surveyed the room and siddled up to the desk. Sam seemed to take an immediate interest in Mr. Little Stupid, much like a lion might take interest in a wounded gazelle. Before he could say anything, though, Granny noticed Mr. Little Stupid's shirt, took a deep intake of breath and squealed to Grandson, "Look who he has on his shiiiiirt!"

"Who?" Grandson said.

"Carrie Underw000000d!!!" Grandma said in amazement.

Mr. Little Stupid looked nervous about this sudden attention. He became even moreso when Sam said, "Where'd you get that?"

"Um... at the Carrie Underw00d concert at the fair."

"Who is it?" Grandson repeated.

I was still furiously checking out Granny's selection when Sam noticed another item of Mr. Little Stupid's attire.

"Hey, those ain't real dog tags," Yosemite Sam said, pointing to two brightly colored decorative metal tags hanging around Mr. Little Stupid's neck.

"Um, no," Mr. Little Stupid said.

"Then what ya wearin' `em for?" Yosemite Sam said in an accusatory tone.

"Um, um, ah, um, what?" Mr. Little Stupid said.

"If they ain't real dog tags, what ya wearin' `em for?" I took from Sam's tone that he was a bit offended that someone would dare to wear dog tags with no personal military connection to speak of. Sam, I'm speculating, is a Vietnam vet, possibly of the bitter variety.

"I... um, I just like them," Mr. Little Stupid said.

I thought Sam might jump on this, but instead he let it pass, saying that he was just kidding around and that he knew men have to have their necklaces too. Then, not abandoning the military subject, he said, "You in the National Guard?"

Mr. Little Stupid explained that, no, he wasn't in the military at all, but worked for a local fast food establishment.

By this point, I'd finished with Granny's items and she'd gathered them up and headed for the door with Grandson. Sam made no move to leave. Instead, he continued on about how Mr. Little Stupid should join the national guard where he might get to wear real dog tags and perhaps see a firefight before it's all said and done. Better still, Mr. Little Stupid should come up and visit Yosemite Sam himself sometime because, as Sam put it, "I can show you a real firefight."

"SAM!" Granny barked from the doorway.

His back turned to Granny, Sam cut his eyes in what I took to be malevolent annoyance. Whatever the case, he looked plum evil to me. Granny departed and Sam turned back to his quarry, who was still twisting nervously in the web. Sam did eventually leave, but not before waiting what seemed to be an amount of time carefully measured to infuriate Granny and not without insulting Mr. Little Stupid's receding hairline using a jovially toned Good Ol' Boy verbal jab.

After Sam was gone, Mr. Little Stupid looked a bit weak, but signed up for his computer nevertheless, no doubt off to search up some Carrie Underw00d fan sites.

Happy new year to me!

As I walked up to the door of the "liberry" yesterday, to put in my first day at work of 2007, I saw a glorious thing taped into one of the glass panes of our front door. It was a paper sign that read: "We now have wireless access!" What wonders a new year brings! Us, with WIRELESS! I never thought I'd never live to see the day.

I did a little dance on our front doorstep and then cautiously entered the building, bracing myself in case it was just a cruel joke on me. It wasn't!

Mrs. C showed me the new three-buttoned, paper-tape-spitting, plastic thing that now lives by the answering machine. Now when a patron comes in and asks if we have wireless, instead of kicking them in the junk and shoving them in the general direction of Ornathological Coffee—the nearest wireless access point whose signal we've often leached off of—I am to ask them "Would you like one hour, or two?" (Or four, really; the paper spitty thing has three buttons, after all.) I then hit the corresponding button to their request and the spitty thing spits out a piece of paper with their login information, all purty and convenient.

So far, we've only had one guy who's taken any notice—a fellow I kicked in the junk and shoved down the street just last week. Who knew?