Austin Day 5

We took things a bit easier today, at least activity wise. After brunch we saw the parents off to the airport, then spent the afternoon driving around the Lake Travis area and seeing the spa where my sister works as a massage therapist. We all had a nice nap back at her place to sleep off the effects of lunch. We attempted to drive down to Hippie Hollow, the clothing-optional section around Lake Travis. We were going to invoke the option of keeping our clothes on, but the $10 entrance fee seemed a bit steep, particularly a day as "cold" as today. It actually feels pretty darn warm to us, but you get anywhere below 65 degrees and Austinians start breaking out the parkas and salting the roads.

GASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL: We met my friend Gordon at the Hula Hut for a 11a late brunch. Turned out to be more of a lunchy affair, as that's the sort of food Hula Hut serves. I ate a MASSIVE enchilada called a Pipeline. The damn thing was nearly as thick as my arm. That pretty much took care of me for the afternoon and I didn't eat another bite until dinner. In fact, my stomach spent a bit of time protesting all the good food I've been eating lately. I was not to be stopped by a little ache, though. Dinner was a Royale with Cheese burger eaten at the Alamo Drafthouse South, during a screening of Juno. Excellent movie, by the way. Afterward, we returned to Amy's Ice Cream where I again ate a Mexican Vanilla waffle cone with Reesey cups and Nutter Butters crushed up in it. In fact, we had extra cones on hand, donated to us by the staff who kept breaking them trying to flip our ice cream in the air as part of their Benihana-style ice-cream acrobatics. Once again, I had to slap a stranger.

Austin Day 4

After breakfast, the parents went off on their own to visit a friend of theirs in town while we went shopping. Our first stop was Dragon's Lair Comics on Burnett. While I really love Austin Comics & Books, Dragon's Lair was a very high quality surprise. I didn't expect another shop to come close to the coolness of AC&B but DL came pretty close. What they lacked in sheer volume, they made up for in a nice store layout and warm atmosphere. (AC&B has a warm and friendly staff, but the lighting is a bit more fluorescent in feel.) We headed north to an outlet mall for shopping. Later we stopped at a Giant Book Sale store, which was going out of business and offered books at around 75 percent off and better. It was like a "liberry" book sale, only with books in better condition. I only found a couple, but the wife found a huge supply of trashy romance novels, which she views as junk food for the brain, but consumes all the same. In her line of work, it's good to have something you can read and don't have to remember AT ALL.

GASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL: Started things off with part of an orange from the hippy market. Then we headed out to Austin Diner, on Burnett, where I devoured two breakfast tacos, one with crisp bacon and one with sausage (the bacon one was better), as well as a side of black beans and a biscuit. Ahh, bliss! During our shopping trip, we stopped at the outlet mall food court where I ate a gigantic Philly cheesesteak and shared fries with the wife. I'd only ordered a small Philly sandwich, but they gave me a biggun anyway. It was pretty good. The meat was cheap, but the bread was quite nice. Had to eat it. Unfortunately, that was around 3 in the afternoon and we'd planned to meet the `rents for dinner. So we gave ourselves three hours to digest and met them at the Clay Pit Indian restaurant, on Guadalupe. Other than the service being a bit slow, the food was fantastic. We each ordered a different dish and then shared around the table. I enjoyed Khuroos-E-Tursh, which the menu describes as: "Medallions of chicken breast stuffed with seasoned spinach, mushrooms, onions & cheese, simmered in a rich cashew-almond cream sauce with a hint of sweetness. Served with basmati rice." This was the first time I'd had this particular dish and it was delicious. My dad's choice of Kabuli Chicken ("boneless chicken cooked in our korma sauce from the curry house & infused with a paste made from pureed nuts, raisins & cherries") was slightly better, though. Probably the best dish on the table, in fact. After waiting half an eternity for our waiter to fetch our check (in his defense, I think the place was understaffed and he had probably two too many tables to mind) we headed to Spider House, a cafe/bar on 29th, where we sat under heat towers on the patio, drank tasty coffee and watched the gathering of UT hipsters all of whom were far cooler than we could hope to aspire to. And while there were waiters on the patio, you wouldn't really know it. They slunk along the sidelines, aggressively refusing to make eye-contact and only appearing on the patio itself to lurk over and snatch up empty coffee cups at moments calculated to be least likely to allow you the chance to ask them for anything. After a bit, a "dj" set up and began playing music which may as well have come from an iPod set to random. While some of it was good music, the "dj" seemed to take great joy in the juxtaposition of unlikely combos, such as segueing from Metalica to Kenny Rogers and attempting, with wild levels of both irony and unsuccessfulness, to blend them. We had great fun despite and because of his efforts. Spider House was a cool place to hang and wind up our evening.

Austin Day 3

Had fun hanging out with the `rents and seester. Shopped a bit through the day, including a visit to one of my all time favorite comic shops in the world, Austin Books & Comics. Holy shit, that place makes me SO happy! They have EVERYTHING and lots of it. If it's a graphic novel or a trade paperback you want, they have multiple copies of it. I purchased Powers: Secret Identity, the latest collection in the Powers series.

Later I saw one of my oldest friends, Gordon, and met his dog Lucy.

GASTRONOMICAL JOUIRNAL: Went to breakfast at Juan in a Million, on Cesar Chavez. They have a breakfast taco called the Don Juan. It's only about $3.75 but is food to feed the 5000, or at least me. You have to have extra tortillas to finish the sheer amount of eggs, potatoes, bacon and cheese that they haul out for you. We all ordered one and then went into food comas. It was a late breakfast, though, so we didn't eat again until 5p when we went to dinner at Iron Works barbeque. Pretty good stuff there, too. Had the beef plate. Afterward, we headed over to Waterloo Records and Amy's Ice Cream, which is a locally-owned version of Cold Stone Creamery. I had a massive waffle cone filled with Mexican vanilla ice cream mixed with crushed Reeses cups and Nutter Butters. Then I smacked a random stranger, it was that good. Late in the evening, my sister's friends Star & Liz threw a gathering in our honor to finally meet us. Beer was drunk and cats and small dogs were tormented.

Austin Day 2

We had fun seeing the sights today. The sister took us up to the top of "Mount" Bonnell to get a view of the area. Now after having been to Alaska, I no longer really count WV's mountains as real mountains, but this was pretty much just a large hill. We went to a nature conservatory and saw lots of peacocks and squirrells. My `rents arrived mid afternoon and, after eating, we hit Book People, one of my favorite independent bookstores, and later tried to see the bats fly from under the bridge, but the parking is kind of nonexistent there cause of some construction, so we wound up missing them.

GASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL: Ate homemade breakfast tacos, jalapeno boudain (that I found in an H.E.B. grocery store) and toast at the seester's place. Ate a late lunch at Casa Garcia consisting of the Casa Especial plate, which had a taco, enchilladas, queso dip, rice, beans guacamole, etc. and more chips than anyone has any business eating. It was fantastic. Ate a prailene. Ate some amazingly good trail mix that the wife made from igredients picked up in the bulk bins down at the hippy market (a.k.a. the Whole Market down by Book People and Waterloo, I can't remember the street). I also enjoyed a Sam Adams and a white russian, though only one each. So far I'm holding up admirably.

Austin Bound

The Wife and I have hit the road--or the air, as it were--to Austin, Texas, to visit my steenky leetle seester and my `rents.

I haven't taken any pictures yet, so no Postcards from Austin.

GASTRONOMICAL JOURNAL: So far today I've eaten a piece of pizza at 4 a.m. before driving to the airport, one and a half packs of cheese & crackers on our flight from Atlanta to Austin (which is Delta airlines version of a breakfast feast), a migas taco and a breakfast taco at Kerbey Lane Cafe in Austin, a Kevin Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato at the Alamo Drafthouse while watching No Country for Old Men. This sandwich had an irresponsible amount of bacon on it, which was impossible to contain within the confines of two mere pieces of bread. Throughout my meal, it kept falling out the sides of the sandwich and raining down into my food tray. It's the kind of problem I like to have, though, so I didn't mind. I also drank a $5 milkshake, (it's a pretty fudgin' good milkshake; I don't know if it's worth $5, but it's pretty fudgin' good) and ate chips and salsa. Later I ate a peanut butter & jelly sandwich and some chips with a Sam Adams Scotch Ale, as well as various snacky things around my sister's apartment.

Good times.

Universal Archetypes...

...they're everywhere!

The Perfect Storm of Extremely High-Maintainance, Needy, Old White Women (PART 2)

So I explained the whole deal with why we need the driver's license number to the Old White Woman. The OWW, of course, then reiterated having been told never to give hers to anyone at all. And rather than resorting to obstinate insistence as her weapon of choice, she instead played a different card and began blinking up at me pitifully, as though hoping I might reconsider doing my job out of sympathy.

While I understood her concern for identity protection, as far as I could see the choice was very very simple: she could either give us her number and get a card, or she could decline to give her number and we would then decline to issue her a card. I'm so completely sick of people—Old White Women especially—who insist we treat them differently than everyone else because they have a wild hair up their ass about something. Some of my fellow employees give in to such behavior, which has ALWAYS come back to bite them. I, however, would not be doing so.

I explained again to the OWW that we really did need the driver's license number before we could issue her a card. The OWW looked worried, then concerned. She then opened her wallet to its card section and started to write something in the license blank, presumably her number from her license within the wallet. Then she stopped, seemed to think better of it, scratched out what she'd started to write and withdrew the pen.

"I don't have my license with me, today," she said. Said it to my very face, she did. "Could I just call you with it from home?"

I was staggered at how dumb she thought I was. And while, on rare occasions in the past, we've allowed people to phone us with their license when they didn't have it on them, (and who the hell are all these people driving around without their %#$&ing licenses?) this lady would not be receiving that treatment. If she was allowed to leave the building without supplying it, we'd never hear of it again.

"No, ma'am," I told her.

"So I can't check anything out, then?" she said pitifully.

I began then to explain the rules of cause and effect to her, in only the politest of terms, when I was interrupted by the other Old White Woman, who stepped up to her friend's defense.

"Well, TOWN-C doesn't require a driver's license."

"Yes, ma'am, they do," I said.

Her eyes flashed, perhaps that I had dared deny the truthfulness of her claim.

"No, they don't," she said.

"Yes, ma'am. They do," I said, again remaining polite. "They're part of the same library consortium that we are and are required to take exactly the same information that we do."

The OWW thought on this and then admitted that maybe it was replacement cards they didn't require it for, as she'd recently had her card replaced there. And since she had her replaced card on her person at that very moment (Way to go, OWW!) she would simply allow her friend to check out materials on it. That was fine by me.

The above transaction took around five minutes and was actually still in progress when other patrons began to pile up behind the crew. Mrs. B took some of them at the auxiliary circ computer, but more kept coming. Some of them were giving me the stink eye, probably for not just giving in to the Old White Women's demands and speeding things along. They were even less thrilled when Tool T-Shirt finally got his application filled out and passed it over for his own card, not to mention ICP and the third kid, who were also standing there with books.

As I was processing Tool T-Shirt's card, there was a shout from the back of the line.

"Is this the line for the desk?!" a third Old White Woman said very loudly. She was standing next to a fourth, not-quite-so-Old White Woman, perhaps an apprentice. Ah, the third wave had hit and at last the storm of OWWs had reached perfection.

"Yes, ma'am," I said. I gestured to the four deep line of people directly in front of her. "I'm afraid we're a bit busy, so it may be a moment before we can help you. We have to go one person at a time." The OWW didn't huff, but looked like she really wanted to.

Soon, I had Tool T-Shirt's card finished and his book checked out. I was amazed the OWW hadn't given me crap for the fact that we didn't require a driver's license from him, but being as how he didn't have one maybe she did the math herself. I took care of the checkouts for the rest of her crew and they started to depart. And in her defense, before she left the desk the first Old White Woman thanked me for my courtesy.

The third Old White Woman was actually more of the typical loud, demanding and fairly unpleasant variety, but she held it in check for the most part. She too wanted a library card. And while she did have a license on her and was willing to supply it, she was also a recent transplant to the area and still had an out of state license with her former address. As we require proof of local address, I thought she was out of luck. She then supplied a small white name card, printed with her local contact information. Wow, she was truly an Old School OWW. I decided to let that serve and she soon left with a library card and, no doubt, some satisfaction at having won the day.

We learned later that the boys who came in with the first two OWWs were not their grandchildren at all but were actually residents of one of the local homes for troubled youth. Which means the local homes for troubled youth have now taken to employing Old White Women as minders for the troubled youth rather than the hulking linebacker types they've traditionally employed.

And that, my friends, is an astounding example of true genius at work.

The Perfect Storm of Extremely High-Maintainance, Needy, Old White Women (PART 1)

This is a tale from a few weeks back—a tale in which my co-worker Mrs. B and I were assaulted by a perfect storm of extremely high-maintenance, needy, Old White Women.

The afternoon had been going well enough until that point. We'd wrestled with the heating system, weathered a brief downpour of innanet patrons and survived the sinful temptations of a king-sized Snickers bar left in our possession by Mr. Rob, the librarian at the community college. Then, the doors opened and the first assault of Old White Women marched in.

There were two OWWs in this first wave, accompanied by a small battalion of high school-aged boys, who I initially took to be grandchildren. The OWW's didn't make trouble right away. Instead, they fell back, allowing their footsoldiers to approach the circ desk.

One of the boys, a stout lad who was dressed as though he aspired to be "Metal" but was not quite pulling it off, asked me if we had the book ICP: Behind the Paint.

"Insane Clown Posse?" I asked, shocked that the ICP were even still alive, let alone making albums or warranting books written about them. Even more shocking was that I knew what the acronym stood for without having to ask.

"Yeah," the kid said.

"No, we don't have that," I said, without even moving a finger toward the OPAC. I knew there was no way in hell Mrs. A had ever ordered that book. I then glanced at one of the kid's two fellow foot soldiers, a boy of no more than 16 who was somehow clad in a t-shirt advertising Tool's album Undertow. I began to wonder if maybe this whole group had slipped through a hole in the space/time continuum from, say, 1997.

They lurked away and the Old White Women followed them.

We thought the attack was over, but that had only been the first wave.

After fifteen minutes or so, one of the two Old White Woman returned with books on tape. Now, I'm not sure what she actually said when she approached because it was noisy around the desk, but the phrases "I don't have my card" and "look me up" were clearly heard among the other words I couldn't make out. I explained politely that we did require an actual library card to check out items. She seemed a little confused at this, though, so I began to inwardly question what she had actually said before. It might have been something like "I don't have my card so you're going to have to look me up" or could have been more of a, "I'm not sure if I'm still in your system, I don’t have my card, could you look me up and see if I need to get a new one?”

“Um… Do you have a card with us?” I asked.

“I… I did have a card. I don’t know,” the woman said.

“Well, I can look you up to see if you’re in the system, but I can’t check anything out to you without a card. Or a replacement card,” I added. I looked her up. Oddly, she didn’t have a card at all, meaning if she did at one time she was now one of the remaining holdovers from the old pre-2004 system. I "liberry"-ninja-flipped her an application and a pen. Meanwhile the boys returned to the desk each with selections. Tool T-Shirt really really wanted some book he'd found and was trying to demonstrate his excitement about it to the OWW. He'd read the first page and everything and loved it! The first OWW told him he could get his own card after she'd received hers.

I started in making her card, that is until I reached the blank line where a driver's license number should go. She might be an Old White Woman, but she didn't look old enough to have never had one nor to have had hers taken away yet. I asked her about it.

"Oh, do you really need that?" she asked. "My credit-protection service warned me never to give it out."

I'd been waiting for this moment. I'd seen it coming. And here was where I would make my stand.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

"Liberry" Glossary: Old White Women

Old White Women
-collective noun

A loose affiliation of elderly Caucasian females who continually demonstrate themselves to be the fussiest, least easy-to-please human beings on the planet. Members of the Old White Women collective come well-armored with a thick and chitinous shell of entitlement that cannot be cracked by mere mortals. They are either used to people jumping at their merest whim or are forever longing for the days of yore when people jumped at their merest whim. They are completely unaccustomed to not getting their way and being told they cannot do that which they wish to do and become quite put out when such situations inevitably occur. Their most favored attack posture in these circumstances is a deftly-wielded, razor-sharp, obstinate insistence that they be allowed to do whatever it is they want to do anyway and despite all logic and policy that might say otherwise. Very often, it is all the weaponry they need, for it can be a powerful force indeed. The most frequent obstacle they face at the "liberry," therefore, is their inability to check out library materials without their library card or the requirement of a drivers license number to get said card. Old White Women are rarely seen to be happy about anything at all.

While there is no obvious organizational structure to their ranks, (much as in the case with a similar loose affiliation of the elderly, The Grampy Patrol) there is definitely something of an exclusive membership present. Membership in the order of Old White Women is not compulsory by any means, for the vast majority of the world's population of both old women and white women are not members. However, membership in the ranks of the Old White Women does seem to be dependent upon being both old and white. Wealth and privilege is also a traditional characteristic of the membership majority, particularly at levels which elevate the individual old white woman above the reality experienced by most other human beings. Abbreviations: OWW (Old White Women); OWL (Old White Lady/Ladies)

(Famous Old White Women: Mrs. Owl, Mrs. Delva Poopoohead of the New England Poopooheads, Mrs. Manic, Mrs. Carol Satan, Hillary Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II)

(Honoray Old White Women: Ann Coulter, Mr. Crab)

Meet the Hackers

The "liberry" has been hacked. No, not this blog, but the "liberry" itself. And, no, not the "liberry's" computer systems, but, instead, our immune systems.

Let me back up.

One of our long-time regular and allegedly "good" patrons is a guy who I will call Johnny "Hacker" James, after the kid who hacked NASA. Johnny's a young adult who still lives at home when not attending the local community college. He and his family visit us several times a week to use the computers, read periodicals and occasionally check out books. They're all very nice people.

Johnny came in last evening and signed up for a computer. I logged him on and he sat down. During the sign up and login process, I heard Johnny cough a couple of times. They were little, hacking coughs of the sort you hear when people have a tickle in their throat. Usually, with such throat tickles, you can hack a couple of times and you're done, no? Not Johnny. He proceeded to emit one or two of those little hacking coughs every 10 to 20 seconds for the next three hours. And let me assure you, I am not exaggerating AT ALL.

Sometimes Johnny's hacks were quiet little coughs. Sometimes they were quite loud. Sometimes Johnny would add a bit of voice into it and really give it some power, but his throat evidently continued to tickle and he continued to hack away every 10 to 20 seconds. This very swiftly began to drive me crazy in a water-torture kind of way.

As my wife can tell you, one of my greatest pet peeves in life is the coughing of other people. I know, I know... coughing fits are beyond the control of most human beings, myself included when I get sick. Doesn't mean I have to like hearing them. Not only are they offensive to me because they usually mean a sick person is potentially spreading their illness into our shared atmosphere, but also because coughing is a full stop interruption to whatever else might be going on--say a conversation taking place or dialogue in a movie that can be difficult to undertand through a torrent of coughing. And if there's one thing I've learned in my years of working at the "liberry" it's this: no matter what illness a person might have, no matter how communicable it might be, no matter how many days they've been out of work because of it or how miserable they feel, that infected soul will not think twice about coming to the library and staying for hours on end, coughing and sneezing away, because damn if they're going to miss out on some innanet time.

As crazy as Johnny's hacking was driving me, I knew it had to be completely freaking out Germophobe Gary, who was seated at the opposite end of Johnny's particular row of computer terminals. Germophobe Gary is another recent addition to our "good" or Sundry Others patron ranks. He's only been visiting us regularly for the past couple of months and has proven himself notable for the frequency of both his visits and his requests that we supply him with Clorox wipes with which he can protect himself from the patron squeezings of previous users. As irritating as this is, I can't really blame him.

Meanwhile, Johnny continued to hack and hack and hack and hack and hack and hack and hack. I desperately wanted to go up to him and scream, "Listen, Cap'n Tripps, you're going to need to take that shit outside and HACK IT THE HELL UP! Cause, if you keep coughing like that, I'm going to have to haul our PDR over here and bust you in the head with it! Try coughing when you're unconscious!"

In Johnny's defense, he did politely cover his mouth with his hand with each and every hack I witnessed. And then he would lower that infected hand back to the computer keyboard and contaminate it further. He also at least had the decency to look ashamed whenever I caught his eye during a particularly loud burst of hacking.

At one point, Mr. B-Natural happened in for a computer. I tried to put him on the available computer farthest away from Johnny--after all, Mr. B-Natural is elderly and more susceptible to infection--but Mr. B-Natural doesn't like the other computer because one time it crashed on him mid-crossword puzzle, so he insisted I move him to the one directly beside Johnny. I complied. Mr. B-Natural didn't stay very long.

After two and a half hours of solid hacking on Johnny's part, his parents arrived. Johnny's father, as usual, grabbed a few magazines and had a seat in a comfy chair where he too proceeded to hack and hack and hack. Oh, great! A whole family of hackers! Granted, Mr. Hacker's hacking was not as incessant as his son's, occurring only once every few minutes, but clearly the virus had spread.

Johnny kept right on hacking away, but also upped the ante by demonstrating how his cold had progressed into his nose by pulling out an enormous hand-towel which he blew his nose into repeatedly and ferociously, returning his freshly snotty (or at the very least snotproximate) hands to the keyboard afterward. I shuddered with every honk.

Following several particularly loud and voice-intensive hacks in a row, Johnny's mother walked over and spoke to him in stern yet hushed tones. He looked a little embarrassed at first, but then seemed to offer some protest in a kind of "What do you expect me to do about it? Stop using the innanet and go home?" sort of way. I didn't actually hear her statement, nor his reply, nor her reply to his reply, but the answer to what I presume was said seemed to be "Yes." Soon the whole family departed, hacking away.

After enough time had passed that I was sure they had cleared the parking lot, I grabbed our Clorox wipes and used three of them to scour Johnny's keyboard, mouse, monitor, his chair and the surrounding area. I also cleaned all the front door handles, the handles of the restroom door, the water fountain where he'd sipped water and basically anything I even suspected Johnny might have touched.

I never caught Germophobe Gary's gaze during the detoxification process, but I'm sure he appreciated the gesture.

Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #105

SETTING: My "liberry" as a female patron approaches the circ desk.

PATRON— Yeah, I'm trying to get to whitepages.com, but it just stays on your website.

ME— Uh, okay. Lemme take a look.

(I go over to her computer where the screen does indeed bear our "liberry" website, though the address whitepages.com has been typed in the address field.)

PATRON— See, I try going to it, but every time it looks like it's working it just stays here.

ME— Okay. How `bout click in the address bar and hit enter.

PATRON— The what?

ME— The address bar. (I point to it for her. It didn't type in "whitepages.com" by itself, sweety.)

(She waves the mouse pointer uncertainly over the field but does not click within it.)

ME— Just click in it and then hit enter.

(She wavers some more, finally clicking within the field.)

ME— Now just hit enter.

(She does and our page vanishes and whitepages.com appears, albeit slowly.)

PATRON— (Agitated) Well, that's not what it did before. When I clicked the little green button there, it just stayed put.

ME— Um... (Pause to adopt proper diplomatic tone) I might be wrong about this, but to my understanding the little green button with the arrows there is the refresh button.

(Long pause)

PATRON— Oh.

We've Got Letters (and Resolutions)!

Michelle the Academic Librarian writes:

Hi Juice,

I've been reading your blog for a couple of years now, but I think I need to take a break. I love the entries about the rogues, but we've been reading a *lot* lately about the inner workings of your bowels and what you find in the liberry's bathroom. I'm often reading as I have my breakfast, but even if I weren't, I think it would still be a bit much.

Just wanted to know I really enjoy what you do, but the entries about rogues and your life with your sweetie are much better fodder for reading than entries about doo and speculation about the goings-on in your liberry's bathroom.

Although I'm being honest here, I remain a fan. I hope that's okay. I'll check back in later and see if you have "moved" out of bowels of bathroom lit.

Yours,
Michelle, the academic liberrian.

P.S. Sorry to hear about your fish. We are pet lovers around my house.

Michelle,

Thanks very much for the letter.

I suspect you're right about there being a few too many bathroom-related entries as of late. It's not my intention to write a gross-out blog, it's just that the bathroom-related problems we're having are the ones driving me the most insane right now. Still, I have actually been thinking along similar lines myself, particularly after penning last week's And Now, We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Program entry. It was chock full of disgusting bathroom-related material and got me to thinking that I might be dwelling on it a bit much.

A few years ago, I had a similar realization that much of my output had become devoted to the patron who was driving us most insane back then, the man known as Parka. Rather than continuing to devote the majority of my blog output to chronicling his annoying behavior, I decided to just let readers take it as a given that he was continuing to behave annoyingly and just not write about it anymore. Of course, there was still the occasional incident that deserved chronicling, but by and large I left him out. And not terribly long after I stopped writing about him, he went into a self-imposed exile from our branch after figuratively showing his ass one day. He eventually returned, like a big, annoying, Michelin Man-parka-clad, bad penny, but within a couple of months had actually left town, seemingly for good. This may yet be more evidence in my theory that the more energy and thoughts you beam toward the Rogues the more power they gain; which is why I never mentioned his ultimate departure here AT ALL, so as not to jinx it. (And let us hope this note doesn't accomplish that.) I guess the lesson to be learned about poop humor is: a little goes a long way, but a lot can stink up the place—kind of like Fred Schneider songs.

So, that said, barring any major newsworthy poo-festivals or stank ho-downs that occur, my official New Year's Resolution for the blog is to let my readership assume that the horrors in our restroom are continuing unabated, though unchronicled. Believe me, I have plenty of material to cover beyond it. (Plus, maybe if I stop obsessing over everyone else's mookystinks, they'll stop leaving them behind for me to find.)

Don't go anywhere just yet, Michelle. I enjoy having thoughtful, honest people such as yourself as readers.

--juice

"Liberry" Glossary: Coot Pile

Coot Pile
-noun

1. The assorted books on philosophy, poetry, biography and classic literature left in piles on one or more of our reading tables each day by our patron The Coot. (Granted, we hate it when patrons try to reshelve books themselves and encourage them to leave any books they pull from the shelves on our conveniently located shelving cart, so it's not like we expected the Coot to do the work for us. However, it is still very irritating to be on the brink of locking the door to go home only to discover a pile of seven books and magazines from wildly different places in the nonfiction stacks to have to shelve before you can leave. Wherever he is when he's finished reading, that's where the book stays.)

Where has YOUR ass been?

By now I'm used to seeing unsettling things when I go in to inspect the men's restroom at the beginning of my shift and often at the end of the day. However, I was at a loss to explain what I found on the seat of our toilet when inspecting it today.

I found wet leaves.

Yes, you read me right... Wet. Leaves. On. The. Toilet. Seat.

Mind you, there were only a couple of leaves to speak of, but that's two too many to not be odd. See, in order for wet leaves to be found on a toilet seat, the person who left them there had to have either placed them there intentionally by hand or, at some point in the recent past, they had to have sat down, bare-assed, in some wet leaves and picked up at least two on a cheek that way.

I briefly considered the possibility that the person who left them had merely had wet leaves on the soles of their shoes and had stood on the toilet seat for whatever reason people have for standing on a toilet seat. However, if your shoes are dirty enough to have wet leaves on them they're dirty enough to leave shoe-prints, and I saw none.

Or, maybe they found the leaves stuck to their shoes while using the restroom, attempted to drop them into the toilet to flush, missed the bowl and then were so terrified of the deadly, ass-bacteria teaming on our toilet seat that they just left them there rather than risk contamination in the removal process.

Yeah, that seems about right.

And now, we return to our regularly scheduled program.

So what have the "bad" patrons been up to since I took two weeks off from crapping on them quite so much?

Oh, the usual...

• We still have the usual urinal non-flushers to deal with, who in recent weeks have taken to leaving sloppy drippage on both the front lip of the urinal edge as well as the floor beneath. Now they've stepped up their game and are somehow managing to get urine on TOP of the urinal itself, where it congeals in the hard to clean trench made by the sealant. Son-of-a-bitch, you'd think we'd had a pack of dogs in here marking their territory! I've now been a bit more observant when I visit public restrooms in other buildings and I must say I don't notice near the amount of excess spillage in them that I see on a daily basis at the "liberry." Engage in Intercourse with a small water-fowl, I hate `em!


• In more excretory news, we seem to have a new Serial Shitter—a Copycat Shitter, if you will. We know it's not the original Serial Shitter for none of us have seen him in for months. However, just like his namesake, the Copycat Shitter has left his calling card splattered all over the interior sides of our men's toilet and made, from the evidence, only a cursory effort to flush. This Copycat Shitter may in fact be related to our next mystery rogue...


• Some asshat has been frequently rendering our men's restroom a gassy no-man's land through the sheer power of his fecal fumes. I know, I know, this has been a regular complaint here about a LOT of different patrons over the years, but this is one guy with, presumably, one ass and the ability to completely void the warranty of any given room. We don't know who it is yet, but he has to be a regular patron, since it is occurring quite regularly. The stench is horrifying and lingering and defies our efforts to dispel it. And while I've never been on a CSI-style forensic field trip to know first-hand, to me this guy's product smells exactly like a bog corpse. And due to some damn genius having hid all the aerosol freshener, I had to combat this horror with a tiny bottle of pump-spray air-freshener and a crucifix. For a bit, I thought the responsible party might be Sunday Bob, who did return on a recent Friday and caused all hope to be abandoned by anyone entering the restroom after his departure. However, he's not been in regularly enough to be the culprit and has fumes of a different... um... flavor, I guess. We have now bought numerous cans of aerosol air-freshener, each a different scent and different brand because we know from experience with the likes of Mr. Stanky that this level of stench will wear out a given scent in no time flat.


• The Coot has now taken to shaving in the men's room, which seems the next logical step in his campaign to make the "liberry" his home. This might have gone entirely unnoticed by the staff, except for the fact that, just as he leaves piles of books in his wake throughout the "liberry," he also leaves wads of shaving cream, stray whiskers and soap scum in the sink and seemingly makes no effort to clean up after himself at all. I personally suspect he may be the culprit behind at least two of the above three paragraphs.


• While hauling boxes down to our lower-level storage area (or as we like to call it "the wine cellar), Ms. D noticed there was a light coming from beneath the unusually closed door of our story hour room. Opening it to investigate, she found two teenagers, a guy and a girl. They were both clothed, though the girl was just putting on her coat. Immediately they adopted what she described as incredibly guilty expressions. Before she could ask them what they were doing in an otherwise unpopulated area of the building that we prefer patrons stay the hell out of, they dashed out the lower level back door and were gone. None of the staff had seen anyone go downstairs in the first place, so we have no idea how long they'd been down there and, lacking any infa-red Woods lamps, can only guess what they'd been up to.

A Death at Christmas

Around 11p last night, we finally rolled in to Tri-Metro, returning from our Christmas Holiday with the wife's family in North Carolina. My cat, Winston, mewed at the sound of our arrival and came out of the bedroom to complain at us for leaving her alone for a few days. As is usual, she was fat as mud from having gorged herself at her cat-feeder while we were away. All was not well with our other pet, though.

I had just listened to our answering machine messages and was about to head back down to haul up another load from the car when the wife came in and said, "Oh, no! My fish is dead!"

Yep. There in the crystal bowl on the table between the two comfy chairs was our Betta fish, Betta Prime. He floated on his side, his formerly vivid red and black coloration now a dull gray. The water around him was now a bit cloudy on the surface and there was a lone piece of fish food floating nearby. I'm no CSI: FISH expert, or anything, but he looked like he'd been dead for a few days.

For those of you who don't own Betta fish, they tend to die a lot. They're not exactly hearty little souls and have a life expectancy of around 2 years. In fact, Betta Prime was originally named Betta Gamma, as he was the third in a series of Betta fish we've owned since we first married.

Our first fish, Betta Alpha, actually lived for nearly four years, having survived three moves (one of which was interstate), algae poisoning, algaestat poisoning, a tussle with a cat, dozens of tussles with his own reflection and some pretty serious rage issues. We thought he was indestructable, though, until we woke up one day and found him dead.

Betta Beta, who came into our lives a couple of years later, was defective from the start and only lasted about two weeks. His downfall came in the fact that he did not seem to recognize fish food as something he should eat and refused to do so. Eventually, we discovered that he liked freeze dried blood worms and fed him those. However, the blood worms tended to disintegrate in the water, which wound up poisoning it and ultimately killed him despite a last minute water change. That's our theory, at least.

Betta Gamma was high quality from the start, though. He was bright red, feisty and full of life. Not only that, but my wife trained him to jump out of the water on command. Each night when she would go to feed him, she would hold up the red-lidded Betta fish food container and say, "Jump for mama! Juuuuuump for mama!" Betta Gamma would flair out his fins and glare up at the intruding container. After a bit of frustration that its bounty wasn't being distributed to him, Betta Gamma would leap out of the water and look very angry indeed. It was astoundingly satisfying to watch. We decided he was the coolest Betta ever and thus rechristened him Betta Prime. We loved him as much as any two people can love a Betta fish.

We don't know for sure what happened to Betta Prime. Before we left Saturday, the wife fed him well and gave him an extra food pelet or so, as we would be gone through Tuesday. (We took him with us during Thanksgiving, but he didn't like it at all and refused to jump for mama for a week as punishment.) After that, the wife poured some leftover water from two bottled water bottles into his bowl. She worried at first that the temperature variations might upset him, but the tank water was already heated by our fish water heater, so we figured it would settle out soon enough.

Our major theory at this point is that we might have overfed him or that he ate his food so fast he choked his fool self. The fact that there was still a piece of food in the water with him leads us to believe he died shortly after we left.

We'll probably get a Betta Delta, but likely not until we return from our upcoming trip to Austin to see my sister and parents.

Betta Prime: RIP.

"Liberry" Glossary: Holiday Hours

Holiday Hours
-noun (plural)

Days of the year during which the "liberry" is not open for business, such as Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Traditionally, on said holidays, our "innanet" crowd patrons repeatedly drop by to bang on the doors and try the handles in the futile hope that we were just kidding about that whole being closed thing and that at any moment we're going to open up and let them come in to surf. No amount of signs to the contrary can disuade them from this hope. Granted, we the staff are not there to witness this behavior and therefore have no conclusive proof that it indeed occurs. However, the fact that these same patrons exhibit this same behavior on days of the week when we do not open until 1p and have not opened until 1p for nigh on two decades, now, makes us fairly certain that they behave this way on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day all the same.

My Second Jackass Moment? (Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week: Day 4)

I guess this might not really qualify as a Dumbass Thing I've Done Lately, unless getting my haircut at Wal-Mart qualifies as a dumbass thing to do in your book.

In the book Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, the character who's ostensibly the romantic hero of the book is a fellow named Newton Pulsifer. Newton an odd man out sort of guy, technology is beyond him, chaos follows in his wake and he cannot get a proper haircut to save his life. The text of that section of the book describes how throughout his life he had frequently gone to hair-cutting establishments armed with pictures of how he wanted his hair to look only to have it turn out wildly different due to his head's refusal to take stylish cuts. In the end, he resigned himself to the fact that the only thing he could really expect from getting a haircut was shorter hair.

I have felt like that quite a bit in life myself. In fact, the last time I received what I would term a really great haircut was in March of 2005 and it was given to me at Wal-Mart.

Before you scoff too much, I've consistently received better haircuts at Wal-Mart's Smart-Style haircuttery than at nearly any other place I've been to. And this can be said for not only my local Wally World, but also ones in towns I've previously lived in.

The woman who gave me that last really great haircut, let's call her Melissa, was just incredible. She seemed to psychically intuit exactly how my hair would look its best, with very little instruction from me, and gave me that exact cut. I was so amazed by it that I resolved at that moment to return to Melissa and only Melissa for the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, one of Smart-Style's major drawbacks is that its a first-come-first-served sort of place. You can't make appointments and can't really ask for individual stylists, unless you want to keep letting people go ahead of you until the one you want comes up in the draw. So the next time I returned to see Melissa, I was saddled instead with the girl at the station directly next to Melissa's. And that girl, let's call her Miss Twique, was actively on drugs. I'm not kidding. She was higher than 93 octane and I was fortunate to escape with hair at all.

Of course, at first, I gave her the benefit of the doubt and tried to imagine she was just a really spacy person with very red eyes and, just to continue the automotive metaphor, a habit of talking at 150 mph. My wife the medical professional walked up mid-way through the cut, exchanged four words with Miss Twique and mouthed "She's ON something" to me. Shortly after this, both Melissa and Miss Twique ceased to work there and I've not seen either of them again.

Still, it was with great hope that I returned to Smart-Style last week with a mop of hair in need of a lopping. I was seated immediately by a stylist I'd not seen there before. She was a middle-aged woman who seemed very happy but only in a High On Life sort of way. Soon the subject of what I wanted done with my hair was broached.

"Do you usually get a clipper cut? Probably about a number 2 guard?" the hairstylist asked.

Now, I do a #2 clipper in warmer weather, but thought, what the heck, let it be a little shorter. After all, it's been pushing 60 degrees around these parts lately. So I told her a #2 blended into a #3 on the sides and back would be fine.

"What about the top?" she asked. "Just a trim?"

"Yeah. Just a trim," I said. "But I want to get rid of all this," I added pointing to the excessively shaggy widow's peak in the front that had been driving me insane.

The lady started a-clippin', making small talk all the while. I could feel that #2 clipper getting higher and higher up on the back of my head as she talked. Then she switched it out to a #3 and I felt a little better. That is, until she ran it clear across the top rear portion of my cranium. A very large chunk of my hair slid down my shoulder and I realized that I had now committed to another VERY short haircut.

As has been chronicled here before, I'm unfortunately no stranger to the odd self-inflicted shaver shark attack. And while I have actually been contemplating another VERY short haircut in recent months, I've not had the sac to actually go through with one. It's the sort of thing that, for me at least, has to occur unintentionally and then become accepted.

Well, I got my wish. When she finished with me, it was ever-so-slightly longer than the skull cap look of four years ago, and barely that. Still, I thought it looked pretty good.

Of course, as soon as I left Wally World, the temperature plummeted, snow began to fall and I now keep snuggy knit hats on my person at all times.

B.O. at the P.O. (Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week: Day 3)

We have loads of packages we need to mail round the "liberry," but no one asked me to haul them to the Post Office. In fact, Mrs. C took petty cash to run to Wally World, so I couldn't have taken those packages even if I wanted to. Which I didn't. Like a dumbass, though, I used my afternoon break to go to the post office anyway to do some mailing of my own.

I truly hate going to the post office as part of my work duties, because we always have 50 ILLs to mail and they and the inherent slowness of whichever postal clerk happens to help me (usually the ONLY clerk) clogs up the damned line even moreso than it's usually clogged. However, I reserve a particular hatred for going to the post office in December; for it's in December that ehhhhhveryone is doing all of their last minute Christmas package-mailing—most of the actual packing of which they could have done at home, but decided to do at the post office, cause that's inconvenient for EVERYONE—and this screws up the line even more and generally making everyone feel less merry. In kind, our local post office usually responds to the increase in traffic by putting even less people on the desk.

yaaaay.

When I arrived, there were five other people wedged into the tiny corner that the local P.O. has set aside for queueing. One of them was Mr. Stanky. He wasn't as blazingly-stinky as I've smelt him before, and his clothes, while disheveled, were not outright filthy. In such close quarters, he was still most unpleasant. Everyone else in line was trying to give him a wide berth, but there was only so far we could move in our attempt to widen the space between he and we.

There were two employees running the desk, but the people standing at their stations were insisting on doing complicated transactions that took FOREVER, so we all had to wait for several minutes before one of the lines opened. Eventually and most uncharacteristically, a third employee came up and opened a new window. I thought "Glory Be! Someone in charge is using their brain." Then one of the other employees told the next person who was able to approach to hold on, that he'd be with them in a moment. He then disappeared for five minutes, leaving the rest of us to wait.

Mr. Stanky was eventually next in line, but hadn't done his package packing at home, so he had to stop and do that and then had to fill out paperwork about it.

Finally, the second desk guy returned and the lines began moving again and I was at last able to mail my single package and flee that stank-choked, line-filled purgatory.

The Corduroy Conspiracy (Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week: Day 2)

One of my favorite items of clothing that I own is my corduroy coat. It's light enough to not be bulky, but lined with a wool-like substance that keeps me warm and snuggly. Other than a hole in the lining of the left pocket (which I'm sure my long-time-reader ma-in-law would be willing to mend for me come this weekend) it's perfect. In fact, it's the only coat I took with me to Alaska, back in May, (as can be seen in the accompanying photograph) and served me very well there.

This past Autumn, it went missing.

I'd taken it with me on a trip out of town back when the weather first began to get chilly around here. However, I never actually wore it during the trip. Instead, it remained on its coat-hanger, hanging from the hanger hook in the back seat of my car. Days turned to weeks and the coat remained in my car. In late October, after another out-of-town trip in which I had to borrow the Wife Wagon (or, as my friend Joe has dubbed it, "that ugly ass Honda Element") to do some hauling of boxes back to the homestead, I returned to find that the back seat of my car was littered with pine straw. I deduced that the wife, who had been driving my car, had parked it somewhere beneath a pine tree and left the windows down long enough for the straw to collect there. It took me a few days to get around to cleaning it out and by then I noticed that in addition to the pine straw there was also, on the back seat floor, an empty coat hanger.

I didn't immediately try to do the math on this, though. Instead, I assumed I'd taken my coat in the house. Only, the next time it got cold, I couldn't find it anywhere. Maybe I'd moved it to the trunk? Nope, not there. Maybe I'd taken it with me on that out of town trip and it was still in the Wife Wagon. Nope, not there either. Eventually, my brain processed the clues of the pine straw and the empty hanger and I began to wonder if someone hadn't nicked it from my car while the windows were down. That's certainly an asshole move, but on the flipside, perhaps it was someone who really needed a warm coat.

I asked the wife where all she'd been while driving my car, days before. My guess was that she'd been to Wal-Mart, had left the windows down, allowing some jerk the opportunity to hork my coat. It certainly couldn't have been my fault, because I lock my doors EVERY time I get out of the car, regardless of whether I'm at home or at work. The wife claimed, howerver that the only time she'd gone out was to go to a baby shower and it had been at someone's house way out in the country, with plenty of pine trees around, hence the needles. No one would have stolen my coat out there.

I accepted her word, but wasn't sure I really bought it. After all, this is the same woman who frequently can't find her car keys because she's left them in the ignition of her unlocked vehicle, with her pocketbook on the seat to boot. I believed her, but still wanted to blame her, because I couldn't resolve how my coat had been stolen unless she'd been the one to leave the car unlocked. She suggested I'd left it somewhere on my out of town journies, which I supposed was possible except that I'd never actually worn it and, again, would never have left my car unlocked, allowing someone to take it.

More weeks passed and I began looking for a new coat. The only trouble is, there just aren't any clothing stores in the area that sell the sort of coat I'm looking for. Oh, there are some corduroy coats to be found, but most are cheaply made things that do nothing for me. I wanted MY coat back, the one that probably still had alder and wild sage residue in the pockets from my attempt to make Alaska potpouri.

Then, one cold December day, it began to rain. I went to my closet to find my enormous black overcoat to throw on against the chill. As soon as I'd pushed back the hanging clothes around it, though, I burst out laughing. There in my closet, where I'd looked for my corduroy jacket many times, was my corduroy jacket. It was hanging on a coat hanger, but was hidden from view due to the enormous black overcoat wrapped around it on the very same hanger. My guess is, I'd had them both in the car and had wrapped the one around the other to haul them into the house with greater efficiency. I couldn't even be mad about it, cause at last I had my coat back.

It's a good thing, too, cause it's snowing again.

Ceintures du Jus Deux (Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week: Day 1)

It's Christmas Party season. I likes me a good Christmas Party--particularly when they're thrown by the hospital where my wife works and involve free-flowing rivers of heavy hors d'oeuvres and booze. In years past, though, I've always fussed over what I'm going to wear. Normally, I don't fret over my clothing so much, but such a swanky affair makes it feel like a high-pressure situation. I don't own any clothing even remotely festive, so I've sometimes worn a sweater. But then I always get there and feel like I've somehow dressed down, or could at least have tried for some sort of color, or should maybe have worn a suit, etc.

This year, I decided I would just wear a damn suit and be done with it. Only then I had the dilemma of what shirt and tie to wear with said suit. Naturally, I started making these choices about 30 minutes from the start of my Friday shift. Rather than rush into a bad fashion decision for the sake of getting to work on time, I just grabbed half my closet and put it in the car. I also made sure to take my black shoes, which were way too dressy for work, but which I could change into later. And I put on my black belt, which would go with the both the dress shoes and the black Chuck Taylors I was already wearing with my jeans.

As I hauled all this stuff in to the library and hung it on our coat-rack, Mrs. J rolled her eyes at me. She doesn't like her men to be fussy about fashion. Mrs. A and Mrs. C, however, delighted in helping me pick my outfit. In the end, we decided on the brown shirt and a black tie with blueishy brownishy circular designs on it. It wasn't particularly festive, but it all matched. After that it was just a waiting game for 7p to roll on by.

At some point in the afternoon, I went to the can. I reached down and undid my belt in preparation for dropping trou. Only when I got the belt unbuckled I found I couldn't feel the button of my jeans beneath it because there was something blocking it. I looked down and saw that beneath the black leather belt I had just unbuckled was a buckled brown leather belt. I stared at it for a long moment, then burst out laughing.

I still don't know how I managed such a feat, but apparently I'd put on a pair of jeans from a couple of days ago that still had my brown belt in them. It was only later that I added the black belt, and had been in too much of a hurry to get everything together that I didn't notice. It was genius, I tell you!

My coworkers have now christened me Juice Two Belts. They said it's my Indian name. Got it posted it on my locker and everything.

Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week

I've often maintained that if a person is going to go around pointing fingers at the foibles of others, it's only fair for that person to occasionally take a look at some of their own. So, in continuance of our trend of not heaping on the "bad" patrons so much, let's spend a little time looking at some of the dumbass things I've done lately...

"Liberry" Glossary: Remnant

Remnant
-noun

1. A deposit of patron feces consistently left behind in the toilet, discovered by a staff member each evening at closing time. Unlike those of previous fecalfeliacs, such as The Serial Shitter, these dollups of poo seem to be the result of the failure of our less than enthusiastic toilets to flush it down due to the criminally low water pressure they often exert. Still, it begs the question: if everything doesn't go down the first time you flush, are you really just gonna leave whatever remains on the theory that if it survived the flush "it be the will of God"?

When Bad Patrons Go Good: Take 2 (Tales of the "Good" Patrons Week: Day 5)

I was mindin' my own at the circ desk when a brightly-dressed lady entered the building, approached the desk and set some Danielle Steel books down.

"I'm bringing these back," she said in a genial tone. Then she moved off toward the New Fiction section.

Now the lady looked a little familiar but I couldn't quite place her face. When I checked in the first book, though, the patron record of one Mrs. Carol Satan popped up.

I didn't want to believe it at first. My eyes said the record was hers, but my other senses, particularly my nose, usually detect her presence long before I actually lay eyes on her. Mrs. Carol Satan, you see, traditionally smells like a heaping bowl of that old Christmastime favorite, Aunt Linda's 3-Unfiltered-Lucky-Strikes Salad.

(RECIPE: In a large dirty ash-tray, mix together three packs of half-smoked, unfiltered Lucky Strikes, three 10 oz cans of Veg-All, a handful of Junior Mints and three cigarette-pack-cellophane-wrappers full of balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Toss. Serves seven.)

After a few minutes had passed, Mrs. Carol Satan returned to the circ desk with a stack of seven or eight hardback books. She placed them on the edge of the counter, but did so a bit faster than advisable, for the whole stack tumbled over, avalanching toward the back edge of the desk. Fortunately, my "liberry" ninja skills kicked in and I caught the whole tower before a single one could fall. What happened next, though, came completely as a shock.

"Oh, I'm SO sorry!" Mrs. Carol Satan said. And there was genuine regret in her voice as she said it. Granted, it was regret crusted over by layers of tar, but it was regret all the same. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to let them fall like that."

"That's... that's okay," I said.

Mrs. Carol Satan continued to be very nice as I checked out her books. First, she readily offered her library card without having to be asked, made chit-chat with me while I scanned and stamped each one and seemed remarkably pleasant for a woman who has repeatedly blessed me out for issues that were her own fault. She even smiled. SMILED! And still I couldn't smell any cigarette fumes coming off of her. In fact, she smelled... pretty good, really. Was this somehow a twin sister? Maybe a Mirror Universe escapee, sans goatee? Why was she being so nice to me?

And I still don't know. Mrs. Carol Satan gathered up her books when I was finished with them, wished me a good day and vanished through the doors, a smile still upon her lips. I was floored! This was a turnabout in behavior that could not possibly have been achieved without divine intervention, or at least a few visitations of the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, Future and Zyban.

Mrs. Carol Satan: recent divorcee?

It's not Delivery, it's... well, okay, it IS Delivery (Tales of the "Good" Patrons Week: Day 4)

Any week devoted to tales of "good" patrons must include my favorite patron family of all time, the Asners.

Yep, no sooner had I issued myself the challenge of chronicling the nice folk who visit us than we were paid a visit by Ma Asner and her middle daughter. They approached the desk and politely, silently, waited for me to finish helping another patron. When at last I was able to turn to them, the daughter smiled and explained that she was selling pizza kits for her school and wondered if I would like to have a look at their catalog.

Now, unlike my personal telemarketer policy, I have a personal school-sales policy of buying from one out of every two kids who come to my door to sell me something. (I think they're catching on, cause they keep coming in pairs.) I spent too much time going door to door myself as a yout' to become the cranky, cheap-ass neighbor every one hates. (Plus, I probably still owe the March of Dimes money.) However, it's one thing to be kind and generous to neighborhood kids, but buying stuff at a workplace as public as mine is very dangerous. You get a reputation for buying fund-raising stuff there and suddenly you're overrun with kids selling $5 Hershey Bars and $8 popcorn balls.

However, because young Miss Asner was the one who asked and because I'm still charmed by all those times she said "God bless you" with her sisters as they departed the building, I readily accepted her catalog and spent $33 on pizza and breadstick 3-pack kits. Miss Asner was overjoyed and promised delivery to me within a few weeks.

When Bad Patrons Go Good: Take 1 (Tales of the "Good" Patrons Week: Day 3)

I've complained before about our annoying patron called Ms. Green. I should stress, though, that Ms. Green is not a Rogue, per se. She's never seemed to be a bad human being by our estimation. She's never qualified as mean, nasty or antagonizing to any degree. However, she has certainly proven difficult to deal with due to her ability to drive the staff to the edge of madness as we attempt very simple, standard "liberry" transactions with her only to have her question us at every turn. It's not that she doesn't trust what we're telling her, it's that she just doesn't seem to understand it. She's not dumb at all, but just doesn't quite "get" a lot of things that we take for granted as being pretty obvious.

In recent months, however, Ms. Green and I have come to a bit of an understanding. I came to understand that the major sources of friction between us are that her personality type and mine aren't the most compatible (she being a brassy, outgoing, semi-oblivious and often prone to distraction Yankee; and me, not so much) and that her perspective as a patron and mine as a "liberry" ass. don't always intersect. I also came to understand that Ms. Green has never seemed to hold a grudge about the times I've become annoyed with her or, more importantly, the times I've allowed it to show. In fact, while I may have been oblivious to it for a long while, Ms. Green has always been very nice and friendly to me, regardless of my behavior. Once I was able to wrap my head around this, my problems with her just sort of melted away and I suddenly found myself being friendly and nice back.

The last several time Ms. Green has been in for a visit, we've actually chatted for goodly stretches of time. And not chatted in that "I'm making small talk with a patron because it's polite and they won't go away" sort of chatted, but more of a genuine, unforced, friendly exchange. I tell you, I'm as shocked as anyone.

Oh, sure, Ms. Green still has idiosyncrasies that can be annoying, but given my shift in perspective, I just don't take much offense at them and pretty much roll right along. And Ms. Green, for her part, has actively taken to being less annoying by doing things like taking her cell phone calls outside and not allowing her phone to blare on for ages. It's freaky.

A further example of how helpful she has become came last night. Ms. Green was in with her kids, they browsed, we chatted, they browsed some more and toward closing time Ms. Green asked if we could make a couple of photocopies for her. Sure thing. Only she wound up not having the 50 cents in her pocket to pay for them then and there and asked if she could pay us tomorrow. Annoying? Eh, sure, but she's made this request before and I knew she was good for it. We let folks slide on paying like this all the time and they almost always pay us back.

Closing time arrived, Ms. Green and her kids checked out and left. While I was waiting for a few last minute computer stragglers, I went ahead and unlocked the book return and locked the front doors. Soon the computer users had finally left, though not before one of them had gone into my perfectly cleaned restroom, pissed up the urinal and didn't flush. I had discovered this act of bad-patronage, remedied it and was just leaving the restroom when I spied Ms. Green standing again at the circ desk. That didn't make sense, though, because I'd just locked the front door.

"Oh, here's the 50 cents I owed you," she said, placing it on the counter.

"How did you just..." I started.

"How did I what?" she began. Then light dawned in her eyes. "Oh. You thought you'd locked the front door, didn't you?"

"Yeah," I said. "Wow. It's a good thing you came back."

Sure enough, I'd managed to lock one of the doors but must have turned the key the wrong way in the other. That could have ended very badly for us, because despite all the signs declaring our hours, and despite the absence of interior lights, nearly every patron who approaches that door when we are indeed closed has to try both handles and yank on them for a while before the message finally sinks in.

Whew! Several strikes in the positive column for Ms. Green. I may have to move her to the Sundry Others column, or maybe add a "Good" Patrons column, just to make it up to her.

Brother Trucker (Tales of the "Good" Patrons Week: Day 2)

Brother Trucker is a good patron I'm thankful to have around. As you might have guessed, he's a long-haul trucker and as such enjoys having something to occupy him when he's on the road. So he comes to us for books on tape and CD.

I've actually written about him before, detailing the first time I recall meeting him. At the time I didn't like him very much, because after turning in a stack of Robert Ludlum ILLed books on tape he told me to "gimme the next four" and started to walk away. I was offended that he thought this was how the ILL system worked, but it turned out he was right. He and ILL Queen Mrs. C had already made arrangements that once he found an author he liked she would just keep ordering new books on tape for him, heading right down the list of what the system had to offer, four at a time. It was a bit unorthodox as far as things typically go around here, but it worked.

Since then, I've come to realize that Brother Trucker is indeed a valued patron. Not only does he come in for his ILLs when called, but he pays the postage for them as well! Hardly any other ILL patrons bother to do this. He's worked his way through quite a number of authors this way and is constantly on the lookout for new ones to add into the mix. Mrs. C keeps detailed records of what she's already requested, so as not to do the same ones over. Brother Trucker seems to appreciate all the work that goes into this, which is possibly why he always pays the postage.

And being such a long-time, solid patron, Brother Trucker has become something of a friend of the "liberry." He knows Mrs. A, B and C and they him. Often he hangs around for a few minutes to chat with us, telling us the latest goings on in his family and listening to the latest on the staff's. In fact, I bet if we ever wanted to have a rumble with any of our Rogues, Brother Trucker would be there with a tire-iron to back us up. For you see, being at the desk for such stretches, he's also seen our job and some of the annoying things that accompany it.

For instance, Brother Trucker came in to turn in some old ILLs this week. We didn't have any new ones for him, so he went to see what was in our own audio collection. He was gone for a bit and since the desk was empty I stepped into the staff workroom and into the staff restroom to have myself a wee. I was only in there for 30 seconds or so, but when I came out there was Brother Trucker standing at the desk, waiting. He grinned and said, "It's Murphy's law: if you go in the bathroom you know somebody's gonna come to the desk while your in there."

"Yep," I said. "That's why I know I better look like I've been washing my hands when I come out."

"Liberry" Glossary: Good Patron (Tales of the "Good" Patrons Week: Day 1)

Good Patron
Adjective Noun Combo

1. A member of the majority population of patrons at our "liberry"—probably the top 95 percent. This patron type is described as "good" because "Good" Patrons are generally liked and appreciated by the "liberry" staff. "Good" Patrons return their books on time, or, if returning them late, immediately offer to pay their fines in full. And "Good" Patrons are often shocked and dismayed when we refuse their offered fines on days when we are not charging fines, such as Fine Free Friday or National Children's Book week, and often give us the money they had earmarked for fine-payment as a donation. "Good" Patrons are not always necessarily smiling and happy people, but at the same time are generally pleasant to be around and not actively antagonizing the staff. "Good" Patrons never give us shit. "Good" Patrons always wear deodorant. "Good" Patrons flush. "Good" Patrons double check the toilet to make sure everything has gone down after the first flush, and repeat the flushing process until it has. "Good" Patrons always remember to bring their library cards, for they know without having to be told repeatedly that library cards are a requirement when checking out books. On the rare occasion that a "Good" Patron has left their card in their other purse or other cat's ass, they do not raise hell about it but simply accept the mistake as their own and request that we hold their books until they are next able to return with their card. "Good" Patrons bring us cookies at Christmastime. "Good" Patrons have smiling, pleasant children who are well-behaved and do not trash our children's area. However, were the child of a "Good" Patron to trash our children's area, their "Good" Patron parent would clean up after them. Good Patrons never bring fifty easy reader books back at the crack of closing. In fact, by definition, "Good" Patrons never exhibit any of the bad behavior I usually bitch about here.

Tales of the Good Patrons Week

A week or so back, a post-commenter commented that my posts of late seem to indicate that I am a good deal more bitter and in need of a vacation than the happy Juice of old. I'd not thought so until that moment, but upon consideration I can see how perhaps there is some merit to this observation. After all, I save up all these stories about the behavior of our "bad" patrons, yet give hardly any play to the other 90 to 95 percent of our patron population, or, our "good" patrons.

So this week, let's devote some time to looking at those "Good" patrons who prove that it ain't all bad down "liberry" way.

Cat Piss Man (a.k.a. "Bodily Excretions Week: Day 3")

In our local kingdom of stinky patrons, there are some royally fetid gems.

Naturally, the king of this empire is Mr. Stanky.

Second in line of succession, perhaps surprisingly, is Mr. Stankier who, while outranking Mr. Stanky in pure stank power, is still rated only second because, generously, he visits us only about a tenth as often.

Third up is The Sweatiest Woman in All the Land (ne, the Urineiest Woman in all the Land). I must say, though, that while she has been a more frequent visitor as of recent, I've found she no longer really smells sweaty or uriney at all. Maybe I'm catching her on good days, but let's hope this is a permanent change. However, even with her current diminished stank power, she's still third based on nasal-memory alone.

Fourth would be Bear Piss Man, who is no longer in the area, but ranks fourth all the same. He is so named not only because that's what he smelled like but also because we were pretty sure he had free access to such a substance in his line of work as a carny running an animal display at the local fair. Bear Piss Man became progressively more offensive as the days of the fair passed and progressively more insistent that the staff should come visit his booth at the fair. If we dropped his name, he said, we could get in for free. We had no desire to do this, however, because by the end of the week this guy could clear the computers of patrons within seconds of his arrival. We also learned we were wrong about the bear piss. By his own admission, late in the week, he actually ran the Freak Tent, which gave us all sorts of unsettling mental images to accompany his aroma.

Let us not forget Crusty the Patron, either, who I'll refrain from detailing as it is getting close to lunch time. (Okay, so it's only 9 a.m. here, but somewhere in the world it is indeed lunch time.)

And we've had an assortment of stinky drifters who smell of sweat, but who are often entertaining, so we don't mind so much.

Last week the stinky patron royal family saw a new and dangerous threat to their hierarchy amassing its armies on the horizon. I first noticed it shortly after arriving for my shift one day.

While shelving books near the computer area and comfy chair reading section, my nose detected the unmistakable odor of cat piss. I say unmistakable because, as the owner of a thankfully-retired former World Champion Cat-Piss-Distributor (the Official World-Champion Cat-Piss-Distributor of the 1996 Summer Olympics), I know it well. The smell seemed to be coming from a particular comfy chair, which disturbed me greatly. However, upon my next trip through the area, the smell had vanished from the chair. Moments later, though, as I was turning back to the desk, I caught it again, now coming from somewhere near the fireplace.

"Um... have we let a bunch of cats run free in the library recently?" I asked Mrs. C after returning to the desk.

Mrs. C shook her head. "It's him," she said, pointing back toward the fireplace. Sprawled there on one of our comfy sofas, practically on his back, his ass nearly completely off the front edge of the seat cushion, his legs jutting way the hell out in EVERYBODY's way, was the Coot.

Lord, beer me strength.

The Coot, it turns out, was wearing a winter jacket that has, evidently, been steeped in cat urine. It's quite foul and quite unholy and he seems to be either quite unaware of it or is quite aware of it but just doesn't quite give a damn. Frankly either of those options seems plausible.

So because of our stubborn lack of policy allowing us to point out to stinky patrons that they are making our very EYES BLEED with their stench, we had to sit in his cat piss fumes for most of the business day.

Two days later, the Coot returned, but no longer smelled like cat piss. Ah, very good, we collectively thought. He'd washed his coat or has otherwise been given a heads up.

Nope.

A day later, he was back and pissy-smelling. Either he'd worn a different coat on the intervening day, or his cleaned coat had been given a fresh cat-spraying.

So far the War of the Stankites has not commenced in full, as no other members of the royal family have been present to defend their territory from this new aggressor. It's only a matter of time, though, before the battle for the throne commences and the valley runs yellow with the secretions of our enemies.

Mommy, Mommy! Look what I made!

Whoo hoo! I finally made stinky! Had me a poo poo, I did! Honked out a dirt-snake. Dropped kids off at the pool. Etc.

I don't know if it was the mineral oil, the fiber or the half bag of Mrs. A's Olestra-based "light" potato chips I ate, but things are finally starting to move along.

That is all.

More information about my bowels than is absolutely necessary!

Riddle me this: How is it possible to have a shitty day and a non-shitty day at the same time?

Easy... Just get really, really constipated and head to K-Mart!

It all started Monday evening when I began to feel crampy about my mid-section. After listening to my gut with her stethoscope, my physician wife diagnosed me as being full of shit. I've received this diagnosis often enough, but not in the literal sense for quite a while now. Nothing was moving inside and my guts were bound up tighter than two S&M Christmas turkeys awaiting a jolly good beating by their dominatrix. I tried to think about what I'd eaten that might have caused my condition, but other than that block of extra sharp cheddar, I couldn't come up with a single thing. So, after a fitful, gas-pain-filled night, and an empty toilet sort of morning, I decided to head out to K-Mart for mass-quantities of toilet paper and enemas.

Let me just say, I really hate the local K-Mart. It's one of the most irritating places a person can go around here. It's a big store, but only has about 1/4 of the employees of a normal K-Mart of the same size to help stave off bankruptsy, I suppose. With so few employees, some sections of the store, particularly the office supply area, have been allowed to become a wild-west no mans' land where chaos rules and you can't find a damn thing. You can also never find anyone to help you if, say, you want to try on clothing and need the dressing rooms unlocked or if you need to put something on layaway. In those instances, there are buttons you can press that summon employees to help you by sending automated messages out over the loudspeaker calling them to you. But, K-Mart does tend to have cheap toilet paper and since my fondest wish was to use some, that's where I went to buy it.

So, there I was, rolling through the aisles of K-Mart, cart packed high with Scott 16-packs, soothing Christmas music over the speaker system interrupted twice a minute by a very loud monotone recording saying "SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY! SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY!" Soon, other shoppers began to encroach upon my personal space and get in my way. And then the loudspeakers began to play Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which I hate, and hate even more when it's continually interrupted by "SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY! SERVICE IS NEEDED IN LAYAWAY!" and I came to the decision that I'm fed up with the place and it's time to go. I took my cart full of butt-paper and enemas to check out, only to find that the only two open checkout lanes were clogged even worse than my colon.

Each checkout line contained three people and from the brimming contents of their carts, they were apparently doing all of their Christmas shopping for this year, plus shopping retroactively backward in time for seven generations. The cashiers were, naturally, not the speediest of transactionists either and this was compounded by the fact that both lines seemed to have some sort of pricing issue, which brought the whole shebang to a halt. I was irritated enough by this, but then I saw that one of the tabloids this week was picking on poor Suzanne Plechette. What did Bob Newhart's TV wife ever do to them? Jackals!

"SERVICE IS NEEDED AT THE FITTING ROOMS! SERVICE IS NEEDED AT THE FITTING ROOMS!"

Meanwhile, my stomach blazed with gas pains and cramping and at that moment I wanted nothing more than to buy my TP, escape this hellish place and, oh, maybe go home and bust a poo.

Then I sensed a presence lurking up beside me, to the right. It siddled up closer and closer, then stoped a few feet away and paused in what felt like an expectant manner. I turned expecting to see someone I knew coming over to say hi. I was right, but not in a good way, for standing there was Chester the (Potential) Molester. What's worse, Chester was smiling at me as though I were somehow his friend.

In the years I've known Chester, I've done everything short of punching him full in the face to alert him to the fact that I hate his guts. When he visits us at the library, I stare daggers at him and give him the most rage-filled spiteful face I possibly can, hoping the message will communicate that he is an unwelcome presence. (I actually told him this to his face on one occasion, but it didn't take.) Yet, every time I see him anywhere, his first reaction is to smile and wave as though I am a dear friend. This drives me nucking futs! If only I had been capable of defecating at that moment, perhaps I could have delivered unto him a violently-applied turd across the face to help him remember not to attempt friendliness at me in the future. Instead, though, I just stood there cramping and firing as much ire at him as my face could muster.

"Uh, hey," Chester said, ignoring my expression yet again. "Is the library open today?"

I continued tearing him into little shreds with my gaze for a long moment.

"I'm afraid it is," I said very slowly and with what I hoped was threat in my tone. Then I turned away from him entirely and refused to look back. Chester stood there for a moment, then wandered off, oblivious to how despised he is.

When I arrived at work, a poopless hour later, I warned my coworkers of Chester's potential to appear. Fortunately, he never showed up.

Meanwhile, I'm downing mineral oil (which tastes exactly like drinking a Crayon) and anything with fiber I can find in the hopes of busting the clog before it busts me. So far, no go.

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries #104

*RING*

ME— Tri-Metro County Library

MR. CRAB (FORMER ANNUAL $200 DONOR AND THIRD GRUMPIEST OLD MAN IN ALL THE WORLD)— This is MR. CRAB. Could you please renew my book (SAYS NAME OF BOOK)?

ME— Sure. Can I have your library card number?

(Pause)

MR. CRAB— (Only mildly annoyed) Ohhhh. Let me get my wallet and I'll give it to you

(Long pause)

MR. CRAB— Just a minute. I got too many pockets.

(Long pause)

MR. CRAB— Well, here it is... The last few numbers are... (GIVES ME THE LAST FEW NUMBERS OF HIS LIBRARY CARD NUMBER) Is that right?

ME— I'm not sure. I'd need the whole number.

(Pause)

MR. CRAB— So you want me to give you this millionaire of a number here?

ME— Yes, sir.

(Long pause)

MR. CRAB— (In a tone practically bristling with regret that he's already alerted us to the fact that he will be witholding his $200 annual donation this year due to some infraction on our part, preventing him from making that threat again at this juncture.) Okaaaaayyy...

(Mr. Crab reads me the entire number, but it sounds like it has too many digits. Nothing comes up. I try variations on it without as many zeroes as he gave me, but nothing is coming up.)

ME— Could you repeat that number? It's not coming up.

(I start him off with the first few numbers. He fills in the rest and I see that he'd inserted a nonexistent 3 in what he read to me originally. I renew his book.)

ME— There. I've got it renewed for you through the 17th.

MR. CRAB— (Not listening whatsoever) Well, that's the number I have here. Maybe I don't have the right card. I had two of them. And there's some other number written here, but I don't know what that is.

ME— No, I've already renewed it for you.

MR. CRAB— Maybe there's another card here, somewhere...

ME— (Louder) No, I've already renewed it for you.

MR. CRAB— You what?

ME— That's your card. I've got you right here on the screen and I've already renewed your book for you.

MR. CRAB— Oh, you did?

ME— Yes. Through the 17th.

MR. CRAB— (SAYS NAME OF BOOK IN SUSPICIOUS TONE, AS IF I MIGHT HAVE RENEWED AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT BOOK)

ME— Yes.

MR. CRAB— Oh. (Pause) Very good.

(One day I shall have to tell the story of the physical altercation Mr. Crab and I nearly got into at a wine and cheese reception we both attended.)

"Liberry" Glossary: Gorebits

Gorebits
-noun (plural)

1. Small, often triangular wedges of torn paper towel found dotting the floor of our public restrooms at any given point during the day, but especially at closing time. These are fragments of larger paper towels that have been torn asunder due to the inability of our patrons to simply pull the entire towel from the towel dispenser, whole. We're not certain why patrons seem to be having such difficulty with such a simple a task, as we the staff have personally tested each towel dispenser and have found them to be in functioning order and containing towels that are quite easy to remove with no tearing necessary. However, the sheer amount of Gorebits left behind on the floor indicates that our patron population is indeed in need of assistance and/or a tutorial session when it comes to their use. It should be noted that at no time has it ever occurred to our patrons to deposit their torn Gorebits in the waste-receptical conveniently located DIRECTLY BENEATH the paper towel dispenser. No, the Gorebits are instead released to float on the fecal-particle-laden air-currents until they find a new home on the floor where they remain until the staff has to clean them up at the end of the day. Gorebits are named in honor of former Vice President Al Gore, who would no doubt be appalled to know that an entire paper towel's worth of paper is being wasted each day in the form of Gorebits.


2. A wildly unpopular corn-based breakfast cereal released by General Mills in 2000. It was distinctive in that the cereal was manufactured in the shape of uncounted hanging chads and tasted like bitter defeat. It went out of production in 2002 after it was discovered the only person still eating it was its namesake.