SETTING: Our
"liberry". A new patron has come in and applied for a library card with
our new circulation system. My fellow "liberry" ass. Mrs. B took the
man's information typed it into our computer and issued him a new
library card.
MRS. B: (TO NEW PATRON) ...and you'll need to bring your library card each time you want to check out a book.
NEW PATRON: Oh, okay.
UNRELATED EAVESDROPPING FEMALE PATRON WHO ALREADY HAS A NEW CARD: What? Did you just say we have to have our library card to check out books?
MRS. B: Um, yeah. You do.
UNRELATED EAVESDROPPING FEMALE PATRON WHO ALREADY HAS A NEW CARD: (ANGRILY) Homeland Security!!
(PATRON THEN STORMS OUT OF THE LIBRARY.)Now,
could someone please explain to me how having a library card to check
out a book--a time honored practice at libraries world wide for at least
the past, oh, century--has anything at all to do with Homeland
Security? Even if we didn't require you to actually HAVE your card, your
patron account is still being accessed by us and books put on it. How
is that any different from if we scanned your frickin' card?
And even
if Homeland Security somehow DID have something to do with knowing what
you've checked out, doesn't it make sense that having a library card
would have no effect whatsoever on their ability to crack into a given
library database and find out what was being checked out?
I'm
really tempted to start telling patrons who complain like this that if
they don't bring their library card Tom Ridge will personally come to
their house and kick them in the ass. Trouble is, this would just feed
the flames of their paranoia and confirm their worst fears.
Son of a B!
D-MINUS: 11
Monday, August 23, 2004
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Sayonara, Bear Piss San
Today's Sunday shift went pretty well over all, but it sure didn't seem like it when I started out.
I nearly broke my and my car's ass trying to get to work on time. After church I barely had time to dash home, snatch up a plate of cabbage and boudain and hit the road.
(By the way, for those not in the know, boudain--pronounced boodan--is an exquisite New Orleans delicacy involving spiced pork, beef, chicken, liver and rice ground into a dressing and stuffed in a sausage skin. Done right, it can be as heavenly in a savory way as cinnamon rolls are in a sweet way. Most of the country, and indeed the world, is ignorant of this stuffed wonder. You can't buy it anywhere within at least eight states of here, so we had to import ours from friends passing through New Orleans. It's been sitting in our freezer for just over a year now, so we decided that since the wife and I are taking a minor break from our usual low-carb habits--due to her being stressed out at having to take the second round of board exams this week--we'd cook those suckers up today.)
So here I go, racing from home to make my usual 15 minute journey in 10 minutes. Never mind that the Fair is still going strong and traffic is nutty. I realize as I'm driving, though, that even if I'm a couple minutes late to work, the only person who will be inconvenienced is Mr. B-Natural, who's almost always waiting for us to open. Sure enough, he was the only one there when I drove up, a full two minutes before 1. By the time I actually opened the doors, Mr. B-Natural had been joined by Mr. Smiley, concentrating the world's population of grumpiest old men on our front step.
Mrs. H, who worked Saturday, had quite a busy day according to the circulation stats. She didn't even have time to finish the ILL's, so that was on my agenda. Eating my lunch was also on my agenda... that is, until Bear Piss Man wafted in for a computer. I didn't have a computer free for him, though, so he just stood around stinking up the front room until I did. Bear Piss Man still smelled like bear piss, but he had obviously tried to cover it by spraying himself down with some sort of air-freshener. It did not help whatsoever. He smelled exactly like a urinal cake.
"Been to the fair yet?" he asked, still trying to ply his free entrance to the freak-show favor. "Oh yeah, you went for the cinnamon rolls the other day," he said, remembering that I'd told him that. "Better go today, cause it's your last chance til next year."
I didn't reply. I finally put him on a computer and he proceeded to stink up the computer hall for the better part of two hours. When he left, he said, "Well, if I don't see you before next year, it's been a real pleasure." Then he reached out and shook my hand. And his hand was every bit as clammy as you'd expect it to be. As soon as he'd left, I booked it to the sink to wash my hand, trying not to breathe too heavily least I smell something on it.
I was unable to eat my beloved boudain until the place had been given quite a while to air out.
D-MINUS: 12
I nearly broke my and my car's ass trying to get to work on time. After church I barely had time to dash home, snatch up a plate of cabbage and boudain and hit the road.
(By the way, for those not in the know, boudain--pronounced boodan--is an exquisite New Orleans delicacy involving spiced pork, beef, chicken, liver and rice ground into a dressing and stuffed in a sausage skin. Done right, it can be as heavenly in a savory way as cinnamon rolls are in a sweet way. Most of the country, and indeed the world, is ignorant of this stuffed wonder. You can't buy it anywhere within at least eight states of here, so we had to import ours from friends passing through New Orleans. It's been sitting in our freezer for just over a year now, so we decided that since the wife and I are taking a minor break from our usual low-carb habits--due to her being stressed out at having to take the second round of board exams this week--we'd cook those suckers up today.)
So here I go, racing from home to make my usual 15 minute journey in 10 minutes. Never mind that the Fair is still going strong and traffic is nutty. I realize as I'm driving, though, that even if I'm a couple minutes late to work, the only person who will be inconvenienced is Mr. B-Natural, who's almost always waiting for us to open. Sure enough, he was the only one there when I drove up, a full two minutes before 1. By the time I actually opened the doors, Mr. B-Natural had been joined by Mr. Smiley, concentrating the world's population of grumpiest old men on our front step.
Mrs. H, who worked Saturday, had quite a busy day according to the circulation stats. She didn't even have time to finish the ILL's, so that was on my agenda. Eating my lunch was also on my agenda... that is, until Bear Piss Man wafted in for a computer. I didn't have a computer free for him, though, so he just stood around stinking up the front room until I did. Bear Piss Man still smelled like bear piss, but he had obviously tried to cover it by spraying himself down with some sort of air-freshener. It did not help whatsoever. He smelled exactly like a urinal cake.
"Been to the fair yet?" he asked, still trying to ply his free entrance to the freak-show favor. "Oh yeah, you went for the cinnamon rolls the other day," he said, remembering that I'd told him that. "Better go today, cause it's your last chance til next year."
I didn't reply. I finally put him on a computer and he proceeded to stink up the computer hall for the better part of two hours. When he left, he said, "Well, if I don't see you before next year, it's been a real pleasure." Then he reached out and shook my hand. And his hand was every bit as clammy as you'd expect it to be. As soon as he'd left, I booked it to the sink to wash my hand, trying not to breathe too heavily least I smell something on it.
I was unable to eat my beloved boudain until the place had been given quite a while to air out.
D-MINUS: 12
Friday, August 20, 2004
No, seriously, we don't want any more books.
Our annual book sale is just over a week away. We've been collecting
book donations for it since last September. Throughout the year, the
donations come in and are hauled to the basement where Mrs. B
periodically sorts them into categories and boxes them up to be moved to
our storage facility in a local city-owned building.
While we're very grateful for all the donations made throughout the year, toward the end of July we begin really talking up the book sale in an effort to let our patrons know that if they were planning to donate books they should put some ass into it and get it done cause there WILL be a cut off date. This year that date was last Sunday, August 15, after which we put up lots of signs saying we weren't accepting any more book donations until September 15. Not that this has stopped people from bringing them anyway.
Most insistent book donators are turned away with a kind "Thank you very much, but we're no longer accepting books until September 15." They may not like it, but they do go away. One in particular, however, was not so easily disuaded. She phoned us up on Tuesday to ask if she could bring in her books. Mrs. B told her, sorry, no, but we stopped taking books on the 15th.
"But that was Sunday!" the woman said.
"Yes, it was," Mrs. B replied.
Within an hour or two the lady from the phone drove up outside and began unloading boxes. Mrs. B told the woman we really weren't accepting any more books, but the lady insisted on continuing to unload her boxes, stacking them neatly by the front door. Throughout the stacking, Mrs. B continued to tell the woman that No, seriously, we're not accepting any more book donations. You have to take these boxes away. Didn't stop the lady. Didn't even slow her down. She just kept stacking, not saying a word. It seemed nothing short of physical violence was going to stop her, and Mrs. B, having recently had surgery, was in no condition to dish any out. Then, when she'd deposited the tenth box onto the pile, she looked Mrs. B in the eye and said, "You should be grateful for these books." She then got in her car and drove off.
It may seem strange that we would be at all ungrateful for books to benefit our library or that we would have a cut off date at all, but it is absolutely necessary to the process. For one thing, it's very difficult to organize the books you already have when more keep getting dumped on the pile. For another, we're never NEEEEEVER gonna sell all of them anyway. We'd be dancing in the streets if we could sell half of what we usually have. It just doesn't happen, though.
Our booksale is always well attended, but when the number of books we have on sale outnumbers the population of the entire county and only a fraction of that population shows up to the sale, there are going to be lots of books left unsold. At the end of the day, all those unsold books will have to be boxed up again and hauled back onto the rental truck. Then they take a ride to see their new friend Mr. City Garbage Truck where they are compacted into book mush and eventually deposited into a landfill.
(*FEELS THE OVERWHELMING CRIES OF ANGUISH FROM BOOKLOVING READERS ACROSS THE EARTH*)
That's right, we throw them away.
It sounds brutal and horrible and I completely understand if you think we're all a bunch of inhuman monsters at this point, but stay with me cause I'm going somewhere with all this.
I was spared having to see the fate of the leftover books during my first year working the sale. I could live in my little fantasy world in which all those books were taken back to the book-orphanage that is our storage shed to await another chance at happiness in a new home come next year. (Picture scenes from Cider House Rules, only starring books instead of Dewey from Malcolm In The Middle.) Last year, however, they made me go help load the boxes into the garbage truck and I had to do some real soul searching.
I'm still pretty conflicted about seeing books destroyed in this manner. There's just something about a book, no matter how useless it may be to me personally or to the rest of humanity (*COUGH* *COUGH*ROBINCOOK*COUGH*), that grants it inherent value and twists at my soul to see destroyed. However, after much thought, I came to the conclusion (rationalization) that throwing away all those books was not the high crime it might seem on the surface. In fact, it is a valuable community service.
See, the public and patrons in general don't want to see books thrown away any more than we do. In lieu of throwing their own books away, which would be unthinkable, they bring them to us in the belief that their gift will be used for a greater purpose. Either we'll add their books to our collection (the ultimate honor) or we'll sell them in the booksale and the funds will go toward keeping the library running (still pretty honorable). Both of those possibilities MAY be true for any given book. Odds being what they are, however, it is also nearly as likely that their book will be among the leftovers we chunk. Doesn't really matter in either case, though. Our valuable service is that the library becomes the one unloaded rifle in the firing squad that allows each rifleman to sleep at night in the belief that they didn't actually kill anyone. We throw books no one wants away so that average citizens don't have to and don't feel anguished over having done so.
I also realized that what we do is not actually destroying books, at least not in the larger sense. We're merely destroying copies of certain books. Those books still exist out there in the world with plenty of other copies, we've just removed one or two of them from circulation. It happens.
("Oh, yeah? Well if EVERYONE did that then ALL copies of books would be destroyed!" someone out there just said in knee-jerk reaction. Yes, that is true. If everyone destroyed all their book copies then the books would be destroyed. And when and if that happens, we can start making a big deal about it. Since it isn't, and since most of what we destroy are people's old unwanted Chicken Soup for the Asshole's Soul copies and ratty 200th printings of John Grisham, I'm gonna be cool about it.)
On Wednesday, Mrs. C printed out a gigantic banner that reads "WE WILL NOT BE ACCEPTING BOOK DONATIONS UNTIL SEPTEMBER 17!!!" and plastered it across the outside of our front door. Already it has stopped several well-meaning donors in their tracks coming up the front walk.
The good news, however, is that we have also discovered an alternate donation site. One of the libraries in a nearby county was shut down a couple of years ago due to not being able to sustain itself financially. That community has now rallied together, though, and they are about to reopen that branch and are in dire need of books. So now we're sending latecomers their way and may be able to unload a few orphans of our own there after the sale.
D-MINUS: 14
While we're very grateful for all the donations made throughout the year, toward the end of July we begin really talking up the book sale in an effort to let our patrons know that if they were planning to donate books they should put some ass into it and get it done cause there WILL be a cut off date. This year that date was last Sunday, August 15, after which we put up lots of signs saying we weren't accepting any more book donations until September 15. Not that this has stopped people from bringing them anyway.
Most insistent book donators are turned away with a kind "Thank you very much, but we're no longer accepting books until September 15." They may not like it, but they do go away. One in particular, however, was not so easily disuaded. She phoned us up on Tuesday to ask if she could bring in her books. Mrs. B told her, sorry, no, but we stopped taking books on the 15th.
"But that was Sunday!" the woman said.
"Yes, it was," Mrs. B replied.
Within an hour or two the lady from the phone drove up outside and began unloading boxes. Mrs. B told the woman we really weren't accepting any more books, but the lady insisted on continuing to unload her boxes, stacking them neatly by the front door. Throughout the stacking, Mrs. B continued to tell the woman that No, seriously, we're not accepting any more book donations. You have to take these boxes away. Didn't stop the lady. Didn't even slow her down. She just kept stacking, not saying a word. It seemed nothing short of physical violence was going to stop her, and Mrs. B, having recently had surgery, was in no condition to dish any out. Then, when she'd deposited the tenth box onto the pile, she looked Mrs. B in the eye and said, "You should be grateful for these books." She then got in her car and drove off.
It may seem strange that we would be at all ungrateful for books to benefit our library or that we would have a cut off date at all, but it is absolutely necessary to the process. For one thing, it's very difficult to organize the books you already have when more keep getting dumped on the pile. For another, we're never NEEEEEVER gonna sell all of them anyway. We'd be dancing in the streets if we could sell half of what we usually have. It just doesn't happen, though.
Our booksale is always well attended, but when the number of books we have on sale outnumbers the population of the entire county and only a fraction of that population shows up to the sale, there are going to be lots of books left unsold. At the end of the day, all those unsold books will have to be boxed up again and hauled back onto the rental truck. Then they take a ride to see their new friend Mr. City Garbage Truck where they are compacted into book mush and eventually deposited into a landfill.
(*FEELS THE OVERWHELMING CRIES OF ANGUISH FROM BOOKLOVING READERS ACROSS THE EARTH*)
That's right, we throw them away.
It sounds brutal and horrible and I completely understand if you think we're all a bunch of inhuman monsters at this point, but stay with me cause I'm going somewhere with all this.
I was spared having to see the fate of the leftover books during my first year working the sale. I could live in my little fantasy world in which all those books were taken back to the book-orphanage that is our storage shed to await another chance at happiness in a new home come next year. (Picture scenes from Cider House Rules, only starring books instead of Dewey from Malcolm In The Middle.) Last year, however, they made me go help load the boxes into the garbage truck and I had to do some real soul searching.
I'm still pretty conflicted about seeing books destroyed in this manner. There's just something about a book, no matter how useless it may be to me personally or to the rest of humanity (*COUGH* *COUGH*ROBINCOOK*COUGH*), that grants it inherent value and twists at my soul to see destroyed. However, after much thought, I came to the conclusion (rationalization) that throwing away all those books was not the high crime it might seem on the surface. In fact, it is a valuable community service.
See, the public and patrons in general don't want to see books thrown away any more than we do. In lieu of throwing their own books away, which would be unthinkable, they bring them to us in the belief that their gift will be used for a greater purpose. Either we'll add their books to our collection (the ultimate honor) or we'll sell them in the booksale and the funds will go toward keeping the library running (still pretty honorable). Both of those possibilities MAY be true for any given book. Odds being what they are, however, it is also nearly as likely that their book will be among the leftovers we chunk. Doesn't really matter in either case, though. Our valuable service is that the library becomes the one unloaded rifle in the firing squad that allows each rifleman to sleep at night in the belief that they didn't actually kill anyone. We throw books no one wants away so that average citizens don't have to and don't feel anguished over having done so.
I also realized that what we do is not actually destroying books, at least not in the larger sense. We're merely destroying copies of certain books. Those books still exist out there in the world with plenty of other copies, we've just removed one or two of them from circulation. It happens.
("Oh, yeah? Well if EVERYONE did that then ALL copies of books would be destroyed!" someone out there just said in knee-jerk reaction. Yes, that is true. If everyone destroyed all their book copies then the books would be destroyed. And when and if that happens, we can start making a big deal about it. Since it isn't, and since most of what we destroy are people's old unwanted Chicken Soup for the Asshole's Soul copies and ratty 200th printings of John Grisham, I'm gonna be cool about it.)
On Wednesday, Mrs. C printed out a gigantic banner that reads "WE WILL NOT BE ACCEPTING BOOK DONATIONS UNTIL SEPTEMBER 17!!!" and plastered it across the outside of our front door. Already it has stopped several well-meaning donors in their tracks coming up the front walk.
The good news, however, is that we have also discovered an alternate donation site. One of the libraries in a nearby county was shut down a couple of years ago due to not being able to sustain itself financially. That community has now rallied together, though, and they are about to reopen that branch and are in dire need of books. So now we're sending latecomers their way and may be able to unload a few orphans of our own there after the sale.
D-MINUS: 14
Thursday, August 19, 2004
Stank Week
Oh, the unpleasant smells of humanity I have smelled this week.
In addition to daily visits from The Sweatiest Woman in All the Land, whose stank is now in danger of achieving Rogue Status all on its own, we've also been visited by an even stinkier person.
Bear Piss Man is his name. I first met him on Sunday when he came in to use a computer. He doesn't live around here, though he'd fit right in. He didn't even smell particularly bad that day and I even talked to him for a bit. He had mentioned not being from the area nor having a library card when he'd inquired about the computers. I asked if he was in town for the Fair and he confirmed that he was. Seems he's something of a professional carny and is in charge of the Freak Show booth. He invited me to come by and said I just had to mention his name to the ticket taker and they'd let me right in for free. I even thought about taking him up on it when I went to get my cinnamon rolls on Wednesday, but decided not to.
I've never been to the freak show at this particular fair before, but from what I understand there are more animal oddities than human oddities on display. And most of them are dead. Most. Regardless, I didn't want anything to spoil my roll, so I didn't stop in. This was a wise move in retrospect, as when I did turn up for work at the "liberry" Bear Piss Man was already there at the computers, reeking of urine.
The staff had already classified the urine smell as cat-piss, as it's in that general neighborhood of unvanquishable stench. Then they had second thoughts.
"I think he runs the bear show," Mrs. J suggested.
"Oh, so it's bear piss?" Mrs. A said in a low voice that Bear Piss Man probably couldn't hear.
"Uh, I don't know about that," I said. "He told me he ran the freak show."
"Freak piss, then?" Mrs. A countered.
Regardless of the species that actually issued his pissy smell, Bear Piss Man was the name that stuck.
He spied me while I was logging on a computer for someone else and asked if I'd been to the fair yet.
"Well, yeah, I was there this morning, but just for the cinnamon rolls."
Bear Piss Man then reissued his invitation that I should stop on by the show, tell the ticket guy his name and come right in for free. I found the urgency of the man's invitation more than a little bit unsettling. I told this to the wife over the phone last night.
"He probably needs a new Fat Man," she suggested.
I'd argue, but I do still look preggers from my double shot of cinnamon rolls.
In addition to daily visits from The Sweatiest Woman in All the Land, whose stank is now in danger of achieving Rogue Status all on its own, we've also been visited by an even stinkier person.
Bear Piss Man is his name. I first met him on Sunday when he came in to use a computer. He doesn't live around here, though he'd fit right in. He didn't even smell particularly bad that day and I even talked to him for a bit. He had mentioned not being from the area nor having a library card when he'd inquired about the computers. I asked if he was in town for the Fair and he confirmed that he was. Seems he's something of a professional carny and is in charge of the Freak Show booth. He invited me to come by and said I just had to mention his name to the ticket taker and they'd let me right in for free. I even thought about taking him up on it when I went to get my cinnamon rolls on Wednesday, but decided not to.
I've never been to the freak show at this particular fair before, but from what I understand there are more animal oddities than human oddities on display. And most of them are dead. Most. Regardless, I didn't want anything to spoil my roll, so I didn't stop in. This was a wise move in retrospect, as when I did turn up for work at the "liberry" Bear Piss Man was already there at the computers, reeking of urine.
The staff had already classified the urine smell as cat-piss, as it's in that general neighborhood of unvanquishable stench. Then they had second thoughts.
"I think he runs the bear show," Mrs. J suggested.
"Oh, so it's bear piss?" Mrs. A said in a low voice that Bear Piss Man probably couldn't hear.
"Uh, I don't know about that," I said. "He told me he ran the freak show."
"Freak piss, then?" Mrs. A countered.
Regardless of the species that actually issued his pissy smell, Bear Piss Man was the name that stuck.
He spied me while I was logging on a computer for someone else and asked if I'd been to the fair yet.
"Well, yeah, I was there this morning, but just for the cinnamon rolls."
Bear Piss Man then reissued his invitation that I should stop on by the show, tell the ticket guy his name and come right in for free. I found the urgency of the man's invitation more than a little bit unsettling. I told this to the wife over the phone last night.
"He probably needs a new Fat Man," she suggested.
I'd argue, but I do still look preggers from my double shot of cinnamon rolls.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Cinnamon Roll Day
Every year, we have a fair in town for a week and every year the
whole Tri-Metro area is thrown into bedlam and confusion as people from
all over the region descend upon our heads, tie up our roads and make
life a good bit more stressful. Many local citizens choose this week to
leave the area on vacation just to avoid it. Those of us who have to
stay quickly learn the back roads to get around the glut of traffic
between us and work. Even the "liberry" reduces hours of operation to
close at 5 p.m. all week just to compensate for the lower patronage.
This royally horks off the internet crowd, though, so it's not all bad.
I first encountered the Fair Cinnamon Roll two years ago while visiting the fair with my in-laws. We'd already eaten our share of the usual fair food and were feeling kind of bloated from it, but spied the cinnamon roll stand on our way out. The wife and I bought a roll to share, but didn't actually eat any of it until we'd been home for an hour or two. Upon having our first bite, we knew we'd made a grave error in judgment. Not because it was cold, mind, but because if we had known how amazing these giant sugar-coated balls of heaven truly were we would have bought several more. To get more, we would have to pay upwards of $7 just to get into the fair, then another $5 a pop for each roll. It was quite an expensive endeavor, but dammit we were addicts now and had to have them! I finally wound up bribing Mrs. A to buy three cinnamon rolls when she went to the Fair to work the literacy booth. The wife and I each had one and we generously gave the third to our next door neighbor.
I missed out on the rolls last year because I was visiting my sister in Austin, but I more than made up for it by eating my weight in Tex Mex while there.
This year I was determined to get my hands on at least one cinnamon roll and I knew exactly when I was going to do it.
Today.
See today was Free Day at the Fair. This doesn't mean you can get into the Fair free all day, but you can get in free between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Just in time for breakfast! So I left all guilt and the chain-rattling ghost of Dr. Atkins at the house and headed out at 8:15 to secure my cinnamon roll.
After negotiating my way through the free-parking lot, running over a bottle in the process thanks to the kindly direction of the parking staff, and maneuvering through the mass crowd of families who were headed in for free day with no intentions of leaving until they ran out of money or were forcibly removed by carnies, I was finally there.
I felt very lucky that only a handful of people were in line at the cinnamon roll trailer, waiting to make off with some of the earliest rolls fresh from the oven. I needn't have worried. The lines for this booth usually rival those of It's A Small World at Disneyland. And the rolls are always fresh because they have no time to sit around because of the demand. And, if you get close, you can watch their blessed creation...
The cinnamon roll guys roll out the dough right there in front of the big window. They lovingly put around 16 pats of real butter all over the surface of the dough, not skimping, before sprinkling the whole thing with a quarter inch of sugar and cinnamon. Then they roll that sucker up, slice it into huge chunks, put the chunks on a baking sheet, bake it for a while, then slather the whole piping hot tray in a gooey sugar/cinnamon icing. Eating one is like becoming David Bowman at the end of 2001. "My God, it's full of stars!"
"I'll have a coffee and two cinnamon rolls, please," I told the man at the window. He took a spatula and gathered up my rolls into little plastic containers, slid them into a white paper bag and poured my coffee. My total price was $11 and I knew already it would be worth every last penny of it.
I took my bag of cinnamony sugary carb-laden goodness to find a spot to sit and eat. The picnic tables were infested with teenagers waiting for the rides to open, so I decided to use the mostly uncrowded concrete front step of one of the exhibit buildings as my dining table.
Take a good close look at the full-size picture of my cinnamon roll to the right. A beauty isn't it? My stomach's been living for this moment for months now. This is to be the pinnacle moment of low carb-cheating for my entire year. All other cheats--including eating half a box of Golden Grahams, by myself, in one sitting, a month back--pale by comparison.
I take the first bite. It is every bit as good as I've been hoping it would be. I can taste the salt from the butter as it has a menage a trois with the sugar and cinnamon across my tongue. Only by eating one of these can you understand just how on the money all those scientific studies showing how men equate smells of warm cinnamon buns with sex truly are. Well... if you're a man, I guess. I take another bite. It's just as good as the first. I then proceed, bite by bite, through the entire roll over the course of six or so minutes.
While eating, I try to analyze the experience as best I can, cause it turns out there are highs and lows to it.
I've come to the conclusion that, for me at least, the first seven or eight bites were probably the best. Eight put me about half-way through the cinnamon roll. After that, each bite was diminishing returns. I'm really not a sweet-tooth at heart and I can only stand so much sugary richness before the endorphin flow begins to trickle off. At around four bites from the end, I could really see the logic in merely sharing one of these rolls with someone else. That way, you get the best parts of the experience and not so much of the whole long haul to the finish line praying for merciful death thing. The penultimate bite was painful, cause I could see the last one coming, and it was a big one. I didn't get sick or anything, but my poor sugar-deprived stomach was definitely feeling confused as to what to do with the mass influx of sucrose.
After that, I walked around the fair for a while, looking at all the other food booths that are just opening up. I knew that while I was in for free I really should indulge in some of the better edible attractions, but my gut was full of roll and I just couldn't imagine eating anything else, particularly something sweet. After twenty minutes or so, I went home with my other cinnamon roll, which I planned to offer to my sweet baby upon her impending return from Clarksburg. I even mentioned it to her on the phone tonight, secretly hoping she would turn it down.
"Noooo, I don't need any more sugar," she said. "You should eat it. Don't let it sit around in the congealed butter grease and get nasty."
I didn't need to be told twice. I popped that sucker in a bowl, nuked it for a couple of minutes and feasted on warm cinnamon roll that was almost exactly as good as the one this morning. I even ate some of it on the phone so she could live vicariously through me.
Frankly, I think she's a bit jealous of my near adulterous relationship with the rolls.
I first encountered the Fair Cinnamon Roll two years ago while visiting the fair with my in-laws. We'd already eaten our share of the usual fair food and were feeling kind of bloated from it, but spied the cinnamon roll stand on our way out. The wife and I bought a roll to share, but didn't actually eat any of it until we'd been home for an hour or two. Upon having our first bite, we knew we'd made a grave error in judgment. Not because it was cold, mind, but because if we had known how amazing these giant sugar-coated balls of heaven truly were we would have bought several more. To get more, we would have to pay upwards of $7 just to get into the fair, then another $5 a pop for each roll. It was quite an expensive endeavor, but dammit we were addicts now and had to have them! I finally wound up bribing Mrs. A to buy three cinnamon rolls when she went to the Fair to work the literacy booth. The wife and I each had one and we generously gave the third to our next door neighbor.
I missed out on the rolls last year because I was visiting my sister in Austin, but I more than made up for it by eating my weight in Tex Mex while there.
This year I was determined to get my hands on at least one cinnamon roll and I knew exactly when I was going to do it.
Today.
See today was Free Day at the Fair. This doesn't mean you can get into the Fair free all day, but you can get in free between the hours of 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Just in time for breakfast! So I left all guilt and the chain-rattling ghost of Dr. Atkins at the house and headed out at 8:15 to secure my cinnamon roll.
After negotiating my way through the free-parking lot, running over a bottle in the process thanks to the kindly direction of the parking staff, and maneuvering through the mass crowd of families who were headed in for free day with no intentions of leaving until they ran out of money or were forcibly removed by carnies, I was finally there.
I felt very lucky that only a handful of people were in line at the cinnamon roll trailer, waiting to make off with some of the earliest rolls fresh from the oven. I needn't have worried. The lines for this booth usually rival those of It's A Small World at Disneyland. And the rolls are always fresh because they have no time to sit around because of the demand. And, if you get close, you can watch their blessed creation...
The cinnamon roll guys roll out the dough right there in front of the big window. They lovingly put around 16 pats of real butter all over the surface of the dough, not skimping, before sprinkling the whole thing with a quarter inch of sugar and cinnamon. Then they roll that sucker up, slice it into huge chunks, put the chunks on a baking sheet, bake it for a while, then slather the whole piping hot tray in a gooey sugar/cinnamon icing. Eating one is like becoming David Bowman at the end of 2001. "My God, it's full of stars!"
"I'll have a coffee and two cinnamon rolls, please," I told the man at the window. He took a spatula and gathered up my rolls into little plastic containers, slid them into a white paper bag and poured my coffee. My total price was $11 and I knew already it would be worth every last penny of it.
I took my bag of cinnamony sugary carb-laden goodness to find a spot to sit and eat. The picnic tables were infested with teenagers waiting for the rides to open, so I decided to use the mostly uncrowded concrete front step of one of the exhibit buildings as my dining table.
Take a good close look at the full-size picture of my cinnamon roll to the right. A beauty isn't it? My stomach's been living for this moment for months now. This is to be the pinnacle moment of low carb-cheating for my entire year. All other cheats--including eating half a box of Golden Grahams, by myself, in one sitting, a month back--pale by comparison.
I take the first bite. It is every bit as good as I've been hoping it would be. I can taste the salt from the butter as it has a menage a trois with the sugar and cinnamon across my tongue. Only by eating one of these can you understand just how on the money all those scientific studies showing how men equate smells of warm cinnamon buns with sex truly are. Well... if you're a man, I guess. I take another bite. It's just as good as the first. I then proceed, bite by bite, through the entire roll over the course of six or so minutes.
While eating, I try to analyze the experience as best I can, cause it turns out there are highs and lows to it.
I've come to the conclusion that, for me at least, the first seven or eight bites were probably the best. Eight put me about half-way through the cinnamon roll. After that, each bite was diminishing returns. I'm really not a sweet-tooth at heart and I can only stand so much sugary richness before the endorphin flow begins to trickle off. At around four bites from the end, I could really see the logic in merely sharing one of these rolls with someone else. That way, you get the best parts of the experience and not so much of the whole long haul to the finish line praying for merciful death thing. The penultimate bite was painful, cause I could see the last one coming, and it was a big one. I didn't get sick or anything, but my poor sugar-deprived stomach was definitely feeling confused as to what to do with the mass influx of sucrose.
After that, I walked around the fair for a while, looking at all the other food booths that are just opening up. I knew that while I was in for free I really should indulge in some of the better edible attractions, but my gut was full of roll and I just couldn't imagine eating anything else, particularly something sweet. After twenty minutes or so, I went home with my other cinnamon roll, which I planned to offer to my sweet baby upon her impending return from Clarksburg. I even mentioned it to her on the phone tonight, secretly hoping she would turn it down.
"Noooo, I don't need any more sugar," she said. "You should eat it. Don't let it sit around in the congealed butter grease and get nasty."
I didn't need to be told twice. I popped that sucker in a bowl, nuked it for a couple of minutes and feasted on warm cinnamon roll that was almost exactly as good as the one this morning. I even ate some of it on the phone so she could live vicariously through me.
Frankly, I think she's a bit jealous of my near adulterous relationship with the rolls.
Monday, August 16, 2004
The Clone Conspiracy
A patron was checking out recently when she surprised me by saying, "Hey, I saw you out the other day... Down at HISTORIC RESTAURANT, right?"
For a moment my brain was thrown into confusion mode as I tried to make sense of what she was saying. HISTORIC RESTAURANT is one of our fine and expensive downtown restaurants. Trouble is, I've never set foot in the place. Not that I don't want to, I just can't afford to.
Being as how nothing else at the library had made much sense that afternoon, it took me a few seconds to figure out that I wasn't the only one in the room who was confused. Then with an almost audible *PING* my brain realized whom it was she had actually seen at HISTORIC RESTAURANT.
"Oh, no. That wasn't me," I said. "That was one of my clones."
"Your clones?"
"Yeah. There's a guy that works at that restaurant who looks a lot like me, but it's not me."
"It wasn't you?" she said suspiciously.
"Nope. Clone."
"Wow. Well he sure did look like you."
"Yep."
I haven't officially met my current local clone, but I've seen more than one of them in the area.
Understand, I don't actually believe these people who resemble me are honest to God clones. That's just a nice short-hand I use to describe them. I could say doppelgangers or evil twins or faerie children with just as little seriousness as clones. Also know that I'm not actually saying there's any kind of sinister plot concerning them, nor is there anything remotely supernatural or conspiratorial about them. (Yet.) There just happen to be a goodly number of gents walking the earth who look a damn sight like me, who occasionally cross my path and infrequently cause complications to my life. I'd probably find it unsettling if this sort of thing hasn't been happening to me for the past thirteen years.
In short, I'm not making this shit up.
In March of 1991, I was a Freshman in college. During Spring Break that year, my buddy John and I took a trip to New York City as chaperones for a group of high school students my former high school drama teacher, Mrs. Mabry, was taking there on a tour. On the last day of our trip, our flight home wound up getting cancelled and the airline rescheduled us for a later flight. Having an extra six hours in the big city on our hands, our touring organization sent us on a scenic bus tour. So we drove around for a while, going through places like Greenwich Village and eventually past the NY headquarters of the Hell's Angels. A few blocks from there, we wound up getting stuck in a minor traffic jam for a couple of minutes. I was looking out of the right-side bus windows when from the left side of the bus Mrs. Mabry suddenly shouted, "Hey, look, there's JUICE!"
Everyone turned and looked out of the left side bus windows and sure enough, there I was on the sidewalk. It was boo-creepy! The kid looked exactly like me, though perhaps a couple of years younger. He had my face, he had my hair, he had my gargantu-head. He even had my ass.
Clone kid didn't notice us. He was too preoccupied helping a friend sort through a big cardboard box which seemed to contain lots of magic markers. I don't know what they really were, as magic markers don't make a lot of sense in that New York City sidewalk context. I've always imagined they were something more illegal in nature, but still have no idea what. Just white plastic magic markery-looking tubes.
Only later, after we'd driven on, did I realize that the greatest practical joke of my entire life had been within my grasp and I'd missed it. If I'd been on the ball, I should have stepped off the bus, walked over to the clone kid and said, "Mom lied!" then just got back on the bus. It would have shattered his world. Actually, the idea disturbed me a bit too and as soon as I got home I began grilling my dad as to whether or not he'd spent any time in the NYC area around 16 years previous. He denied having been there, but I think I caught a glint of fear in his eye for just a second.
This was only the first of my college clones. By the time I graduated, I'd seen a succession of them.
Within months of returning from NYC, I began hearing about appearances I'd made around campus which I knew I hadn't made. Friends and acquaintances would claim to have seen me at a distance, called my name to the point of shouting, and then would get pissed that I had ignored them or that I'd given them a dirty look for their trouble. It was a mystery for which I had no explanation for quite a while. Then I began having such sightings of myself myself and realized there was another clone at work.
Usually these sightings would occur while I was on my way to class and would spy a very familiar visage across the campus's drill field moving in the opposite direction. A few times, though, our paths crossed even closer and I was able to get a better look at him. He sure did look like me. It was hard not to stare.
My dad and I even saw one of my clones eating at McDonald's one night. Dad was completely blown away by the resemblance and kept trying to get me to go up and talk to the guy. Dad's a firm believer in the old adage: If someone looks just like you, go hunt them down and point it out to them. He'd actually done this to one of his own clones a few years earlier. (His clone agreed that they did indeed look very similar.) I almost did go speak to mine then, if only to keep Dad from doing it on his own and creating an embarrassing situation over which I would have no control. I could just see Dad marching over and saying, "Hey, you look like my kid," at which time he would point back across the restaurant at me cowering beneath our booth. Nope. That was not an experience I wanted to have. And the idea of speaking to my clone just seemed like a very uncomfortable situation for everyone involved. It's like Ford Prefect says in Douglas Adams' book Life, the Universe and Everything: "People who talk to themselves on the phone never learn anything to their advantage." I suspect the same goes for in-person encounters as well. So I forbade Dad to move from his seat until my clone had safely left the building.
Within another year, yet another clone appeared. This one was different from the one I'd seen in McDonald's in that he was slightly taller and slightly chunkier than me. However, we also shared several mutual acquaintances, which really began confusing things. Around this same time I grew my hair out to shoulder length and developed something of a goatee. Naturally, my clone decided that would be a good look for him as well. Thanks, bitch.
Questions concerning which of us was the Evil Twin soon began to arise in my mind. I was pretty sure it was him, but perhaps he'd disagree. (TMBG fans sing along.... *I know he looks like me and walks like me, hates work like me and talks like me, he's even got a twin like me!*) I eventually got the chance to ask him myself when some of our mutual acquaintances hosted a party and we both wound up going.
That was a very strange evening indeed for reasons beyond the presence of my clone. My friend Joe, who was also at the party, had just learned that his older brother had died that morning and was understandably still shaken. My crew of friends present were not really in a partying sort of mood as a result. I tried to console Joe by mixing up some Lemon/Lime flavored Mad Dog 20/20 with Shasta and then drinking it. This cheered him up immensely, if only for the expression on my face as I determinedly choked that reisty concoction down. (I maintain that mixing MD20/20 with Shasta is the only way to make it go down and stay down, but I still don't recommend it.)
My clone, meanwhile, wisely avoided drinking anything nearly so foul, perhaps proving himself the more intelligent of the two of us. We barely spoke at all, except to say, "No, we're not. But, uh, yeah, he does kind of look like me," when people kept asking if we were brothers. It was very awkward. Neither of us really wanted to acknowledge the resemblance and I think we were both irritated that no one else would just shut up about it and leave us alone. I did, however, learn that my clone's name was Dennis.
Some months later, one of my clones was attacked on my behalf. I'm not sure if it was Dennis or the first clone. And while it was a minor, non life-threatening attack, it was an attack all the same. The attacker was a girl named Dawn who I worked with at the college radio station. We'd only just met a couple of weeks before, but were friendly enough, which is why the attack is all the more odd. According to Dawn herself, she had been walking on campus one day and thought she saw me moseying along the sidewalk some distance ahead of her. In this situation, Dawn did what anyone would have done upon discovering a fairly new acquaintance was walking ahead of her. That's right, she sprinted up behind me, leaped onto my back and knocked me to the ground. Then, to her horror, she discovered that it wasn't me at all and that she had just assaulted a complete stranger. She didn't discover it right away, mind you. She had a brief argument with him over whether nor not he was actually me, before realizing that he truly wasn't then had to explain to him that she hadn't intended to attack him, per se, but someone who looked just like him.
"Why the hell would you want to jump on me and knock me down in the first place?" I asked her. It's not like we were even good friends. We'd practically just met.
Dawn never gave me a satisfactory answer, but I'll bet she thought twice before attacking anyone else in the future.
So why is it a guy like me has so many look-a-likes (or like-a-looks, for you Cerebus fans)?
It's not like I'm the most commonplace-looking fellow in the world. I'm of average to stocky build, occasionally fat, have perpetually rosy red cheeks and a collossal cranium that's damn near impossible to fit a hat on. Yet, all my clones seem to match up pretty well for almost all of those traits.
Well, not ALL of them. I actually count my friend Glen Bryant among my clones. This is a pretty good trick too, what with him being over 6 feet tall and Korean while I'm a short white guy. We both have goatees, sure, but beyond that we'd hardly be mistaken for one another in a lineup. Yet I have been mistaken for him on more than one occasion, and he for me. I chalk it up to a shared aura of mischief, but have no explanation beyond that.
Then again, it might just come down to a matter of mathematics. As my friend Gordon Carskadon once told me, "If you're one in a million then there are 10,000 of you walking around in this country alone." And that's assuming I'm only one in a million, instead of one in 242,973, which I think is far more likely. Plus, that figure comes from before the last census, so there are probably even more of me now.
Since college, the clones have continued to turn up unexpectedly in my life.
One of my coworkers when I worked for Onstar was a clone. We were both damn good at our jobs, so at least we didn't cause each other any hassles when we were mistaken.
I've actually known about my current clone down at HISTORIC RESTAURANT for a couple of years now. He's a waiter. Some of my wife's fellow students once had dinner there and mistook him for me. They waved and smiled and waved some more, then began to get irritated that I was studiously not coming over to say hi to them nor acknowledging them in any way. (He wasn't their waiter.) Weeks later, they tracked me down and confronted me about it. That's when I realized I had a clone in the area. Since then that same scenario has played itself out several times, so now I have even more of a reputation for being a standoffish jerk.
It was a while before I actually saw that clone myself, though. I thought I saw him at Wal-Mart one day, but it turned out to be a different one entirely. He looked almost exactly like me only he was blond. (I've always wondered how I'd look as a blond and the answer is: really not all that different.) He was also wearing ski-gear, so I'm pretty sure he was just in the area as a pit-stop on the way to the slopes.
Eventually I did have a personal sighting of my waiter clone. (Or, at least I assume he was my waiter clone. If not then I have a third twin around here too, dammit.) He came in the library one day and did indeed look quite like me only a good bit scragglier. Mrs. A saw him too and she just stood and stared at him for the longest time before nervously looking over at me for an explanation.
"Clone," I told her.
Later she paid me the compliment that she thought I was the better looking of the two of us. That's good, cause that's what I thought too.
I've since begun to wonder if maybe the waiter clone had come in specifically to get a look at me, though. Surely if I've been hearing rumors about some guy that looks like me haunting a restaurant just down the hill from us, he's hearing the same thing about a slightly better-looking guy who works at the library just up the hill. I've not seen him in since then, so maybe he was just confirming the situation then backing off to a safe distance. Maybe he too realizes that people who talk to themselves never learn anything to their advantage.
My family's involvement with clones has not ended either. Dad reported to me just the other day about spying a clone of my sister in Birmingham, AL. He, of course, walked right up to her and said, "Hey, you look like my kid." The girl took the news well and was pleased to hear that her look-a-like lives in such a cool city as Austin, TX.
That's my dad for you.
I still think this is all somehow his fault.
For a moment my brain was thrown into confusion mode as I tried to make sense of what she was saying. HISTORIC RESTAURANT is one of our fine and expensive downtown restaurants. Trouble is, I've never set foot in the place. Not that I don't want to, I just can't afford to.
Being as how nothing else at the library had made much sense that afternoon, it took me a few seconds to figure out that I wasn't the only one in the room who was confused. Then with an almost audible *PING* my brain realized whom it was she had actually seen at HISTORIC RESTAURANT.
"Oh, no. That wasn't me," I said. "That was one of my clones."
"Your clones?"
"Yeah. There's a guy that works at that restaurant who looks a lot like me, but it's not me."
"It wasn't you?" she said suspiciously.
"Nope. Clone."
"Wow. Well he sure did look like you."
"Yep."
I haven't officially met my current local clone, but I've seen more than one of them in the area.
Understand, I don't actually believe these people who resemble me are honest to God clones. That's just a nice short-hand I use to describe them. I could say doppelgangers or evil twins or faerie children with just as little seriousness as clones. Also know that I'm not actually saying there's any kind of sinister plot concerning them, nor is there anything remotely supernatural or conspiratorial about them. (Yet.) There just happen to be a goodly number of gents walking the earth who look a damn sight like me, who occasionally cross my path and infrequently cause complications to my life. I'd probably find it unsettling if this sort of thing hasn't been happening to me for the past thirteen years.
In short, I'm not making this shit up.
In March of 1991, I was a Freshman in college. During Spring Break that year, my buddy John and I took a trip to New York City as chaperones for a group of high school students my former high school drama teacher, Mrs. Mabry, was taking there on a tour. On the last day of our trip, our flight home wound up getting cancelled and the airline rescheduled us for a later flight. Having an extra six hours in the big city on our hands, our touring organization sent us on a scenic bus tour. So we drove around for a while, going through places like Greenwich Village and eventually past the NY headquarters of the Hell's Angels. A few blocks from there, we wound up getting stuck in a minor traffic jam for a couple of minutes. I was looking out of the right-side bus windows when from the left side of the bus Mrs. Mabry suddenly shouted, "Hey, look, there's JUICE!"
Everyone turned and looked out of the left side bus windows and sure enough, there I was on the sidewalk. It was boo-creepy! The kid looked exactly like me, though perhaps a couple of years younger. He had my face, he had my hair, he had my gargantu-head. He even had my ass.
Clone kid didn't notice us. He was too preoccupied helping a friend sort through a big cardboard box which seemed to contain lots of magic markers. I don't know what they really were, as magic markers don't make a lot of sense in that New York City sidewalk context. I've always imagined they were something more illegal in nature, but still have no idea what. Just white plastic magic markery-looking tubes.
Only later, after we'd driven on, did I realize that the greatest practical joke of my entire life had been within my grasp and I'd missed it. If I'd been on the ball, I should have stepped off the bus, walked over to the clone kid and said, "Mom lied!" then just got back on the bus. It would have shattered his world. Actually, the idea disturbed me a bit too and as soon as I got home I began grilling my dad as to whether or not he'd spent any time in the NYC area around 16 years previous. He denied having been there, but I think I caught a glint of fear in his eye for just a second.
This was only the first of my college clones. By the time I graduated, I'd seen a succession of them.
Within months of returning from NYC, I began hearing about appearances I'd made around campus which I knew I hadn't made. Friends and acquaintances would claim to have seen me at a distance, called my name to the point of shouting, and then would get pissed that I had ignored them or that I'd given them a dirty look for their trouble. It was a mystery for which I had no explanation for quite a while. Then I began having such sightings of myself myself and realized there was another clone at work.
Usually these sightings would occur while I was on my way to class and would spy a very familiar visage across the campus's drill field moving in the opposite direction. A few times, though, our paths crossed even closer and I was able to get a better look at him. He sure did look like me. It was hard not to stare.
My dad and I even saw one of my clones eating at McDonald's one night. Dad was completely blown away by the resemblance and kept trying to get me to go up and talk to the guy. Dad's a firm believer in the old adage: If someone looks just like you, go hunt them down and point it out to them. He'd actually done this to one of his own clones a few years earlier. (His clone agreed that they did indeed look very similar.) I almost did go speak to mine then, if only to keep Dad from doing it on his own and creating an embarrassing situation over which I would have no control. I could just see Dad marching over and saying, "Hey, you look like my kid," at which time he would point back across the restaurant at me cowering beneath our booth. Nope. That was not an experience I wanted to have. And the idea of speaking to my clone just seemed like a very uncomfortable situation for everyone involved. It's like Ford Prefect says in Douglas Adams' book Life, the Universe and Everything: "People who talk to themselves on the phone never learn anything to their advantage." I suspect the same goes for in-person encounters as well. So I forbade Dad to move from his seat until my clone had safely left the building.
Within another year, yet another clone appeared. This one was different from the one I'd seen in McDonald's in that he was slightly taller and slightly chunkier than me. However, we also shared several mutual acquaintances, which really began confusing things. Around this same time I grew my hair out to shoulder length and developed something of a goatee. Naturally, my clone decided that would be a good look for him as well. Thanks, bitch.
Questions concerning which of us was the Evil Twin soon began to arise in my mind. I was pretty sure it was him, but perhaps he'd disagree. (TMBG fans sing along.... *I know he looks like me and walks like me, hates work like me and talks like me, he's even got a twin like me!*) I eventually got the chance to ask him myself when some of our mutual acquaintances hosted a party and we both wound up going.
That was a very strange evening indeed for reasons beyond the presence of my clone. My friend Joe, who was also at the party, had just learned that his older brother had died that morning and was understandably still shaken. My crew of friends present were not really in a partying sort of mood as a result. I tried to console Joe by mixing up some Lemon/Lime flavored Mad Dog 20/20 with Shasta and then drinking it. This cheered him up immensely, if only for the expression on my face as I determinedly choked that reisty concoction down. (I maintain that mixing MD20/20 with Shasta is the only way to make it go down and stay down, but I still don't recommend it.)
My clone, meanwhile, wisely avoided drinking anything nearly so foul, perhaps proving himself the more intelligent of the two of us. We barely spoke at all, except to say, "No, we're not. But, uh, yeah, he does kind of look like me," when people kept asking if we were brothers. It was very awkward. Neither of us really wanted to acknowledge the resemblance and I think we were both irritated that no one else would just shut up about it and leave us alone. I did, however, learn that my clone's name was Dennis.
Some months later, one of my clones was attacked on my behalf. I'm not sure if it was Dennis or the first clone. And while it was a minor, non life-threatening attack, it was an attack all the same. The attacker was a girl named Dawn who I worked with at the college radio station. We'd only just met a couple of weeks before, but were friendly enough, which is why the attack is all the more odd. According to Dawn herself, she had been walking on campus one day and thought she saw me moseying along the sidewalk some distance ahead of her. In this situation, Dawn did what anyone would have done upon discovering a fairly new acquaintance was walking ahead of her. That's right, she sprinted up behind me, leaped onto my back and knocked me to the ground. Then, to her horror, she discovered that it wasn't me at all and that she had just assaulted a complete stranger. She didn't discover it right away, mind you. She had a brief argument with him over whether nor not he was actually me, before realizing that he truly wasn't then had to explain to him that she hadn't intended to attack him, per se, but someone who looked just like him.
"Why the hell would you want to jump on me and knock me down in the first place?" I asked her. It's not like we were even good friends. We'd practically just met.
Dawn never gave me a satisfactory answer, but I'll bet she thought twice before attacking anyone else in the future.
So why is it a guy like me has so many look-a-likes (or like-a-looks, for you Cerebus fans)?
It's not like I'm the most commonplace-looking fellow in the world. I'm of average to stocky build, occasionally fat, have perpetually rosy red cheeks and a collossal cranium that's damn near impossible to fit a hat on. Yet, all my clones seem to match up pretty well for almost all of those traits.
Well, not ALL of them. I actually count my friend Glen Bryant among my clones. This is a pretty good trick too, what with him being over 6 feet tall and Korean while I'm a short white guy. We both have goatees, sure, but beyond that we'd hardly be mistaken for one another in a lineup. Yet I have been mistaken for him on more than one occasion, and he for me. I chalk it up to a shared aura of mischief, but have no explanation beyond that.
Then again, it might just come down to a matter of mathematics. As my friend Gordon Carskadon once told me, "If you're one in a million then there are 10,000 of you walking around in this country alone." And that's assuming I'm only one in a million, instead of one in 242,973, which I think is far more likely. Plus, that figure comes from before the last census, so there are probably even more of me now.
Since college, the clones have continued to turn up unexpectedly in my life.
One of my coworkers when I worked for Onstar was a clone. We were both damn good at our jobs, so at least we didn't cause each other any hassles when we were mistaken.
I've actually known about my current clone down at HISTORIC RESTAURANT for a couple of years now. He's a waiter. Some of my wife's fellow students once had dinner there and mistook him for me. They waved and smiled and waved some more, then began to get irritated that I was studiously not coming over to say hi to them nor acknowledging them in any way. (He wasn't their waiter.) Weeks later, they tracked me down and confronted me about it. That's when I realized I had a clone in the area. Since then that same scenario has played itself out several times, so now I have even more of a reputation for being a standoffish jerk.
It was a while before I actually saw that clone myself, though. I thought I saw him at Wal-Mart one day, but it turned out to be a different one entirely. He looked almost exactly like me only he was blond. (I've always wondered how I'd look as a blond and the answer is: really not all that different.) He was also wearing ski-gear, so I'm pretty sure he was just in the area as a pit-stop on the way to the slopes.
Eventually I did have a personal sighting of my waiter clone. (Or, at least I assume he was my waiter clone. If not then I have a third twin around here too, dammit.) He came in the library one day and did indeed look quite like me only a good bit scragglier. Mrs. A saw him too and she just stood and stared at him for the longest time before nervously looking over at me for an explanation.
"Clone," I told her.
Later she paid me the compliment that she thought I was the better looking of the two of us. That's good, cause that's what I thought too.
I've since begun to wonder if maybe the waiter clone had come in specifically to get a look at me, though. Surely if I've been hearing rumors about some guy that looks like me haunting a restaurant just down the hill from us, he's hearing the same thing about a slightly better-looking guy who works at the library just up the hill. I've not seen him in since then, so maybe he was just confirming the situation then backing off to a safe distance. Maybe he too realizes that people who talk to themselves never learn anything to their advantage.
My family's involvement with clones has not ended either. Dad reported to me just the other day about spying a clone of my sister in Birmingham, AL. He, of course, walked right up to her and said, "Hey, you look like my kid." The girl took the news well and was pleased to hear that her look-a-like lives in such a cool city as Austin, TX.
That's my dad for you.
I still think this is all somehow his fault.
Friday, August 13, 2004
It Takes a Village
This has been a pretty heavy work week for me, actually. I subbed for
Mrs. C on Monday and for Mrs. B on Tuesday. I actually had a Thursday
off for the first time in forever, so I used my free afternoon to go see
M. Night Shyamalan's The Village.
I'd been hearing bad buzz about the film on AICN for a while, but I don't always trust the particular reviewer who buzzed badly. (After all, anyone who claims not to "get" Babylon 5 is obviously not going to share the same sense of quality as I do.) Before I went to the theater, though, I also heard some second hand bad reviews from Garin the Comic Shop Guy. He'd not seen it yet, but had several customers who had told him it was incredibly predictable and that they'd walked out of it due to it being so bad.
Even with that knowledge, I was going in anyway. I've loved Shyamalan's last few films and feel that he's more than earned my movie watching dollar even if it turned out to be a turkey. Plus, I haven't walked out of a movie for being bad in 15 years, though Lord knows I probably should have with some. (I did fail to finish watching the DVD of Made I rented last week because Vince Vaughn's character was making me crazy.)
So I went.
My non-spoiler review of it is that I don't think it was a turkey at all. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not Shyamalan's best, but it was enjoyable for what it was. The trick is to go into it with no expectations, though. The movie is being mis-marketed as a horror movie filled with frights and chills. However, while there are a few spooky moments, it is NOT a horror movie nor do the scares live up to the marketing. I think that's why some people may be disappointed with it. They went in for cake and were given whole-wheat bread.
As to the predictability of it, I did figure out what the big twist ending was going to be within the first half hour. However, I don't really think this was the fault of the film itself. I think it's my own fault as a viewer who's seen too many M. Night Shyamalan movies and that I knew there was going to be a twist coming and deduced it. I just asked myself, "Hmm. If I was going to put a twist ending on this film given the story presented thus far and the fact that it is more than likely set in Pennsylvania, as Shyamalan almost always does, what would be the most twisty ending that could come up?" I turned out to be right on the money. I didn't have all the specifics nailed down, but I had the broad brush strokes spotted well in advance.
There were still a lot of surprises to be had. The story itself bobs and weaves around common expectations pretty well. And given some of the major dramatic shifts in the story, I also found it ironic that Sigourney Weaver had been in the cast.
Overall I think this movie would have been received far better by viewers had it been Shyamalan's first film rather than his 5th. It would be a good one to take a Shyamalan newbie to.
I'd been hearing bad buzz about the film on AICN for a while, but I don't always trust the particular reviewer who buzzed badly. (After all, anyone who claims not to "get" Babylon 5 is obviously not going to share the same sense of quality as I do.) Before I went to the theater, though, I also heard some second hand bad reviews from Garin the Comic Shop Guy. He'd not seen it yet, but had several customers who had told him it was incredibly predictable and that they'd walked out of it due to it being so bad.
Even with that knowledge, I was going in anyway. I've loved Shyamalan's last few films and feel that he's more than earned my movie watching dollar even if it turned out to be a turkey. Plus, I haven't walked out of a movie for being bad in 15 years, though Lord knows I probably should have with some. (I did fail to finish watching the DVD of Made I rented last week because Vince Vaughn's character was making me crazy.)
So I went.
My non-spoiler review of it is that I don't think it was a turkey at all. In fact, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's not Shyamalan's best, but it was enjoyable for what it was. The trick is to go into it with no expectations, though. The movie is being mis-marketed as a horror movie filled with frights and chills. However, while there are a few spooky moments, it is NOT a horror movie nor do the scares live up to the marketing. I think that's why some people may be disappointed with it. They went in for cake and were given whole-wheat bread.
As to the predictability of it, I did figure out what the big twist ending was going to be within the first half hour. However, I don't really think this was the fault of the film itself. I think it's my own fault as a viewer who's seen too many M. Night Shyamalan movies and that I knew there was going to be a twist coming and deduced it. I just asked myself, "Hmm. If I was going to put a twist ending on this film given the story presented thus far and the fact that it is more than likely set in Pennsylvania, as Shyamalan almost always does, what would be the most twisty ending that could come up?" I turned out to be right on the money. I didn't have all the specifics nailed down, but I had the broad brush strokes spotted well in advance.
There were still a lot of surprises to be had. The story itself bobs and weaves around common expectations pretty well. And given some of the major dramatic shifts in the story, I also found it ironic that Sigourney Weaver had been in the cast.
Overall I think this movie would have been received far better by viewers had it been Shyamalan's first film rather than his 5th. It would be a good one to take a Shyamalan newbie to.
One Week, Two Kreskins
At the risk of having readers question my honesty, I must report yet another Mr. Kreskin incident. Two in one week. Who'da thunk?
Mrs. C was unavoidably out on Wednesday, so I came in at 11 a.m. to help Mrs. A steer the ship. She seemed nice and refreshed from her vacation that early in the day, but I suspect by the end she was on the verge of scheduling another one. Last week, most of the people who usually call desperate to speak to Mrs. A had been told she was out for the week, so they just saved up everything they desperately needed to phone in for Mrs. A's first day back on Wednesday. The phone was thus almost constantly ringing. After three hours of it, my silent curses began to be voiced and every ring was met with snarls at the least.
Around 2 p.m., Mrs. A left for lunch, which really irritated the 30 people who called during the next hour, but none moreso than Mr. Kreskin.
It's uncanny. An example of true psychic phenomena if ever there was one. That's the only way I can explain how the man is able to call ONLY when both people he wants to talk to are gone EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's astounding.
I was able to help him with what he needed this time, which probably saved Mrs. A a stern talking to later. He gets royally peeved when neither Mrs. A nor Mrs. C are in. He's tried to lay down the law with them before, insisting that one of them HAS to be there at all times. By "all times" however, I'm pretty sure he means "24/7." Even if he just meant "during normal business hours" it's still such an unrealistic expectation that it didn't stick for very long.
"MR. KRESKIN called," I said to Mrs. A when she got back. "I helped him, though."
She then pointed out to me that Mr. Kreskin knowing that I'm a capable human being with skills is not necessarily a good thing. That knowledge will surely mean more work for me when they're not around. Not more hours, mind you, but more work during the hours I'm already scheduled for. Mr. Kreskin tends to view Mrs. A and Mrs. C as his own personal secretaries, and has them type up correspondence for him regularly. Most of it is library related, so they don't mind so much, but it can still be inconvenient. Hopefully he won't learn of my 80 wpm typing speed or copy-writing/editing background.
Mrs. C was unavoidably out on Wednesday, so I came in at 11 a.m. to help Mrs. A steer the ship. She seemed nice and refreshed from her vacation that early in the day, but I suspect by the end she was on the verge of scheduling another one. Last week, most of the people who usually call desperate to speak to Mrs. A had been told she was out for the week, so they just saved up everything they desperately needed to phone in for Mrs. A's first day back on Wednesday. The phone was thus almost constantly ringing. After three hours of it, my silent curses began to be voiced and every ring was met with snarls at the least.
Around 2 p.m., Mrs. A left for lunch, which really irritated the 30 people who called during the next hour, but none moreso than Mr. Kreskin.
It's uncanny. An example of true psychic phenomena if ever there was one. That's the only way I can explain how the man is able to call ONLY when both people he wants to talk to are gone EVERY SINGLE TIME. It's astounding.
I was able to help him with what he needed this time, which probably saved Mrs. A a stern talking to later. He gets royally peeved when neither Mrs. A nor Mrs. C are in. He's tried to lay down the law with them before, insisting that one of them HAS to be there at all times. By "all times" however, I'm pretty sure he means "24/7." Even if he just meant "during normal business hours" it's still such an unrealistic expectation that it didn't stick for very long.
"MR. KRESKIN called," I said to Mrs. A when she got back. "I helped him, though."
She then pointed out to me that Mr. Kreskin knowing that I'm a capable human being with skills is not necessarily a good thing. That knowledge will surely mean more work for me when they're not around. Not more hours, mind you, but more work during the hours I'm already scheduled for. Mr. Kreskin tends to view Mrs. A and Mrs. C as his own personal secretaries, and has them type up correspondence for him regularly. Most of it is library related, so they don't mind so much, but it can still be inconvenient. Hopefully he won't learn of my 80 wpm typing speed or copy-writing/editing background.
Thursday, August 12, 2004
The Grampy Patrol (In Color!)
So I go to Wal-Mart the other day.
Sure, I know I'm depriving my community of needed revenue by shopping at the corporate giant, but dammit I needed Russell Stover sugar free low-carb peanut butter cups and all the locally owned businesses charge $8,000 for them if they have them at all. I'm only human!
(Oh, and a word of advice to you low-carbers out there. Allow me to assure you that it is a VERY bad idea indeed to eat the suggested serving size of 5 cups of the Reese's brand of sugar-free mini-peanut butter cups. That is, unless you've got a hankering to spend the rest of your evening running carefully to and from the toilet to do your best impression of the Serial Shitter. Not so much trouble in that department with my boy Russ, so that's my brand.)
As I was maneuvering my Malibu through Wally World's parking lot, I got behind an older gentleman driving a big Pontiac who was slowly turning into one of the parking aisles near the store's southern entrance. I immediately recognized him as a member of that international fraternal brotherhood and cabalistic society known as the Grampy Patrol—a loose-knit organization of elderly men who drive around in big vehicles, preferably pickup trucks, at irritatingly slow speeds, take twenty minutes to make a turn and who always wear hats while doing so. They are among my many arch-nemeses and will remain so until I'm old enough to join them and subvert them from within.
I pulled into the same aisle and then had to slow down to maintain the car-length of distance between my car and his, since he refused to go any faster. It was a good thing that distance was there, though, because the man suddenly came to a halt. Much to my surprise and annoyance, he then threw his car into reverse and started backing up toward me. Turned out, the man had driven right past the empty handicapped parking space near the door and had decided he wanted it after all. However, my car was at that moment perpendicular to that space, blocking the way. The man didn't seem to have noticed this, though, as he had not bothered to even look in his rear view mirror to check if anyone was behind him before throwing it into reverse. He wasn't exactly flying back, though, so I kept waiting for him to catch a glimpse of me and stop. He didn't, because he was not only NOT using his mirror but he wasn't even turning his head to look behind him at all as he backed up. Instead, he was watching the parked cars to his right to gauge his progress.
Seeing that he was going to hit me, I threw my own car into reverse. Fortunately, I DID check my mirror and saw there were several people in the pedestrian walkway directly behind my car. I couldn't back up at all without backing over them. I was trapped!
*HONK*HONK*HONK*, I honked. This seemed to get the man’s attention and he slowed to a halt. For good measure, I gave him several longer, angrier honks. Only then did his head finally swivel around and actually look at me. Still the man remained in reverse. He was actually waiting for me to get out of his way.
FINE!
When the crosswalk was clear, I backed up and took the next aisle down where I found a parking space and quickly got out of my car to go find this guy and vent my fury.
How could someone have such a colossal failure to exercise common sense in driving? The guy was old enough to have been driving for several decades, so he should know better! Anyone could have been behind him, closer than I was. Hell, a pedestrian could have been behind him and he hadn't bothered to look at all!
I soon spotted him. He had exited his car and was slowly making his way across the pedestrian crosswalk; had his Grampy Patrol hat on and everything. I started in his direction and noticed that he was already looking nervously back over his shoulder in my direction. (Oh, sure, NOW he looks over his shoulder?! ) I'm sure I had a fiery expression of rage on my face, but as I watched this frail little old man hobble along toward the door of Wally World, I was internally starting to soften.
What good could really come from me yelling at this guy for nearly testing my front bumper? Probably none. No one had been hurt, he had hopefully learned the lesson that it was a mistake to blindly throw his car into reverse and I'd already gotten to righteously honk at him, which is always fun. Embarrassing the man in front of half of Wal-Mart was probably not a good idea and would definitely not be respecting my elders. By the time I'd reached the crosswalk myself, I'd decided I wouldn't yell at him at all.
"Pssst! Hey, pssst!" I heard from my left. It was an equally old man seated on the bench outside of Wally-World's entrance. He was jerking his head at me in an effort to beckon me over. He wasn't wearing a Grampy Patrol hat, so I figured it was safe.
"Yeah?" I said, coming closer. The man nodded in the direction of the thoughtless older man, who was only then reaching the doors of Wally World.
"That's him," the man on the bench said, still nodding in the first one’s direction. I nearly burst out laughing. Dude on the bench was trying to start a fight. Oh, sure, he was wrapping it up in civic-duty, trying to make it seem like he was just helping me find the man who nearly backed into me, but deep down this guy was trying to cause trouble. Then, as though he had judged me too dim to "get" what he meant, the man on the bench lifted a hand and pointed his finger at the first man, now well within Wally World’s breezeway, and said, "That's him. That's the guy."
"Yeah. I know," I said.
I didn't bother hunting down the Grampy Patrol driver, though we did see one another a couple of more times while I was shopping. Whenever he saw me, he'd look nervous again and maybe shuffle his shopping cart a little faster down the aisle.
Great, I thought, now I'm inadvertently bullying the elderly.
Sure, I know I'm depriving my community of needed revenue by shopping at the corporate giant, but dammit I needed Russell Stover sugar free low-carb peanut butter cups and all the locally owned businesses charge $8,000 for them if they have them at all. I'm only human!
(Oh, and a word of advice to you low-carbers out there. Allow me to assure you that it is a VERY bad idea indeed to eat the suggested serving size of 5 cups of the Reese's brand of sugar-free mini-peanut butter cups. That is, unless you've got a hankering to spend the rest of your evening running carefully to and from the toilet to do your best impression of the Serial Shitter. Not so much trouble in that department with my boy Russ, so that's my brand.)
As I was maneuvering my Malibu through Wally World's parking lot, I got behind an older gentleman driving a big Pontiac who was slowly turning into one of the parking aisles near the store's southern entrance. I immediately recognized him as a member of that international fraternal brotherhood and cabalistic society known as the Grampy Patrol—a loose-knit organization of elderly men who drive around in big vehicles, preferably pickup trucks, at irritatingly slow speeds, take twenty minutes to make a turn and who always wear hats while doing so. They are among my many arch-nemeses and will remain so until I'm old enough to join them and subvert them from within.
I pulled into the same aisle and then had to slow down to maintain the car-length of distance between my car and his, since he refused to go any faster. It was a good thing that distance was there, though, because the man suddenly came to a halt. Much to my surprise and annoyance, he then threw his car into reverse and started backing up toward me. Turned out, the man had driven right past the empty handicapped parking space near the door and had decided he wanted it after all. However, my car was at that moment perpendicular to that space, blocking the way. The man didn't seem to have noticed this, though, as he had not bothered to even look in his rear view mirror to check if anyone was behind him before throwing it into reverse. He wasn't exactly flying back, though, so I kept waiting for him to catch a glimpse of me and stop. He didn't, because he was not only NOT using his mirror but he wasn't even turning his head to look behind him at all as he backed up. Instead, he was watching the parked cars to his right to gauge his progress.
Seeing that he was going to hit me, I threw my own car into reverse. Fortunately, I DID check my mirror and saw there were several people in the pedestrian walkway directly behind my car. I couldn't back up at all without backing over them. I was trapped!
*HONK*HONK*HONK*, I honked. This seemed to get the man’s attention and he slowed to a halt. For good measure, I gave him several longer, angrier honks. Only then did his head finally swivel around and actually look at me. Still the man remained in reverse. He was actually waiting for me to get out of his way.
FINE!
When the crosswalk was clear, I backed up and took the next aisle down where I found a parking space and quickly got out of my car to go find this guy and vent my fury.
How could someone have such a colossal failure to exercise common sense in driving? The guy was old enough to have been driving for several decades, so he should know better! Anyone could have been behind him, closer than I was. Hell, a pedestrian could have been behind him and he hadn't bothered to look at all!
I soon spotted him. He had exited his car and was slowly making his way across the pedestrian crosswalk; had his Grampy Patrol hat on and everything. I started in his direction and noticed that he was already looking nervously back over his shoulder in my direction. (Oh, sure, NOW he looks over his shoulder?! ) I'm sure I had a fiery expression of rage on my face, but as I watched this frail little old man hobble along toward the door of Wally World, I was internally starting to soften.
What good could really come from me yelling at this guy for nearly testing my front bumper? Probably none. No one had been hurt, he had hopefully learned the lesson that it was a mistake to blindly throw his car into reverse and I'd already gotten to righteously honk at him, which is always fun. Embarrassing the man in front of half of Wal-Mart was probably not a good idea and would definitely not be respecting my elders. By the time I'd reached the crosswalk myself, I'd decided I wouldn't yell at him at all.
"Pssst! Hey, pssst!" I heard from my left. It was an equally old man seated on the bench outside of Wally-World's entrance. He was jerking his head at me in an effort to beckon me over. He wasn't wearing a Grampy Patrol hat, so I figured it was safe.
"Yeah?" I said, coming closer. The man nodded in the direction of the thoughtless older man, who was only then reaching the doors of Wally World.
"That's him," the man on the bench said, still nodding in the first one’s direction. I nearly burst out laughing. Dude on the bench was trying to start a fight. Oh, sure, he was wrapping it up in civic-duty, trying to make it seem like he was just helping me find the man who nearly backed into me, but deep down this guy was trying to cause trouble. Then, as though he had judged me too dim to "get" what he meant, the man on the bench lifted a hand and pointed his finger at the first man, now well within Wally World’s breezeway, and said, "That's him. That's the guy."
"Yeah. I know," I said.
I didn't bother hunting down the Grampy Patrol driver, though we did see one another a couple of more times while I was shopping. Whenever he saw me, he'd look nervous again and maybe shuffle his shopping cart a little faster down the aisle.
Great, I thought, now I'm inadvertently bullying the elderly.
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Where's Jan Brady when you need her?
There are a couple of homes for wayward youth in the area. They send
groups of their kids out on field trips into the real world and occasionally
these lead them to the library.
These visits have been a bit of a tricky situation for us in the past, as we have to walk a fine line with them. We want to encourage their rehabilitation as much as we can by allowing them to check out books and videos. However, doing so is a risky gamble since our stuff often fails to come back by its due date, or indeed at all. These kids are usually only at the home for x number of weeks and many of them don't seem to mind taking our materials with them when they go. Or, they "lose" them, at which point they begin claiming that they "brought them back already" and we still never see them again.
The administrators of the homes in question have historically been unsympathetic to our plight. One of the homes even received a banning due to their poor attitudes about the borrowing/stealing behavior of their residents. They were only allowed to return once Mrs. A established with them that they, the administration of the homes, were in fact responsible for returning all our materials to us. It's still probably a 60/40 success ratio, skewed toward those who do return our material, but at least when the kids don't bring stuff back the home now pays for the lost items.
So yesterday, in walked a group of around seven 15-17 year-old boys from one of the homes. Nearly every one of them had a book or two and came up and plunked it down on the circulation desk, under the watchful gaze of their daytrip supervisor, an enormous muscle-bound man who looked like he could take the whole lot of `em using only his steely no-nonsense expression. They quickly spread throughout the "liberry" to search for new stuff to borrow. I was just thankful they all already had cards--well, except for one of them, who managed to lose his card since they were in last and didn't appreciate the $1 we were going to charge him for a replacement card.
About this time, Mrs. C decided to take her lunch break, leaving me and Mrs. J to run the ship by ourselves. I didn't really like this, but I also couldn't really say why since we almost never have trouble from the group home kids while they're actually IN the library. It's only after they leave with our stuff that the trouble usually occurs.
They behaved, as far as I could tell, though. The group stayed for around fifteen minutes and a few of them found things to check out. When it was time to go, their pro-wrestler-looking supervisor herded them up and back to the van they obediently went.
A few minutes later, I went back to the computer hallway to log off the vacant computers. I'd done one of them and was nearly finished with the second when I realized that the familiar smell my nose was detecting was not actually familiar to the library.
*SNIFF*SNIFF*SNIFF*
Yep. It was definitely coming from in-house and seemed to be stronger near the stairs. I ascended and the smell became even stronger. I went into the non-fiction room. The only people there were a lone patron and Mrs. J. I didn't think the smell was coming from them. Besides, it seemed to diminish in the non-fiction room.
I turned around and traced it back to the top of the stairs, then into Mrs. A's office, then into the private staff restroom, the door of which was left open, the light of which was left on. That's where the smell was at its most concentrated.
Someone had been in there and... (*ADOPTS BEST JAN BRADY VOICE*)... they were SMOking!
If the smell of smoke hadn't been enough of a clue, there were ashes on the toilet seat to back it up. My guess is at least two of them had been in there. (After all, what fun is it to be bad and rebellious and take a smoke break in the library all by yourself?)
Mrs. J had smelled it too, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from or who had been doing it. She also seemed to think it smelled like marijuana, but I assured her it was most likely Marlboro.
Mrs. C was unhappy about this when she finally returned. I asked her if she knew which home that group had come from and she did. She phoned them up and advised the administrator she talked to that the entire library was most definitely a non-smoking facility.
Course, now the kids will probably all get in trouble. I just hope our library materials don't bear the brunt of any revenge they seek upon us.
These visits have been a bit of a tricky situation for us in the past, as we have to walk a fine line with them. We want to encourage their rehabilitation as much as we can by allowing them to check out books and videos. However, doing so is a risky gamble since our stuff often fails to come back by its due date, or indeed at all. These kids are usually only at the home for x number of weeks and many of them don't seem to mind taking our materials with them when they go. Or, they "lose" them, at which point they begin claiming that they "brought them back already" and we still never see them again.
The administrators of the homes in question have historically been unsympathetic to our plight. One of the homes even received a banning due to their poor attitudes about the borrowing/stealing behavior of their residents. They were only allowed to return once Mrs. A established with them that they, the administration of the homes, were in fact responsible for returning all our materials to us. It's still probably a 60/40 success ratio, skewed toward those who do return our material, but at least when the kids don't bring stuff back the home now pays for the lost items.
So yesterday, in walked a group of around seven 15-17 year-old boys from one of the homes. Nearly every one of them had a book or two and came up and plunked it down on the circulation desk, under the watchful gaze of their daytrip supervisor, an enormous muscle-bound man who looked like he could take the whole lot of `em using only his steely no-nonsense expression. They quickly spread throughout the "liberry" to search for new stuff to borrow. I was just thankful they all already had cards--well, except for one of them, who managed to lose his card since they were in last and didn't appreciate the $1 we were going to charge him for a replacement card.
About this time, Mrs. C decided to take her lunch break, leaving me and Mrs. J to run the ship by ourselves. I didn't really like this, but I also couldn't really say why since we almost never have trouble from the group home kids while they're actually IN the library. It's only after they leave with our stuff that the trouble usually occurs.
They behaved, as far as I could tell, though. The group stayed for around fifteen minutes and a few of them found things to check out. When it was time to go, their pro-wrestler-looking supervisor herded them up and back to the van they obediently went.
A few minutes later, I went back to the computer hallway to log off the vacant computers. I'd done one of them and was nearly finished with the second when I realized that the familiar smell my nose was detecting was not actually familiar to the library.
*SNIFF*SNIFF*SNIFF*
Yep. It was definitely coming from in-house and seemed to be stronger near the stairs. I ascended and the smell became even stronger. I went into the non-fiction room. The only people there were a lone patron and Mrs. J. I didn't think the smell was coming from them. Besides, it seemed to diminish in the non-fiction room.
I turned around and traced it back to the top of the stairs, then into Mrs. A's office, then into the private staff restroom, the door of which was left open, the light of which was left on. That's where the smell was at its most concentrated.
Someone had been in there and... (*ADOPTS BEST JAN BRADY VOICE*)... they were SMOking!
If the smell of smoke hadn't been enough of a clue, there were ashes on the toilet seat to back it up. My guess is at least two of them had been in there. (After all, what fun is it to be bad and rebellious and take a smoke break in the library all by yourself?)
Mrs. J had smelled it too, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from or who had been doing it. She also seemed to think it smelled like marijuana, but I assured her it was most likely Marlboro.
Mrs. C was unhappy about this when she finally returned. I asked her if she knew which home that group had come from and she did. She phoned them up and advised the administrator she talked to that the entire library was most definitely a non-smoking facility.
Course, now the kids will probably all get in trouble. I just hope our library materials don't bear the brunt of any revenge they seek upon us.
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
R.I.P. Super Freak
Dear Rick James...
...you bitch. Thanks ever so much kicking off dead a mere three weeks after I borrowed your name to use as a pseudonym for one of our problem patrons. Now I'm going to look like an asshole in poor taste for using your name when I only just learned of your passing today in Newsweek. And I'm going to feel all creepy and stuff when I keep using it in the future.
Love and kisses,
--Juice
...you bitch. Thanks ever so much kicking off dead a mere three weeks after I borrowed your name to use as a pseudonym for one of our problem patrons. Now I'm going to look like an asshole in poor taste for using your name when I only just learned of your passing today in Newsweek. And I'm going to feel all creepy and stuff when I keep using it in the future.
Love and kisses,
--Juice
Monday, August 09, 2004
Boy, someone needs a nap
Our major problem patron of the day was a
middle-aged lady who seemed somehow offended that all of our computers
were full and she couldn't immediately have one. Offended. That's the best way I can
think to describe her ire. I told her she could have one in two
minutes, when Mr. B-Natural's time ran out. I said this in earshot of
Mr. B-Natural, though I didn't mention him by name. Happily, he took it
as the hint it was meant to be and relinquished his computer without
having to be asked. I put her on it and started the timer for her half
hour.
Slightly over half an hour later, we had another rush on the computers and I went back to tell her that her time was up. Again, she was instantly offended.
"But I'm not out of time!" she said.
"Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Ma'am, I was timing you. You got over half an hour."
"Well, I'm used to getting the full hour," she huffed.
"Ma'am, we give patrons half an hour."
"Every time I've come here I've gotten a full hour!"
"That may be the case, ma'am, but it was probably because we don't ask patrons to get off unless someone is waiting."
The woman adopted an even huffier tone. "Well, I've never been told there was a half hour limit."
I calmly reached over and flipped down the orange sign taped to the monitor and pointed to the line that said "TIME LIMIT: 30 MINUTES." I was waiting for her to say that she hadn't seen it, just so I could say that I wasn't responsible for glaringly obvious policy signs that our patrons don't read. (Course, that's technically not true, as I was responsible for creating that particular policy sign that patrons never read.) She declined to go that route. Instead, she took a much more childish one.
"But I'm not finished. I have a lot more to read here and my husband won't be back to pick me up for another half hour!"
My voice remained admirably calm as I said, "Regardless, ma'am, we DO have someone waiting to use this computer and your time IS up." Then I turned and walked away. If she wanted to argue more, she could do so without me. It's the same tactic I used to use on Mr. B-Natural, back when he was a much surlier patron.
Within a minute, the lady had signed off and stomped up front. Just to further irritate her, I decided to continue being terribly nice to her. I cheerfully told her she could sign on for another computer, since we'd have one opening up in about ten minutes. She groused that she wouldn't have enough time, since her husband was coming to get her soon. That's when I realized the joke was on me, since she was going to determinedly stand there in the middle of the room and wait for him for the full half-hour, subjecting me to her unpleasantness. Fortunately, hubby turned up early, but not before she could try to make sour prune small talk, inquiring about the best time of day to try and use the internet here and how she went to college with Mrs. A, my boss.
If that was meant as a veiled threat, I'm not threatened. Mrs. A does not suffer grumpy fools lightly, and I can't imagine her actually being friends with such a grumpy fool as this woman,let alone getting angry with me that I hadn't let her grumpy "friend" violate library policy.
Slightly over half an hour later, we had another rush on the computers and I went back to tell her that her time was up. Again, she was instantly offended.
"But I'm not out of time!" she said.
"Yes, ma'am. I'm afraid you are."
"No, I'm not."
"Ma'am, I was timing you. You got over half an hour."
"Well, I'm used to getting the full hour," she huffed.
"Ma'am, we give patrons half an hour."
"Every time I've come here I've gotten a full hour!"
"That may be the case, ma'am, but it was probably because we don't ask patrons to get off unless someone is waiting."
The woman adopted an even huffier tone. "Well, I've never been told there was a half hour limit."
I calmly reached over and flipped down the orange sign taped to the monitor and pointed to the line that said "TIME LIMIT: 30 MINUTES." I was waiting for her to say that she hadn't seen it, just so I could say that I wasn't responsible for glaringly obvious policy signs that our patrons don't read. (Course, that's technically not true, as I was responsible for creating that particular policy sign that patrons never read.) She declined to go that route. Instead, she took a much more childish one.
"But I'm not finished. I have a lot more to read here and my husband won't be back to pick me up for another half hour!"
My voice remained admirably calm as I said, "Regardless, ma'am, we DO have someone waiting to use this computer and your time IS up." Then I turned and walked away. If she wanted to argue more, she could do so without me. It's the same tactic I used to use on Mr. B-Natural, back when he was a much surlier patron.
Within a minute, the lady had signed off and stomped up front. Just to further irritate her, I decided to continue being terribly nice to her. I cheerfully told her she could sign on for another computer, since we'd have one opening up in about ten minutes. She groused that she wouldn't have enough time, since her husband was coming to get her soon. That's when I realized the joke was on me, since she was going to determinedly stand there in the middle of the room and wait for him for the full half-hour, subjecting me to her unpleasantness. Fortunately, hubby turned up early, but not before she could try to make sour prune small talk, inquiring about the best time of day to try and use the internet here and how she went to college with Mrs. A, my boss.
If that was meant as a veiled threat, I'm not threatened. Mrs. A does not suffer grumpy fools lightly, and I can't imagine her actually being friends with such a grumpy fool as this woman,let alone getting angry with me that I hadn't let her grumpy "friend" violate library policy.
The Kreskin Prophecy
Last week, Mrs. C asked if I would substitute for her usual 1-5 Monday shift today. Foolishly I said yes.
I know better than to volunteer for Monday desk duty, but in addition to liking cash I also like to be Mr. Nice Guy Subber whenever I can. It allows me to build up a backstock of favors owed, which I can cash in for prizes later.
Before leaving the house, I remembered that Mrs. A wasn't scheduled to return from vacation until Tuesday. This would mean only one thing: At some point during my day, I was going to get a call from our board president, Mr. Kreskin.
As I've mentioned several times before, the president of our library's board of directors has the mutant ability to sense when both of our librarians are not at work, at which point he develops a sudden desperate, earth-shattering need to speak to one and/or both of them and will subsequently not rest until he has done so. The only time in my experience that this has failed to happen was on a day when he had a really bad cold. Otherwise, an enterprising guy could win a lot of money by wagering on it.
Well, he didn't phone today. However, five minutes after our doors opened at 1 p.m., he walked through them, on the usual desperate mission to speak to Mrs. A/C.
"I'm sorry, neither of them are here today," I said, trying not to grin at my prophecy having been fulfilled so vividly and soon.
"Well, that's okay," Mr. Kreskin said. His tone of voice, however, said it wasn't okay, but that he recognized that there was hardly anything I could do about it. Mr. Kreskin decided to leave them a note, so I passed over the legal pad and continued dealing with the throng of patrons at the desk.
A few minutes later, Mr. Kreskin passed back the note on the pad and started for the door. A quick glance at it showed that he was, as in accordance with tradition, looking for a copy of some sort of correspondence he'd sent out before.
"Uh, sir. I can probably find this for you, if you like," I said. Backstock Board President Favors Owed are better than most other kinds of favors owed. (In fact, it's trumped only by Bedroom-Oriented Wifely Favors Owed, and by quite a large margin.) I figured that the correspondence Mr. Kreskin wanted would be in the previously secret Kreskin Correspondence folder in the filing cabinet. I hauled it out and began flipping through it for him. It wasn't filed in any noticeable order, however, so the search was not an easy one. Finally, Mr. K offered to just look through it himself, freeing me to return to the busy circ desk.
Mr. Kreskin eventually found what he wanted, photocopied it and left happy and grateful.
Chalk another point up for the Juiceman.
I know better than to volunteer for Monday desk duty, but in addition to liking cash I also like to be Mr. Nice Guy Subber whenever I can. It allows me to build up a backstock of favors owed, which I can cash in for prizes later.
Before leaving the house, I remembered that Mrs. A wasn't scheduled to return from vacation until Tuesday. This would mean only one thing: At some point during my day, I was going to get a call from our board president, Mr. Kreskin.
As I've mentioned several times before, the president of our library's board of directors has the mutant ability to sense when both of our librarians are not at work, at which point he develops a sudden desperate, earth-shattering need to speak to one and/or both of them and will subsequently not rest until he has done so. The only time in my experience that this has failed to happen was on a day when he had a really bad cold. Otherwise, an enterprising guy could win a lot of money by wagering on it.
Well, he didn't phone today. However, five minutes after our doors opened at 1 p.m., he walked through them, on the usual desperate mission to speak to Mrs. A/C.
"I'm sorry, neither of them are here today," I said, trying not to grin at my prophecy having been fulfilled so vividly and soon.
"Well, that's okay," Mr. Kreskin said. His tone of voice, however, said it wasn't okay, but that he recognized that there was hardly anything I could do about it. Mr. Kreskin decided to leave them a note, so I passed over the legal pad and continued dealing with the throng of patrons at the desk.
A few minutes later, Mr. Kreskin passed back the note on the pad and started for the door. A quick glance at it showed that he was, as in accordance with tradition, looking for a copy of some sort of correspondence he'd sent out before.
"Uh, sir. I can probably find this for you, if you like," I said. Backstock Board President Favors Owed are better than most other kinds of favors owed. (In fact, it's trumped only by Bedroom-Oriented Wifely Favors Owed, and by quite a large margin.) I figured that the correspondence Mr. Kreskin wanted would be in the previously secret Kreskin Correspondence folder in the filing cabinet. I hauled it out and began flipping through it for him. It wasn't filed in any noticeable order, however, so the search was not an easy one. Finally, Mr. K offered to just look through it himself, freeing me to return to the busy circ desk.
Mr. Kreskin eventually found what he wanted, photocopied it and left happy and grateful.
Chalk another point up for the Juiceman.
Friday, August 06, 2004
The Return of Conspiracy Guy
As is usually the case, once I blog about a long lost "liberry" rogue
who hasn't been in to see us in months and/or years, they magically turn up.
Yesterday, Conspiracy Guy popped in for a visit. He didn't use a computer but was in to research something mundane and non-conspiracy related.
Once he'd found the book he wanted and had brought it to the circ desk, it fell to Mrs. B to break the news that he would need a new "liberry" card. Though neither of us spoke about it until after Conspiracy Guy had left, both Mrs. B and I knew that he would be none too keen on getting a new card, particularly after he saw the Drivers License and Middle Name blanks that are now required information. He asked if they really were required . When Mrs. B said, yes, he decided that he would rather just take the book upstairs and make notes from it. So no card for Conspiracy Guy, but at least there wasn't a screaming fit either.
Can't say the same for another disgruntled patron who, Mrs. C reports, became very angry when he learned he would (*GASP*) have to bring his card in if he wanted to check out a book. Never mind that we TOLD HIM that when he first signed up for the card. So he didn't have his card on him but didn't want to leave without his book either and was prepared to get quite huffy about it. Mrs. C said that she could verify his patron record if she could see his driver's license number and he reluctantly let her do this. Then, after he had already gotten his way, he kept right on ranting, threatened to call our superiors and demanded to know the names of our board of directors so he could complain to them. Mrs. C told him that it would do no good to complain to the board of directors since they have nothing to do with it. This was a policy created by our particular "liberry" network and not a local one. Mr. Cranky still wanted to know the "liberry" commission's phone number so he could register his ire with them, so Mrs. C handed it over, too.
I'm glad I wasn't there. I don't know how I would have handled that. I'm finding my patience with cranky patrons is pretty thin these days.
Yesterday, Conspiracy Guy popped in for a visit. He didn't use a computer but was in to research something mundane and non-conspiracy related.
Once he'd found the book he wanted and had brought it to the circ desk, it fell to Mrs. B to break the news that he would need a new "liberry" card. Though neither of us spoke about it until after Conspiracy Guy had left, both Mrs. B and I knew that he would be none too keen on getting a new card, particularly after he saw the Drivers License and Middle Name blanks that are now required information. He asked if they really were required . When Mrs. B said, yes, he decided that he would rather just take the book upstairs and make notes from it. So no card for Conspiracy Guy, but at least there wasn't a screaming fit either.
Can't say the same for another disgruntled patron who, Mrs. C reports, became very angry when he learned he would (*GASP*) have to bring his card in if he wanted to check out a book. Never mind that we TOLD HIM that when he first signed up for the card. So he didn't have his card on him but didn't want to leave without his book either and was prepared to get quite huffy about it. Mrs. C said that she could verify his patron record if she could see his driver's license number and he reluctantly let her do this. Then, after he had already gotten his way, he kept right on ranting, threatened to call our superiors and demanded to know the names of our board of directors so he could complain to them. Mrs. C told him that it would do no good to complain to the board of directors since they have nothing to do with it. This was a policy created by our particular "liberry" network and not a local one. Mr. Cranky still wanted to know the "liberry" commission's phone number so he could register his ire with them, so Mrs. C handed it over, too.
I'm glad I wasn't there. I don't know how I would have handled that. I'm finding my patience with cranky patrons is pretty thin these days.
Secrets and Lies
Found out our Print Stealing New Devil Twins,
Brent & Brice, weren't on file in our permission slip folder after
all. So I have no way of tattling on them to their mom. Of course, since
they don't have permission slips, they also won't be using the
computers any more until they get their mom to fill out a couple. And
when they do, I'll tattle on them to their mom.
The twins came in and tried to sign up for computers on Monday, when Mrs. C was running the joint solo. She'd read my note about the darn nigh quarter ream of paper they'd printed and stolen, Sunday, and had already checked the permission slip folder for them. When she told them they couldn't have computers without a permission slip they were plenty pissed. So mad, in fact, that she didn't even bother to bless them out for their theft of our paper and ink. Instead, Mrs. C gave them permission slips to take home for signing. If they return with them, we'll ban them until they pay up and also tattle to their mom.
Beyond them, though, I'm getting royally sick of deceptive patrons.
A mom and her two daughters came in yesterday to check out some videos and a few books. As they were browsing, I overheard both of the daughters tell their mom they'd forgotten their library cards. I figured I was going to be in for a fight when they were ready to leave until Mom decided to get a card for herself. No problem. We signed her up for one and she filled it full of eight videos and two of the three books her youngest daughter wanted. I explained that they'd already reached their 10 item limit and would probably need to put something back if they wanted that third book.
"Well can we just sign them up for a card?" Mom asked.
"That depends," I said, sensing the impending ruse. "Do either of them have cards with another area library already?"
Mom was noncommittal on this point. The youngest daughter seemed to waiver on it for a bit too, but finally admitted that, yes, she did have a card with Town-R's library. The older daughter, however, claimed she had no card anywhere.
"You don't have a card at any other area library?" I asked again, just to make sure her statement was on record.
"No," she said.
I raised an eyebrow at this, but decided that if she was lying the computer would soon sort it out. I should have just tried looking for her by name, which would have been quicker, but instead I gave her some rope by letting her fill out an application form. Let's waste everyone's time.
Oldest daughter seemed reluctant to put down an address. When I pressed her for one, she put down her Mom's address in Town-C. Mom asked her why she'd done that, as the girl actually lives with her dad in Town-R. Hearing that, I pointed out that we also had to have the actual physical address where she lived. Daughter didn't seem to like this but took her form and filled out the line, putting down a post office box in Town-R. I pointed out that this wasn't a physical address, so she reluctantly filled out that line too. And, to no one's surprise, as soon as that bit of information was plugged into the computer, it spat up an existing record for her.
"Well, it looks as though you already have a card through TOWN-R's library," I said. I kept my tone diplomatic, implying with it that she had simply made a mistake and not lied through her teeth, her pants aflame, as I knew she had.
"But I don't have a card there," daughter claimed.
"I'm sorry, but this says that you do."
"But they didn't give me a card. They said I didn't need a card," daughter quickly revised. Though I knew she was lying, it still wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. After all, when we first got our new circulation system, some of the area libraries who had not yet received their shipment of new library cards began foolishly issuing patrons new patron accounts anyway. Their logic seemed to be that other libraries were issuing new accounts with new cards, so they didn't want to be left behind just because of a little thing like having no cards. I'd not heard of Town-R doing this, though. And daughter's account actually had one of the new 14 digit card numbers attached to it, which came only pre-printed on our plastic library cards and not a loose sticker, like the old 10 digits, so a card had been issued. Still, I continued to appear to give her the benefit of the doubt.
"Well, they have one of our new card numbers listed here for you, so if they didn't issue you an actual card when you signed up, chances are they'll have one on file for you now. You'll need to see them about it."
"Can't you just give her a card here?" Mom asked.
"No, ma'am. She already has a card. It's one big system and we can only issue one card per patron."
"So she can't check out any books here?"
"Not unless she has her library card," I said.
Mom rolled her eyes and huffed, as though this was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard of and made a big production of dragging out one of her videos to trade in for younger daughter's book.
Technically I had the capability of going ahead and checking the extra book out on the daughter's card. I could even have rationalized it because I'd already called up her REAL account and verified it had the same physical address she'd given me. I decided not to be nice, though. After all, she wasn't being nice by actively lying to me because it served her purposes. And mom had done nearly everything to aid and abet the girl as well. So I'm not about to reward such collective familial dishonesty like that.
And that's really what makes me sick--that a mother would actively assist her daughter in an obvious lie just so she wouldn't have to put one of her own videos back. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the selfishness and dishonesty of humanity. I'd be willing to bet I've even been guilty of such in the past myself. I still don't have to like it.
The twins came in and tried to sign up for computers on Monday, when Mrs. C was running the joint solo. She'd read my note about the darn nigh quarter ream of paper they'd printed and stolen, Sunday, and had already checked the permission slip folder for them. When she told them they couldn't have computers without a permission slip they were plenty pissed. So mad, in fact, that she didn't even bother to bless them out for their theft of our paper and ink. Instead, Mrs. C gave them permission slips to take home for signing. If they return with them, we'll ban them until they pay up and also tattle to their mom.
Beyond them, though, I'm getting royally sick of deceptive patrons.
A mom and her two daughters came in yesterday to check out some videos and a few books. As they were browsing, I overheard both of the daughters tell their mom they'd forgotten their library cards. I figured I was going to be in for a fight when they were ready to leave until Mom decided to get a card for herself. No problem. We signed her up for one and she filled it full of eight videos and two of the three books her youngest daughter wanted. I explained that they'd already reached their 10 item limit and would probably need to put something back if they wanted that third book.
"Well can we just sign them up for a card?" Mom asked.
"That depends," I said, sensing the impending ruse. "Do either of them have cards with another area library already?"
Mom was noncommittal on this point. The youngest daughter seemed to waiver on it for a bit too, but finally admitted that, yes, she did have a card with Town-R's library. The older daughter, however, claimed she had no card anywhere.
"You don't have a card at any other area library?" I asked again, just to make sure her statement was on record.
"No," she said.
I raised an eyebrow at this, but decided that if she was lying the computer would soon sort it out. I should have just tried looking for her by name, which would have been quicker, but instead I gave her some rope by letting her fill out an application form. Let's waste everyone's time.
Oldest daughter seemed reluctant to put down an address. When I pressed her for one, she put down her Mom's address in Town-C. Mom asked her why she'd done that, as the girl actually lives with her dad in Town-R. Hearing that, I pointed out that we also had to have the actual physical address where she lived. Daughter didn't seem to like this but took her form and filled out the line, putting down a post office box in Town-R. I pointed out that this wasn't a physical address, so she reluctantly filled out that line too. And, to no one's surprise, as soon as that bit of information was plugged into the computer, it spat up an existing record for her.
"Well, it looks as though you already have a card through TOWN-R's library," I said. I kept my tone diplomatic, implying with it that she had simply made a mistake and not lied through her teeth, her pants aflame, as I knew she had.
"But I don't have a card there," daughter claimed.
"I'm sorry, but this says that you do."
"But they didn't give me a card. They said I didn't need a card," daughter quickly revised. Though I knew she was lying, it still wasn't beyond the realm of possibility. After all, when we first got our new circulation system, some of the area libraries who had not yet received their shipment of new library cards began foolishly issuing patrons new patron accounts anyway. Their logic seemed to be that other libraries were issuing new accounts with new cards, so they didn't want to be left behind just because of a little thing like having no cards. I'd not heard of Town-R doing this, though. And daughter's account actually had one of the new 14 digit card numbers attached to it, which came only pre-printed on our plastic library cards and not a loose sticker, like the old 10 digits, so a card had been issued. Still, I continued to appear to give her the benefit of the doubt.
"Well, they have one of our new card numbers listed here for you, so if they didn't issue you an actual card when you signed up, chances are they'll have one on file for you now. You'll need to see them about it."
"Can't you just give her a card here?" Mom asked.
"No, ma'am. She already has a card. It's one big system and we can only issue one card per patron."
"So she can't check out any books here?"
"Not unless she has her library card," I said.
Mom rolled her eyes and huffed, as though this was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard of and made a big production of dragging out one of her videos to trade in for younger daughter's book.
Technically I had the capability of going ahead and checking the extra book out on the daughter's card. I could even have rationalized it because I'd already called up her REAL account and verified it had the same physical address she'd given me. I decided not to be nice, though. After all, she wasn't being nice by actively lying to me because it served her purposes. And mom had done nearly everything to aid and abet the girl as well. So I'm not about to reward such collective familial dishonesty like that.
And that's really what makes me sick--that a mother would actively assist her daughter in an obvious lie just so she wouldn't have to put one of her own videos back. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the selfishness and dishonesty of humanity. I'd be willing to bet I've even been guilty of such in the past myself. I still don't have to like it.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
BUSTED!
When I went to work yesterday, having my secret identity as a
"liberry" blogger unearthed was the furthest thing from my mind. It was
about to happen all the same, though.
Nearly nine months ago when I first started writing this blog I knew in all likelihood I was eventually gonna get caught. Sure, I tried to be careful about who and what I wrote about. Well, a little careful. I did rename most of the people and places that showed up—sometimes thinly—to limit the clues within the blog itself that could lead back to me. However, I've been plenty sloppy in a lot of ways too. Sometimes this has been intentional. Sometimes not.
It's one thing, however, to not care if readers in other states and indeed other countries know my secret identity. It's a whole other ball of dung for someone here in the Tri-Metro area to find out and that's where the sloppy comes in.
I didn't realize just how sloppy I was in other less obvious ways until a few months ago when I started checking my stats and saw the kind of search engine searches that sometimes lead people in my direction. (And by the way, what the hell kind of person does a subject search for "Chris Farley's Dead Ass," anyway?) The stats showed me that even having such words as "West," "Library"and "Virginia" in proximity to one another on the same page could lead people right to my door if they were merely doing a search for something using those words. There are plenty of other words that, while innocuous enough on the surface, could lead someone local to the blog. So I went back and changed some references, eliminated others and tried to tart the place up a bit to further decrease the chances of someone accidentally stumbling in.
Still, there's only so much you can do to disguise yourself if you're writing a blog about working at a "liberry" in WV to keep those terms from coming up. Eventually, the state and the word library are gonna get together and someone is going to find them in a search. With that in mind, I figured it was likely that someone from library HQ would eventually find me. They may already have. If so, they don't seem to be inclined to rat me out to my boss, Mrs. A.
Frankly, though, I wasn't too concerned about being ratted out that way. I think most of my co-workers would really dig the blog and would quickly become some of my more avid readers were they to learn of it. I've even considered letting them in on it if only to get more accurate reporting out of them on the crazy stuff that happens while I'm not at work. I decided, though, that doing so would cause a chilling effect on what I could say. Granted, I've always made it a point not to talk too much trash about my co-workers, (except, of course, for those who abandon their jobs and make me have to pack up all their interlibrary loans on a day I would otherwise not have been at work—thank you oh so very much, Miss E). Still, I'd much prefer the freedom in which I have the choice to behave myself.
I figure they'll eventually learn of it, either by admission or by someone ratting me out. My hope is that if they're angry at me, it will be because I didn't tell them about it sooner.
No, my imagined worse case scenario was much different. In it, I would go in to work one day, walk back to the computer hall and find somebody there reading my blog. They would turn and look up at me with realization in their eyes and then either wink knowingly or give me the finger. Worse yet, what if they came up to the circ desk and yelled at me about it? Even worse still.... what if it was PARKA? That chest hair entry alone would net me at least a bloody nose. Hell, the rest of my rogues gallery practically rivals Spider-Man's already! Sure, I might do okay one on one with most of them, but what if they ganged up? Carol Satan would tear me to shreds with her talons! Wal-Mart Jesus would clock me with his cudgel! Ron the Ripper would try to rip me, or at the very least fart on me! And Cap'n Crossdresser would hit me with his purse!
No sir... I don't like it.
Like I said, though, when I went to work yesterday, I wasn't thinking about any of the above scenarios. And when I left to go on break, I still wasn't thinking of them. So when it happened, it took me by surprise.
As per my usual Wednesday afternoon routine, I ambled down to the local "mall" comic book kiosk, to see what the new shipment had brought. Garin the comic book guy was there at the desk as usual. For some reason, he seemed especially happy to see me. He just kept saying my name over and over, taking an unwholesome amount of glee at some unrevealed nugget of information. I was oblivious.
"You will NEVER guess what I saw... on... the... internet," he said with a devilish grin. Still, I was clueless. I was somehow picturing that he'd found stills from the new Sin City film adaptation, or the full script for Spider-Man 3, or clips from Catwoman: The Version that Didn't Blow Goats.
Garin continued, slowly letting out his verbal fishing line in preparation for yanking it back suddenly. "I found a website that mentions me and my shop."
That's when it hit me and I instantly knew I was busted.
I always expected such a busting to come with the requisite chills and stomach vertigo that usually accompany major revelations. I didn't get so much of that, though. I must have at least looked properly shocked for a few moments, because Garin just continued grinning triumphantly. Pretty quickly, though, I settled into my new role as the grinning little low-carb dieting kid caught with his hand in the Nutter Butters but who knows he's far too cute and adorable to be punished.
What had happened, as Garin explained it, is that one of his customers decided to look his shop up by name and see if it had a website. They typed the name into a search engine and came up with some ebay entries as well as a little blog entry called The Fix Is In. They took a gander at it and alerted Garin that someone was writing about him on the internet.
"So I see this Tales from the `Liberry' site that mentions my shop," Garin said. "I knew immediately who had to have written it! Just the language you used was SO EXACTLY YOU."
Not only did Garin read his own initial appearance in the blog, but read most of the other entries as well and liked them. (Hey, I told ya I was cute and adorable!) Even my slightly less-than-favorable early review of his store, ("I can't say this one ranks with the best of them. But then again, it's only a kiosk store—what can you really do with a kiosk store?"), written a mere one month after he opened for business was met with smiles and appreciation for my honesty. (And just for the record, I also predicted that his store had a lot of potential and in the ten months since then he's proven just what you CAN do with a kiosk store. It's become quite the quality comic retail outlet. *WAVES TO GARIN* In fact, Garin's search engine search also turned up an award he'd won from Marvel Comics themselves, but which no one at Marvel thought to tell him about.)
Garin's one complaint to me in the whole matter: "So why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"
I explained that I was trying to keep things on the Q.T. as far as local publicity went. As much as I didn't care that he knew about it, I'd much prefer most other locals NOT knowing about it. Particularly the mentally-unbalanced locals who occasionally turn up as subject matter.
Then, as if somebody rang the crazy bell, who should show up at the kiosk right on cue... Doc Oc-Fetishist Woman!
This time she wasn't looking for the New Doc Ock or the Old Doc Ock or any Doc Ock. Instead, she had come to see if Garin had any other toys for her husband. Sure enough, a great huge Fantastic 4 Four Pack set of figures has been released, including figures of all four members of the FF plus Franklin Richards, Doctor Doom and even Robbie the EFFing Robot. This, apparently, is what DOF Woman's husband had ordered and she was overjoyed at its arrival.
Naturally, there had to be a wrinkle, though. In addition to the Fantastic Four Pack, a brand new Thing figure had also been released, which was a different sculpt than the version of Thing already in the pack. Garin just wanted to call her attention to it in case her husband was interested, as he knew the guy liked the FF characters. This completely threw Doc Ock Fetishist Woman into a tizzy, though. Garin had to explain to her several times that her husband hadn't ordered the extra Thing so she didn't need to buy it, but if her husband was interested it was there. I had to walk out of sight of her to keep from cracking up laughing as DOF Woman struggled with these concepts for a couple of minutes, dancing perilously close to but never actually crossing the line into understanding. Finally Garin took the extra Thing away from her and told her he would hold on to it and save it for her husband should he want it.
"You'll save it for him then?"
"Yes."
"You'll save it for him then?"
"YES."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I cannot make up shit that crazy!
So guess what, Garin... If I do get drummed out of the library for this blog, I'm moving into your comic shop and starting a new blog there. Seems like it's just another station for the local Crazy Train.
Nearly nine months ago when I first started writing this blog I knew in all likelihood I was eventually gonna get caught. Sure, I tried to be careful about who and what I wrote about. Well, a little careful. I did rename most of the people and places that showed up—sometimes thinly—to limit the clues within the blog itself that could lead back to me. However, I've been plenty sloppy in a lot of ways too. Sometimes this has been intentional. Sometimes not.
It's one thing, however, to not care if readers in other states and indeed other countries know my secret identity. It's a whole other ball of dung for someone here in the Tri-Metro area to find out and that's where the sloppy comes in.
I didn't realize just how sloppy I was in other less obvious ways until a few months ago when I started checking my stats and saw the kind of search engine searches that sometimes lead people in my direction. (And by the way, what the hell kind of person does a subject search for "Chris Farley's Dead Ass," anyway?) The stats showed me that even having such words as "West," "Library"and "Virginia" in proximity to one another on the same page could lead people right to my door if they were merely doing a search for something using those words. There are plenty of other words that, while innocuous enough on the surface, could lead someone local to the blog. So I went back and changed some references, eliminated others and tried to tart the place up a bit to further decrease the chances of someone accidentally stumbling in.
Still, there's only so much you can do to disguise yourself if you're writing a blog about working at a "liberry" in WV to keep those terms from coming up. Eventually, the state and the word library are gonna get together and someone is going to find them in a search. With that in mind, I figured it was likely that someone from library HQ would eventually find me. They may already have. If so, they don't seem to be inclined to rat me out to my boss, Mrs. A.
Frankly, though, I wasn't too concerned about being ratted out that way. I think most of my co-workers would really dig the blog and would quickly become some of my more avid readers were they to learn of it. I've even considered letting them in on it if only to get more accurate reporting out of them on the crazy stuff that happens while I'm not at work. I decided, though, that doing so would cause a chilling effect on what I could say. Granted, I've always made it a point not to talk too much trash about my co-workers, (except, of course, for those who abandon their jobs and make me have to pack up all their interlibrary loans on a day I would otherwise not have been at work—thank you oh so very much, Miss E). Still, I'd much prefer the freedom in which I have the choice to behave myself.
I figure they'll eventually learn of it, either by admission or by someone ratting me out. My hope is that if they're angry at me, it will be because I didn't tell them about it sooner.
No, my imagined worse case scenario was much different. In it, I would go in to work one day, walk back to the computer hall and find somebody there reading my blog. They would turn and look up at me with realization in their eyes and then either wink knowingly or give me the finger. Worse yet, what if they came up to the circ desk and yelled at me about it? Even worse still.... what if it was PARKA? That chest hair entry alone would net me at least a bloody nose. Hell, the rest of my rogues gallery practically rivals Spider-Man's already! Sure, I might do okay one on one with most of them, but what if they ganged up? Carol Satan would tear me to shreds with her talons! Wal-Mart Jesus would clock me with his cudgel! Ron the Ripper would try to rip me, or at the very least fart on me! And Cap'n Crossdresser would hit me with his purse!
No sir... I don't like it.
Like I said, though, when I went to work yesterday, I wasn't thinking about any of the above scenarios. And when I left to go on break, I still wasn't thinking of them. So when it happened, it took me by surprise.
As per my usual Wednesday afternoon routine, I ambled down to the local "mall" comic book kiosk, to see what the new shipment had brought. Garin the comic book guy was there at the desk as usual. For some reason, he seemed especially happy to see me. He just kept saying my name over and over, taking an unwholesome amount of glee at some unrevealed nugget of information. I was oblivious.
"You will NEVER guess what I saw... on... the... internet," he said with a devilish grin. Still, I was clueless. I was somehow picturing that he'd found stills from the new Sin City film adaptation, or the full script for Spider-Man 3, or clips from Catwoman: The Version that Didn't Blow Goats.
Garin continued, slowly letting out his verbal fishing line in preparation for yanking it back suddenly. "I found a website that mentions me and my shop."
That's when it hit me and I instantly knew I was busted.
I always expected such a busting to come with the requisite chills and stomach vertigo that usually accompany major revelations. I didn't get so much of that, though. I must have at least looked properly shocked for a few moments, because Garin just continued grinning triumphantly. Pretty quickly, though, I settled into my new role as the grinning little low-carb dieting kid caught with his hand in the Nutter Butters but who knows he's far too cute and adorable to be punished.
What had happened, as Garin explained it, is that one of his customers decided to look his shop up by name and see if it had a website. They typed the name into a search engine and came up with some ebay entries as well as a little blog entry called The Fix Is In. They took a gander at it and alerted Garin that someone was writing about him on the internet.
"So I see this Tales from the `Liberry' site that mentions my shop," Garin said. "I knew immediately who had to have written it! Just the language you used was SO EXACTLY YOU."
Not only did Garin read his own initial appearance in the blog, but read most of the other entries as well and liked them. (Hey, I told ya I was cute and adorable!) Even my slightly less-than-favorable early review of his store, ("I can't say this one ranks with the best of them. But then again, it's only a kiosk store—what can you really do with a kiosk store?"), written a mere one month after he opened for business was met with smiles and appreciation for my honesty. (And just for the record, I also predicted that his store had a lot of potential and in the ten months since then he's proven just what you CAN do with a kiosk store. It's become quite the quality comic retail outlet. *WAVES TO GARIN* In fact, Garin's search engine search also turned up an award he'd won from Marvel Comics themselves, but which no one at Marvel thought to tell him about.)
Garin's one complaint to me in the whole matter: "So why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"
I explained that I was trying to keep things on the Q.T. as far as local publicity went. As much as I didn't care that he knew about it, I'd much prefer most other locals NOT knowing about it. Particularly the mentally-unbalanced locals who occasionally turn up as subject matter.
Then, as if somebody rang the crazy bell, who should show up at the kiosk right on cue... Doc Oc-Fetishist Woman!
This time she wasn't looking for the New Doc Ock or the Old Doc Ock or any Doc Ock. Instead, she had come to see if Garin had any other toys for her husband. Sure enough, a great huge Fantastic 4 Four Pack set of figures has been released, including figures of all four members of the FF plus Franklin Richards, Doctor Doom and even Robbie the EFFing Robot. This, apparently, is what DOF Woman's husband had ordered and she was overjoyed at its arrival.
Naturally, there had to be a wrinkle, though. In addition to the Fantastic Four Pack, a brand new Thing figure had also been released, which was a different sculpt than the version of Thing already in the pack. Garin just wanted to call her attention to it in case her husband was interested, as he knew the guy liked the FF characters. This completely threw Doc Ock Fetishist Woman into a tizzy, though. Garin had to explain to her several times that her husband hadn't ordered the extra Thing so she didn't need to buy it, but if her husband was interested it was there. I had to walk out of sight of her to keep from cracking up laughing as DOF Woman struggled with these concepts for a couple of minutes, dancing perilously close to but never actually crossing the line into understanding. Finally Garin took the extra Thing away from her and told her he would hold on to it and save it for her husband should he want it.
"You'll save it for him then?"
"Yes."
"You'll save it for him then?"
"YES."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: I cannot make up shit that crazy!
So guess what, Garin... If I do get drummed out of the library for this blog, I'm moving into your comic shop and starting a new blog there. Seems like it's just another station for the local Crazy Train.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Goat Wang
I would just like to take this moment to say a hearty "I told ya so" regarding my prediction last February of the goat wang fellatio capabilities of Halle Berry's version of Catwoman.
I've not seen it, nor am I going to, but the consensus of reviewers does seem to back me up.
Granted, most people aren't going in to Catwoman expecting Citizen Kane. Most of the audience is there to see Halle jumping around in a leather getup most self-respecting hookers would be embarrassed to wear. Believe me, I can sympathize.
But may I suggest an alternative?
Why not go rent the DVD of Monster's Ball where you get to see a damn lot more of Halle's lovely physique plus the added bonuses of both frame by frame pause AND an engaging story.
Remember: Friends don't let friends see Catwoman.
I've not seen it, nor am I going to, but the consensus of reviewers does seem to back me up.
Granted, most people aren't going in to Catwoman expecting Citizen Kane. Most of the audience is there to see Halle jumping around in a leather getup most self-respecting hookers would be embarrassed to wear. Believe me, I can sympathize.
But may I suggest an alternative?
Why not go rent the DVD of Monster's Ball where you get to see a damn lot more of Halle's lovely physique plus the added bonuses of both frame by frame pause AND an engaging story.
Remember: Friends don't let friends see Catwoman.
Sunday, August 01, 2004
Sunday Shift
So with our weekender Miss E effectively out of
the picture, I hit the library at 1 today for my first Sunday shift in
quite a while.
Sunday shifts are usually plenty boring, but I knew I was going to have a busy enough day. See, Mrs. H has now been recruited to become our new Saturday "liberry" ass. leaving Mrs. B and I to rotate Sundays. This is fine with me. Trouble is, Mrs. H doesn't seem to know how to prepare and pack up the week's worth of interlibrary loans, so it's fallen to the Sunday shifter to do that for the past couple of weeks. This is okay too. I'd rather have something to do. Beyond that, though, today's shift was far from boring.
There was, of course, a crowd at the door as I arrived at 12:55. Great.
When I went upstairs and flipped on the light switch, the lights all came on then immediately went back off as the breaker tripped from the surge. Double great. Even greater is the fact that I have no idea where the breaker switch box is. I looked around for it, but it wasn't in any of the obvious places like closets or bathrooms or walls. Damn, it was probably in the basement.
Mr. B-Natural was among the crowd outside and was the first to sign up for a computer. More followed, including Brent & Brice, two twin teenagers who have been making a nuisance of themselves for reasons which will become apparent. They're not related to the Devil Twins, of Rogues Gallery fame, but they probably should be.
The wife turned up around 1:30 with lunch for the two of us. She's on her way out of town, headed back to Clarksburg until later in the month. After lunch, I decided that while she was there and was able to guard the desk, I'd go to the basement and see about the breaker. I was headed for the door on that very quest when Jimmy the "Anonymous" Snitch came in and started signing in for a computer. Jimmy's been in a couple of times recently. One day last week, I actually had to ask a patron I liked to get off the computers just to give one to frickin' Jimmy's dumb criminal ass. And just minutes earlier, I'd had to bust another favored patron off to give one to Parka. At the time I thought, Who's next? Chester? The computers were all full, though, and not due for any openings for 16 minutes. I mentioned that to Jimmy on my way out the door.
Despite high expectations, I could find no evidence of a breaker box in the basement. I didn't want to spend a lot of time in there, though. Jimmy was lurking in the library and while the wife was standing guard on the cash box no one was guarding the upstairs restroom, where Jimmy's pal Bladder Boy once found and stole our laptop. I rushed back up to the main library and then upstairs. Jimmy was sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs near the periodicals. I walked behind him and into Mrs. A's office where I retrieved the restroom key from its hiding place then made a big conspicuous production of locking the restroom door as loudly as I could.
Back downstairs, a few minutes later, I was telling the wife what I had just done when she suddenly signaled to me to be quiet. Too late, I was still finishing my sentence, "...conspicuously locked the bathroom door" when Jimmy entered the room behind me. He had to have heard what I was saying and he would also have to know what it meant. I realized that I didn't care if he did hear me. I really don't mind if he knows that I know he's a sneaky little weasel. If I were really ballsy, though, I would ask Jimmy how his sentencing went this month. I'd honestly like to know, cause I haven't heard.
I had to tell Brice and Brent to relinquish their computers to let Jimmy and another patron have them. B&B, who are probably 13 years old, are infamous for coming in, using our computers, printing lots of pages and either leaving the pages unpaid for or, more often, taking the pages unpaid for. Mrs. A and I both have spoken to them about this and told them they had to pay for everything they print, but they don't seem to care. I figured with the wife still guarding the desk they wouldn't dare grab their prints and leave, but they did. They probably even felt safe in doing it, since they're not card carrying patrons so we don't have their home number to rat them out to their mother. Unfortunately for them, they neglected to remember that we do have their phone number on file as part of their parental permission slip. Unfortunately for me, I didn't remember that until just now, so I'll have to phone her up next time I'm in. Should be fun.
Sunday shifts are usually plenty boring, but I knew I was going to have a busy enough day. See, Mrs. H has now been recruited to become our new Saturday "liberry" ass. leaving Mrs. B and I to rotate Sundays. This is fine with me. Trouble is, Mrs. H doesn't seem to know how to prepare and pack up the week's worth of interlibrary loans, so it's fallen to the Sunday shifter to do that for the past couple of weeks. This is okay too. I'd rather have something to do. Beyond that, though, today's shift was far from boring.
There was, of course, a crowd at the door as I arrived at 12:55. Great.
When I went upstairs and flipped on the light switch, the lights all came on then immediately went back off as the breaker tripped from the surge. Double great. Even greater is the fact that I have no idea where the breaker switch box is. I looked around for it, but it wasn't in any of the obvious places like closets or bathrooms or walls. Damn, it was probably in the basement.
Mr. B-Natural was among the crowd outside and was the first to sign up for a computer. More followed, including Brent & Brice, two twin teenagers who have been making a nuisance of themselves for reasons which will become apparent. They're not related to the Devil Twins, of Rogues Gallery fame, but they probably should be.
The wife turned up around 1:30 with lunch for the two of us. She's on her way out of town, headed back to Clarksburg until later in the month. After lunch, I decided that while she was there and was able to guard the desk, I'd go to the basement and see about the breaker. I was headed for the door on that very quest when Jimmy the "Anonymous" Snitch came in and started signing in for a computer. Jimmy's been in a couple of times recently. One day last week, I actually had to ask a patron I liked to get off the computers just to give one to frickin' Jimmy's dumb criminal ass. And just minutes earlier, I'd had to bust another favored patron off to give one to Parka. At the time I thought, Who's next? Chester? The computers were all full, though, and not due for any openings for 16 minutes. I mentioned that to Jimmy on my way out the door.
Despite high expectations, I could find no evidence of a breaker box in the basement. I didn't want to spend a lot of time in there, though. Jimmy was lurking in the library and while the wife was standing guard on the cash box no one was guarding the upstairs restroom, where Jimmy's pal Bladder Boy once found and stole our laptop. I rushed back up to the main library and then upstairs. Jimmy was sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs near the periodicals. I walked behind him and into Mrs. A's office where I retrieved the restroom key from its hiding place then made a big conspicuous production of locking the restroom door as loudly as I could.
Back downstairs, a few minutes later, I was telling the wife what I had just done when she suddenly signaled to me to be quiet. Too late, I was still finishing my sentence, "...conspicuously locked the bathroom door" when Jimmy entered the room behind me. He had to have heard what I was saying and he would also have to know what it meant. I realized that I didn't care if he did hear me. I really don't mind if he knows that I know he's a sneaky little weasel. If I were really ballsy, though, I would ask Jimmy how his sentencing went this month. I'd honestly like to know, cause I haven't heard.
I had to tell Brice and Brent to relinquish their computers to let Jimmy and another patron have them. B&B, who are probably 13 years old, are infamous for coming in, using our computers, printing lots of pages and either leaving the pages unpaid for or, more often, taking the pages unpaid for. Mrs. A and I both have spoken to them about this and told them they had to pay for everything they print, but they don't seem to care. I figured with the wife still guarding the desk they wouldn't dare grab their prints and leave, but they did. They probably even felt safe in doing it, since they're not card carrying patrons so we don't have their home number to rat them out to their mother. Unfortunately for them, they neglected to remember that we do have their phone number on file as part of their parental permission slip. Unfortunately for me, I didn't remember that until just now, so I'll have to phone her up next time I'm in. Should be fun.
Handbasket Update
Well, Miss E is now DEFINITELY no longer an employee of the "liberry".
As of closing time Friday, she still had not returned any of Mrs. A's calls further convincing us that she was trying to quit through sheer neglect. This would seem to be the case as Mrs. A has spoken with Miss E's mother and learned that Miss E has taken a factory job two towns over and has actually been working it for the past week and a half. It's a second shift position, meaning she doesn't leave work until 1 in the morning. This further indicates that the story we were told about her being very sick last weekend was a lie.
This is very disappointing to us all, but primarily to Mrs. A, Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Mrs. J who have known Miss E for most of her life. They were her friends as well as coworkers and say that this sort of behavior is not what they would have expected from her--or at least not from the Miss E they used to know.
Miss E has been a common sight at the library since she was a small child. She practically grew up in the summer reading and story-hour programs and was among the students in Miss E's first Summer Reading group. Eventually, she outgrew the programs and began volunteering to help out with them. It was because of this formerly good relationship that Mrs. A offered her a job as our weekend library assistant last year when she was only a junior in highschool. She was already among the handful of high school aged kids who we practically consider library staff, so it made sense to bring her in part time. As an employee, Miss E had been fairly decent. Weekend shift is never the most exciting, but she usually did a good job of it. Sure, she's been guilty of doing so using less than her whole ass on occasion, but what can you expect? She was in high school!
Unfortunately, things haven't gone so well for Miss E's personal life this year and they weren't that great to start with. There are a lot of things I'd like to write about it, both bad and good, but I won't go into it here. Ex-coworker or not I still don't care to spread around her personal business no matter how pseudonymously.
I still think Miss E is a good egg at heart. However, she's a good egg who comes from a carton full of spoiled and otherwise cracked eggs. Despite her best and half-best efforts, theirs is an influence that's proving to be very difficult to escape.
As of closing time Friday, she still had not returned any of Mrs. A's calls further convincing us that she was trying to quit through sheer neglect. This would seem to be the case as Mrs. A has spoken with Miss E's mother and learned that Miss E has taken a factory job two towns over and has actually been working it for the past week and a half. It's a second shift position, meaning she doesn't leave work until 1 in the morning. This further indicates that the story we were told about her being very sick last weekend was a lie.
This is very disappointing to us all, but primarily to Mrs. A, Mrs. C, Mrs. B and Mrs. J who have known Miss E for most of her life. They were her friends as well as coworkers and say that this sort of behavior is not what they would have expected from her--or at least not from the Miss E they used to know.
Miss E has been a common sight at the library since she was a small child. She practically grew up in the summer reading and story-hour programs and was among the students in Miss E's first Summer Reading group. Eventually, she outgrew the programs and began volunteering to help out with them. It was because of this formerly good relationship that Mrs. A offered her a job as our weekend library assistant last year when she was only a junior in highschool. She was already among the handful of high school aged kids who we practically consider library staff, so it made sense to bring her in part time. As an employee, Miss E had been fairly decent. Weekend shift is never the most exciting, but she usually did a good job of it. Sure, she's been guilty of doing so using less than her whole ass on occasion, but what can you expect? She was in high school!
Unfortunately, things haven't gone so well for Miss E's personal life this year and they weren't that great to start with. There are a lot of things I'd like to write about it, both bad and good, but I won't go into it here. Ex-coworker or not I still don't care to spread around her personal business no matter how pseudonymously.
I still think Miss E is a good egg at heart. However, she's a good egg who comes from a carton full of spoiled and otherwise cracked eggs. Despite her best and half-best efforts, theirs is an influence that's proving to be very difficult to escape.
Friday, July 30, 2004
Here's your handbasket, now get in line.
Well it was plenty peaceful at the "liberry" Thursday. The computer
traffic had calmed down and the final day of Summer Reading went
splendidly. Unfortunately several other things went to hell at
work.
It appears Miss E may no longer be with us as an employee. It's not that anyone wants her gone or even wants to fire her, but she's not leaving anyone a lot of choice at this point.
Last Thursday, her mom called in to say she'd be out for all of her weekend shifts due to being sick. No prob. We covered just fine. However, an anonymous male also called shortly after her mother's call and told us the same thing. We assume this is her boyfriend, but we don't know for sure. And neither call mentioned anything about her missing the rest of her shifts for the remainder of this week. It's now been a solid week since she's been in and she's not phoned or returned any calls or messages.
We've checked into it enough to determine that she is still alive, but her refusal to call Mrs. A is more than a bit odd. There are other circumstances that may shed light on this, but I'm not going to go into them now, if ever. Most of what we think we know about the situation is gossipy speculation at best, which Miss E would not wish to be repeated. Rest assured, there's Drama O' Plenty at every turn.
Meanwhile, I'll be picking up some extra hours as I fill in for Miss E's Sunday shifts.
It appears Miss E may no longer be with us as an employee. It's not that anyone wants her gone or even wants to fire her, but she's not leaving anyone a lot of choice at this point.
Last Thursday, her mom called in to say she'd be out for all of her weekend shifts due to being sick. No prob. We covered just fine. However, an anonymous male also called shortly after her mother's call and told us the same thing. We assume this is her boyfriend, but we don't know for sure. And neither call mentioned anything about her missing the rest of her shifts for the remainder of this week. It's now been a solid week since she's been in and she's not phoned or returned any calls or messages.
We've checked into it enough to determine that she is still alive, but her refusal to call Mrs. A is more than a bit odd. There are other circumstances that may shed light on this, but I'm not going to go into them now, if ever. Most of what we think we know about the situation is gossipy speculation at best, which Miss E would not wish to be repeated. Rest assured, there's Drama O' Plenty at every turn.
Meanwhile, I'll be picking up some extra hours as I fill in for Miss E's Sunday shifts.
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