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Some Local Library:
Furious Champion Edition
Saturday, May 31, 2003 - 11:05 p.m. - Defenestrator
SCHOOL'S OUT...HOORAY
Yes, that's right. School is out for the summer. That means that for those people who are unable or unwilling to go to the mall and wreak havoc there, the library becomes THE place to hang out all day.
Exhibit 1: We'll just call the kid "whitey tighties". It's your average two-year old boy with no concept of potty training. Which is fine and dandy, since some genius one day long ago invented diapers. Except, this boy wasn't wearing diapers. In fact, he wasn't even wearing pants for that matter. Thus, "whitey tighties".
So, this kid is using one of our computers, enraptured by the sounds and sights of modern edumacational software, when he decides to take a leak on the seat since he can't hold it in. His mother walks over to the desk, tells me the story (in broken English, which seems to be an ever increasing occurrence these days), and thus I am left with the unenviable task of cleaning up a mess that could have been avoided if the parent had taken the time to put a diaper on the kid.
I'm sorry, but I just don't buy all this crap that says "You have to respect other cultures because their way isn't really wrong, it's just different." How about respecting my right to go to work without the fear of contracting bubonic plague since some idiot parent doesn't understand the meaning of basic hygiene?
Anyways, moving on...
Exhibit 2: Now that school is out, we have a special reading program for the kids that we've done for some years now. In fact, it's pretty commonplace at most public libraries to have such programs for the kids, with the aim of encouraging them to read (because reading is FUNdamental, after all). Basically, the equation is:
kids read books = kids get prizes
Anyways, I had a couple of parents today, signing up their kids for said program, who had the gall to ask how we (i.e., "the staff") would really know if their kids were being honest? Basically, it's the same question every year - "Do you really know if the kids are really reading the books that they say they're reading?" And every year, I've given the same answer - "No, but we do expect that the kids will actually make a decent attempt at being honest." Truthfully though, I probably should have just put a star on the child's registration card, then play the part of the interrogator when he or she comes to claim their prizes. Of course, part of the problem is that some parents are more motivated than their kids to get the prizes.
Junior: "But mom, I DON'T want to join the reading program this year!"
Big Momma: "Shut the hell up, Junior, before I smacks you on the ass!"
I tell ya, there's nothing like parents living vicariously through the "successes" of their children. I'm sure that somewhere in suburban America, some mom is playing the part of dominatrix, with her kids handuffed to the table, not letting them leave until they finish "earning" the trophy. Anytime the kids' eyes leave the pages....
CRACK!!!!
All the while, momma is getting hornier and hornier, masturbating and clit-picking her way to a trophy. I used to wonder why some of these parents come back summer after summer, dragging their kids by the scruffs of their necks to join the summer reading program. If I got to engage in kinky sex EVERY summer and get a trophy for it, and didn't have to read a single damned book (hey, that's what the kids are for) OR pay a single dime to some STD-infested hooker, well, you can see where this cost-benefits analysis is going.
School's out and so are the brats...hooray...
Saturday, May 31, 2003 - 12:59 a.m. - Defenestrator
I saw this group of kids one day playing tag. As you may or may not know, there are different variations of tag, such as freeze tag. Well, these kids had made up a new version of their own, which I thought rather ingenious. We'll just call this version "SARS tag". The kids would go around, tagging each other, then yelling out "SARS!!!!" I wasn't there for the whole game, but apparently, the game had gone long enough to the point where EVERYONE was "it" (i.e., everyone had SARS).
My point in telling all this? I think it would be totally cool if we had a children's program where ALL the kids played SARS tag. We could direct them to run around the entire library, tagging patrons at will, inflicting them with SARS. In fact, just picture a flock of them on top of Mr. Blue, patting him down, screaming "SARS! SARS! SARS! SARS!"
Just a thought...
Friday, May 30, 2003 - 01:42 p.m. - Doc
THIS IS THE HATE SOCIALIST COLLECTIVE
The gentle aroma of pork and failure in the air can only mean that the
Big Winners in the Game of Life have returned to the library, to squat
and sweat at the fancy-pants new XP computers. As usual, they are
jabbering away in not-quite-hushed-enough tones about their faggoty
orcs and runes and plus-nine Haagen-Dazs of Mom's Basement; as usual, I
am alone on the goddamned desk. That's right: I was out of the town,
but I'm back now, and of fucking course these slope-browed
evolutionary backwashes are here to be a part of it.
That's pretty much par for the course, though. Until one or both of
them get a life, go to jail, or just fucking die, chances are
good you'll be able to find them here doing their little thing. And I'm
beatific - I accept that as part of The Job. Capitalizing "The Job"
makes me sound more like a world-weary, hardened, self-referential cop
or firefighter, which in turn only makes me sad that my employers do
not, in the course of my duties, see fit to equip me with an axe or
stun-gun. What I've got to tell you about today is even more
delightful.
Mister Fucking Blue came back into the library yesterday; once again he
picked through our dopey little video collection (want to learn some
country line dancin'? How about taking a fucking video train
tour of Eastern Europe? You're in luck, motherfucker!) and once
again he decided that I'm his big fucking computer literate Pal At The
Public Library. And whoop-dee-fucking-doo, he's got more crazy-ass
lonely loser lies to spin completely out of control.
So he comes up - well, see, the Detective and Jackpot and I were all on
the goddamned AIM, and they both suddenly go Code Blue and I'm
all duh, I do not savvy your newfangled interweb lingo, and yep,
before I can brace myself I've accidentally made eye contact with
Mister Blue and he's making a beeline for me. What luck! "Save me," I
messaged the Detective. "Should I throw up on him?" he replied. We're a
suave, mature bunch. Without so much as a pretext, he launches into
some goofy-ass series of questions about Windows 2000. Have I used it?
(No.) Is it any good? (I don't know; I haven't used it.) He thinks it's
good. (Wonderful.) It's better than NT! (Again, wonderful.) Some game
store just paid him to install it on all their computers.
Okay, hold the goddamned phone just one minute, Sharkey. This claim
requires me to believe several Retarded Things. Thing One: that at any
given "game store", not one employee would have the very fucking
basic computer skills required to install Windows, which, if I
recall correctly, involves watching an animated drum for about six
hours and clicking "OK" a couple of times. Thing Two: that at said game
store, someone with the authority to make this sort of decision would
say to himself, you know that yammering idiot that hangs out here
for hours at a time? Perhaps I can pay him to tackle this difficult
task! Thing Three: that Mister Blue could successfully install
Windows. But we'll play along with the mythology - let's go ahead and
believe him so this story can continue. (For my part, I think I nodded
and then continued doing something else. If this were The Sims,
I would have made some ennn-ehhh noise and spat out a picture of
a floppy disk garnished with a couple of big red minuses; it's not,
though, and I have to rely on his non-existent sense of body
language to convey Hints like shut up and go away.)
"I got Warcraft 3!" he then announces proudly. Apparently, someone -
please, get a load of this - someone at this mysterious Game Store
staffed entirely by dwarves from the magical land of Idiotica gave
him a real and proper retail copy of Warcraft 3 because this
someone could not defeat the copy protection. "I tried to tell
him to use the NO-CD CRACK, but he said that he doesn't like the NO-CD
CRACK," Mister Blue helpfully informed me. So now Mister Blue is 1337
like that. This motion is seconded and carried by an abrupt segue into
some impossible-to-follow nonsense about Kazaa. Two or three minutes
later, he was not in fact given Warcraft 3; he swapped it for a
game called The Italian Job. Yes, that value-priced piece of PSOne
shovelware. "I'm not making fun of the British," he hastens to add, "I
just don't like the accents! And driving on the left!" Whatever you
say, champ.
He then asks if we've gotten any more computer-related donations. You
know, that he can HAVE. "That keyboard you gave me was great. I put it
with some other stuff and gave it to a kid." "A kid," I say. "Yeah, he
was really happy to have it." Pause. Pause. "Oh?" I finally fucking
prompt him. "Yeah, because he broke both his legs." "Just like that?" I
ask. "No, he fell off his bike." Well, that was a goddamned gripping
tale.
"But the real game is Grand Theft Auto 3," he says. At this
point, I decide to have a little fun with him. He doesn't seem to be
going anywhere, at any rate. Bear in mind that all this time, I have
been quite openly Doing Something Else and I don't think I've made eye
contact since the beginning of the conversation. This is for two
reasons: first of all, it is because I am literally seconds away from
blatantly derisive laughter, and also because I cannot get past his
weird teeth. So I say, disapprovingly, "Grand Theft Auto 3? But I heard
that game was pretty... raunchy." Mister Blue, you'll remember, is the
one who once complained to the Detective that The Princess Diaries was
"smut"; now he is raving about what is the most successful game to ever
endorse open sociopathy. "Well, it's true," he adds, chastened,
"there's too much emphasis on joining the gangs and the mafias."
There's also beating whores to death for their lunch money, but you
know, morality's what we call a "sliding scale". So he yacks on about
the mafias for a while, and then, wham -
"But what I really play is Counterstrike." "I don't have an internet
connection at home," I say pleasantly. I have pled ignorance about
every fucking thing he has mentioned, and I'm not just stopping
there. I place a hold on a book about Windows 2000 for him and he
leaves. Eventually.
Wednesday, May 21, 2003 - 03:01 p.m. - The Detective
Just when we thought it couldn't get any worse...
It Came From Someone's Ass!!
So one day, I noticed something small and brown in our books bins, and it had stained the mats in the bins. Not knowing what it was, I called another employee to help me figure out what it was. We believe at first that it was chocolate, but the co-worker used something to pick it up and throw it into the trash. This morning she told me that awhile after she threw it into the trash can, the trash can started stinking. Now these trash cans get paper and other non-smelly items thrown into them, so we're going to attribute this smell to what we think is crap. People suck.
Monday, May 19, 2003 - 10:09 p.m. - Defenestrator
You know what's really funny and irritating are those people who ask you the same reference question month after month, expecting that somehow, in that lapse of time, you'll have a different answer that is more to their liking. Today, I had one such patron. See, this kid came up to me and asked if we had any books that would teach him how to draw planets. I recall that the first time he had asked this question, I had searched in vain for such a book and suggested that perhaps he would be better served looking for a book with pictures of planets that he could use for his artistic inspiration. For whatever reason, that answer wasn't to his liking, and he left unsatisfied, I suspect.
So now it's take #2 tonight...same script, same answer, and yes, you guessed it, same look of dissatisfaction. Except this time, he comes up to me AGAIN and asked if we had the 2nd and 3rd volumes of The Wind in the Willows. Last time I checked, The Wind in the Willows was a stand-alone book, and I explained that I couldn't find a 2nd or 3rd volume (just to humor this patron/brat, I checked the catalog). After telling him all this, he stands there simply looking at me, expecting that somehow, maybe I'll change my mind and magically pull The Wind in the Willows vols. 2 and 3 out of my ass. Anyhow, another patron comes along (one with a LEGITIMATE reference question), and as I begin to help this patron, Mr. I-want-to-draw-the-planets asks if we have any books that teach how to draw countries and continents. Excuse me, but has this kid never seen a map or an atlas??
Friday, May 16, 2003 - 09:30 p.m. - The Detective
It's been kinda slow this week, with Doc up doing school stuff and me being lazy. I mean, who does school-ralated things anyway? Fucking nerds.
This week brought me some very memorable events into my life. I now suspect that I may be lactose intolerant due to the stomach pains I recieved this week. That, and my theory about how all people are bastards was proven.
This man came in, and he seemed like an okay guy. At first. He gave me the wrong cards several times, but he was cool about it. Then came that moment when he changed from okay guy to complete bastard. His wife had checked out a book, but she was done with it, so he wanted it switched over onto his account. I told him that we don't do that, and that if he wanted to return it, we would hold onto it for 24 hours, to give other people a chance to check out the book. "Well I'm another person," he said. That's not how it works. It's per household. This asshole just would not listen to me. It finally took the Circ boss to set him straight, and he walked off with a "Thank you" that was less than sincere. In the end, all I gotta say is that I have a certain book in my desk drawer, and it's not going to circulate for at least another week.
Less than 30 minutes later, this woman comes up to check out. I scan her card, and I notice that she has fines of $9.30 on her record. She was shocked by this. I printed out her fines, so she could have herself a hard copy to look at, but when she saw what items the fines were on, she was perplexed. "I don't remember checking out these books." When she told me that, I pointed out that these fines were from 1997. "But I still don't remember ever checking out these books." Then came my one act of defiance. I no longer pretended to be nice to people. In my smug, arrogant way, I told her, "Of course, that WAS six years ago. Ma'am." But she lucked out, as the fines on her card were waiveable. But even though I told her this, she was still whipping out her money. I should have taken it as my "Dealing with retards" tip.
And last, and perhaps the grossest, story this week. There are things I just cannot tolerate. Patrons. Screamnig kids. People who ignore the "No Food or Drink in the Library" sign. But there are worse thigns. Like wet books. Books that are wet are bad enough, but when the book is wet because there's URINE on it, that's just disgusting. But we're tracking down on whoever's responsible for that. I just wish that I didn't touch the book.
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