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The New York Times recently reported that IM chat slang is creeping into school reports, driving teachers crazy. It also seems to be making its way just as inappropriately into pregnancy scare letters. Look at this gem that E found in a newly returned book, a note in which some young lady contemplates the future direction of her relationship after a potential pregnancy crisis.

dear Simon,

Since our scare, ive been thinking. We are seriously not ready for stuff like this. We too young and financially, emotionally not ready. I mean what if I was, what then? You get? I don’t know. Would you want me to have had the abation? This scare has really got me thinking about the Future. Just makes me really think. I just feel scared and insecure about the future.

I just don’t know. The last scare really really scared me. I’m still really really scared. I was actually really considering it, thinking about it. What if I was. idk. I feel kinda confused. So sorry. I think I confused you too. Boo! THE END I think! LOL!!!!

Simon's 'boo' is kissing cousins to Amber Richardson, my favorite Onion columnist.

I have a soft spot for the misunderstood creatures of the world, the spotted hyena in particular.

They are an evolutionary oddity, a chimera, with snaky long necks and strangely shortened rear legs that give them their comical, awkward gait. Although they resemble a bear/dog/lion mixture, their closest relative, and not a close one, is the mongoose.

But here’s where spotted hyenas get really weird – the males and females are nearly impossible to tell apart, so much so that it widely believed until not that long ago that spotted hyenas were hermaphrodites. Females are awash in androgen and have scrotum like sacks and a pseudo-penis, just like what you hear happens to certain juiced up competitive female body builders. Actually, in the hyena’s case this pseudo penis (which they can make erect at will) is a fusion of the clitoris, labia of the vagina. Hyenas give birth through this narrow tunnel, which makes childbirth a risky proposition and frequently results in the death of the first time mother or the first cub, who will suffocate before it can make its way out. The females are highly aggressive, and the dominant female will try to kill all other females in her litter, sometimes within seconds of birth.

They live in female dominated, matriarchal packs. Male relatives are usually driven off, presumably to prevent inbreeding. As one hyena researcher states, “Female dominance imposes unusual diffidence and patience on males. Their obvious fear of female aggression makes courtship an often amusing spectacle.

Although labeled as scavengers, hyenas are skilled hunters. A pack can reduce a cape buffalo down to its hooves in minutes. Actually, hyenas will eat the hooves (and horn, teeth and pelt), extract what calcium there is to be had and then regurgitate it like an owl pellet.

This is a picture of a friend of mine taken while he was in Ethiopia. Hyenas descend upon this one town at night, presumably because they’re fed as a tourist attraction. Looks like he can feel that hyenas hot breath on his face.

Last Sunday E was at the sketchiest Burger King in the city, which, naturally, is located right across the street from the library. A seedy looking man leaned in the door and called to his lady, who was standing next to the food pickup station, clutching a grimy receipt.

“Oh, honey,” he said in the stilted, carefully enunciated words of a bad liar, "We're going to be late for…church, so you better just get a refund for our meal. We cannot wait any longer.”

She shuffled over to the cash register and asked for a refund.

The manager gave her the once over. “Ma'am, this food was purchased for you two, not by you two. I will only give a cash refund to the person who bought the food for you.”

Obviously some misguided Samaritan had bought them a meal in lieu of a cash handout, which of course they had absolutely no interest in, since you can’t trade street drugs for a flame broiled Whopper. After a lot of righteous indignation, she gave up and skulked out. She and her life partner then walked off down the street, bickering, I'm sure, over which one had failed in his oer her part of their sad little grift. Sebastian and Michelle ride again!

This city spends a staggering 80K on services per homeless person. They are not going hungry, believe me, despite the gauntlet of increasingly aggressive cant one has to face coming to and fro the library. Sorry that I sound so jaded, but cash handouts do nothing but fuel addiction and support an underground economy of drugs that is ruinous to the quality of life for all involved. One of my fedup colleagues will scream at people, primarily tourists, that she sees handing out money to panhandlers around the library, “Enablers! Quit ruining my city!”

We're going to have our own Easter egg hunt in the stacks of the the library today and by "Easter eggs" I mean human feces.

David Sedaris did a hilarious segment on This American Life about this phenomenon, although he focuses mostly on the goings on at large retail chains. His theory is that it is an acting out, a fecal uprising, against faceles corporatation, like throwing a rock through a Starbucks window at a G-8 demonstration. He became intrigued after his boyfriend mentioned offhandedly one day that when he worked at The Gap customers would often use the dressing rooms as bathrooms, even though there were bathrooms located conveniently throughout the mall where this Gap was. Sedaris, furious that Hugh withheld such fascinating material from him, embarks on his own informal research project about these incidences by polling everyone he meets who worked at a store if this had ever happened. My favorite reponse was from an elderly woman he just met who had worked at Target. She grasped his hands and gave him a deep, haunted look.

"Why, however did you know?"

She reported employees would find poo all over Target, but the most popular place was in the interior of the circular clothing racks. I suppose humans are no better than caged monkeys, flinging our poo as an act of defiance and rage. As thoroughly revolting as that is, I was relieved to know that the public library is not an isolated target of this sort of bio-vandalism.

Or puts the unborn in its place. Although this cannot be comfortable for Billy, and it certainly is not for me, my ever expanding abdomen has become his new favorite perch. I suspect he senses that there's a rival in there who must be told his place in the pack. Or perhaps he is trying to help me incubate it in his own special way.

According to the Dog Wheeesperer, some of the ways dogs exert dominance are to sit upon, lean against or place a body part upon whomever/whatever they're trying dominate. Because Billy is the most nervous and insecure alpha ever, he cannot be direct about it and has to stealth dominate. Whenever we have guests over Billy will sidle up next to the "intruder," curl up, feign sleep, stretch and then subtly but deliberately place a paw on them. In his little dog mind, hiearchy has been established. and he is now the boss of them.

This does not bode well.

During my last hour on the desk some workmen were jackhammering stonework that had become a tripping hazard not 20 feet away. The noise was deafening and made meaningful reference work or even conversation impossible. As frustrating and nerve rattling as the conditions were, I was reminded of my all time favorite Snopes entry.

Fun fact: More than a quarter of pregnant West Virginians smoke! You stay classy, West Virginia.

Supposedly babies in utero will begin to squirm and kick when mothers even THINK about lighting up.