Awww, I wasn't going to kill her...

A big thank you to E for downloading this picture of the lawn dart scene from Reno 911! that features Reno resident dirtball and “Captain of Suspicious Behavior” Big Mike who, despite having a lawn dart protruding from his skull, still valiantly clutches his beer.

Big Mike is one of the many fabulous recurring characters on Reno 911!. Reno's police officers frequently respond to complaints of domestic violence or disturbances of the peace at Big Mike's residence. In my favorite episode featuring Big Mike, Lt. Dangle holds a scavenger hunt, the prize being two tickets to an execution later that evening. As Deputy Travis Junior explains, this is a particularly desirable prize because “getting two tickets to an execution is like getting two tickets to NASCAR on the front row, except you *know* Jeff Gordon's gonna die.”

Scavenger Hunt Items
Crackhead with a wig- 5pts.
Perp over 6'5"- 10pts.
Man with teats (B cup or larger) - 5pts.
Best looking hooker- 15pts.
Red foreign car- 5pts.
Perp with animal tattoo- 5pts.
Double Points if perp is Jewish

As the officers canvass Reno in search of items on the scavenger hunt, Dangle and Travis visit Big Mike because they heard rumors that either his sister or his common law wife recently gave him a tattoo. They drive up and find Big Mike sitting in a chair watering his weed and trash choked lawn with a hose. They hassle and provoke Big Mike, who sprays them with his water hose. They use that as excuse to tackle him so they can check out his tattoo. After they lift his shirt up they are disappointed to discover that Big Mike’s tattoo is that of a dragon, and while they have Big Mike’s face shoved in the dirt they debate whether the dragon will count since it’s a mythical beast. Big Mike insists that the tattoo, which is on his trunk, is that of a panther. He twists his neck to look at it and realizes for the first time that the tatoo is a dragon. In a rage, he escapes the officers and charges the house, threatening to kill his sister for not giving him the correct panther tatto. The officers subdue him and handcuff him. “Awwww, I wasn’t going to kill her, I was just going to f*ck her up,” Big Mike confesses sheepishly as they lead him away to the squad car.

Come to think of it, Reno's finest should have started at the library; if they had, they would have completed the hunt in about 5 minutes.

Awww, I wasn't going to kill her...

A big thank you to E for downloading this picture of the lawn dart scene from Reno 911! that features Reno resident dirtball and “Captain of Suspicious Behavior” Big Mike who, despite having a lawn dart protruding from his skull, still valiantly clutches his beer.

Big Mike is one of the many fabulous recurring characters on Reno 911!. Reno's police officers frequently respond to complaints of domestic violence or disturbances of the peace at Big Mike's residence. In my favorite episode featuring Big Mike, Lt. Dangle holds a scavenger hunt, the prize being two tickets to an execution later that evening. As Deputy Travis Junior explains, this is a particularly desirable prize because “getting two tickets to an execution is like getting two tickets to NASCAR on the front row, except you *know* Jeff Gordon's gonna die.”

Scavenger Hunt Items
Crackhead with a wig- 5pts.
Perp over 6'5"- 10pts.
Man with teats (B cup or larger) - 5pts.
Best looking hooker- 15pts.
Red foreign car- 5pts.
Perp with animal tattoo- 5pts.
Double Points if perp is Jewish

As the officers canvass Reno in search of items on the scavenger hunt, Dangle and Travis visit Big Mike because they heard rumors that either his sister or his common law wife recently gave him a tattoo. They drive up and find Big Mike sitting in a chair watering his weed and trash choked lawn with a hose. They hassle and provoke Big Mike, who sprays them with his water hose. They use that as excuse to tackle him so they can check out his tattoo. After they lift his shirt up they are disappointed to discover that Big Mike’s tattoo is that of a dragon, and while they have Big Mike’s face shoved in the dirt they debate whether the dragon will count since it’s a mythical beast. Big Mike insists that the tattoo, which is on his trunk, is that of a panther. He twists his neck to look at it and realizes for the first time that the tatoo is a dragon. In a rage, he escapes the officers and charges the house, threatening to kill his sister for not giving him the correct panther tatto. The officers subdue him and handcuff him. “Awwww, I wasn’t going to kill her, I was just going to f*ck her up,” Big Mike confesses sheepishly as they lead him away to the squad car.

Come to think of it, Reno's finest should have started at the library; if they had, they would have completed the hunt in about 5 minutes.

I Heart the War Nerd

I have two televisions set up next to each other so I can watch movies while I do a taped workout, and although it helps make the workouts go faster, I end up giving them both only my half assed attention. The other day I finally watched Shaving Ryan’s Saving Private Ryan, a movie I have been avoiding for years. I had so much adrenalin coursing through me during the Omaha Beach scene that I didn’t realize I was seriously overdoing it with the weights, so much so that I could barely walk the next day.

This might surprise you, but even though I enjoy browsing through crime scene photos and studying the life cycles of parasites and vampire bats, I really can't bear the subject of war. Even though I have what some people may think are morbid and depraved tastes, the cruelty, the carnage and the waste of war are too much, even for me, to stand. I am certainly no Iris Chang, who apparently would pester and beg her grandparents for stories of the Rape of Nanking, an event of which they were the unfortunate eyewitnesses. As a child, she would sit at their knee and listen raptly to their sickening descriptions like they were treasured bedtime stories. Personally, I don’t like such knowledge rattling around in my head. That kind of information tends to be like some sort of opportunistic infection, lying in wait to attack and fill me with despair when I’m depressed, sick or weak. Perhaps this is what happened with Iris Chang, who committed suicide after she drove herself to exhaustion interviewing survivors of the Bataan Death March for her last project.

Despite my aversion to war reading, lately I've been really into the columns of Gary Brecher, The War Nerd. He probably doesn’t exist – people suspect he is a literary collaboration, a nom de guerre of the Exile's Mark Ames and John Dolan – but the column is brilliantly informative and, despite the grim subject matter, hilarious. He has scathing opinions about the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into in Iraq, writes stuff about North Korea that will keep you awake at night, and is highly politically incorrect. This is an excerpt from one of my favorite columns, Colombia: One Hundred Years of Slaughtertude.

There are some countries that turn into psycho killers once they put on a uniform, but wouldn't even run a yellow light once they're in civvies again. Two classic examples: the Japanese and Germans. The Japanese did things in China that just don't bear thinkin' about...beheading contests, sword practice on pregnant Chinese prisoners, baby-bayoneting volleyball -- but those same soldiers went home and turned into shy little salary-men who wouldn't jaywalk, never mind hurt anybody. Same with the Germans: let'em loose in a gray helmet and they think up stuff that'd make Saddam ashamed -- but back home in Dusseldorf they'd die before they'd drop a popsicle stick on the sidewalk.

I thought about this column the other day when I was commuting to work on my bicycle. I had inched into the crosswalk to let a car pass by me and take a right turn. A German man walked by and said, “Ja! You’re over the line.” I was no more than 5 inches into the crosswalk, but this was enough to warrant a public scolding from a German. I’m glad that I don’t live in such a terribly rigid and repressed society like Japan or Germany. All that human nature tapped down leaks out in other ways, like rape manga, war atrocities and scheisse porn.

I Heart the War Nerd

I have two televisions set up next to each other so I can watch movies while I do a taped workout, and although it helps make the workouts go faster, I end up giving them both only my half assed attention. The other day I finally watched Shaving Ryan’s Saving Private Ryan, a movie I have been avoiding for years. I had so much adrenalin coursing through me during the Omaha Beach scene that I didn’t realize I was seriously overdoing it with the weights, so much so that I could barely walk the next day.

This might surprise you, but even though I enjoy browsing through crime scene photos and studying the life cycles of parasites and vampire bats, I really can't bear the subject of war. Even though I have what some people may think are morbid and depraved tastes, the cruelty, the carnage and the waste of war are too much, even for me, to stand. I am certainly no Iris Chang, who apparently would pester and beg her grandparents for stories of the Rape of Nanking, an event of which they were the unfortunate eyewitnesses. As a child, she would sit at their knee and listen raptly to their sickening descriptions like they were treasured bedtime stories. Personally, I don’t like such knowledge rattling around in my head. That kind of information tends to be like some sort of opportunistic infection, lying in wait to attack and fill me with despair when I’m depressed, sick or weak. Perhaps this is what happened with Iris Chang, who committed suicide after she drove herself to exhaustion interviewing survivors of the Bataan Death March for her last project.

Despite my aversion to war reading, lately I've been really into the columns of Gary Brecher, The War Nerd. He probably doesn’t exist – people suspect he is a literary collaboration, a nom de guerre of the Exile's Mark Ames and John Dolan – but the column is brilliantly informative and, despite the grim subject matter, hilarious. He has scathing opinions about the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into in Iraq, writes stuff about North Korea that will keep you awake at night, and is highly politically incorrect. This is an excerpt from one of my favorite columns, Colombia: One Hundred Years of Slaughtertude.

There are some countries that turn into psycho killers once they put on a uniform, but wouldn't even run a yellow light once they're in civvies again. Two classic examples: the Japanese and Germans. The Japanese did things in China that just don't bear thinkin' about...beheading contests, sword practice on pregnant Chinese prisoners, baby-bayoneting volleyball -- but those same soldiers went home and turned into shy little salary-men who wouldn't jaywalk, never mind hurt anybody. Same with the Germans: let'em loose in a gray helmet and they think up stuff that'd make Saddam ashamed -- but back home in Dusseldorf they'd die before they'd drop a popsicle stick on the sidewalk.

I thought about this column the other day when I was commuting to work on my bicycle. I had inched into the crosswalk to let a car pass by me and take a right turn. A German man walked by and said, “Ja! You’re over the line.” I was no more than 5 inches into the crosswalk, but this was enough to warrant a public scolding from a German. I’m glad that I don’t live in such a terribly rigid and repressed society like Japan or Germany. All that human nature tapped down leaks out in other ways, like rape manga, war atrocities and scheisse porn.

Typing Pool

Despite the myriad classes the library offers, many patrons refuse to use computer word processing. Because one of the library’s missions is to help these people left behind by technology’s inexorable advance, the library offers typewriters for these public to use. Because repair and service contracts are increasingly hard to come by, however, the number of typewriters in this system has lately dwindled down to one. I’m afraid soon our last typewriter will become out of commission and these people will be forced to adapt. In the meantime, this typewriter is in great demand, and there is always a line of restive patrons waiting to use it.

I thought that these patrons preferred the typewriter because they didn’t know how to use word processing, but the security guards informed me that many patrons refuse to use computers because they're fearful government or some other sort of agency or organization will monitor them through the computers.

One woman complained to the guards that every time she went to use the typewriter she would fall asleep. She blamed this on her enemies, many of whom happened to be competing for the typewriter in line with her, rather than on the hot, rather airless glassed in office where the typewriter resides. Another woman claimed that she and Vice President Dick Cheney collaborated on an invention together and it’s an issue of national security that she contact him. Every day, as soon as the library doors open she races to get in line for the typewriter so she can write Dick Cheney long letters.

Because there are so many paranoid people in line eager to pound out their manifestos, complaint forms to government agencies, etc., the situation can become volatile. Because of the high levels of paranoia, many in line consider eye contact a prying act of aggression, and fist fights and shoving matches erupt occasionally. I've also found that conspiracy case nuts are the least tolerant and most dismissive of conspiracy theories that differ from their own. In any case, the desk near the line for the typewriter is the best seat in the house for paranoid watching and conspiracy theory eavesdropping.

Typing Pool

Despite the myriad classes the library offers, many patrons refuse to use computer word processing. Because one of the library’s missions is to help these people left behind by technology’s inexorable advance, the library offers typewriters for these public to use. Because repair and service contracts are increasingly hard to come by, however, the number of typewriters in this system has lately dwindled down to one. I’m afraid soon our last typewriter will become out of commission and these people will be forced to adapt. In the meantime, this typewriter is in great demand, and there is always a line of restive patrons waiting to use it.

I thought that these patrons preferred the typewriter because they didn’t know how to use word processing, but the security guards informed me that many patrons refuse to use computers because they're fearful government or some other sort of agency or organization will monitor them through the computers.

One woman complained to the guards that every time she went to use the typewriter she would fall asleep. She blamed this on her enemies, many of whom happened to be competing for the typewriter in line with her, rather than on the hot, rather airless glassed in office where the typewriter resides. Another woman claimed that she and Vice President Dick Cheney collaborated on an invention together and it’s an issue of national security that she contact him. Every day, as soon as the library doors open she races to get in line for the typewriter so she can write Dick Cheney long letters.

Because there are so many paranoid people in line eager to pound out their manifestos, complaint forms to government agencies, etc., the situation can become volatile. Because of the high levels of paranoia, many in line consider eye contact a prying act of aggression, and fist fights and shoving matches erupt occasionally. I've also found that conspiracy case nuts are the least tolerant and most dismissive of conspiracy theories that differ from their own. In any case, the desk near the line for the typewriter is the best seat in the house for paranoid watching and conspiracy theory eavesdropping.

The Stench

Lately I’ve been charged with pulling older books in the new fiction section. I really enjoy the task and find it deeply relaxing, almost meditative. I receive great tactile pleasure from running my fingers across books spines and shifting and rearranging the books from shelf to shelf. Unfortunately, the back of the section is an inviting place for the homeless to nap and for junkies to enjoy a nice heroin doze. Often they will shoot me a bleary stink eye if I drop a book or disturb them in their favorite haunt.

The air is thick with the smell of hair grease, fortified wine tinged sweat, unwashed body, clothes that haven’t been changed in months, perhaps years, wet wool, and that curious metallic odor of mental illness. It is a heady symphony of odors both acrid and cloying and it permeates your nostrils, your clothes, your hair and your memory. The odors overwhelm our HVAC system and I could make a case that the odor situation is becoming an OSHA issue.

One of our pages who works three different jobs told me that his girlfriend can always tell he's been at the library because his clothes reek. She makes him leave them outside the door, like I used to do when I would go to the bars and my clothes would reek of cigarette smoke. I remember how a friend who dated a nurse could always tell when his girlfriend did a round at the burn unit, because the odor of burned human flesh would permeate the fibers of her clothes. Or how a colleague told me that to this day he will still unconsciously hold his breath when his brother walks by, a conditioned response because of the stench his brother would throw off when he worked at a chicken processing plant one summer twenty years ago.

Private, free, no strings attached showers abound in this area, as do places to acquire free clothing. By no strings I mean that the people who use the showers face neither condescending nor humiliating requirements to use them. Sobriety is not a stipulation, there is no gospel preaching, no gauntlet of sanctimonious, smugly cheerful do-gooders (God spare me and all of humanity from this type) - none of the regular humiliations the homeless must endure and surely resent in order to receive charity. Why don’t they avail themselves of these showers? The only parallel I can draw is to animals that stop grooming themselves when they’re very sick or dying. Yet we allow these people to rot in their stench like not to do so is a violation of their inalienable rights. I guess that’s the society we live in.

Smells are life. I enjoy rich, pungent odors: Morbier cheese, the carcinogenic smell of gasoline when I fill up my car, the odor of books burning and decomposing from acid treated paper, the smell of mulch, horse sweat when I worked at the stables, but I often wish I could shut my nostrils like I do my eyes. That way I wouldn’t have had to endure at an old job a colleague who doused herself with some cheap, chemical perfume that clawed at my nostrils and choked my throat. I could never identify the brand, but I’m suspecting one of those awful ones named after a celebrity, like J-Lo. How depressing that anyone buys that shit.

Sometimes my sense of smell provides me with information I wish I didn’t know, knowledge that puts me in an ethical quandary. One time a yuppie soccer mom type surrounded by children approached the desk. Her breath was flammable with vodka fumes at 3:00 in the afternoon. I felt like saying to her, “It’s a myth that vodka is odorless, so whom do you think you’re fooling?” All I could wonder about the rest of the afternoon was if all of those kids were going to pile in a van piloted by this woman. What is my obligation to interfere?

One time a toddler crawled in my lap at one of the branches where I was substituting. His teeth were rotten and stained brown like a betel nut addict, and the memory of that sweet, putrid stench makes my mouth fill with water as I type this. I guess his parents were putting him to bed with a bottle of juice each night and the sugar had rotted his teeth. Was this child in agony from his rotting and abscessed teeth? If so, did he think that this suffering was just part of existence, a fact of life? How or is it even my place to explain to his parents, who didn’t speak any English, about free dental care? Do I unleash the blunt tool of social services on this family whose name I don’t even know and whom I might never see again at the library?

Strong odors at the library are an occupational hazard to which I should probably just resign myself. And on the bright side, at least if people reek, they won't be able to sneak up on me in the stacks.

The Stench

Lately I’ve been charged with pulling older books in the new fiction section. I really enjoy the task and find it deeply relaxing, almost meditative. I receive great tactile pleasure from running my fingers across books spines and shifting and rearranging the books from shelf to shelf. Unfortunately, the back of the section is an inviting place for the homeless to nap and for junkies to enjoy a nice heroin doze. Often they will shoot me a bleary stink eye if I drop a book or disturb them in their favorite haunt.

The air is thick with the smell of hair grease, fortified wine tinged sweat, unwashed body, clothes that haven’t been changed in months, perhaps years, wet wool, and that curious metallic odor of mental illness. It is a heady symphony of odors both acrid and cloying and it permeates your nostrils, your clothes, your hair and your memory. The odors overwhelm our HVAC system and I could make a case that the odor situation is becoming an OSHA issue.

One of our pages who works three different jobs told me that his girlfriend can always tell he's been at the library because his clothes reek. She makes him leave them outside the door, like I used to do when I would go to the bars and my clothes would reek of cigarette smoke. I remember how a friend who dated a nurse could always tell when his girlfriend did a round at the burn unit, because the odor of burned human flesh would permeate the fibers of her clothes. Or how a colleague told me that to this day he will still unconsciously hold his breath when his brother walks by, a conditioned response because of the stench his brother would throw off when he worked at a chicken processing plant one summer twenty years ago.

Private, free, no strings attached showers abound in this area, as do places to acquire free clothing. By no strings I mean that the people who use the showers face neither condescending nor humiliating requirements to use them. Sobriety is not a stipulation, there is no gospel preaching, no gauntlet of sanctimonious, smugly cheerful do-gooders (God spare me and all of humanity from this type) - none of the regular humiliations the homeless must endure and surely resent in order to receive charity. Why don’t they avail themselves of these showers? The only parallel I can draw is to animals that stop grooming themselves when they’re very sick or dying. Yet we allow these people to rot in their stench like not to do so is a violation of their inalienable rights. I guess that’s the society we live in.

Smells are life. I enjoy rich, pungent odors: Morbier cheese, the carcinogenic smell of gasoline when I fill up my car, the odor of books burning and decomposing from acid treated paper, the smell of mulch, horse sweat when I worked at the stables, but I often wish I could shut my nostrils like I do my eyes. That way I wouldn’t have had to endure at an old job a colleague who doused herself with some cheap, chemical perfume that clawed at my nostrils and choked my throat. I could never identify the brand, but I’m suspecting one of those awful ones named after a celebrity, like J-Lo. How depressing that anyone buys that shit.

Sometimes my sense of smell provides me with information I wish I didn’t know, knowledge that puts me in an ethical quandary. One time a yuppie soccer mom type surrounded by children approached the desk. Her breath was flammable with vodka fumes at 3:00 in the afternoon. I felt like saying to her, “It’s a myth that vodka is odorless, so whom do you think you’re fooling?” All I could wonder about the rest of the afternoon was if all of those kids were going to pile in a van piloted by this woman. What is my obligation to interfere?

One time a toddler crawled in my lap at one of the branches where I was substituting. His teeth were rotten and stained brown like a betel nut addict, and the memory of that sweet, putrid stench makes my mouth fill with water as I type this. I guess his parents were putting him to bed with a bottle of juice each night and the sugar had rotted his teeth. Was this child in agony from his rotting and abscessed teeth? If so, did he think that this suffering was just part of existence, a fact of life? How or is it even my place to explain to his parents, who didn’t speak any English, about free dental care? Do I unleash the blunt tool of social services on this family whose name I don’t even know and whom I might never see again at the library?

Strong odors at the library are an occupational hazard to which I should probably just resign myself. And on the bright side, at least if people reek, they won't be able to sneak up on me in the stacks.

Daddy, Eugenia and I have something to tell you!

Am I the only one who snickers at this book's title and cover art? I mean, I know that the relentless Ms. Steel's latest effort is about the debutante season or something or other, but the double entendre, however unintended, is quite obvious to me. It doesn't help that the man looks taken aback, as if one of the girls is announcing something rather shocking about the nature of the two girls' relationship.

I'll read anything, and I mean anything, but I have yet to make it through any of Danielle Steel's incessantly expanding ouevre. It's not adequately trashy or racy to be entertaining enough for the escapist fare it's supposed to be, and the characters are just completely dull to me. I find serial wedder Danielle Steel's personal life much more fascinating, especially her pretentions to high society and her rough trade phase, which culminated in her prison marriage to serial rapist/recovering heroin addict/overall thug Danny Zugelder. A colleague's cousin was one of Zugelder's victims. He kidnapped her and spent the night raping her and extinguishing cigarettes on her breasts.

Daddy, Eugenia and I have something to tell you!

Am I the only one who snickers at this book's title and cover art? I mean, I know that the relentless Ms. Steel's latest effort is about the debutante season or something or other, but the double entendre, however unintended, is quite obvious to me. It doesn't help that the man looks taken aback, as if one of the girls is announcing something rather shocking about the nature of the two girls' relationship.

I'll read anything, and I mean anything, but I have yet to make it through any of Danielle Steel's incessantly expanding ouevre. It's not adequately trashy or racy to be entertaining enough for the escapist fare it's supposed to be, and the characters are just completely dull to me. I find serial wedder Danielle Steel's personal life much more fascinating, especially her pretentions to high society and her rough trade phase, which culminated in her prison marriage to serial rapist/recovering heroin addict/overall thug Danny Zugelder. A colleague's cousin was one of Zugelder's victims. He kidnapped her and spent the night raping her and extinguishing cigarettes on her breasts.

Trouserless Tuesday!

A colleague proclaimed yesterday Trouserless Tuesday. That morning she was watching people walk by her desk when it occurred to her, “Hmmmm, there’s something odd about that man. Why, he’s not wearing any pants!” A man with nothing but a t-shirt strolled right by her. He waved good naturedly and wished her good morning as he passed her desk. She called security, who promptly escorted him out.

Later I was at the desk when a man stormed up, seething with righteous indignation. “I want to speak to someone in administration. I am being unfairly harassed by your guards!”

“I’m sorry about that. Let me call someone for you now.” I could see our two female guards rolling their eyes as they slowly closed in on him.

“I asked them at the entrance whether my attire was acceptable. They said that it was. But now they’ve arbitrarily decided that it’s not and they’re kicking me out! They are going back on their word.”

He looked perfectly presentable in his button down oxford shirt, but when I peered down over the desk I saw that on his bottom half he was wearing a micromini kilt, a tiny swath of tartan about two inches in length that barely covered his inseam. He whipped around to the face the guards, and the fabric swirled up, exposing himself to me and the guards. “Are you telling me I can’t wear a kilt! It’s part of my cultural heritage! You’re discriminating. Stop this harassment! I demand to speak to a supervisor NOW!”

The guards led him away into the security office. They later told me that several other patrons complained that he was purposefully dropping pencils down in front of their chairs, then bending over and backing up his bare bottom, displaying it inches from their faces.


He reminded me of one of Jack Plotnick’s characters in Reno 911! Under the guise of a magician, carnie operator or puppeteer, he is always trying to unleash his perversion on an unsuspecting public. My favorite is when he portrays a carnival puppeteer who has a small portable stage attached to his waist. He announces that behind the curtained stage lies a magical, albino snake that “grows rigid in your grasp.” He tells the deputies sent out to investigate that they can't see the snake because "it's very sensitive to light and it's really more for women."

Trouserless Tuesday!

A colleague proclaimed yesterday Trouserless Tuesday. That morning she was watching people walk by her desk when it occurred to her, “Hmmmm, there’s something odd about that man. Why, he’s not wearing any pants!” A man with nothing but a t-shirt strolled right by her. He waved good naturedly and wished her good morning as he passed her desk. She called security, who promptly escorted him out.

Later I was at the desk when a man stormed up, seething with righteous indignation. “I want to speak to someone in administration. I am being unfairly harassed by your guards!”

“I’m sorry about that. Let me call someone for you now.” I could see our two female guards rolling their eyes as they slowly closed in on him.

“I asked them at the entrance whether my attire was acceptable. They said that it was. But now they’ve arbitrarily decided that it’s not and they’re kicking me out! They are going back on their word.”

He looked perfectly presentable in his button down oxford shirt, but when I peered down over the desk I saw that on his bottom half he was wearing a micromini kilt, a tiny swath of tartan about two inches in length that barely covered his inseam. He whipped around to the face the guards, and the fabric swirled up, exposing himself to me and the guards. “Are you telling me I can’t wear a kilt! It’s part of my cultural heritage! You’re discriminating. Stop this harassment! I demand to speak to a supervisor NOW!”

The guards led him away into the security office. They later told me that several other patrons complained that he was purposefully dropping pencils down in front of their chairs, then bending over and backing up his bare bottom, displaying it inches from their faces.


He reminded me of one of Jack Plotnick’s characters in Reno 911! Under the guise of a magician, carnie operator or puppeteer, he is always trying to unleash his perversion on an unsuspecting public. My favorite is when he portrays a carnival puppeteer who has a small portable stage attached to his waist. He announces that behind the curtained stage lies a magical, albino snake that “grows rigid in your grasp.” He tells the deputies sent out to investigate that they can't see the snake because "it's very sensitive to light and it's really more for women."

Phone vs Desk Reference

Some of my colleagues prefer answering the phones to the face to face interaction of the reference desk. Each has its pros and cons and inherent risks. At the desk, you can pick up all of the non verbal cues of the patron, so it’s easier to read and connect with people. On the desk you get to witness and interact with humanity in all of its resplendent and degraded and fascinating forms, from the criminally insane to wizened scholars to sweet children and elegant society matrons. Of course you’re physically more vulnerable on the desk, not to mention subjected to revolting smells beyond my power of description. Often it can be hard to shake a patron, like one off his meds on a manic upswing talking jag, or a nasty borderline who will turn you in her mind from her best friend to her worst enemy in a matter of seconds, or unreasonable yuppie moms who are under the mistaken impression that screaming at a civil servant will get them their way, or mentally unstable malcontents who desire a captive audience for their soapbox issue.

Angry bicycle messenger guy: “Do you know what the rich people would do if we took away all of their money?”

“Is this a reference question?”

Not listening, “They would die, of course! They would completely fall apart! This society hates the poor, and I should know! Rich people couldn’t survive if you took away all of their money and power - ”

“I’m sorry, Sir. There’s a line of people. Unless you have a specific question that I can help you answer?”

“Oh – O.K. But think about it! I’ll be back later.”

Obviously no one else in their life will listen to their tired old rant, but they still want and need to be heard, so we get the pleasure at the desk. In most cases, if you just smile and nod while they finish out their script they will wander away. My particular weakness at the desk is for lonely old men, men who obviously live alone and have stopped looking at themselves in the mirror. They don't have anyone to tell them that their fly is open, that their socks don't match, or they cut themselves shaving. Some of them smell as musty as an old cellar. For the most part they’re heartbreakingly kind and courteous, though, and so sweet and desperate for human contact, I have a hard time disengaging and keeping a professional distance and sending them on their way.

Although the phones can be interesting, misunderstandings arise more easily from its communication limitations. People also can have appalling phone manners, and chew food and smack gum and squabble with their children or spouses in my ear. Often they won’t even bother to turn down a blaring television. One regular who is running a small business from his home is a notorious multitasker who never extends you the courtesy of his undivided attention. You can hear him rummaging through papers, or taking calls on his other line, which he’ll then confuse the line on which he has the librarian. He also has all of these maddening habits like playing with the spit in his mouth, and once the librarian could hear the unmistakable sound of him urinating and flushing the toilet. My colleague was outraged. “Call me back when you’re not otherwise engaged!” The librarian slammed the phone down.

Some calls are vaguely obscene, and people who don’t know that we have caller ID are emboldened by the perceived anonymity to be ruder than they would dare to be to your face. But, you can always hang up on a person, while it’s a little more challenging to shake them at the reference desk. My overly active imagination always creates scenarios for the people on the other end of the phone line, like for the mellifluent African American man who calls to order various jazz CDs. He always has some cool jazz playing like Miles Davis or John Coltraine in the background, so I imagine him in a turtleneck swirling a glass of cognac in front of a fire place. Other times my imagination has a more morbid bent, and the scenarios I imagine are much darker.

A woman called whose voice sounded strangled by fat. She told me she had lost track of her children but she needed to find addresses for them. Through labored breathing she said, “Wait, I can get you their social security numbers, if that helps. I had to get their numbers all at once when I got them on the welfare.” I could hear rustling and she began to grunt with exertion. “Uggh... Wait a minute – I have this device, this gripper, you know? I think their cards are in one of these piles next to the bed. I’m going…to try…to reach them. Mmmmmhhh…Uggghh…Mmmmmmg.” I could hear rustling and things falling over. After a while she panted into the phone., “Got ‘em.” I could just see her, this morbidly obese woman trapped on a bed, the television blaring, papers and objects surrounding her in filthy piles.

My favorite call was handled by a colleague. A man with a deep voice asked where he was in line for the latest Harry Potter book.
“Sir, you are 75th in line.”
Unable to contain his excitement, he shouted off the phone, “Mommy! Guess what? I’m 75th in line!”

Phone vs Desk Reference

Some of my colleagues prefer answering the phones to the face to face interaction of the reference desk. Each has its pros and cons and inherent risks. At the desk, you can pick up all of the non verbal cues of the patron, so it’s easier to read and connect with people. On the desk you get to witness and interact with humanity in all of its resplendent and degraded and fascinating forms, from the criminally insane to wizened scholars to sweet children and elegant society matrons. Of course you’re physically more vulnerable on the desk, not to mention subjected to revolting smells beyond my power of description. Often it can be hard to shake a patron, like one off his meds on a manic upswing talking jag, or a nasty borderline who will turn you in her mind from her best friend to her worst enemy in a matter of seconds, or unreasonable yuppie moms who are under the mistaken impression that screaming at a civil servant will get them their way, or mentally unstable malcontents who desire a captive audience for their soapbox issue.

Angry bicycle messenger guy: “Do you know what the rich people would do if we took away all of their money?”

“Is this a reference question?”

Not listening, “They would die, of course! They would completely fall apart! This society hates the poor, and I should know! Rich people couldn’t survive if you took away all of their money and power - ”

“I’m sorry, Sir. There’s a line of people. Unless you have a specific question that I can help you answer?”

“Oh – O.K. But think about it! I’ll be back later.”

Obviously no one else in their life will listen to their tired old rant, but they still want and need to be heard, so we get the pleasure at the desk. In most cases, if you just smile and nod while they finish out their script they will wander away. My particular weakness at the desk is for lonely old men, men who obviously live alone and have stopped looking at themselves in the mirror. They don't have anyone to tell them that their fly is open, that their socks don't match, or they cut themselves shaving. Some of them smell as musty as an old cellar. For the most part they’re heartbreakingly kind and courteous, though, and so sweet and desperate for human contact, I have a hard time disengaging and keeping a professional distance and sending them on their way.

Although the phones can be interesting, misunderstandings arise more easily from its communication limitations. People also can have appalling phone manners, and chew food and smack gum and squabble with their children or spouses in my ear. Often they won’t even bother to turn down a blaring television. One regular who is running a small business from his home is a notorious multitasker who never extends you the courtesy of his undivided attention. You can hear him rummaging through papers, or taking calls on his other line, which he’ll then confuse the line on which he has the librarian. He also has all of these maddening habits like playing with the spit in his mouth, and once the librarian could hear the unmistakable sound of him urinating and flushing the toilet. My colleague was outraged. “Call me back when you’re not otherwise engaged!” The librarian slammed the phone down.

Some calls are vaguely obscene, and people who don’t know that we have caller ID are emboldened by the perceived anonymity to be ruder than they would dare to be to your face. But, you can always hang up on a person, while it’s a little more challenging to shake them at the reference desk. My overly active imagination always creates scenarios for the people on the other end of the phone line, like for the mellifluent African American man who calls to order various jazz CDs. He always has some cool jazz playing like Miles Davis or John Coltraine in the background, so I imagine him in a turtleneck swirling a glass of cognac in front of a fire place. Other times my imagination has a more morbid bent, and the scenarios I imagine are much darker.

A woman called whose voice sounded strangled by fat. She told me she had lost track of her children but she needed to find addresses for them. Through labored breathing she said, “Wait, I can get you their social security numbers, if that helps. I had to get their numbers all at once when I got them on the welfare.” I could hear rustling and she began to grunt with exertion. “Uggh... Wait a minute – I have this device, this gripper, you know? I think their cards are in one of these piles next to the bed. I’m going…to try…to reach them. Mmmmmhhh…Uggghh…Mmmmmmg.” I could hear rustling and things falling over. After a while she panted into the phone., “Got ‘em.” I could just see her, this morbidly obese woman trapped on a bed, the television blaring, papers and objects surrounding her in filthy piles.

My favorite call was handled by a colleague. A man with a deep voice asked where he was in line for the latest Harry Potter book.
“Sir, you are 75th in line.”
Unable to contain his excitement, he shouted off the phone, “Mommy! Guess what? I’m 75th in line!”

Bats have an impressive land speed

Go, bat, go! I’ve made no secret of my fascination with parasitism, but this interest also extends to other more benign forms of cooperation and symbiosis in the animal kingdom. Vampire bats live off the blood of other animals, but they are one of the few animals to practice what is known as reciprocal altruism. A vampire bat who has had a fruitful evening will regurgitate blood for less successful members of its colony. Vampire bats will starve to death in a matter of only a few days if they don’t feed, and every creature has a run of bad luck eventually, so this sort of sharing policy is good insurance for all. Cheaters are noted and evicted from the group.

A humorous image: a vampire bat will flutter down about 10 feet behind its victim (usually a cow or a horse) and then sneak up in this hunched tip toed waddle until it can latch on to the flesh behind its victim's tail. Bats can also run, though. Using the end of their wings like crutches, they can brachiate to great speeds. Scientists put some on a treadmill to measure their speed and were amazed at how fast the little devils could move.

At Rancho Transylvania, a farm/bat research facility in Mexico, a scientist is studying rare and endangered bats that feed exclusively on chickens. The bat will sneak up on a sleeping chicken, bite its toes, and lap up small amount of blood. Often the bats will make a cheeping sound like that of a chick, a sound that seems to soothe and quiet the chickens, as if to say, “Don’t mind us! Nobody but us (baby) chickens here!”

Bats have an impressive land speed

Go, bat, go! I’ve made no secret of my fascination with parasitism, but this interest also extends to other more benign forms of cooperation and symbiosis in the animal kingdom. Vampire bats live off the blood of other animals, but they are one of the few animals to practice what is known as reciprocal altruism. A vampire bat who has had a fruitful evening will regurgitate blood for less successful members of its colony. Vampire bats will starve to death in a matter of only a few days if they don’t feed, and every creature has a run of bad luck eventually, so this sort of sharing policy is good insurance for all. Cheaters are noted and evicted from the group.

A humorous image: a vampire bat will flutter down about 10 feet behind its victim (usually a cow or a horse) and then sneak up in this hunched tip toed waddle until it can latch on to the flesh behind its victim's tail. Bats can also run, though. Using the end of their wings like crutches, they can brachiate to great speeds. Scientists put some on a treadmill to measure their speed and were amazed at how fast the little devils could move.

At Rancho Transylvania, a farm/bat research facility in Mexico, a scientist is studying rare and endangered bats that feed exclusively on chickens. The bat will sneak up on a sleeping chicken, bite its toes, and lap up small amount of blood. Often the bats will make a cheeping sound like that of a chick, a sound that seems to soothe and quiet the chickens, as if to say, “Don’t mind us! Nobody but us (baby) chickens here!”

This Little Piggy Got Broken

Billy broke his sweet baby toe disporting himself with his tennis ball, his household god/significant other/magnificent obsession/teacher-mother-secret lover/preeeeciousss. He has to wear this ungainly cast for 6 weeks. He's not gnawing on the cast so at least he is spared the indignity of the lampshade. He is extremely high on rimadyl in this picture.

Our teen summer reading program just ended, and I've had a good time reading the book reviews the participants had to write to claim their various prizes. Some of them didn't even try, though.

The book I read was Ashley's Ashes by Frank McCourt. It is about a Jewish family's struggle from childhood. It was funny when the author wrote some of his experiences in a childish voice. They were a poor but loving family.

More later...

This Little Piggy Got Broken

Billy broke his sweet baby toe disporting himself with his tennis ball, his household god/significant other/magnificent obsession/teacher-mother-secret lover/preeeeciousss. He has to wear this ungainly cast for 6 weeks. He's not gnawing on the cast so at least he is spared the indignity of the lampshade. He is extremely high on rimadyl in this picture.

Our teen summer reading program just ended, and I've had a good time reading the book reviews the participants had to write to claim their various prizes. Some of them didn't even try, though.

The book I read was Ashley's Ashes by Frank McCourt. It is about a Jewish family's struggle from childhood. It was funny when the author wrote some of his experiences in a childish voice. They were a poor but loving family.

More later...

Reference Roundup

A young man approached the reference desk. "I have an infestation of roaches. Remember that movie Joe’s Apartment? It's like that, except the little bastards don't sing and dance, they just die in my cereal boxes. Help."

Whenever a patron asks how to get rid of roaches or some other pest, I always recommend Tiny Game Hunting. I have yet to have a man who is not delighted by the title, which must appeal to his sense of adventure, as if he is going on safari rather than, say, rid prize roses of aphids. I also always print out this article from the Straight Dope.

A Chinese man who bought some greeting cards in bulk called telephone reference. He thought the cards were blank, but when he opened them up he discovered they were inscribed, “From your secret pal.” Since his English was limited he didn’t understand what ‘secret pal’ meant, so I tried to explain that it’s perhaps someone who’s trying anonymously to cheer up a friend or a relative. I hesitated even to get into the creepy and stalker implications of sending cards anonymously as a “secret pal” but suggested that if he must use the cards to only do so with family members.

I had a difficult time trying to explain to a Chinese woman the different pronunciations of Warren Buffet (financial investor), buffet (to strike or beat), and buffet (piece of furniture, smorgasbord).

God, English is a bitch! I told her that since English sometimes comes up short, it will assimilate languages’ words, which accounts for some of the variations in pronunciations. Or, as Booker T. Washington said, “We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

"Is it more sanitary to be peed on or spit on?"
Don't know the reasons for this question, and I didn't care to ask. Spit is teeming with bacteria, but urine is quite sterile, so much so that it was actually used to clean wounds by Aztecs and drunk medicinally by Gandhi and, if you believe his daughter, J.D. Salinger. Licking your own wounds may be beneficial, though. Good old Cecil Adams answers the age old question about whose mouth is cleaner: a dog's or human's.

"Which is higher, the Atlantic or Pacific side of the Panama Canal?"
Tricky question! Because of tidal pull, mean sea level at the Pacific end of the canal is on average about 20 centimetres (8 in) higher than at the Atlantic end.

"How much urine does the average adult male pass a day?"
For a healthy man, 1 - 2 L per day.

The latest news on female circumcision. The patron claims he's a lawyer who’s interested in the subject from a human right’s standpoint, but I bet I have an unpleasant suspicion that he just wants to get a female librarian to talk to him about it and obtain photocopies of pictures of mutilated vaginas for him. I usually transfer him to the men in interlibrary loan to satisfy his research needs.

"What's Star Jones up to nowadays?"

Reference Roundup

A young man approached the reference desk. "I have an infestation of roaches. Remember that movie Joe’s Apartment? It's like that, except the little bastards don't sing and dance, they just die in my cereal boxes. Help."

Whenever a patron asks how to get rid of roaches or some other pest, I always recommend Tiny Game Hunting. I have yet to have a man who is not delighted by the title, which must appeal to his sense of adventure, as if he is going on safari rather than, say, rid prize roses of aphids. I also always print out this article from the Straight Dope.

A Chinese man who bought some greeting cards in bulk called telephone reference. He thought the cards were blank, but when he opened them up he discovered they were inscribed, “From your secret pal.” Since his English was limited he didn’t understand what ‘secret pal’ meant, so I tried to explain that it’s perhaps someone who’s trying anonymously to cheer up a friend or a relative. I hesitated even to get into the creepy and stalker implications of sending cards anonymously as a “secret pal” but suggested that if he must use the cards to only do so with family members.

I had a difficult time trying to explain to a Chinese woman the different pronunciations of Warren Buffet (financial investor), buffet (to strike or beat), and buffet (piece of furniture, smorgasbord).

God, English is a bitch! I told her that since English sometimes comes up short, it will assimilate languages’ words, which accounts for some of the variations in pronunciations. Or, as Booker T. Washington said, “We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

"Is it more sanitary to be peed on or spit on?"
Don't know the reasons for this question, and I didn't care to ask. Spit is teeming with bacteria, but urine is quite sterile, so much so that it was actually used to clean wounds by Aztecs and drunk medicinally by Gandhi and, if you believe his daughter, J.D. Salinger. Licking your own wounds may be beneficial, though. Good old Cecil Adams answers the age old question about whose mouth is cleaner: a dog's or human's.

"Which is higher, the Atlantic or Pacific side of the Panama Canal?"
Tricky question! Because of tidal pull, mean sea level at the Pacific end of the canal is on average about 20 centimetres (8 in) higher than at the Atlantic end.

"How much urine does the average adult male pass a day?"
For a healthy man, 1 - 2 L per day.

The latest news on female circumcision. The patron claims he's a lawyer who’s interested in the subject from a human right’s standpoint, but I bet I have an unpleasant suspicion that he just wants to get a female librarian to talk to him about it and obtain photocopies of pictures of mutilated vaginas for him. I usually transfer him to the men in interlibrary loan to satisfy his research needs.

"What's Star Jones up to nowadays?"

Bete Noire

E captured the dogs going beserker in the office over a black cat cutting through the neighbor's yard. When the cat noticed that the dogs barking at it, it froze and stared back with yellow, sulfuric eyes. When the cat realized the dogs couldn't reach it, the cat settled down and began insolently cleaning its privates while the dogs screamed and raged.

Bete Noire

E captured the dogs going beserker in the office over a black cat cutting through the neighbor's yard. When the cat noticed that the dogs barking at it, it froze and stared back with yellow, sulfuric eyes. When the cat realized the dogs couldn't reach it, the cat settled down and began insolently cleaning its privates while the dogs screamed and raged.

How ya' going to keep them down on the farm

A gloomy old Scandinavian man, his eyes pink rimmed and rheumy, wanted help locating his estranged daughter. He told me she was born and raised in his small farming town in South Dakota, but she had blown town in her late teens and never looked back. All I could think of was the scene in the Big Lebowski when a detective hired to find Tara Reid’s character questions the Dude and explains the situation.

“The Knutsens. It's a wandering daughter job. Bunny Lebowski, man. Her real name is Fawn Knutsen. Her parents want her back.” He reaches into his pocket and shows the Dude a photograph. "The Knutsens told me to show her this when I found her. The family farm. Outside of Moorhead, Minnesota. They think it'll make her homesick.”

The photo is of a desolate farm on a snow covered, windblasted wasteland. I always loved that scene because the detective is so sincere, as if that photograph of that frozen tundra dump would entice Tara Reid’s character, a gold digging former porn star living it up in L.A., back home. I printed off some matches of his daughter’s name from Zabbasearch and wished him luck.

How ya' going to keep them down on the farm

A gloomy old Scandinavian man, his eyes pink rimmed and rheumy, wanted help locating his estranged daughter. He told me she was born and raised in his small farming town in South Dakota, but she had blown town in her late teens and never looked back. All I could think of was the scene in the Big Lebowski when a detective hired to find Tara Reid’s character questions the Dude and explains the situation.

“The Knutsens. It's a wandering daughter job. Bunny Lebowski, man. Her real name is Fawn Knutsen. Her parents want her back.” He reaches into his pocket and shows the Dude a photograph. "The Knutsens told me to show her this when I found her. The family farm. Outside of Moorhead, Minnesota. They think it'll make her homesick.”

The photo is of a desolate farm on a snow covered, windblasted wasteland. I always loved that scene because the detective is so sincere, as if that photograph of that frozen tundra dump would entice Tara Reid’s character, a gold digging former porn star living it up in L.A., back home. I printed off some matches of his daughter’s name from Zabbasearch and wished him luck.

Land of Nod

I have a feeling that there’s another potent batch of heroin circulating through the city. I’ve noticed a lot of patrons dozing off in unlikely places, like at the 15 minute express computers, their heads sunk onto the keyboards. I've also come across several in a leaning stand against bookshelves in the stacks, delicately snoring, and returning from lunch the other day I saw a group of unconscious bodies bloodlessly strewn about some statuary outside like our own little Jonestown. Japanese tourists there to see the statuary were taking pictures of one of the women. She had a large urine stain on her pants and burst capillaries the size of carnations covering her face, a scene which just made my bosom SWELL with civic pride. On a more humorous note, one of the security guards described a man nodding off while operating his Jazzy outside the library. He was ramming it into parked cars at slow speed, and each time the Jazzy hit a car, or a meter, or when a pedestrian screamed at him after a near miss, he would jolt awake, but then almost immediately his head would sag and he would nod right back off. Because they’re not dying, I don’t believe it’s the deadly fentanyl mix, which has been sending hundreds of heroin users throughout the country straight off to Junkie Valhalla. And by the way, please check out the picture of the woman in the article. There's no way that that bitch is 32! Typical junkie veracity. And don't you love her junkie thinking when she admits that she's 'intrigued' by the incredible high the mix promises, even though her fellow drug addicts are dying like flies from it.

I prefer having the junkies come to the library to nod than to kick, but still, what a sorry nuisance. The guards reported apprehending a man trying to cook up heroin and Vicodin in the bathroom. I thought the entire reason the opiate in Vicodin was bonded with acetaminophen was to prevent junkies from cooking it up, but the junkie had heard that Vicodin injected with heroin made a good high so he gamely tried it. The result was that the pill cooked into a thick sludge, which clogged his needle up. Weeping in frustration, the junkie had resorted to jamming the needle into his arm savagely and repeatedly. When the guards found him, he was attacking and stabbing his arms like they were Janet Leigh .

One of my colleagues told me that a schizophrenic woman, a regular patron, wanted her library card number. My colleague said that she needed the woman’s ID to give her her number. She refused, hissing, “I don’t give my ID to DEAD people!" Jabbing her fingers at the librarians, she said, "You’re dead, and you’re dead and you’re dead, and I don't give my ID to dead people!” I thought that was hilarious until I remembered the scene from Terminator 2, when Sarah Connor is raving at her smug, smarmy psychiatrist and the orderlies, “You think you're alive and safe, but you're already dead. Everybody, you, him...everybody... you're all fucking dead!”

I certainly hope the schizophrenic patron doesn’t know something that we don’t.

Land of Nod

I have a feeling that there’s another potent batch of heroin circulating through the city. I’ve noticed a lot of patrons dozing off in unlikely places, like at the 15 minute express computers, their heads sunk onto the keyboards. I've also come across several in a leaning stand against bookshelves in the stacks, delicately snoring, and returning from lunch the other day I saw a group of unconscious bodies bloodlessly strewn about some statuary outside like our own little Jonestown. Japanese tourists there to see the statuary were taking pictures of one of the women. She had a large urine stain on her pants and burst capillaries the size of carnations covering her face, a scene which just made my bosom SWELL with civic pride. On a more humorous note, one of the security guards described a man nodding off while operating his Jazzy outside the library. He was ramming it into parked cars at slow speed, and each time the Jazzy hit a car, or a meter, or when a pedestrian screamed at him after a near miss, he would jolt awake, but then almost immediately his head would sag and he would nod right back off. Because they’re not dying, I don’t believe it’s the deadly fentanyl mix, which has been sending hundreds of heroin users throughout the country straight off to Junkie Valhalla. And by the way, please check out the picture of the woman in the article. There's no way that that bitch is 32! Typical junkie veracity. And don't you love her junkie thinking when she admits that she's 'intrigued' by the incredible high the mix promises, even though her fellow drug addicts are dying like flies from it.

I prefer having the junkies come to the library to nod than to kick, but still, what a sorry nuisance. The guards reported apprehending a man trying to cook up heroin and Vicodin in the bathroom. I thought the entire reason the opiate in Vicodin was bonded with acetaminophen was to prevent junkies from cooking it up, but the junkie had heard that Vicodin injected with heroin made a good high so he gamely tried it. The result was that the pill cooked into a thick sludge, which clogged his needle up. Weeping in frustration, the junkie had resorted to jamming the needle into his arm savagely and repeatedly. When the guards found him, he was attacking and stabbing his arms like they were Janet Leigh .

One of my colleagues told me that a schizophrenic woman, a regular patron, wanted her library card number. My colleague said that she needed the woman’s ID to give her her number. She refused, hissing, “I don’t give my ID to DEAD people!" Jabbing her fingers at the librarians, she said, "You’re dead, and you’re dead and you’re dead, and I don't give my ID to dead people!” I thought that was hilarious until I remembered the scene from Terminator 2, when Sarah Connor is raving at her smug, smarmy psychiatrist and the orderlies, “You think you're alive and safe, but you're already dead. Everybody, you, him...everybody... you're all fucking dead!”

I certainly hope the schizophrenic patron doesn’t know something that we don’t.

Ordure du Jour

We've suffered an exasperating streak of bio-vandalism lately, acts which I find childish, malicious and psychotic in equal measure. I won't go into too much nauseating detail - even I have my limits - but let me just say that employees keep finding book pages that have been ripped out and used for 'intimate hygiene' littering the stacks, and last night I inadvertently rolled my bike through a foamy slick of urine right outside the employee exit, a favorite bathroom destination for the homeless. Public toilets abound in this area, including at least 50 roomy stalls inside the library, but I guess defecating and urinating right outside the employee door is the antisocial's and/or homeless’ petty little way of sticking it to the library employees, of expressing their institutional anger at “the man.” I thought I heard that Singapore, to discourage public urination, started somehow running an electrical charge against the side of certain buildings and structures so that a nasty current would run back up the steam of urine and jolt the pisser. I can find no confirmation of this, however, and so it must just be an urban myth about Singapore, which is increasingly sounding more and more like my idea of utopia, as fascist and full of caning as it may be.

The other day a patron attempted to smuggle several reference books out of the library. He had the books shoved up against his body under his sweater like a suicide bomber and the outlines of the book were clearly visible. The books triggered the security alarm and a guard asked him to step inside the security office. The thief refused and protested that he had to go to the bathroom. The security guard said he could go in a minute, but that he had to settle this matter first. The security guard led the patron into the office, but then the patron began clutching his sides and removing his pants. Before the guard could utter, “Don't you dare" or "Oh no you did-n’t” the patron dropped his pants, bent over and began spraying jets of black, tarry diarrhea, like a like squid emitting puddles of ink. I have to wonder if this was some sort of biological defense mechanism, because a friend of mine’s cat voided its bowels in much the same way when it was being chased by a coyote. In any case, the guard could do nothing more than allow the man to stay put and let nature take its course, so the man sat on the bench, naked from the waist down, for a good five minutes while his bowels spasmed out. In another case of outrageous leniency at the library, this man is only banned for a year.

Ordure du Jour

We've suffered an exasperating streak of bio-vandalism lately, acts which I find childish, malicious and psychotic in equal measure. I won't go into too much nauseating detail - even I have my limits - but let me just say that employees keep finding book pages that have been ripped out and used for 'intimate hygiene' littering the stacks, and last night I inadvertently rolled my bike through a foamy slick of urine right outside the employee exit, a favorite bathroom destination for the homeless. Public toilets abound in this area, including at least 50 roomy stalls inside the library, but I guess defecating and urinating right outside the employee door is the antisocial's and/or homeless’ petty little way of sticking it to the library employees, of expressing their institutional anger at “the man.” I thought I heard that Singapore, to discourage public urination, started somehow running an electrical charge against the side of certain buildings and structures so that a nasty current would run back up the steam of urine and jolt the pisser. I can find no confirmation of this, however, and so it must just be an urban myth about Singapore, which is increasingly sounding more and more like my idea of utopia, as fascist and full of caning as it may be.

The other day a patron attempted to smuggle several reference books out of the library. He had the books shoved up against his body under his sweater like a suicide bomber and the outlines of the book were clearly visible. The books triggered the security alarm and a guard asked him to step inside the security office. The thief refused and protested that he had to go to the bathroom. The security guard said he could go in a minute, but that he had to settle this matter first. The security guard led the patron into the office, but then the patron began clutching his sides and removing his pants. Before the guard could utter, “Don't you dare" or "Oh no you did-n’t” the patron dropped his pants, bent over and began spraying jets of black, tarry diarrhea, like a like squid emitting puddles of ink. I have to wonder if this was some sort of biological defense mechanism, because a friend of mine’s cat voided its bowels in much the same way when it was being chased by a coyote. In any case, the guard could do nothing more than allow the man to stay put and let nature take its course, so the man sat on the bench, naked from the waist down, for a good five minutes while his bowels spasmed out. In another case of outrageous leniency at the library, this man is only banned for a year.

Dorothy Parker Quote of the Day

When asked as part of a word game to use the word horticulture, Parker shot off, "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."

Dorothy Parker Quote of the Day

When asked as part of a word game to use the word horticulture, Parker shot off, "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."

In Praise of the Battleaxe

Granny Weatherall, the subject of my last post, is a fine example of the battleaxe, a certain forceful type of dowager who wields an incredible amount of power and respect both within their family and society. Although a bit gruff, dour and sharp tounged, a battleaxe is wise and highly sought after for advice on both family and financial matters. One can always count on them to set oneself straight.

From "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall":

She wasn’t too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty miles for advice when one of the children jumped the track, and Jimmy still dropped in and talked things over: “Now, Mammy, you’ve a good business head, I want to know what you think of this?…

A battleaxe makes a fine, reassuring role model for young women. Why fear aging and loss of beauty and physical allure if you get to become a battleaxe? Unlike most elderly in this society, they’re not marginalized. They haven't subsumed themselves completely to a man like Nancy Reagan. They're not pitifully frightening like that plastic surgery victim/mutton dressed as lamb Helen Gurley Brown, a woman who prattles on about her sex life in her seventies, as if anyone would be interested in hearing about that. Battleaxes age gracefully and with dignity. They dress age appropriately and are often stout. In the South, they’re president of the charity clubs and arbiters of society rules and decorum. They possess the power to decide the social fates of young women, as Margaret Mitchell discovered when the old battleaxes blackballed her from the Junior League after she scandalized them by doing something called the Apache Dance at a debutante party. In Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler knows that these women will determine whether his daughter Bonnie would be making her debut and in whose houses she will be received, so he begins paying court to them as soon as his daughter is in her pram. Gone with the Wind, like the South, is replete with battleaxes. I wrote about my favorite, Grandma Fontaine, a few years ago.

Battleaxes are not necessarily part of white high society. African Americans have their versions of the archetype with Madea and Big Momma. In Night of the Hunter, Lillian Gish portrays Rachel Cooper, an old country widow who takes in and fosters stray children during the Great Depression. She’s gentle and nurturing but tough and sure of her place in the world. Surrounded by her adopted children she says, “I'm a strong tree with branches for many birds. I'm good for something in this world and I know it, too.” She protects the children during the all night stand off with Robert Mitchum's character, a psychopathic preacher who is pursuing two of the children. Knowing he is hiding somewhere on the porch, she rocks all night in a rocking chair, shotgun in her lap. Accustomed to staying up all night nursing sick children and holding deathbed and childbirth vigils, she patiently and stoically outlasts Robert Mitchum. When he can stand to wait no longer, he shrieks out of his hiding place and charges her. She shoots him and then calls the Sheriff. "You better get out here. I've got something trapped in my barn."

Catherine Mingott in the Age of Innocence is another grand battleaxe from literature. Her immense weight, which has prevented her from wrinkling or appearing to age, has also incapacitated her to the point where she never leaves her house. Although confined to her mansion, she wields incredible power and controls her social sphere and her family, which visit her like attendants to a queen bee. She is the standard and enforcer of propriety. My favorite scene is when her niece comes to her to beg her to give her money to prevent a financial scandal caused by her husband, "to back up her husband, see them through--not to desert them, as she called it--in fact to induce the whole family to cover and condone their monstrous dishonour." Catherine, who has the rectitude and ideals of a Roman matron, will hear none of it. "I said to her: "Honour's always been honour, and honesty honesty, in Manson Mingott's house, and will be till I'm carried out of it feet first... And when she said: `But my name, Auntie--my name's Regina Dallas,' I said: `It was Beaufort when he covered you with jewels, and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's covered you with shame!"

Squinty, prune faced Ruby Thewes from Cold Mountain, although too young to be considered a true battleaxe, is well on her way to becoming one. We are introduced to her when she walks up to the porch where the refined to the point of uselessness Ada is being held hostage by a tyrannical rooster. Ignoring Ada’s warnings, Ruby marches right up to the rooster and wrings his neck. “Let’s put ‘im in a pot.” Ruby is practical, self sufficient and tough. She whips the farm back into shape and saves Ada from starvation. Judging by the way Ruby's husband snaps to when she tells him to get the cider at the picnic at the end of the movie, the viewer knows that Ruby will make a fine battleaxe in years to come.

In Praise of the Battleaxe

Granny Weatherall, the subject of my last post, is a fine example of the battleaxe, a certain forceful type of dowager who wields an incredible amount of power and respect both within their family and society. Although a bit gruff, dour and sharp tounged, a battleaxe is wise and highly sought after for advice on both family and financial matters. One can always count on them to set oneself straight.

From "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall":

She wasn’t too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty miles for advice when one of the children jumped the track, and Jimmy still dropped in and talked things over: “Now, Mammy, you’ve a good business head, I want to know what you think of this?…

A battleaxe makes a fine, reassuring role model for young women. Why fear aging and loss of beauty and physical allure if you get to become a battleaxe? Unlike most elderly in this society, they’re not marginalized. They haven't subsumed themselves completely to a man like Nancy Reagan. They're not pitifully frightening like that plastic surgery victim/mutton dressed as lamb Helen Gurley Brown, a woman who prattles on about her sex life in her seventies, as if anyone would be interested in hearing about that. Battleaxes age gracefully and with dignity. They dress age appropriately and are often stout. In the South, they’re president of the charity clubs and arbiters of society rules and decorum. They possess the power to decide the social fates of young women, as Margaret Mitchell discovered when the old battleaxes blackballed her from the Junior League after she scandalized them by doing something called the Apache Dance at a debutante party. In Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler knows that these women will determine whether his daughter Bonnie would be making her debut and in whose houses she will be received, so he begins paying court to them as soon as his daughter is in her pram. Gone with the Wind, like the South, is replete with battleaxes. I wrote about my favorite, Grandma Fontaine, a few years ago.

Battleaxes are not necessarily part of white high society. African Americans have their versions of the archetype with Madea and Big Momma. In Night of the Hunter, Lillian Gish portrays Rachel Cooper, an old country widow who takes in and fosters stray children during the Great Depression. She’s gentle and nurturing but tough and sure of her place in the world. Surrounded by her adopted children she says, “I'm a strong tree with branches for many birds. I'm good for something in this world and I know it, too.” She protects the children during the all night stand off with Robert Mitchum's character, a psychopathic preacher who is pursuing two of the children. Knowing he is hiding somewhere on the porch, she rocks all night in a rocking chair, shotgun in her lap. Accustomed to staying up all night nursing sick children and holding deathbed and childbirth vigils, she patiently and stoically outlasts Robert Mitchum. When he can stand to wait no longer, he shrieks out of his hiding place and charges her. She shoots him and then calls the Sheriff. "You better get out here. I've got something trapped in my barn."

Catherine Mingott in the Age of Innocence is another grand battleaxe from literature. Her immense weight, which has prevented her from wrinkling or appearing to age, has also incapacitated her to the point where she never leaves her house. Although confined to her mansion, she wields incredible power and controls her social sphere and her family, which visit her like attendants to a queen bee. She is the standard and enforcer of propriety. My favorite scene is when her niece comes to her to beg her to give her money to prevent a financial scandal caused by her husband, "to back up her husband, see them through--not to desert them, as she called it--in fact to induce the whole family to cover and condone their monstrous dishonour." Catherine, who has the rectitude and ideals of a Roman matron, will hear none of it. "I said to her: "Honour's always been honour, and honesty honesty, in Manson Mingott's house, and will be till I'm carried out of it feet first... And when she said: `But my name, Auntie--my name's Regina Dallas,' I said: `It was Beaufort when he covered you with jewels, and it's got to stay Beaufort now that he's covered you with shame!"

Squinty, prune faced Ruby Thewes from Cold Mountain, although too young to be considered a true battleaxe, is well on her way to becoming one. We are introduced to her when she walks up to the porch where the refined to the point of uselessness Ada is being held hostage by a tyrannical rooster. Ignoring Ada’s warnings, Ruby marches right up to the rooster and wrings his neck. “Let’s put ‘im in a pot.” Ruby is practical, self sufficient and tough. She whips the farm back into shape and saves Ada from starvation. Judging by the way Ruby's husband snaps to when she tells him to get the cider at the picnic at the end of the movie, the viewer knows that Ruby will make a fine battleaxe in years to come.

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

I’m still enjoying the literature anthology I picked up in a thrift store last month, and am happy to see that it includes the wonderful short story The Jilting of Granny Weatherall. I adore Katherine Anne Porter, and find her so superior to the extremely overrated but now more famous Southern writer Eudora Welty, although I do enjoy her photography.), I found the Optimist’s Daughter a tedious, soporific experience, and after reading it, American Pastoral, 1000 Acres and Middlesex and I have become deeply suspicious and wary of Pulitzer Prize fiction winners.

The recent death of my mother, a cousin, my favorite patron and the extended and scary convalescence of a formative grandmother have made this an extremely difficult year for me, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted or needed to revisit any stories about Southern matriarchs on their deathbeds, but I’m glad I did. Told mostly in a stream of consciousness style that drifts into occasional delirium, the story is about the experiences of a dying, 80 year old Southern matriarch. Like her name implies, she is a model of endurance and perseverance, a real battleaxe, but through flashbacks, you learn that she was jilted at the altar when she was twenty, an event from which she has never truly recovered. She eventually married another man and made a good, fulfilling life for herself and their children. She transformed from a belle with a painted fan to a woman who "fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the post holes herself and clamping the wires with just a negro boy to help," a woman who rode "country roads in the winter when women had their babies...sitting up nights with sick horses and sick negroes and sick children and hardly ever losing one." In her old age she is greatly respected for her wisdom and common sense, and family and friends constantly seek her advice. The memory of her jilting still preoccupies her, however, and when her time comes near and death is not exactly what she has envisioned, she assumes she’s being jilted once again, but this time by Jesus. She’s wrong, though, God's coming for her, just not in the form that she recognizes and presumes. Instead of Jesus, she starts to 'see' people like her favorite child, Hapsy, who died in childbirth years before, baby on her arm. Her stubborn will and pride are traits which allowed her to survive the trauma of the first jilting, but they have also blinded her a bit. When she dies, she does so bitterly but on her own terms, by stretching herself with a deep breath and forcefully "blowing out the light" herself. Even though she dies in despair, erroneously believing that she has been stood up and betrayed once again, the reader knows that she is going to be all right, that loved ones who have passed on before her have gathered to lead her into the hereafter.

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

I’m still enjoying the literature anthology I picked up in a thrift store last month, and am happy to see that it includes the wonderful short story The Jilting of Granny Weatherall. I adore Katherine Anne Porter, and find her so superior to the extremely overrated but now more famous Southern writer Eudora Welty, although I do enjoy her photography.), I found the Optimist’s Daughter a tedious, soporific experience, and after reading it, American Pastoral, 1000 Acres and Middlesex and I have become deeply suspicious and wary of Pulitzer Prize fiction winners.

The recent death of my mother, a cousin, my favorite patron and the extended and scary convalescence of a formative grandmother have made this an extremely difficult year for me, so I wasn’t sure if I wanted or needed to revisit any stories about Southern matriarchs on their deathbeds, but I’m glad I did. Told mostly in a stream of consciousness style that drifts into occasional delirium, the story is about the experiences of a dying, 80 year old Southern matriarch. Like her name implies, she is a model of endurance and perseverance, a real battleaxe, but through flashbacks, you learn that she was jilted at the altar when she was twenty, an event from which she has never truly recovered. She eventually married another man and made a good, fulfilling life for herself and their children. She transformed from a belle with a painted fan to a woman who "fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the post holes herself and clamping the wires with just a negro boy to help," a woman who rode "country roads in the winter when women had their babies...sitting up nights with sick horses and sick negroes and sick children and hardly ever losing one." In her old age she is greatly respected for her wisdom and common sense, and family and friends constantly seek her advice. The memory of her jilting still preoccupies her, however, and when her time comes near and death is not exactly what she has envisioned, she assumes she’s being jilted once again, but this time by Jesus. She’s wrong, though, God's coming for her, just not in the form that she recognizes and presumes. Instead of Jesus, she starts to 'see' people like her favorite child, Hapsy, who died in childbirth years before, baby on her arm. Her stubborn will and pride are traits which allowed her to survive the trauma of the first jilting, but they have also blinded her a bit. When she dies, she does so bitterly but on her own terms, by stretching herself with a deep breath and forcefully "blowing out the light" herself. Even though she dies in despair, erroneously believing that she has been stood up and betrayed once again, the reader knows that she is going to be all right, that loved ones who have passed on before her have gathered to lead her into the hereafter.