Mannequin 2 - On the Move

I got a call the other day from a man who wanted a local mannequin manufacturer. When I could find no evidence of the company he angrily disputed my spelling of mannequin, insisting the word was spelled "manican." I told him that there was no company with either spelling and he seemed crestfallen. He then asked for the closest manufacturer. He wasn't interested in used mannequins, or mannequin stores. Only a manufactuer would do.

Eeeewwww. I got the creepiest vibe from him. There was this unseemly, yearning excitement in his voice, and I got the impression that he needed to speak to a manufactuere was going to make himself the perfect woman, manufactured to his specifications, one with a specially placed...pocket. Or perhaps he's going to give dress it up in fancy dress and keep a jar with a pickled human head next to it in a car in a storage unit like in Silence of the Lambs.

Mannequins have been the stuff of nightmares to me since that Twilight Zone episode about the mannequin on furlough. Those wretched Andrew McCarthy movies about them certainly didn’t improve my opinion of them either.

Quit staring at me!!! Quit it!

The Presumptuousness of Memory

A young man called the other day.

Hello, I’m trying to use the library’s databases to access the Wall Street Journal but the system won’t accept my library card.

All right, let’s try to see what's going. Please read me your library card’s barcode.

He rattled off a long number that wasn't even in the ballpark of one of my system's cards.

Hmmm. That doesn’t sound like one of ours. What you gave me has about 5 more digits than what ours have. Are you sure that the card is from our system? Did you ever lose your card and have it replaced?

No, this is definitely the card for your system. It even had expired and I had it renewed about 2 weeks ago.

Let me look you up by name. Well, you’re in the system, but that’s definitely not your card number. How odd. Let me read you your card number we have for you in our system.

That's definitely not my card number for your system. I couldn't be more sure.

How mysterious. What color is your card? Perhaps it’s some really old card and we’ve changed the system of barcodes to a shorter sequence.

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have the card in front of me. It’s at home and I’m calling from work so I’m reading the barcode from my memory. I'm sure. I have a photogenic memory.

Photogenic memory? Well, I think we’ve found the problem. (heavy sigh)

Wow. Maybe it’s just me, but when I’m working through my brain’s little troubleshooting flowchart, I at least try to see what I might be doing wrong on my end BEFORE I WASTE SOMEONE’S TIME AND MAKE MYSELF LOOK LIKE A TOTAL JACKASS.

The Presumptuousness of Memory

A young man called the other day.

Hello, I’m trying to use the library’s databases to access the Wall Street Journal but the system won’t accept my library card.

All right, let’s try to see what's going. Please read me your library card’s barcode.

He rattled off a long number that wasn't even in the ballpark of one of my system's cards.

Hmmm. That doesn’t sound like one of ours. What you gave me has about 5 more digits than what ours have. Are you sure that the card is from our system? Did you ever lose your card and have it replaced?

No, this is definitely the card for your system. It even had expired and I had it renewed about 2 weeks ago.

Let me look you up by name. Well, you’re in the system, but that’s definitely not your card number. How odd. Let me read you your card number we have for you in our system.

That's definitely not my card number for your system. I couldn't be more sure.

How mysterious. What color is your card? Perhaps it’s some really old card and we’ve changed the system of barcodes to a shorter sequence.

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t have the card in front of me. It’s at home and I’m calling from work so I’m reading the barcode from my memory. I'm sure. I have a photogenic memory.

Photogenic memory? Well, I think we’ve found the problem. (heavy sigh)

Wow. Maybe it’s just me, but when I’m working through my brain’s little troubleshooting flowchart, I at least try to see what I might be doing wrong on my end BEFORE I WASTE SOMEONE’S TIME AND MAKE MYSELF LOOK LIKE A TOTAL JACKASS.

If you've got a rockin' bone in your body...

E created this Youtube tribute to Billy Jack after being deeply inspired by John Parr's 80s power ballad Naughty Naughty.

The reviews of John Parr on Amazon are hilarious and appear to be written by Jim Anchower, my favorite Onion columnist.

If I had my own country, this would be the national anthem.That's what my girlfriend recently said to me while we were listening to John Parr's Don't Leave Your Mark On Me. I have to agree. I can imagine it at the olympics. All the other countries are introduced with their bland and boring national anthems. And then...Don't Leave Your Mark On Me. That would be the ultimate.

If you've got a single rocking bone in your body, you need this album in your collection - simple as that.

There was in 1984 and this was the first song on a mixed tape continuing with Don Henley's "All she wants to do is dance", then Glenn Frey's "The heat is on".

Will Ferrell as washed up monster Glenn Frey in the H. is O.

If you've got a rockin' bone in your body...

E created this Youtube tribute to Billy Jack after being deeply inspired by John Parr's 80s power ballad Naughty Naughty.

The reviews of John Parr on Amazon are hilarious and appear to be written by Jim Anchower, my favorite Onion columnist.

If I had my own country, this would be the national anthem.That's what my girlfriend recently said to me while we were listening to John Parr's Don't Leave Your Mark On Me. I have to agree. I can imagine it at the olympics. All the other countries are introduced with their bland and boring national anthems. And then...Don't Leave Your Mark On Me. That would be the ultimate.

If you've got a single rocking bone in your body, you need this album in your collection - simple as that.

There was in 1984 and this was the first song on a mixed tape continuing with Don Henley's "All she wants to do is dance", then Glenn Frey's "The heat is on".

Will Ferrell as washed up monster Glenn Frey in the H. is O.

It’s Hard out Here for an Information Professional

We work the reference desk in teams. The other day one of the security guards strolled up and leaned into the desk. I was stationed with a colleague who resembles me, enough so that patrons often confuse us.

“A patron complained that one of you, he wouldn’t say which one, is calling his daughter in Los Angeles and telling the most despicable lies about him.”

He motioned his head toward the security gates. A man dressed in a long brown monk’s cowl was peeking out from behind one of the gates, glaring at us.

“Oh, please assure him that we would never do such a thing.”

“By all means.”

The security guard winked at us and returned to the man.

My colleague and I had a good laugh until I thought about how our patron might try to teach one of us a lesson about slander by splitting our skulls open with the hickory walking staff he is allowed to bring in the library. Fatalism is a good philosophy for this job and one of my favorite tenets is “worry is the misuse of imagination" but sometimes it’s hard not to brood to despondency.

It’s Hard out Here for an Information Professional

We work the reference desk in teams. The other day one of the security guards strolled up and leaned into the desk. I was stationed with a colleague who resembles me, enough so that patrons often confuse us.

“A patron complained that one of you, he wouldn’t say which one, is calling his daughter in Los Angeles and telling the most despicable lies about him.”

He motioned his head toward the security gates. A man dressed in a long brown monk’s cowl was peeking out from behind one of the gates, glaring at us.

“Oh, please assure him that we would never do such a thing.”

“By all means.”

The security guard winked at us and returned to the man.

My colleague and I had a good laugh until I thought about how our patron might try to teach one of us a lesson about slander by splitting our skulls open with the hickory walking staff he is allowed to bring in the library. Fatalism is a good philosophy for this job and one of my favorite tenets is “worry is the misuse of imagination" but sometimes it’s hard not to brood to despondency.

Career Highlights

A few years a colleague cut through a rather lonesome, out-of-the-way section of the back offices. When she turned a corner she saw one of the older librarians primly seated at a typewriter typing on index cards. The librarian was so absorbed in her task that she was completely oblivious to the naked man not five feet behind her, curled in a fetal position on the floor, weeping and masturbating furiously.

“Sir,” my colleague hissed as she froze in her tracks. “Members of the public are not allowed in the staff area! You must leave this instant!” He stopped, shot her a poignant, wounded look, gathered his clothes and wandered off, sniffling.

After the man had wandered away the librarian suddenly ceased typing, whipped around and glared at my colleague, as if to rebuke her for disturbing her. My colleague looked at the librarian, a mean, spinsterish, prune faced woman, the kind who had probably never seen an erect penis in her life.

“I'm sorry, but there was a man – oh, never mind. Sorry to disturb you.”

Career Highlights

A few years a colleague cut through a rather lonesome, out-of-the-way section of the back offices. When she turned a corner she saw one of the older librarians primly seated at a typewriter typing on index cards. The librarian was so absorbed in her task that she was completely oblivious to the naked man not five feet behind her, curled in a fetal position on the floor, weeping and masturbating furiously.

“Sir,” my colleague hissed as she froze in her tracks. “Members of the public are not allowed in the staff area! You must leave this instant!” He stopped, shot her a poignant, wounded look, gathered his clothes and wandered off, sniffling.

After the man had wandered away the librarian suddenly ceased typing, whipped around and glared at my colleague, as if to rebuke her for disturbing her. My colleague looked at the librarian, a mean, spinsterish, prune faced woman, the kind who had probably never seen an erect penis in her life.

“I'm sorry, but there was a man – oh, never mind. Sorry to disturb you.”

Every Woman Loves a Fascist (Architect)

Instant Message Transcript:
Patron: Hi, I am high school teacher from Germany. I am studying a lot about America at school and would need access to the newspaper database to get articles. Right now I am doing a project on the 1992 race riots ... which means I would need original newspaper articles from back then. Is there any way to be allowed access to your databases from Germany?

Librarian: I apologize, but those databases are accessible only to our library card holders, whose tax dollars pay for them. (I provided her with a link to our cardholder eligibility)
Best regards!

Patron: Is there a way to get a card even from abroad? Through friends in the city or something? Is there any way you can make a special case for me? I need these articles.

Librarian: I apologize, but no. That violates are terms with the databases. It would be illegal for me to do so.

Patron: Illegal such as your country’s war in Iraq?


GRRRRRRAAAAAAHHH. Believe me, I loathe this neocon quagmire as much as the rest of the world, but I will not have a GERMAN getting on her high horse with me, especially for reasons so petty and self serving.

This reminds me of a New York Times article I read about piracy and intellectual property rights in China. When the journalist asked a Chinese publisher about rampant piracy in China, the publisher "plunged into a polemic about my exterminating the American Indian, angrily stabbing his palm with his finger.” Marriage counselors call this "everything and the kitchen sink" fighting, and highly discourage against it. Instead, they encourage couples to stay on the topic at hand and not drag the past into the current discussion.

Don't you just, in spite of yourself, love this Nazi propaganda poster here? I hate to admit it but this sort of fascist architecture - so sheer, so sleek, so streamlined - has always made me a little weak in the knees.

Pynchon is incomprehensible to me and previous attempts to tackle his works have led to tears of frustration but I might have to revisit him after I read sentences with brilliant similes like this:

"With his own private horrors further unfolded into an ideology of the mortal and uncontinued self, Brock came to visit, and strangely to comfort, in the half-lit hallways of the night, leaning in darkly in above her like any of the sleek raptors that decorate fascist architecture." Thomas Pynchon, Vineland.

Every Woman Loves a Fascist (Architect)

Instant Message Transcript:
Patron: Hi, I am high school teacher from Germany. I am studying a lot about America at school and would need access to the newspaper database to get articles. Right now I am doing a project on the 1992 race riots ... which means I would need original newspaper articles from back then. Is there any way to be allowed access to your databases from Germany?

Librarian: I apologize, but those databases are accessible only to our library card holders, whose tax dollars pay for them. (I provided her with a link to our cardholder eligibility)
Best regards!

Patron: Is there a way to get a card even from abroad? Through friends in the city or something? Is there any way you can make a special case for me? I need these articles.

Librarian: I apologize, but no. That violates are terms with the databases. It would be illegal for me to do so.

Patron: Illegal such as your country’s war in Iraq?


GRRRRRRAAAAAAHHH. Believe me, I loathe this neocon quagmire as much as the rest of the world, but I will not have a GERMAN getting on her high horse with me, especially for reasons so petty and self serving.

This reminds me of a New York Times article I read about piracy and intellectual property rights in China. When the journalist asked a Chinese publisher about rampant piracy in China, the publisher "plunged into a polemic about my exterminating the American Indian, angrily stabbing his palm with his finger.” Marriage counselors call this "everything and the kitchen sink" fighting, and highly discourage against it. Instead, they encourage couples to stay on the topic at hand and not drag the past into the current discussion.

Don't you just, in spite of yourself, love this Nazi propaganda poster here? I hate to admit it but this sort of fascist architecture - so sheer, so sleek, so streamlined - has always made me a little weak in the knees.

Pynchon is incomprehensible to me and previous attempts to tackle his works have led to tears of frustration but I might have to revisit him after I read sentences with brilliant similes like this:

"With his own private horrors further unfolded into an ideology of the mortal and uncontinued self, Brock came to visit, and strangely to comfort, in the half-lit hallways of the night, leaning in darkly in above her like any of the sleek raptors that decorate fascist architecture." Thomas Pynchon, Vineland.

Fragile Patrons

A patron called and wanted to know the details of Adam Walsh's disappearance and murder. As my colleague read her an account, the patron began emitting these huge, choking sobs .

"S-s-sorry. It's just so suh-uh-ad!"

I think we can all agree it was a sickening tragedy, but how does such a sensitive soul cope in this world? A lot of our patrons seem this way. Blake put it best:

"Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night."

(This is my one of my other favorite fragments of poetry)

"Sweet is true love though given in vain, and sweet is death that taketh away pain."

I was riding my bike the other day and I spotted two silver haired gentleman, obviously a couple, slowly strolling arm and arm on the sidewalk. They were both dressed quite elegantly in classic summer suits. The were like two elegant old queens off to some grand Southern social event - Christopher Isherwood and Tennessee Williams on their way to the steeplechase races. One of the men was frailer than the other and shuffled and leaned on his friend for support. It was then I noticed that he had the vacant stare of someone completely lost to senile dementia. Something about the gentle and patient way his friend escorted him, and the special care that he took dressing him for their evening walk, made me burst into tears.

Fragile Patrons

A patron called and wanted to know the details of Adam Walsh's disappearance and murder. As my colleague read her an account, the patron began emitting these huge, choking sobs .

"S-s-sorry. It's just so suh-uh-ad!"

I think we can all agree it was a sickening tragedy, but how does such a sensitive soul cope in this world? A lot of our patrons seem this way. Blake put it best:

"Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night."

(This is my one of my other favorite fragments of poetry)

"Sweet is true love though given in vain, and sweet is death that taketh away pain."

I was riding my bike the other day and I spotted two silver haired gentleman, obviously a couple, slowly strolling arm and arm on the sidewalk. They were both dressed quite elegantly in classic summer suits. The were like two elegant old queens off to some grand Southern social event - Christopher Isherwood and Tennessee Williams on their way to the steeplechase races. One of the men was frailer than the other and shuffled and leaned on his friend for support. It was then I noticed that he had the vacant stare of someone completely lost to senile dementia. Something about the gentle and patient way his friend escorted him, and the special care that he took dressing him for their evening walk, made me burst into tears.

Suffering for your Art

From the NYT's review of Vollman's latest:

"For decades, and at great personal risk, Vollmann has made a calling and a career of mixing with people whom most of us avoid and of listening, at length, to the unheard, whom he typically, and appropriately, pays to speak to him."

This is especially true while he was researching The Royal Family and Whores for Gloria. He immersed himself in San Francisco's Tenderloin, went native and smoked crack and paid prostitutes to have sex with him. And not just once but many, many, many times, just to be sure what if felt like so he could write with the authenticity of experience. What selfless dedication to his craft!

Suffering for your Art

From the NYT's review of Vollman's latest:

"For decades, and at great personal risk, Vollmann has made a calling and a career of mixing with people whom most of us avoid and of listening, at length, to the unheard, whom he typically, and appropriately, pays to speak to him."

This is especially true while he was researching The Royal Family and Whores for Gloria. He immersed himself in San Francisco's Tenderloin, went native and smoked crack and paid prostitutes to have sex with him. And not just once but many, many, many times, just to be sure what if felt like so he could write with the authenticity of experience. What selfless dedication to his craft!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Poor, poor Spoon was not invited to the little girl next door’s party. She spent the day sighing heavily as she watched the little dressed up girls run around the yard and eat cake.

Spoon really needs a stripping. She now resembles an extremely fuzzy, extremely poisonous caterpillar. When she walks her hair ripples and undulates just like the stinging hairs of a caterpillar. If I catch her out of the corner of my eye for an instant I’ll get a panicked, insane urge to smash her with my shoe.


I had a similar problem with some oven mitts E’s mother gave us for Christmas last year. They were yellow and black, the exact same color combination of yellowjackets, a particularly vicious, territorial species of wasps that infested my home town. (One of the high school’s mascot was even named the Yellowjackets). We hung the mitts up next to the stove and every time I walked by and caught that flash of yellow and black the primitive part of my brain would scream, “DANGER, AGONY, STINGING, RUN” and I would jump out of my skin. They were great mitts but they upset me so much we finally had to give them away.

Spoon on blender cleaning detail:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Poor, poor Spoon was not invited to the little girl next door’s party. She spent the day sighing heavily as she watched the little dressed up girls run around the yard and eat cake.

Spoon really needs a stripping. She now resembles an extremely fuzzy, extremely poisonous caterpillar. When she walks her hair ripples and undulates just like the stinging hairs of a caterpillar. If I catch her out of the corner of my eye for an instant I’ll get a panicked, insane urge to smash her with my shoe.


I had a similar problem with some oven mitts E’s mother gave us for Christmas last year. They were yellow and black, the exact same color combination of yellowjackets, a particularly vicious, territorial species of wasps that infested my home town. (One of the high school’s mascot was even named the Yellowjackets). We hung the mitts up next to the stove and every time I walked by and caught that flash of yellow and black the primitive part of my brain would scream, “DANGER, AGONY, STINGING, RUN” and I would jump out of my skin. They were great mitts but they upset me so much we finally had to give them away.

Spoon on blender cleaning detail:

Pigtails

The other night at dinner the conversation somehow turned toward pigs. Pigs’ appetites are legendary, but something we certainly can’t fault them for since humans are the ones who have selectively bred them that way. At time their voracity can be put to productive use, like at my grandmother's farm property. One of the ponds had became infested with water moccasins, a very aggressive, territorial species of poisonous snake that has been known to chase 'trespassing' humans onto dry land. The pond, once a delightful swimming hole, had become a seething cauldron of snakes. My grandmother was discussing the situation with her neighbor. “Let my pigs take care of that. Pigs will eat anything.” The pigs were set loose on the property and in less than a week the pigs had devoured every single snake. They then started swimming out to an anchored styrofoam and wood raft in the middle of the pond and taking huge bites out of the Styrofoam until they sank it. They ate everything in sight and thank God no children wandered onto the property because the pigs probably would have devoured them as well.

E's uncle used to keep pigs on the family farm outside of Nashville. One night during a terrible rainstorm the pigs escaped their pen and the entire herd galloped across the highway to the neighbor’s yard on a foraging raid. E’s uncle got a phone call in the middle of the night from the panicked and furious neighbor. “You better get out here right now! Your pigs – sob - are digging up our grandpa!” The pigs had broken into the family plot and were trying to get at the body of the family’s recently deceased patriarch which their snouts could smell through the earth like a mouthwatering truffle. What a scene that must have been, all of those pigs squealing and rooting and tearing up the grave in the driving rain, backlit by flashes of lightning. It must have been like something out of a horror movie. E’s uncle had to drive up all the way from Nashville in the middle of the night to go round up the lot of them. That was the last year that E’s uncle kept pigs.

Suggested reading: The Good, Good Pig. Naturalist Sy Montgomery beautiful memoir of a pig she adopts. An ailing runt that her pig farming neighbors don’t have the heart to take back behind the barn and brain with a shovel, Christopher Hogsworth is adopted by Sy and her husband. He grows into a loveable 500 pound monster who alternately delights and terrorizes her small town in Vermont. Warning: May put you off your bacon. It did for me for the most part, but I still like proscuitto. I'm like the loathesome Walrus in Lewis Carroll's poem The Walrus and the Carpenter. I'll still eat it but feel really, really bad about it.

Pigtails

The other night at dinner the conversation somehow turned toward pigs. Pigs’ appetites are legendary, but something we certainly can’t fault them for since humans are the ones who have selectively bred them that way. At time their voracity can be put to productive use, like at my grandmother's farm property. One of the ponds had became infested with water moccasins, a very aggressive, territorial species of poisonous snake that has been known to chase 'trespassing' humans onto dry land. The pond, once a delightful swimming hole, had become a seething cauldron of snakes. My grandmother was discussing the situation with her neighbor. “Let my pigs take care of that. Pigs will eat anything.” The pigs were set loose on the property and in less than a week the pigs had devoured every single snake. They then started swimming out to an anchored styrofoam and wood raft in the middle of the pond and taking huge bites out of the Styrofoam until they sank it. They ate everything in sight and thank God no children wandered onto the property because the pigs probably would have devoured them as well.

E's uncle used to keep pigs on the family farm outside of Nashville. One night during a terrible rainstorm the pigs escaped their pen and the entire herd galloped across the highway to the neighbor’s yard on a foraging raid. E’s uncle got a phone call in the middle of the night from the panicked and furious neighbor. “You better get out here right now! Your pigs – sob - are digging up our grandpa!” The pigs had broken into the family plot and were trying to get at the body of the family’s recently deceased patriarch which their snouts could smell through the earth like a mouthwatering truffle. What a scene that must have been, all of those pigs squealing and rooting and tearing up the grave in the driving rain, backlit by flashes of lightning. It must have been like something out of a horror movie. E’s uncle had to drive up all the way from Nashville in the middle of the night to go round up the lot of them. That was the last year that E’s uncle kept pigs.

Suggested reading: The Good, Good Pig. Naturalist Sy Montgomery beautiful memoir of a pig she adopts. An ailing runt that her pig farming neighbors don’t have the heart to take back behind the barn and brain with a shovel, Christopher Hogsworth is adopted by Sy and her husband. He grows into a loveable 500 pound monster who alternately delights and terrorizes her small town in Vermont. Warning: May put you off your bacon. It did for me for the most part, but I still like proscuitto. I'm like the loathesome Walrus in Lewis Carroll's poem The Walrus and the Carpenter. I'll still eat it but feel really, really bad about it.

Drag Envy

The Bikram studio I attend recently acquired an industrial humidifier which, during class, sits in the corner and hisses and spews a column of steam like a chained dragon. The studio is now as sultry and steamy as Danang, a big improvement from the searing, dry, pre-humidifier days. The owner used to be in the HVAC business and installed this system that could probably roast every student alive if the instructor got careless with the settings. Before the humidifier I had to be careful not to wear earrings made out of conducting metals unless I wanted burned earlobes. The floor would burn my feet like I was standing on coals and I would have to hop around. One time I had my feet next to one of the vents and it was like my soles were being hit by a hairdryer, like some especially cruel form of bastinado. The woman lying next to me caught my eye and we both burst into amazed laughter.

I adore the heat, though. I feel like I sweat out so much toxic crud and it gives me a high like no other, like I’ve just slammed a bunch of primo heroin (or so I’ve read). When I stagger out of class I often have to step over all the nodding junkies that congregate in the alley next to the studio, a popular stop for needle exchange. “HA! Higher than you, suckas!” I thought to myself as I passed them. Of course, as it so often happens, my petty superiority instantly and karmically bit me in the ass because immediately afterwards I collided with this neighborhood drag queen street walker whose beauty and fashion sense I find extremely intimidating. She is always dressed to the nines, and that day had a beautiful shawl she had probably crocheted herself wrapped fashionably around her 20 inch waist. She glared at me and strutted past, waggling her hips like a runway model. This particular drag queen always stirs deep feelings of inadequacy in me about my feminine allure and overall appearance. She puts me to shame and makes me feel like I’m not ‘working it,’ that I’m frittering away my God-given attributes. When I look at her and see what she’s doing with what she’s got I always feel like I’m lazily squandering my feminine allure. After our run-in I slinked away, covered in sweat, my hair a greasy mess and my face all ruddy and inflamed from the heat. I caught my reflection in a store window and realized that my bright red face resembled those of my alcoholic patrons who acquire those exposure sunburns from passing out face up in the sun for hours.

To console myself, I stopped at my favorite cheese shop to investigate their new cheeses. I like my cheeses sweaty, oozing and pungent, the varieties that smell like something the dogs dug up from the yard, the kind that are prohibited by law from carrying on public transportation. Among their dazzling array of foul cheeses I discovered an awesomely putrid new one, The Stinking Bishop, that was so good it made me gag. (Wouldn’t The Stinking Bishop also make a good pub name?) While I was sniffing and poking more cheeses these two impeccably dressed, fashionably emaciated French girls joined me at the counter. And it must be true that those bitches don't get fat because they gorged on about a pound each of samples. They looked like they had just stepped out of the offices of French Vogue and I looked like I had just crawled out of a sewer. Anyway, I felt real good about myself yesterday. The French and the drag queens have shamed me into putting more of an effort into my looks. I have become quite lazy about my appearance, so I guess I'm lucky to live in a town teeming with both types to give me a good kick in the ass when I need it.

Drag Envy

The Bikram studio I attend recently acquired an industrial humidifier which, during class, sits in the corner and hisses and spews a column of steam like a chained dragon. The studio is now as sultry and steamy as Danang, a big improvement from the searing, dry, pre-humidifier days. The owner used to be in the HVAC business and installed this system that could probably roast every student alive if the instructor got careless with the settings. Before the humidifier I had to be careful not to wear earrings made out of conducting metals unless I wanted burned earlobes. The floor would burn my feet like I was standing on coals and I would have to hop around. One time I had my feet next to one of the vents and it was like my soles were being hit by a hairdryer, like some especially cruel form of bastinado. The woman lying next to me caught my eye and we both burst into amazed laughter.

I adore the heat, though. I feel like I sweat out so much toxic crud and it gives me a high like no other, like I’ve just slammed a bunch of primo heroin (or so I’ve read). When I stagger out of class I often have to step over all the nodding junkies that congregate in the alley next to the studio, a popular stop for needle exchange. “HA! Higher than you, suckas!” I thought to myself as I passed them. Of course, as it so often happens, my petty superiority instantly and karmically bit me in the ass because immediately afterwards I collided with this neighborhood drag queen street walker whose beauty and fashion sense I find extremely intimidating. She is always dressed to the nines, and that day had a beautiful shawl she had probably crocheted herself wrapped fashionably around her 20 inch waist. She glared at me and strutted past, waggling her hips like a runway model. This particular drag queen always stirs deep feelings of inadequacy in me about my feminine allure and overall appearance. She puts me to shame and makes me feel like I’m not ‘working it,’ that I’m frittering away my God-given attributes. When I look at her and see what she’s doing with what she’s got I always feel like I’m lazily squandering my feminine allure. After our run-in I slinked away, covered in sweat, my hair a greasy mess and my face all ruddy and inflamed from the heat. I caught my reflection in a store window and realized that my bright red face resembled those of my alcoholic patrons who acquire those exposure sunburns from passing out face up in the sun for hours.

To console myself, I stopped at my favorite cheese shop to investigate their new cheeses. I like my cheeses sweaty, oozing and pungent, the varieties that smell like something the dogs dug up from the yard, the kind that are prohibited by law from carrying on public transportation. Among their dazzling array of foul cheeses I discovered an awesomely putrid new one, The Stinking Bishop, that was so good it made me gag. (Wouldn’t The Stinking Bishop also make a good pub name?) While I was sniffing and poking more cheeses these two impeccably dressed, fashionably emaciated French girls joined me at the counter. And it must be true that those bitches don't get fat because they gorged on about a pound each of samples. They looked like they had just stepped out of the offices of French Vogue and I looked like I had just crawled out of a sewer. Anyway, I felt real good about myself yesterday. The French and the drag queens have shamed me into putting more of an effort into my looks. I have become quite lazy about my appearance, so I guess I'm lucky to live in a town teeming with both types to give me a good kick in the ass when I need it.

A Pox on You

I finally finished off Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis. As fascinating a read as it was, even a morbid gorehound like myself who likes to curl up before bedtime with books like this could only handle all the chronicles of suffering in small, carefully timed chunks. Before I read the book it never really dawned on me how profoundly significant syphilis was from a historical standpoint, and how it caused as much societal upheaval as the Black Plague. As much as I hate to agree with the Religious Right, promiscuity is one hell of a vector for disease. Syphilis' effects on sexual mores linger today, and is as much an argument for safe sex and monogamy as there ever was.

During the first major European outbreak in Naples in 1494, before the disease burned down and worked out a more agreeable arrangement with its host, the symptoms of of syphilis were immediate, horrific and virulent. Mortality often occurred in as little as two weeks.

From Rats, Lice and History.
The ulcerations which often resulted from the eruptions covered the body from the head to the knees. Crusts formed and the sick presented so dreadful an appearance that their companions abandoned them and even the lepers avoided them. Extensive losses of tissue in the nose, throat, and mouth followed the skin manifestations, and in the train of these came painful swellings of the bones, often involving the skull. In survivors, emaciation and exhaustion lasted for many years.

I also read in Pox that infant rape, that barbarous home remedy for AIDS you hear about going on in Africa, also occurred in the early days of the syphilis outbreak in Europe. It turns out that ‘virgin cure’ for venereal disease isn’t something just currently being promulgated by witch doctors in Africa.

The complexity of the disease and its varying horrific manifestations are truly mind boggling. Syphilis is knows as the Great Imitator because during its decades long progression it mimics an amazing number of other painful conditions and diseases. Malaria, gout, insanity, clinical depression, heart disease and conjunctivitis are just a taste of the diseases syphilis can mimic and be misdiagnosed as. The needless agony that those doctors allowed in the Tuskeegee Experiments makes me believe that those responsible should be made an example of and hanged Nuremberg style.

Historians believe that this figure from the Isenheim Altarpiece, the unparalleled masterpiece that Grunewald created for hospital chapel of Saint Anthony's Monastery, is suffering from syphilis. St Anthony is the patron saint of skin diseases, and the monastery served as a hospital for those afflicted with both ergotism and syphilis.
I wonder if the agony of the syphilitics inspired Grunewald's truly grotesque painting, “Dead Lovers.” Note the clammy toad suctioned on to the woman’s genitals, the ghastly rictus of their faces, the snakes whipping and writhing through their corpses. Witnessing the terrible toll that venereal disease could enact must have made quite an impression upon Grunewald.

A Pox on You

I finally finished off Pox: Genius, Madness, and the Mysteries of Syphilis. As fascinating a read as it was, even a morbid gorehound like myself who likes to curl up before bedtime with books like this could only handle all the chronicles of suffering in small, carefully timed chunks. Before I read the book it never really dawned on me how profoundly significant syphilis was from a historical standpoint, and how it caused as much societal upheaval as the Black Plague. As much as I hate to agree with the Religious Right, promiscuity is one hell of a vector for disease. Syphilis' effects on sexual mores linger today, and is as much an argument for safe sex and monogamy as there ever was.

During the first major European outbreak in Naples in 1494, before the disease burned down and worked out a more agreeable arrangement with its host, the symptoms of of syphilis were immediate, horrific and virulent. Mortality often occurred in as little as two weeks.

From Rats, Lice and History.
The ulcerations which often resulted from the eruptions covered the body from the head to the knees. Crusts formed and the sick presented so dreadful an appearance that their companions abandoned them and even the lepers avoided them. Extensive losses of tissue in the nose, throat, and mouth followed the skin manifestations, and in the train of these came painful swellings of the bones, often involving the skull. In survivors, emaciation and exhaustion lasted for many years.

I also read in Pox that infant rape, that barbarous home remedy for AIDS you hear about going on in Africa, also occurred in the early days of the syphilis outbreak in Europe. It turns out that ‘virgin cure’ for venereal disease isn’t something just currently being promulgated by witch doctors in Africa.

The complexity of the disease and its varying horrific manifestations are truly mind boggling. Syphilis is knows as the Great Imitator because during its decades long progression it mimics an amazing number of other painful conditions and diseases. Malaria, gout, insanity, clinical depression, heart disease and conjunctivitis are just a taste of the diseases syphilis can mimic and be misdiagnosed as. The needless agony that those doctors allowed in the Tuskeegee Experiments makes me believe that those responsible should be made an example of and hanged Nuremberg style.

Historians believe that this figure from the Isenheim Altarpiece, the unparalleled masterpiece that Grunewald created for hospital chapel of Saint Anthony's Monastery, is suffering from syphilis. St Anthony is the patron saint of skin diseases, and the monastery served as a hospital for those afflicted with both ergotism and syphilis.
I wonder if the agony of the syphilitics inspired Grunewald's truly grotesque painting, “Dead Lovers.” Note the clammy toad suctioned on to the woman’s genitals, the ghastly rictus of their faces, the snakes whipping and writhing through their corpses. Witnessing the terrible toll that venereal disease could enact must have made quite an impression upon Grunewald.

Ain't it a crying shame

I lost patience with one of our patrons the other evening and I feel a bad about it. I believe that this patron is a transient who blew into town couple of weeks ago. Since then, he's in the library from the time the doors open until security hustles him out at closing. He has an asymmetrical bowl haircut, the buggy eyes of someone suffering from a thyroid condition and a garbage bag filled with all of his earthly possessions slung over his back. Although he seems nice enough he has the disconcerting habit of slouching up to the desk right before we close and reciting:

“Yellow and green strings come out of sores. You can always tell that the pope has blessed it because a recognizable string, sometimes green, sometimes yellow will be coming out of the weeping sore. There are sores all over the bodies of believers and that is proof that they have been blessed by the pope. Check your body for these sores so you will see if you have been so blessed. Pus and strings, strings and pus.”

I had heard the speech four nights in a row so when he approached the desk the other night and took a deep breath I pointed my finger at him and said, “NO!” He drew back like I had slapped him and then glared back at me indignantly. "God! I wasn't going to say that! You didn't know what I was going to say!" He then lurked by the side of the desk giving me the stink eye until we closed. I don't know why I just didn't let him say his piece. In these cases I usually just grit my teeth and internally recite, “There but for the grace of God” but there is something unseemly about his little speech, as if he’s a flasher, showing me something nasty from his brain and getting off on it. I get the feeling that he enjoys the shock value and the look of revulsion his words cause.

I must be suffering from a case of compassion fatigue. Since the city uses as (unofficially, expediently, cynically) as its mental institution/homeless shelter we get so many lost, mentally ill people in libraries. Often we become the only ones who will listen to them. Usually I just let them run their script and smile and nod, but I just wasn't in the mood to hear his gross delusion for the fifth night in a row.

How cruel to have your mind turn on you like that, what a special walking hell it must be. The brain is such delicate, daedal piece of machinery. It seems so tragically easy for something to go haywire, and once it does your entire personality, who you are - your soul, your essence - can be altered into this grotesque caricature of yourself.

I read a heart wrenching, devastatingly honest piece in Harper’s a few years ago about a woman who chronicles her mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s, the most perversely cruel disease that exists. She described how, before the disease, the sound of her mother calling her name used to be the sweetest sound in the world. After her mother got sick she would follow the author around the house repeating it until she couldn’t stand the sound anymore, until it made her want to tear out her hair in rage and frustration. “This person looked like my mother, sounded like my mother, but she was becoming everything that had been anathema to her: intrusive, complaining.”

She expanded the piece into a book called Death in Slow Motion which I will never, ever have the guts to read.

Ain't it a crying shame

I lost patience with one of our patrons the other evening and I feel a bad about it. I believe that this patron is a transient who blew into town couple of weeks ago. Since then, he's in the library from the time the doors open until security hustles him out at closing. He has an asymmetrical bowl haircut, the buggy eyes of someone suffering from a thyroid condition and a garbage bag filled with all of his earthly possessions slung over his back. Although he seems nice enough he has the disconcerting habit of slouching up to the desk right before we close and reciting:

“Yellow and green strings come out of sores. You can always tell that the pope has blessed it because a recognizable string, sometimes green, sometimes yellow will be coming out of the weeping sore. There are sores all over the bodies of believers and that is proof that they have been blessed by the pope. Check your body for these sores so you will see if you have been so blessed. Pus and strings, strings and pus.”

I had heard the speech four nights in a row so when he approached the desk the other night and took a deep breath I pointed my finger at him and said, “NO!” He drew back like I had slapped him and then glared back at me indignantly. "God! I wasn't going to say that! You didn't know what I was going to say!" He then lurked by the side of the desk giving me the stink eye until we closed. I don't know why I just didn't let him say his piece. In these cases I usually just grit my teeth and internally recite, “There but for the grace of God” but there is something unseemly about his little speech, as if he’s a flasher, showing me something nasty from his brain and getting off on it. I get the feeling that he enjoys the shock value and the look of revulsion his words cause.

I must be suffering from a case of compassion fatigue. Since the city uses as (unofficially, expediently, cynically) as its mental institution/homeless shelter we get so many lost, mentally ill people in libraries. Often we become the only ones who will listen to them. Usually I just let them run their script and smile and nod, but I just wasn't in the mood to hear his gross delusion for the fifth night in a row.

How cruel to have your mind turn on you like that, what a special walking hell it must be. The brain is such delicate, daedal piece of machinery. It seems so tragically easy for something to go haywire, and once it does your entire personality, who you are - your soul, your essence - can be altered into this grotesque caricature of yourself.

I read a heart wrenching, devastatingly honest piece in Harper’s a few years ago about a woman who chronicles her mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s, the most perversely cruel disease that exists. She described how, before the disease, the sound of her mother calling her name used to be the sweetest sound in the world. After her mother got sick she would follow the author around the house repeating it until she couldn’t stand the sound anymore, until it made her want to tear out her hair in rage and frustration. “This person looked like my mother, sounded like my mother, but she was becoming everything that had been anathema to her: intrusive, complaining.”

She expanded the piece into a book called Death in Slow Motion which I will never, ever have the guts to read.

The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep

In my public internet class the other day I demonstrated the power of using quotations in a search by having my pupils type "the woods are lovely, dark and deep" in their Google search fields.

"Does anybody recognize this phrase?" I asked.

"Yeah! They said it in that Chuck Bronson movie!!!” an elderly African American man from Georgia sitting on the front row shouted.

“Actually, it’s from the poem by Robert Fro - YOU'RE RIGHT! Telefon! About all of the sleeper cells!”

I hadn't thought of that Chuck Bronson classic of Cold War paranoia in years. In the move, these seemingly all-American ordinary citizens, going about their day, making a pancake breakfast for their kids, for exacmple, receive a phone call.“The woods are lovely, dark and deep” a silkily but sinister voice (Donald Pleasance) on the other end of the line tells them.

Then their eyes glaze over and they stumble out to their car to go blow up the local military installation and themselves along with it.

This brainwashing idea has been spoofed many times, most memorably in the Naked Gun. Here's a great New Yorker article on brainwashing and popular culture.

Their characters lived in a world gone wrong, a world in which, long before the atom bomb, civilization had created the machinery for its own destruction and was learning to use it with all the moronic delight of a gangster trying out his first machine-gun.
Raymond Chandler

Times may be scary now, but I still think it was much more terrifying growing up with the threat of global nuclear annihilation. It didn’t help that a high school teacher of mine, one of those types that goes into teaching to push their little agendas on impressionable minds, had me convinced that nuclear war was imminent. He assigned all of this material to scare the hell out of us and supply us with a lifetime of radioactive nightmares. We were all waiting for the other shoe to drop. I remember wishing, rather selfishly now that I think of it, that the Reds would drop the bomb and just get it over with so I wouldn’t have to write my gigantic final term paper that I had procrastinated even getting started (typically) until the night before it was due.

Mr. Harmon's reading list to scare the shit out of young ladies:

A Canticle for Leibowitz
You think you’re reading a charming little story about a Medieval monastery full of manuscript illuminators until it dawns on you that this is actually the post apocalyptic future, the 26th century to be exact, and the manuscripts the monks are illuminating are bomb blueprints that survived “The Great Burning.” (You can guess what that was).

By the Waters of Babylon
Short story of a young aboriginal tribesman on a vision quest who travels to a mysterious and perilous place called the Island of the Dead. I wonder if this is story is where Miller, the author of Leibowitz, got the idea.

Alas, Babylon
Survivors in a small Florida town deal with the aftermath of nuclear holocaust.

On the Beach
Australians survived the initial blast, but they soon realize that they're doomed by a radiactive cloud headed straight for them. The book revolves around how the characters spend their last time on earth before they take their government supplied cyanide pills.

How are we humans ever going to get past our death drive? Even that Frost poem, when you get down to it, is a hypnotic love poem to death. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, for sure. As the Abbot Dom Zerchi so poignantly asks in A Canticle for Leibowitz, "Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix, in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again."

The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep

In my public internet class the other day I demonstrated the power of using quotations in a search by having my pupils type "the woods are lovely, dark and deep" in their Google search fields.

"Does anybody recognize this phrase?" I asked.

"Yeah! They said it in that Chuck Bronson movie!!!” an elderly African American man from Georgia sitting on the front row shouted.

“Actually, it’s from the poem by Robert Fro - YOU'RE RIGHT! Telefon! About all of the sleeper cells!”

I hadn't thought of that Chuck Bronson classic of Cold War paranoia in years. In the move, these seemingly all-American ordinary citizens, going about their day, making a pancake breakfast for their kids, for exacmple, receive a phone call.“The woods are lovely, dark and deep” a silkily but sinister voice (Donald Pleasance) on the other end of the line tells them.

Then their eyes glaze over and they stumble out to their car to go blow up the local military installation and themselves along with it.

This brainwashing idea has been spoofed many times, most memorably in the Naked Gun. Here's a great New Yorker article on brainwashing and popular culture.

Their characters lived in a world gone wrong, a world in which, long before the atom bomb, civilization had created the machinery for its own destruction and was learning to use it with all the moronic delight of a gangster trying out his first machine-gun.
Raymond Chandler

Times may be scary now, but I still think it was much more terrifying growing up with the threat of global nuclear annihilation. It didn’t help that a high school teacher of mine, one of those types that goes into teaching to push their little agendas on impressionable minds, had me convinced that nuclear war was imminent. He assigned all of this material to scare the hell out of us and supply us with a lifetime of radioactive nightmares. We were all waiting for the other shoe to drop. I remember wishing, rather selfishly now that I think of it, that the Reds would drop the bomb and just get it over with so I wouldn’t have to write my gigantic final term paper that I had procrastinated even getting started (typically) until the night before it was due.

Mr. Harmon's reading list to scare the shit out of young ladies:

A Canticle for Leibowitz
You think you’re reading a charming little story about a Medieval monastery full of manuscript illuminators until it dawns on you that this is actually the post apocalyptic future, the 26th century to be exact, and the manuscripts the monks are illuminating are bomb blueprints that survived “The Great Burning.” (You can guess what that was).

By the Waters of Babylon
Short story of a young aboriginal tribesman on a vision quest who travels to a mysterious and perilous place called the Island of the Dead. I wonder if this is story is where Miller, the author of Leibowitz, got the idea.

Alas, Babylon
Survivors in a small Florida town deal with the aftermath of nuclear holocaust.

On the Beach
Australians survived the initial blast, but they soon realize that they're doomed by a radiactive cloud headed straight for them. The book revolves around how the characters spend their last time on earth before they take their government supplied cyanide pills.

How are we humans ever going to get past our death drive? Even that Frost poem, when you get down to it, is a hypnotic love poem to death. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, for sure. As the Abbot Dom Zerchi so poignantly asks in A Canticle for Leibowitz, "Listen, are we helpless? Are we doomed to do it again and again and again? Have we no choice but to play the Phoenix, in an unending sequence of rise and fall? Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, Rome, the Empires of Charlemagne and the Turk. Ground to dust and plowed with salt. Spain, France, Britain, America—burned into the oblivion of the centuries. And again and again and again."

And who shall I say is calling?

I think my iPod's fucking with me. I’ve been experiencing a lot of eerie synchronicity with the music on my Ipod and the world outside. The other day I was listening to the song Southside on my way to Krav Maga. When I arrived at the studio, the instructor was blasting Southside on the sound system at almost the exact point of my iPod. While I was walking home after class a sign in my neighborhood's bookstore caught my eye. The sign was informing customers about the memorial services of one of the employees who had died unexpectedly. Leonard Cohen's Who by Fire was playing on my iPod at that moment, a morbidly appropriate sound track for the moment. Thank God I don’t smoke (a lot) of meth or have schizophrenia and am not obsessively trying to draw meaning about the significance of these odd coincidences.

Who by Fire is such a searingly, hauntingly beautiful song, an exquisite memento mori. It sounds like an eerie incantation, a prayer, a dark but beautiful lullaby. Cohen modeled it on the Unetaneh-Tokef, liturgy recited on the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed,
And on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who shall live and who shall die,
Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not,
Who shall perish by water and who by fire,
Who by sword and who by wild beast,
Who by famine and who by thirst,
Who by earthquake and who by plague,
Who by strangulation and who by stoning...

I can just see the members of the congregation chanting the prayer while looking askance at those around them, imagining and pondering everyone's, including their own, fates.

Cohen's lyrics:

And who by fire, who by water,
who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
who in your merry merry month of may,
who by very slow decay,
and who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
and who by avalanche, who by powder,
who for his greed, who for his hunger,
and who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,
who in solitude, who in this mirror,
who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains, who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?

One of my favorite songs of all time is Cohen's exquisitely depressing Bird on a Wire, which contains some of the what must be the most haunting lyrics ever written:

Like a baby stillborn, or a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out to me

As depressing as the song may be, it also contains some excellent advice.

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, you must not ask for so much.
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, hey, why not ask for more?

Hey indeed, why not ask for more? Why listen to the beggar?

Youtube.com is lousy with Cohen performances. Here is a good one of Who by Fire with a violin solo that will tear your heart out. In fact, if you feel like wallowing in melancholia a good rainy day activity is watching all of the different performances and covers of Cohen's music. (Warning: may cause clinical depression.)

I especially enjoy Rufus Wainwright's campy, Shirley Bassey-esque version of Everybody Knows.

And who shall I say is calling?

I think my iPod's fucking with me. I’ve been experiencing a lot of eerie synchronicity with the music on my Ipod and the world outside. The other day I was listening to the song Southside on my way to Krav Maga. When I arrived at the studio, the instructor was blasting Southside on the sound system at almost the exact point of my iPod. While I was walking home after class a sign in my neighborhood's bookstore caught my eye. The sign was informing customers about the memorial services of one of the employees who had died unexpectedly. Leonard Cohen's Who by Fire was playing on my iPod at that moment, a morbidly appropriate sound track for the moment. Thank God I don’t smoke (a lot) of meth or have schizophrenia and am not obsessively trying to draw meaning about the significance of these odd coincidences.

Who by Fire is such a searingly, hauntingly beautiful song, an exquisite memento mori. It sounds like an eerie incantation, a prayer, a dark but beautiful lullaby. Cohen modeled it on the Unetaneh-Tokef, liturgy recited on the Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed,
And on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,
Who shall live and who shall die,
Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not,
Who shall perish by water and who by fire,
Who by sword and who by wild beast,
Who by famine and who by thirst,
Who by earthquake and who by plague,
Who by strangulation and who by stoning...

I can just see the members of the congregation chanting the prayer while looking askance at those around them, imagining and pondering everyone's, including their own, fates.

Cohen's lyrics:

And who by fire, who by water,
who in the sunshine, who in the night time,
who by high ordeal, who by common trial,
who in your merry merry month of may,
who by very slow decay,
and who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate,
who in these realms of love, who by something blunt,
and who by avalanche, who by powder,
who for his greed, who for his hunger,
and who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident,
who in solitude, who in this mirror,
who by his lady's command, who by his own hand,
who in mortal chains, who in power,
and who shall I say is calling?

One of my favorite songs of all time is Cohen's exquisitely depressing Bird on a Wire, which contains some of the what must be the most haunting lyrics ever written:

Like a baby stillborn, or a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out to me

As depressing as the song may be, it also contains some excellent advice.

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, you must not ask for so much.
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, hey, why not ask for more?

Hey indeed, why not ask for more? Why listen to the beggar?

Youtube.com is lousy with Cohen performances. Here is a good one of Who by Fire with a violin solo that will tear your heart out. In fact, if you feel like wallowing in melancholia a good rainy day activity is watching all of the different performances and covers of Cohen's music. (Warning: may cause clinical depression.)

I especially enjoy Rufus Wainwright's campy, Shirley Bassey-esque version of Everybody Knows.

Miss Lonelyhearts

I apologize for the lack of updates but I have been handling the bulk of the email and IM reference and it’s been much more physically and emotionally draining than I could have ever anticipated. This electronic reference seems to reach a whole new…class of patrons and sometimes the magnitude of their problems, desperation and witlessness fills with me with this sort of despairing wonder. They're just so lost. I’m certainly not going to let their questions get to me until they destroy me like Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, but they certainly have sapped my vitality and creative energy while I’ve been shoring up and fortifying my boundaries.

Anyway, here are some choice samples. Details have been changed to protect the patron, and I have also have made an attempt to clean up the spelling and grammar for your sanity as well as mine.

Patron:
Patron: : i got this girl pregnant and today her other baby's daddy gets out of jail and is just crazy. If he beat her up so she lost the baby would I be able to press charges? Even if she didn’t want to? Like if he kicked her or threw her down the stairs or something?

These two just seemed like shit-smeared pungi stick lined traps set by extremists. I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole and instead directed them to Planned Parenthood.

Patron: i live in XXXXX county people tell me an abortion can be done within 3 months, others say up to 5 months. i need to find a place that will do abortion at 7 months

Patron: My daughter is 16 and I want her to have an abortion but she won’t. Can I force her?

Medical Emergencies:
Patron:Hello. My father-in-law accidentally ate all of our dog’s Heartguard flea and heart worm medication. Is it poisonous? It says keep out of reach of children.

Librarian: GET OFF IM AND CALL POISON CONTROL IMMEDIATELY 1-800-222-1222

The “All in the Family” or “My Bitch ex-wife” category. Oftentimes these are written in ALLCAPS. These are always referred to legal aid.

Patron: CAN A PERSON WITHHOLD VISITATION EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE A COURT ORDER? THE LAST TIME I TRIED TO PICK UP THE KIDS THEY WOULDN’T LET ME IN FROM THE PORCH. SHE HAS A RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST ME BUT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE IS REAL CORRUPT HERE

Patron: How do I enforce visitation when the other party won't open the door even for the sheriff?


Patron: I have been paying child support for 15 years for a child that is not mine never signed birth certifi cate, even though I was married. Is there a law that states if you are not the biological father and can prove it do you still have to pay and can I get refunded.

Patron: A temporary Restraining Order was granted against me. However,a permanent order was not granted. How can I get this erased. My employer requires background checks and I don't want this to come up.

Patron: Can I appeal a judges order to change child custody orders if I feel I was misunderstood and my ex wife lied?

In any case, I used to think the grotesque characters of Flannery O’Connor and Nathanial West were a lot funnier than I do now that I'm dealing with them. But I do have to say that I am still in awe at the brilliance of West naming Miss Lonelyheart’s cynical, tormenting boss, Shrike. Shrike, who sadistically revels in disillusioning and destroying any religious or romantic notions Miss Lonelyhearts may express, shares a name with a carnivorous bird that impales its prey on thorns. The shrike, also known as the butcher bird, uses the thorn as leverage to tear its prey apart as well as handy storage for the little corpse. Mother Nature is one strange bitch.

Miss Lonelyhearts

I apologize for the lack of updates but I have been handling the bulk of the email and IM reference and it’s been much more physically and emotionally draining than I could have ever anticipated. This electronic reference seems to reach a whole new…class of patrons and sometimes the magnitude of their problems, desperation and witlessness fills with me with this sort of despairing wonder. They're just so lost. I’m certainly not going to let their questions get to me until they destroy me like Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts, but they certainly have sapped my vitality and creative energy while I’ve been shoring up and fortifying my boundaries.

Anyway, here are some choice samples. Details have been changed to protect the patron, and I have also have made an attempt to clean up the spelling and grammar for your sanity as well as mine.

Patron:
Patron: : i got this girl pregnant and today her other baby's daddy gets out of jail and is just crazy. If he beat her up so she lost the baby would I be able to press charges? Even if she didn’t want to? Like if he kicked her or threw her down the stairs or something?

These two just seemed like shit-smeared pungi stick lined traps set by extremists. I wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole and instead directed them to Planned Parenthood.

Patron: i live in XXXXX county people tell me an abortion can be done within 3 months, others say up to 5 months. i need to find a place that will do abortion at 7 months

Patron: My daughter is 16 and I want her to have an abortion but she won’t. Can I force her?

Medical Emergencies:
Patron:Hello. My father-in-law accidentally ate all of our dog’s Heartguard flea and heart worm medication. Is it poisonous? It says keep out of reach of children.

Librarian: GET OFF IM AND CALL POISON CONTROL IMMEDIATELY 1-800-222-1222

The “All in the Family” or “My Bitch ex-wife” category. Oftentimes these are written in ALLCAPS. These are always referred to legal aid.

Patron: CAN A PERSON WITHHOLD VISITATION EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE A COURT ORDER? THE LAST TIME I TRIED TO PICK UP THE KIDS THEY WOULDN’T LET ME IN FROM THE PORCH. SHE HAS A RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST ME BUT THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE IS REAL CORRUPT HERE

Patron: How do I enforce visitation when the other party won't open the door even for the sheriff?


Patron: I have been paying child support for 15 years for a child that is not mine never signed birth certifi cate, even though I was married. Is there a law that states if you are not the biological father and can prove it do you still have to pay and can I get refunded.

Patron: A temporary Restraining Order was granted against me. However,a permanent order was not granted. How can I get this erased. My employer requires background checks and I don't want this to come up.

Patron: Can I appeal a judges order to change child custody orders if I feel I was misunderstood and my ex wife lied?

In any case, I used to think the grotesque characters of Flannery O’Connor and Nathanial West were a lot funnier than I do now that I'm dealing with them. But I do have to say that I am still in awe at the brilliance of West naming Miss Lonelyheart’s cynical, tormenting boss, Shrike. Shrike, who sadistically revels in disillusioning and destroying any religious or romantic notions Miss Lonelyhearts may express, shares a name with a carnivorous bird that impales its prey on thorns. The shrike, also known as the butcher bird, uses the thorn as leverage to tear its prey apart as well as handy storage for the little corpse. Mother Nature is one strange bitch.

More Rave Reviews from our Patrons

From a popular on-line review site...

A junkie in the bathroom asked me to help her shoot up as she attempted to simultaneously wrap a slender piece of rubberized hose around her bicep, tugging at it with her teeth and holding a disgustingly dirty needle in the other hand. I'm nice but I ain't that nice...

The crazies will talk to each other out loud here and then bitch about the librarians talking! i was told by someone who witnessed this guy running in to the library holding his butt and headed straight to the bathroom. unfortunately the men's room was closed for cleaning and the guy still holding his butt started to kick and scream at the bathroom door. He had to be escorted out of the library.

More Rave Reviews from our Patrons

From a popular on-line review site...

A junkie in the bathroom asked me to help her shoot up as she attempted to simultaneously wrap a slender piece of rubberized hose around her bicep, tugging at it with her teeth and holding a disgustingly dirty needle in the other hand. I'm nice but I ain't that nice...

The crazies will talk to each other out loud here and then bitch about the librarians talking! i was told by someone who witnessed this guy running in to the library holding his butt and headed straight to the bathroom. unfortunately the men's room was closed for cleaning and the guy still holding his butt started to kick and scream at the bathroom door. He had to be escorted out of the library.

Pearls of God

A patron keeps pestering us about when the library's copy of The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers will be available for circulation. True crime is a popular subject - we can hardly keep Ann Rule books on the shelves - and many patrons, including sweet little old ladies with a twinkle in their eye I have come to recognize as bloodthirsty, are serial killer/sensational murder enthusiasts. This patron’s overweening passion for such a grisly subject, however, gives even the most imperturbable and beyond caring burnt out of us pause. Although I would definitely classify him as misfit loner, he seems to be a nice enough guy (as the neighbors always say), but he smells eye wateringly bad - like carrion, to be exact. Perhaps that's from all the bodies of his victims that he keeps plastered up in his walls “for company.”

Recently, another patron approached the desk wearing filth caked rags he probably hadn’t changed out of since the first Bush administration. He looked like some raving, wild eyed prophet and after we could catch our breathe I said to my colleague, “He smelled like an anchorite!” Oh, the Middle Ages... Supposedly at the height of that unfortunate fad in early Christianity, Europe and the Holy Land were lousy with anchorites and stylites. Reportedly, they stank so wretchedly that people could smell them for miles.

From Sex and Salvation by Margaret Bhatty:
Since sex depends heavily on the chemistry of sex appeal, those anxious for their souls rendered themselves as unattractive as possible. Adornment and finery was of the devil, while bathing was a sin. Anchorites, fleeing temptation by women, lived in the wilderness unwashed for the rest of their lives. St. Abraham, "a man of singular beauty", fled on his wedding night and never washed for the next fifty years. The dirt on his person "reflected the purity of his soul." Body odour was called "the odour of sanctity" and lice, "the pearls of God." Those celibates who couldn't live in the wilderness, climbed to the top of tall columns and were called stylites. Up there they were assured of being free from the contact with women which could put their souls at risk.

Sweet Jesus, the closer I walk with thee! I can’t wait to call security to report a patron flicking “pearls of God” from his body at passersby in the magazines area. For further entertaining reading about some of the gross, fleshly-mortification-and- debasement-as-a-route to holiness notions in early Christianity, please read Holy Feast, Holy Fast. It contains a nauseating yet riveting section about a favorite custom of saint wannabes: sucking the pus out of and plucking and eating the scabs off of lepers. From what I can gather, those saints were quite competitive, always trying to one up each other in the gross out department. One profiled saint, Angelina of Folina, claimed she found the leper pus “as sweet as the communion.” Not to be outdone, Catherine of Siena boasted, "Never in my life have I tasted any food and drink sweeter or more exquisite than this pus." In any case, those girls make that albino with his cilice in The Da Vinci code look like a total pussy.

Pearls of God

A patron keeps pestering us about when the library's copy of The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers will be available for circulation. True crime is a popular subject - we can hardly keep Ann Rule books on the shelves - and many patrons, including sweet little old ladies with a twinkle in their eye I have come to recognize as bloodthirsty, are serial killer/sensational murder enthusiasts. This patron’s overweening passion for such a grisly subject, however, gives even the most imperturbable and beyond caring burnt out of us pause. Although I would definitely classify him as misfit loner, he seems to be a nice enough guy (as the neighbors always say), but he smells eye wateringly bad - like carrion, to be exact. Perhaps that's from all the bodies of his victims that he keeps plastered up in his walls “for company.”

Recently, another patron approached the desk wearing filth caked rags he probably hadn’t changed out of since the first Bush administration. He looked like some raving, wild eyed prophet and after we could catch our breathe I said to my colleague, “He smelled like an anchorite!” Oh, the Middle Ages... Supposedly at the height of that unfortunate fad in early Christianity, Europe and the Holy Land were lousy with anchorites and stylites. Reportedly, they stank so wretchedly that people could smell them for miles.

From Sex and Salvation by Margaret Bhatty:
Since sex depends heavily on the chemistry of sex appeal, those anxious for their souls rendered themselves as unattractive as possible. Adornment and finery was of the devil, while bathing was a sin. Anchorites, fleeing temptation by women, lived in the wilderness unwashed for the rest of their lives. St. Abraham, "a man of singular beauty", fled on his wedding night and never washed for the next fifty years. The dirt on his person "reflected the purity of his soul." Body odour was called "the odour of sanctity" and lice, "the pearls of God." Those celibates who couldn't live in the wilderness, climbed to the top of tall columns and were called stylites. Up there they were assured of being free from the contact with women which could put their souls at risk.

Sweet Jesus, the closer I walk with thee! I can’t wait to call security to report a patron flicking “pearls of God” from his body at passersby in the magazines area. For further entertaining reading about some of the gross, fleshly-mortification-and- debasement-as-a-route to holiness notions in early Christianity, please read Holy Feast, Holy Fast. It contains a nauseating yet riveting section about a favorite custom of saint wannabes: sucking the pus out of and plucking and eating the scabs off of lepers. From what I can gather, those saints were quite competitive, always trying to one up each other in the gross out department. One profiled saint, Angelina of Folina, claimed she found the leper pus “as sweet as the communion.” Not to be outdone, Catherine of Siena boasted, "Never in my life have I tasted any food and drink sweeter or more exquisite than this pus." In any case, those girls make that albino with his cilice in The Da Vinci code look like a total pussy.

IM Reference: Last Refuge of the Shiftless Student

Patron:I need you to tell me what photosynthesis is.

Librarian: From Encarta: Photosynthesis, process by which green plants and certain other organisms use the energy of light to convert carbon dioxide and water into the simple sugar glucose. In so doing, photosynthesis provides the basic energy source for virtually all organisms. An extremely important byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen, on which most organisms depend.

Patron: But I need it in your own words

Librarian: What grade are you in? Do you want a definition that might be easier to understand? Would you like the definition from World Book, a children’s encyclopedia?

Patron: 7th. Just give it to me in your own words. I need it in your own words

Librarian: Is this for a homework assignment?

Patron: GIVE IT TO ME IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Librarian: Sorry, I provided you with the definition. I’m not going to do your homework assignment for you. Anything else I can help you with?

Patron signed off

IM Reference, last refuge of the profoundly lazy

Patron: I need some facts about President Wilson

Librarian: Here are some quick facts from Encarta:
Lowered tariff rates and established a federal income tax with the Underwood Tariff of 1913.
Established the Federal Reserve System in 1914 to supervise and regulate banks.
Asked Congress to declare war on Germany on April 2, 1917, after many diplomatic attempts to end World War I.
Signed peace treaty with Germany to end World War I in 1919.
Received the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to end World War I and to establish the League of Nations.
1902-1910 Served as president of Princeton University.
1911-1913 Served as governor of New Jersey.
1913-1921 President of the United States.
Wilson allowed sheep to graze on the White House lawn during World War I; their wool helped raise money for the Red Cross.
Wilson was the first president to cross the Atlantic Ocean while in office.
Wilson established the practice of holding regular presidential press conferences.

Patron: I just need 5. Pick out the five best facts and give them to me.

Librarian: I gave you five facts. Pick out the ones you want.

Patron: I just want five facts that are the best.

Librarian: I gave you the material. It’s up to you to judge which ones you need. Please don’t ask me to do your homework.

Patron signed off

IM Reference: Last Refuge of the Shiftless Student

Patron:I need you to tell me what photosynthesis is.

Librarian: From Encarta: Photosynthesis, process by which green plants and certain other organisms use the energy of light to convert carbon dioxide and water into the simple sugar glucose. In so doing, photosynthesis provides the basic energy source for virtually all organisms. An extremely important byproduct of photosynthesis is oxygen, on which most organisms depend.

Patron: But I need it in your own words

Librarian: What grade are you in? Do you want a definition that might be easier to understand? Would you like the definition from World Book, a children’s encyclopedia?

Patron: 7th. Just give it to me in your own words. I need it in your own words

Librarian: Is this for a homework assignment?

Patron: GIVE IT TO ME IN YOUR OWN WORDS

Librarian: Sorry, I provided you with the definition. I’m not going to do your homework assignment for you. Anything else I can help you with?

Patron signed off

IM Reference, last refuge of the profoundly lazy

Patron: I need some facts about President Wilson

Librarian: Here are some quick facts from Encarta:
Lowered tariff rates and established a federal income tax with the Underwood Tariff of 1913.
Established the Federal Reserve System in 1914 to supervise and regulate banks.
Asked Congress to declare war on Germany on April 2, 1917, after many diplomatic attempts to end World War I.
Signed peace treaty with Germany to end World War I in 1919.
Received the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to end World War I and to establish the League of Nations.
1902-1910 Served as president of Princeton University.
1911-1913 Served as governor of New Jersey.
1913-1921 President of the United States.
Wilson allowed sheep to graze on the White House lawn during World War I; their wool helped raise money for the Red Cross.
Wilson was the first president to cross the Atlantic Ocean while in office.
Wilson established the practice of holding regular presidential press conferences.

Patron: I just need 5. Pick out the five best facts and give them to me.

Librarian: I gave you five facts. Pick out the ones you want.

Patron: I just want five facts that are the best.

Librarian: I gave you the material. It’s up to you to judge which ones you need. Please don’t ask me to do your homework.

Patron signed off