Have a question? Ask a librarian!

Today a librarian reluctantly followed a series of olfactory clues to a man perched squatting on one of the library's metal, knee high trashcans. His pants were rolled down and there was no mistaking for what purpose he was using the trashcan. The librarian was aghast.

"Sir, what are you doing? Why aren't you using the bathroom?"

"I couldn't find a bathroom," he grunted.

She backed away to call security, still in disbelief. "But why, why didn't you just ask? There are librarians everywhere."

Have a question? Ask a librarian!

Today a librarian reluctantly followed a series of olfactory clues to a man perched squatting on one of the library's metal, knee high trashcans. His pants were rolled down and there was no mistaking for what purpose he was using the trashcan. The librarian was aghast.

"Sir, what are you doing? Why aren't you using the bathroom?"

"I couldn't find a bathroom," he grunted.

She backed away to call security, still in disbelief. "But why, why didn't you just ask? There are librarians everywhere."

Ho' Couture

My colleague was retrieving a book from the stacks when she came across a woman in the stacks. She looked like a crack whore, but a very stylish crack whore, with a purple sequined halter top and retro bellbottom pants that hung perfectly on her skeletal frame. She was twitching and vibrating with the effects of the drugs, her eyes wild with hallucination. “You’re the devil,” she hissed at my colleague. “Get away from me, SATAN.” The woman then drew her hands into claws and lunged at my colleague’s eyes but was so shaky that she missed and fell over onto the floor. My colleague high tailed it to security, which found the patron sitting on the ground where my colleague had left her. As expected she was highly uncooperative and security had to drag her kicking, screaming and flailing, all bony knees and elbows, into the office. When security asked her name she replied, “First name FUCK, last name YOU.”

That’s actually pretty good, almost as good as Frances Farmer writing “cocksucker” in the occupation field of her court papers when she was taken in for drunk driving and resisting arrest. Her mother blamed Farmer's subsequent breakdown on 'world communism.'

I kind of imagine the patron as Pam Grier in Fort Apache the Bronx, the alluring but psychopathic prostitute who dances and speaks in eerie singsong before slashing her johns’ throats with a razor she keeps concealed in her mouth.

My colleague, understanding that these things happen, certainly bore her no ill will, and still speaks with admiration about the patron's fashion. "Those were the greatest pair of pants," my colleague said wistfully. "I don't think anyone with an ounce of body fat could pull those off, though."

Ho' Couture

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Gauntlet

I was having trouble with my security access card at the employee entrance the other morning. I keep my badge in an outer pocket of my backpack so I just have to wave my backpack at the security pad to unlock the doors, which are set back in an alcove. For whatever reason it wasn’t reading my badge through my backpack so I fished into my bag to retrieve it. I was clearly having a hard time trying to juggle my backpack and my bike when a young junkie wandered over and helpfully thrust his grimy, needle scarred arm at me, demanding change.

My street survival instincts are all about defusing, deflecting and doing whatever you can not to escalate a situation, since you just never know what little thing will transform your friendly neighborhood junkie into a rage zombie. Junkies consider this town, notorious for its tolerance, the land of milk and honey, but it outraged me that he was so emboldened that he thought it was all right to corner a woman in clear distress and try to intimidate money out of her. I don’t care how dopesick you are.

I stared at him in disbelief. I backed up against the door and my bike fell against my hip painfully. He moved in closer, fencing me in, and repeated himself. “Got any change.”

“No and GO AWAY,” I hissed at him like a cat.

He drew back and gave me a wounded look. "No, YOU…YOU go away." (Snap!) Thankfully someone walked by just then and he slouched off.

Maybe it's just me, but lately homeless around the city have become much more restive, their cant more aggressive and intimidating. Last week a large, muscle bound man asked me for money and I smiled and said sorry. He bowed up and glared at me and screamed, “Damn, all I’ve been getting all day are smiles!” I was taken back by the venom in his voice, so I hurried off. I was still shaken from that ugly encounter when I walked by a squatting man holding a rather uncouth cardboard sign: “NEED MONEY FOR PUSSY.” Walking the streets around the streets of this city has become a gauntlet.

I was soothing myself by looking at up paintings of Flemish master Quentin Matsys on the internet. All his paintings have incredibly sumptuous colors and mind blowing attention to detail, but even his loveliest paintings have that streak of the grotesque I find so appealing. The characters in his portraits have such striking personality, individuality and presence.

Fun fact: Matsys' sister was buried alive in the town square for reading the Bible, a capital crime at the time. (Her husband was decapitated.) Just as Jesus would have wanted them to be, I'm sure. This was during the Reformation and the Catholic church, terrified of losing control, was cracking down. I'm glad that the Catholic church has lightened up a bit since then.

Here is a nice little write up on the image pictured here, The Ill-Matched Lovers.

Gauntlet

I was having trouble with my security access card at the employee entrance the other morning. I keep my badge in an outer pocket of my backpack so I just have to wave my backpack at the security pad to unlock the doors, which are set back in an alcove. For whatever reason it wasn’t reading my badge through my backpack so I fished into my bag to retrieve it. I was clearly having a hard time trying to juggle my backpack and my bike when a young junkie wandered over and helpfully thrust his grimy, needle scarred arm at me, demanding change.

My street survival instincts are all about defusing, deflecting and doing whatever you can not to escalate a situation, since you just never know what little thing will transform your friendly neighborhood junkie into a rage zombie. Junkies consider this town, notorious for its tolerance, the land of milk and honey, but it outraged me that he was so emboldened that he thought it was all right to corner a woman in clear distress and try to intimidate money out of her. I don’t care how dopesick you are.

I stared at him in disbelief. I backed up against the door and my bike fell against my hip painfully. He moved in closer, fencing me in, and repeated himself. “Got any change.”

“No and GO AWAY,” I hissed at him like a cat.

He drew back and gave me a wounded look. "No, YOU…YOU go away." (Snap!) Thankfully someone walked by just then and he slouched off.

Maybe it's just me, but lately homeless around the city have become much more restive, their cant more aggressive and intimidating. Last week a large, muscle bound man asked me for money and I smiled and said sorry. He bowed up and glared at me and screamed, “Damn, all I’ve been getting all day are smiles!” I was taken back by the venom in his voice, so I hurried off. I was still shaken from that ugly encounter when I walked by a squatting man holding a rather uncouth cardboard sign: “NEED MONEY FOR PUSSY.” Walking the streets around the streets of this city has become a gauntlet.

I was soothing myself by looking at up paintings of Flemish master Quentin Matsys on the internet. All his paintings have incredibly sumptuous colors and mind blowing attention to detail, but even his loveliest paintings have that streak of the grotesque I find so appealing. The characters in his portraits have such striking personality, individuality and presence.

Fun fact: Matsys' sister was buried alive in the town square for reading the Bible, a capital crime at the time. (Her husband was decapitated.) Just as Jesus would have wanted them to be, I'm sure. This was during the Reformation and the Catholic church, terrified of losing control, was cracking down. I'm glad that the Catholic church has lightened up a bit since then.

Here is a nice little write up on the image pictured here, The Ill-Matched Lovers.

Damnation of Memory

The 15 minute internet computers have been relocated to the back of the building. All the desks are facing the other direction and it is difficult to keep a close eye on them. Predictably, many patron behavior problems - carousing, fisticuffs, drug dealing, line jumping – have blossomed there. Now that our backs are turned it is like a perverse game of Mother May I, and when we whip our heads around or the security guard patrols everyone is suddenly and peacefully waiting in line with innocent, doe-like expressions.

This beautiful Norwegian tourist couple, so polite, so fresh scrubbed, asked me if the library had internet so I reluctantly led them back to the 15 minute computer line. As we approached the area I saw a man sitting in line swatting at his hallucinations dancing around his head and another one muttering to himself and glaring at everyone in this alarming and menacing way. Although it was standing room only the chairs on either side of him were empty and even the most hardcore were giving him as wide a berth as a stick of sweating dynamite. As we approached the men all turned and looked at the female tourist as if she were a roasted Thanksgiving turkey adorned with leg frills. When I got close and I was struck by the rough crowd’s odor rising above like some foul, choking incense, I turned us all right back around and gave them internet passes to other computers. I have too much national pride to let them wait in line with that.

A patron called and had me look up a cool Latin phrase I had never heard of: Damnation of Memory, a practice in which all records and traces of a person were 'disappeared' were permanently erased by the state. Soviets, of course, were modern masters of this. I’ve always had a perverse interest in doctored Soviet photographs from Stalin’s time, when people who fell out of favor were expunged, sometimes with cartoonish and laughable efforts, from state photos. Imagine what Stalin’s people could have done with Photoshop.

Damnation of Memory was often carried out on a more personal, familial level. Often the family Bible acted as the official family record and was the only place where vital records such as birth, marriage and death dates were kept. Black sheep’s names were occasionally struck from the family Bible for disgracing the family is some unforgivable way, like eloping with a person of the wrong religion or gambling away the family fortune or abandoning her husband and children and running off with a Yankee officer, as my great-great granfather's first wife supposedly did. (My great-great grandfather immigrated from Kentucky to Texas shortly thereafter, and details are rather hazy as to whether he was official divorced before he married my great-great grandmother, which is why my great uncle always remarked, "I don't know why this family puts on such airs when we're all just a bunch of bastards.")

I have been revisiting the beautiful stories of Katherine Anne Porter. In Old Mortality, a fictionalized account of her grandmother and her constant companion, Nannie Gay, who had been slave given to her when she was a little girl. Her grandmother caused a minor scandal when at the age of nine she entered in Nannie Gay's name in the family Bible next to hers.

Nannie Gay,” she wrote in stiff careful letters, (black),” and though there was some uproar when this was discovered, the ink was long sink sunk deeply into the paper, and besides no one was really upset enough to have it scratched out. There it remained, one of their pleasantest points of reference.

Damnation of Memory

The 15 minute internet computers have been relocated to the back of the building. All the desks are facing the other direction and it is difficult to keep a close eye on them. Predictably, many patron behavior problems - carousing, fisticuffs, drug dealing, line jumping – have blossomed there. Now that our backs are turned it is like a perverse game of Mother May I, and when we whip our heads around or the security guard patrols everyone is suddenly and peacefully waiting in line with innocent, doe-like expressions.

This beautiful Norwegian tourist couple, so polite, so fresh scrubbed, asked me if the library had internet so I reluctantly led them back to the 15 minute computer line. As we approached the area I saw a man sitting in line swatting at his hallucinations dancing around his head and another one muttering to himself and glaring at everyone in this alarming and menacing way. Although it was standing room only the chairs on either side of him were empty and even the most hardcore were giving him as wide a berth as a stick of sweating dynamite. As we approached the men all turned and looked at the female tourist as if she were a roasted Thanksgiving turkey adorned with leg frills. When I got close and I was struck by the rough crowd’s odor rising above like some foul, choking incense, I turned us all right back around and gave them internet passes to other computers. I have too much national pride to let them wait in line with that.

A patron called and had me look up a cool Latin phrase I had never heard of: Damnation of Memory, a practice in which all records and traces of a person were 'disappeared' were permanently erased by the state. Soviets, of course, were modern masters of this. I’ve always had a perverse interest in doctored Soviet photographs from Stalin’s time, when people who fell out of favor were expunged, sometimes with cartoonish and laughable efforts, from state photos. Imagine what Stalin’s people could have done with Photoshop.

Damnation of Memory was often carried out on a more personal, familial level. Often the family Bible acted as the official family record and was the only place where vital records such as birth, marriage and death dates were kept. Black sheep’s names were occasionally struck from the family Bible for disgracing the family is some unforgivable way, like eloping with a person of the wrong religion or gambling away the family fortune or abandoning her husband and children and running off with a Yankee officer, as my great-great granfather's first wife supposedly did. (My great-great grandfather immigrated from Kentucky to Texas shortly thereafter, and details are rather hazy as to whether he was official divorced before he married my great-great grandmother, which is why my great uncle always remarked, "I don't know why this family puts on such airs when we're all just a bunch of bastards.")

I have been revisiting the beautiful stories of Katherine Anne Porter. In Old Mortality, a fictionalized account of her grandmother and her constant companion, Nannie Gay, who had been slave given to her when she was a little girl. Her grandmother caused a minor scandal when at the age of nine she entered in Nannie Gay's name in the family Bible next to hers.

Nannie Gay,” she wrote in stiff careful letters, (black),” and though there was some uproar when this was discovered, the ink was long sink sunk deeply into the paper, and besides no one was really upset enough to have it scratched out. There it remained, one of their pleasantest points of reference.

Do me, you filthy bee

Good night! I know that flowers are the genitalia of the plant world, but come on! With its heart shaped 'tongue', its lower petals, coyly crossed, looking as if they're wearing thigh high garter stockings pulled up to plump little buttocks - Georgia O'Keefe only wishes she could paint something so suggestive.

By the way, this little strumpet is the Highland Masdevallia.

Do me, you filthy bee

Good night! I know that flowers are the genitalia of the plant world, but come on! With its heart shaped 'tongue', its lower petals, coyly crossed, looking as if they're wearing thigh high garter stockings pulled up to plump little buttocks - Georgia O'Keefe only wishes she could paint something so suggestive.

By the way, this little strumpet is the Highland Masdevallia.

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!

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.”