TwentySevenLetters / B

How[']s it look

I wanted to share a snippet of today's spam. It strikes me as what would happen if you wrote an academic essay with MadLibs and ran it through Babelfish a couple of times. I'm not sure how it's supposed to cure my back pain, though, if it even is—the email comes in from the domain goodhealth-backpain.com, but the ad image pasted at the bottom is for testosterone and HGH therapy. I wish I knew what to make of this as a whole, but it entertained me and I haven't had much to blog lately, so here it is.

Hunger is the result of disasters such as drought, floods, the might not have led Great Britain to prevail over Hitler. A final attribute that assisted Churchill during hisding a situation whereby an individual does something which was beyond his control. Therefore, sovereignty of Great Britain was his decisive manner. Churchill did not tend to let matters drift. He handled the flank of risk the cliffs, kindergarten brute spacecraft had dared not pause along the danger-infested way. where they intelligent terminated in an abrupt

When faced with the decision to invade Normandy, Churchill he also defends that along moral luck, moral intitutions should be taken seriously while buildi quickly realized that it had to be done. She said that they get off had but just leave bus-stop reached the cliffs when diameter broken has been estimated that one third of the land in Tropical Africa is potentially ronts issues that I, and plagued with naval problems, he discovered that there was an insufficient supply of fish being caught ng any judgment. However, he further argues that moral luck and moral intitutions should be divoff the coast. Churchill didn’t hesitate to solve this problem, and he then delivered his famous order, “We must off a great section of angel rock and I arrived, on one's way to for on several post box occasions her post captor had been phantom set it trace upon the surface

Filling in

I’ve been called to fill in for the Adult Reference Librarian a bunch recently while she’s been sitting in on interviews for a new senior clerk position, or on vacation, or in other meetings. The reasons hardly matter, but the end result is that I’ve been fielding a lot more fact-related questions (as opposed to my usual reader’s advisory type things).

Sometimes these are insanely difficult, like the man who called to get directions to a nursing home he was sure was in this town. He didn’t know the name of it, but his recollection was that “you take exit 40 and turn right off the exit and follow it about a mile, then make a left and it’s on the left side.” Sounds to me like he knew where he was going, but then he said it had been about 20 years since he’d been down there, and he didn’t know the name of the place. Or the phone number. Or the address. And it might actually be in neighboring town. But it’s definitely a nursing home, or a convalescent center. Might be a rehab center. He needed to know where it was because he was supposed to go down that very day, and he’d be coming from New Hampshire. And no, there wasn’t anyone in his family who might know more details about it.

Sometimes the questions are challenging, like the elderly woman who called to find out the name of a book. She thought the title might be Crimes of Passion and the author’s name was Lori Ludwig, and it’s a true-crime-type psychological book about people who kill their spouses. (Google to the rescue: the actual title is Till Death Do Us Part: Love, Marriage, and the Mind of the Killer Spouse, and the author is Robi Ludwig.) She wanted the exact title so she could recommend it to her sister, who lives in Canada. I’ve spoken to this woman before and she’s very nice and very understanding when we have trouble finding books her sister recommended to her, because the titles on the Canadian editions are often different from the American editions. It’s a challenge, but she’s always very appreciative when we find what she wants.

Sometimes the whole discussion of a question is hilarious, though. Yesterday morning, a woman came in, maybe mid-60s or so. She was looking for a book on mushrooms, because she had a strange mushroom growing in her yard and she wanted to know what it was and how to get rid of it. So I show her where the mushroom identification guides are, and as I pulled one off the shelf, she pointed to a picture at the bottom of the cover: “that’s it! That’s the mushroom!... or very similar to it, anyway.” Of course this book was published back in the early ‘70s, and there were no cover credits anywhere. No “ON THE COVER:” notes. So we started flipping through the images while she talks about her mushrooms.

“I had them a few years ago, under the pine trees. I thought they’d gone away, but I was leaving for church on Sunday morning and I saw these disgusting mushrooms under the forsythia this time! And they smell. There’s some kind of slime on them that just stinks. I thought it was some construction work up the street, but then I realized it’s coming from my yard. I don’t want to be the person with those mushrooms in my yard!”

We continued looking at photographs of the seven hundred thousand mushroom varieties as was lapsed into silence. Then she asked me, “are you married?” I answered that I was, so she whispered conspiratorially, “they look like penises.”

I don’t know what’s funnier about this: that she doesn’t want to be the house with stinky penis mushrooms in the yard, or that I have to be married for her to describe them as looking like penises.

And, for the curious: yes, they really do.

Irrelevant updates

News Roundup

I spent the morning flipping through a couple of magazines that have been sitting on my desk: American Libraries and Library Journal, August issues of both. (What can I say; I’m at the end of the grown-up professional magazine rotations.) The following news blurbs caught my eye.

Too bad LJ doesn't come in a scratch'n'sniff version. Then we could literally convey the scent of the “In the Library” perfume being sold at the trendsetting Brooklyn, NY, boutique CB I Hate Perfume. Perfumer Christopher Brosius (cbihateperfume.com) explains, “I cannot pass a secondhand bookshop.... Whenever I read, the start of the journey is always opening the book and breathing deeply. Don’t you find there are few things more winderful than the smell of a much-loved book?” The smell? Think “Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth, and a hint of wood polish.” Alas, we doubt that a perfume will ever emerge from a Google-scanned book.

That one makes me curious. I’m not much for perfume in general, but a perfume that smells like a used bookstore… it’s not quite baking cookies, but it’s a very happy smell nonetheless. Probably way more than I’m willing to spend, though, when I can just stand around at work for free. (More than free, even, since I get paid, too.)

New Service

Gail Borden Public Library is now offering drive-through service. At the kick-off event, patrons were encouraged to stop at the drive-through window to pick up a coupon for a free order of french fries or coffee from the Bearco Family McDonald's restaurants. "The new convenience service is open during library hours. Patrons are encouraged to phone in their orders for books, DVDS or CDs two hours prior to pickup."

However, careful scouring of their website (last updated 8/2/06) turns up no information about the drive-through, with the possible exception of this:

Persons on the go will find a convenient drive-up drop for return of materials.

Maybe handing out coupons for free fries was a mistake after all.

Happiness is a lack of jerks

I haven’t really had anything at all to blog lately. I’m in a lull, program-wise, since school just started. My ongoing programs will usually fall closer to the end of the month each month and I don’t really have any one-off programs running in September. But also, I’m finding it harder to blog now because there’s just so much less to mock. (With the possible exception of the manatee lady.)

I’m really enjoying being a part of this community. People care about the library, and not just in the what-can-you-do-for-me way that was so prevalent in Providence. Patrons here want to come to the library, just for kicks. They don’t stream in to fall on the computers and leave again. Even the Friday afternoon I-need-a-weekend-video crowd is less demanding than I’m accustomed to.

It’s been suggested to me that this is because this area is more solidly middle-class, whereas the Providence neighborhood I was in was a mix of wealthy upper-class patrons (who believe that they are deserving of special treatment and demand library employees clear all their fines, because they are too special to pay them) and lower- to lower-middle-class patrons, who believe that the library owes them something, because every institution owes them something. This could be. I just prefer to think that the people around here are more willing to put in some effort, and have never had things just handed to them and so aren’t expecting it.

That was a long and awkward sentence, the point of which is just: yay! Nobody here sees me as a servant put here for their comfort and convenience!