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EPISODE 052 (252): Final Days (Final Episode)
Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and this is the end of the weekly edition of Tales from the "LiberryCAST." (You'll have to listen to it to find out why I put weekly in italics.) <br />
<br />
Contained herein are some of the final entries I wrote as a "Liberry" employee, and one that I wrote afterward. There are a number of appearances from prominent members of the Rogues Gallery as well as cameos by a few long lost "liberry" friends to boot.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 7: EPISODE 40 (140): Mr. B-Natural
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JN7lvyLTPmY/TuUR-2YsbsI/AAAAAAAAAWA/2RSOb8wdABY/s1600/tftl-episode40.png" target="_blank" ><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JN7lvyLTPmY/TuUR-2YsbsI/AAAAAAAAAWA/2RSOb8wdABY/s1600/tftl-episode40.png"></a><br />
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There are rogue patrons and there are Rogue Patrons and Mr. B-Natural, Grumpiest Old Man in All the World, was usually somewhere in between. Not an evil human being by any stretch, but a tremendously cranky man, except when in the presence of his beloved pooch, Bubba. Our main beef with him is that Mr. B-Natural was a guy who definitely took pleasure in annoying the bejeezus out of the library staff by blatantly breaking as many rules as he could get away with just to piss us off. To hear him tell it, a library needs patrons who break the rules, otherwise we would have no reason to have rules at all. (Which, I think, was exactly the motivation of Professor Zoom, the arch-nemesis of The Flash.) So he continually signed his name upside down on our computer sign in sheet and tried to sneak his coffee back to the computers for his daily crossword. These are but a few of his stories.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 7: EPISODE 034 (234): Non-Actual Conversations Not Heard in Actual Libraries #74
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fO0Fxqx7G_4/UKmVf9yM3MI/AAAAAAAAAik/3GumaOp5gYY/s1600/tftl-episode234.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fO0Fxqx7G_4/UKmVf9yM3MI/AAAAAAAAAik/3GumaOp5gYY/s1600/tftl-episode234.png"></a><br />
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When I was first planning this podcast, there were two entries from the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog that I knew I had to adapt. The first you can hear as the first episode. The next is this episode.<br />
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For all the entries I wrote in my "Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries" series, only a few were labeled as paraphrased and none were outright fiction.... well, except for one. I got pissed off at a certain set of real circumstances one day and started writing unreal dialogue. <br />
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So I now present Non-Actual Conversations Not Heard in Actual Libraries #74--a completely fictional conversation between a number of real rogue patrons, inspired by actual events if not actual words.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 7: EPISODE 035 (235): Cranky Liquid Paper Guy (and other tales of Library Neophytes)
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1mCDuIdBEc0/ULLf9JjSOyI/AAAAAAAAAi4/khmN8FTMaK0/s1600/tftl-episode235.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1mCDuIdBEc0/ULLf9JjSOyI/AAAAAAAAAi4/khmN8FTMaK0/s1600/tftl-episode235.png"></a><br />
<br />
We're all neophytes at something in life, but the number of people who remain computer neophytes in 2012 is still pretty astounding to me. Even more astounding are the people who are neophytes to libraries themselves--entire "famblies" of people who would only set foot in one if sent there by THEY. This podcast tells a few such stories that befell me during my time working for a "liberry."<br />
<br />
(Featuring a guest appearance by Parka.)
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 7: EPISODE 045 (245): Cross Words
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-piy5eymW6bA/URU9n_t8dnI/AAAAAAAAAmg/gmHaN7POFeQ/s1600/tftl-episode245.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-piy5eymW6bA/URU9n_t8dnI/AAAAAAAAAmg/gmHaN7POFeQ/s1600/tftl-episode245.png"></a><br />
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One of the patrons who I assumed would remain my arch-enemy for the life of the blog was Grumpiest Old Man in All the World, Mr. B-Natural. This turned out not to be the case, as by the time I ended the blog in 2008, Mr. B-Natural had stopped actively trying to piss us off and we had developed something of a grudging mutual respect. However, he still had his moments where the old grumpy soul would flare through, especially when his beloved Wall Street Journal cross word puzzles were endangered. This podcast also tells the mysterious tale of Mr. B-Natural's briefly adopted toupee.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 6: EPISODE 16 (116): Stanky Patrons and other Dusty Turds
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WaE71B6DhEs/TgOmRJWBhJI/AAAAAAAAAN4/oqZMYzroAos/s1600/tftl-episode16.jpg"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WaE71B6DhEs/TgOmRJWBhJI/AAAAAAAAAN4/oqZMYzroAos/s1600/tftl-episode16.jpg"></a><br />
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Public service brings with it one constant: The Public. And not everyone among the public is an avid fan of bathing nor is capable of comprehending that noxious fumes are produced by their butts, nor the readily available ways to combat said fumes. This was a reoccurring problem at my "liberry" that drove me nigh unto insanity. Today's episode presents one of the simple and elegant remedies to our library's ass fume problems that I actually proposed to my bosses.<br />
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As an added bonus, following today's reading is an interview with friend and former fellow library compatriot from another state, Glen B (no relation to Mrs. B), who will enlighten us as to the exact stench classification of some of the patrons in his library. He'll also enlighten us as to what one does when one's home is swallowed by a lake and how that smells afterward. This is one for the Hobo Power record books, gang.<br />
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 6: EPISODE 36 (136): The Ballad of Crusty the Patron
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pY99Fzkr_Mo/TsBAPF_SgSI/AAAAAAAAARI/uA2HYUmoJpY/s1600/tftl-episode36.jpg"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pY99Fzkr_Mo/TsBAPF_SgSI/AAAAAAAAARI/uA2HYUmoJpY/s1600/tftl-episode36.jpg"></a><br />
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While not the stinkiest patron we ever had to deal with, the man who became known as Crusty the Patron was still counted among the worst of the stinky patron lot due to his tenacity in inflicting his stench on us for hours at a time. Crusty suffered from a number of other hygienic ailments that made working at my "liberry" downright unappetizing. And while I was not allowed to kick him out directly, I was able to find at least a temporary solution to the basic problems he caused for us without a direct confrontation. (Don't eat any pastries while listening to this episode.)<br />
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This ep also features appearances and references to Parka and the worlds second stinkiest patron, Mr. Stanky.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 6: EPISODE 51 (151): Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FhrNzBeB9w0/TzqT37C8rGI/AAAAAAAAAYc/jdKXX82ClIo/s1600/tftl-episode51.png1"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FhrNzBeB9w0/TzqT37C8rGI/AAAAAAAAAYc/jdKXX82ClIo/s1600/tftl-episode51.png"></a><br />
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I've often maintained that if a person is going to go around pointing fingers at the foibles of others (or recording podcasts adapting blog entries about the foibles of others), it's only fair for that person to occasionally point a few at some of their own. I did this pretty frequently during the course of writing Tales from the "Liberry" and even devoted an entire week to it. <br />
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Adapted here are a few entries from that week, as well as dumbass things I did beyond it. Guest stars include Mr. Stanky, Mr. Perfect, my moms-in-law, and, unfortunately, my junk.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 6: EPISODE 031 (231): Monsieur Stanky
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
<br />
Way back in Episode 16 of this podcast, I started to tell the story of our penultimate stinky patron, Mr. Stanky. So, 67 episodes later, I finally get around to picking up where I left off. <br />
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Mr. Stanky was a guy who was so eye-wateringly stinky that he defeated all comers from our air-freshener arsenal. Astoundingly stinky... except when he wasn't.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 5: EPISODE 18 (118): Parka Life
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dEItn99PB-U/TgPAWH2h85I/AAAAAAAAAOI/onGpSC-6TSc/s1600/tftl-episode18.jpg"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dEItn99PB-U/TgPAWH2h85I/AAAAAAAAAOI/onGpSC-6TSc/s1600/tftl-episode18.jpg"></a><br />
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Just when we thought we had it bad enough with frequent visits from Chester the (Potential) Molester, another seeming sicko fell into our midst. And, unlike Chester, this one actually had computer skills. He also had a habit of exclusively wearing a puffy white Michelin man winter parka in the warmth of April, so his nickname officially became Parka.<br />
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While I didn't know it at the time, he would become the MOST chronicled member of the "Liberry" Rogues Gallery by proving himself to be the MOST irritating patron we had to deal with, in a multitude of ways.<br />
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Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to play the Five Tacos and a Taco podcast game Dick, Douche, or Dumbass and see if you can tell which category Parka falls into best. Or worst, as the case may be.<br />
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As an added bonus, the final story of the podcast features a magnificently satisfying tale of both a massively unprecedented event for our library as well as one of the aforementioned Chester getting his comeuppance at the hands of another library.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 5: EPISODE 24 (124): Who's Got the 10 and a Half?
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kSM3FpjwSpc/TlE2tFePssI/AAAAAAAAAPE/JOPwLA8zp8o/s1600/tftl-episode24.jpg" target="_blank" ><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kSM3FpjwSpc/TlE2tFePssI/AAAAAAAAAPE/JOPwLA8zp8o/s1600/tftl-episode24.jpg"></a><br />
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For most of my "liberry" career, I was a part time employee. Once in a while, though, when EVERYONE else was out of town, I was called upon to take on not only a full 8 hour day, but sometimes a full 10 hour day, almost entirely by myself. This is when my experiments with real time blogging began to take shape. It's not all funny material, but it was often surprising.<br />
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Guest stars include: Mr. Smiley, Parka, Kanji the Kid, Brent & Brice the New Devil Twins, Chester the (Potential) Moletster, and more.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 5: EPISODE 39 (139): And the Password Is...
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vy0WttcC6L8/TtrJ_jl-IYI/AAAAAAAAAV0/13_rOYZka-A/s1600/tftl-episode39.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vy0WttcC6L8/TtrJ_jl-IYI/AAAAAAAAAV0/13_rOYZka-A/s1600/tftl-episode39.png"></a><br />
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Everybody has a secret these days. If nothing else, they have at least one computer password. We went through several at the "liberry" for our patron computers, mostly because our patrons kept hacking them. And, sure, we didn't always make this as difficult as we should, but people having the patron computer password wasn't exactly the end of the world. It was just irritating. And who among our patrons tended to be the ones who tried to hack us most frequently? Why the Rogue Patrons, of course.<br />
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(Featuring appearances by Parka, The Evil Fed Ex Guy and the Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids)<br />
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 5: EPISODE 43 (143): ParkaST 2
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oaOVtgiXzOA/TwCvJHVac5I/AAAAAAAAAWk/WKlaLMz6mL8/s1600/tftl-episode43.png" target="_blank" ><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oaOVtgiXzOA/TwCvJHVac5I/AAAAAAAAAWk/WKlaLMz6mL8/s1600/tftl-episode43.png"></a><br />
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Back for the new year are tales of everyone's favorite puffy, white, Michelin Man parka-clad, innanet crowd patron, Parka. Detailed here are tales of his repeatedly thwarted efforts to drink his coffee while chatting with his e-skanks on our computers, what it might sound like were he to have been given a microphone with which to chat with them, his deep roots into the synchronicity fields surrounding our building, and his banning from the use of our computers at the hands of... himself.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 5: EPISODE 035 (235): Cranky Liquid Paper Guy (and other tales of Library Neophytes)
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1mCDuIdBEc0/ULLf9JjSOyI/AAAAAAAAAi4/khmN8FTMaK0/s1600/tftl-episode235.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1mCDuIdBEc0/ULLf9JjSOyI/AAAAAAAAAi4/khmN8FTMaK0/s1600/tftl-episode235.png"></a><br />
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We're all neophytes at something in life, but the number of people who remain computer neophytes in 2012 is still pretty astounding to me. Even more astounding are the people who are neophytes to libraries themselves--entire "famblies" of people who would only set foot in one if sent there by THEY. This podcast tells a few such stories that befell me during my time working for a "liberry."<br />
<br />
(Featuring a guest appearance by Parka.)
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 4: EPISODE 33 (133): The Crustacean Menace!
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7z6F7_OA02I/TqIiMuErVaI/AAAAAAAAAQY/9t-6qC-wKfw/s1600/tftl-episode33.jpg"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7z6F7_OA02I/TqIiMuErVaI/AAAAAAAAAQY/9t-6qC-wKfw/s1600/tftl-episode33.jpg"></a><br />
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In the past, I've chronicled small tales of Mr. B-Natural and Mr. Smiley, the first and second grumpiest old men in all the world respectively. However, the third grumpiest old man in all the world actually proved to be one of the more active antagonists in the history of the Tales from the "Liberry" blog. As I said <a href="http://www.liberrycast.com/2011/10/episode-32-132-blue-hair-group.html">last week</a>, he's an honorary old white lady and for good reason; not only is he on par with the O.W.L.s in mere surliness, but he could go up against the worst of them in the <font style="font-style: italic;">Forgetting Your Library Card and Getting All Worked up About it to the Point of Leveling Threats Against the Staff 400 meter dash. </font>One for the record books, people.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 4: EPISODE 41 (141): Christmas Party Pack
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V8Hr0fXdne8/Tu5ovh3P4SI/AAAAAAAAAWM/bYpcg5tLHX8/s1600/tftl-episode41.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V8Hr0fXdne8/Tu5ovh3P4SI/AAAAAAAAAWM/bYpcg5tLHX8/s1600/tftl-episode41.png"></a><br />
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I loves me some Christmas Party. Yessir. Nearly my favorite kind of party due to high concentrations of fantastic food and drink and presents. Our "liberry" Christmas parties were especially fun, as we usually did them potluck style and stuffed ourselves beyond full with the amazing dishes created by the wonderful cooks I worked with (and am married to). But there are many varieties of Christmas party beyond the "liberry", not to mention just nutty seasonal crap to deal with. This week's podcast explores the topic all around.<br />
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(Features unfortunate guest appearances by both Chester the (potential) Molester and my colon.)
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 4: EPISODE 038 (238): The Second Crustacean Menace
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zvKU0-ABPMM/UM-ekxySr6I/AAAAAAAAAj0/U30qSg6gEHA/s1600/tftl-episode238.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zvKU0-ABPMM/UM-ekxySr6I/AAAAAAAAAj0/U30qSg6gEHA/s1600/tftl-episode238.png"></a><br />
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Among the five Grumpiest Old Men in All The World that I encountered and cataloged during my time at the "Liberry," the 3rd Grumpiest, Mr. Crab, was perhaps the most irritating on a day to day basis. For while he was not as frequent a visitor as 1st Grumpiest Old Man, Mr. B-Natural, and did more to keep the library in business than 2nd Grumpiest Mr. Smiley (a man who actively campaigned to prevent us from building a new building), Mr. Crab habitually provided us with a greater volume of shit than any of the others.<br />
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Today's episode continues to illustrate this, in addition to telling the tales of the two times in my life that I have been afforded the opportunity to impale him on a broom.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 3: EPISODE 26 (126): D-Con Kills Nerds Dead
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.")<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OJl_-UQilcY/TmPpqAKzkjI/AAAAAAAAAPU/z_JvXmTuYjM/s1600/tftl-episode26.jpg"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OJl_-UQilcY/TmPpqAKzkjI/AAAAAAAAAPU/z_JvXmTuYjM/s1600/tftl-episode26.jpg"></a><br />
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As you might have noticed, I'm an enormous nerd. Maybe not quite as nerdy as the Nerdist Podcast, but nerdy all the same. As such, I'm fond of heading out to nerd gatherings such as the infamous Dragon Con in Atlanta. In honor of this being Dragon Con weekend for 2011, I present some non-"liberry" tales of my D-Con experiences of the past decade. Included are dealer's room encounters with gerbil-cleavaged sci-fi heroines; Annoying Brit Track Boy's near-death-experience at the hands of both the panel audience and the 5th Doctor Who; an awkward encounter with Biff from Back to the Future, Harlan Ellison laying verbal waste to one and all; and, as always, the guy that played Boomer in the 70s Battlestar Galactica.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 2: EPISODE 9 (109): Bad Mother's day
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WDz1x_rkNzI/TccXLd7DamI/AAAAAAAAAMM/EdfcK2IMFnw/s1600/tftl-episode9.jpg"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WDz1x_rkNzI/TccXLd7DamI/AAAAAAAAAMM/EdfcK2IMFnw/s1600/tftl-episode9.jpg"></a><br />
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From the cast of 16 And Pregnant to the Octomom, bad moms are in the news and are seemingly more common than ever before. And while the majority of the moms who I knew at the "liberry" were awesome, there were a handful whose parenting skills I at least had to question, when not being actively driven nuts by the ladies themselves. Welcome to the Tales from the "LiberryCAST" Bad Mother's Day Special.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 2: EPISODE 22 (122): Summer Reading Blues
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dEZeWzO1dsY/Tj75Zm4YiLI/AAAAAAAAAO0/xpOKrA4YKag/s1600/tftl-episode22.jpg" target="_blank"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dEZeWzO1dsY/Tj75Zm4YiLI/AAAAAAAAAO0/xpOKrA4YKag/s1600/tftl-episode22.jpg"></a><br />
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Summer Reading, oh how it burns!<br />
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Yes, it's the time of year when snot-nosed crumb-crunchers descend upon the "liberry" to craft crafts, hear stories, fill out reading logs and create chaos. That is, if their parents can manage to get them signed up to begin with.<br />
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And who is the queen of Summer Reading Chaos? Why our old nemesis, Little Kayla, of course.<br />
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(This episode also includes a cameo by Parka as well as one by his shag carpet of torso hair.)
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 2: EPISODE 08 (208): Bad Moms 2
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000003TAY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=tafrth34li34-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000003TAY" target="_blank"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MfMExK4EnLw/T7kb-P5p1KI/AAAAAAAAAac/I2YssUZ6lvA/s320/tftl-episode208.png"></a><br />
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Okay, so it's a week late, but just like calling your mom for Mother's Day, better late than never.<br />
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Today's episode is the sequel to last year's BAD MOTHERS DAY podcast which got rerun last week in place of this one, which was eaten by Audacity. So now, freshly rerecorded and spiffy and stuff, here's Bad Moms 2. Featured in today's episode are more tales of questionable parenting, featuring such bad parenting byproducts as Little Kayla, Holly GoHeavilly and the children of future podcast featured former Rogue, Ms. Green.<br />
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Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 2: EPISODE 021 (221): Annoying Greens of the Non-Horn Variety
(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QC5QhWyCr7k/UDFjOXRj7WI/AAAAAAAAAeI/sX24sjrUBJQ/s1600/tftl-episode221.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QC5QhWyCr7k/UDFjOXRj7WI/AAAAAAAAAeI/sX24sjrUBJQ/s1600/tftl-episode221.png"></a><br />
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Having last appeared in the Bad Mom's 2 Mother's Day Episode, Ms. Green was not a bad mom, per se, despite assisting her son with his homework projects a bit more than would be educationally healthy for him. She also distinguished herself by being one of our more exasperating patrons despite almost always being incredibly nice to us. The primary reason for the conflict between our personality types stemmed from her refusal to understand simple concepts requiring no explanation without us supplying triple-ply explanation. Well, that and her cell phone ringtone, which sounded like avian rape porn. (And let me just say, I look forward to the Google Keyword search terms that find THAT when I next check Statcounter.)
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 1: EPISODE 2 (102): FAX Guy Goes Nutzoid
(Welcome to Best Of Week as Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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The second episode of the LiberryCAST features a classic story of both poor customer service and insane customer behavior. It also marks the debut appearance of long time "Liberry" Rogue Barbara Turdmurkle on the podcast.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 1: EPISODE 022 (222): Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries
(Welcome to Best Of Week as Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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When one works in a library, one hears a lot of conversations. Often they arrive in person, often by phone and sometimes by second hand retellings of tales from fellow employees. When I heard a good one, I tried to write it down for use on the blog. Sometimes they were funny. Other times just odd. And occasionally they were downright terrifying. These are a few of my favorites.<br />
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(Guest starring Rogue Patrons: Mrs. Carol Satan and Barbara Turdmurkle)
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 1: EPISODE 034 (234): Non-Actual Conversations Not Heard in Actual Libraries #74
(Welcome to Best Of Week as Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(Welcome to Best Of Week. As Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") </b></font><br />
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When I was first planning this podcast, there were two entries from the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog that I knew I had to adapt. The first you can hear as the first episode. The next is this episode.<br />
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For all the entries I wrote in my "Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries" series, only a few were labeled as paraphrased and none were outright fiction.... well, except for one. I got pissed off at a certain set of real circumstances one day and started writing unreal dialogue. <br />
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So I now present Non-Actual Conversations Not Heard in Actual Libraries #74--a completely fictional conversation between a number of real rogue patrons, inspired by actual events if not actual words.
Listen:
BEST OF WEEK DAY 1: Tales from the "LiberryCAST" CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: "A Christmas Carol Satan"
(Welcome to Best Of Week as Tales from the "LiberryCAST" rockets toward its final episode, this is my chance to have a look back at some of my favorite episodes from this podcast adaptation of favorite blog entries from Tales from the "Liberry.") <br />
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Tales from the "LiberryCAST" Theatre is proud to present, the Tales from the "LiberryCAST" Christmas Special: "A Christmas Carol Satan."<br />
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Hark back to a time and possible alternate reality where Mrs. Carol Satan remained the Nastiest Patron Ever and we the "liberry" staff became bloodthirsty dispensers of "liberry" justice. This dispensed with, the Ghost of Carol Satan and her other newly and rapidly growing number of deceased Rogue Patron brethren must band together to save the soul of the next rogue in line for a killin', before their eternity becomes any more hellish.
Listen:
TFT"LC" SPECIAL: B-Sides & Rarities (Part 2) Juice & Glen Shoot the Shit
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Okay, so way back in Season 1 Episode 16 of this podcast, I did an episode called Stanky Patrons and Other Dusty Turds. In that, I introduced the concept of the woefully stinky patrons we often had to deal with at my "liberry" and it’s the first appearance of their king, Mr. Stanky. And because the entry I was adapting in it ended with a quote about stinky patrons, originally penned by my friend and former library worker Glen B, I decided to call Glen up and have him read his own damn quote. And afterward, we'd just shoot the shit for a while since we don't get to very often.<br />
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Of the hour and two minutes we talked, I wound up only using 27 minutes for the podcast, which was mainly where the library talk happened. But I threatened that one day I would release the rest of it because it too was good stuff. Today is that day.<br />
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If you've already heard Episode 16, the first 27 minutes will seem awfully familiar (though with a few DVD extra changes from the original aired version, such as the first draft of my awkward and line-flubby reading of the entry). The rest has only been lightly edited. If you haven't heard Episode 16, don't bother going back for it cause it's all contained herein.
Listen:
TFT"LC" SPECIAL: B-Sides & Rarities (Part 1)
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Over the two years that I've been adapting entries from the Tales from the "Liberry" blog, there have been occasions when I've recorded entries for an episode and then removed them during editing. Sometimes this was for purposes of keeping an episode below a certain length; sometimes because another entry in the same episode made basically the same point; sometimes because the entry just wasn't funny or satisfying to begin with; and sometimes because the sound quality of the recorded file turned out to be abominable. Most of the time, I deleted those lost files. But once in a while, I saved them for a rainy day, thinking I might one day need a B-Sides episode I could quickly throw together in case I needed a week off. (Unlike last week, which I just took off with no substitutions.)<br />
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This week's special episode presents a few of those saved entries, warts and all. Interspersed between them, however, are a few tales featuring a member of the "Liberry" Rogues Gallery who somehow never really made it into an episode of the podcast. Which is a tragedy, because he was the very first Rogue Patron I ever mentioned in the blog itself. And then there's the matter of his secret identity.
Listen:
EPISODE 051 (251): The Graduate and Other Penultimate Tales Told Out of Order
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For the penultimate episode of this podcast, I chose to tell some stories `bout my goodly wife. Unfortunately, because I recorded this particular episode, like, a month and a half ago, I've been doing callbacks to the references in it not realizing I hadn't made them yet. Among these references were the medical mission trip to Central America we both took in the mid oughts, and a brain tumor scare. One of those stories gets told this week. But several episodes back I also referred to the first of the rare occasions when I was able to actually surprise my wife with a gift on one of her major days. That story appears here as well. And, to wrap things up, I have a never-before-blogged-or-really-told tale from our time on the aforementioned mission trip--a story that involves giant condoms.
Listen:
EPISODE 050 (250): Moving Days Part 2
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And now, continuing my tale of finding myself in the untenable (yet fun) position of being an unreliable narrator of my own blog, today's podcast presents the second part of the Moving Days episode. In it we are given our final appearance of the Patron Who Must Not Be Named, as well as the penultimate appearances of some other rogue patrons.
Listen:
EPISODE 51 (151): Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week (BONUS REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(A BONUS REPOST IN HONOR OF A DUMBASS THING I'VE DONE THIS WEEK.)</b></font><br />
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I've often maintained that if a person is going to go around pointing fingers at the foibles of others (or recording podcasts adapting blog entries about the foibles of others), it's only fair for that person to occasionally point a few at some of their own. I did this pretty frequently during the course of writing Tales from the "Liberry" and even devoted an entire week to it. <br />
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Adapted here are a few entries from that week, as well as dumbass things I did beyond it. Guest stars include Mr. Stanky, Mr. Perfect, my moms-in-law, and, unfortunately, my junk.
Listen:
EPISODE 23 (123): The Amazing Mr. Kreskin (BONUS REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(BONUS REPOST IN HONOR OF MR. KRESKIN'S APPEARANCE ON THIS WEEK'S PODCAST) </b></font><br />
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One of the most astounding figures I encountered during my time at the "liberry" was our board president, Mr. Kreskin (not his real name). He was a very nice and capable human being, tirelessly juggling multiple complicated projects on the library's behalf. And from those projects arose many questions, only our two librarians were capable of answering for him. Unfortunately the ONLY time he was ever known to phone us at all were on the rare days when both librarians were out of town and unavailable. It was more reliable than Old Faithful.<br />
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(This episode also includes a cameo by Mrs. Carol Satan.)
Listen:
EPISODE 050 (250): Moving Days Part 1
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When writing the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog, I often wrote multi-part stories some of which would span a week at a time. In July of 2008, I began a 21 part epic story called Moving Days that not only chronicled the journey my wife and I made in moving from Tri-Metro to a new home in Borderland, but also my library's move into a brand new building. And I finished that epic story in September. <br />
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The thing is, I'd been playing something of the unreliable narrator for a while before starting that particular tale. This was mostly due to the fact that I'd not actually alerted any of my readers to my library moving buildings, even though that particular move had occurred well over a year previous. Yep. Just forgot to mention it. Hoped no one noticed. Just went right on writing stories set within the new library, but failed to make note that the tales occurred in a new library. And since you can't move the contents of a library from one building to another without a bunch of drama, there were loads of stories I'd been itching to tell for quite some time (some of which have already been adapted previously on this podcast). So Moving Days laid it all out and told the tale in somewhat less-excruciating detail than it actually occurred, but possibly more detail than it needed to. <br />
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This episode part 1 of a 2 part episode which adapts some of that tale in even less excruciating detail. Included in Part 1 is the battle between my library and Rogue Patron Mr. Smiley, Second Grumpiest Old Man in all the World, with the fate of the new library project in the balance.
Listen:
EPISODE 015 (215): BookSaling Away (BONUS REPOST)
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(BONUS REPOST IN HONOR OF MR. SMILEY'S APPEARANCE THIS WEEK)<br />
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Booksales. They're a necessary evil when it comes to "liberries." Where else are we going to get rid of the piles upon donated piles of Chicken Soup for the Dickweed's Soul, or any given Mitch Albom book? But they're a colossal pain in the ass to have to organize, physically set up, and, eventually, take down, not to mention all those people you have to turn away donations from cause they insist on trying to give you the one thing you DO NOT ACCEPT: text books. And there's the matter of the horrible fate that awaits all the copies of The Five People You Meet in My Ass that are left over after the sale is through. Oh, and then there are the asshat used book sellers who refuse to play fair with other customers, try to sneak early peeks at potential prized tomes and who throw loud public tantrums when confronted about their asshattery. We know how to deal with them, as you shall see when you listen to this week's ep.<br />
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SPECIAL GUEST STAR: Mr. Smiley, 2nd Grumpiest Old Man in All the World.
Listen:
Tales from the "LiberryCAST" SPECIAL: The BIZGIRL Interview
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This is a special episode that doesn't directly adapt any of the entries from my original Tales from the "Liberry" blog, but which does feature an interview with a fellow former library blogger who was an influence on my blog. Natalie Biz was the author of Bizgirl, a library blog in which we got to read her adventures as a 20-something librarian in New Zealand. Along the way, we meet many of her coworkers and patrons, including a kid called Artemis who proved to be wildly inventive. <br />
When I first thought about what I wanted to achieve with the Tales from the "LiberryCAST" as a whole, interviewing Natalie was top of the list. For she managed to achieve a degree of library blogging fame that probably surpasses that of any other library blogger, at least to my knowledge. For Natalie was the first library blogger I was aware of to be fired from her job due to her blog. And the story of how her employers came to learn of her blog is one for the ages. So I thought it best to let Natalie tell her own story, via a recorded Skype session from New Zealand.
Listen:
EPISODE 049 (249): Busted!
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There are lots of blogs out there, and some of the bloggers who blog upon them blog about their workplace, coworkers and sundry crazy people they encounter on a daily basis. One does not have to look very far before discovering stories of bloggers who were busted (outed) as a workplace blogger and even horror stories of these busted bloggers subsequently being fired (or Dooced) for it. <br />
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One might wonder, did I as a library blogger ever come close to such a Doocing scenario? Or, at the very least, was I ever "busted" as a "liberry" blogger?<br />
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The answer (as you bloody well learned in Episode 121) is, of course, yes. But that was far from the only busting incident I endured. Nay, there were several others, the most disturbing of which was the day my bosses were told of my blog by none other than a former "liberry" employee. But which one? Find out in this week's podcast!
Listen:
EPISODE 21 (121): The Doc Ock Fetishist Society (BONUS REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(A BONUS REPOSTED SHOW IN HONOR OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE "BUSTED!")</b></font><br />
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An odd tale of an odd bird encountered in the wild, AWAY from the "liberry" proper. Doc Ock Fetishist Woman was never a patron, but she was about as nutty as any of our patrons ever got. Not a bad human being in the slightest, just exasperating. In fact, if she has committed any crime, it's probably that she cares too much... about inanimate objects.<br />
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Also included in this tale is the story of the first time I was busted as a "liberry" blogger. Having your secret identity revealed to you is always disconcerting, but is even more bewildering when it comes with a large dollop of synchronicity on top.
Listen:
EPISODE 048 (248): Dawn of the Book Hoarding Bizatch!
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I personally had many enemies (rogue patrons) during the writing of the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog. However, the collective library staff and at least one of the members of its board of directors had an arch nemesis for the better part of a year--a "book hoarding bizatch" I called Kammy K. She was a lady who managed to keep an interlibrary loaned book on the topic of retarding the effects of the aging process for well over 9 months, resulting in our library being banned from any more loans from the library that had loaned it to us. No amount of letters, phone calls, or personal visits we attempted were met with any success in getting it back, to the point that legal action was our only recourse. Learn how it all came to a head in this very podcast<br />
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Also features an appearance by Mrs. Carol Satan and the penultimate podcast appearance by Chester the (Potential) Molester.
Listen:
EPISODE 7 (107): The Patron Who Must Not Be Named (BONUS REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(BONUS REPOST IN HONOR OF CHESTER'S PENULTIMATE APPEARANCE ON THE PODCAST THIS WEEK)</b></font><br />
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Pedophiles: Public enemy #1. You've tried smelly sprays and perverticides, but pedophiles can smell too. They avoid sprayed areas and keep coming back for more. What you need is CHESTERKILL...<br />
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...Oh, I can't do it anymore. I so want to make light of our library's resident pedophile Chester the (Potential) Molester, but I just can't stand to do it. He was never a joke to us when I worked there and he's still not now.<br />
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Unfortunately, guys like Chester, who have more than a dusting of interest in underage girls, are a part of life when you work in a library. They don't tell you in the interview that it's part of your job to defend the patrons these sick bastards might (or might not) like to prey upon. But when you see them in action, you gladly do it because every fiber of your being screams for you to.<br />
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And Chester was particularly infuriating for many reasons, but two primary ones: 1) monitoring Chester's activities when he's in the building becomes a full time job from the moment he arrives; 2) Chester above all other patrons can magically appear at the sound of his own name.<br />
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This is less of a Funny Ha-Ha episode and more of a Holy Shit, I Can't Believe That Guy Is Walking The Earth, Where's Chris Hanson When You Need Him? kind of episode.
Listen:
EPISODE 047 (247): "Paging Mr. Williams" and Other Random Tales
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An assemblage of seemingly random tales (no, I didn't roll actual dice to choose them this time), of fun, frustrating, exuberant, and occasionally mystifying experiences I had from across the spectrum of my "liberry" career. Guest stars include, Cap'n Crossdresser, Barbara Turdmurkle (though you have to squint to see her), a bunch of patrons asking questions with perilously obvious answers, and a rather famous personage once portrayed by Mr. Robin Williams.
Listen:
EPISODE 12 (112): Conspiracy Theory and Other Abused Substances
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Among existing "liberry" patron archetypes, Conspiracy Guy and Stoner Lad are probably two of the more universal ones. Every library has them, sometimes in multiples. We did as well, but there were two specific people that embodied these roles for me. Alas, by the time I began to write my blog, they had more or less moved on. But on one perfect night, they afforded me a glimpse of their combined powers of archetypical representation. (Now who sounds like they're on drugs?)
Listen:
EPISODE 046 (246): DirecTV Sucks Ass
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Those of you who have ever had service through DirecTV probably already know this, but it has been my experience that it sucks ass. A lot of ass. Copious amounts of ass. And not in a good way. I don't want to say that as a media distribution corporation they're a bunch of dirty liars willing to tell you anything you want to hear to get you to sign up, knowing full well that by the time you discover how much they've been lying to you in the first you'll be past their trial period and locked into an 18 month contract with them and subject to massive fees should I wish to discontinue service... but certainly the employees of DirecTV that I dealt with in just such a situation were in fact all dirty liars willing to tell me anything I wanted to hear to get me to sign up for their service, knowing full well that by the time I discovered just how much they had lied to me, I'd already be under the 18 month contract and subject to massive fees should I wish to discontinue my service. <br />
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Unfortunately for them, they'd never before had to deal with a bowel monkey as angry as mine. Nor had they yet had the misfortune of crossing my wife.
Listen:
EPISODE 045 (245): Cross Words
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One of the patrons who I assumed would remain my arch-enemy for the life of the blog was Grumpiest Old Man in All the World, Mr. B-Natural. This turned out not to be the case, as by the time I ended the blog in 2008, Mr. B-Natural had stopped actively trying to piss us off and we had developed something of a grudging mutual respect. However, he still had his moments where the old grumpy soul would flare through, especially when his beloved Wall Street Journal cross word puzzles were endangered. This podcast also tells the mysterious tale of Mr. B-Natural's briefly adopted toupee.
Listen:
EPISODE 044 (244): One Day in Tibet
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I'm no stranger to anniversaries. They happen every year. I've tried to keep secrets about my wife's birthday that have left me stranded and screaming in the middle of an interstate on more than one occasion after she pulls those secrets out of the air, seemingly by means that might even be unholy in nature. Eventually, I learned that a little bit of preventative maintenance went a long way in terms of keeping said secrets. Unfortunately, getting my wife to actually pay attention to my desire to keep my big yap shut is sometimes a more difficult process than setting up those secrets to begin with. You just can't win with her. Or, in my case, you can't often win. These are but some of those stories.
Listen:
EPISODE 48 (148): The Anniversary Flight Blues (REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>IN HONOR OF MY IMPENDING WEDDING ANNIVERSARY, AND THE WEDDING ANNIVERSARY PODCAST THAT SHALL ACCOMPANY IT, HERE IS A BONUS REPOSTING OF LAST YEAR'S WEDDING ANNIVERSARY-THEMED PODCAST.</b></font><br />
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Wedding anniversaries: for me they happen every year and this year my 12th anniversary just happens to fall on the day this episode drops, Sunday, February 5. So, because I have a sum total of ZERO football stories from the blog I could slip in here to create a different theme, and because I love my wife (those excuses may not be in the right order), I shall tell an off-blog yet-still-blog-like tale regarding a mystery anniversary concert the wife arranged for me for our 3rd anniversary, way back before Tales from the "Liberry" even began.
Listen:
EPISODE 043 (243): Fun Lovin' Malibu Juice
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I'm no stranger to car troubles. I've owned cars that have left me stranded and screaming in the middle of an interstate on more than one occasion. Eventually, I learned that a little bit of preventative maintenance went a long way in terms of keeping me unstranded. Unfortunately, getting my mechanic to actually pay attention to me and fix the problems I could clearly hear were there was sometimes a more difficult process than dealing with a dead car. These are but some of those stories.
Listen:
EPISODE 042 (242): The DAVEinci Code
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There are many books that are problematic for libraries. However, beyond the contractor's manuals, the three major tomes that created the most headaches for us were "The Da Vinci Code," "A Child Called It," and "The Five People You Meet in My Ass." These were wildly popular books that were perpetually on hold for EVERYONE. (We just cut out the middle man and automatically put patrons on hold with each new library card issued. Saved time.) Yep, these books blew the curve for all others because they were nearly impossible for patrons to read due to their high popularity, and, in one case, high incidence of theft.
Listen:
EPISODE 041 (241): The Triumvirate of Skeez
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Looking at the subjects studied in this week's podcast, I note that they are three separate men who skeezed out or were otherwise nasty to our staff during three separate decades, the 80s, 90s and 00s. Then, all three returned in the oughts to skeez out a new generation of library assistant, i.e. me. Join me for the tales of Mr. Creepy Guy, Mr. Butts and the patron known only as Red Alert.
Listen:
EPISODE 040 (240): Dangerous Habits
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One of the most colorful of our area eccentrics was a lady that we and the rest of the town knew as The Purple Nun. She was a lady who was always garbed in a purple nun's habit and carried the lifestyle to new and astounding levels. Hers was a strange and interesting life, which we only learned of via bits and pieces gleaned from the stories told of her by others. And pretty much everyone had a Purple Nun story to share. This is mine.
Listen:
Tales from the "LiberryCAST" CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: "A Christmas Carol Satan"
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Tales from the "LiberryCAST" Theatre is proud to present, the Tales from the "LiberryCAST" Christmas Special: "A Christmas Carol Satan."<br />
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Hark back to a time and possible alternate reality where Mrs. Carol Satan remained the Nastiest Patron Ever and we the "liberry" staff became bloodthirsty dispensers of "liberry" justice. This dispensed with, the Ghost of Carol Satan and her other newly and rapidly growing number of deceased Rogue Patron brethren must band together to save the soul of the next rogue in line for a killin', before their eternity becomes any more hellish.
Listen:
EPISODE 039 (239): ChristmasCAST 2012
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I thought I'd wrapped up all my Christmas-based entries in a nice bow in the 2011 ChristmasCAST, but it turns out I missed a few. And a glorious few they are! Among the tales featured this week, we have a holiday tale of complaint and revenge delivered Santa-stle by board member Mrs. Day. And the tale of a Christmas miracle featuring none other than our formerly nastiest patron ever, Mrs. Carol Satan.
Listen:
EPISODE 41 (141): Christmas Party Pack (REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(A BONUS REPOST OF LAST YEAR'S CHRISTMAS EPISODE, IN HONOR OF THE TWO NEW CHRISTMAS THEMED PODCASTS I'M POSTING THIS WEEK.)</b></font><br />
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I loves me some Christmas Party. Yessir. Nearly my favorite kind of party due to high concentrations of fantastic food and drink and presents. Our "liberry" Christmas parties were especially fun, as we usually did them potluck style and stuffed ourselves beyond full with the amazing dishes created by the wonderful cooks I worked with (and am married to). But there are many varieties of Christmas party beyond the "liberry", not to mention just nutty seasonal crap to deal with. This week's podcast explores the topic all around.<br />
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(Features unfortunate guest appearances by both Chester the (potential) Molester and my colon.)
Listen:
EPISODE 17 (117): The Nastiest Patron Ever (BONUS)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(A BONUS CLASSIC EPISODE FROM SEASON 1, IN HONOR OF MRS. CAROL SATAN'S UPCOMING CHRISTMAS APPEARANCES ON THE PODCAST)</b></font><br />
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As much as I complain about nutty patrons, the vast majority of people I had to deal with on a daily basis were amazingly nice and appreciative folk, who would never think to question a fine, let alone whine about it and whose scant few complaints were limited to things like, "I wish the library was open even more often than every day, cause I love it so." Then, just when I was starting to think that humanity was basically decent, if occasionally misunderstood, and I should really look into shutting up with my own petty moaning, someone truly evil, such as the patron I called Mrs. Carol Satan, would arrive and blow the decency curve for everyone.<br />
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Mrs. Carol Satan's overriding memorable quality, (beyond smelling like a Marlboro factory in heat) was her ability to go from zero to psychotic, lying, bizatch in the space of 2.5 seconds. Not only was she known to frequently lie to our faces concerning matters that were her own damn fault, but she usually did so at full scream, practically slashing at our eyes with her claws. Any encounter with her left you feeling violated and dirty. She gave harpies a bad name. Dipped in the River C, she was.<br />
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Fortunately, we were at last able to defeat her in a most public manner.<br />
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This is that story.
Listen:
EPISODE 038 (238): The Second Crustacean Menace
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Among the five Grumpiest Old Men in All The World that I encountered and cataloged during my time at the "Liberry," the 3rd Grumpiest, Mr. Crab, was perhaps the most irritating on a day to day basis. For while he was not as frequent a visitor as 1st Grumpiest Old Man, Mr. B-Natural, and did more to keep the library in business than 2nd Grumpiest Mr. Smiley (a man who actively campaigned to prevent us from building a new building), Mr. Crab habitually provided us with a greater volume of shit than any of the others.<br />
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Today's episode continues to illustrate this, in addition to telling the tales of the two times in my life that I have been afforded the opportunity to impale him on a broom.
Listen:
EPISODE 037 (237): Of Mice and Mentality
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Most libraries have a compliment of mentally handicapped patrons, but we in fact had one such soul on the staff. (No, not just Eternal Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S.) <br />
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Though he rarely made appearances on the Tales from the "Liberry" blog, our volunteer staff member Lennie was a weekly presence in our lives, though not one without his quirks. For instance, getting him to leave the building could be a challenge, cause he was built like his literary namesake and could not be easily moved if he did not want to be. However, we found the answer to that problem and it involves the Village People.
Listen:
EPISODE 33 (133): The Crustacean Menace! (REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>BONUS REPOST IN HONOR OF THIS WEEK'S MR. CRAB-CENTRIC EPISODE</b></font><br />
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In the past, I've chronicled small tales of Mr. B-Natural and Mr. Smiley, the first and second grumpiest old men in all the world respectively. However, the third grumpiest old man in all the world actually proved to be one of the more active antagonists in the history of the Tales from the "Liberry" blog. As I said <a href="http://www.liberrycast.com/2011/10/episode-32-132-blue-hair-group.html">last week</a>, he's an honorary old white lady and for good reason; not only is he on par with the O.W.L.s in mere surliness, but he could go up against the worst of them in the <font style="font-style: italic;">Forgetting Your Library Card and Getting All Worked up About it to the Point of Leveling Threats Against the Staff 400 meter dash. </font>One for the record books, people.
Listen:
EPISODE 036 (236): Honkies!
Honkies. They're a problem, be they people honking their car horns incessantly (or, in my case, to keep from being backed over in Walmart's parking lot), to crazy old white men, to people engaged in honking of a completely different and non mechanical nature. In honor of it being national honky week (and if it's not, I'm declaring it), this week's podcast is dedicated to the honks we love to hate.<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 035 (235): Cranky Liquid Paper Guy (and other tales of Library Neophytes)
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We're all neophytes at something in life, but the number of people who remain computer neophytes in 2012 is still pretty astounding to me. Even more astounding are the people who are neophytes to libraries themselves--entire "famblies" of people who would only set foot in one if sent there by THEY. This podcast tells a few such stories that befell me during my time working for a "liberry."<br />
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(Featuring a guest appearance by Parka.)
Listen:
EPISODE 5 (105): The Ballad of I.N. Phyte (REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(IN HONOR OF THIS WEEK'S EPISODE CELEBRATING LIBRARY AND COMPUTER NEOPHYTES, I REPOST EPISODE 5 OF SEASON 1, "THE BALLAD OF I.N. PHYTE.")</b></font><br />
<font color="#ff0000"><b></b></font><br />
Fact: There are still people in this country--young people, even--whose lives do not revolve around the internet. These are people who not only don't check their email every day, they don't even HAVE email. It's kind of refreshing, when you think about it. However, it can also be VERY frustrating when those same people turn up and decide to jump whole hog into it in the course of one lesson. It can be difficult to explain the concept of the world wide web to an internet neophyte when they are still trying to climb the hurdle of basic computer concepts. It is even more difficult to explain all of the above to a person who is aggressively ignoring everything you tell them. <br />
<br />
That used to be my job.
Listen:
EPISODE 38 (138): The Thanksgiving Podcast (REPOST)
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>(A REPOST OF THE TURKEY DAY PODCAST FROM SEASON 1 EPISODE 38. YOU'RE WELCOME.)</b></font><br />
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On this Thanksgiving holiday, I am thankful for family and friends willing to travel great distances to my home only to have to sleep on inflatabeds. I'm also thankful that I once wrote a handful of Tales from the "Liberry" entries in which Thanksgiving played a part. That's cause they were readily available for me to adapt for this week's podcast.<br />
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Hope you and yours are having a festive turkey season.<br />
<br />
(And that you don't live in Missouri or Kentucky, cause I shit on those states pretty heavily in this episode.)<br />
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(This podcast features the first podcast appearance of Birthday Lady)
Listen:
EPISODE 034 (234): Non-Actual Conversations Not Heard in Actual Libraries #74
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<br />
When I was first planning this podcast, there were two entries from the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog that I knew I had to adapt. The first you can hear as the first episode. The next is this episode.<br />
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For all the entries I wrote in my "Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries" series, only a few were labeled as paraphrased and none were outright fiction.... well, except for one. I got pissed off at a certain set of real circumstances one day and started writing unreal dialogue. <br />
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So I now present Non-Actual Conversations Not Heard in Actual Libraries #74--a completely fictional conversation between a number of real rogue patrons, inspired by actual events if not actual words.
Listen:
EPISODE 18 (118): Parka Life (REPOST)
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(A REPOSTED CLASSIC EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE)<br />
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Just when we thought we had it bad enough with frequent visits from Chester the (Potential) Molester, another seeming sicko fell into our midst. And, unlike Chester, this one actually had computer skills. He also had a habit of exclusively wearing a puffy white Michelin man winter parka in the warmth of April, so his nickname officially became Parka.<br />
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While I didn't know it at the time, he would become the MOST chronicled member of the "Liberry" Rogues Gallery by proving himself to be the MOST irritating patron we had to deal with, in a multitude of ways.<br />
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Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to play the Five Tacos and a Taco podcast game Dick, Douche, or Dumbass and see if you can tell which category Parka falls into best. Or worst, as the case may be.<br />
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As an added bonus, the final story of the podcast features a magnificently satisfying tale of both a massively unprecedented event for our library as well as one of the aforementioned Chester getting his comeuppance at the hands of another library.
Listen:
EPISODE 40 (140): Mr. B-Natural (REPOST)
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<br />
(A REPOSTED CLASSIC EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE)
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There are rogue patrons and there are Rogue Patrons and Mr. B-Natural, Grumpiest Old Man in All the World, was usually somewhere in between. Not an evil human being by any stretch, but a tremendously cranky man, except when in the presence of his beloved pooch, Bubba. Our main beef with him is that Mr. B-Natural was a guy who definitely took pleasure in annoying the bejeezus out of the library staff by blatantly breaking as many rules as he could get away with just to piss us off. To hear him tell it, a library needs patrons who break the rules, otherwise we would have no reason to have rules at all. (Which, I think, was exactly the motivation of Professor Zoom, the arch-nemesis of The Flash.) So he continually signed his name upside down on our computer sign in sheet and tried to sneak his coffee back to the computers for his daily crossword. These are but a few of his stories.
Listen:
EPISODE 018 (218): Gemini Satan (or "Thermo Dynamics") (REPOST)
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(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.)<br />
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Brent and Brice (a.k.a. the New Devil Twins) and their friends, the Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, were a minor thorn in our collective "liberry" side through most of my time working there. They were mostly known for hogging up our computers, My Space chatting to one another from a mere three feet away and their habit of printing reams of video game cheat codes which they always acted shocked about having to pay for. But when the thermostat controls of our building began receiving extreme and unauthorized adjustments, their names were among those that turned up on my short list of Merry Prankster Suspects.
Listen:
EPISODE 19 (119): Barbie T: Master of the Internet (REPOST)
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<br />
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.)<br />
<br />
This podcast marks a return appearance by previous podcast rogue patron Barbara Turdmurkle, a.k.a. the titular Barbie T.<br />
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Barbie T has repeatedly proven herself to be incapable of using technology, especially computers, yet she continues to sign up for services that require internet access. This coupled with her constant fear that someone is trying to steal her identity and ruin her credit, coupled with some truly strange phone calls, meant someone at the "liberry" was going to have a bad day. Too bad it was me.
Listen:
EPISODE 34 (134): Dawn of the Dufus (REPOST)
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<br />
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.)<br />
<br />
The major problem with patron access computers are the patrons. They don't have computers at home, so they have to come use ours.<br />
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And that's great, until it's not.<br />
<br />
Such was the case with a Rogue Patron I came to call The Dufus. He was a guy from the area who'd gone out into the world for, to hear him tell it, a storied career as a minor deity on the West Coast, where he hobnobbed with rich and powerful celebrities all of whom adored him. Again, to hear him tell it. And tell it he was more than willing to do. Somehow he got it into his head that such minor matters as time limits on the patron computers didn't apply to him and no matter how many people we had waiting to use his, there he sat, pissing all of us off. Ironic and moronic, because he was using our computer to try and get a job working for the library in the first place.
Listen:
EPISODE 028 (228): The Coot (REPOST)
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4rLdDyyJlhc/UHHlaKwModI/AAAAAAAAAgk/aHSVDWC5UkY/s1600/tftl-episode228.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4rLdDyyJlhc/UHHlaKwModI/AAAAAAAAAgk/aHSVDWC5UkY/s1600/tftl-episode228.png"></a><br />
<br />
(A REPOSTED CLASSIC EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE)
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The majority of patrons are not rogue patrons. Some are great, some average, some merely annoying and some are what I called benign irritants. They're not evil, but sometimes may as well be for the amount of hassle they create. Such a patron was The Coot--an old man who didn't quite rise to even 6th grumpiest status, but who still demonstrated some of the most aggressive passive aggressive behavior I've ever seen.
Listen:
EPISODE 7 (107): The Patron Who Must Not Be Named (REPOST)
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9s0Ue_AbIOI/Ta9R-t9Pz8I/AAAAAAAAAL0/VnmqLHy-e9M/s1600/tftl-episode7.jpg" target="_blank"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9s0Ue_AbIOI/Ta9R-t9Pz8I/AAAAAAAAAL0/VnmqLHy-e9M/s1600/tftl-episode7.jpg"></a><br />
<br />
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S EPISODE)<br />
<br />
Pedophiles: Public enemy #1. You've tried smelly sprays and perverticides, but pedophiles can smell too. They avoid sprayed areas and keep coming back for more. What you need is CHESTERKILL...<br />
<br />
...Oh, I can't do it anymore. I so want to make light of our library's resident pedophile Chester the (Potential) Molester, but I just can't stand to do it. He was never a joke to us when I worked there and he's still not now.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, guys like Chester, who have more than a dusting of interest in underage girls, are a part of life when you work in a library. They don't tell you in the interview that it's part of your job to defend the patrons these sick bastards might (or might not) like to prey upon. But when you see them in action, you gladly do it because every fiber of your being screams for you to.<br />
<br />
And Chester was particularly infuriating for many reasons, but two primary ones: 1) monitoring Chester's activities when he's in the building becomes a full time job from the moment he arrives; 2) Chester above all other patrons can magically appear at the sound of his own name.<br />
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This is less of a Funny Ha-Ha episode and more of a Holy Shit, I Can't Believe That Guy Is Walking The Earth, Where's Chris Hanson When You Need Him? kind of episode.
Listen:
EPISODE 36 (136): The Ballad of Crusty the Patron (REPOST)
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pY99Fzkr_Mo/TsBAPF_SgSI/AAAAAAAAARI/uA2HYUmoJpY/s1600/tftl-episode36.jpg"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pY99Fzkr_Mo/TsBAPF_SgSI/AAAAAAAAARI/uA2HYUmoJpY/s1600/tftl-episode36.jpg"></a><br />
<br />
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.)<br />
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While not the stinkiest patron we ever had to deal with, the man who became known as Crusty the Patron was still counted among the worst of the stinky patron lot due to his tenacity in inflicting his stench on us for hours at a time. Crusty suffered from a number of other hygienic ailments that made working at my "liberry" downright unappetizing. And while I was not allowed to kick him out directly, I was able to find at least a temporary solution to the basic problems he caused for us without a direct confrontation. (Don't eat any pastries while listening to this episode.)<br />
<br />
This ep also features appearances and references to Parka and the worlds second stinkiest patron, Mr. Stanky.
Listen:
EPISODE 033 (233): Who's Got the 10 and a Half, Minus the Half? Part III (Sorta) FIXED FEED
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kCxrmjK4eGQ/UKFPP5TEPtI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/TXb7P2lj2bM/s1600/tftl-episode233.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kCxrmjK4eGQ/UKFPP5TEPtI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/TXb7P2lj2bM/s1600/tftl-episode233.png"></a><br />
<br />
For most of my "liberry" career, I was a part time employee. Once in a while, though, when EVERYONE else was out of town, I was called upon to take on not only a full 8 hour day, but sometimes a full 10 hour day, almost entirely by myself. And then there were times when I shot myself in my own foot by paying off favors owed for days substituted by fellow employees and worked a double shift for them with most of the rest of the staff present, too. You try real time blogging when everyone's looking over your shoulder!<br />
<br />
Guest stars include: Mr. Smiley, Buddy, Harry the Killer Midget, Lennie, Mr. Little Stupid, The Coot and more.
Listen:
EPISODE 033 (233): Who's Got the 10 and a Half, Minus the Half? Part III (Sorta)
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kCxrmjK4eGQ/UKFPP5TEPtI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/TXb7P2lj2bM/s1600/tftl-episode233.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kCxrmjK4eGQ/UKFPP5TEPtI/AAAAAAAAAiQ/TXb7P2lj2bM/s1600/tftl-episode233.png"></a><br />
<br />
For most of my "liberry" career, I was a part time employee. Once in a while, though, when EVERYONE else was out of town, I was called upon to take on not only a full 8 hour day, but sometimes a full 10 hour day, almost entirely by myself. And then there were times when I shot myself in my own foot by paying off favors owed for days substituted by fellow employees and worked a double shift for them with most of the rest of the staff present, too. You try real time blogging when everyone's looking over your shoulder!<br />
<br />
Guest stars include: Mr. Smiley, Buddy, Harry the Killer Midget, Lennie, Mr. Little Stupid, The Coot and more.
Listen:
EPISODE 032 (232): The (Potential) Final Chester Episode
<a href="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=tafrth34li34-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001IDQBSS"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1FEBC1yGUm4/UI8bVGZl4zI/AAAAAAAAAh0/FB5O5STI2wk/s1600/tftl-episode232.png"></a><br />
<br />
I thought the only fitting way to wrap up this string of episodes in the Crime & Excrement Saga was to tell a few more tales about a guy who's been on the fringes of nearly every one of the last two months' worth of shows... Chester the (Potential) Molester. These mark the final tales focussed on Chester before I stopped writing the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog.
Listen:
EPISODE 031 (231): Monsieur Stanky
<br />
<br />
Way back in Episode 16 of this podcast, I started to tell the story of our penultimate stinky patron, Mr. Stanky. So, 67 episodes later, I finally get around to picking up where I left off. <br />
<br />
Mr. Stanky was a guy who was so eye-wateringly stinky that he defeated all comers from our air-freshener arsenal. Astoundingly stinky... except when he wasn't.
Listen:
EPISODE 030 (230): The Untalented Mr. Ripley and other "Liberry" Criminals
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wa8E2NtVy7M/UISY9nMCyDI/AAAAAAAAAhM/3c6ZzTCcaq4/s1600/tftl-episode230.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Wa8E2NtVy7M/UISY9nMCyDI/AAAAAAAAAhM/3c6ZzTCcaq4/s1600/tftl-episode230.png"></a><br />
<br />
The Untalented Mr. Ripley was far from the only would-be master criminal we encountered, but he was one of the few who we knew that were eventually arrested for it. However, his semi-allies, The Fagins, were far more destructive to the "liberry" proper and are infamous for stealing piles of books from our branch and others across the years. These, and one other, are their stories.
Listen:
EPISODE 029 (229): Mookiestinks!
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lphZtRo25xg/UHt76E5rJJI/AAAAAAAAAg4/m7wW9LoIMUg/s1600/tftl-episode229.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lphZtRo25xg/UHt76E5rJJI/AAAAAAAAAg4/m7wW9LoIMUg/s1600/tftl-episode229.png"></a><br />
<br />
From nearly day one of the Tales from the "Liberry" blog, one of my major topics of frustration was the seemingly neverending series of horrors visited upon me via our public restroom. From patrons who refused to use our handy air-freshener, to the toilet death throes after another patron flushed something unflushable, to puddles of standing urine, to the occasional poo festivals of our mentally handicapped patrons, I have seen things I cannot unsee. Or unsmell. Add to that our continuing theme of semi-bathroom-related crime and you have a metric shit ton of "liberry" hassles.
Listen:
EPISODE 028 (228): The Coot
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4rLdDyyJlhc/UHHlaKwModI/AAAAAAAAAgk/aHSVDWC5UkY/s1600/tftl-episode228.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4rLdDyyJlhc/UHHlaKwModI/AAAAAAAAAgk/aHSVDWC5UkY/s1600/tftl-episode228.png"></a><br />
<br />
The majority of patrons are not rogue patrons. Some are great, some average, some merely annoying and some are what I called benign irritants. They're not evil, but sometimes may as well be for the amount of hassle they create. Such a patron was The Coot--an old man who didn't quite rise to even 6th grumpiest status, but who still demonstrated some of the most aggressive passive aggressive behavior I've ever seen.
Listen:
EPISODE 027 (227): Tales of the Bladder Thieves
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4I8vt01CE-Q/UGm9k2rum9I/AAAAAAAAAgQ/ynQOu8Ea5Ek/s1600/tftl-episode227.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4I8vt01CE-Q/UGm9k2rum9I/AAAAAAAAAgQ/ynQOu8Ea5Ek/s1600/tftl-episode227.png"></a><br />
<br />
We didn't have a lot of trouble when it came to lawbreakers and the "liberry." More often, our patrons were overzealous when it came to the law and its intricacies. But once in a while we were touched by the greasy caress of theft. <br />
<br />
Today I present the tale of the theft of the library's laptop by thieves driven to crime by their own bashful bladders. I also show how our own Junior Clubhouse Detective work that ultimately confirmed the identities of the thieves in question. <br />
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(Featuring a cameo by Chester the (Potential) Molester.)
Listen:
EPISODE 026 (226): Chester the (Potential) Gym Rat and other stories
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9Johv2gfO_w/UGBqnXx106I/AAAAAAAAAf8/Pvg--yanOHc/s1600/tftl-episode226.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9Johv2gfO_w/UGBqnXx106I/AAAAAAAAAf8/Pvg--yanOHc/s1600/tftl-episode226.png"></a><br />
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Everyone has trouble losing the holiday pounds. Even Chester the (Potential) Molester. And when there's lard to lose, what's a prevert like Chester to do? Answer: Head on down to the local gym, where he can get in a workout while ogling short-short clad beauties, all while wearing his stupid little knit cap. Of course, those beauties don't usually take kindly to being ogled by the likes of Chester. And therein lies our story.<br />
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(Featuring a guest appearance by Parka)
Listen:
EPISODE 025 (225): RandomCAST
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4Ju5qZYYFQM/UFZv3H7Q2XI/AAAAAAAAAfo/OeYJvyKVGGE/s1600/tftl-episode225.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4Ju5qZYYFQM/UFZv3H7Q2XI/AAAAAAAAAfo/OeYJvyKVGGE/s1600/tftl-episode225.png"></a><br />
<br />
On a whim, and lacking any other podcast material that struck my fancy when I woke up, I started rolling dice to determine a line of Tales from the "Liberry" blog entry dates from which I could potentially pull podcast adaptation material. According to my rules--ohhhh, there were rules--I couldn't rerecord a podcast I'd already adapted, couldn't adapt just one part of a multi-part story, nor could I skip to a nearby date if no entry existed for the date I rolled. After a 2 out of 5 ratio, I gave up on dice and hit Random.org's date randomizer, plugged in the range of years for the blog and went to town with slightly better results. In the end, I had five randomly chosen stories to adapt for today's show and adapt them I have. You're welcome.
Listen:
EPISODE 024 (224): BabyCAST
<a href="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=tafrth34li34-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B008F6DAIK%22%20style=%22width:120px;height:240px;"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ekjSKmzqGvE/UEz8N89J7LI/AAAAAAAAAfQ/7aXB96vrTAc/s320/tftl-episode224.png"></a><br />
<br />
During the writing of Tales from the "Liberry" the blog, I often found cause to point out the parental failings of some of our patrons. And on a few occasions, this hubris on my part would cause the patron saint of parents to arrange for me to experience a taste of the rigors of parenting myself. I was not always up to the challenge. <br />
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(Featuring baby Ashley, the baby who appeared on last week's podcast.)
Listen:
EPISODE 023 (223): BirthdayCAST (UPDATED)
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7HFTLR6dzcs/UEIWwtpjA2I/AAAAAAAAAe4/NpWgL_UFobM/s1600/tftl-episode223.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7HFTLR6dzcs/UEIWwtpjA2I/AAAAAAAAAe4/NpWgL_UFobM/s1600/tftl-episode223.png"></a><br />
<br />
During the five year course of writing the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog, I wrote a substantial entry almost every single weekday. However, there were a few occasions when I skipped out on my blogging duties and not only said EFF it to myself, but posted it as well. And usually that day fell upon my birthday. That said, there are still a number of longer entries devoted to my birthday or involving birthdays in general. There are also an even greater number of entries devoted to the patron we called Birthday Lady, who phoned us faithfully every time a celebrity died to learn from us the day on which that fresh dirt-napper was born.<br />
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So, in honor of the fact that this particular episode drops on my 2nd 39th birthday, I present a podcast that chronicles both of the above scenarios and more: The BirthdayCAST.
Listen:
EPISODE 022 (222): Actual Conversations Heard in Actual Libraries
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PK3G_edjPfM/UDo1gY504EI/AAAAAAAAAeg/YujKJ2nVecQ/s1600/tftl-episode222.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PK3G_edjPfM/UDo1gY504EI/AAAAAAAAAeg/YujKJ2nVecQ/s1600/tftl-episode222.png"></a><br />
<br />
When one works in a library, one hears a lot of conversations. Often they arrive in person, often by phone and sometimes by second hand retellings of tales from fellow employees. When I heard a good one, I tried to write it down for use on the blog. Sometimes they were funny. Other times just odd. And occasionally they were downright terrifying. These are a few of my favorites.<br />
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(Guest starring Rogue Patrons: Mrs. Carol Satan and Barbara Turdmurkle)
Listen:
EPISODE 26 (126): D-Con Kills Nerds Dead (BONUS ENCORE REPOST)
<font color="#ff0000"><i>In honor of this being Dragon Con Weekend, here's an encore bonus of last year's Dragon Con-themed LiberryCAST</i></font><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OJl_-UQilcY/TmPpqAKzkjI/AAAAAAAAAPU/z_JvXmTuYjM/s1600/tftl-episode26.jpg"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OJl_-UQilcY/TmPpqAKzkjI/AAAAAAAAAPU/z_JvXmTuYjM/s1600/tftl-episode26.jpg"></a><br />
<br />
As you might have noticed, I'm an enormous nerd. Maybe not quite as nerdy as the Nerdist Podcast, but nerdy all the same. As such, I'm fond of heading out to nerd gatherings such as the infamous Dragon Con in Atlanta. In honor of this being Dragon Con weekend for 2011, I present some non-"liberry" tales of my D-Con experiences of the past decade. Included are dealer's room encounters with gerbil-cleavaged sci-fi heroines; Annoying Brit Track Boy's near-death-experience at the hands of both the panel audience and the 5th Doctor Who; an awkward encounter with Biff from Back to the Future, Harlan Ellison laying verbal waste to one and all; and, as always, the guy that played Boomer in the 70s Battlestar Galactica.
Listen:
EPISODE 021 (221): Annoying Greens of the Non-Horn Variety
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QC5QhWyCr7k/UDFjOXRj7WI/AAAAAAAAAeI/sX24sjrUBJQ/s1600/tftl-episode221.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QC5QhWyCr7k/UDFjOXRj7WI/AAAAAAAAAeI/sX24sjrUBJQ/s1600/tftl-episode221.png"></a><br />
<br />
Having last appeared in the Bad Mom's 2 Mother's Day Episode, Ms. Green was not a bad mom, per se, despite assisting her son with his homework projects a bit more than would be educationally healthy for him. She also distinguished herself by being one of our more exasperating patrons despite almost always being incredibly nice to us. The primary reason for the conflict between our personality types stemmed from her refusal to understand simple concepts requiring no explanation without us supplying triple-ply explanation. Well, that and her cell phone ringtone, which sounded like avian rape porn. (And let me just say, I look forward to the Google Keyword search terms that find THAT when I next check Statcounter.)
Listen:
EPISODE 020 (220): Greenhorns 5: The Fall of the Queen
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JNKV0mjrF5Y/UCgnFmEzDTI/AAAAAAAAAdk/59r7VlorvFA/s320/tftl-episode220.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JNKV0mjrF5Y/UCgnFmEzDTI/AAAAAAAAAdk/59r7VlorvFA/s320/tftl-episode220.png"></a><br />
<br />
The day we hoped for and dreamed of had to eventually come: the day the Queen of the Eternal Newbie Greenhorns, Ms. S, left the employ of the "liberry." And when the day came, she went with barely a whimper, but a whole lot of whining. <br />
<br />
What we didn't realize was the freeing her from the employ of the "liberry" freed her up for a new calling: fiction writer.<br />
<br />
Also features the long sought-for 5th Grumpiest Old Man in All the World: William Shatner.
Listen:
EPISODE 019 (219): Oranges and Lemons and Goat Wangs (REPOST)
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005ATHN/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00005ATHN&linkCode=as2&tag=tafrth34li34-20"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3iuUCIJPXa4/UCAu7pA7qpI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/zp7ahrw89pw/s1600/tftl-episode219.png"></a><br />
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<font color="#ff0000"><b>8/8/12 </b></font><b>THIS EPISODE HAS BEEN RERECORDED TO ELILMINATE SHITTY AUDIO PROBLEMS</b><br />
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A podcast over a year in the making featuring a cinematic theme. Yes, just in time for Catwoman's appearance in The Dark Knight Rises comes the second part of the much delayed Halle Berry's Catwoman Blows Goat Wang entry from nigh on a year back. Plus there are the touching tales of the best flat-footed mountain dancer and Elvis impersonator in the world (or at least our state) and why Star Wars Episode III made me cry. (Hint: It wasn't Hayden Christensen's acting, though it should have been.)
Listen:
EPISODE 019 (219): Oranges and Lemons and Goat Wangs
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005ATHN/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00005ATHN&linkCode=as2&tag=tafrth34li34-20"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3iuUCIJPXa4/UCAu7pA7qpI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/zp7ahrw89pw/s1600/tftl-episode219.png"></a><br />
<br />
A podcast over a year in the making featuring a cinematic theme. Yes, just in time for Catwoman's appearance in The Dark Knight Rises comes the second part of the much delayed Halle Berry's Catwoman Blows Goat Wang entry from nigh on a year back. Plus there are the touching tales of the best flat-footed mountain dancer and Elvis impersonator in the world (or at least our state) and why Star Wars Episode III made me cry. (Hint: It wasn't Hayden Christensen's acting, though it should have been.)
Listen:
EPISODE 018 (218): Gemini Satan (or "Thermo Dynamics")
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nQ8l2w2TTak/UBXRmfTJXLI/AAAAAAAAAc8/GSBPCxvboqM/s1600/tftl-episode218.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nQ8l2w2TTak/UBXRmfTJXLI/AAAAAAAAAc8/GSBPCxvboqM/s1600/tftl-episode218.png"></a><br />
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Brent and Brice (a.k.a. the New Devil Twins) and their friends, the Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, were a minor thorn in our collective "liberry" side through most of my time working there. They were mostly known for hogging up our computers, My Space chatting to one another from a mere three feet away and their habit of printing reams of video game cheat codes which they always acted shocked about having to pay for. But when the thermostat controls of our building began receiving extreme and unauthorized adjustments, their names were among those that turned up on my short list of Merry Prankster Suspects.<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 017 (217): (Potential) Parking Enforcement
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MywnNWZMdAs/UAx7VpZ8XDI/AAAAAAAAAcs/nSa9qfng_RE/s1600/tftl-episode217.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MywnNWZMdAs/UAx7VpZ8XDI/AAAAAAAAAcs/nSa9qfng_RE/s1600/tftl-episode217.png"></a><br />
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On many occasions during my time at the "liberry" I expressed my deepest desire to call the police concerning our resident pedophile, Chester the (Potential) Molester. This is the story of the time I finally got to call them... about his illegally parked car.
Listen:
EPISODE 016 (216): What I Did on my Summer Vacation
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TvhB9fViXSU/UAQUhLBy_nI/AAAAAAAAAcc/XhLh5XFDseM/s1600/tftl-episode216.png"><img width="144" height="144" alt="" border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TvhB9fViXSU/UAQUhLBy_nI/AAAAAAAAAcc/XhLh5XFDseM/s1600/tftl-episode216.png"></a><br />
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As you may have heard for approximately 5 minutes on the national news, Appalachia recently got the smackdown put on it by a series of violent thunderstorms packing hurricane force winds. Fortunately, before the power went out for nearly a week, I'd already banked a couple of podcasts to cover the time I was already planning to be out of state. We got caught in the storms first-hand and the wife had to deal with them for the duration. This is our story.
Listen:
EPISODE 015 (215): BookSaling Away
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Booksales. They're a necessary evil when it comes to "liberries." Where else are we going to get rid of the piles upon donated piles of Chicken Soup for the Dickweed's Soul, or any given Mitch Albom book? But they're a colossal pain in the ass to have to organize, physically set up, and, eventually, take down, not to mention all those people you have to turn away donations from cause they insist on trying to give you the one thing you DO NOT ACCEPT: text books. And there's the matter of the horrible fate that awaits all the copies of The Five People You Meet in My Ass that are left over after the sale is through. Oh, and then there are the asshat used book sellers who refuse to play fair with other customers, try to sneak early peeks at potential prized tomes and who throw loud public tantrums when confronted about their asshattery. We know how to deal with them, as you shall see when you listen to this week's ep.<br />
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SPECIAL GUEST STAR: Mr. Smiley, 2nd Grumpiest Old Man in All the World.
Listen:
EPISODE 014 (214): Perfect Applications for Genealogy Tasers
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Of our dangerous patrons, one of the more benignly dangerous ones was Gene Gene the Genealogy Machine. And he was only dangerous because anyone near him had a far greater chance of having to gnaw their own leg off to escape the boring details of his family history than those who were not in his presence. Gene's greatest enemy, other than the neighborhood children who often encroached upon his ancestry computing time, were our computers themselves and the near dialup speeds they tended to run at. And while he proposed many fanciful solutions for the problem, getting him to listen to the ONE THING he could do that MIGHT have some effect was the major point of conflict in our relationship with him. This is that story.
Listen:
EPISODE 013 (213): Summer Reading and (Potential) Final Conflicts
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Our Summer Reading program was far more stressful than most. We didn't just make kids read X number of books over X number of weeks, we also put together three hour-long programs for them each and every one of those X number of weeks, with crafts crafted, stories read aloud and snacks snacked upon. However, what made our Summer Reading even more stressful was our insistence on producing one of those hour-long Summer Reading programs on Mondays, which, as we all know from prior podcasts, are insanely chaotic all by themselves. So take the lines of screaming children, bewildered patrons, understaffed circulation desk, and general Monday Madness, during which no one has a moment to spare, and add a terrifyingly dangerous element: the patron who must not be named. Yessir, this is the one where things come to a head and yours truly gets to do the honors.
Listen:
EPISODE 012 (212): Father's Day
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Over the 64 episodes of this podcast, I've told many a tale about mothers of questionable quality. Today, I present a few about the dads. <br />
Okay, so none of the dads in today's story are particularly questionable. I have to say that, cause my own dad is featured prominently and behaves admirably. But when it comes to dad stories at the "liberry" you have to pick from what's there, cause there's only a few to be found. But you do get to hear the tale of the time my dad and I nearly had to lay a beatdown on a frat guy in a Huddle House.
Listen:
EPISODE 011 (211): L is for Lazy Week (Greenhorns 4)
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Newbie Greenhorn Ms. S was not only an eternal newbie greenhorn, she was their queen. Never before had I met a person so willfully unwilling to burn a single calorie in the execution of her job that could have gone unburnt with her ass planted in a chair. The fact that she remained an employee as long as she did is a mystery for the ages. After hoarding away a number of the best Ms. S stories, I finally unleashed them in a weeklong torrent called L is for Lazy Week (much as Ms. S could unleash a torrent of dumbass questions just as you were trying to walk out the door for home). This is that week adapted to podcast form.<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 010 (210): Mr. Little Stupid
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One of the most confounding "liberry" mysteries put before me, years even before I began blogging about my adventures, was the mystery of Mr. Little Stupid. Like his near namesake, Mr. Big Stupid, Mr. Little Stupid enjoyed using our public computers. Unlike Mr. Big Stupid, Mr. L.S. was a small, meek fellow who walked around carrying a Girl Scouts binder and wanted to read the poetry of tragic figures cut down too soon. He also had the perplexing inability to remember the most basic of internet access concepts, such as how to load internet explorer, despite repeated lessons from me personally. It was a mystery that I came to solve, and chronicle here.
Listen:
EPISODE 09 (209): Schrodinger's Cup
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Take a coffee cup that has a lid... and is stationary... and has no backlighting... and has a radioactive isotope inside of it that could release a molecule that has a 50/50 chance to punch a hole in the side of it, revealing whether or not it's full... and... and... Oh, yeah, did I mention the room is completely dark? Yeah, it's dark, all right.<br />
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Anyway, after you think about all that for a while, listen to this week's episode featuring Mr. Hinky, a Rogue Patron who was a repeat offender at sneaking coffee to our computers.
Listen:
EPISODE 08 (208): Bad Moms 2
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Okay, so it's a week late, but just like calling your mom for Mother's Day, better late than never.<br />
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Today's episode is the sequel to last year's BAD MOTHERS DAY podcast which got rerun last week in place of this one, which was eaten by Audacity. So now, freshly rerecorded and spiffy and stuff, here's Bad Moms 2. Featured in today's episode are more tales of questionable parenting, featuring such bad parenting byproducts as Little Kayla, Holly GoHeavilly and the children of future podcast featured former Rogue, Ms. Green.<br />
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Listen:
ENCORE EPISODE 9 (109): Bad Mother's Day
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<i>In honor of Mother's Day and because EFFing Audacity EFFing ate the Bad Mother's Day sequel file I recorded today just as I was starting to edit it . (That's okay, though. Turns out it had shitty audio cause something is set wrong on the wife's laptop. But I digress.) So instead, I present an encore reairing of last year's bad mother's day show. Tune in next week for this year's, dammit.</i><br />
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From the cast of 16 And Pregnant to the Octomom to that Brazilian chick who said she was having, like, nine babies and then turned out she was just fat, bad moms are in the news and are seemingly more common than ever before. And while the majority of the moms who I knew at the "liberry" were awesome, there were a handful whose parenting skills I at least had to question, when not being actively driven nuts by the ladies themselves. Welcome to the Tales from the "LiberryCAST" Bad Mother's Day Special.
Listen:
EPISODE 07 (207): "I'll take Dents other than Arthur for $300, Alex."
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Throughout my time at the "liberry" I was able to identify and classify the top five grumpiest old men in all the world. So far Mr. B-Natural and Mr. Crab (#1 and #3, respectively) have had podcast episodes devoted to them. Now we turn to Grumpiest Old Man in All the World #4: Mr. Dent. This was an older gentleman kwho closely resembled Sam the Eagle from the Muppet Show, albeit with a massive dent in the side of his head. Oh, and he was also known for his infatuation with the alleged genetic impurity of a certain section of the English Countryside. I also discuss the concept and origins of Fake Shemps.
Listen:
EPISODE 06 (206): Send in the Clones
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They say if you're one in a million then there are 10,000 of you in the U.S. alone. And thems only 1990 census numbers. This being the case, I, and more importantly people who barely know me, have run into (or attacked, in some cases) perfect strangers who just happen to resemble me. These handsome devils I call my "clones" and they have plagued me since my days in college. One even paid me a visit at the "liberry."
Listen:
EPISODE 05 (205): Urf Day
In honor of Earth Day, this episode presents my one and only Earth Day entry detailing one wildly irresponsible environmentally-conscious childrens' book that I regretted cold reading to a bunch of story hour kids. Additionally, this episode serves as part 2 of our cute stories about good kids series, albeit one in which some of the good kids are pretty frustrating. Guest stars include Brett Mavrick: The Card Sharp, Olive "Has No Inside Voice" Baker, and Danger Ben Stout.<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 04 (204): I Believe the Children Are Our Future (and a few of them are pretty good)
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Kids. Lots of people have them and lots of them are shits. Even thieving shits, (See: the Fagins). But once in a while you'll get a few good eggs. In fact, whole families of good eggs.<br />
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After weeks (some might say 55 of them) of negativity and grief, allow me to present part one of a two part series of Tales of the Good Patrons--stories about great kids and/or great parents, who are no less entertaining than the bad ones--just in a good way.
Listen:
EPISODE 03 (203): Greenhorns Saga Part 3
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While most newbie greenhorn employees settle into the job at some point (even some who take a year or two to find their feet) there are some who NEVER find their feet no matter how many times you train and retrain them. These are the eternal newbie greenhorns and Ms. S was their queen and, eventually, sole member at our branch. Which is odd, because Eternal Newbie "Liberry" Greenhorn Ms. S was allegedly a trained library worker with some sort of library degree to her name before she started.
Listen:
EPISODE 02 (202): Sprangtime
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This episode drops April 1 and it's all sprangy outside. In honor of that, here are a handful of stories involving the season of spring (with just a hint of winter).<br />
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Highlights include appearances by Fatty Manchild and Old Man Womanlegs, plus the greatest and best shot in the world, and an unprecedented question from a patron.
Listen:
SEASON 2 EPISODE 01 (201): Return to Tri-Metro
Tales from the "LiberryCAST" enters Season 2 with some hints and details on my return to my old stomping grounds of the Tri-Metro area of small Appalachian towns--the very place that spawned the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog. <br />
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In honor of a few return trips to the actual "liberry" in question, this episode also presents a few adapted tales starring the one Rogues Gallery member I've actually seen at the "liberry" nearly every time I've been back.
Listen:
EPISODE 52 (152): Open Letters, part the second
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Back in Episode 10 (110), I featured some of the Open Letters I'd published to both patrons and members of the entertainment industry (both living and dead). And back in Episode 10, I said I had some more such letters to come. Today's episode, Episode 52 (that would be the one year anniversary of this show) features those other open letters.<br />
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By the by, I'm gonna take a couple weeks off before starting Season 2 of TFT"LC", cause I'm moving houses and stuff.
Listen:
EPISODE 51 (151): Dumbass Things I've Done Lately Week
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I've often maintained that if a person is going to go around pointing fingers at the foibles of others (or recording podcasts adapting blog entries about the foibles of others), it's only fair for that person to occasionally point a few at some of their own. I did this pretty frequently during the course of writing Tales from the "Liberry" and even devoted an entire week to it. <br />
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Adapted here are a few entries from that week, as well as dumbass things I did beyond it. Guest stars include Mr. Stanky, Mr. Perfect, my moms-in-law, and, unfortunately, my junk.
Listen:
EPISODE 50 (150): The Founding Fathers Won't Leave Me Alone
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We at the "liberry" were no strangers to playing the role of "liberry" clubhouse junior detectives on occasion. But one day we were presented with a huge mystery that remains largely unsolved to this very day. <br />
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On this week's podcast, you can listen to what our staff did after an older gentleman patron behaved most ungentlemanly to us by spreading lies that we had refused to supply him with copies of the founding documents of our nation, after we very much had. <br />
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I give you the story of Grandpa Sam.
Listen:
EPISODE 14 (114): The (Vid) Borrowers REPOST
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<b>(NOTE FROM 2012: Okay, I don't know what happened but somehow half this episode vanished. No, the version that's been posted here, for who knows how long, had the theme music, then trailed off to silence for, like, 12 minutes, then came back in with the second and third stories and wrapped up. There was a massive gap where the first story had been and I don't know how this is even possible. It was just gone and was gone from my back up .wav copy, and the .mp3 copy, and the online copy, and the backup online copy I had on another server. Huge mystery. I think I'll lay the blame upon Audacity. Anyway, I have now rerecorded the missing bit and the episode is whole once again.)</b><br />
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Libraries aren't just for books, you know. In fact, some patrons wouldn't crack one if there was crack in it. (Unless it was written by V.C. Andrews, but maybe that's just around here.) That's okay, cause most "liberries" have on hand a selection of some of the greatest films ever created and the shittiest VHS tapes ever to be lobbed into a donation bin. The patrons who exclusively check out such tapes fall into the patron archetype of Vid-Borrowers. And their queen, Mrs. Bellows, is a force-of-nature-of-frustration.
Listen:
EPISODE 49 (149): Meet the Hackers
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Meet Johnny Hacker, one of the "good" patrons. He was a college student living at home who was known to us only for his use of our facilities for their best possible purposes, not to mention for being an all around cheerful dude. That boy's parents raised him right, and we know cause they were usually not far when Johnny was in house. However, while his mother's good lessons of "cover your mouth when you cough" definitely stuck in his brain, common sense notions of "if you're going to give off hacking coughs every 10 to 20 seconds FOR TWO $&%#ING HOURS, not only should you cover your mouth but you should GO THE &*$# HOME before someone brains you with a PDR! As a bonus, I include a non-blog tale about a couple of sick cars.
Listen:
EPISODE 48 (148): The Anniversary Flight Blues
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Wedding anniversaries: for me they happen every year and this year my 12th anniversary just happens to fall on the day this episode drops, Sunday, February 5. So, because I have a sum total of ZERO football stories from the blog I could slip in here to create a different theme, and because I love my wife (those excuses may not be in the right order), I shall tell an off-blog yet-still-blog-like tale regarding a mystery anniversary concert the wife arranged for me for our 3rd anniversary, way back before Tales from the "Liberry" even began.
Listen:
EPISODE 47 (147): Spinoffs
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As with successful TV shows that spinoff into subsequent TV shows, sometimes "liberry" programs spin off into others. However, for every Cheers to Frasier spin-off, there are twenty forgettable Friends to Joey spinoffs.<br />
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I got to be the architect of two such back to back spinoffs of our weekly morning story hour program, which became evening story time projects with the unlikely acronyms of O.U.A.W and T.U.A.T. Over the course of most of a year, their attendance, and therefore success, varied wildly from week to week, with anywhere from six to zero kids turning up to hear me read stories at them.<br />
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While I always thought of myself as Frasier, I guess I was closer to Joey. Or maybe even, The Tortellis.<br />
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(This episode features notable appearances by previous podcast topic characters Little Kevin Martin and Chester the (Potential) Molester.)
Listen:
EPISODE 46 (146): Greenhorns 2: Greenhornier
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Our troubles with the Newbie Greenhorns on staff only began with Ms. K, Ms. M and Miss F. For they were but the heralds for the coming of the great and terrible Queen of the Greenhorns: Ms. S. <br />
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On paper, Ms. S seemed like a dream come true, for while she was but a newbie to our "liberry" she held in her employment history actual experience working in a larger library in a neighboring county, which meant she knew our computer system already. Sweet! Better still, she allegedly held an undergraduate degree in library science. We thought: How could a new employee get any better? Welllll, a lot, it turns out. And by quite a staggering margin. She took greenhorning to the next level. <br />
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Taken individually, none of Ms. S's myriad of "liberry" crimes was worthy of termination from her job. However, it's the cumulative effect that really drove the rest of us over the edge. This is her story.
Listen:
EPISODE 45 (145): Winston's Story
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One of the cast members of the Tales from the "Liberry" blog who was on the scene long before I ever worked in a public library was my cat Winston Churchill: The Infinitely Bad Kitty. Named because she looked exactly like the former British Prime Minister as an infant, Winston was one of my best friends throughout my 20s and much of my 30s. However, due to a series of most unfortunate events, she nearly didn't make it through the midpoint of my 30s. This is the miraculous story of her salvation.<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 44 (144): Newbie Greenhorns
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Everybody has to start their career somewhere and usually when you start at entry level you're not very good. It takes a while to find your feet. And that was the purpose of the Newbie Greenhorn program at our "liberry". Newbie Greenhorns were allowed time to work out the kinks and master the details of their job without a great deal of initial positive expectation on the part of their coworkers. Ideally, these employees would graduate to mere Greenhorn status and then full fledged "Liberry" Ass. status, with all the perks that come with that position. Some graduated right away. And some did not graduate EVER despite years on the job. Today's episode is the first part in an ongoing series chronicling our problems with the Newbie Greenhorns.
Listen:
EPISODE 43 (143): ParkaST 2
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Back for the new year are tales of everyone's favorite puffy, white, Michelin Man parka-clad, innanet crowd patron, Parka. Detailed here are tales of his repeatedly thwarted efforts to drink his coffee while chatting with his e-skanks on our computers, what it might sound like were he to have been given a microphone with which to chat with them, his deep roots into the synchronicity fields surrounding our building, and his banning from the use of our computers at the hands of... himself.
Listen:
EPISODE 42 (142): What Would Wal-Mart Jesus Do?
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On this special day, on which we both celebrate the birth of our savior and worship at the altar of commerce, I bring you a Christmas story of another humble servant of God. <br />
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One of the most memorable patrons we ever had to deal with was a fellow we collectively called Jesus and who I blog-dubbed Wal-Mart Jesus. How come? Cause he looked like Jesus, but wearing flowing, striped, table-clothy robes that looked as if they had been pulled directly from a roll in Wal-Mart's fabric department. He was instantly recognizable and very very memorable. Which is odd, because the major trouble we had with him stemmed from an incident involving him that none of us could remember.<br />
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WWWMJD? Drive us nuts.
Listen:
EPISODE 41 (141): Christmas Party Pack
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I loves me some Christmas Party. Yessir. Nearly my favorite kind of party due to high concentrations of fantastic food and drink and presents. Our "liberry" Christmas parties were especially fun, as we usually did them potluck style and stuffed ourselves beyond full with the amazing dishes created by the wonderful cooks I worked with (and am married to). But there are many varieties of Christmas party beyond the "liberry", not to mention just nutty seasonal crap to deal with. This week's podcast explores the topic all around.<br />
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(Features unfortunate guest appearances by both Chester the (potential) Molester and my colon.)
Listen:
EPISODE 40 (140): Mr. B-Natural
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There are rogue patrons and there are Rogue Patrons and Mr. B-Natural, Grumpiest Old Man in All the World, was usually somewhere in between. Not an evil human being by any stretch, but a tremendously cranky man, except when in the presence of his beloved pooch, Bubba. Our main beef with him is that Mr. B-Natural was a guy who definitely took pleasure in annoying the bejeezus out of the library staff by blatantly breaking as many rules as he could get away with just to piss us off. To hear him tell it, a library needs patrons who break the rules, otherwise we would have no reason to have rules at all. (Which, I think, was exactly the motivation of Professor Zoom, the arch-nemesis of The Flash.) So he continually signed his name upside down on our computer sign in sheet and tried to sneak his coffee back to the computers for his daily crossword. These are but a few of his stories.
Listen:
EPISODE 39 (139): And the Password Is...
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Everybody has a secret these days. If nothing else, they have at least one computer password. We went through several at the "liberry" for our patron computers, mostly because our patrons kept hacking them. And, sure, we didn't always make this as difficult as we should, but people having the patron computer password wasn't exactly the end of the world. It was just irritating. And who among our patrons tended to be the ones who tried to hack us most frequently? Why the Rogue Patrons, of course.<br />
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(Featuring appearances by Parka, The Evil Fed Ex Guy and the Devil Twins Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids)<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 38 (138): The Thanksgiving Podcast
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On this Thanksgiving holiday, I am thankful for family and friends willing to travel great distances to my home only to have to sleep on inflatabeds. I'm also thankful that I once wrote a handful of Tales from the "Liberry" entries in which Thanksgiving played a part. That's cause they were readily available for me to adapt for this week's podcast.<br />
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Hope you and yours are having a festive turkey season.<br />
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(And that you don't live in Missouri or Kentucky, cause I shit on those states pretty heavily in this episode.)<br />
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(This podcast features the first podcast appearance of Birthday Lady)
Listen:
EPISODE 37 (137): Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine
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There are many irritating patron archetypes, but among the most irritating of them are the Geneal0gy People. Yes, those patrons who are so fervid about their own ancestry that they simply must spend at least six hours a day diligently researching the shit out of it. And, really, if you're gonna put that kind of time and labor into something you're so passionate about, are you gonna keep your discoveries to yourself? Hell no, you're going to tell simply EVERYONE about it all. And who better to start with than the library staff? We had a handful of amateur geneal0gists under foot, but the one we actually avoided at all costs was the man who became known as Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine.
Listen:
EPISODE 36 (136): The Ballad of Crusty the Patron
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While not the stinkiest patron we ever had to deal with, the man who became known as Crusty the Patron was still counted among the worst of the stinky patron lot due to his tenacity in inflicting his stench on us for hours at a time. Crusty suffered from a number of other hygienic ailments that made working at my "liberry" downright unappetizing. And while I was not allowed to kick him out directly, I was able to find at least a temporary solution to the basic problems he caused for us without a direct confrontation. (Don't eat any pastries while listening to this episode.)<br />
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This ep also features appearances and references to Parka and the worlds second stinkiest patron, Mr. Stanky.
Listen:
EPISODE 35 (135): Billy the Brainchild
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There were only a handful of patrons I truly hated, most with good reason. However, one who pressed all my hatred buttons within seconds of meeting him was a guy I called Billy the Brainchild--well, him and a remarkably similar patron called The Expert). Billy was a guy out to make a name for himself in a variety of half-assed media business ventures of a pornographic nature. His ultimate goal was to become Appalachia's version of Larry Flynt, minus the wheel chair and, presumably, the inflatable wang. And that wasn't even why I hated him. No, my ire was because his first step toward his goal (besides putting his bong down for one whole hour) was to come pester us for ways to achieve that goal. But, naturally, a guy as smart as Billy saw himself didn't really need our help. He already knew everything there was to know about the business world; he just needed us to confirm it for him. And therein lay the basic conflict.
Listen:
EPISODE 34 (134): Dawn of the Dufus
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The major problem with patron access computers are the patrons. They don't have computers at home, so they have to come use ours.<br />
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And that's great, until it's not.<br />
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Such was the case with a Rogue Patron I came to call The Dufus. He was a guy from the area who'd gone out into the world for, to hear him tell it, a storied career as a minor deity on the West Coast, where he hobnobbed with rich and powerful celebrities all of whom adored him. Again, to hear him tell it. And tell it he was more than willing to do. Somehow he got it into his head that such minor matters as time limits on the patron computers didn't apply to him and no matter how many people we had waiting to use his, there he sat, pissing all of us off. Ironic and moronic, because he was using our computer to try and get a job working for the library in the first place.
Listen:
EPISODE 33 (133): The Crustacean Menace!
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In the past, I've chronicled small tales of Mr. B-Natural and Mr. Smiley, the first and second grumpiest old men in all the world respectively. However, the third grumpiest old man in all the world actually proved to be one of the more active antagonists in the history of the Tales from the "Liberry" blog. As I said <a href="http://www.liberrycast.com/2011/10/episode-32-132-blue-hair-group.html">last week</a>, he's an honorary old white lady and for good reason; not only is he on par with the O.W.L.s in mere surliness, but he could go up against the worst of them in the <font style="font-style: italic;">Forgetting Your Library Card and Getting All Worked up About it to the Point of Leveling Threats Against the Staff 400 meter dash. </font>One for the record books, people.
Listen:
EPISODE 32 (132): Blue Hair Group
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Customer service people, back me up here. When it comes to the ability of customers/patrons to deliver huge consignments of shit during the course of a basic transaction, the group of human beings most likely to be making that delivery are Old White Ladies. Yessir. More than any other group on the planet, they are the least easy to please. Maybe it's a southern thing. I dunno. But that has been my experience over the course of 20 years of dealing with the public, and four such tales are presented in this week's podcast. (Featuring an appearance by Delva Poopoohead, of the New England Poopooheads.)
Listen:
EPISODE 31 (131): Troubled Youth
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Children are not angels. Sometimes they break bad and have to be sent away for a while to a place where they can be broken of the badness, or simply be removed from a bad situation. (I know, I know, that's a huge over simplification, but that's how it seems.) We had a couple of homes for troubled youth in Tri-Metro and they were frequent visitors to the "liberry" along with their usual hulking, pro-wrestler style Troubled Youth Wranglers. Getting materials back from them was often a problem. Getting them to stop asking if we had The Anarchist Cookbook, an impossibility.
Listen:
EPISODE 30 (130): Shhhhh!
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Libraries are supposed to be places of quiet study. Mine, not so much. Our patrons were very louLinkd. Sometimes they suffered from no-inside-voice syndrome, a sad condition in which their parents never taught them proper indoor voice technique. Other times they used blood curdling screams as their only form of communication. And, on the rare occasions when they were quiet, they were excessively quiet and were in danger of having their voices drowned out by the sounds of typing. Presented for your modulated listening, three tales spanning the history of the original blog.<br />
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Notable appearances by Kanji the Kid, the Screamer.
Listen:
EPISODE 29 (129): Banned
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In honor of National Banned Books Week, we present an expanded version of an Actual Conversation Heard in an Actual Library on that very topic. Directly interwoven with this tale is the story of my abiding love of the Walter the Farting Dog series and how my "liberry" self-banned it for several months to avoid the nonexistent wrath of coddling parents.<br />
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All in all, four different Tales from the "Liberry", each involving Walter to some degree, are covered in today's podcast, yet none of them are in their original form from the blog. Eat new content!
Listen:
EPISODE 28 (128): The Dreamcast
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Libraries are places full of dreams. (Just ask Lucien.) Sometimes they can be literal, such as a nightmare I once had regarding a particular problem patron discovering the blog, or my dream of revenge on Joss Whedon for... well, Firefly fans know what Joss did. Other times, in title alone. And other times, it can be the dreams of a patron, dashed by a surly "liberry" ass. such as myself. They can all be found in today's DreamCAST.Link
Listen:
EPISODE 27 (127): Anniversaries and Origins
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Today's 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks brings to mind where I was during that time a decade ago and how it coincided with my hiring at the Tri-Metro "liberry." Today's podcast presents an adaptation of that portion of Secret Origins of Tales from the "Liberry" as well as a commentary bit containing the actual never-before-revealed secret origin of the blog.
Listen:
EPISODE 26 (126): D-Con Kills Nerds Dead
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As you might have noticed, I'm an enormous nerd. Maybe not quite as nerdy as the Nerdist Podcast, but nerdy all the same. As such, I'm fond of heading out to nerd gatherings such as the infamous Dragon Con in Atlanta. In honor of this being Dragon Con weekend for 2011, I present some non-"liberry" tales of my D-Con experiences of the past decade. Included are dealer's room encounters with gerbil-cleavaged sci-fi heroines; Annoying Brit Track Boy's near-death-experience at the hands of both the panel audience and the 5th Doctor Who; an awkward encounter with Biff from Back to the Future, Harlan Ellison laying verbal waste to one and all; and, as always, the guy that played Boomer in the 70s Battlestar Galactica.
Listen:
EPISODE 25 (125): Odd Birds, Strange Encounters, and Fragmentary Dilemmas (and cussin')
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Libraries always have their odd bird patrons. Flocks of them, usually. Ours was no exception. Presented for your consideration today are five tales of such in-the-wild encounters with odd bird patrons, and/or tales featuring some cussin'. That's right, it's the All Cussin' Episode (#$%& yeah!) with nary a censor tone to be found and Explicit right on the Tag. Fire it up for Grandma!
Listen:
EPISODE 24 (124): Who's Got the 10 and a Half?
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For most of my "liberry" career, I was a part time employee. Once in a while, though, when EVERYONE else was out of town, I was called upon to take on not only a full 8 hour day, but sometimes a full 10 hour day, almost entirely by myself. This is when my experiments with real time blogging began to take shape. It's not all funny material, but it was often surprising.<br />
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Guest stars include: Mr. Smiley, Parka, Kanji the Kid, Brent & Brice the New Devil Twins, Chester the (Potential) Moletster, and more.
Listen:
EPISODE 23 (123): The Amazing Mr. Kreskin
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One of the most astounding figures I encountered during my time at the "liberry" was our board president, Mr. Kreskin (not his real name). He was a very nice and capable human being, tirelessly juggling multiple complicated projects on the library's behalf. And from those projects arose many questions, only our two librarians were capable of answering for him. Unfortunately the ONLY time he was ever known to phone us at all were on the rare days when both librarians were out of town and unavailable. It was more reliable than Old Faithful.<br />
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(This episode also includes a cameo by Mrs. Carol Satan.)
Listen:
EPISODE 22 (122): Summer Reading Blues
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Summer Reading, oh how it burns!<br />
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Yes, it's the time of year when snot-nosed crumb-crunchers descend upon the "liberry" to craft crafts, hear stories, fill out reading logs and create chaos. That is, if their parents can manage to get them signed up to begin with.<br />
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And who is the queen of Summer Reading Chaos? Why our old nemesis, Little Kayla, of course.<br />
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(This episode also includes a cameo by Parka as well as one by his shag carpet of torso hair.)
Listen:
EPISODE 21 (121): The Doc Ock Fetishist Society
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An odd tale of an odd bird encountered in the wild, AWAY from the "liberry" proper. Doc Ock Fetishist Woman was never a patron, but she was about as nutty as any of our patrons ever got. Not a bad human being in the slightest, just exasperating. In fact, if she has committed any crime, it's probably that she cares too much... about inanimate objects.<br />
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Also included in this tale is the story of the first time I was busted as a "liberry" blogger. Having your secret identity revealed to you is always disconcerting, but is even more bewildering when it comes with a large dollop of synchronicity on top.<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 18 (118): Parka Life (REPOST)
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Just when we thought we had it bad enough with frequent visits from Chester the (Potential) Molester, another seeming sicko fell into our midst. And, unlike Chester, this one actually had computer skills. He also had a habit of exclusively wearing a puffy white Michelin man winter parka in the warmth of April, so his nickname officially became Parka.<br />
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While I didn't know it at the time, he would become the MOST chronicled member of the "Liberry" Rogues Gallery by proving himself to be the MOST irritating patron we had to deal with, in a multitude of ways.<br />
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Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to play the Five Tacos and a Taco podcast game Dick, Douche, or Dumbass and see if you can tell which category Parka falls into best. Or worst, as the case may be.<br />
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As an added bonus, the final story of the podcast features a magnificently satisfying tale of both a massively unprecedented event for our library as well as one of the aforementioned Chester getting his comeuppance at the hands of another library.
Listen:
EPISODE 20 (120): Barbie T: Combat Pay
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Last week's podcast presented how Barbie Turdmurkle drove us nigh unto insanity in helping her log into one of her many online services that she doesn't have the necessary skillset to access by herself. One year later, she returned to do much the same thing, having learned no lessons on doing so from our previous encounter on the matter.<br />
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As an added bonus, I have also recorded my heretofore unpodcasted first encounter with Barbie T. It was the first of many exasperating telephone conversations I was to have with her.
Listen:
EPISODE 19 (119): Barbie T: Master of the Internet
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This podcast marks a return appearance by previous podcast rogue patron Barbara Turdmurkle, a.k.a. the titular Barbie T.<br />
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Barbie T has repeatedly proven herself to be incapable of using technology, especially computers, yet she continues to sign up for services that require internet access. This coupled with her constant fear that someone is trying to steal her identity and ruin her credit, coupled with some truly strange phone calls, meant someone at the "liberry" was going to have a bad day. Too bad it was me.
Listen:
EPISODE 18 (118): Parka Life
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Just when we thought we had it bad enough with frequent visits from Chester the (Potential) Molester, another seeming sicko fell into our midst. And, unlike Chester, this one actually had computer skills. He also had a habit of exclusively wearing a puffy white Michelin man winter parka in the warmth of April, so his nickname officially became Parka.<br />
<br />
While I didn't know it at the time, he would become the MOST chronicled member of the "Liberry" Rogues Gallery by proving himself to be the MOST irritating patron we had to deal with, in a multitude of ways.<br />
<br />
Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to play the Five Tacos and a Taco podcast game Dick, Douche, or Dumbass and see if you can tell which category Parka falls into best. Or worst, as the case may be.<br />
<br />
As an added bonus, the final story of the podcast features a magnificently satisfying tale of both a massively unprecedented event for our library as well as one of the aforementioned Chester getting his comeuppance at the hands of another library.
Listen:
EPISODE 17 (117): The Nastiest Patron Ever
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As much as I complain about nutty patrons, the vast majority of people I had to deal with on a daily basis were amazingly nice and appreciative folk, who would never think to question a fine, let alone whine about it and whose scant few complaints were limited to things like, "I wish the library was open even more often than every day, cause I love it so." Then, just when I was starting to think that humanity was basically decent, if occasionally misunderstood, and I should really look into shutting up with my own petty moaning, someone truly evil, such as the patron I called Mrs. Carol Satan, would arrive and blow the decency curve for everyone.<br />
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Mrs. Carol Satan's overriding memorable quality, (beyond smelling like a Marlboro factory in heat) was her ability to go from zero to psychotic, lying, bizatch in the space of 2.5 seconds. Not only was she known to frequently lie to our faces concerning matters that were her own damn fault, but she usually did so at full scream, practically slashing at our eyes with her claws. Any encounter with her left you feeling violated and dirty. She gave harpies a bad name. Dipped in the River C, she was.<br />
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Fortunately, we were at last able to defeat her in a most public manner.<br />
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This is that story.
Listen:
EPISODE 16 (116): Stanky Patrons and other Dusty Turds
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Public service brings with it one constant: The Public. And not everyone among the public is an avid fan of bathing nor is capable of comprehending that noxious fumes are produced by their butts, nor the readily available ways to combat said fumes. This was a reoccurring problem at my "liberry" that drove me nigh unto insanity. Today's episode presents one of the simple and elegant remedies to our library's ass fume problems that I actually proposed to my bosses.<br />
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As an added bonus, following today's reading is an interview with friend and former fellow library compatriot from another state, Glen B (no relation to Mrs. B), who will enlighten us as to the exact stench classification of some of the patrons in his library. He'll also enlighten us as to what one does when one's home is swallowed by a lake and how that smells afterward. This is one for the Hobo Power record books, gang.<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 15 (115): Deception as the Rule
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One of the oddest tales in the entire "liberry" catalog has to be that of Mrs. Lying D. Sackashit, a lady who proved to have in her possession a never-ending fountain of horseshit which she turned in our direction whenever we encountered her. I don't know the true nature of her particular brand of mental flaw, but she had an impressive ability to calmly reinvent reality on the spot regardless of the MOUNTING evidence to the contrary staring her in the face. Why did she do this? To get what she wanted, of course. And, unfortunately, in our battles with her, she often won.
Listen:
EPISODE 14 (114): The (Vid) Borrowers
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<b>(NOTE FROM 2012: Okay, I don't know what happened but somehow half this episode vanished. No, the version that's been posted here, for who knows how long, had the theme music, then trailed off to silence for, like, 12 minutes, then came back in with the second and third stories and wrapped up. There was a massive gap where the first story had been and I don't know how this is even possible. It was just gone and was gone from my back up .wav copy, and the .mp3 copy, and the online copy, and the backup online copy I had on another server. Huge mystery. I think I'll lay the blame upon Audacity. Anyway, I have now rerecorded the missing bit and the episode is whole once again.)</b><br />
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Libraries aren't just for books, you know. In fact, some patrons wouldn't crack one if there was crack in it. (Unless it was written by V.C. Andrews, but maybe that's just around here.) That's okay, cause most "liberries" have on hand a selection of some of the greatest films ever created and the shittiest VHS tapes ever to be lobbed into a donation bin. The patrons who exclusively check out such tapes fall into the patron archetype of Vid-Borrowers. And their queen, Mrs. Bellows, is a force-of-nature-of-frustration.
Listen:
EPISODE 13 (113): Superfreak, the Worst of Paranoid Rick James
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Upgrades in technology often bring upgrades in hassle. So was the case when our "liberry" network upgraded our circulation software, requiring us to rebarcode not only our entire collection, but our patrons as well. And when it came to patrons freaking out on us in a super fashion about policy issues concerning their library card, no one won the race ahead of Paranoid Rick James. His apparent fear that the "gubmint" was trying to keep track of which Joan Medlicott books he read led him down corridors of patron deception we could scarcely keep track of ourselves.
Listen:
EPISODE 12 (112): Conspiracy Theory and Other Abused Substances
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Among existing "liberry" patron archetypes, Conspiracy Guy and Stoner Lad are probably two of the more universal ones. Every library has them, sometimes in multiples. We did as well, but there were two specific people that embodied these roles for me. Alas, by the time I began to write my blog, they had more or less moved on. But on one perfect night, they afforded me a glimpse of their combined powers of archetypical representation. (Now who sounds like they're on drugs?)
Listen:
EPISODE 11 (111): Now THAT's some Monday for your ass.
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Mondays. Who needs `em? Can't stand them. Wouldn't live next to them.<br />
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Okay, so this attitude is pretty much a universal one. But I assure you that Mondays at the "liberry" sucked even more than most Mondays despite the fact that we didn't even open until 1 in the afternoon. No, Mondays at the "liberry" sucked even worse than Halle Berry's Catwoman and, as your average goat will tell you, that movie sucked A LOT.<br />
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This episode is a prime example of why I hated Mondays at the "liberry" and the awful events that fell upon me on one particular Monday.
Listen:
EPISODE 10 (110): Open Letters, part the first
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In these days of miracle and wonder, with all our email and forum snark, the craftily-worded complaint letter is nearly a lost artform. Even at the library, a place where the patrons had no problem complaining about the tiniest of perceived infractions, we rarely received them in letter form. That's why I decided to turn the tables and start writing open letters of complaint to the people who drove me nuts--albeit, online and in a place where they were unlikely to ever see them, especially considering that one of them is dead.
Listen:
EPISODE 9 (109): Bad Mother's day
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From the cast of 16 And Pregnant to the Octomom, bad moms are in the news and are seemingly more common than ever before. And while the majority of the moms who I knew at the "liberry" were awesome, there were a handful whose parenting skills I at least had to question, when not being actively driven nuts by the ladies themselves. Welcome to the Tales from the "LiberryCAST" Bad Mother's Day Special.
Listen:
EPISODE 8 (108): The Boy With One Red Shoe (and other Tales of the Martins)
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Two of the more exasperating and amusing child patrons we had at the "liberry" were Little Kevin and Little Chuck Martin. They were very intelligent, sometimes bitingly funny, but often a bit spacey and prone to making the job of "liberry" ass. a difficult one. I still count them among the good eggs, but that made them no less challenging (or funny) to deal with.
Listen:
EPISODE 7 (107): The Patron Who Must Not Be Named
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Pedophiles: Public enemy #1. You've tried smelly sprays and perverticides, but pedophiles can smell too. They avoid sprayed areas and keep coming back for more. What you need is CHESTERKILL...<br />
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...Oh, I can't do it anymore. I so want to make light of our library's resident pedophile Chester the (Potential) Molester, but I just can't stand to do it. He was never a joke to us when I worked there and he's still not now.<br />
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Unfortunately, guys like Chester, who have more than a dusting of interest in underage girls, are a part of life when you work in a library. They don't tell you in the interview that it's part of your job to defend the patrons these sick bastards might (or might not) like to prey upon. But when you see them in action, you gladly do it because every fiber of your being screams for you to.<br />
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And Chester was particularly infuriating for many reasons, but two primary ones: 1) monitoring Chester's activities when he's in the building becomes a full time job from the moment he arrives; 2) Chester above all other patrons can magically appear at the sound of his own name.<br />
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This is less of a Funny Ha-Ha episode and more of a Holy Shit, I Can't Believe That Guy Is Walking The Earth, Where's Chris Hanson When You Need Him? kind of episode.
Listen:
EPISODE 6 (106): Tax Time Blues
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Tax season is one of the more annoying seasons at the "liberry." Not only do you have people descending on your head, asking for financial advice you're not qualified to give, but they refuse to read all signs to that effect that might have saved them a trip to the reference desk. Don't bother putting any up to direct them to the tax forms, either. Patrons, as a rule, don't read signs.<br />
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Episode 6 (106) presents three different tax time tales, some of which are amalgams of a handful of other stories originally presented on the Tales from the "Liberry" blog.<br />
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Hope your personal tax season is going better than mine used to.<br />
Listen:
EPISODE 5 (105): The Ballad of I.N. Phyte
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Fact: There are still people in this country--young people, even--whose lives do not revolve around the internet. These are people who not only don't check their email every day, they don't even HAVE email. It's kind of refreshing, when you think about it. However, it can also be VERY frustrating when those same people turn up and decide to jump whole hog into it in the course of one lesson. It can be difficult to explain the concept of the world wide web to an internet neophyte when they are still trying to climb the hurdle of basic computer concepts. It is even more difficult to explain all of the above to a person who is aggressively ignoring everything you tell them. <br />
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That used to be my job.
Listen:
EPISODE 4 (104): "They Live" and other stories of Language Lessons and DMVictims
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Anyone who's ever worked the reference desk in a library has heard tale of the infamous <b><i>THEY</i></b>--that secret cabal of advice-givers who send people to the library in search of the of odd-assed things no library should be expected to have. <b><i>They</i></b> cause an awful lot of trouble. And it doesn't help that the patrons <b><i>They</i></b> send to libraries have difficulty communicating the instructions from <b><i>They</i></b> in the first place, necessitating the consultation of English/Patronese dictionaries and, quite possibly, a divining rod.<br />
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<b><i>They</i></b><i> said you should listen to this podcast. </i><b><i>They</i></b><i> said doing so will make you fabulously wealthy. </i><b><i>They</i></b><i> said it contains the answers you are seeking. </i><b><i>They</i></b><i> said it has a creamy nougat center. </i><b><i>They</i></b><i> said you should forward the podcast on to five people you know and three you don't, or it will bring bad luck. </i><b><i>They</i></b><i> said it does a body good. In fact, </i><b><i>They</i></b><i> said if you don't listen to it, Slim Goodbody will come to your house and kick you squar in the junk. </i><b><i>They</i></b><i> said if you do not possess "junk," that's okay, neither does Slim. You can both listen to the podcast together. </i>
Listen:
EPISODE 3 (103): The Horse Pissperer
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Unfortunate Fact: human patrons often read their library books on the toilet, where they are apt to accidentally, or otherwise, contaminate them with various mookystinks. (Think about THAT the next time you sit down to read a borrowed book over your lunch break.) Horse patrons rarely read books on the toilet. However, as evidenced by this week's podcast, they are also apt to be a bit liberal with their distribution of waste products around them. A classic tale of love, compassion and disinfectant.<br />
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And in our bonus story, we have another tale of finding the wrong video in the right case, only this time without as much discomfort involved--er, well, depending on your cinematic tastes, I guess. It's probably a tale only Stephen King could love.
Listen:
EPISODE 2 (102): FAX Guy Goes Nutzoid
The second episode of the LiberryCAST features a classic story of both poor customer service and insane customer behavior. It also marks the debut appearance of long time "Liberry" Rogue Barbara Turdmurkle on the podcast.
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EPISODE 1 (101): DP for DPenedetta
Yessir, it's the premiere episode of Tales from the "LiberryCast." This is an audio adaptation of stories from a blog I wrote for five years called Tales from the "Liberry." It was a chronicle of my quest to remain sane while working in a public library where the patrons could double as extras in a David Lynch film. This podcast will adapt my favorite stories from the run of that blog along with some behind the scenes commentary and DVD-style commentary.
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