2.12.08

Category: dribblings

somehow i’ve been found out!
the names have been changed to protect… my job.
hee.

i get to work today and my boss is all, “i didn’t know you knew Very Nice Lady from the Mayor’s Office.”

and i say, “who?”

“Very Nice Lady. she said you told her a hilarious story.”

“me?”

“YES.”

“okay, now who are we talking about here?”

“Very Nice Lady! in the Mayor’s Office!”

“oh. well, yeah. i know her. sorta. mom, i think, knows her. mom knows everybody.”

“well, did you tell her a funny work story?”

“no. i haven’t seen Very Nice Lady in months. since the last time she checked out a book while i was working.”

my boss is puzzled. and so am i. then she says, “so you didn’t tell her a funny story about a patron telling you she was going to cheat on a test or something?”

oh. my. god.

ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!

“oh. uh. yeah. the cheater…” i know all the blood drained from my head. i couldn’t think straight. all i could think was ‘how was i found out? oh man, i’m dead. or worse… dooced. the mayor’s office? oh god, have i slandered anyone lately? damn, and i really love this job, too.’ and my boss is all, “so you DID tell her a story?”

“i… well, i… wrote a story. about the cheater… and um, Very Nice Lady told you about it?”

“she told me that what you said was hilarious. how come i didn’t know about this funny story?”

“oh. it happened after you left one day.”

“well?”

“well, what had happened was… this patron came in and told me she was going to cheat and so i was shocked because, she um, was going to cheat and then when she checked out her books i called her a cheater and then she left.”

“that’s the story?”

“er, yeah well, the long version is hilarious. gosh it sure looks busy out there, huh? i better get back to the circulation desk and earn my wage!”

*************************************

Dear Very Nice Lady,

Gosh, you look nice today. Is that a new blouse? Well, it looks great on you.
Wow and your office is always so nice a cozy. You sure do work hard. I hope the Mayor appreciates all of your hard work. Well, have a great day, okay?

Sincerely,
Jaimie

PS. *GASP* PLEASE DON’T RAT ME OUT.

**************************************

IN OTHER NEWS: the insurance company (of the dude who crashed into my property) denied the claim. they said it wasn’t his fault. oh, and like it was my fault that my property was damaged when HE crashed HIS car into it? so i won’t get any money to repair the damage. i could take it to court, i guess. but who has time and money for that?
i hate insurance people. the evil insurance company is Safeway, by the way. in case you ever want to NOT get insurance from evil, unhelpful, robbing liars. apparently, i’m not the only person they’ve screwed over. it makes me want to vomit. in a manilla envelope. and mail it to them.
weekly.

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2.10.08

Category: dribblings

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2.07.08

Category: dribblings

may i nerd out here for a moment? i think that working at the ‘brary has turned me into a square old crone. okay, more of a square old crone.

there’s a girl who comes in once or twice a week and she’s in high school and she reads TONS of shitty werewolf/fantasy/vampire/junk, but she’s always nice and we always talk about books or whatever and then she leaves and i always feel like, “yeah jaimie, you’ve still got it. you can still talk to high school kids, you haven’t become an old dork yet.”

well. she came in a couple of days ago and she was all attitude! she had a brand new tattoo on her back. it’s a really great tat, but also, high school kid here. there’s not one damn thing i loved in high school that i still love today. well, besides mr. fleegan. (aw. see, i can be sweet) but i say nothing to her about regretful tattoos or ANYthing lame like that. i just said, “nice tat.” and she says, ” *sigh* NO it DIDN’T hurt and YES you can touch it.”

well, one, i didn’t ask, and two, i’d never touch someone’s tattoo! especially not a new one! that would be like touching an open sore. gag. so i figured she must be hormonal or a pissy werewolf or something. so i was all, “okay, have a good one.” and walked away, but then she needed help on the computer. “can you show me how to get this thing to make columns?”

she was using microsloth word and so i was all, “yeah, you just click the-” but she was already in columns. so i asked, “do you need more than two columns per page?”

“no.” she said in that teenage way.

“then you’re all set, it’s already set to columns.”

“no it isn’t.”

“um, but… it is.”

“then WHY isn’t it working?”

“because you haven’t typed anything yet.” and i held down the number 4 on the number pad and watched as a column of 4s filled the screen.

“oh.”

“yeah.”

“i’m making a cheat sheet.”

so now we’re friends again? i can’t remember the last time i heard someone say “cheat sheet”. i didn’t know what to say so i just said, “no kidding?” (i say, “really?” and “no kidding?” a lot. oh, and awesome. i say awesome too much.

“yeah. i have a test tomorrow.”

and here’s me, the ultimo-goober completely shocked that someone would cheat on a test, “wha- wait, you’re going to cheat?”

“yes.”

“you’re going to cheat? on a test?!”

“ye-es,” she says. but it’s not just yes, like, affirmative. but it’s more of that teen-girl yes which is more like, “yes, GAH, I SWEAR YOU ARE RETARDED leave me alone why am i so misunderstood? I HATE YOU!”

so i leave to go back to the circ. desk and i get there and jan, my ‘brary mate is there and i’m all, “you won’t believe this! THAT GIRL TOLD ME SHE WAS GOING TO CHEAT! i’m so dorky i had to ask her TWICE. and twice she said she was going to CHEAT.”

“what?”

“ON A TEST!”

“what?“

“ON PURPOSE. she’s going to cheat!”

“she told you this?”

“i know!” see, i knew i could trust jan because she, like me, is a huge nerd. and neither of us would ever cheat on anything. not because we think it’s wrong (BUT IT IS WRONG), it’s much nerdier than that, it’s that we know if you cheat at something you’re only cheating yourself.

did you read that last thing i wrote?! “if you cheat at something you’re only cheating yourself.” seriously?! when did i lose my cool?! who says that kind of junk?! “you’re only cheating yourself.” rrrrrrgh! when did i become this…this moralistic fortune cookie thinker person?! i am so lame.

so where was i? oh yeah, jan was all, “she told you she’s going to cheat?”

“yeah. isn’t that horrible?”

“on a test? for school?”

“i’m right there with you.”

“i can’t believe she told you.”

“one the one hand, i don’t actually care if she cheats. but on the other hand, i’ll never look at her the same again. i really like her, she’s a reader, you know? not many high school kids come in here for fun, right? but i mean, a cheater?”

“heh, let’s call her school.”

“hee! we can’t do that.”

“i know.”

“when she comes up to check out i’m going to shame her.”

“what kind of cheater tells people she’s going to cheat?”

“a cry for help?”

“yeah, and you helped her cheat.”

“it was just columns! and she already had it in columns! she just didn’t know…because her brain is filled with cheating.”

so a few minutes later angst-teen girl comes up to check out her stack of fantasy books. jan scans the books and is putting the date stickers on them. i walk up, point at the girl, and loudly stage whisper, “CHEEEEEEEATER! CHEEEEEATER! CHEEEEEATER!”

the girl, who has no sense of humor about this, gives me a death stare from the inner-most circle of the 4th realm of Teenage Wasteland (it’s only teenage wasteland) and she walks out. as soon as the door closes jan loses it, “i can’t believe you just did that!”

“i thought she would’ve at least cracked a smile.”

“i CANNOT believe you just CALLED HER A CHEATER! TO HER FACE.”

“she told me she was going to cheat.”

“to her face!”

“she should’ve at LEAST owned it. i mean, you tell someone you’re gonna cheat, then they call you on it, the very least you can do is own it.”

“she was NOT amused.”

“for real. did you see that death stare? she probably put some kind of spell on me.”

jan is laughing her ass off, i mean, with tears, “i can’t believe you did that. that was so funny! TO HER FACE!”

and the rest of the day we’d crack ourselves up by whispering, “cheater!” over and over. and really, i think a year ago if some kid told me they were cheating on a test i’d have been all, “why the hell you tellin’ me?” but now, maybe it’s the job, maybe it’s that i’m 30 years old and some kind of switch flips and alla sudden you’re a dork, but now i’m all, GASP. “cheating?! how very dare you!”
what gives?

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Lincoln: A Foreigner’s Quest by Jan Morris

Category: 50 Books

10. Lincoln: A Foreigner’s Quest by Jan Morris

Yes, I am a bit obsessed with Abraham Lincoln at the moment. I did not like this book very much. Ms. Morris is a British author and she writes this book as a sort of quest to find out how she ultimately feels about the glory (i guess) that is given to Abraham Lincoln. On the one hand it’s interesting to see a foreigner’s take on such a huge part of American history, but on the other hand Ms. Morris is kinda bitchy at the beginning of the book, and towards the end when she seems a bit charmed by Lincoln it’s as though the whole journey for her was an annoyance in that she still doesn’t know what to think about Lincoln.

And it’s not that I don’t understand her humor, I do, it just… doesn’t work in this book. She’s pretty insulting at the beginning, when she talks about being in Kentucky (or perhaps it was Indiana) and one of the locals approached her and talked to her. She made a big deal about it like the guy was there to ruin her day or something. When in fact, the very fact that the local came up and talked to her, gave her a story for her book that went on to prove the very point she was making in the book about southern people and the way they talk to anyone/everyone.

The only good thing about the book is that it gives a general overview of Lincoln’s life without getting too detailed in any one part. But at the same time, as books about Abraham Lincoln go, this one is unnecessary. I give it five stinky, arrogant Cansecos.

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Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Steers Jr.

Category: 50 Books

9. Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Steers Jr.

This was a good book. It was daunting (to me) because it seemed that on every page there were 1,500 names. After a while it became easier to glean through the names and remember which ones were important and which ones were able to be forgotten without losing what was going on. The great thing about this book (besides the fact that Mr. Steers Jr. has a footnote for everything) is that it really is just about the assassination. We’re not forced to relearn all about Lincoln’s past, there’s not a ton of stuff about the Civil War, it’s really JUST about the assassination.

He does touch on some of the conspiracy theories about how Booth wasn’t really killed and that Dr. Samuel Mudd was an innocent bystander kinda deal. He basically calls shenanigans on both of them.

I think what amazed me most was how the Union army/governemt was able to catch all the conspirators as quickly as they did. It seemed that most of it was luck, and I can’t help but think that God was all, “Psst, check over there.” even the one guy (john Surrat Jr.) who got away (for a short while)… he made it as far as Italy. I know! he became a Papal Zouave (um, lookitup), and while doing that, in Italy, he was recognized? really? He was caught, escaped to Egypt, and then caught again. That is remarkable. What, only to me? Fine.

Like I say, this book is great and it covers a very specific moment in history. So if you’re interested in this moment and you don’t want to have to muck through a bunch of “twice told tales” about Lincoln growing up in a log cabin, or Gettysburg, or the U.S. Civil War (not that those aren’t great subjects, mind) then this is the book for you. WARNING: if you read this book on purpose, for entertainment or your own personal edification and NOT because you have to write a report of some kind, just know that your friends will make fun of you, nerd.

Oh! But! The best part of this book was the cover! On it Lincoln looks like a psycho (he’s got this Crazy Eye) and Booth looks like My Name is Earl. Every time I got the book out to read I was all, “*sigh* Can SOMEone straighten Crazy Eye’s tie? We’re taking a portrait over here!”

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Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

Category: 50 Books

8. Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

I really enjoyed this book. Sarah Vowell tells about her travels to all the historic spots dealing with the assassinations of three presidents: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley. I know, it sounds boring and gross. It’s not. It’s The Awesome. Her descriptions and the way she tells the history keeps you reading. I think I liked this book better than her other one, The Partly Cloudy Patriot. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both great books. I just liked this one better.

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I Live For This!: Baseball’s Last True Believer by Bill Plaschke with Tommy Lasorda

Category: 50 Books

7. I Live For This!: Baseball’s Last True Believer by Bill Plaschke with Tommy Lasorda

Okay, if you’re looking for a biography of Tommy Lasorda, just know that this isn’t really that kind of book. This book is about Tommy Lasorda, yes, but it’s not a typical baseball biography where they tell you all about growing up poor and making it to the Bigs and living the Baseball Life. Well, that stuff is in there, but not much. Mostly this books talked about what Tommy Lasorda does now and they’ve mixed in a few stories of when he was the manager of the Dodgers. Personally I was looking forward to reading about some late ’70s early ’80s baseball, you know, his heyday as a Dodger manager. There was just not a lot of that in here.

What is in here is the motivational speech circuit that Lasorda does today. This book tells you all about how he gives great speeches to ANY organization (some he does for free), and how he donates tons of money to charity. That is awesome. It really is. But also? For MOST of a book? It’s meh. So, he’s a great motivational speaker… he inspires ALL kinds of people, baseball players, firemen, people with heart problems, olympic athletes, fantastic. Personally, I want to hear more about his Championships and Fernandomania and junk like that. Maybe there’s already too many books on those things and they wanted to write kind of a “where are they now?” kinda book, and that’s cool. It’s just, I wish I had been warned. So now, baseball book fans, I’m warning you. This book completely paints Lasorda as a saint and it gets redundant.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Tommy Lasorda. I think he was a great manager. He knows so much about baseball it’s not even funny. Tommy Lasorda is beyond baseball. Everyone knows who Tommy Lasorda is, even people who don’t know a thing about baseball. Case in point, I just called Laura (NOT a sportsfan of any kind. She rooted for Tom Petty at the last Super Bowl) and asked her if she knew who Tommy Lasorda was. She was all, “Kind of, but not really.”

“Could you pick him out of a line-up?”

“I dunno. You say Tommy Lasorda and I keep thinking of that commercial with Robert Loggia.”

“heh. That’s a GREAT commercial!”

“I know!”

“Okay, well, do you know what Tommy Lasorda did? His job?”

“Is this important?”

“It’s for the fiddy. So no, but I’m trying to make a point about how EVERYONE has heard of Tommy Lasorda.”

“Okay, I’m gonna say he’s either an actor or a sport… coach of some kind.”

skknt! I wish you could’ve heard her say “sport coach” because it was like she had never said the two words before.

“Perfect!” I crowed, “You said coach! You didn’t even say player that’s a huge deal!”

“It is?”

“Yes, it is. You said coach. That’s enough to make my point, plus he was in those Slim Fast commercials in the ’80s so maybe that’s why you had ‘actor’ in your head. You’re the bomb, thanks!”

So see? Tommy Lasorda is bigger than baseball. I believe that. He’s amazing. He’s charasmatic. He’s got moxie. But this book? It’s on the boring side. Sorry.

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7th Heaven by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Category: 50 Books

6. 7th Heaven by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Like tons of people I enjoy the Women’s Murder Club book series (i like the show too, but the books are better.), and I was excited when this one came out because it said it was the “MOST TERRIFYING CASE EVER”. Well, it wasn’t really. To me, anyway. But then again I still feel burned by the whole “Jill thing”. (JP, you bastard.)

I did like this book though. I loved the bad guys in this because as with any True Crime fan, I have a couple of my “faves” that I like to read up on, and Leopold and Loeb just happens to be one of those cases. So when I started reading about these intelligent serial killer students I was excited because I couldn’t WAIT for Boxer to catch those bastards. The Leopold and Loeb case is only mentioned VERY briefly by Boxer’s boy friend, Joe. So I was a wee bit disappointed in that. But then again, maybe Patterson is all, “People are going to see the similarities in these characters with L&L, so why beat a dead horse?”
Why indeed?

Speaking of Dead Horse Beating and Joe, WHY THE HELL CAN’T WE JUST HAVE A REGULAR MYSTERY SOLVED AND THEN EVERYONE GETS TO GO HOME HAPPY? No, we’ve got to have extra bullshit drama. It SLAYS me that Lindsey and Joe FINALLY get to have a REAL relationship, and now? NOW? Lindsey’s getting all hot for Conklin? really? Are you serious? I understand being attracted to someone, really I do. That’s human nature. But COME the hell ON. For once, ONCE, I’d like to read about a character who ISN’T FORCED TO BE ALL SELF-DESTRUCTIVE IN THE NAME OF UNNECESSARY DRAMA.

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Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker

Category: 50 Books

5. Mister B. Gone by Clive Barker

I’ve never read any of Clive Barker’s stuff, and I think I’ve only seen one of his movies. (I’ve never seen any of the Hellraiser franchise, but I did see the first Candyman movie. It’s the only scary movie I’ve ever watched at an actual “sleepover”. Oh, the cliches I’ve lived. Oh, wait, I just IMDB-ed him and I’ll also admit to seeing Lord of Illusions, at the theater no less. My friend Nola had a huge tv crush on Scott Bakula at the time, and that’s the ONLY reason we sat through that piece of shit.) Anyway, Barker has written tons of stuff, and I’m always surprised by how much he’s written every time I’m putting away books at the library. Still it was never enough for me to want to actually read any of his books.

Then, a couple of weeks ago a patron returned his latest book, Mister B. Gone (and are you also thinking of Mr. B. Natural? because you know I am.) and the patron said that it was SO SCARY that she couldn’t read past the first page. Now this patron, she reads a lot. She usually reads only good stuff, and she’s made several reccomendations lately all of which have been good. So she says this book is terrifying… I gotta believe her. But I got curious. So I thought I would read the first page to see if it was, in fact, terrifying.

It wasn’t. In fact, it was kinda corny. It was insisting that you should burn the book because the evil within the book was so evil that it should be burned immediately without reading the book because EVIL! Like I said, corn. So I read the whole thing because it’s not very long and it’s easy to read. The narrator is a demon, and he’s telling his story and begging you to burn the book to put him out of his misery because he’s been bound to the book. It’s a neat idea, but the parts (and there are MANY) where he pauses to beg/insist/threaten you to burn the book become SO TIRESOME AND BORING that it kinda ruins the book. Really.

I did like the book though. I really liked the story. I just wish there had been more time spent on the story instead of all those pleas and threats to burn the book. Do you see how annoying it is for me to keep mentioning that the demon wants you to burn the book? Yeah, well multiply that times 20 and that’s what it’s like to read the book. Like I say, the story is great. It’s about this demon and the invention of well, the invention that will bring about the End of the World. I don’t want to give too much away because even though I could see what was coming I was happy about the invention and the story. Seriously, I LOVED the story.

It never got scary, and I told the patron that she should give it another go, because I don’t think she’d get scared reading it. Annoyed maybe, but scared? Nah.

 

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2.06.08

Category: dribblings

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE ONE AND ONLY TAMI SPARKS

also, it’s Waitangi Day in New Zealand. i once took a class on the history of the British Commonwealth of Nations. ha, and you think we’re imperialistic bastards. not only will the british invade your country, they’ll take every bit of your art and treasure, and they’ll even dig up your mummified dead from their sacred places of rest and fill their museums with them. and make no apology for it hundreds of years later. on the other hand, if you’re a huge fan of Egyptology (and who isn’t?), who’s to say we would even know one fourth of what we know had it not been for the british (and french, mind) stealing away Egypt’s national treasures. piracy in the name of the crown back then = college degrees today.

speaking of, the Gadsden Museum of Art has some kind of new exhibit called Tut @ GMA. a lady came to the library yesterday and set up a display in one of our display cases with some pictures and junk from the gift shop. seriously. that’s what the lady said she said, “be sure to tell people that they can buy most of this stuff from our gift shop.” the coolest thing in there is a “make your own papyrus kit” the rest of the “gifts” are pretty much junk and probably overpriced (boy, i’m in a mood today, huh?) like a giant ink pen with hieroglyphs on it, which would be awesome, except the glyphs look bad. and there were two different plastic sarcophagi with tiny plastic mummies inside. which, at first i wasn’t impressed with, but then later on i wished i had one so that after i lost it i could find it again and be all, “after months of searching, jaimie finally stumbled across the sarcophagus. it had been buried on her desk underneath a pile of CDs and used index cards and random doodles.”

so. anyway. GMA. i think i’m going to go to this exhibit. because i love all things mummy. however, i’m not fooled, GMA. you cannot fool a fooler! i noticed IMMEDIATELY that there is no actual mention of actually having the ol’ Tutmeister himself. now, if i get there and you actually have actual junk from Tut’s tomb but not the Tutster, I’ll forgive, because i’m not an idiot, and i know they don’t loan out Tut all willy-nilly to just any old place.

BUT. if i get there, and it’s really an exhibit on Howard Carter and it’s only his shit they’ve got stashed in acrylic boxes, and there’s no real Egypt stuff, and it’s his dumb old compass and digging tools, and it’s just maps and journals (ooh, i love maps though), and like, his lucky hat or whatnot, then i’m calling shenanigans.

wow. what’s it like being friends with a bitchy nerd?

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