So for anyone that commented anything on here about this being a bad piece or Louis writing about hate and stuff like that, I disagree. Ha.

cjh

As for the homeless, sometimes people fall on hard times, there have been rich and famous, Harvard graduates, and so on who have been homeless. Anyways if they want to learn something to maybe earn a living, who’s to stop them. You would have kicked out the real Chris Gardner from the Pursuit of Happyness out when he’s trying to support his family but can’t afford to buy text books.

If sounds if it was up to you, you would do the Brave New World thing and put people in castes and put the Epsilons in the circular file, when if you were born in that situation, how would you feel if no one gave you a chance. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses, but as human beings we need to learn to accept and live with one another. Most avid book lovers and authors would agree with that concept.

“IT’s not all that well done, but IT still doesn’t take much to figure IT out” .. . ha ha ha ha. . . I’m sorry – really I’m not trying to be an a-hole – i just want to understand what you meant.

thanks,
Hyper Thalamus

I can vouch for a lot of this – I worked in a public library. If you work in a library and you don’t like this piece, then you most likely resemble part of it, or you’re not being honest.

Fact is – homeless people DO shit their pants in the library. They DO pass out in the media viewing stations and piss themselves. Creepy old dudes CERTAINLY DO take “breast examination” materials into the men’s room for extended periods of time. When you take a position at the library, you do not consider that this sort of thing will ever be part of your job.

I live in a town that USED TO have a state-of-the-art mental institution, but the taxpayers – in their wisdom and desire to save a buck or two – decided we didn’t need such things, and so these folks are now just turned loose and basically on their own. You’d best believe they ALL come to the library.

So, while the taxpayer is “saving money,” the good folks who work the desks are dealing with crazies who scream obscenities and throw things at them, threaten suicide in the local pond, and then the police must be called, etc etc etc. . . are we still saving money? Promise people a tax cut, and they bark and clap like Pavlovian walruses.

Anyway – I digress — this is some funny stuff ’cause there’s a lot of truth in it. Don’t listen to the nae-sayers!

“Luckily, in the next 20 to 30 years, through the use of computers, we’ll happily phase out the librarian and their sourpuss mugs. Electronic search systems will help us find the book, and, much like in many grocery stores now, you’ll self-checkout the book. Yes, at least in this respect, the future of your local library just got a little bit brighter.”

I respectfully disagree that the librarian will be phased out. We’ve had search systems for years now and while Google and other search engines have made it much easier to find quick answers, your local librarian who is trained in search methods can help with more difficult searches.

I’d also recommend checking out what your local library offers, you may be surprised if you haven’t visited lately. Yes, most of us have DVDs and videos – as one of the commenter’s said, that’s because our communities want them. But, we also have paid databases that have quality information that simply can’t be found through an Internet search – and it’s free. You can also find downloadable electronic books, audio books, movies, and music at many libraries. Programming options have expanded beyond story times for children to include programming for teens and adults. And, we still have books.

While you still may run into some interesting folks at the library, it’s well worth a visit either in person or online. BTW, many libraries already have self-checkout.

Are you implying that women aren’t interested in guys who use TV trivia as pick up lines? In retrospect that explains a lot.

Love your work. It’s amazing how many library users (and sometimes workers) harbour these kind of revolting sentiments of prejudice… and feel entirely justified in expressing them.

Or the guy who haunted a county library. A creepy middle-aged gentleman who was in no way covert with his leering glances at the younger female staffers and patrons. He tried to hit on some of them apparently, trying to wow them with his blather about TV show trivia and such. He only left one day after a regular patron, a quiet young woman, snapped and told him to shut the fsck up and stop standing so close to her table. She later told some of us he was so close to her she felt his breath on her neck. Mortified, he left and was never heard from again in the years since.

I’m like the guy a few posts above- I put my stuff on hold via the internet, when it comes in I head on over and leave in less that 5 minutes. Libraries are great, but there’s no reason to hang around them.

How have you been doing? It’s been a week since I last wrote and I still haven’t heard anything back from you. That’s okay, I understand that doing the narration for GOSSIP GIRL and filming all of those reshoots for FANBOYS has really put a strain on your schedule. Take your time, there’s no rush.

I hope you’re doing good. Today totally sucked for me. First I accidentally scratched the the fourth disk from the third season, which is the one with “The Zeppo” on it and that’s only my third favourite Xander-centric episode of all time! I guess I’m going to have to go out and buy a new copy to replace it.

But that wasn’t even the worst part! Just a few hours after I scratched the disc I read this comment on a book review website about how much this guy hates me just because I’m a bit overweight and I like watching the MOST AWESOME TV SHOW OF ALL TIME while I write letters to the former star of TV’s ALL TIME CUTEST TEENAGE DETECTIVE. Why would he write something like that? What did I ever do to him? I don’t understand why some people can only make themselves feel good by hating everyone else. It’s just lame and it makes me sad.

Anyway, I better get back to Buffy. Before I go though, if you happen to run into Alexis Bledel sometime soon, could you ask her why she had a lawyer send me a restraining order. She had to know that I was just kidding! I don’t even own a horse!

Your Number One Fan

Allan Mott

No, white trash in general is the lowest form of life, and, usually, it just happens that 75% of women who are white trash, at least in Oklahoma where I base most of these recollections, are graphically obese.

(On a personal level though, the only real obese people who I just plain hate are fat guys who sit around jacking off to old episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” while writing fan letters to Kristen Bell. Those guys are reallllly sad.)

My least favorite type are the bitter old cranks, the sort of guys who probably spend hours of the day composing angry letters-to-the-editor and live to hassle people with their ranting and raving. Ex. 1 – the short, sour faced man ahead of me at a library help-desk one day who said the staff were “fascist Nazis” because the library didn’t stock enough JFK/UFO/9-11/fake moon landing/etc. conspiracy books to suit him. Ex. 2 – the hunched over old coot who haranged a friend as he waited in line because said friend was wearing a windbreaker with the logo of the grocery chain store he worked at on it. Old coot had noticed it and went off on my friend about how companies were evil and he was a capitalist drone and personally terrible and evil.

Just be honest. We’ll find it refreshing.

I enjoyed the similar entry Nine Most Annoying Bookstore Patrons as far as it went, but this list is simple intolerance mixed with personal gripes and a marked degree of selfishness and hatred.

The idea that libraries should not offer videos is absurd. The core mandate of any public library is to offer the community as many resources as possible. At one time, libraries would not have deigned to offer any popular fiction at all, content to supply literary classics to the exclusion of what everyone else was actually interested in. Times change. If you don’t like that the library offers its patrons a choice, I would advise you to simply ignore that area of the library. Granted, Dorm Daze 2 seems a little out of place, but libraries survive by offering as wide a selection as possible to every single library user. Many of my patrons hate the fact (quite vocally) that we offer alternative literature and non-fiction resources centred on homosexuality. I offer these items because, as the Canadian Library Association so adequately puts it, “It is the responsibility of libraries to guarantee and facilitate access to all expressions of knowledge and intellectual activity, including those which some elements of society may consider to be unconventional, unpopular or unacceptable. To this end, libraries shall acquire and make available the widest variety of materials.”

Yes, libraries sometimes have become harbours for the homeless. It is a peril of offering information resources to ALL. If someone is making a fuss, you are prefectly within your rights to complain. If someone offends you merely by their presence, I submit that this is due to personal bias, and not something a library can do anything about.

And perverts, unfortunately, are everywhere. If you suspect someone of stalking, report it. But I think you’ll find that it is extremely hard to convict someone of standing where you don’t want them to be. Librarians hate them as much as anyone (I have thrown out two truly despicable creatures in my time), but you can’t convict based on innuendo.

All that said, yes, libraries are not day-cares, and it is a sad fact that many people see them as such. If you are concerned, call family services. If the kids are causing trouble, complain. If the librarian refuses, complain to the board. No child under eleven should be left alone unsupervised. We librarians hate this as much as you do.

All this should not reflect the general blog Bookgasm, of which I have the highest respect.

This is a brilliant idea. This way, whenever anybody wants to lock information away, they can say that you must be bitter, disillusioned, and jealous of youth, and kick you out.

Maybe we should make a library application form that asks how much money you make, and we can screen that way.

Thanks! I about spit my coffee on the monitor this morning.

Great entry.

Take care,
Troy