Tales from the "LiberryCAST"

(A REPOST OF THE TURKEY DAY PODCAST FROM SEASON 1 EPISODE 38. YOU'RE WELCOME.) 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. Hope you and yours are having a festive turkey season. (And that you don't live in Missouri or Kentucky, cause I shit on those states pretty heavily in this episode.) (This podcast features the first podcast appearance of Birthday Lady)

(A REPOSTED EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE) 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. 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. 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. 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.

(A REPOSTED CLASSIC EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE) 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.

(A REPOSTED CLASSIC EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE) 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.

(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.) 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.

(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.) 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.) This ep also features appearances and references to Parka and the worlds second stinkiest patron, Mr. Stanky.

(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.) This podcast marks a return appearance by previous podcast rogue patron Barbara Turdmurkle, a.k.a. the titular Barbie T. 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.

(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.) The major problem with patron access computers are the patrons. They don't have computers at home, so they have to come use ours. And that's great, until it's not. 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.

(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S EPISODE) 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... ...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. 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. 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. 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.

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! Guest stars include: Mr. Smiley, Buddy, Harry the Killer Midget, Lennie, Mr. Little Stupid, The Coot and more.

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! Guest stars include: Mr. Smiley, Buddy, Harry the Killer Midget, Lennie, Mr. Little Stupid, The Coot and more.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.