Tales from the "LiberryCAST"

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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. I give you the story of Grandpa Sam.

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.

(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.) 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.

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.

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. 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. While I always thought of myself as Frasier, I guess I was closer to Joey. Or maybe even, The Tortellis. (This episode features notable appearances by previous podcast topic characters Little Kevin Martin and Chester the (Potential) Molester.)

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. 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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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. WWWMJD? Drive us nuts.

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. (Features unfortunate guest appearances by both Chester the (potential) Molester and my colon.)

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.