Tales From The "liberrycast"

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.   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.   (Featuring a cameo by Chester the (Potential) Molester.)

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. (Featuring a guest appearance by Parka)

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.

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.   (Featuring baby Ashley, the baby who appeared on last week's podcast.)