Tales From The "liberrycast"

There are many irritating patron archetypes, but among the most irritating of them are the Geneal0gy People. Yes, those patrons who are so fervid about their own ancestry that they simply must spend at least six hours a day diligently researching the shit out of it. And, really, if you're gonna put that kind of time and labor into something you're so passionate about, are you gonna keep your discoveries to yourself? Hell no, you're going to tell simply EVERYONE about it all. And who better to start with than the library staff? We had a handful of amateur geneal0gists under foot, but the one we actually avoided at all costs was the man who became known as Gene Gene the Geneal0gy Machine.

There were only a handful of patrons I truly hated, most with good reason. However, one who pressed all my hatred buttons within seconds of meeting him was a guy I called Billy the Brainchild--well, him and a remarkably similar patron called The Expert). Billy was a guy out to make a name for himself in a variety of half-assed media business ventures of a pornographic nature.  His ultimate goal was to become Appalachia's version of Larry Flynt, minus the wheel chair and, presumably, the inflatable wang.  And that wasn't even why I hated him.  No, my ire was because his first step toward his goal (besides putting his bong down for one whole hour) was to come pester us for ways to achieve that goal.  But, naturally, a guy as smart as Billy saw himself didn't really need our help. He already knew everything there was to know about the business world; he just needed us to confirm it for him. And therein lay the basic conflict.

Customer service people, back me up here. When it comes to the ability of customers/patrons to deliver huge consignments of shit during the course of a basic transaction, the group of human beings most likely to be making that delivery are Old White Ladies. Yessir. More than any other group on the planet, they are the least easy to please. Maybe it's a southern thing. I dunno. But that has been my experience over the course of 20 years of dealing with the public, and four such tales are presented in this week's podcast. (Featuring an appearance by Delva Poopoohead, of the New England Poopooheads.)

Children are not angels. Sometimes they break bad and have to be sent away for a while to a place where they can be broken of the badness, or simply be removed from a bad situation. (I know, I know, that's a huge over simplification, but that's how it seems.) We had a couple of homes for troubled youth in Tri-Metro and they were frequent visitors to the "liberry" along with their usual hulking, pro-wrestler style Troubled Youth Wranglers. Getting materials back from them was often a problem.  Getting them to stop asking if we had The Anarchist Cookbook, an impossibility.

Libraries are supposed to be places of quiet study.  Mine, not so much.  Our patrons were very louLinkd.  Sometimes they suffered from no-inside-voice syndrome, a sad condition in which their parents never taught them proper indoor voice technique.  Other times they used blood curdling screams as their only form of communication.  And, on the rare occasions when they were quiet, they were excessively quiet and were in danger of having their voices drowned out by the sounds of typing.  Presented for your modulated listening, three tales spanning the history of the original blog. Notable  appearances by Kanji the Kid, the Screamer.

In honor of National Banned Books Week, we present an expanded version of an Actual Conversation Heard in an Actual Library on that very topic. Directly interwoven with this tale is the story of my abiding love of the Walter the Farting Dog series and how my "liberry" self-banned it for several months to avoid the nonexistent wrath of coddling parents. All in all, four different Tales from the "Liberry", each involving Walter to some degree, are covered in today's podcast, yet none of them are in their original form from the blog. Eat new content!

Libraries are places full of dreams. (Just ask Lucien.) Sometimes they can be literal, such as a nightmare I once had regarding a particular problem patron discovering the blog, or my dream of revenge on Joss Whedon for... well, Firefly fans know what Joss did. Other times, in title alone. And other times, it can be the dreams of a patron, dashed by a surly "liberry" ass. such as myself. They can all be found in today's DreamCAST.Link

Today's 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks brings to mind where I was during that time a decade ago and how it coincided with my hiring at the Tri-Metro "liberry." Today's podcast presents an adaptation of that portion of Secret Origins of Tales from the "Liberry" as well as a commentary bit containing the actual never-before-revealed secret origin of the blog.

Libraries always have their odd bird patrons. Flocks of them, usually. Ours was no exception. Presented for your consideration today are five tales of such in-the-wild encounters with odd bird patrons, and/or tales featuring some cussin'. That's right, it's the All Cussin' Episode (#$%& yeah!) with nary a censor tone to be found and Explicit right on the Tag. Fire it up for Grandma!