Things I did today (on my day off)

Was at the DMV for three hours.
Watched a homeless man try to steal a cantaloupe from Giant.

What year are you calling from?

The desk phone rings and I answer it and the patron asks to be “connected to” the city library. I inform them that I can’t directly connect them, but I’ll be happy to provide them with the number (though I am wondering if they looked up our library number why they didn’t look up another one?).
The patron replies “ok” and I start reading off the phone number when simultaneously in my ear I hear “beep boop beep beep!” I stop giving the number and say, “Uh, you can’t be dialing while we’re on the line, you have to wait until I finish giving it to you and then hang up.”
There’s a pause. “Oh,” the patron says. Longer pause.
“Why don’t you write the number I’m giving you down and then call it,” I suggest.
Another pause. “Oh ok, hold on, let me go find a pen.”

I have never had a phone transaction quite like this and find it hard to imagine that this person has lived their life without knowing how properly use the phone. Who starts dialing while someone is talking? How did they think this transaction would work?

Romance and copious amounts of vomit

I just Googled the phrase life is a series of down endings and the first return was a Google book page for Jane Eyre, which seems appropriate.

In other classical literature downer news, I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies the other day and felt it fell short of its full potential with the promised "ultra-violent zombie mayhem" just barely making an appearance. Still, in general it was an amusing read and the dining scenes at Hunsford and Rosings Park received quite a few lolz, even though I thought it borrowed some from Dead Alive.

The Wikipedia Problem

I'll admit that I'm a Wikipedia fan, but as an information professional I get tired by how many people use it as an unquestionable authority for information or research. I must tell at least one high school student every day that Wikipedia is not always reliable and that they really need to look into their sources.

Perhaps this recent news story will wake up some people to the problem: Irish student's Jarre wiki hoax dupes journalists.

In a slightly related note, yesterday I was bored at work and playing around on Wikipedia and was reading Glenn Danzig's entry which contains a link to Danzig's supposed Twitter feed which is either really sad or really funny, but maybe a bit of both.

We also work as psychiatrists...

Newsweek has an article out about libraries becoming career centers and librarians doing double duty as career counselors, which I understand in this economy as I have been asked for advice on applications, proofreading cover letters, helping locate the best aggregated job sites. Perhaps my favorite unemployed patron to assist was an elderly man who claimed to be a former lawyer and was doing some consulting work on the side. He would book one of our study rooms and use it all day as his personal office, letting our phone line serve as his "line 2" (for when his cell was busy). As interesting a character as he was, I was surprised to discover a few years later when I was going through the local achieves researching another topic when I came across his obituary. It included a black and white photograph of a young man in a soldier’s uniform and detailed his life in the military and career as a lawyer. The only problem was it wasn't my patron's obituary, because it was from 1972. I learned later that my patron had stolen the dead guy's identity and was using his name and attempting to use his career as an entry point to pretend to practice law. When I thought about it, there were definite signs: he never had any clients and couldn’t get a library card because he had no ID. He carried a briefcase, but he was also living out of his car.

dream job?

Since they aren't hiring people to bottle feed the new baby leopards at the zoo, I think my next idea on my fantasy job wishlist would be curator for the Museum of Bad Art. Maybe I could start my own library or museum...?
Actually, what I need to get to work on is writing some reanimated human corpse fiction over a literary classic (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - 15% new material!) so that I can get into a Hollywood bidding war before said book is even published.

children r stoopid

These were actually written by middle school students, not elementary:

"The Library of Congress is where congressmen go to steal books."
"Copyright is using the copier the right way."
"Plagiarism is when you copy someone without them finding out."
"Literature is long stories in tiny letters with no fun happening."

Warrior Librarian