Foxylibrarian.com

Most of the local population has discarded their old VCRs after upgrading to DVD machines, and VCR players are becoming hard to find. The library still has a couple of VHS viewing stations, which primarily seem to serve as a comfortable place for patrons to come down off of drugs and alcohol as they while away the time until their next SSI disability check arrives and they can re-up. (OH I KID, I KID) Often patrons will come in and ask to view their own personal VHS tapes, but there is a strict policy that only tapes belonging to the library can be watched, so they are turned away. I thought this was because the library feared liability issues with damaged tapes, but now I see the wisdom of the policy after a patron came in wanting to view a big stack of his VHS format porno. This guy really had no shame, because after a lot of indignant huffing he then demanded that the librarian look up places around town where he could view his tapes.

I got a nasty call from a disgruntled patron who lives on the other side of the state (this system issues library cards to every state resident, don’t get me started) outraged over the lag time he experienced when he used the library’s database subscription to Rosetta Stone. The problem lay in the fact that he was trying to access it using a satellite modem. Rosetta Stone is an incredibly data intensive, interactive program, one, by the way, that would cost him almost $500 to subscribe to personally FOR ONE LANGUAGE, while our subscription offers him access to 10. He ended his stern lecture with, "I'm VERY disappointed," like I was his kid who gotten drunk and wrecked the family car on prom night.

The drawbacks of satellite modems are quite well known. Here they are spelled out in Wikipedia.

Satellite Internet also has a high latency problem caused by the signal having to travel 35,000 km (22,000 miles) out into space to the satellite and back to Earth again. The signal delay can be as much as 500 milliseconds to 900 milliseconds, which makes this service unsuitable for applications requiring real-time user input such as certain multiplayer Internet games and first-person shooters played over the connection. Despite this, it is still possible for many games to be played, but the scope is limited to real-time strategy or turn-based games. The functionality of live interactive access to a distant computer can also be subject to the problems caused by high latency. These problems are more than tolerable for just basic email access and web browsing and in most cases are barely noticeable.

There is no simple way to get around this problem. The delay is primarily due to the speed of light being 300,000 km/second (186,000 miles per second). Even if all other signaling delays could be eliminated it still takes the electromagnetic wave 233 milliseconds to travel from ground to the satellite and back to the ground, a total of 70,000 km (44,000 miles) to travel from the user to the satellite company.

My favorite part of this section?
The delay is primarily due to the speed of light being 300,000 km/second (186,000 miles per second).

So, save it for Rosetta Stone, your internet provider, God or whoever else you think created the laws of the universe, you bellyaching crybaby, you ungracious, unreasonable, self-important, malcontented jackass. While you’re doing that, the library will try its best to bend the laws of physics so you can look like a total tool trying to learn conversational Mandarin at the beach on your laptop.

Today I found out one of my patrons died. He was a regular so I had been wondering why I hadn’t seen him in a while. A couple of months ago he was stabbed to death in one of those seedy residential hotel rooms and then his body dumped like so much trash into a dumpster behind the building. The murder remains unsolved, and the police have been unable even to locate next of kin. One of my colleagues got the news when the police finally released his name to the papers in the hopes someone in his family will come forward to claim the body.
He was a little guy, but more Bantam rooster than runt, with a swagger that I couldn’t help but find charming. He took great care with his appearance and always dressed in a dark suit. He might have passed for a slick lawyer were it not for the sorry condition of his teeth, including a missing front incisor. (It turns out he wore a dark suit because he was a livery driver.) He was unfailingly courteous and had interesting, rather high brow taste in movies, which he enjoyed discussing with whoever was on the reference desk. Our last conversation was about Kristin Lavransdatter.

When I brought up some pictures of the movie on the screen he leaned in to look closer. “So many beautiful women in the world,” he said wistfully. Of course this comment took on rather sinister meaning when the circulation staff, who always knows the dirt on everyone, let me in on the fact that this patron was on the Megan’s Law website for forced oral copulation with a 14 year old, a crime for which he served jail time. The circ staff told me that when he would visit the library after being released from prison he dressed not in dark suit but in short cut off jeans and a white tank top like a Polk Street hustler. This most likely was just a hangover from a survival strategy in prison – a man of his stature would have been a helpless target for rape.

What a sad and tawdry ending to a sad life.

Two patrons decided to resolve some matter by fisticuffs in the atrium, right in front of a visiting class of elementary school children. If I had witnessed a fist fight at such an age I would have most likely burst into tears, but the children were delighted and immediately began pounding their tiny fists into the palms of their hands and chanting, “Fight, fight, fight!” Security broke the fight up. As the class trailed out I heard one of the boys who was clutching his new library card say to his friend, “This has been the best day!”

A boy, 8 years old according to his record, called the library to renew his books. He was telling me his library card when I heard his mother call to him in the background. I don't like it when people try to talk to me when I'm trying to use the phone, but telling one's mother, who was only trying to help, to shut the hell up on Christmas Eve is really asking for a big lump of coal and a switch in the next morning.

Bum's Rush
There’s a vegetarian restaurant in town that is owned and operated by a Hare Krishna like religious sect that let’s just say has made its way on the list of several cult watch groups. The restaurant’s walls are decorated with photographs of the group’s charismatic leader performing humanly impossible feats of strength, or posing with Mother Theresa and Princess Di, or holding forth before crowds of thousands. The female followers who work in the restaurant are mostly white bread hippy types, but wear saris, bindis and long, braided hair. They all float around the restaurant with blissful, blank smiles that can only come from serious protein deficiency and/or the consequences of taking 2000 or so acid trips back in their heyday. It’s rumored that back at the compound they all live in stark, sexually segregated barracks. Celibacy is required of the followers, but some apostates reported that the Leader would invite some of the younger, attractive women back to his private chamber for grueling all night performances of girl on girl action. I also notice that at the restaurant the women seemed to be doing most of the hard labor around the restaurant. Needless to say, this restaurant is completely cash driven.
I occasionally go there because options are limited around here and they make a decent salad. The last time I was there seated I was suddenly overcome with the smell of open sewage and Ripple. I looked up and a wino was shuffling slowly past me toward the bathroom, his pants completely and utterly soaked with diarrhea. All of the diners were choking. I was afraid that the restaurant would be all welcoming and compassionate but instead one of the workers ordered him out immediately. "Go to the library, brother! We are not equipped to deal with that." He thrust some napkins into the wino’s hands and shoved him out the door. He then lit some incense which of course they had on hand and the smell slowly dissipated. Although I was grateful to finish my meal, I wasn’t too happy about the staff directing the man to the library, because we certainly aren’t equipped to deal with that mess either. We certainly don’t need that kind of ‘business', especially when there are plenty of shelters within walking distance which are. This is the kind of bio mess that makes our custodial staff have to go out on stress leave.