r.i.p.

It should be obvious by now, to anyone who is bothering to check this website, that I do not have the energy anymore for zengeful. I have, however, created a sort of tribute blog to my current favorite blog in the blogosphere, Love the Liberry. My ripoff can be found here.

Monday morning ewwww

A shelver brings a Grateful Dead DVD "Truckin Up to Buffalo" to the desk. "It's a bit filthy," he says. "It was stuck to the other DVD." The Dead DVD, which has only gone out 9 times, was covered with what might be crushed, possibly pre-salivated lollipop.

Which reminds me of the coworker who had to buy the library a new copy of a book of Margaret Atwood poems because her boyfriend threw up on the first one after a night of binge drinking.

Ref question of the day

From one of our frequent callers:

"Does the President pay rent at the White House?"

Follow-up questions from the patron included

"What salary does the President get?"
"Does the Vice President Pay rent?"
"How many children does Sarah Palin have?"

As best as I could tell, he was trying to compare incomes and costs of living for these different stations to see how much worse off financially Sarah Palin is than those currently holding the post of President and Vice President. (There was some confusion on his part as to whether Sarah Palin was currently living at the Vice President's residence at Number One Observatory Circle. He seemed to believe that she is, despite my repeated efforts to clarify with him that Cheney is current VP, not Sarah Palin.)



Some of these answers were located thanks to a wonderful page at the Internet Public Library. And the lovely "Congressional Quarterly's Guide to the Presidency" explains, "One of the luxuries that presidents and their families enjoy is the rent-free White House mansion...almost every imaginable convenience is available to the president within the White House complex...including a theater, a swimming pool, a gymnasium, tennis courts, a bowling alley, a putting green, a jogging track, and a library regularly supplied by the publishing industry." Which would explain what Bush has been doing for the past eight years, except for the part about the library.



The patron explained to me in great detail his theory that Sarah Palin is more in tune with the average American, thanks to her paltry $125,000 salary and the fact that she has five kids to feed. (Because I'm sure that the average American has appeared in Vogue and is worth 1.2 million dollars. )



Bah.

I'm not sure why I'm doing this, but...

Per ruehllin,

"I come to a stop against a brass rail and straighten up, looking back at Earl in shock. Then I see the rest of them.

'What is this?' says Uncle Al from the depths of a winged chair. He is seated at a table with three other men, twaddling a fat cigar between the finger and thumb of one hand and holding five fanned cards in the other. A snifter of brandy rests on the table in front of him. Just beyond it is a large pile of poker chips.

'Jumped the train, sir.'"

Maybe now ruehllin will explain this bizarre exercise to me?

Once a chump, always a chump

Dogsitting. I sit here listening to the ragged barking of two bored terriers ricochet off the neighbor's houses. For the first time it occurs to me that it is not an honor to be asked by vague acquaintances to stay over at their place and babysit their dogs. I used to think that this was a sign that they view me as an upright person, reliable and worthy of being trusted with their possessions and their creatures’ wellbeings. Now I understand that it is simply because I am the only person they know who is not married and with children, or else openly insane.

Also, because I am a chump.

These are the white Westies whose names are Billy and Collins, meaning I get to stand in the backyard screaming the name of the ex-poet-laureate of the United States to the sounds of frantic, impervious barking. They are brothers, and would be indistinguishable to me save the fact that Collins is slightly more sedate and will sometimes stop barking after I scream his name for the fourth or fifth time, whereas Billy likes to bark until I have actually physically tackled him and dragged him into the house by his collar. I would be perfectly happy to let both of them stand outside and bark until they lost their voices, permanently, but this is a fairly upscale neighborhood and the police don’t have a whole lot to do.

Though they are the last dogs I will ever, ever dogsit for, Billy and Collins are certainly not the worst. That honor belongs to two other terriers, oft-mentioned in my former blog, both of whom seemed determined to shit their way into the Guinness Book of World Records with the distinction of the most piles of dogshit ever deposited on a single carpet. This, despite having a dog door. I might add that the more malevolent of these terriers was also responsible for the most harrowing week in my recent memory, in which he decided to randomly stop taking his twice-daily antibiotic pills tucked into the peanut butter/cheese/butter/ice cream I offered him, preferring instead to slink under the owners’ bed where he would barricade himself, teeth bared, snarling and lunging at my hands like something out of Aliens, until I was forced to don a jean jacket and gardening gloves and pull this horrible devil out from under the bed and crouch over him, sweating and trying to force a tiny pill down his throat while he did everything in his power to dismember me. I have never hated any living animal as much as I did that terrier.

Certainly not Billy nor Collins, who are almost cute in a brusque, terrieresque sort of way. When they are not barking. Or nosing my bare feet with their cold, moist snouts. Or peeing on the expensive carpeting because they have not been let out in the past 45 minutes. Or mostly, when they are under the care of their owners.

Columbus: Third-World Fun in a First-World City

Okay, I'm exaggerating--Columbus is still at least 30 functioning traffic lights away from anarchy. And I still have running water at home. The berry has been closed for the past day and a half (and counting!), and the fact that I still have not straightened out the projector situation for a program I'm supposed to be doing tomorrow night on the Peace Corps in Eastern Europe, plus am unable to log on to check my email to find out crucial info on whether the situation has been straightened out because apparently the berry's server is still down, is causing me only low frequency distress right now. Of higher priority is the task of keeping my cat's antibiotics cold, which must happen despite not knowing anyone in a ten-mile radius who has refrigeration capabilities, much less ice to sell me so that I can put it in the cooler I've been loading with a venti cup from Starbucks that I fill with ice any time I go out to eat, which is about four times a day, currently.

To tell the truth, I'm very much enjoying my extended vacation, not in the least because I am not a homeowner. I'm enjoying eating out at every meal (and it was time to clean out the fridge, anyways). The fact that my computer at home doesn't work (I'm at a different berry curently, one that is open and very similar in feel right now to a refuge camp--thank god I don't work here, I'm thinking, as I listen to the patient staff member at the desk explain repeatedly that he cannot move people ahead in the reservation line for computers because they are "in a hurry" or working on "important business"), the fact that my cell phone only intermittently works, the fact that none of the lights work no matter how often I unthinkingly flip their switches...none of these things bother me too terribly much. In fact, if they never got around to getting the power back on, I wouldn't mind too much at all, so long as the movie theaters kept running, and the restaurants, and the one open grocery store kept my favorite cereal in stock, and some kindly benefactor paid off my credit card balances every month.

Any takers?

She's a Lady

I would consider myself an animal lover, but as I get older I understand that it is specific animals that I love (my cats) or general classes of animals (dolphins, alpacas) rather than, say, that dog over there who is barking at me. And so it is that I declare my contempt for my brother’s dog, who is a one-year-old yellow lab and dumb as a rock. He brought her on vacation to the beach with us and I have never seen a creature so obsessed with eating sand. She eats sand, she rolls in it, and then she throws it up, the whole dog cycle of life.

My brother has trained her to sit, stay, and drop a Frisbee, so I suppose I must give her credit for being slightly more intelligent than a rock. She obeys him about seventy-five percent of the time, but whenever I’m left to watch her she immediately goes charging down the beach like a rabid dingo to bark in the face of someone’s toddler. I have to stumble through the sand after her screaming in my angriest, most urgent voice, making it all the more embarrassing that she completely ignores me. Sometimes she’ll glance over her shoulder as she’s running away, and you can actually see the moment when she decides to blow me off and keep going for the toddler.

Humorously, her name is Lady. Not only is this name generic, inaccurate, and responsible for getting the Tom Jones song “She’s a Lady” stuck in my head for four consecutive days, it also means that I have to holler it at her when she’s galloping away from me at the beach. I worry that people will think that I both own this horrible dog and am responsible for having named her. Which would be untenable.

Lady has fleas. Apparently, my brother put Frontline on her twice before bringing her on vacation, but the fleas persist. Now every time I get an itch on my foot, I have to check to see if it’s a Lady flea. I’m guessing that Lady fleas are somehow special and impervious to all chemical treatments, and I will probably transport them home with me where my cats will have them for the rest of their lives.

I was lying on my towel at the beach this afternoon, drowsing to the rush and roar of waves, when from afar I heard an agitated choking and strangling sound. I continued to drowse. The choking and gagging sounds grew closer, and with them an ongoing wheezing sound, like someone panting as they struggled to push a boulder up a hill. I didn’t have to glance up but I did anyways, and sure enough, there was Lady, towing brother down the beach on her leash. She doesn’t understand, simply does not compute, that she will get where she’s going in exactly the same amount of time but with far fewer respiratory issues, if she simply walks beside the person holding her leash rather than dragging them like a frothing, wild-eyed draft horse.

Today I watched Lady eat some sand, and then trot down to the ocean to pee in the waves. In her, I see an eagerness and zest for life that is matched only by her profound stupidity. In a strange way, I’m almost jealous.