….some random thoughts:
Automobiles:
- Spoilers on cars are the automotive equivalent of the ankle bracelet.
- Jacked-up trucks: let’s just say the bigger (and higher) the truck, the smaller and squeakier the guy. If they keep it up, them boys are gonna have to start wearin’ big, white, four-fingered gloves.
- The more tattered American flags/stickers on a car, the more bone-headed stunts they will pull right in front of you.
- The Chrysler PT Cruiser: the grandma car of the new millennium.
- The louder and more thug-like the hip-hop music is coming down the street, the more likely it’s coming from a very white high-school kid wearing a backwards baseball cap driving a brand-new Jetta.
- The Mini Cooper: replacing the Mazda Miata as the balding, mid-life crisis car
- The more paper/magazines/video tapes in the car, the higher the probability it’s owned by a librarian. Cat carrier included? Cataloger. Multiple cat carriers? Serials cataloger. Hungry students squeezed between the piles on the backseat rummaging for day-old pizza? Head of Circulation.
Reference Desk:
- If someone asks you for the name and address of a company CEO, that person thinks that company is conspiring to kill them.
- The craziest questions are always asked by the nicest-dressed people.
- The longer the story before the question, the more certain the question will be “where’s the bathroom?”
- There is no such thing as an inverse snore/smell ratio when it comes to homeless patrons.
- Lost items that brand new are never reclaimed. The rattiest, skankiest items, however, are always missed.
- The lower the waistline on the low-rise jeans, the longer the cell phone conversation at the ref desk.
- There is no such thing as an inverse snore/smell ratio when it comes to undergrad students camped out in your library.
Plain Ol’ Miscellaneous:
- No one under 25 has what used to be considered a normal name (i.e, Mary, Elizabeth, Joe, etc.,). Now everyone is an Ashleigh, Zoe, Tyler, Cloe, Zachary….you get the idea. (Corollary: if someone does have a normal name, it’s usually spelled in a way I like to call unique–e.g., Amy spelled “Aimeee” or Carol as “Querole”. Rent LA Story for inevitable and sad outcome of this trend.
- Ever notice how you misread certain words in a newspaper? For instance, who among our profession hasn’t misread the headline: “Liberians Overrun Capitol” as “Librarians Overrun Capitol”? And don’t get me started with any headline containing the word “penal”….
BB (Bizarre Beauty) Tip of the Day: This tip comes from a Mrs. Jane A. Emmith, whereabouts unknown:
Using the orange powdery material from ancient books bound with sheep leather to bronze your skin and give it that “I can afford a trip to the Bahama’s on my librarian salary” look.
* To borrow from a cheesy yet inescapable song refrain….
Giant papier-mache head of Harry Potter and tubes of glitter glue? Children’s Librarian.
heehee 😛
prius? the partner of a librarian, because the librarian takes public transport. 🙂
la story is one of my top-10 movies. nobody ever understands why, but that’s okay.
But I LOVE the PT Cruiser and I’m not even old enough to be a grandmother!
Great LL-site, by the way.
We ARE rather a sad lot, aren’t we? Though in my defense, I will say that my car is totally free of extraneous stuff. (Perhaps that’s a sub-type of catalogers?)
In my experience, children’s librarians have the messiest cars–Sulky is right on target there. And the school librarians I know tend to hang their extra wooden jewelry around their mirrors. Sigh.