Fear of fear itself

My dear friend S came in today, and after talking about the monster thunderstorms we had on Saturday and Sunday (one of which caused a power surge that actually turned the sky green) he wanted me to look up what the fear of thunder was. It's either brontiphobia or tonitrophobia, depending on which source you use (and I suspect these may not all be OED approved). Here are a list of the ones that I really liked:

• Anuptaphobia - fear of staying single
• Atelophobia - fear of imperfection
• Enetophobia - fear of pins and needles
• Gamophobia - fear of marriage
• Iatrophobia - fear of doctors
• Kakorrhaphiophobia - fear of failure or defeat
• Linonophobia - fear of string
• Molysomophobia - fear of infection

And, of course, Phobophobia - fear of fear itself.

Pink books

And so another person is added to the entourage. A is 11 (but for most of the day I thought she was at least 14 until she told me her age), has braces with green elastics, a fairly pronounced lisp, and seemingly has a lot of time on her hands. She spent the whole day pretty much watching me work. Sometimes she just rides the bus around for fun, telling the bus driver that her family is moving to a particular neighbourhood and she wants to see the houses in that area. Oh, and her latest project is to read any or all books in the library that are pink. She doesn't care what they are about, they just have to be pink. People like A make me laugh, because when I first started this job, my friend tried to convince me that the only kids who I would meet at the library would be the geeky, friendless kids who have nothing better to do than spend whole days at a time at the library, and I swore up and down that the "cool" kids would also be here. But as it turns out he is right, and there are a whole lot of losers that come to the library. They are sweet, nice kids and I would rather they be here than the meth addicts, but the fact is they are still losers. I can say this because I may have been a loser, at one point in time. Of course I'm not any more, because I'm now a cool librarian.

Blankets

This graphic novel or "illustrated novel" is nothing like the crap that my stalker D reads ... this one is actually good. Beautifully drawn and tenderly told, it is the loosely fictional memoir of Thompson growing up as part of a Christian family in the American Midwest. Alienated in school, he seeks solace at his church, and while attending a Christian camp during winter break he meets Raina, who shares his combination of spirituality and angst. After months of written correspondence, Craig goes to stay with Raina's family for a couple weeks and their teen relationship is brought to a new level. While they do not have sex they get mighty close, which results in a few pages of images of them rolling around together ... but while it isn't really that nasty at all, from a librarian's perspective those images are probably enough to keep it out of YA and have it shelved in Adult fiction. Raina loves Craig but not with quite the same devotion, and the relationship ends. Set during a number of blustery Wisconsin winters, Blankets does a great job of capturing both the soft and fierce nature of snow and ties it closely to human emotions. Craig's eventual loss of faith is not sudden and very believable despite his upbringing, as he gradually uncovers more of the Bible and of himself. I cannot imagine this coming of age story being told any other way than in illustrated format, and Thompson should be given much credit for his creation.

Obscure graphic novels

Why do graphic novels need to have such fucking obscure names? Here is a list of some of my recent favourites:

• Ouran High School Host Club
• Wallflower Yamatonadeshiko Shichihenge
• Princess Ninja Scroll Tenka Muso
• Full Moon O Sagashite
• Boys Over Flowers
• Land of the Blindfolded
• Absolute Boyfriend

Maybe our friend Mr Stroumboulopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopoulous should write a graphic novel, because he would fit right in! It may come as no suprise that the way I found out about these stunning titles were from my freaky lesbian stalker friend D, who has visited me a grand total of three times in the last three days to tell me about all the best and brightest new graphic novels. Yesterday Absolute Girlfriend D came in with sexy teeth that were stained by some orangeish-red substance that looked a little like blood but more like some weird candy. She had her wimpy friend "Smurf" with her ... sort of a bodyguard, except he couldn't harm a fly even if he sat on it (and he works at a strip joint).

Emails, mosquitoes and sparkles

Yesterday the tech guy at the library sent out his semi-annual "we need to free up more space on the server" email, and I set about trying to clean up my work email account. This morning I realized that the "Sent Items" folder does not automatically delete istelf after time as I expected, so I had 2478 emails that date back to my June 2006 start date. The only problem was I had to delete every email individually, which actually involves the two steps (hitting the delete button and then the enter button) ... can we say repetitive strain injury, kids? My hand hurts right now, but at least it's helping take my mind off of the possible West Nile Virus growing on my legs due to multiple mosquito bites. Here's the question: would you rather die of Cryptococcus from pigeon shit or West Nile Virus from mosquito bites? Tough call.

This thought sparked another one - isn't it amazing how little kids get injured all the time (I'm not talking belt beatings and spankings, but rather cuts, scrapes, falling down, etc) but after their initial little cry they really don't care that much about it and seem to heal quickly ... but if adults get even the slightest injury the recovery time can stretch out over a period of days, weeks or even months? Things like repetitive strain injury are an indication of that, and prove that adults are even bigger babies than kids.

And my amusing story from yesterday - S came and visited and told me a his confession that he really likes it when you hang your head out a car window and hold your tongue out so it becomes so dry it feels like a lizard's tongue. Also, K2 (of the stolen wallet and new page job fame) came up to the teen area after helping out with a children's program happily covered in glue and sparkles that she then tried to spread over everyone around her as called herself the sparkle princess. Sometimes you'd never guess that this girl is 17.

Sitting in the dark pondering bus rides and teen thieves

Today my library was instructed by City Hall that we (and the rest of the city) are using up too much electricity and we were to choose between turning off our lights or our air conditioning. Naturally we chose the lights, as it has been in the mid 30s for the last few days and we don't want to scare away ALL of our patrons. The dark thing may sound a bit dodgy, but it's actually quite nice - we can still see the books and computers perfectly well, and we had a teen movie night tonight and this helped to add to the ambience. It's also quite good for people who have lingering headaches caused by the aforementioned Absinthe.

Something I really like about my mid-sized Canadian city (and let me tell you there aren't a whole lot of things) is bus etiquette. In bigger cities like Vancouver or Ottawa, there are so many buses, drivers and passengers that it is only occasionally you hear a "thank you" from the passenger or a "have a good day" from the driver. There were some crazy-ass mofos in Vancouver who would say things like "I love you, bub-bye!", "And if you exit by the rear doors, don't forget to yell 'Geronimo'" or "I don't know about you guys, but I have wife to get home to so if you don't need a stop we aint stopping there!", but I like the generally more pleasant demeanor of drivers and passengers here. There are usually only a handful of people on the bus, and it is not out of the ordinary to hear pleases and thankyous from every second person, or even to have a nice conversation with the person sitting next to you.

And last but not least for today's Deep Thoughts .... I think we can separate Mankind into two words: mank, and ind. Ok, that's not what I actually want to talk about - I just remember a friend from high school who put that in her yearbook writeup.

Yesterday my darling K2 was at the library being interviewed for a page position, a job which she has coveted for a good two years, and asked if she could leave her wallet and cell phone with me so she wouldn't fiddle with them during the interview. Being a wonderfully generous librarian I of course agreed, but rather than locking them up in a drawer (which I actually did consider doing) I left them on my desk, but under a big pile of junk so that no one would take them but K2 would be able to locate them if she needed them while I was away from my office. Well, I was gone from the area not longer than 10 minutes or so and some mofo did take them. It was only when she came to collect them that I discovered this fact - at first I thought they were just buried under the mountain of shit on my desk, and then I realized they were truly gone. I enlisted the help of the security guards, who went out to the park to see if any of the usual suspects were looking particularly suspicious, and I called the RCMP to file a report about her phone and wallet, which had July and August bus passes, $30 cash, a bank card, and some other smaller cards in it. Luckily she is not old enough to have a credit card nor does she have a driver's license.

I know it wasn't completely my fault - A) She should have just kept them on her, B) I should have locked them up, and C) How the fuck was I supposed to know some idiot would go out of their way to go into an office, root around on the desk, and pocket anything valuable they might find - but I still felt terrible about it and think that K2 might not think I'm such an "awesome librarian" any longer. I later heard that her wallet was found in the park by the library, without the money of course, but her phone is still missing. The whole time I was worried that K2 was going to have another seizure (she's one of the teens with epilepsy) but thankfully that did not happen. And I think she got one of the page positions, so that's at least some compensation for her. As for me, I just get to keep helping to perpetuate the stereotype that all teens are up to no good.

What I did on my summer vacation ... Part 1

I had a lovely dinner last night at my friends' house, which is situated a bunch of miles and fields out of a small-sized Canadian city. The night was filled with great food, wine, 13 new mosquito bites, gun show-and-tell, a game of Monopoly, and two shots of Absinthe, which consequently resulted in a massive hangover that is keeping me from doing my job very well today. I was just looking for Patricia Wrede's Dealing With Dragons for some dragon-obsessed young man, and even though I was looked for "F WRE YA", I ended up locating Jane Yolen's A Sending of Dragons (F YOL YA). You see how I could get the two mixed up, right?

As I think sitting in one position will be the best strategy for the next few hours, I have decided to do some internet research on Absinthe. After all, if it comes from a Wormwood tree and is good enough for Vincent Van Gogh, then it's good enough for me.

This is taken from Wikipedia:

Absinthe is often referred to as la Fée Verte ("The Green Fairy") because of its coloring — typically pale or emerald green, but sometimes clear. Due to its high proof and concentration of oils, absintheurs (absinthe drinkers) typically add three to five parts ice-cold water to a dose of absinthe, which causes the drink to turn cloudy (called "louching"); often the water is used to dissolve added sugar to decrease bitterness. This preparation is considered an important part of the experience of drinking absinthe, so much so that it has become ritualized, complete with special slotted absinthe spoons and other accoutrements. Absinthe's flavor is similar to anise-flavored liqueurs, with a light bitterness and greater complexity imparted by multiple herbs.
Absinthe originated in Switzerland as an elixir, but is better known for its popularity in late 19th- and early 20th-century France, particularly among Parisian artists and writers whose romantic associations with the drink still linger in popular culture. In its heyday, the most popular brand of absinthe worldwide was Pernod Fils. At the height of this popularity, absinthe was portrayed as a dangerously addictive, psychoactive drug; the chemical thujone was blamed for most of its deleterious effects. By 1915 it was banned in a number of European countries and the United States. Even though it was vilified, there is no evidence showing it to be any more dangerous than ordinary alcohol although few modern medical studies have been conducted to test this. A modern absinthe revival began in the 1990s, as countries in the European Union began to reauthorize its manufacture and sale.

What I find most interesting about the drink is not its rarity or high alcoholic content (the stuff we had was 70% alcohol ... by comparison, the wine we were drinking was 12%) but the fact that my most honourable hosts thought it best to prepare it in the Bohemian style, where you pour some Absinthe in the glass, melt a sugar cube into it and then set the whole thing on fire, and add water, except with one little omission: the water. We had sugar and Absinthe but NO water. On Wikipedia it goes on to say that this method "enhances the effects of the high-strength alcohol", so without water, I'm assuming it enhances it even more. And my friend the security guard here just pointed out that to have 2 shots without water is sort of more like having 6 shots if you add up the 1:3 ratio. It was an amusing experience to have while playing Monopoly and eating berry crisp -- apparently I offered one player a blow job if he gave me Park Place (I of course had already purchased Boardwalk). Luckily he declined my offer. It was all good until this morning, when I was still a bit drunk, dizzy, nauseous and had a huge headache. Maybe I'll cut my ear off next time I have some and it will take my mind off of feeling sick.

Blogger Idol

Enough with the fucking singing shows! American and Canadian Idol, Rock Star INXS and Supernova, The One, The 666 ... ok, I made that last one up, but you know what I mean. I won't lie to you - I was guilty of watching Rock Star last year and American Idol this year, but the fact still remains that TV needs some NEW ideas. I know repetition sells, but enough is enough. Can't we have Canada's Next Top Librarian? Library Idol? Library Survivor? So You Think You Can Dance in the Library? The Bachelorette Guelph? (No I don't live in Guelph, I just thought it sounded better than The Bachelorette: Mid Sized Canadian City). And because George Stroumbolopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopopoulous obviously has enough time off from The Hour to host The One, maybe he'll have time to host this one too, seeing as how he is a hottie. Failing that, I guess we could get Nancy Pearl to host it. Or maybe would could just have a show where every week George kicks the shit out of Ben Mulroney, Ryan Seacrest, Jeff Probst, and any other pansy-assed hosts who want to take him on. Now that I'd pay to see.

You may be wondering why I have chosen to ramble on about this NOW as opposed to a few years ago when all the shows started, but first of all I didn't have a blog two years ago, and secondly now it has become personal. You see, I was all ready to watch my weekly Lost re-run at 10pm when I discovered, in abject horror, that one of the singing shows was on instead. I have to draw the line somewhere, and when it comes to replacing what could be the best show on TV right now with a singing show, I doth protest too much. This better not be a sign of things to come, because as cute as George is, he does not make up for an episode of Lost. Ooh, maybe in the finale of "Who Wants to Get Shit-Kicked By George" George can get shit-kicked by Jack, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurly and John. The winner gets to share Charlie's heroin stash and sleep with Kate. Again, quality entertainment. I think I'm in the wrong line of work - I should be a studio executive instead of a librarian. It wouldn't be about the money, but more how I would be fulfilled as a person and feel like I was doing my part to help make the world a better place.

Technology and string

My dear sweet father, bless his fuzzy soul, just discovered this amazing website called Amazon. Apparently you can look up books, CDs, DVDs, and whole host of other things, order and pay for them online, and have them shipped right to your door in a matter of days. Shocker. When he called me last night to ask whether I had any experience with said website I assured him that not only was it fun and efficient, but it was also relatively safe and thus far no one had stolen my credit card number and used it to buy a new car. It was amusing to have a conversation about Amazon with him because on this same day, I had the complete other ends of the spectrum too when it comes to technology, starting with a libary patron who wanted to know if he could click on the picture of the CD in the library catalogue and hear the music, and ending with me being blown away by the fine art of file sharing when chatting with my friend on the phone. I have been thinking about buying an IPod (yes, I'm a little behind the times as well) and was confuzzled about transferring songs onto it and "buying" new songs, which he told me was entirely unecessary as long as you know your way around a computer. I'm obviously not the expert on technology, but at least I know more than some people!

The other funny thing that happened yesterday was when a group of boys, who came into the library because there was a huge thunderstorm outside and they needed refuge, decided, after they got bored of Scrabble, to tie their friend up Houdini-style with an elaborate mess of string, tape and a spare sheet that was sitting around from a teen program. I opposed the idea of leaving his exacto knife out to help him escape and suggested that scissors would be a slightly safer option. I could just picture blood spewing out of his main arteries when the RCMP came over and saw him tied up with string - can we say liability, children? I ended up having to cut him loose because it was 5:30, I wanted to go home, and there was no way he was getting out of all that shit. His friends had ditched him by this point in time, leaving only a few errant teens to watch him embarrass himself.

The Book Thief

I know that I may be guilty of slipping into superlatives when describing books I have read (after all, I am a librarian and former bookseller), but dammit, this novel by the Australian Marcus Zusak is a fucking brilliant book. Set in a small town outside Munich in Nazi Germany, The Book Thief is narrated by Death, a blunt but strangely sympathetic narrator, and tells the story of a young girl placed with foster parents who takes fondly to stealing books. Her foster father teaches her to read with the Gravediggers Manual, the book she stole while watching her younger brother being buried, and over the next few years she steals a small collection of books that become very meaningful to her. Surrounded by Hitler Youth and adults who place their faith in the Fuhrer, Liesel similarly trusts that Hitler must know what he is doing until the day she meets a young Jewish man named Max that her foster parents are helping to hide in the basement. Max carried with him a copy of Mein Kampf, and sets about writing beautifully simple allegories on the pages of Mein Kampf, which he has ripped out and painted white. He writes "The Standover Man" and "The Word Shaker", the latter a bold statement of the damage caused to all of Germany's people by Hitler's words. Throughout the story Death follows a non-linear storytelling technique, saying things like "Of course, I'm being rude - I'm spoiling the ending" as he collects the millions of souls that expired during World War II. His only comfort is the colours he sees in the sky each time he carries out his grisly job; colour has been his only vacation during a profession that has spanned all eternity. In a very fitting literary ending, Liesel's own book, The Book Thief, finds its way into Death's hands after she is the lone survivor of her street being bombed near the end of the war. She lives to be an old woman, but like Death, is haunted by the souls of humans she has known. It's beautiful, it's weird, and although I have given most of it away, you should definitely read it.

Epilepsy

The amount of epilepsy in this town is beginning to freak me out - with every day that goes by, I hear about another child or teenager that is diagnosed with it. Luckily, some of them just have it as a childhood condition and the seizures will not persist through their adult years, but others are less fortunate and not only will they have to be on medication for the rest of their lives, but they will still have to suffer through seizures. Two teens at the library that I know of have it, two adults who are patrons, a number of the staff's children had it when they were younger, and in the last couple days I've just heard about a few babies that have been diagnosed with it. I'm no medical expert and people can feel free to contradict me on this, but I wonder if this is one of these conditions that is getting worse with time, due to various environmental factors and whatnot, or if it is still only genetic. It's not like autism or ADD where kids could be misdiagnosed - I think it's pretty clear who is having seizures and who isn't, right? Even if it is genetic I still find it a little bit scary in that I'm not sure I'd want to have kids here ... what if the guy that I meet has a history of it in his family? Would I still want to have children? I guess that's a bit of moot point because thus far there is no guy, and I'm sort of hoping there won't be one either. Now if I meet someone who is visiting from Australia or Italy and wants to take me back there with him, that's a whole other story.

Samesies!

Yesterday J and C, while taking a break from bugging me and chatting with each other at the library, discovered they were both Jehovah's Witnesses and were positively elated ... altogether now: it's a world of laughter, a world of tears, a world of hopes and a world of fears, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, it's a small world after all. This may be good for both of them, because despite the age difference (J is 13 and C is almost 16) they keep telling me that they don't have many friends ... and often go so far as to say that I'm their only friend. Just a few days ago J told me that I was never allowed to leave the library, because people he likes (teachers, etc) are always leaving and it's always after he's just gotten to know them and like them. I thought this was sweet but sad, because while I may stick around for a year or two, I can't say I'll be here for the rest of his difficult teenage years. Now if only I could make a "small world" discovery to find out about someone else in this town who is an aetheist, then I'll be giggling and squealing!

Between Mom and Jo

This new teen novel by Julie Anne Peters (author of Define Normal) is a welcome addition to a slowly growing genre of fiction about same sex families. I'm not talking about picture books like Heather Has Two Mommies or books with a bit character who is gay, who sometimes ends up being like the Star Trek guy in the red shirt who gets killed when they go down to the foreign planet to explore. This novel is great because it's about a teenage boy who has two mothers ... god forbid that the little kids in the picture books (and real life) should have to grow up and have same-sex parents as teenagers, right? Between Mom and Jo follows Nick from the age of 3 into his teenage years, and how he copes with having two mothers - being teased at school for being gay (by default), having his mothers break up and have to experience a partial custody battle, and going through many pets who just don't want to stay alive. He identifies much more with Jo, who is not his birth mother and never adopted him, and so when he is forced to live with his mother and her new girlfriend needless to say he is not very happy. It is heartfelt, funny and I really wish that there were more books like this out there.

Addendum to the entourage

How could I forget about K3 ? This 16 year old daughter of one of the staff is a nice, albeit slightly naive young girl. Most of the blame should probably go to her mother for that, as she was the one who brought K3 up with the whole "No dating til you're 18" and "Christians don't lie" shite. Maybe we can also blame the Christian school she goes to - it has a couple hundred kids from k - 12, and they are not allowed to have dances for fear of fraternizing with members of the opposite sex while, good heavens, dancing. They have a zero tolerance policy (for kissing, not for bullying) and even had to cut the kissing scene out of the school play they recently performed. Dear sweet K3, who will only read books by Melody Carlson or other god-fearing authors, came to me today with her latest problem: she likes a boy at school but he, gasp, only likes her as a friend. Well, I think I can safely say we've all been there, right? I do feel for dear sweet K3, because not only does this boy, (who apparently said something about them maybe dating in 2 years, if she is still interested), not like her "in that way", but her best friend also "has feelings" for this boy. Great and holy goodness batman, whatever will we do? Earlier in the year I told K3, subversive librarian that I am, that if her mother didn't approve of her dating I could be the one who chaperoned and her mother would never have to know. I would not allow them to give each other blow jobs on my couch, but dinner and a movie would be alright. But as I now know she can't lie, nor never would want to, so I think screwing over her friend may be out of the question as well.

Grammar for the masses

A couple grammatical things have been bothering me lately. No, none of them concern its and it's or there, their and they're, even though these are probably the most popular grammatical flaws in the English language and rest assured I have seen them written incorrectly a number of times in email and other things these last few months. But I just accept that people will always fuck those things up, so I'm not going to rant about them right now. What has really irritated me recently is the way that people use the word "seen" in the place of "see", or even worse, "saw". For example, while it would be correct to say "I see that you are not wearing any clothes", it would not be correct to say "I seen that you are not wearing any clothes". One could correctly say "I saw the nasty sex show last night" but should not say "I seen the nasty sex show last night". I've heard so many people in my lovely city say that and I think it makes them sound even more red neck-ish than I already thought they were. I keep waiting for Billy Bob to come up to me and say "I seen that movie last night about the gay cowboys and boy did it ever remind me of my childhood!". But alas, many of then people who use "seen" seem to be quite lovely, edu-macated people, which perplexes me all the more!

Secondly, I am mourning the loss of the "s" that use to once exist in the school subject Social Studies, or the abbreviated Socials. I only ever hear kids now say "Social", as opposed to "Socials" (which would make much more sense, as it is Social Studies, plural, in that one studies more than one area of social history, or whatever Social Studies teachers actually teach). When asked why this was, one teen said "well, we have just abbreviated Social Studies, and Social is quicker to say", to which I replied "well it's just fine to abbreviate it but Socials is just as many syllables as Social, so why leave out the s?". One co-worker seemed to recall calling it Social when she went to school as well, implying that I was in the wrong and that the currciculum of the province I attended school in used a different word then they do here. To that I say: harrrumpff!

Mosquitoes ... those scummy little bastards

Sometimes I think I'm allergic to this stupid town - first it was nosebleeds, then headaches, then insomnia, and now it's mosquito bites that look like a poison ivy rash. I know that mosquito bites are usually unpleasant for everyone - red bumps that stay itchy for days after the bite itself goes away, but for me, these sorts of things always end up being much bigger and better. You only need to ask one of the travellers on my South America trip and they will likely agree with you. I currently have about 6 bites on the back of one leg, and for one of them (in my "knee pit") the surrounding area is reddish orange and about the size of a CD. It went from itchy to just plain painful in a couple days, and while I am not a doctor, I sense this may not be normal. The question is: West Nile virus? Infected bug bite? Allergic to mosquitoes? Or allergic to this city in general? A similar thing happened to my leg when I was in Peru, and I sort of thought that was because bugs are more exciting (and dirty) there, but now I'm thinking that me and big bites really don't jive. Here's a thought: maybe the friendly pigeons in my building can eat all the mosquitoes in the city, then the pigeons can either be swallowed up by the tornado that we may have this summer, or just run over by one of the drunken idiots driving a pickup truck along the major street outside my house.