Who can you trust after you're dead?

I was asked on our chat reference desk recently for a program that will wipe a computer's hard drive in the event that the owner dies or is suddenly "put out of commission" for a long time.

"Why do you need that?" I typed back, but Mr. "Al Kyda" gave no reply.

But that had me searching for some solution to this problem. What would you do if you were suddenly hospitalized and didn't want someone poking around in your computer, spying at all your personal crap? Sure, you might have a password to protect an unauthorized logon, but seriously, we all know it's "chocolate."

What if you're in a car accident and end up in a coma? Or you have a heart attack and spend two weeks in the hospital? What if you have a stroke and can't move and the doctor pronounces you dead, and because your insurance requires an autopsy to determine if there is any fault or negligence to avoid paying on your policy, the ME is about to cut you open, but you're alive! And you know you saw that TV show where the guy couldn't move and the doctor was about to cut him open, so he tried to cry so someone would see his tears, and they did! So you try and try to cry and you strain too much so you fart; what then? A fart isn't proof you're alive, so they cut you right open. And now, who is going to delete all that porn from your computer?

Maybe it's not porn you don't want anyone to find on your computer. Maybe is just a picture of you in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. Or maybe it's a Kenyan birth certificate. Or it's the recipe for Ice-nine.

Whatever it is, you don't want anyone to find it.

In the old days, you might leave a letter to a trusted friend with instructions on what to do with your personal effects. For example, I have all of my private items up in the attic sealed in a cardboard box labeled, "not porn."

In the event of my death, my attorney or named associate would take that box of "not porn" from the attic and drive it out into a field where it would be burned, its contents a mystery forever. Until the flames hit the inflatable Sailor Moon love doll that I got from Japan: those babies explode when you put a match to them.

But anyway, that's how we would do it in the old days. But now? My computer hard drive is loaded with tens of thousands of files, any number of which could prove embarrassing if found by the wrong party.

I've looked, but I haven't found a program that will wipe a folder or partition if nothing is done for a period of time. If a password is not entered or if something else hasn't been done, I don't see anything that will perform this function. I guess one could write a batch file that would execute and format the partition, but is that good enough to keep my love letters to Leif Garrett private?

I don't think so. I don't think any solution is as good as the one from the old days, the trusted friend.

So I'm going to keep a card like this in my wallet, next to my "mullet donor" card (yes, that's a thing: in the event of my death, my mullet will be removed and transplanted onto a prematurely balding singer in a Southern rock band).

In event of coma or death: call 202-555-1235 tell Joe, "the salamander has left the pond"

If you would like to participate, you have to be willing to travel anywhere in the Continental U.S. at a moment's notice. You need a cordless drill with a metal drill bit, safety goggles, gloves, a plastic bucket and some muriatic acid. Okay, you don't really need the acid.

But in the event of my death, I expect you to respond when you hear, "the salamander has left the pond," and then spring into action. When you get to my house, be courteous and knock. The dog's gonna bark a lot, but she won't attack if you give her a treat; that's how we lost the TV in the last burglary. So give the dog something. My girlfriend likes wine coolers, but since she'll be grieving, bring a bottle of tequila.

Go upstairs and open the computer. Be careful with my stuff. Those Ikki Tousen action figures weren't cheap.

Get out the hard drive and drill some holes through it. Put the drive on a phone book first, you dummy! You want to drill through the floor? Four holes all the way through should be enough. If you brought the acid, drop the drive in the bucket and pour some acid over it.

And you're done.

Get up, pet the dog. Look, she likes you. Leave my girlfriend alone. Yes, I know she's hot, but come on, I'm not even in the ground. Show some respect.

Now, I just need your phone number. Anyone?

The Library Grief Cycle.

In response to Restore the Noble Purpose of Libraries, by William H. Wisner:

I'm sorry to tell you, Mr. Wisner, but the Noble Library is dead.

It died when my local library purchased a vinyl copy of the album KC and the Sunshine Band back in 1976. Yes, I agree "Boogie Shoes" is an awesome song, but I have to place the death of the traditional, noble, enlightened library at that ignoble event. Up to then, the library never bought any popular music: no Led Zepellin or Rolling Stones or The Who or David Bowie. There were only albums of Prokofiev, Mozart or the Boston Pops.

And librarians have been dealing with the loss for the last thirty years.

The Kübler-Ross Five Stages of Grief are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. And librarians are smack in the middle of this process.

Some say the Denial stage is still ongoing, but I'm pretty sure it ended around the time your library made you learn about the "23 Things" and "Library 2.0." If creating ten different online accounts and solving the accompanying CAPTCHAs didn't shake you from that initial defensive response, then you're so deluded you probably think The Beatles will still get back together one day (all four of them).

The Anger period lasted all that time you were supposed to build that wiki and tag those images and write in that blog, but didn't, and went back to reading Booklist. Not long at all.

So librarians are currently in the state of Bargaining.

"Please come in and take these DVDs, yeah, check out 50 at a time, more than anyone could ever watch, and if you don't bring them back, we'll charge you a nickel..."

"Have a nap on that furniture. We'll wake you when it's time to go home."

"Leave your children here while you go off to the movies."

"We have cookies."

I sense that Depression isn't far off. As soon as we all realize that the cookies aren't working.

Already some librarians have successfully passed all the way to Acceptance, giving up on calling their workplaces "libraries" and renaming them "community centers." If the Noble Library is dead, embrace that change, they believe. Life begins anew. After all, librarians work for the people, and if the people don't want to better themselves through intellectual pursuits, who are we to keep suggesting they try?

So for now on, when we discuss "the future of libraries," I think the only answer is reincarnation. Accept death, mourn the loss and move on. Trust that the library had a noble and purposeful existence.

And if you're like me, pray that your library is reborn as a strip club.

How will I know when I'm dead?

How will Facebook know when I'm dead? Or how will I manage that final tweet?

I just read an article about people who died and their families wanted their online friends to know. But how could they access all their accounts when the only person with the password ain't telling.

I don't know about you, but I'd like to know when I'm dead. I'd like an email or something. So to prepare for the inevitable, I'm glad that Blogger allows me to schedule posts for some future date. Like I can make a entry that will automatically post if I'm not around to stop it. Maybe schedule it for thirty days from today. This could be the message:

It's been 30 days since I last logged into this account. I don't think I would just forget about this account. I think there's a good chance that I'm dead. If I don't post anything soon to correct this, then I'd say I'm dead.

Wait, what if I'm in a coma? There's hope, huh? Maybe I'm just in a coma. And when I awake, I won't remember any of this. And then we could be friends again. Because I won't have any memory of all the awful things I wrote here. Do you think you could forgive me for all this terrible stuff I've been posting? I bet you could... because of the coma.

Well, so far I haven't created this "death note." (Hey, that's catchy. Someone should use that for the title of something.) Mostly because I might just forget to log in for a month and I wouldn't want for you to get the wrong idea when you read the post. Because some of you are old and you might hurt yourselves from all the joyous dancing.

But getting back to the original story ("Deaths of gamers leave their online lives in limbo" AP), "Jerald Spangenberg collapsed and died in the middle of a quest in an online game,..." so his daughter went on her own quest to let the members of his WoW guild know that he was dead in the "meat" world. When one member found out weeks later, he said he'd thought that Spangenberg's absence was due to "an argument among the gamers that night."

"I figured he probably just needed some time to cool off," the member said. No, no cooling off, unless you mean cooling off to room temperature. He died. Right after an online fight with you guys. Another video game related death.

But here is the important thing: how come Spangenberg didn't give any of these guys his real data? What is the true worth of online relationships? If I don't tell you in the online world who I really am in the thingy world, is it because I don't want you to know?

If this is true, then what about the daughter? Did she do the wrong thing by tracking down the other members of the guild (from which her own dad kept his real identity a secret)?

Regardless of how important we claim these online relationships are, are they ever as valuable as our real relationships? (If they are, then don't they become real relationships?)

Anyway, I guess the real test of whether the.effing.librarian is dead is whether he remains hilarious. And if you would find my death that funny, then I guess I wouldn't really be dead; I'd become immortal. "There can only be ONE!"

Crafty Death.

I just finished my Crafty Chica journal-in-a-box that I bought on clearance. Yes, I made a journal. So I can write down all my hopes and dreams and desires. Here it is:

The kit comes with papers and glue and glitter and letters and other stuff to make your own journal. I went to the Miami Book Fair over the weekend and heard Scott McCloud give his history of comics and graphic novels and someone asked him what he was reading now and he said, Death Note. I read part of one issue online and saw that it's about a journal that if you write someone's name in it and say how you want them to die, they will die in that way. So I figured that Death Note was a good name for my journal.

It was fun making my journal. I don't know if it has the same powers as the Death Note journal, but if you want to leave me some names and death scenarios, I'll be happy to write them in the book to see what happens. The only limitation is that it can't be anyone famous, and it can't be me. But if you have someone you think should die, then let me know and we can see if the "shinigami" does his job.

(Not responsible for misspellings and having the wrong people die. Oh, and not responsible for having the right people die. The above is for entertainment purposes only: shinigami are not real.)

Why the.effing.librarian doesn't have a "bucket list"

I don’t know if you saw the movie The Bucket List, but it was okay. Seeing it reaffirms my belief that having a rich friend is never a bad thing. I should add that to my list, when I make one.

But I don’t now have “a list of things I need to do before I kick the bucket.” I’ve tried to make one, but I can’t think of anything I really need to do or places I need to go.

I’d like to skydive, but I don’t have any friends who want to do it with me, so I haven’t made the jump. I could go by myself, but skydiving alone seems like drinking alone, or worse, skinny dipping alone. Some pursuits require an accomplice.

I’d like to go to Scotland because I saw Highlander a few times and it looks cool. I assume the movie had some scenes filmed in Scotland, but it could just be Kentucky; how should I know. But I’ve also seen An American Werewolf in London, so I don’t how much I want to see lush, green hills compared to how much I don’t want my throat torn out by a great beastie.

The only item I ever had on a list that I attempted to do was to drive a car 100 miles an hour. That’s probably not a big deal to most people, but I only drive two ways, completely oblivious to my surroundings or obsessively analyzing every aspect of my speed, the traffic, the behavior of the vehicle, and my gas mileage. When I was in library school, I routinely drove from Tallahassee to Miami at 88 miles per hour. There are long stretches of nothing in Florida, and I would just drive faster and faster until I was well over the posted speed limit, and then I would notice and panic and then fight the urges to either slow down to keep from getting a speeding ticket or speed up to keep from dying of boredom. But driving 100 miles an hour (which is like 160 kilometers per hour for some of you folks out there; that’s probably the speed children drive across the Outback in Australia), isn’t even in the realm of possibility for normal American driving.

But there was a time before that when I owned a 1968 Dodge Charger that I got for $200. It was a piece of crap, but it ran, and that’s all that mattered. It had the basic engine, so I didn’t know if it could do 100, but I made an actual plan to see if it would.

So remember, getting caught by the police while driving 100 miles an hour is very, very bad.

And since this car was a true turd; I think it was only firing seven cylinders and the carburetor leaked gas, I wasn’t completely sure that it wouldn’t just explode on the highway. And of course, no airbags. It might have had seatbelts somewhere under the seat, but I never looked for them.

So I had to find a long piece of road where there were no cops. I couldn’t think of a good place, so I just ran the car up on the nearest highway and stomped on the gas.

I tried to lie to myself afterward and say that I got to 100, but I didn’t. I chickened out at 97. As I crossed ninety-five miles an hour, everything just seemed really unnecessarily dangerous. And it was taking forever for that bucket of shit to move. The car was shaking and the engine was thumping and I realized it wasn’t really important that I cross some imaginary speed barrier. I felt I had pushed my luck about as far as I could.

So I don’t have a bucket list.

Maybe if I really knew I had only six months to live, I’d make the list. After I was done... you know...having 5 1/2 months of sex.

Remeber me.

Nothing gets folks talking like fuck-ups. And the two greatest fuck-ups you can suffer are tattoos and grave stones.

Yes, there are lots of other fuck-ups you can cite, like organized religion and forms of government, but misspellings on semi-permanent messages is completely preventable, and hence, much more of a fuck-up.

Did you ever see a guy with something misspelled on his tattoo? How hard is it to check the dictionary before you ink up? Shouldn't every tattoo shop have at least one dictionary and a book of baby names for customers to reference? Or maybe the phone number of the local fucking library?

I admit, my tattoo is fucked up. When I designed it, I looked at in the mirror without adjusting my mind to how others would see it. And I also had my arm at an angle which contracted my shoulder muscles so that when I stand naturally, stretches and distorts the design. Oh, and the tattoo guy was drunk.
That's another major fuck-up. Make sure you don't visit the tattoo guy on a Sunday morning when he's been up until 7 a.m. drinking. There aren't going to be any straight lines that day.

Anyway, the one fuck-up that stands out because I've seen it twice is the word, "lose." So far, I've seen "Born to Loose" and a pair of dice showing "snake eyes" that says, "You Loose." Neither time did I feel stupid enough to point out the mistake to the bad-ass mofo with the scabs on his knuckles.

Which brings me to grave stones. I don't wander through cemeteries reading them; simple answer: vampires and zombies. And even just the dead trying to reenter this realm by possessing my body is enough to keep me away, you know, the usual stuff dead people try to do when you get naked in a cemetery at midnight because your friends Laura and Marci dare you.

But I took an online test a long time ago that told me how I would die (the link seems to be gone):

You scored as Disappear. Your death will be by disappearing, probably a camping trip gone wrong or an evening hike you never returned from. Always remeber that one guy who was hiking alone and got in a rock slide. He could have died, but he cut his own hand off to save himself. Don't end up like him (or worse, dead). Disappear 100% Natural Causes 73% Suicide 67% Posion 60% Bomb 53% Gunshot 47% Suffocated 33% Accident 27% Disease 27% Drowning 27% Stabbed 20% Eaten 20% Cut Throat 20% How Will You Die?? created with QuizFarm.com

But look at the typo: "...remeber that one guy..." Yeah, I remeber that guy because he sawed off his own hand.

But other than that, how else can you guarantee that people will remeber you? And that is that answer: put a typo on your grave stone:
"Remeber Me."

Sure, people will say you're an idiot, but you'll already be dead, so who cares. But people will pass your grave and comment eternally on your final message to the world.

But since I'm going to just disappear, I don't know if I'll even have a grave. There will be nothing to mark my passing when the aliens take me.

At least I have this blog.

What's cool now is that Blogger allows you to schedule posts for a future date or time. So since I don't know when I'm going to just up and disappear, I guess I'll have to post my final message to you all one month into the future.

Then every twenty days, or so, I can just move it up another month and then another, so that when I finally kick it, my message will appear for everyone to see. It'll be eerie. But it will be simple: remeber me. Oh, and I'll probably tell you my name.

Wear Sunscreen.

Now that I'm an old man, I get to see more doctors who insist on doing things to my body that are sure to kill me. I'm sure if I could just avoid seeing any medical professionals, I would live to a ripe old age.

And so every once in a while when this song gets played in my car, I think about my life and how little of it there is left:

"Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth . Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked."

from "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young," Chicago Tribune - June 1, 1997, by Mary Schmich, and turned into a song by somebody.

So here is a picture of me from 1984 when we drove to Daytona Beach during spring break to see REM. Now, other than not wearing sunscreen, that was a pretty good trip. We got drunk; we got hassled by cops; nobody got pregnant. If I set the bar really low, I could argue that I had a pretty good life back then. I had all my hair and I had a tattoo.

I had a friend who told me that the "heart with wings" was a Sufi symbol and recommended that I don't get it as a tattoo. I didn't know anything about Sufism. But when I checked books in the library, I didn't see any mention of a heart symbol:

The symbol of the Order is a heart with wings. It explains that the heart is between soul and body, a medium between spirit and matter. When the soul is covered by its love for matter it is naturally attracted to matter. This is the law of gravitation in abstract form, as it is said in the Bible, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ When man treasures the things of the earth his heart is drawn to the earth. But the heart is subject not only to gravitation, but also to attraction from on high, and as in the Egyptian symbology, wings are considered as the symbol of spiritual progress, the heart with wings expresses that the heart reaches upward towards heaven.

But I liked the image of the heart with wings so that's what I got. I probably took my shirt off that day to show it off to everyone. Because that's what cool people do; they let everyone how cool they are by telling them about their tattoos and the places they went and the bands they saw.

But look at that picture. I have the specific memory that I felt that I was fat back then. Now I look at this photo and wonder how I could have thought I was fat. I understand how I thought it because a few years earlier I weighed twenty pounds less, but still, I don't think I look fat in this picture. And now you see the connection to the "wear sunscreen" editorial/poem/song.

And no, I'm not wearing "clown pants." That's my shirt tied around my waist.

I don't know why I've been thinking about dying lately. Maybe it's because my doctor is only scheduling my appointments one week in advance. And he tells me to take a vacation so the time won't go to waste. And when I mention that I want to get a puppy, he laughs, then catches himself, then shakes his head, and suggests I get a goldfish. You think he's trying to tell me something?

My Obituary.

It seems like there are lots of stories out there about librarians who close the book or finish the chapter or hit their due date or have their privileges expire or delete that account or just plain die.

The story tells inevitably of a person who loved to read and share the joy of reading with others, especially sick children and wounded animals and the homeless.

Since I'm not a reader, I guess my story would be pretty short. But I have an excuse. I don't read because it makes me tired. I don't know if it's processing words or black text on white paper, but reading wears me out. It could also be that I can't read more than a few words without having some idea about something that has me off thinking about something else.

Here is me reading:
"Call me Ishmael."
Call me Ishmael. That is so simple. And it's so informal, like he's my friend. I need to think about an opening line like that. Keep it simple. Keep is simple. But is simple still popular? I need to find a new book. What's on the bestseller list? How do those books start? No, wait. I need to stick to the basics. Keep it simple. Yeah. Simple. Man, I need a nap. But first, a sandwich.

And that is why I never finished Moby Dick.

So what could someone say about me after a career as a librarian? I'm not getting any younger. I could go any day now. Especially since I haven't been able to stop drinking. Or quit smoking. Or kick the toad licking.

So if you haven't thought about what your story might be, maybe you should. Because otherwise it will be left to your boss and co-workers to write something. And if you die before me, you know I'm writing that you loved the Longarm novels, especially the sex scenes which you underlined with a red felt-tip pen, adding "Yes!" in the margins.

So about me, so far I have this:
He tried never to kill anyone. Except that one guy. You know the guy. The one who stopped coming a few years ago. I'm not saying anything, but don't dig up behind the dumpster. Let someone else find it; you don't want to know about it.

Ones who are gone.

I didn't think much of Keith Haring (artist) when he was alive. I thought he was overrated, too much publicity. But after he died, I saw a documentary on TV, and my opinion changed completely. The documentary showed how he would draw on objects people would hand him, and then that person had a work of art. Something about giving away a valuable thing impressed me, like getting Mickey Mantle's autograph (which I have, somewhere). This was before eBay when most people collected things because they wanted them and not to sell that night online. He died on February 16.

I was out riding my bike when I heard that Elvis died. Someone stopped his car and pointed to his AM radio and said, "Can you believe Elvis died?" It didn't matter to me. Elvis? But I think the guy just needed to tell someone. I was skipping class and drinking MD 20/20 with friends when I heard that Bon Scott (singer for AC/DC) had died. Since this was high school, we all liked AC/DC, which is a phase lots of kids go through. Plus, Highway to Hell was a huge hit. Between that song and T.N.T and Whole Lotta Rosie, AC/DC was on the radio pretty often.

So I don't really remember the death of Elvis as having any real impact on me; maybe I was too young or maybe death was too much of an abstract concept. But sometime during the next year, a kid I had hung around with a few times, David, put a rifle under his chin and killed himself, and death became real. I don't remember David that well; he was a friend of a friend. We went over to swim in his pool and jump in off the roof. We poured gasoline on dog shit and lit it on fire. He tried to teach me how to ride his motorcycle. And I think his dad was a mean bastard.

So I remember where I was when I heard that Bon Scott died. I was with friends, and I remember we drank to him. He died on February 19. I know he's not like John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rudolph Valentino or Elvis, but I think everyone should remember where they were when someone famous died. If for no other reason, it's a good reason for friends to get together for a drink.

To be a winner.

I like winning. I like winning at races and games, but mostly, I love winning when my opponents aren't aware there's a competition. I race strangers reading quietly at their table by finishing my page first and flipping to the next with a dramatic flourish. I race people out of the building to my car and pump my fist into the air in victory.

I have no friends.

So I can identify with the pathetic asswipes who race to be the top reviewers on Amazon.

As I explored the murky understory of Amazon's reviewer rankings, however, I came to see the real Web 2.0 as a tangle of hidden agendas...

Hell, all of the Web is a popularity contest. But only a few are aware of it. Some (like me) are aware, but try not to care, occasionally declaring shenanigans when the bullshit gets too deep.

Back when the Internet Movie Database needed program reviews, the webmasters didn't seem to care what comments got posted. Five or six years ago, I used to look for movies and programs that needed reviews and I would make up one. Back then, the first review posted for a movie was the one everybody saw first. For about a year, there were some movies where my "fake" review showed up first.
At first, it was fun. But after seeing them there for a while, I felt regret. I felt like it was a lie and that some poor schlub might waste 90 minutes of his life on my recommendation, and wished I could remove them without getting found out by some unseen authority.

But I never sought fame or recognition from my shenanigans. But these Amazon reviews are different. Their reviews, whether honestly earned or not, dilute the whole process. What is your stamp of approval worth if every book gets one?

The whole nature of competition, of winning, of being at the top leads me to one conclusion:
We are alone and we fear death.

I hope Oklahoma is in.

I've been thinking too much about death lately. I just saw, No Country for Old Men, which is about death. And then I saw Frankenstein. And now I'm watching Black Christmas. I don't usually think about death. Just like I don't think about having to poop; I know it's going to happen at some point, and I just need to plan my day around it.
And that stupid movie coming out with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson where the two old farts make a list of all the things they want to before they die and then they go do them. I don't have a list. I vowed one day to make a list, but I never got past "Go to ___." Go where? I think I'd like Scotland or maybe Switzerland, but not so much that I feel I need to get off my ass and travel.

The only goal I ever have is to spend more time with my friends. I used to sit around and watch movies, but now I go out and bother any of the three people who let me inside when I knock. I'm not the kind of person who needs lots of friends. I don't have the energy to maintain lots of relationships. I have a bad memory, so I can't tell the same funny stories over and over. So I think I limit my friends to a few so that I can have reliable backup. You know, if one or two people spend a lot of time with me, then when I ask about stuff that I've forgotten, one of them will know what I'm talking about. But if I have too many friends, I'll just get mad all the time because none of us will know anything about who I am or where I've been.

So let's see if there's a copy of Oklahoma in the library tomorrow. Or My Fair Lady or something else where no one dies. Or comes back from the dead.

I hope as I get older that I don't regret not having a list. But maybe one of my friends will have a list and maybe I can just go along with her to do the stuff on her list. That would be good. Although I'm not sure how I'll feel about sleeping with Chris Noth. (He never called me after the last time and I felt like such a whore.)