Further Adventures in Tech Support: Year 2010 A.D.

"I'm sorry to bother you with this, madam, but do you have access to a hammer right now? You do? That's wonderful. Now, if you could just take that hammer and strike yourself with it. Yes, anywhere on the head... oh, yes, right between the eyes would be lovely."

That was me channeling Peter Cook portraying The Devil in Bedazzled.

Oh, what a joyous new year...

I resolve to have this conversation 150 times this year:

Do you know what that is? No? Do you know why you clicked on it? No? Do you have any idea what you're doing? No? But you want me to explain it to you? In concepts you can understand? Just give me five minutes to go let a horse kick me in the head and I'll be right back.

One down, 149 to go.

Library New Year's Resolutions.

I was just reading a story about how librarians in Louisiana have been banned from accepting cookies and cakes from their library patrons. Because public libraries are government agencies, librarians are often barred from accepting gifts, unless that gift can be shared with everyone. So we accept chocolates, but we have to leave them out in the open for everyone to enjoy (but not out in the open in front of the patrons, that would be just stupid).

Some patrons understand how their holiday gift could be viewed by the public or the press ("Corrupt Librarians Trade Favors for Ding-Dongs"), so they've learned to play along. When the thankful delivers a huge box of Godiva chocolates, I accept the box, then hand back an egg salad sandwich while proclaiming loud-enough-for-all-to-hear: "No, I cannot accept this egg salad sandwich at Christmas as a thank-you for all of my hard work." Or I pocket the $20 and hand back $1 while modifying the announcement, "I could never accept a dollar as a gift. Nope, never a single dollar. Cough. Cough."

All year long, we work hard for our customers. We get them to the right websites and show them where to apply for state aid or unemployment or even employment. We help them print their airline boarding passes. We listen to their complaints. We do hours of work that could cost them hundreds of dollars in the private sector and we charge nothing. We clean up their messes after they fuck around with everything.

So I don't understand why I can't have a treat once in a while. I have to take their shit, but I can't take their cookies. Why can't I ever say, "I'm sorry, sir, but as a government employee, I can't take your shit. It could be seen as a conflict of interest"? That would be great. "Unless you've brought enough shit for everyone. Did you want to give some shit to all these other people? Especially that big guy over there. Sir, this man would like to give you some shit."

So at least once a year, I try to remember how grateful I am to have a job that pays me pretty good money and keeps me out of jail. And Christmas is as good a time as any to remember and be thankful. Because I'm a Lorax and this is when we worship trees.

So at this moment of weakness, here are my New Year's Resolutions for 2009:

1. I will try to not be mad when upstart blogs get thousands of readers only two months after they start posting; yes, I mean, Fuck You, Fuck You, Penguin, you NKOTB, hilarious motherfucker. Yes, I'm mad now, but I'll try to not be after the First. But for now, suck a fat one.


2. I will continue to be more appreciative of all the hard work and effort others make in the world. I know that everyone has a job, and that job might suck, so I try to remember that when I interact with other people at their jobs. Most people try really hard to get things right, and I want them to know that it's working. So I smile back and say, Thank You, so they can think that maybe, just maybe, they kept that crazy man from murdering people: "I think I stopped this crazy guy from killing someone, like maybe a whole school bus filled with children, like a children's choir, who would spend their last moments singing, 'Oh, Holy Night' as he drove them off a bridge. Yeah, I think I kept that from happening."


3. I will lose weight. Yeah, I know I've been letting myself go and you don't want to sleep with me anymore. But I'm still a man, damn it, and I have needs. So I'll lose the gut and do some push-ups. But you'll have to lose those panties once in a while. (Oh, wait, where am I writing this?)

Is three resolutions enough? Yeah. Otherwise, I'm perfect.

Ban Library Headline Clichés

For the new year, I'd like all news reporting agencies to cease using the following phrases when referring to libraries:

The (whatever) library...
closes the book;
turns a page;
begins a new chapter.

A quick search on the googly shows total hits for each:
library and
closes the book, 38,700
turns a page, 16,700
begins a new chapter, 4,500

Please, please, please, journalists of the world, give us new metaphors. Anything. Haven't you been to the library, lately? How about these for example:

The (whatever) library...
prods the sleeping smelly guy on...;
unblocks the filter on...;
cleans the ca-ca on...;
reboots the...;
refills the golf pencils on...;
clears the copier jam on...;
ignores the abandoned child on...;
distracts the psycho while the sniper gets a clear shot on...;
wipes the sweaty keyboard on...
(suggested by "dances with books," has sex in the restrooms of... and provides aid to the bounty hunters on... )
Or anything other than those same three phrases over and over and over. I vote for anything with ca-ca.

On Fame.

Britney vs. Uncle Miltie: no competition.

[brought to you by a Time article on kids who take a class on the art of being famous, or "famo" as they call it, like you'll get famous using a word like that, unless they pronounce it with the short a / long o, then that might sound cool...]

There's fame and there's fame. If you know any history about America and television, then you know that back in 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951 there was Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, and Red Skelton.
At 8:00 on any given night, you knew exactly where 50 million Americans were and where the would be for the following 60 minutes. There will never be, and I say never given that we are never enslaved by space aliens as media-hungry as human beings who force us to watch Neptunian Idol, a time when so many people share the exact same collective popular consciousness.
You can say Madonna is famous, but if there were a way to condense her fame, to search into the memories of people and quantify the variety and depth of memory, I don't think she could compare to someone like Jack Benny. If you were in front of your television week after week, knowing, absolutely knowing, that if you missed something, it would be gone forever, you would watch and you would pay attention. Even with my television watching experience, I could never extrapolate my pop culture saturation to understand the mindset of people who shared those original live television experiences.

I remember staying in front of the TV at 4:00 in the afternoon to watch Thriller, but even then, MTV played that video repeatedly for weeks, so if I missed five minutes, I could always tune in later. And once I bought a VCR, nothing was ever shared with anyone ever again, since I could watch or not watch what I wanted whenever.

Today's famous think they've achieved the fame they witnessed as children, but each subsequent generation of seekers is wading deeper and deeper into an ocean of competition. Those early famous shared an entire country across three television networks. Now people say, "Ooh, 200,000 people have downloaded my video from youtube," but what does that mean? From my experience, it means about as much as when someone says, "What a cute puppy." I looked and yes, it was cute, but I'm not going to alter my schedule or my life to see that puppy next week. Because we all hope to be famous one day, we believe the lie that when someone watches your video that that will guarantee fame, but it can't. Not in this classic way which is presently unattainable.

People go to conventions to keep the memories alive, but should real fame require life support?

So we redefine what it is to be famous. The standard has been lowered to simple awareness. We don't even try to be famous for 15 minutes. We just want someone we've never met to say, "Yeah, I've heard of you." You want evidence of this, then tell me what happened to all the celebrity impressionists? You can only be a successful impersonator of someone else if your diluted version still contains some of the flavor of the original. But if the original isn't truly famous so that we all share that experience, then how can someone impersonate her? We share less and less every year.
Popular culture becomes diluted, so it's inevitable that fame needs to change. How many people identify that Jack Nicholson saying, "Here's Johnny" in The Shining refers to the Johnny Carson show? Probably few people under 25. That's why the term pop culture itself will also disappear. When baby boomers die off, so will much of that popular culture, which was less popular than that of the preceding generation. Sure, the numbers of people who are familiar with a particular subject are still huge, but how much we share with each other is diminishing every day.

So I'll say it again, and this time with more conviction; buy an effinglibrarian mug. Or a tee-shirt. You think I blog because I want to be a librarian for the rest of my life? Wear an effinglibrarian tee-shirt! Watch and link to my videos. This is your New Year's resolution. Make me famous, you bastards. Make me so famous that no one can think "librarian" without thinking "effing." That's your job for the coming year. Get to work.