I Am Completely Serious

Graduating seniors who work at the library are supposed to pick out a book to be put on display at the end of the year, with our photo and an explanation of why we think the book's important. When they take it down, they put a little plate in it with our name and year of graduation. It's kind of stupid, because they don't let us pick out a book for the library to buy - we just choose one they already own - and nobody can check out the book we recommend while it's on display.

But, yes. I decided to donate my copy of A, A', by Hagio Moto for my book. I gave it to the woman in charge, let her take my picture, wrote my little tagline, and left.

That was a couple months ago, and it's only in the past few days the books actually went up. So I have no recollection as to why "my" explanation of the manga's import might read thusly:

A,A' Prime: a Graphic Novel. It's the only book by Moto Hagia, without whom, modern Manga, wouldn't exist in English.

...I WILL KILL YOU SO HARD WOMAN ohhh this is character assassination.

Even if she can't form a coherent sentence, she could at least have made the effort to spell the author's name correctly.

My assumption is that she had a comma spasm and lost the meaning of the original sentence, which I guess was something like, "It's the only book by Moto Hagio, without whom modern manga wouldn't exist, available in English."

I got my supervisor's permission to make myself a new sign. I've got a fairly well-behaved version finished - it's slightly snazzier than the original, with a less clashing color scheme and a better photo of me (that's important, too!), which I think I deserve after having such words put in my mouth. But I'm still teetering on the edge of adding something horrible. I wonder if they'll take it down if I use one of my Nekozawa Halloween photos. Or just a screenshot of Haruhi's mom's iei. Or a picture of Hunter S. Thompson.

It is exactly zero degrees Fahrenheit outside.

When I got to the library for my midnight-to-two shift, I noticed that the inside of the bathroom window had a white coating around the edges. I poked it and left a fingerprint; it was frost. I'd never seen that before, and guessed the window must have been left open, and only been closed a few minutes before.

Later I went into the stacks to shelve. All the windows were frosted over - the condensation was freezing as it formed on the glass. The spot I'd melted in the bathroom window had frozen over again when I went to turn off the lights at closing.

I thought I was wearing my scarf today, but during lit I realized I'd actually picked up the piece of polartec fabric I'd bought to sew a bag out of. I can't find my real scarf. I grant that the polartec's warmer, but my throat's still too sore for me to breathe out there without something shielding my mouth, and polartec isn't exactly permeable. So I have been walking around all day in a partly-chopped-up polartec pseudo-scarf, with my hands over my mouth as though I am shocked and scandalized.

To round up the list of grievances, I've applied moisturizer four times in the past three hours, and have put some water boiling in my rice-cooker to act as a humidifier, because I can't breathe very well in here, either. I hope it doesn't break.

Cardcaptor Sakura probably fosters really unhealthy attitudes about honesty. There are all these scenes, particularly in the last couple volumes, of which the moral is basically, It's okay to deceive your loved ones if you feel like it's for their own good. Particularly if the loved one is Sakura. She will totally thank you for it - tears in her eyes, screentone with bubbles and flowers, the works.

( Facetiousness continues, but with slight spoilers. )

But it is so cute that I don't actually care. I guess Sakura is the only completely heterosexual protagonist? I don't even know if you can count Clow, he has this thing about keeping extremely pretty men around. Well, maybe Kero's straight. It's not addressed.

Ohhh, wait. Miss Mizuki. Okay, so two.

My brain hurts from library. There were four people on my shift for some reason, and all of them but me were new.

Villainous types were using the kitchen at 6:30, so I decided to put my fish out to thaw and lie down while I waited for them to finish.

After a while, I noticed that it was kind of dark, and rolled over to look at the clock. It said 1:19 AM. I said, out loud, so as my inanimate objects would know, "I am some kind of genius."

Whenever I do something stupid at work, I preface my explanation with, "Because I'm a genius." (as in, "Because I'm a genius, I accidentally hit the print button just now," or, "Because I'm a genius, I gave that girl bad directions.") Today ILL Lord heard me saying this for the first time and laughed at me. I told her patiently, "I never do anything for non-genius reasons." About forty-five seconds later, I ran into a piller.

I laughed at this book when I checked it in today. I am a bad person.

(I also stole this image from Amazon - hence the little copyright notices - so I'm a really bad person.)



Big and orange means severe, man! We're not talking about fidgeting here, or talking too loud at parties or taking your pizza apart before you eat it - none of those minor behavior problems! We're talking about throwing buildings at happy dogs and then exploding! SEVERE behavior problems!

Doing the headcount is annoying. There's something about a student worker walking around with a clipboard that makes college students think they're being written by Arthur Miller - there are always suspicious looks, and on weekday evenings, at least one person giving me a hostile, openly defiant look until I get off her turf. (It's mostly girls who do this, for some reason. There is one guy who's always in the stacks, always closes his book when he sees me, and having learned to recognize me as a library employee, now glares whenever he runs into me anywhere on campus. I have this self-destructive impulse to order him to Respect My Authori-tay.)

I don't know what these people think I'm doing - I can't decide if it would calm them down or make it worse if I started, say, pointing with my pencil while I'm counting, to make it obvious what's going on. Maybe they think we go around looking for people who are eating - which actually *isn't* against the rules - or who have cell phones out - which is, but mostly isn't enforced, since it's a general campus-wide thing that no one ever turns their phone off, and we'd never have time for actual work - breathe and think tea thoughts. Or maybe they think we're looking to see who's making a mess, since the ones who have laid out a perimeter of paper wads and Red Bull cans usually get the weirdest. If they're so worried about being called on that, perhaps they ought give ease to their tortured consciences, and clean up after themselves.

(By the way - people who leave food in out-of-the-way corners of the stacks? I know God (she's in my KoL guild, likes to play as a Disco Bandit) and she told me last week, you're going straight to hell. You don't even get to hang with Charon, they send a guy around with a *truck*. Take you right down to the cold place with that big head.)

I've seen one of the supervisors doing the count, and people actually didn't react as badly to her as they do to the student workers. (I think I'm extra-sensitive to this, but it's not just me that sets them off. No one pays attention when I've got a truckful of books, it's the clipboard that makes them antsy.) I guess it's because the supervisors are older and seem more like legitimate authority figures, the kind of people who have the *right* to carry a clipboard around and look at you. What would give me that right? A name tag? A lanyard with some keys? - no, half of everyone has a lanyard at this school, they're like sleep disorders. What if I wore a lab coat, and held, um, held some *medication*? What would a psych student doing a behavior study carry around, flash cards or something?

I don't think it really bothers me, but every time I see someone trying to hide from the clipboard, I just want to confirm all their darkest fears - ask the guy holding the Little Red Book if I can "please see some ID," or tell someone to lift their feet like I want to pick up some garbage under their chair, then examine the soles of their shoes and explain in a grim cop-show voice that we're still looking for the soda-spill perp. Walk past someone, stop abruptly and turn around to look at them again, look down at the clipboard, look up one more time to be *totally sure*, then hurry out. And one of the turf warrior girls would chase after me shouting out her inchoate suspicions about the Patriot Act and smoking bans, and there'd be a tense confrontation, and I'd get fired when six or seven people showed up the next day with signs protesting the new library policy against bangs.

One day, I will doubtless become so amused by airport security that I end up at the bottom of a dogpile. I apologize in advance to those in line behind me.

Maybe I'll make a nametag that says "Attacked Mystification P.D."

I was up in the stacks shelving earlier, and one of the books was called Great First Lines. I opened it to a random page to stick my culprit-slip in, and it said, "Call me Ishmael."

I said, "Well, fuck you, too."

My head hurts and the fan is too noisy, and I'm feeling kind of resentful at the world in general. I am pretty sure that my Comm book's unattractive orange color is deliberate and aggressive. The dorm's dryer burnt the shirts I just bought this morning. On purpose.

I'll show you, objects. I'll show you all.