Tales from the "LiberryCAST"

In honor of National Banned Books Week, we present an expanded version of an Actual Conversation Heard in an Actual Library on that very topic. Directly interwoven with this tale is the story of my abiding love of the Walter the Farting Dog series and how my "liberry" self-banned it for several months to avoid the nonexistent wrath of coddling parents.

All in all, four different Tales from the "Liberry", each involving Walter to some degree, are covered in today's podcast, yet none of them are in their original form from the blog. Eat new content!

Libraries are places full of dreams. (Just ask Lucien.) Sometimes they can be literal, such as a nightmare I once had regarding a particular problem patron discovering the blog, or my dream of revenge on Joss Whedon for... well, Firefly fans know what Joss did. Other times, in title alone. And other times, it can be the dreams of a patron, dashed by a surly "liberry" ass. such as myself. They can all be found in today's DreamCAST.Link

Today's 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks brings to mind where I was during that time a decade ago and how it coincided with my hiring at the Tri-Metro "liberry." Today's podcast presents an adaptation of that portion of Secret Origins of Tales from the "Liberry" as well as a commentary bit containing the actual never-before-revealed secret origin of the blog.

As you might have noticed, I'm an enormous nerd. Maybe not quite as nerdy as the Nerdist Podcast, but nerdy all the same. As such, I'm fond of heading out to nerd gatherings such as the infamous Dragon Con in Atlanta. In honor of this being Dragon Con weekend for 2011, I present some non-"liberry" tales of my D-Con experiences of the past decade. Included are dealer's room encounters with gerbil-cleavaged sci-fi heroines; Annoying Brit Track Boy's near-death-experience at the hands of both the panel audience and the 5th Doctor Who; an awkward encounter with Biff from Back to the Future, Harlan Ellison laying verbal waste to one and all; and, as always, the guy that played Boomer in the 70s Battlestar Galactica.

Libraries always have their odd bird patrons. Flocks of them, usually. Ours was no exception. Presented for your consideration today are five tales of such in-the-wild encounters with odd bird patrons, and/or tales featuring some cussin'. That's right, it's the All Cussin' Episode (#$%& yeah!) with nary a censor tone to be found and Explicit right on the Tag. Fire it up for Grandma!

For most of my "liberry" career, I was a part time employee. Once in a while, though, when EVERYONE else was out of town, I was called upon to take on not only a full 8 hour day, but sometimes a full 10 hour day, almost entirely by myself. This is when my experiments with real time blogging began to take shape. It's not all funny material, but it was often surprising.

Guest stars include: Mr. Smiley, Parka, Kanji the Kid, Brent & Brice the New Devil Twins, Chester the (Potential) Moletster, and more.

One of the most astounding figures I encountered during my time at the "liberry" was our board president, Mr. Kreskin (not his real name). He was a very nice and capable human being, tirelessly juggling multiple complicated projects on the library's behalf. And from those projects arose many questions, only our two librarians were capable of answering for him. Unfortunately the ONLY time he was ever known to phone us at all were on the rare days when both librarians were out of town and unavailable. It was more reliable than Old Faithful.

(This episode also includes a cameo by Mrs. Carol Satan.)

Summer Reading, oh how it burns!

Yes, it's the time of year when snot-nosed crumb-crunchers descend upon the "liberry" to craft crafts, hear stories, fill out reading logs and create chaos. That is, if their parents can manage to get them signed up to begin with.

And who is the queen of Summer Reading Chaos? Why our old nemesis, Little Kayla, of course.

(This episode also includes a cameo by Parka as well as one by his shag carpet of torso hair.)

An odd tale of an odd bird encountered in the wild, AWAY from the "liberry" proper. Doc Ock Fetishist Woman was never a patron, but she was about as nutty as any of our patrons ever got. Not a bad human being in the slightest, just exasperating. In fact, if she has committed any crime, it's probably that she cares too much... about inanimate objects.

Also included in this tale is the story of the first time I was busted as a "liberry" blogger. Having your secret identity revealed to you is always disconcerting, but is even more bewildering when it comes with a large dollop of synchronicity on top.

Just when we thought we had it bad enough with frequent visits from Chester the (Potential) Molester, another seeming sicko fell into our midst. And, unlike Chester, this one actually had computer skills. He also had a habit of exclusively wearing a puffy white Michelin man winter parka in the warmth of April, so his nickname officially became Parka.

While I didn't know it at the time, he would become the MOST chronicled member of the "Liberry" Rogues Gallery by proving himself to be the MOST irritating patron we had to deal with, in a multitude of ways.

Your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to play the Five Tacos and a Taco podcast game Dick, Douche, or Dumbass and see if you can tell which category Parka falls into best. Or worst, as the case may be.

As an added bonus, the final story of the podcast features a magnificently satisfying tale of both a massively unprecedented event for our library as well as one of the aforementioned Chester getting his comeuppance at the hands of another library.