Tales from the "LiberryCAST"

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. And then there were times when I shot myself in my own foot by paying off favors owed for days substituted by fellow employees and worked a double shift for them with most of the rest of the staff present, too. You try real time blogging when everyone's looking over your shoulder!

Guest stars include: Mr. Smiley, Buddy, Harry the Killer Midget, Lennie, Mr. Little Stupid, The Coot and more.

I thought the only fitting way to wrap up this string of episodes in the Crime & Excrement Saga was to tell a few more tales about a guy who's been on the fringes of nearly every one of the last two months' worth of shows... Chester the (Potential) Molester. These mark the final tales focussed on Chester before I stopped writing the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog.

Way back in Episode 16 of this podcast, I started to tell the story of our penultimate stinky patron, Mr. Stanky. So, 67 episodes later, I finally get around to picking up where I left off.

Mr. Stanky was a guy who was so eye-wateringly stinky that he defeated all comers from our air-freshener arsenal. Astoundingly stinky... except when he wasn't.

The Untalented Mr. Ripley was far from the only would-be master criminal we encountered, but he was one of the few who we knew that were eventually arrested for it. However, his semi-allies, The Fagins, were far more destructive to the "liberry" proper and are infamous for stealing piles of books from our branch and others across the years. These, and one other, are their stories.

From nearly day one of the Tales from the "Liberry" blog, one of my major topics of frustration was the seemingly neverending series of horrors visited upon me via our public restroom. From patrons who refused to use our handy air-freshener, to the toilet death throes after another patron flushed something unflushable, to puddles of standing urine, to the occasional poo festivals of our mentally handicapped patrons, I have seen things I cannot unsee. Or unsmell. Add to that our continuing theme of semi-bathroom-related crime and you have a metric shit ton of "liberry" hassles.

The majority of patrons are not rogue patrons. Some are great, some average, some merely annoying and some are what I called benign irritants. They're not evil, but sometimes may as well be for the amount of hassle they create. Such a patron was The Coot--an old man who didn't quite rise to even 6th grumpiest status, but who still demonstrated some of the most aggressive passive aggressive behavior I've ever seen.

We didn't have a lot of trouble when it came to lawbreakers and the "liberry." More often, our patrons were overzealous when it came to the law and its intricacies. But once in a while we were touched by the greasy caress of theft.

Today I present the tale of the theft of the library's laptop by thieves driven to crime by their own bashful bladders. I also show how our own Junior Clubhouse Detective work that ultimately confirmed the identities of the thieves in question.

(Featuring a cameo by Chester the (Potential) Molester.)

Everyone has trouble losing the holiday pounds. Even Chester the (Potential) Molester. And when there's lard to lose, what's a prevert like Chester to do? Answer: Head on down to the local gym, where he can get in a workout while ogling short-short clad beauties, all while wearing his stupid little knit cap. Of course, those beauties don't usually take kindly to being ogled by the likes of Chester. And therein lies our story.

(Featuring a guest appearance by Parka)

On a whim, and lacking any other podcast material that struck my fancy when I woke up, I started rolling dice to determine a line of Tales from the "Liberry" blog entry dates from which I could potentially pull podcast adaptation material. Acording to my rules--ohhhh, there were rules--I couldn't rerecord a podcast I'd already adapted, couldn't adapt just one part of a multi-part story, nor could I skip to a nearby date if no entry existed for the date I rolled. After a 2 out of 5 ratio, I gave up on dice and hit Random.org's date randomizer, plugged in the range of years for the blog and went to town with slightly better results. In the end, I had five randomly chosen stories to adapt for today's show and adapt them I have. You're welcome.

During the writing of Tales from the "Liberry" the blog, I often found cause to point out the parental failings of some of our patrons. And on a few occasions, this hubris on my part would cause the patron saint of parents to arrange for me to experience a taste of the rigors of parenting myself. I was not always up to the challenge.

(Featuring baby Ashley, the baby who appeared on last week's podcast.)