To catch a self-abuser.

When Kate was wee and I was an energetic mum who believed in early-childhood education, my plan to make her a lifelong reader* involved going to storytime every week at the Allen County Public Library. It was always led by one of the several excellent children’s librarians there, but my fave was Miss Beth. Miss Beth had a knack with kids and many piercings. She was also funny, and said things like “right on” when she agreed with you.

Anyway, Miss Beth is in Indy now, but she still reads NN.C, and checked in the other day when we briefly discussed the problem of library perverts — the men too cheap to get their own computer and broadband, and come to the library to surf for porn. It turns out Miss Beth also has mad skilz with the pervz:

There’s a system to catching a perv that I feel I’ve perfected lo these ten years. The rumor at my library is that I can smell a perv at 20 paces because of my success rate. The real tip-off? The subtle tilting of a computer monitor. No innocent person cares if you see their game of hearts or online dating profile. I give it about 20-30 minutes after I see the tilt and then do a fly-by. At this point, the patron is so engrossed (emphasis on “gross”) that he never even hears me approaching. It’s the heart-stopping jump and scramble that I love the most. The best line I ever heard? “I wasn’t looking at porn; those ladies were just missing clothes.” Hand to God.

It also reminds me of the summer I spent about a week (with the help of a few other librarians) combing and interpreting Indiana Code to aid in reprimanding a patron. This particular gent never actually whipped it out. Oh, no, nothing that crass. He would rub himself through his shorts. And when he would come up to ask for more time at his terminal, the evidence of his electronic love was front and center. I usually sat in a low chair and was confronted with his spreading stain enough to ask for help in getting him out. And wouldn’t you know? We found something (and since none of us are law librarians, we took great liberty with it) that suggested one could not self-pleasure through one’s clothes in public in this great state.

Just so’s you know.

How did librarians ever get tagged as shushing, severe, boring old maids? I’ve yet to meet one you wouldn’t want to have a beer with, just so you could hear their stories. On the other hand, maybe there’s a reason they turn into old maids. You can hardly blame a girl for swearing off men forever, after meeting a few like this.

*Obviously this plan has been a miserable failure. I just came downstairs to find her watching a Disney Channel show featuring a talking zit. Yes way.

I feel so much better today, I’m a new person. Still stiff, but no longer fatigued and miserable about it. Some things you just have to wait out. Even…the bloggage!

For Better or For Worse used to be one of my favorite comic strips, until Lynn Johnston embraced her inner conservative, the one that believes that while young ladies may dabble in these things called “careers,” there comes a time when they all have to come home, marry someone parentally approved and open the baby factory. The drawn-out final storyline leading to Johnston’s retirement — the marriage of Elizabeth and her unbelievably boring childhood friend, Andrew — has finally begun. The Comics Curmudgeon finds the turning point.

The reaction to Mr. F’Buckley’s death — I prefer Ernestine the Telephone Lady’s pronunciation — has been more tolerable than I expected, but then again, I’ve been avoiding the National Review. (Although Jeff forced me to read Tim Goeglein’s initial tribute, which was amusing. I’m keeping the bookmark close, to compare it with his inevitable News-Sentinel column.) A few lefty sources dug up this chestnut, which reads like it came out of a brandy-and-cigars conversation in the parlor at Twelve Oaks. Granted, the quote is old — older than me; that’s old — so I did the math and figured Buckley would have been 31 when he said it. Old enough to know better, certainly, but 1957 America was a different place, too. As a writer who’s produced millions of hastily churned words in thousands of forgettable pieces, my natural sympathy lies with the writer. What someone wrote then isn’t as important as what they’d write today. Writing has always been a form of thinking for me (and, I suspect, for Buckley), and part of the reason I do it all day is because it helps me clarify my own thoughts. Someone once asked, “What do you think of X?” and I replied, “Dunno. Haven’t written about it yet.” A sloppy thinker/writer like me might ramble all over the place before arriving at a destination, and if they did the same thing 24 hours later, arrive at an entirely different place.

From this NYT roundup of readers’ questions to Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, who’s writing a bio on the man (thanks, Jeff), we get this:

I never heard him make a personally disparaging remark about anyone, even adversaries like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Gore Vidal. He might describe something they did or the style in which they did it, but never in an insulting or even critical way. He had a large sense of the human comedy.

Also:

He said it was a mistake for National Review not to have supported the civil rights legislation of 1964-65, and later supported a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he grew to admire a good deal, above all for combining spiritual and political values.

So, see, Darwin was right. We do evolve.

Rereading that first quote, I see the trap. “Having a large sense of the human comedy” can be another way of saying, “He was a bullshit artist who would say anything for a paying audience.” Someday, Ann Coulter is going to die of lung cancer, and someone will say that about her. I know people who’ve met her, and say she’s funny and charming and nothing at all like she appears in print, that it’s all a schtick to make a living, etc. Or it might just be that Buckley really did have a large sense of the human comedy. This no longer matters. There’s a reason we say “rest in peace.”

Something I never knew: John McCain was born in the Canal Zone.

And with that, I’m dragging my stiff ass (literally; Tuesday’s workout included a set of two-at-a-time stair climbs, and now my ass hurts) off to the gym in hopes of limbering things up a bit. Later.

Posted at 9:13 am in Current events, Popculch |
 

50 responses to “To catch a self-abuser.”

  1. del said on February 28, 2008 at 10:13 am

    Miss Beth, a Michigan appeals court case involving a topless bar called The Dizzy Duck defines impermissibly indecent lap-dancing. Such dances are prohibited to the extent they are “for the purposes of sexual gratification” or something like that. By that definition a lot of things must be impermissibly indecent.

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  2. MichaelG said on February 28, 2008 at 10:15 am

    Tell your friend the librarian in Indy that there’s a name for what the pervs are doing. It’s called “pocket pool”.

    For Better of For Worse used to be one of the sharpest and best strips around. Now it’s turned into a dense, impenetrable morass of stupidity. And all that horrible flash back stuff with the el shitto artwork . . . yuggh. Content aside, there’s nothing that ruins a strip like lousy art. I went to their (her?) web site a couple of weeks ago and sent them a nasty gram. Like they care.

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  3. 4dbirds said on February 28, 2008 at 10:23 am

    The talking zit. I watched that with my daughter. Ah togetherness.

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  4. Jeff said on February 28, 2008 at 10:26 am

    Graham crackers.

    No, really (at least, that was what he thought would work).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Graham

    They were invented as a dietary aid to eliminate self-abuse.

    On the other hand, you’d have to clean all those crumbs out of the keyboards. But i’d rather have that cleaning duty at the library.

    I had to explain to my wife why i won’t/didn’t sit in the chairs at the internet terminals in the library, and she didn’t appreciate the new understanding of the complexities of this modern world. “Ewwwwwwwwwwww,” was, i believe, the substance of her reaction.

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  5. del said on February 28, 2008 at 10:27 am

    Is it really self-abuse? Stephen Colbert had a hilarious skit yesterday about Starbucks closing for 3 hrs. Carmina Burana’s playing to crescendo as Colbert ends up in a shower with a Venti that he dumps over his head while caressing his chest. Next, the frothy whipped cream is caressed over his chest with his hand which moves down until it is off camera. Moral excellence. Very funny.

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  6. del said on February 28, 2008 at 10:35 am

    Great Seinfeld line — George is in a hospital after injuring himself when discovered by his mother engaging in self-abuse (Glamour magazine in hand) — “I come in and I find Georgie treating himself like an amusement park!” or something like that.

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  7. Connie said on February 28, 2008 at 10:38 am

    It’s been several years since my library implemented a very strict rule. Any Internet user who deliberately displays pornography to a staff member is out of here for 30 days. We also changed out all the chairs at adult internet computers to plastic auditorium type chairs.

    We’ve found we’ve had to get stricter and stricter about internet access. In fact we just finished putting together a spreadsheet listing all the behaviors for which you can get kicked out, and the various escalating levels of banning for each offense.

    I know this sounds tough, but…. we put up an automated internet station reservation system a couple of years ago, and people were using their own card, their friend’s card, photocopies of their friend’s card (yes photocopies of barcodes will scan) to get more computer sessions than the two hours a day we allow.

    Last Fall we finally broke down and added security guards, actually they are uniformed off duty police officers. For years I said no we don’t need security guards, there have been no incidents, and finally circumstances convinced me.

    Elkhart is a tough town. Gangs, projects, homeless people, out of control teenagers. Gang graffiti in the restrooms, on the furniture and the building exterior.

    When I moved here eight years ago I looked at houses all over. I am thankful my kid didn’t end up in the Elkhart school system.

    My kid’s spring semester overseas program has moved from Paris to London. Next week she is going on spring break to the Costa del Sol (Spanish Riviera). Whereas I am going to Minneapolis in a few weeks for a conference. It’s not just fair.

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  8. nancy said on February 28, 2008 at 11:22 am

    Jeff, a few years ago a colleague of mine renovated an old farmhouse out near London, Ohio. They pried a mantelpiece off the wall to refurbish it, and found a pamphlet that had slipped back there, for a patent medicine guaranteed to stop “the dangerous and physically debilitating habit of self-abuse” in young men. Probably mostly alcohol. Just what a mother wants around the house — a drunken masturbator. Maybe that’s why those boys generally got shooed out of the house and into the sheep pen.

    And Elkhart, a tough town? I’m not surprised. I’m always amazed, when I drive through the little towns in this part of the country, how gritty, sad, and down-and-out they seem to be. They have signs at the border declaring themselves Meth Watch communities. The small industries that sustained the non-farming population are closing down, and the farming is increasingly being done on lease for ADM or some other agri-conglomerate. A lot of them have had a large influx of Hispanic workers, which leads to racial tension. The only small towns I know that are still thriving have colleges in them, which tells you something about evil hippie liberal academia, eh?

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  9. Danny said on February 28, 2008 at 11:44 am

    A lot of them have had a large influx of Hispanic workers, which leads to racial tension.

    No. This has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the fact that illegal immigrants and corporations have a symbiotic relationship that is killing the middle class by driving down wages. And the next argument that usually follows is something along the lines of “how we all benefit from this cheap labor in the low price of produce.” Simply not true. Studies show that the price of a head of lettuce might go up 15 cents. And that in no way offsets the amount that we all pay in increased medical insurance, welfare and overcrowded schools.

    And it is not just agriculture. We are also talking about construction industry and what used to be good paying factory jobs.

    *Sounds like evil hippie liberal acedemia and Wallstreet have become strange bedfellows.

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  10. Sue said on February 28, 2008 at 11:45 am

    We’re all over the map today! My kids joke about the books that the Easter Bunny and Santa leave them, even now that they’re in their twenties. This Easter it will be “God Save the Fan” for my son and “Fried Green Tomatoes … ” for my daughter.
    I hate FBFW, as it’s known on Comics Curmudgeon. I used to read it casually, until it became apparent that Elizabeth – given a choice of several hot guys who were not from the hometown – was going to have to go with that Anthony guy who looks like her grandfather. Now that the cartoonist has been left by her husband, it just seems like she’s manipulating her characters to fulfill some kind of fantasy life-as-it-should-be dream. And the wedding dress? My sister actually got stuck in my mother’s dress when she tried it on, due to the fact that she’s several inches taller than my mom. Heirloom non-crawlspace clothing is very nice but not usually practical a few generations removed. Count on it, though: it will fit Liz perfectly. Ick.
    Libraries! I spent a decade as a library aide. We actually had names for some of our more memorable patrons (clients, customers, whatever they’re called now). Not too much porno, fortunately, but we had the laughing lady, the snot sisters, Elvis man; all odd and some scary. A library in another town had a patron who followed women out of the building and asked for their shoes. Just last week one of our librarians was in the middle of a phone discussion with a patron regarding an overdue book and the guy tried to turn it into a “what are you wearing” call. Nancy’s right – library people are funny and fearless and I love almost all my library coworkers, with the exception of the cold, cheerless, uptight old maid who won’t retire and scares the children.

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  11. Jeff said on February 28, 2008 at 11:54 am

    “a drunken masturbator”

    Now there’s a blog post title for you.

    You have all read “The Road to Wellville,” haven’t you? A brilliant and historically solid book by T. Coragicantspellit Boyle. No, the movie doesn’t count — it’s not bad, although the Hollywoodized ending eviscerated the story IMHO.

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  12. nancy said on February 28, 2008 at 11:54 am

    Whatever the cause, Danny, it still comes out as racial tension. I guess what I’m saying is, racial tension does not always equal racism.

    In northeast Indiana small towns, some of it manifests in how people choose to live. Recent immigrants are more comfortable cramming far more people under a single roof than most of us would be. (I hear this happens in California, too, and not just with Hispanics. Asians seem to be comfortable with a density that would make me break out in hives.) Cars get parked up and down the block, and when they run out of block, sometimes in the yard.

    I recall reading something in the San Jose Mercury-News years back, about problems between South Pacific islanders and long-established locals. The former liked to dedicate the weekend to raucous get-togethers involving pig roasts, lots of drinking, and tons of guests. The pig was frequently roasted in a pit in the FRONT YARD, and they were honestly amazed that anyone could object to such a thing.

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  13. Danny said on February 28, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    In my area, we sometimes see filipinos who have extended family under the same roof. But it never seems to be a problem. Everything is orderly and property values are respected.

    The same cannot be said for the overcrowded flop houses for illegal immigrants (aka clown houses). There is no sense of family nor respect for property values. Why should there be? There was no respect for the law when they crossed the border illegally (or over-stayed a visa) and they are not interested in cultural assimilation.

    *And in case anyone should think that this is just “whitey” grousing, my co-workers of Latino/Hispanic decent who are here legally hold the same opinions.

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  14. Dorothy said on February 28, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    All this library/librarian talk has me thinking of Hilda, the very quiet, thin lipped but sweet old lady who was the corporate librarian at my first office job after high school. She retired a few years after I started there, and I remember being so shocked to hear she killed herself by jumping out of a window in downtown Pittsburgh one day. She was probably the quietest person I ever knew. Her death made me very sad, to think of how lonely she must have been.

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  15. del said on February 28, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    I’m sure the illegal immigration picture’s a lot different to you in California than here in Michigan. Mexican immigrants here often move into a very tough neighborhood on the southwest side of Detroit near a touristy area called “Mexican village” for what that’s worth.

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  16. Sue said on February 28, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    I recall a PBS film a few years back about a community in New York trying to come to terms with day workers (many illegal) in their town. The part I remember most was that the workers who were there fighting for a position in the community in the beginning began to complain about the second wave of workers, from a different part of Mexico, who were viewed as too aggressive and were taking jobs away from the first group. Ah, the melting pot. My limited experience with workers from south of the US is that they work incredibly hard, and I think that using their immigrant or illegal status to deny them decent pay or protections is as criminal as sneaking across the border. Here’s a novel idea: let’s pay people what the job is worth, and not expect them to put their health and lives in jeopardy because we can get away with using them as human forklifts or whatever. If we’re willing to pay high gas prices at the same time we know that gas companies are making obscene profits, we should be willing to pay bucks for produce and lawn care to keep basic living standards and health & safety part of the equation. Then maybe “the jobs that we won’t do” will become obsolete. Having said all that, I also have to admit that I am as revolted as anyone else by “activists” milking the system, hiding in churches and generally thumbing their noses at the U.S. However, I hold the two separate. You can find both the treatment of immigrants and the behavior of “activists” disgusting, and I do.

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  17. Connie said on February 28, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    I wouldn’t call Elkhart a small town. Counting the suburban townships the pop is over 100,000. It has always been a booming industrial blue collar city. And historically the big “race” problem had to do the the Italian immigrants who came here in the early part of the century to work on the railroad. If you ever come to Elkhart, ask me for directions to Michael’s Italian Restaurant which has been in the same building for over 50 years, just west of downtown in what used to be called the Italian neighborhood.

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  18. Danny said on February 28, 2008 at 1:04 pm

    Agreed, Sue.I have very low regard for the companies and corporations who take advantage of the illegal’s status to fuel their own greed. And it makes it doubly hard to compete for business owners who want to do the right thing.

    We need to go after the businesses on a regular basis. Probably with a more tamper-proof ID system or an easier way for employers to check if a social security number matches a name, this is doable.

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  19. Halloween Jack said on February 28, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    How did librarians ever get tagged as shushing, severe, boring old maids?

    I suspect that the stereotype stuck around as long as it did for the same reason that many people think that nurses still wear all white with those little caps: it’s something of a sexual fetish. You know: the lonely librarian (remember the dreadful fate that befell George Bailey’s wife in the parallel universe in It’s a Wonderful Life?) with her hair in a bun who’s just waiting for some stud to come along and rock her world? Ask Miss Beth how often she got hit on; some of the female librarians of my acquaintance (I’m a librarian as well) wear wedding rings even though they’re single, and even that doesn’t always help.

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  20. Danny said on February 28, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Well, yeah.. Doesn’t librarian have its root in libido?

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  21. del said on February 28, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    Just in . . . from Italian Supreme Court.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/27/italy1

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  22. Julie Robinson said on February 28, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    My mom was a librarian. When she contracted hepititis, the only cause they could find was contact with books that had **** on them. Talk about ewww.

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  23. del said on February 28, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    Librarians are sexy. Period. Ask Kramer from Seinfeld. Giiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidddyuppppp!

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  24. john c said on February 28, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    Random thoughts on Mexican immigrants:
    1. They – many of them illegals, no doubt – are responsible for bringing back several down and out neighborhoods in Chicago. My very broad generalized observation is that they are willing to work long hours, they have extended family networks to help with childcare, and they save their money. The guy mowing your lawn today will have three crews mowing lawns in five years.
    2. Young single Mexican men like to spend Saturday night standing around a case of Budweiser in an empty lot – any lot, really, but especially the one next to 4050 N. Kenmore – singing very loudly.
    3. My favorite Harry Carrey line was this, uttered during another Cubs loss, after Harry had had a few too many “ice cold BUD-weisers” and a kid from south of the border botched a pop-up. Said Harry: “How the hell does a kid from Mexico lose a ball in the sun!?”

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  25. Peter said on February 28, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    Talk about all over the map, but here’s my favorite Harry stories:

    1. During a Sox/Royals game in the late ’70’s, Harry just started laying into Jimmy Carter’s son (I forgot his name) who was living at the White House; Harry’s rant just got meaner until he was practically screaming that he (Harry) shouldn’t have to pay taxes to support freeloaders at the White House “why doesn’t that kid get a JOB!”

    2. One summer Magnavox had a promotion where every week a lucky fan would win a Quasar (Man, I’m old!) It seemed that every winner had an unpronouncable Eastern European name.
    One night, Sox/Tigers, late inning, Dave Lemanczyk was getting ready, and Harry, having had his beer quota…”Dave Lemach, Lemansk, um…hey, somebody give that Pollack a Quasar!”

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  26. LAMary said on February 28, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    The pig roasting raucous Pacific Islanders might have been Samoan, not Filipino. I remember a big deal in the news her about 15 years ago when police were called in to break up a Samoan wedding shower because it became too rowdy.

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  27. brian stouder said on February 28, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    Mary – is that the one where the police (LA county sheriff’s dept) began breaking heads, and got sued for brutality…and then lost the suit because their own car cameras proved that the folks at the party were more or less peacefully milling about, before being attacked by the police?

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  28. nancy said on February 28, 2008 at 4:26 pm

    They were Samoan, I believe. Either that, or native Hawaiian. (Ethnically, is there a difference?) The pig roasts were, essentially, luaus. So much fun in Hawaii, less so when it’s next door, every Sunday.

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  29. Miss Beth said on February 28, 2008 at 4:41 pm

    To MichaelG: I’m familiar with pocket pool. Any girl who ever attended a middle or high school with boys should be. To an eight-grade boy, I suspect it’s the height of subtlety. I’m cool with pocket pool; it’s the rubbing of one’s zipper to the point of completion that makes me queasy.

    To Sue: Thank God! We too have a list of names for some library patrons, but more along the lines of “Rotten Meat Man” (based on smell alone.) It makes me feel a bit better to know this happens elsewhere. The best one I’ve heard was for the man who wrote mash notes to female patrons about that woman’s feet and/or footwear. He was dubbed “The Birkenstalker.”

    To Julie: Mother of God! That’s horrifying!

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  30. MichaelG said on February 28, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    Beth, sorry for not addressing you directly. Am I to infer from your comment that in some high schools there’s such a thing as pocket pool with an assist?

    And Danny: “Doesn’t librarian have its root in libido?” No. The root is libri which means, amazingly enough, book. My parents made me take Latin in high school. What a waste.

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  31. joodyb said on February 28, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    but that’s some good pig, nance, however you slice it.

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  32. Danny said on February 28, 2008 at 6:19 pm

    Michael, I knew that. It was a joke. Kinda like if any of you saw “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” where the father was always asking someone to give him ANY word and he would relate it back to its Greek root.

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  33. Dexter said on February 28, 2008 at 6:28 pm

    Ah, just the spot for some Hawaiian bashing!
    Many years ago I was sent to an army hospital to work as a medic. One night I was assigned to taking temps. We could use oral thermometers unless the trainees were goldbricking by heating up the reading a few degrees.
    One fellow happened to be from Hawaii.
    He was suspected of heating up his reading to get out of training a few days.
    I had to administer a rectal thermometer.
    His ass was just nasty with shit!
    I confronted him on his total lack of hygiene…his response?
    “In Hawaii, we don’t wipe! Tee hee hee !”

    Not much of a story, and not as gross as a filthy pervert with cum stains asking for more online time…but it’s all true, nonetheless.

    Here in my little city’s library, the computers are almost always jammed up with high school kids…I’d feel creepy being the only adult even if I was just reading WaPo.
    But we did have a party store perv who laid it on the counter to impress a young female clerk, who smashed the offending man’s member with a big can of peaches.
    I know…it sounds like urban legend, but I went there every day for things and I knew the witness to the smashing; the local beat reporter wrote it up in the daily newspaper.

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  34. joodyb said on February 28, 2008 at 6:58 pm

    nn thanks: just read the wolcott piece cited yesterday. i think i know what slowly killed WFB. the ballard-gautier ref was worth the trip.

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  35. Miss Beth said on February 28, 2008 at 7:49 pm

    Okay, Nancy, one last thing about the world of librarianship:
    “How did librarians ever get tagged as shushing, severe, boring old maids?”
    Last November, I presented at the annual Indiana Library Federation conference. I arrived early and half-asleep, barely managing to steer my car into a garage. I thought I knew how to get to the conference center, but was unsure if I was heading in the right direction. Unsure until I spotted the herds of women in sensible shoes and ill-fitting pantsuits. My quest was over; sadly, I had found my tribe. There are indeed hot librarians and smokin’ guybrarians…but their numbers are few, at least in the Midwest.

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  36. Dexter said on February 28, 2008 at 8:40 pm

    I BRAKE FOR ANIMAL (STORIES).

    A note from the animal kingdom:
    After my pet mouse, Tommy, startled me by jumping on my foot from the kitchen counter top (he may well have been scared and fell) I had to terminate our relationship by killing him. A piece of cheese did him in.
    I hated to do it but the trail of mice poo poo was killing me…poor Tommy…never had a chance. He was a cool mouse, too. Damn.
    This happened before this morn when I heard Fred Imus’s story of how he had to kill his pet mouse, Bob, the other day. Fred told Don and us “never name a mouse you’re gonna have to kill…”

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  37. Dexter said on February 28, 2008 at 8:48 pm

    Oh…I don’t want to stir up any Imus controversy, but for any fans who might want to hear a show some day, here’s all-Imus all the time…entire shows with one click:

    http://imustruth.typepad.com/index/

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  38. Dexter said on February 28, 2008 at 9:26 pm

    Now, I like a shot of ketchup on a sandwich sometimes, but leave it to little Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus to show us HOW IT’S DONE.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/28/miley-cyrus-drinks-ketchu_n_88898.html

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  39. Joe K said on February 29, 2008 at 12:00 am

    Just a thought. Most people I know, myself included would not do the jobs that the illegals do, such as working in a beef or poultry plant for the wages they receive. You could demand to pay them more,but who will make up the increase? Not the owner but the consumer. The plants are non-union for a reason. Cheap throwaway labor. It doesn’t make it right. but thats the way it is.
    ” I am just saying”
    Joe K

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  40. Cosmo Panzini said on February 29, 2008 at 6:45 am

    More Harry Caray stories!!!!!!!!!!!

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  41. Julie said on February 29, 2008 at 8:38 am

    Thank you for the kind words for librarians. Saddled with this image problem, and now assaulted from all sides with the internet porn issue (a hot topic in our state legislature right now), librarianship isn’t what it used to be. Thank goodness for Miss Beth…we’re still fighting the good fight.

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  42. Danny said on February 29, 2008 at 9:24 am

    Joe, the increase would not be that much for the consumer. In my original comment on this, I mentioned that the price of a head of lettuce would go up approximately 15 cents. Not a big deal.

    And no matter what anyone’s argument is, we just can’t have uncontrolled, illegal immigration. It needs to be legal immigration.

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  43. Connie said on February 29, 2008 at 10:23 am

    Oh Miss Beth, I know exactly what you mean. I go to librarian conventions and in the midst of the crowd I look around and say to myself “what in the world am I doing hanging around with these kind of people.” Then I look down at my own sensible shoes and think “Oh my god, I am one of them.”

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  44. Robert said on February 29, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    To this small-binded, backward blog: I find it hypocritical to condemn conservatives like Buckley and Goeglein and then turn right back to parochialism. The phrase ‘self-abuser’ is an antequated idea from the past. The issue of public exposure aside, the suggestion that private male masturbation (no mention of ‘female pervs’, apparently) in one’s own home is wrong (one commenter talking about what a mother wouldn’t want in her own) is the same brand of old-fashioned, ‘mom and apple pie’ and ‘decorum’ that is, in itself, not just sexually repressed but also gender-biased (anti-male) and heteronormative (the assumption that all guys are straight, and that pleasuring oneself robs the female of satisfaction).

    I suggest a more libertarian approach, and note that many who post repressed comments are often later caught doing the unthinkable (cheating, paying for prostitution, etc).

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  45. del said on March 1, 2008 at 8:38 am

    Small-minded, backward? Robert, I think not. Condemning of Buckley and Goeglein? Again, I think not. (Goeglein self-destructed, nor was Buckley condemned.) Self-abuser an antiquated term? Maybe so.
    Although I don’t agree with the premises upon which you rest your criticisms, nor your points, they’re fun to read. No need to go all libertarian though (not that I know what you mean by that — just wanted to poke some good fun at you). Many things are bad, and a few are unthinkable, but cheating on your spouse and paying for a hooker don’t fall into the latter category.

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  46. Hank Haines said on March 1, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Never heard Buckley disparage anyone? Well, on national TV he once called Gore Vidal “a G… D….. queer.”
    Remarkable remark.

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  47. Hank Haines said on March 1, 2008 at 10:13 am

    Mr. Buckley made a disparaging, profane remark regarding Gore Vidal’s lifestyle. and he did it on national TV. Back in the black and white days of the medium.

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  48. Danny said on March 1, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Hank, your Buckley quote is imprecise. To be precise, here is the transcript of the exchange:

    Vidal: As far as I am concerned, the only crypto Nazi I can think of is yourself.

    Buckley: Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto Nazi, or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.

    They were both out of control. Buckley, more so.

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  49. Sharon Goeglein said on June 9, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    First of all, we are all human and make mistakes. Usually people who condemn others are just hiding behind their own mistakes.” Whoever is without sin toss the first stone.” It hurts to hear people bash Tim.On the whole the Goegleins are caring people who love the Lord, but we are told if we confess our love of God we will be persecuted in different ways. Judge not lest you be judged.

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