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

1. del said on February 28th, 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.

2. MichaelG said on February 28th, 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.

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

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

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

   Gra­ham crackers.

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

   http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​S​y​l​v​e​s​t​e​r​_​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.

5. del said on February 28th, 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.

6. del said on February 28th, 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.

7. Connie said on February 28th, 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.

8. nancy said on February 28th, 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?

9. Danny said on February 28th, 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.

10. Sue said on February 28th, 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.

11. Jeff said on February 28th, 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.

12. nancy said on February 28th, 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.

13. Danny said on February 28th, 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.

14. Dorothy said on February 28th, 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.

15. del said on February 28th, 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.

16. Sue said on February 28th, 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.

17. Connie said on February 28th, 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.

18. Danny said on February 28th, 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.

19. Halloween Jack said on February 28th, 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.

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

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

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

    Just in … from Ital­ian Supreme Court.
    http://​www​.guardian​.co​.uk/​w​o​r​l​d​/​2​0​0​8​/​f​e​b​/​2​7​/​italy1

22. Julie Robinson said on February 28th, 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.

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

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

24. john c said on February 28th, 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!?”

25. Peter said on February 28th, 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!”

26. LAMary said on February 28th, 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.

27. brian stouder said on February 28th, 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?

28. nancy said on February 28th, 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.

29. Miss Beth said on February 28th, 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!

30. MichaelG said on February 28th, 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.

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

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

32. Danny said on February 28th, 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.

33. Dexter said on February 28th, 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.

34. joodyb said on February 28th, 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.

35. Miss Beth said on February 28th, 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.

36. Dexter said on February 28th, 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…”

37. Dexter said on February 28th, 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://​imus​truth​.type​pad​.com/​index/

38. Dexter said on February 28th, 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​.huff​in​g​ton​post​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​2​8​/​m​i​l​e​y​-​c​y​r​u​s​-​d​r​i​n​k​s​-​k​e​t​c​h​u​_​n​_​8​8​8​9​8.html

39. Joe K said on February 29th, 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

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

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

41. Julie said on February 29th, 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.

42. Danny said on February 29th, 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.

43. Connie said on February 29th, 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.”

44. tim goeglein | Hot Trends said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:07 pm

    […] To catch a self-abuser. […]

45. Robert said on February 29th, 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).

46. del said on March 1st, 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.

47. Hank Haines said on March 1st, 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.

48. Hank Haines said on March 1st, 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.

49. Danny said on March 1st, 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.

50. Sharon Goeglein said on June 9th, 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.