Alone and Unobserved

An Update from Your Local Library

Sean — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:24:23 +0000

I thought about taking allergy medication today but then I remembered how tired I’ve been and how tired the meds make me and I abstained.

Anyway, totally dripping and sniffling and snrrrrking and wiping my nose on my sleeve at the reference desk like a professional librarian.

FELLAS.

My Librarian had stood — a Loaded Gun —

Sean — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 22:19:36 +0000

Me: (Shutting a book with a bang) Oh I hate myself so much right now.

Coworker: (Startled look)

Me: Well, more than usual, at least.

Coworker: What happened?

Me: I asked the library to buy this book, and then when it came in I let it sit on my desk for two months. I went to renew it just now but I couldn’t because there’s a hold on it for someone else, and we only have this one copy. So now that I can’t keep it, I finally opened it up and it’s really good! Or at least the chapter or so of it that I’ve read. WHYYYYYYY—

Coworker: Yup. Happens to all of us.

Me: —YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Under the Two-Scan Sun

Sean — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:37:05 +0000

Patron: Are you familiar with Italy?

Me: …somewhat. What did you need to know?

Patron: Have you ever heard of a place called “Two-Scanny”?

Me: Tuscany? It’s a region in Italy.

Patron: Because I have this olive oil, supposed to be Italian, but all it says is “Made in, uh, Tooscany.” So that’s in Italy?

Me: Yep.

Patron: You sure?

Me: (Internal sigh)

My relationship with my mother is very complicated, especially where pants are involved.

Sean — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 20:52:21 +0000

Remember how I went to bed super-crazy-early on Sunday night, and then got up super-crazy-early Monday morning? And then decided this was going to be the beginning of a New Me who got to bed at a reasonable hour and got up early and was always cheerful and rested? (You may not remember that last part because I don’t think I recorded it or communicated it to anyone else.)

Yeah, despite my lofty ambitions, my body is having none of it. Even though I went to bed exhausted at 10:30 last night (not quite as crazy-early as 6 or 7 but still a good two hours before I usually hit the hay) I tossed and turned and dreamed terrible dreams about being on vacation with my family (nakedness! lost towels! DIRTY CLOTHES) and when my alarm went off at 7 this morning I woke feeling like I’d never slept and I snarled and groaned and cursed and wished death and destruction on all and sundry.

It is now 2:30 in the afternoon and I’m still not awake. I’ve been at work since nine, answering reference questions, dispensing advice, scheduling library programs and signing forms—all in a nightmarish somnambulant state where every other moment I expect my mother to walk up and ask me if I want to see the Labyrinth of Steamy Corridors again, and where are my pants? don’t I know I’m in PUBLIC? and am I ready for my choir performance?

I really don’t know what the answer is to my sleep/nightmare problems, but I do know that I already wandered the Labyrinth of Steamy Corridors (and Naked Overweight Men) once and I have no interest in doing it again, but thank you for asking, Mom, and would you please stop stealing my pants I believe we’ve talked about this.

Brown-Eyed Girl

Sean — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 07:44:21 +0000

So I said there might be photos and MAYBE even video of the drunken YouTube karaoke party, but I was drunk so there’s pretty much just a vid of TJ singing Brown-Eyed Girl.

Right now we’re watching Chris Isaak musik videos and arguing over whether or not he actually is (or was) hot. (The answer is yes, Chris Isaak is/was fucking smoldering.)

I may post the video of TJ to the Internet at some point. I’ll keep you guys posted.

And now Blake is singing the praises of Dr. Laura and Levi Johnston. I think it’s time for the night to end.

Cheers, everyone!

Okay, okay, I’ll go hang out with my friends I GUESS, jeez, stop pushing.

Sean — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 01:18:22 +0000

I know you all have been really, really worried about my social life, and/or the lack thereof, and/or that all I seem to do lately is hole up in my basement apartment with my Netflix Streaming account and watch Futurama and drink gin and/or bourbon.

What can I say? Bender understands me, man, he GETS me.

On the other hand, I swear I’m not (yet) an alcoholic. Um. Probably.

Which is why I’m so excited to go hang out at my friend Nick’s house tonight and get drunk! Because I definitely don’t do that often enough!

(I may have started on the gin a bit early today. Like, say, at 3:30 pm. But not continuously!)

What were we talking about? Oh, right. Futurama. So it has always been in the back of my mind that I love Futurama, BUT I’ve hardly ever seen any of it. A crime, right? Prosecutable, even. Yes. So I’ve always intended to do a marathon. I figured it would be easy: there are only four seasons and four films.

So then Comedy Central has to pick the series back up again and here I am, caught with my pants down, a virtual Futurama novice, and I’ve got to get caught up so I can enjoy the full, subtle brilliance of the new episodes.

And then the Netflix app for iPhone came out! And I could watch Futurama WHEREVER I HAPPENED TO BE STANDING OR SITTING OR RECLINING.

So that’s what I’m doing. Getting caught up on Futurama. And drinking delicious gin and/or bourbon mixed with various delectable mixers. As one does.

What were we talking about? Oh, right. My social life. So yeah, I’ll be out of the house tonight—well, out of my house, at least—singing along amateurishly to amateurish YouTube karaoke videos, and getting smashed. Um, smashed-er.

There may be pictures.

There may be video.

Stay tuned.

Testing My Qualifications

Sean — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:25:03 +0000

Patron: Do you know who is Karl Marx?

Me: Yup.

Patron: Do you know who is… Rita Eng Hell?

Me: What? Who?

Patron: Rita Eng Hell. You know who is?

Me: I… I’m not sure.

Patron: Er, Eng-gell.

Me: Oh, Engels. Yes, I do.

Patron: (Gives me a crafty look.) Is he… or is she?

Me: Well, I know of a specific Engels who was a he, but there are other Engels who are she’s.

Patron: You are sure??

Me: Yep, I’m sure.

Patron: Is right! Russian people think, Karl Marx, and his wife, Engels! Hahahaha!

Me: Ahahahaha…

Spaghetti all’aglio e olio (Spaghetti with garlic and olive oil)

Sean — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 05:25:52 +0000

Pasta
Bring five quarts of well-salted water to boil in a pot. Add spaghetti and stir until the pasta softens and submerges. Bring water back to a medium-low boil and cook until the pasta is almost al dente. Drain immediately, reserving a ladleful of the cooking water.

Garlic-Oil Sauce
Mince the garlic and combine in a cold pan with the olive oil. Simmer over low heat until the oil is fragrant and the garlic is soft. Do not allow garlic to brown—slow is better than fast. Set aside and keep warm until the pasta is ready.

Assembly
Strip the leaves from the parsley and discard stems (or reserve for making stock). Mince finely. Combine the pasta, garlic oil and parsley. Add enough of the reserved cooking water to coat the pasta. Serve immediately.

I think we may have a real problem here.

Sean — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:55:07 +0000

Sometime yesterday, during our normal business hours and right under our noses, someone—or someones—went through our nonfiction collection, pulled all the bright yellow-and-black Dummies books from their places throughout the stacks and reshelved them all together in one place.

This is funny. Yes, we laughed when we found it. But it’s not funny, too. It’s already hard for the shelvers in my department to keep up with the normal shelving flow, and now there are suddenly two full extra carts for them to deal with. When the shelvers are behind it immediately and strongly impacts how easy it is for patrons and staff to find books in the collection.

Also, with the ongoing censorship problem we’re having, security is already being tightened. And with tightened security, individual privacy is inevitably lost. Which is a shame for everyone. We don’t need a reason to tighten security even more. Please.

This Isn’t Even AdNonSense, This Is AdFuckWittery

Sean — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 01:29:14 +0000

I know none of my readers are particularly excited by the prospect of my adding ads to the site, even if they’re just unobtrusive Google text ads. And I haven’t even 100% decided to do it. But the fact that I cannot log into my AdSense account—an account I created who knows how many years ago, and whose username and password I long ago forgot—is currently driving me to the edge of frothing, homicidal rage. And Google’s “help” pages are, as usual, worse than unhelpful.

Google consistently maintains that the following contradictory positions are true:

My main Google account has no AdSense accounts associated with it.
My main Google email (the one that’s part of my main Google account) cannot be used to set up a new AdSense account, because it is already associated with an AdSense account.

At this point my eyes are already bulging with rage, and I remember why I gave up on ever using AdSense in the first place. But, because I am a sense-challenged, pain-loving fool, I visit Google’s Help Center (motto: “Where Your Will To Live Goes To Die”) to see what can be done to recover my account.

Well, according to a labyrinthine series of help articles, the following must be done!

If I no longer remember my “login,” I should check the original email I got from AdSense with that information in it. (The original email has no such information in it. The original email has NO useful information in it. Maybe because, back in the day, when I “submitted my application” [i.e., clicked on a button in Blogger] they had a functional account recovery process. Or a different, non-functional one.)
Failing the above, I should submit a recovery request with several pieces of information I could only get IF I HAD ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT. Which, I’m not sure if you’ve caught on to this yet, I DO NOT.
Failing the above “Failing the above”: I should submit an application for a new account (remembering to lie when it asks if I have an existing account) and let them find out my deception—no really, this is from the official account recovery email I got—and then ask them to close my old account, approve the new one, and merge them together.
Oh, but I can’t just have them close the account and open a new one with the same email, because that email is… already taken. But not usable. And also not associated with any AdSense accounts. Except it is.

So after trying to perform this last-ditch, “lie to us, and then apologize” smoking-earth account recovery maneuver several times, each time generating THE EXACT SAME EMAIL that sends me to the EXACT SAME FUCKING WEBPAGE with the EXACT SAME GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING USELESS OPTIONS I’VE ALREADY TRIED SIX TIMES:

I am done. I will no longer be trying to access, recover, use, or otherwise acknowledge the existence of my alleged AdSense account or Google’s goddamn dickshit horsebuggering AdSense program in general.

And there was much rejoicing.