Rage Against the Machine

Peters Township Library is consistently ranked among the best libraries in Pennsylvania, yet not only do I get the urge to poop every time I enter the place (seriously), I consistently leave there feeling unsatisfied. And the lack of satisfaction isn't due to the fact that I never actually poop while I'm there, but mainly it's related to my beef with the library's DVD section. I went there today to get Borat, which the card catalog told me was available, but I left empty-handed (well, aside from the book I had on hold). You might be saying, "Your library has Borat? You should be happy they even stock current releases." Nay, my friend. Going to the library to get a current release that is supposedly there, then being told it would be impossible to find is even worse. Here's the deal -- I go directly to the DVD section and look through shelves of poorly alphabetized cases, all the way from A to Z, only to realize Borat is missing from the collection. I do another search of the card catalog to make sure it hasn't been checked out since I last searched around 1:30 at work. It says there should be one copy available. I ask the woman at the desk if it might be in the back somewhere because the card catalog says it's in, but it's not on the shelf. The other woman standing there pulls out a bin beneath the desk and says, "It's not in the bin, and if it's in the back, they're double-stacked." The original woman then says to me, "Yeah, there's no way we can find it." Okay, last time I checked, libraries did not superglue their recently returned DVDs to the carts they store them on. Double-stacked my ass! Take a minute and go look through the pile to see if the movie I want is in. Could it really be that difficult? I think the problem is the women at the front desk are elitists who are either bitter they were never able to get their master's degrees and become real librarians or just bitter because they're old, and they refuse to have anything to do with the lowly duties of redistributing library materials to their proper housing places. Finally, I was told that the girl who shelves DVDs will be in over the weekend, and it should be available by then. So now I either have to return to the library in hopes that Borat will be shelved and not snapped up by another library patron or shell out the 3 bucks to rent it. I'm guessing I'll do the latter. The point is, I don't know what criteria Peters Township Library's high status is based upon, but it probably isn't "ability to induce spontaneous bowel movements." So, why all the praise? I see nothing more than a pretty building with a decent selection of materials, grumpy staff, and poor service.

Driving Tales

If only the man in front of me with the Maryland license plate and the "pro-woman, pro-child, pro-life" bumper sticker was pro-safe-driving, I thought, as his car weaved down the road while he rummaged through his front seat and munched on something at the same time. His head bobbed back and forth to look at every street sign, and he slowed down at every intersection until he finally slammed on his brakes, quickly flicked on his right-turn signal, and swung into a parking spot in front of -- get this -- Vocelli's Pizza. Did he come all the way across the Mason-Dixon line for a slice of pie, or did he just have a hankering for some semi-good pizza after his March for Life across the South Hills? The world may never know.

The Ups and Downs of My Relationship with KG

No, not Kyle Gass -- Kathy Griffin. If blogger had the ability to post charts and graphs, I would conveniently show you my feelings about the popular D-lister through an eloquently formed line graph. However, blogger does not have that ability, or if it does, I'm unaware of it. Therefore, I must explain my torrid relationship with Kathy in words rather than charts.

Stage one: I hate Kathy Griffin and carry this feeling throughout my life, though I'm not sure I have any basis for feeling this way.

Stage two: I get addicted to Bravo's reality shows, one of which is Kathy's "My Life on the D-list." Despite her bad hair, she moves up in my book to "somewhat likable" and "definitely entertaining."

Stage three: I find out that Kathy is friends with Rosie O'Donnell. In the words of "Best Week Ever" -- DOWNGRADE!

Stage four: I watch one of Kathy's stand-up acts where she repeatedly makes fun of Lindsay Lohan. The red-headed funny lady is back on my A-list.

And that is where we stand now, so we'll have to see how things change as I watch the new season of "My Life on the D-list" and find more reasons to have a love/hate relationship with a person who doesn't know I exist.

Fill in the Blank

I remember learning at some point in my educational career about interviews and quoting people in writing. Somewhere in that literary lesson was an explanation of how to quote someone but include a word or two that maybe they didn't exactly say. If my memory serves me correctly, doing this involved putting the unspoken words in brackets so that the sentence would make sense but the reader would know that those particular words didn't come from the person being quoted. For instance, if Guy were asked to describe me as a person, he might say, "Caity is a nice girl." Then, when I was writing an article about myself in the local paper, I would write, Guy Tarbert says of his wife, "Caity [is the most beautiful and creative] girl [I know]. Obviously that's a stretch, but hopefully you know what I'm talking about by now.

See, the thing is, whenever I see those little substitutionary brackets in real news articles, I wonder what the original person actually did say. For instance, this quote is taken from an the AP's coverage of Larry David and his wife's recent breakup.
"The split was "very amicable and ... they're going to continue to raise their two (daughters) together as friends," spokeswoman Heather Lylis said Tuesday."

What did Heather really say in place of "daughters"? "They're going to continue to raise their two clumsy Jewish fembots together as friends"? Their alien hermaphrodite children? What? It's almost like a pop culture game of Mad Libs. And you know I love Mad Libs.