(A REPOST OF THE TURKEY DAY PODCAST FROM SEASON 1 EPISODE 38. YOU'RE WELCOME.) On this Thanksgiving holiday, I am thankful for family and friends willing to travel great distances to my home only to have to sleep on inflatabeds. I'm also thankful that I once wrote a handful of Tales from the "Liberry" entries in which Thanksgiving played a part. That's cause they were readily available for me to adapt for this week's podcast. Hope you and yours are having a festive turkey season. (And that you d...
Nov 22, 2012•27 min
(A REPOSTED CLASSIC EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE) Just when we thought we had it bad enough with frequent visits from Chester the (Potential) Molester, another seeming sicko fell into our midst. And, unlike Chester, this one actually had computer skills. He also had a habit of exclusively wearing a puffy white Michelin man winter parka in the warmth of April, so his nickname officially became Parka. While I didn't know it at the time, he would become...
Nov 19, 2012•25 min
(A REPOSTED CLASSIC EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE) 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'...
Nov 19, 2012•23 min
(A REPOSTED CLASSIC EPISODE INTRODUCING CHARACTERS THAT PLAY A PART IN THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE) There are rogue patrons and there are Rogue Patrons and Mr. B-Natural, Grumpiest Old Man in All the World, was usually somewhere in between. Not an evil human being by any stretch, but a tremendously cranky man, except when in the presence of his beloved pooch, Bubba. Our main beef with him is that Mr. B-Natural was a guy who definitely took pleasure in annoying the bejeezus out of the library staff b...
Nov 19, 2012•33 min
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.) Brent and Brice (a.k.a. the New Devil Twins) and their friends, the Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, were a minor thorn in our collective "liberry" side through most of my time working there. They were mostly known for hogging up our computers, My Space chatting to one another from a mere three feet away and their habit of printing reams of video game cheat codes which they always acted shocked about havin...
Nov 19, 2012•30 min
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.) While not the stinkiest patron we ever had to deal with, the man who became known as Crusty the Patron was still counted among the worst of the stinky patron lot due to his tenacity in inflicting his stench on us for hours at a time. Crusty suffered from a number of other hygienic ailments that made working at my "liberry" downright unappetizing. And while I was not allowed to kick him out directly, I was able t...
Nov 19, 2012•34 min
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.) This podcast marks a return appearance by previous podcast rogue patron Barbara Turdmurkle, a.k.a. the titular Barbie T. Barbie T has repeatedly proven herself to be incapable of using technology, especially computers, yet she continues to sign up for services that require internet access. This coupled with her constant fear that someone is trying to steal her identity and ruin her credit, coupled with some trul...
Nov 19, 2012•18 min
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC INTRODUCTORY EPISODE THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S NEW EPISODE.) The major problem with patron access computers are the patrons. They don't have computers at home, so they have to come use ours. And that's great, until it's not. Such was the case with a Rogue Patron I came to call The Dufus. He was a guy from the area who'd gone out into the world for, to hear him tell it, a storied career as a minor deity on the West Coast, where he hobnobbed with rich and powerful celebriti...
Nov 19, 2012•24 min
(A REPOST OF A CLASSIC THAT TIES INTO THIS WEEK'S EPISODE) Pedophiles: Public enemy #1. You've tried smelly sprays and perverticides, but pedophiles can smell too. They avoid sprayed areas and keep coming back for more. What you need is CHESTERKILL... ...Oh, I can't do it anymore. I so want to make light of our library's resident pedophile Chester the (Potential) Molester, but I just can't stand to do it. He was never a joke to us when I worked there and he's still not now. Unfortunately, guys l...
Nov 19, 2012•21 min
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 lookin...
Nov 13, 2012•29 min
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 lookin...
Nov 12, 2012•29 min
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....
Oct 29, 2012•28 min
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.
Oct 28, 2012•34 min
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....
Oct 22, 2012•32 min
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 ...
Oct 15, 2012•41 min
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....
Oct 07, 2012•23 min
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 C...
Oct 01, 2012•33 min
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)...
Sep 24, 2012•20 min
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. According 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...
Sep 17, 2012•32 min
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.)...
Sep 09, 2012•30 min
During the five year course of writing the original Tales from the "Liberry" blog, I wrote a substantial entry almost every single weekday. However, there were a few occasions when I skipped out on my blogging duties and not only said EFF it to myself, but posted it as well. And usually that day fell upon my birthday. That said, there are still a number of longer entries devoted to my birthday or involving birthdays in general. There are also an even greater number of entries devoted to the patr...
Sep 04, 2012•27 min
When one works in a library, one hears a lot of conversations. Often they arrive in person, often by phone and sometimes by second hand retellings of tales from fellow employees. When I heard a good one, I tried to write it down for use on the blog. Sometimes they were funny. Other times just odd. And occasionally they were downright terrifying. These are a few of my favorites. (Guest starring Rogue Patrons: Mrs. Carol Satan and Barbara Turdmurkle)...
Aug 26, 2012•22 min
In honor of this being Dragon Con Weekend, here's an encore bonus of last year's Dragon Con-themed LiberryCAST As you might have noticed, I'm an enormous nerd. Maybe not quite as nerdy as the Nerdist Podcast, but nerdy all the same. As such, I'm fond of heading out to nerd gatherings such as the infamous Dragon Con in Atlanta. In honor of this being Dragon Con weekend for 2011, I present some non-"liberry" tales of my D-Con experiences of the past decade. Included are dealer's room encounters wi...
Aug 24, 2012•35 min
Having last appeared in the Bad Mom's 2 Mother's Day Episode, Ms. Green was not a bad mom, per se, despite assisting her son with his homework projects a bit more than would be educationally healthy for him. She also distinguished herself by being one of our more exasperating patrons despite almost always being incredibly nice to us. The primary reason for the conflict between our personality types stemmed from her refusal to understand simple concepts requiring no explanation without us supplyi...
Aug 19, 2012•27 min
The day we hoped for and dreamed of had to eventually come: the day the Queen of the Eternal Newbie Greenhorns, Ms. S, left the employ of the "liberry." And when the day came, she went with barely a whimper, but a whole lot of whining. What we didn't realize was the freeing her from the employ of the "liberry" freed her up for a new calling: fiction writer. Also features the long sought-for 5th Grumpiest Old Man in All the World: William Shatner....
Aug 12, 2012•34 min
8/8/12 THIS EPISODE HAS BEEN RERECORDED TO ELILMINATE SHITTY AUDIO PROBLEMS A podcast over a year in the making featuring a cinematic theme. Yes, just in time for Catwoman's appearance in The Dark Knight Rises comes the second part of the much delayed Halle Berry's Catwoman Blows Goat Wang entry from nigh on a year back. Plus there are the touching tales of the best flat-footed mountain dancer and Elvis impersonator in the world (or at least our state) and why Star Wars Episode III made me cry. ...
Aug 08, 2012•20 min
A podcast over a year in the making featuring a cinematic theme. Yes, just in time for Catwoman's appearance in The Dark Knight Rises comes the second part of the much delayed Halle Berry's Catwoman Blows Goat Wang entry from nigh on a year back. Plus there are the touching tales of the best flat-footed mountain dancer and Elvis impersonator in the world (or at least our state) and why Star Wars Episode III made me cry. (Hint: It wasn't Hayden Christensen's acting, though it should have been.)...
Aug 06, 2012•20 min
Brent and Brice (a.k.a. the New Devil Twins) and their friends, the Auxiliary League of Neighborhood Kids, were a minor thorn in our collective "liberry" side through most of my time working there. They were mostly known for hogging up our computers, My Space chatting to one another from a mere three feet away and their habit of printing reams of video game cheat codes which they always acted shocked about having to pay for. But when the thermostat controls of our building began receiving extrem...
Jul 29, 2012•30 min
On many occasions during my time at the "liberry" I expressed my deepest desire to call the police concerning our resident pedophile, Chester the (Potential) Molester. This is the story of the time I finally got to call them... about his illegally parked car.
Jul 22, 2012•27 min
As you may have heard for approximately 5 minutes on the national news, Appalachia recently got the smackdown put on it by a series of violent thunderstorms packing hurricane force winds. Fortunately, before the power went out for nearly a week, I'd already banked a couple of podcasts to cover the time I was already planning to be out of state. We got caught in the storms first-hand and the wife had to deal with them for the duration. This is our story....
Jul 16, 2012•26 min
