Making Up For Lost Time

So I was thinking about all the things I want my blog to entail, writing, humor, personal stories, and I thought I could do 'Me Mondays', 'Writing Wednesdays' and 'Funny Fridays' (it was a little less lame a week ago) but then life happened and I didn't successfully post for Monday, Wednesday or Friday. So I don't know if I can competently maintain a blog with such high demands, but I'll give it the old "college try" (which means what? I don't know. I think it's just a phrase someone made up because they didn't want to say "I'll attempt to not be sucky for once".)

I actually wrote down some story ideas that had been bothering me lately, so that was nice. It's like when you have gangrene and you take away part of the leg, just so it doesn't hurt as bad. Okay, so that's a little extreme, but story ideas are so nagful and getting at least a plot down (in lew of the entire story) helps ease the nagging for a while. Maybe these ideas will find time in my busy schedule to be worked out into something more than a plot line, but we'll see. They are interesting though, one is about time travel, another about zombie epidemics and the third about alien slavery (it's less disturbing than it sounds).

I guess to break the ice about being personable in this blog I can share a bit about me. I think I've mentioned before that I work in a library. I work full time and I have a job which allows me the great pleasure of dealing with all the upset patrons and the majority of the upset staff. Due to my general temperament, I'm able to deal with all of this without an ulcer. It is amazing how many ridiculous people go out into the world only to make the library their venue for displaying some of the most extreme poor judgement, rudeness, ignorance and overtly bratty behavior. Most people view the library as a quiet and serene place to find books and other materials at a cheap/free price, to borrow and keep in good condition and to eventually return. But there are way too many people who think they can accost library staff, ruin library materials, act out in the library and be free of consequences. I guess that's where I come in. Most library workers are nice people that don't like confrontation (I wouldn't say all, but in my experience most are light hearted and when you dispute with them they bend over backwards to help you out), and maybe that is why this mentality prevails in the patron community that they can act out and they'll get what they want. But like I said, that's where I come in. Now, when people walk into my library and try to yell at a staff member, they come to me (or the head librarian in my absence - I can't take all the credit for taking down these library abusers) and I do my best to set them straight. Frankly, you know there is something wrong when a patron feels the need to yell at you over the phone and hang up on you when you're only following the rules and I don't think the problem lies with the library worker...but enough on that subject for now.

I spend way too much time around books, and I wanted to share a book I recently saw that gave me pause:

I don't think this "doctor" actually has a license to practice medicine. He probably actually shouldn't be left alone with your children. I'm sure they go into the doctor thinking, certainly this trained professional can help with my child's headache only to face this:

Then they walk away from the experience with a scalped child and a hefty bill because what sane insurance company would cover seeing a bear doctor? I really think this is excessive and wrong. But then I did some research. Apparently, Romans had a long tradition of training bears in the art of medicine (or was it wrestling?). I even found this engraving of the practice:

So the guy on top decrees that bears shall be taught. They image in the middle is the pre-med students being forced to teach the bears. And the final image is the bears taking their knowledge back to the wild to practice on other bears who do not have health insurance; a giving back to the community sort of thing.