Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Miss Information is annoyed by an old nemesis

Miss Information was delighted that her Renaissance paper got a good mark. It was worth 25% of the term and she got an 88. So she was happy. On the way to the subway, she thought about it some more and realized that she hadn’t multiplied correctly. Her mark wasn’t 88. It was 92. This made her very happy.

Hours later she thought about it again and this time realized that her mark wasn’t 88 or 92, it was in fact 96. This time she confirmed it with a calculator.

Stupid lack of ability to do math!

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Miss Information has a failure to communicate

The patron wants a book. This much is clear. She has a title in mind. This is also clear. What remains elusive is the actual name of the book.

The patron mumbles something. Miss Information plays “guess the title”.
Permablend? No.
Pine Intent? No.
Pumice Stone? No.
Puma Song? No.

Miss Information is always reluctant to ask patrons to write things down especially when the customer in question has an accent. It seems so white-oppressive-colonizer to her. But without being asked this woman took out a piece of paper and wrote something down.

Sadly, her handwriting was illegible. All Miss Information could make out was a “P” and a scrawl which doesn’t seem to contain the same number of letters as the spoken version of the title. Since about the only thing she could understand when the woman spoke was the “p”, this is amazingly unhelpful.

Miss Information squints and tries again.
Prune something? No.
Punk something? No.
Poem something? No.

The woman takes the piece of paper back. She writes the entire title this time. Her handwriting is still atrocious but Miss Information can decipher it.

The book the woman is looking for is called “Pronunciation”.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Miss Information is annoyed by toddlers

Miss Information has always felt animosity towards the under 5 set. The ones she’s related to or knows personally aren’t so bad. Miss Information gets a lot of enjoyment out of warping their tiny minds. Besides, you can be really sarcastic to them with impunity.

Up until recently it’s been one-sided and Miss Information has been winning. Suddenly, though, the toddlers have begun to fight back. The first incident occurred when Miss Information was minding her own business in a coffee shop. She had snagged one of the few comfy chairs and was planning to hang around for awhile. Then he showed up.

He toddled up to Miss Information’s chair. She didn’t want to seem like a total bitch (yet) so she said hello. The child didn’t respond verbally. He did respond, though. He began punching her. Repeatedly. Was it something she said? The child’s father was far from shocked. Instead of signing the kid up for military school, he walked away ignoring the fact that his child was pummelling a total stranger, and went over to the coffee counter, which was all the way across the room, behind a wall.

Since it was a busy downtown coffee place, Miss Information concluded that the guy didn’t really care if his child had its ass kicked by a total stranger. Sadly, her taser is in for repairs. Also—too many witnesses. She packed up her stuff and left without sustaining much damage. Thank goodness she learned that bob and weave manoeuvre in kickboxing class.

Later that week, a couple of women with a whole daycare centre’s worth of demon spawn came into the library. Even their mothers recognized they were evil. One of them was tied up--but unfortunately not handcuffed. He broke loose of his chains (well, a scarf) and began pulling Miss Information’s hair. Nobody touches Miss Information’s hair. Sometimes not even her. Hair care is so time consuming. His mother thought it was adorable. Miss Information was not as amused.

That taser better be fixed soon.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Miss Information may be too stupid for graduate school

Remember last week when Miss Information announced the end of her academic career? It turns out that it may have been premature.

See, Miss Information failed to recognize that degree A and degree B are entirely different degrees. All this time she didn't even realize that degree A existed. While she has managed to complete degree A (in fact, could complete it twice), she is still an evil bastard science credit away from degree B. (She has a science credit, but can't use it. Sodding technicalities.)

So, degree A is fine. She can apply to graduate school with degree A. She may not get in. She isn't all that smart, apparently. But she can apply.

Oh, no. She's hopeful again. That's never good. Better go lie down until the feeling passes.

Friday, November 02, 2007

Miss Information is annoyed by librarians

Having discovered this week that her plans to join the librarian ranks have once again been derailed--this time by a sodding technicality, Miss Information has become resentful. While most of her bitterness is directed at the members of the academic world who, although she's been in regular contact with them, did not bother to mention this little glitch to her earlier. Like maybe before the semester started and she could have done something about it.

But oh, well. Maybe it's unfair to take out her frustration on those who have managed to get into the librarian club, but hell, revenge is sweet and Miss Information suddenly has a lot more time on her hands.

Here's the situation. It's Friday. The branch is short staffed. The school board who also have a spot on Miss Information's enemy list, have given the evil bastard children the day off. This means the library is stupidly busy. During the lunch hour Miss Information is scheduled with a certain librarian. This librarian quickly realizes that the staffing situation is untenable. She decides to fix the problem in the only logical way--by leaving the desk herself.

Amazingly, this foolproof plan did not help, in fact it made things about 50% worse. In her time away from the desk she did manage to arrange extra staff for the evening shift.

Unfortunately, this extra staff member was under the impression that she was only there for special training and not to actually work at reference. Still, the supervising librarian was confident that it was all running smoothly and once again left the desk, abandoning poor Miss Information for the second time that day.

Luckily for the world, all the children having used up their Internet time for the day had gone home, leaving Miss Information to plot revenge between reference questions.

(Insert evil laugh here)