teen suggestion box 1.7.09

two brilliant ones when i checked today:

“porn please.”

“edward cullens is HOT.”

i am actually considering discontinuing the teen anonymous suggestion box.  i never get any good suggestions. but it does crack me up.

teen suggestion box

when i was hired for this job, i was assigned to collect graphic novels (teen & adult), video games, and anime. i recently took over teen fiction and teen non-fiction. (yay!)

in the teen fiction section, there is a suggestion box. today i went to empty it out for the first time.

my favorite suggestion:

“NEEDS MORE PICTURE OF BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.”

my other favorite:

“you should get some jonas brothers book marks!”

bedridden

caught the spring ick. went to work yesterday anyway, because i’d been to class alright and thought that meant i had the energy to run the videogame freeplay since mr. e was helping. as soon as i got there the meds i had taken right before leaving the house wore off and i began sneezing and coughing phlegm in all directions. i carried kleenex and hand sanitizer with me all afternoon but it was absolutely disgusting. lesson: going to work sick is not brave and sacrificial, but unattractive and embarrassing. and phlegmy.

which is why i am now in bed with my laptop and a pile of manga and an empty carton of chocolate soy milk.

still, the videogame freeplay went well, we had a larger crowd than last time and at least 6 girls to balance out all the dudes. they taught me how to play naruto on gamecube, which i thought would be stupid…but…now i think i have to buy it.

also out of the ordinary– we had coke with caffeine and m&ms along with all the pretzels and juice and several of the attendees got outrageously hyper which was a problem when the program was over and they were set free in the library.  they were shrieking in the teen room and i went in to ask them to lower the volume. as soon as i walked in they threw all the non-fiction books about sex under the table and started giggling.

i couldn’t resist. i said, “it’s okay guys. the books are there for you to look at. and- if you have any questions- you know you can always ask a librarian.” this nearly killed them.

no more caffeine. keeping the m&ms though. those are for me.

kara0ke revolution & making felt stuff

i’m a little behind. this blogging business is hard work sometimes.

so, last saturday i headed out to new library job to do some more orientation and also play videogames with the teens. the young adults. the adolescents. lately i have been having issues saying the word “teen.” it just sounds so…blech. pretty bad news considering it’s the first word in my job title. if i think of anything better i’ll let you know.

retroblog 9.10.02

lalalalalalalala…today i had a deskie meeting. it was crazy boring. then i drank some tea and dropped a plant.

a word of advice….

if your roommate’s boyfriend is supposed to call, and you want to answer the phone in a ridiculous way to freak him out, DO make sure that, when the phone rings, it is indeed your roommate’s boyfriend. and not her father.

today we are creepy: “bum bum bum bum bum bum-bum” (creepiest noise EVER when i do it right). or when pix says “i have no blood” in her creepy voice, it is SO great!

this written by someone who should be reading beowulf but instead is trying out-creepy her roommate. ba haaa.

inner teen.

when i was 13, i got a terrible haircut. i then spent the next 11 years with an easy and safe shoulder-length do in order to prevent it from ever happening again.

today, for research purposes, i got 5 inches cut off from someone who was not my regular hair dude. it did not come out the way i expected it to. all afternoon at work, i felt hypersensitive, like people were laughing at my hair.  even the bearded investor who almost ALWAYS comments on my appearance said nothing, probably because he was shocked by the awkwardness of my new coif.

so, my inner teen is alive and well.

on a more cheerful note, here is a tea towel i made for my mum a couple of christmases ago. design my own.

best program ever.

my esteemed mentor is out for a month, and on friday i did my first animanga program. i’d noticed thursday that there were still no sign ups, which is really bizarre because usually we get a handful and they wouldn’t have known that i didn’t know what i was doing. but sign-ups rarely indicate any real numbers about attendance, so i set out the pocky and fudgy koalas and popcorn and orange soda, and got the dvd projected on the wall. no one came. so i waited, outside the door of the meeting room, to entice teenagers. kind of like a hooker.

3 fourteen year olds came by, 2 girls and a dude. “hello!” i said. “are you here for the anime?”
“what?” said the dude.
clearly not.
“wanna watch a movie?” i asked.

but it turns out they did. they came in and eyed the snacks hopefully. i told them to eat.

“you can eat in the library?” the dude said.
“what are we watching?” one girl, we’ll call her n, said.
“anime! the prince of tennis.”
“…what’s that?”

they were all best friends. they hadn’t heard of anime. or manga. but they wanted to watch anyway.

“so, why’d you come to the library today?” i asked.
“MYSP@CE!!” they chorused.

“you work here?” said the other girl. we’ll call her s. “yep.”
“you look like sixteen.”
“that’s why they let me watch movies with you guys.”
“oh.”

then they all pulled chairs up, made me sit in the middle, and we watched 3 episodes of the prince of tennis. it turned out they were 3 of the most hilarious youth in all the land. it was like mystery science theater with anime.
“what are these?”
“pocky!”
“they look like chocolate covered sticks!”
“well, they kind of are…”

“man, look at their shorts.” (pointing at the tennis players on the screen).
“yeah, you wear shorts like that at our school, you gettin jumped.”
then the girls came on in their school uniforms.
“THEY FORGOT THEIR PANTS!!”
“n, i think you should wear a big bow like that.”

“do you have a boyfriend?”
“i have a husband.”
“YOU? who let you get married. you’re 16!”
“what’s it like to be in love?”
“it’s fun. i have a great husband.”
“did you move in with him yet?”
“um…yeah, we’re married.”
“oh. oh yeah. i didn’t believe you when you said you’re married.”

and the librarian dream come true part:
“i didn’t know you could do stuff like this in the library.”
“what days do you work? we’ll come back.”

after we finished the movie, they took turns standing up in front of the room telling jokes. then the dude sang us a song and we pretended to be simon, paula, and randy. (they made me be paula.)

it was the most under-attended program i’ve done, and also the most fun i have ever had at work. explain that one.

boy are you people in for a treat.

as most of you already know, i am embarking on a great journey in may- being a teen librarian full-time rather than a part-time intern. in preparation, i am trying to get in touch with my teen side as much as possible. tough break for my beloved, who has had to put with way too many eps of the gilmore girls lately, but he is very understanding of the fact that i need to do research.

because my journals from high school are a bit too shocking to start in on just yet, and also are not digital, i am jumping back only a few years, to age 18, when i started my first blog. i have since hidden all of the content on this blog, because most of it is reDONKulous, but there are some posts i just don’t want to forget.