Reading Fifty Shades of Grey in 2013.

Or, "I just bought a hand-crafted Italian leather ball gag for $19.99."

I wonder what ebooks, or as some of you call the, books, will be like next year.  Many books are being published as apps, with added content such as music, video, annotations, games, etc.

But many apps also include "in app purchasing" where the app delivers more and more content if you pay more money.

Like games for your phone or tablet:  If you want the basic game, you download it for free or for a buck.  Then if you want to actually enjoy the game because the free version sucks, you'll have to pay more money to buy the items you'll need to complete the harder parts.

So if you combine the power to purchase added items with the "book as app" model, you'll get books where you can purchase the items the characters are using right there while you're reading the book.  So you can get that ball gag the stud is strapping to the heroine's face.  Or the dildo she's jamming into him.  Or the champagne or the car or the dress or the music or the .... the list is endless.  In app purchasing for ebooks could become bigger than 2 am infomercials for shitty overpriced exercise equipment.

You could pay to read the even dirtier scenes the author left out of the regular edition.  You could add sound effects each time the whip cracks in the air then licks across the heroine's taught eager ass.

You could pay for images, photos created for the book featuring beautiful models caught at the precise moment of exquisite pain.  Or pay to insert your own photos into the story.  Or change the character's names to match yours.  Or use the names of the 2013 President and First Lady: oooh, naughty.

I don't know what books will be like in a year.  But I can damn well guarantee that if in-app purchases in ebooks become common, more than a few of you will say, "Shit, this book just sold me another dildo. Someone's getting it for Christmas. Maybe grandma?"

Fifty Shades of Fuck You.

So, have you heard this thing where people become sexually aroused and then manually stimulate their own naughty parts so that it feels better and better and better until, BLAM, it feels fantastic and images of Vic Tayback flash into their minds and then they eat a pint of chocolate ice cream?

Yeah.  It's called masturbation.  And apparently most of you love to do it.  And your primary impetus for doing it this summer has been from reading Fifty Shades of Grey.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! Oh, Vic!  Oh, Ben & Jerry.  I can hear all of you saying on some random Tuesday afternoon.

But because all of you are reading that piece of shit excuse for whacking material, your library has had to buy lots and lots of copies of that piece of shit piece-of-shit.

And the more copies of that piece of shit libraries buy, the less money we have to buy actual good stuff that might enrich your lives instead of giving you that primary inspiration to go and rub one out. When you should be taking your kid to soccer practice.

You might not know this, but books cost money.  And when all you assholes put reserves on for this piece of shit Fifty Shades of Grey, then libraries need to buy more copies for satisfy the holds. And your perverted needs.

So if your library is like mine, you probably spent about $3,000 on this bullshit.  So that's $3,000 less you have to buy glue sticks for your Children's programs.  So now that bunny craft you prepared for the kids has become a take-home craft where you just paper-clipped two ears to a paper plate and shoved it into the hands of a confused and disappointed 2-year-old.

WHAT THE FUCK? That kid just suddenly learned to say, out of thin air.

You just taught that kid to curse!  Are you proud of yourselves?

So do us all a favor, do all libraries a favor, and just masturbate to internet porn.  Or Kelly Ripa. Because that's what I do.  The porn, I mean.  I have a job, so I'm not home to watch Kelly, as hot as she is.

DO IT FOR THE CHILDREN.

Libraries suck at search because books are easy to find.

I keep reading about how libraries have crappy search tools for their catalogs and databases.  And that Google has the best search.  So we need to be more like Google.

What people forget is that with most searches where you find what you want, Google also gives you about 3,000,000 results with shit you don't want.

And Google does what it does because of all the assholes in the world.  Google needs to continually update its algorithms to keep scumbags from jumping to the top of the search results listings.

But those scumbags don't exist in the library.  Mostly.

Take a call number, any call number, and try to find that book in a library.  Unless the book is missing or checked out, it will be exactly where it belongs.  I'm not talking about misshelved books.  All it takes in Dewey is four little numbers to find most library books.

Books don't jockey for better position in the library.
Books don't pretend to be other books.
Books don't change their content without notice.
Books don't make you open other books just so you can read the first book.
Books don't tell other books which books you read.
Books don't magically pop into your hands without your picking them up.
Books don't fuck with other books.

It's the internet that does all that.

So the tools the library uses to locate materials doesn't need to evolve.  That's like saying a teaspoon needs LEDs so you can eat cereal at night.

The real problem is that people don't want to learn to use the library.  Nothing else requires them to learn a damn thing, so why should we. But if you would spend ten minutes, just ten fucking minutes, learning how the library works, that knowledge would would be useful for a lifetime.  Because our shit doesn't change!  811 is always somewhere in between 810 and 812.  It's simple.  But you can't be bothered to learn it.  So you blame the library for being archaic.

Google also has the ability to index all the online stuff because everyone wants it indexed.  Everyone throws their stuff at Google and says, Index Me!

Books don't do that.  But books should.

For the last 10 or 20 years, all publishing has been electronic.  The author either works that way or some assistant digitizes the manuscript so it can be edited and formatted.  So publishers have all this digital stuff that they could use to build an index from their titles.  And then they could make those indices available to book sellers and libraries.  So if you wanted a cherry pie recipe, the local bookseller could just consult the publisher's index to find which books had one and sell them to you.  And libraries could do the same thing.

And then libraries could build their own search tools to sort through all these indices to help patrons find the right books, too.

But publishers don't do this.  Maybe it's too much work, but I doubt it.  The end result would be more books sold if people could find what they want.  Unless the end result would be fewer books because people would see how little of what they wanted was actually published.

So we'll have to rely on Google to do all this indexing.  Some day.

But don't keep trying to compare the library catalog to Google.  It would be great if there were a huge keyword and subject / context database for all the published books, but publishers don't seem to understand why this is necessary.

So libraries don't need Google-like solutions.  Unless Google has that index. 

But one magical day someone might.  And then libraries can fold their holdings into it and make searching for infinitesimal facts within books easier.

But don't say we suck at search when all my library's books are exactly where we put them.  Which is a problem because we'd really rather have them checked out.

If You Give Your Boss a Blow Job.

If you give your boss a blow job, he's going to want anal.

When you give him have anal, he's going to promote you to his personal assistant, but he's also going to want to take you to an orgy.

Everyone will be at the orgy and there will be booze and drugs and it's going to be impossible to say no to anyone.  And after, you'll get a tattoo of the number "34" because, well, you'll know why.

At the orgy, your boss will want to take video so he can show off to his friends.

If you let him shoot the video, his wife is going to find it.

When his wife finds out what you've been doing, she's going to make him fire you.

You'll lose your job and his wife will make it worse by posting the video on the Internet.

When a television producer sees the video, she's going to offer you your own reality show. Most people who watch your reality show will know how you got famous, but some won't care because you're famous and that's all that matters.

You'll have a hit show on TV which will make you a national celebrity.  You'll marry someone almost as famous as you, but it won't last long. Because fame is like money: you want it all for yourself.

When you're really famous, you'll run for public office.

When you win by a landslide, you'll run for a bigger and more important position.

When the Presidential candidate sees how many votes you get, he'll ask you to be his running mate.

After you win the election, he'll want to relax in the Oval Office behind his new oak desk.

And when he's behind that desk, the leader of the free world and the representative of the most powerful country on earth, and also your boss, he's going to want a blow job.


-- this is a parody of a popular children's book. parody is protected free-speech, so don't try to sue me. anyone is free to illustrate and publish this, but if you begin to make money with it, I expect a cut.

What They Shoulda Done: The Artist.

Spoiler alert.

Now, I don't know if this would have made a better movie, but they shoulda made George's silent world overlap or interact more with Peppy's talkie world.  Did you ever see Pleasantville?  Where the black and white world becomes "infected" with color? That's sort of what I wanted to see in The Artist.

Like when George is trapped in the burning house, it would have been interesting if he called for help, but no one could hear him.  But yet, when the dog left the house, we heard street sounds and heard the interaction with the cop when the dog barked at him.

And then, when George is saved and brought to the hospital, still unconscious, the doctors would not be able to hear his heartbeat; they could find a pulse, but no heartbeat could be heard through a stethoscope. 

And as the doctors were about to rush George into surgery, Peppy appears to prove George is alive and well by listening to his chest and making his heart display a "Thump, thump. Thump, thump." intertitle card on the screen.  Then Peppy pulls the card from the screen and shows it to the doctors to prove that George's heart is beating.

But seems like most of you like the movie the way it is, so I guess there's no need for change.  But that's what they shoulda done.

SELLING library books.

I don't drink wine.  So if I had to buy a bottle, I wouldn't know what to buy.  I also don't drink hard booze all that much.  Give me almost any 100% agave tequila and a can of frozen limeade and I'm happy.  FYI, about 1.5 oz tequila with 3-4 tablespoons of frozen limeade mixed with cold water tastes great, and a couple of those gets me hammered.

So when I need to buy unfamiliar booze, I look for those reviews that the liquor store attaches to the price label in front of the bottles.  There's usually this tiny review from some source that sounds like Wine Enthusiast or Wino Cabal or something, that gives the bottle a score of some number close to 100.

So the liquor shelf might have a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc (my wine of choice if I have to have wine) with a tiny slip of paper review that says,
"Rating 91. Crisp, fruity, hint of apricot, peach, banana, walrus. Excellent with fish, tacos, but not fish tacos."

And is makes me wonder why libraries never do this?  No, not sell booze, but attach reviews to the library books.

Yes, I realize that the books move.  They change locations almost every day. Except for the Scottish Poetry section. So there really isn't a permanent shelf where we can stick the review.  But we could have a display.  Or maybe get removable labels and stick them on the book spine.  And yeah, each spine is a different width, so the label would need to be smallish.

I don't know about you, but I often pick up a book from the shelf and ask, "Why the hell did we buy this?"  And not just to myself.  I ask staff.  I ask patrons.  I run into the street to stop traffic like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

So it would be cool if we took that original review that convinced us to make the purchase and stuck it to that book, now collecting dust, to show everyone that we had a good reason for getting it. And that they should read it. 

And as with DVD cases, those reviews might convince someone to borrow that book. 

• "3 and 1/2 Stars" is a good enough reason to try something new. (And don't forget to add the images of the stars.)
• "Booklist says, Recommended for all public libraries" could also work. 
• and "Publisher's Weekly says, Read this Motherfucker already!" is going to make me want to punch the asshole in the face who tries to get that book before me.

So, what about it?  Is this another of my awesome ideas, or what?  Oh, fuck, nobody even read this.

The Library. Teaching your community how to dance.

Stand up, those of you who think that your public library should lend the Fifty Shades of Grey series of books.

Of that group, remain standing if you work in a library and are in a position to decide which books get selected for your library.

Now, for those not standing, shut the fuck up because you don't know how a library works.

HERE IS HOW A LIBRARY WORKS:

Libraries have MISSIONS.  Often these missions are tied to actual policy that has been drafted by librarians, cleared by lawyers and approved by local commissions.

Within these MISSIONS are COLLECTION POLICIES.

The collection policy exists to keep the library within guidelines so that some asshole doesn't come along and fill the library with shit.

A typical collection policy says things like, "the library supports the educational and information needs of its community."  And from that, the library will collect and circulate educational and informational materials.

Ah, the asshole says, I need the information in Fifty Shades of Grey.

As I said earlier, shut the fuck up.

The policy may also state that materials need to fit certain criteria.  Because as the asshole just reminded us, pretty much anything can fill an information need. 

So libraries often include a need for the material to have been given a positive review in a standard professional library publication.

And I don't think your Fifty Shades of Grey has filled that requirement.  Yes, continue shutting the fuck up.

But some libraries allow their communities to suggest materials.  And often, and against their better judgment, libraries will purchase materials based on demand or based on bestseller lists.

Now, I haven't seen Footloose.  In any form.  I can't watch any movie where Kevin Bacon isn't a serial killer or where John Lithgow isn't a spaceman.  But I've heard the song and I know I could fly if only I'd just cut loose.  Footloose. God help me, I've heard the song.

But from I think happens, we have a community who decides it's wrong for kids to dance.  And have premarital boning.  But let's stick to the no dancing for now.

You can argue that John Lithgow forced the people, using his spaceman powers, to accept his no-dancing policy.  But that's beside the point, as the town set a community standard for no dancing.  It's like Oprah telling her followers what to read and then the library buying it.  Because Oprah's fans are crazy and will kill us if we don't.

So there was a community standard for no dancing.  But there used to be dancing.  But now there isn't.  Why?  Because community standards change.  Because communities are people and people change.

But libraries create policy to protect the community from itself.  For example, What if one political party came into power and all their members demanded that the library remove all books supporting the opposition's party?  Without a collection policy, the library might do that.

What if some crazy group moved into the neighborhood, meteor lovers, volcano worshippers, Lady Gaga fans, whatever, and wanted the library to carry all the materials that they think we should have?  Again, if there were enough of them, we might have to do it.

And this isn't just your money we're spending, it's everybody's money.  But it's partly your money. That's why you have a say in how we spend it.  But because you are so easily influenced, we often ignore you.


But librarians are not infallible.  We try to buy what we think is good for the library and often you disagree.  We have classic and foreign films on DVD that won't get checked out nearly as often as any Faster & Furiouser movie.

Remember, libraries are not book stores.  We shouldn't care what's hot right now.  We should only care about what's been hot for a while so that buying it will serve a need that will last longer than a couple of months.  Because we're not trying to sell anything.  We're trying to buy materials that will serve the most people for the longest time.

But we own calculators because most librarians didn't major in Math.  And a simple calculation says that if we buy the Piece-O-Shit for $20 and 100 people borrow it in one year but never borrow it ever again after, then that's as good as buying the Great-Classic for $20 that only gets checked out five times a year, but every year for 20 years.  Piece-O-Shit vs. Great Classic, it's a constant battle.

Librarians don't like to buy things that have a short shelf life.  Unless they get used a lot.  So we buy tax guides and testing books that become obsolete in a few years.  And that is why some libraries will buy  Fifty Shades of Grey.  Because the people will borrow it 200 times.

But if a library doesn't buy a book, it's not CENSORSHIP.  We can't possibly buy every fucking book.  If that's your idea of censorship, then how fucking tired must be when you spot it everywhere.

I think libraries have a duty to say Fuck You.  If you demand something that gets rejected and you demand it again so it gets rejected again, that doesn't make you Kevin Fucking Bacon trying to change the library's no-dance policy.  That just makes you another John Lithgow attempting to force your will on the people.

Because the librarian is Kevin Bacon. 

The librarian is the one who looks at the community and researches the needs and finds the solutions.  And also looks great in tight blue jeans.

So if you want Fifty Shades of Grey but your library won't buy it, you can ask again nicely.  Find out what the policy is and whether getting 20 of your friends to ask for the same book will get it bought.

But if Kevin Bacon still says no, then shut the fuck up because he knows what he's doing.  And then ask for an interlibrary loan.  Because the library can get you pretty much anything through interlibrary loan. Even a Piece-O-Shit.