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Cythereal posted:The phantom shitter  Our only "haunting" story was James. When they first expanded the library in the 80s to include the theatre, the first (and, at that point, only) theatre staff member was James. He was apparently quite the character, known for, among other things, taking naps in the catwalk 30 feet above the stage in between events. Can't find James? Has anyone checked the mezzanine? He just sort of magically came and went, but also got the job done single-handed. When he left the library, he just plain dropped off the face of the earth. No one knew where he'd gone, or what he was doing. So any time we heard mysterious noises of something totally crazy happened with the a/v gear, the running joke was that it was James --- or his ghost. Not really a haunting, but funny horror story related: Hurricane Isabel back in 2003 totally trashed our building. The theatre had flooded going up our raked seating to about the fourth row. I came in two days after the fact, even though we were still closed due to power outages and the fact that all our carpets were still swampland. I was bored sitting around my apartment with no power, and wanted to get out of the house to see how hard we got we hit. I had the keys to the building, so I just drove up there to check it out. I see our head of facilities' truck is parked, so I know he's there. But he's not expecting me, so I scare the piss out of him as I'm roaming the the halls with a flashlight in a dead silent building. Then the Skipper shows up, and then Will, another theatre guy and the only black dude in our dept. We finally group up and decide what we can take care of. Bear in mind this is the theatre, so it's pitch black. It's pretty spooky in there. Head of facilities starts barking orders. "I'm gonna check the breakers. JD, you go get some buckets. Will, you go over to ----" "Aw, hell nah! I've seen horror movies, I know how this goes! We all split up, and it's always the brother that gets killed first!" This brings a hearty round of hysterical laughing, and then I reply: "Well, I'M just glad I haven't had teenage sex with any of y'all. Good luck!" and start heading for the maintenance closet. One of my fonder memories. JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Oct 26, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 02:48
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Rich white people are the worst. Not the hobos. Not the mentally ill people dumped off in the library by their caretakers so they don't have to take care of them for the day. Not the kids. It's the rich white people who are consistently the loving worst.
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Oct 26, 2018 03:54
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Cythereal posted:Rich white people are the worst. Not the hobos. Not the mentally ill people dumped off in the library by their caretakers so they don't have to take care of them for the day. Not the kids. Will confirm. They're also always the first ones to break out this chestnut when they're unhappy with your facility/service: "My tax dollars pay for this library/your salary!" I don't have a verifiable source on hand, but my boss, when I was in circ, told me the average Virginian pays something to the tune of $1.75 per year in local, state, and federal taxes combined that actually goes to libraries.
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Oct 26, 2018 12:07
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 I pay part of your salary! I will give you precisely $1.75 of service, if that's your attitude. My attention is all yours. Well, you see I need... Times up!
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Oct 26, 2018 12:15
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Proteus Jones posted:
Genuinely  here. If only I'd had the balls to say that.Talking about rich white folk reminds me of How I Earned the Library Nickname "The Mean Lady" One day we had events going on in all 3 conference rooms, plus the theatre. That night, we also had a very popular concert scheduled. So I'm running around like a headless chicken, satisfying various patrons as well as staffing the desk and answering a constantly ringing phone doing ticket sales for the concert. Our lobby is packed, and despite having Whisper Walls installed in there (they're insulated to absorb noise), it's loud and chaotic as gently caress in there. An entitled yoga mom is sitting on the benches right next to my desk with her toddler, waiting for.... something, idk. The toddler has just learned to make a new noise with his mouth, the kind where you let your lips go loose and blow out. Not a raspberry where you stick your tongue out, but a "BBBBLUBBBBLUBBBBLU" bubble-making noise. He's doing it at full volume a few feet away from me while I'm patiently asking people on the phone to repeat their credit card numbers so I can process their ticket orders. I must've shot a pained look in their direction, because when I got off the phone, the mother gives me a sweet smile and asks, "Oh, is he distracting you?" I smile back as politely as I can and hold up my fingers, making the "just a little bit" gesture. Her smile instantly turns into a scowl, and she glares at me while packing up her SUV-sized stroller. She scoops up her kiddo, roughly tosses him in, loudly declares so everyone in the lobby can hear: "Come on, Brayydin. We have to go. The mean lady doesn't want us here." ...and storms off. I'm left sitting there, a bit taken aback, wondering "why the hell did you even ask, unless you wanted the answer to be 'oh, no, I love having toddlers making stupid noises in my ear while I'm trying to do business here'?" A couple co-workers happened to be around and start laughing, patting me on the back and assuring me that if she complained to management, they'd back me up that I did nothing wrong. But from then on, I was jokingly known as The Mean Lady.
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Oct 26, 2018 16:57
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Weep for that child, for he never had a chance to be normal.
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Oct 26, 2018 19:16
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JacquelineDempsey posted:Will confirm. They're also always the first ones to break out this chestnut when they're unhappy with your facility/service: Also fun is when your boss points out the elderly guy sexually harassing the attractive new paraprofessional who's stuck at the front desk and says do not say a word to him because he's golfing buddies with half the county commissioners and can easily get you and her both fired or make life hell for the library system. There is one library I've worked at that had more sexual harassment and, once, outright sexual assault from patrons against library staff than the rest of the places I've worked combined.
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Oct 28, 2018 05:14
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As someone who was raised by a single librarian, I super dig this thread. Can we hear about the bicycle shorts guy?
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Oct 28, 2018 11:11
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This made me giggle. I'm waiting to see if the library I'm currently working at part-time gives me the full-time position that opened up and I applied for before I start seriously job searching again, as I'd love to stay here if I can, but a library not too far away from me must really be desperate. This is the posted description for a job opening they have:Desperate Library posted:Description:
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Oct 28, 2018 13:51
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Yeah they say they want you to inspire fun in the people around you, but you set up one measly karaoke station and it's off to the head librarian's office with you
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Oct 28, 2018 14:23
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My Lovely Horse posted:Yeah they say they want you to inspire fun in the people around you, but you set up one measly karaoke station and it's off to the head librarian's office with you That's why my library ruled. We got some cool new blood working for Youth Services one year, including one woman who was an avid gamer. They were tasked with bringing more teens into the library, so she booked our theatre and brought in her full Rock Band and Guitar Hero set-ups. I happened to be on deck that day, and while getting the a/v connections of her rig to talk to our sound board and LCD projector was a bit tricky (adapters and y-cables galore), the end result was incredible. Imagine playing Rock Band and Guitar Hero on a 36 foot wide theatre screen with a pro level sound system cranking through three 18" speakers. We had a blast, and so did the kids. They'd been tasked with convincing teens that the library was not some boring, stuffy place, and I think we succeeded admirably that day. But back to weirdos! Bicycle Shorts Guy There's not a heckuva lot of story to tell about this guy, but he was the first weirdo I was warned about when I started my last library job, so he sticks out (oh god that's a terrible pun as you'll find out) to me. Basically, this guy came in, in any weather, wearing bicycle shorts. Y'know, the Lycra/spandex things. He'd be spotted here and there around the stacks, but never checked a book out or asked any questions, and didn't even use the public computers. So that set off some red flags, and staff started keeping an eye on him. As it turned out, HE was keeping an eye on teenage girls, and wearing those shorts to make sure they would be keeping an eye on his raging erection. A subtle sort of exhibitionism compared to a flasher, but that was clearly his end goal. If memory serves (this was about 16 years ago), they finally banned him when he was caught crouching on the floor in the 800s so he could look up girls' skirts in the next aisle over (with a totally noticeable raging hard-on). This was right before I got hired, and before we had security cams, so I was wary of any cyclist coming in wearing bike shorts and had to keep whispering to staff "is that him?" Never did see him, I guess he took his fetish elsewhere.
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Oct 28, 2018 19:14
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Like I said. Jealous. I still got a full Rock Band setup too, so doubly jealous. Actually kinda toying with getting rid of it, since I haven't touched it in years, but also not sure where it would be appreciated. For sure not our local library.
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Oct 28, 2018 19:30
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My Lovely Horse posted:Like I said. Jealous. If you live in a city big enough to have some kind of youth center for poor kids' after-school programs, they might appreciate it. Rock Band is a nice gender neutral game without violence and stuff, it's pretty wholesome as far as video games go. Or maybe like a rehab/halfway house or women's shelter? Give the residents something fun to distract from their woes that involves music and isn't super competitive or just mindless watching tv. IDK, just spitballin' here, these could be terrible ideas, but it's what sprung to mind. Edit: also, what is your av from, it's one of those ones my crazy brain can just sit there and watch for way too long even though it's a 3 second looping gif JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Oct 28, 2018 |
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Oct 28, 2018 19:51
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JacquelineDempsey posted:If you live in a city big enough to have some kind of youth center for poor kids' after-school programs, they might appreciate it. Rock Band is a nice gender neutral game without violence and stuff, it's pretty wholesome as far as video games go. Or maybe like a rehab/halfway house or women's shelter? Give the residents something fun to distract from their woes that involves music and isn't super competitive or just mindless watching tv. IDK, just spitballin' here, these could be terrible ideas, but it's what sprung to mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Otaq2tmNMM
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Oct 28, 2018 20:03
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I, who as a little girl in the 70s/80s loved Thundarr the Barbarian, He-Man, Galaxy Rangers, and Blackstar --- all those sort of cartoons --- would have watched the absolute poo poo out of this if it was real. Hell, I still would. Well, guess the ol crazy brain has something new to watch on an endless loop (Seriously, thanks for answering that!)
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Oct 28, 2018 20:42
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So I figure it's the time of year for this little story I referred to earlier. Um excuse me, sir, the upstairs men's bathroom is covered in blood When I was working at this university, I had two main responsibilities: I ran all the inbound inter-library loans, and I was our late night and weekend supervisor. My own supervisor would go home around 7 PM, I would stay until we closed at 2 AM with between one to three student workers. Now, 99% of the time, things went dead quiet around 10 PM and we were down to single digit numbers of students. My boss knew full well that I was usually lurking in the ILL office posting on SA and watching Starcraft tournaments on youtube on my second monitor, and she had no problem as long as I was getting all the ILL poo poo done and keeping things calm at night. That 1% of the time though... One night, at around 1 AM, I was manning the circulation desk while the student worker was going through the building taking headcount, and a student came up to the desk and told me the title. The second floor men's bathroom was covered in blood, apparently. When the student worker came back, I chose to go upstairs and check this out for myself. Well, it wasn't the whole bathroom. But blood was all over the sink-and-mirror area. There was blood on the counter, in the sinks, on the mirrors, dripping onto the floors, on the soap and paper towel dispensers. First things first, I checked the library operations manual in vain. Surprise, nothing about this kind of situation in there. The custodial services office and campus police were a tad incredulous when I called them to tell them what happened - the former to come prepared for bodily fluids to clean up, the latter just in case someone was hurt. Then I printed out an out of order sign, slapped it on the bathroom door, and composed a rather unusual email to the entire library staff mailing list. There's a reason my department head told me at one of my performance reviews that she'd grown to dread checking her work email in the morning and seeing an email from me labeled 'Anomalous library incident.' That had become my term of art around this time for "So, something weird happened tonight that isn't covered by our normal procedures. Here's what happened, here's what I did, here's why I did it, please reply if you need further information." Never did find out what happened in that bathroom that night...
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Oct 30, 2018 19:49
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My highly professional and educated guess is that alcohol was involved.
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Oct 30, 2018 20:54
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A question for the librarians here. Is there a particular reason why a bunch of police would come to remove someone sitting at a public computer? I saw that happen a while ago. It was an older asian lady, and they all politely swooped in around her, waiting until she gathered all her stuff to go with them. Actual police, not campus police. Uploading torrents? Dangerous porns? Download roms? It was pretty weird.
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Oct 30, 2018 21:19
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value-brand cereal posted:A question for the librarians here. Is there a particular reason why a bunch of police would come to remove someone sitting at a public computer? I saw that happen a while ago. It was an older asian lady, and they all politely swooped in around her, waiting until she gathered all her stuff to go with them. Actual police, not campus police. Could be any number of things, but most likely the police were looking for her and just happened to find her at the library. There's not a great deal that would make me ever call the police on someone in the library, and all of those situations are the kind of thing you'd know why they're being called. Eric the Mauve posted:My highly professional and educated guess is that alcohol was involved. My guess was a really awful nosebleed, but all my boss told me is that they handled it and I didn't pry further. Going from past retail experience, I could also believe alcohol and a female student getting a sudden and very severe period.
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Oct 30, 2018 21:36
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Eric the Mauve posted:My highly professional and educated guess is that alcohol was involved. As someone who has had to deal with a similar situation, it was almost certainly junkie blood. We had a junkie severely gently caress up a fix and turn into a human sprinkler in a bathroom. It really doesn't take that much blood to make a small room look like a Romero film.
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Oct 30, 2018 21:54
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What's the most bizarre regular you guys have had, who DIDN'T do something nuts that required a ban/the police. Who's the most weird, innocent regular
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Oct 30, 2018 21:59
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ninjewtsu posted:What's the most bizarre regular you guys have had, who DIDN'T do something nuts that required a ban/the police. Who's the most weird, innocent regular Assuming you also mean to disqualify people we wished we could ban because we were a captive audience for them (universally old people) to corner and talk to all day? And disqualify the truly mentally ill? Furry gothic girl. She was a student at the university I worked at, and I never saw her not wearing an elaborate gothic or victorian style dress and hairdo - in Florida, including during the summer - with cat ears and a tail out the back. She was pretty normal whenever I had to interact with her, but she was a student there for the last two years I worked at the university and I saw her about every other day, always in those ridiculous dresses with the cat ears and cat tail.
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Oct 30, 2018 22:54
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When I was in high school I had a free period (we were on a block schedule system) two different semesters that I was not allowed to just not have a class in, so I picked Library Aide and so did my best friend. Basically we helped out in the school library for an hour three times a week or something. Well, it was 1992, so the library was charging into the heady technological future by implementing a magnetic strip system. You know, those walk-through detectors at the door that set off an alarm if you try to leave with a book that hasn't been checked out. Basically we had to put a little magnetic strip into the binding of every book in the collection, by hand, one by one. When you check out the checkout desk puts the book on a magnet thingy that does something so the detector won't go off. The detector was a big sucker, with a foot mat thingy that turned it on, so it was only active when someone walked through it. So one day I took one of the little magnetic strips and, standing to the side of the detector, reached around and stuck it on the inside of the detector in an inconspicuous place. From that moment on, every time anyone walked through the detector, it went off. We left it that way for two days while the poor librarians and the technical staff they called in (basically the guy who ran the computer lab at the school) tried to figure out what was wrong. Eventually I felt bad enough that I just removed the sticker when nobody was looking. So the problem magically fixed itself!  I still feel a little bad about that. But only a little.
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Oct 30, 2018 22:54
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Anomalous Library Incident is my band’s name.
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Oct 30, 2018 23:17
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Cythereal posted:Going from past retail experience, I could also believe alcohol and a female student getting a sudden and very severe period. In the Men's Room?
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Oct 31, 2018 05:27
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Khazar-khum posted:In the Men's Room? Like I said, alcohol.
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Oct 31, 2018 13:36
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Leperflesh posted:
Haha! Bit of a derail, but it's my thread, dang it. Around 1998 I worked at a indie used CD store (remember those  ?). We had those kind of security tags, which we put on the plastic security cases, which are called shucks. If you tried to shoplift a CD, shuck and all, it would set off the door sensor. If you could get a CD out of the shuck in the store without us noticing, well, more power to ya, because we used to try to break into those during slow times for fun, and they're pretty tough. For a time we kept finding shucks with burn marks in the r&b section; apparently someone thought they could use a lighter to melt their way thru em. Nope (and if you could, you'd probably melt the jewel case and disc too, you moron).Anyways, we used to prank new hires by putting a fresh tag, sticky side up, on the floor right by the register when it was busy. You'd step on the tag, and it would get stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Then when you went on break or got anywhere near the door, the alarm would go off. Newbies would be frantically patting themselves down, thinking they'd accidentally put a CD they wanted to buy in their coat, or just being plain mystified as to why they kept setting the alarm off. Us folks in on the joke would come up with all kinds of stupid "explanations" like: "Do you have any metal implants?" "Are you on your period? It always goes off when I'm on the rag." "Are you a Scorpio? It's very sensitive to Scorpios." ...etc. If it was today, we probably would have shrugged and said "Oh, it's Halloween. Guess it's haunted." Good times! ... As for Cythereals's blood bath(room) --- Given the blood was by the sink, any chance it was a horrible shaving accident? We had a homeless guy who always used our men's room to shave in. Patrons would bitch about it, but again, I went with a "no harm, no foul" policy, maybe dude's trying to get/keep a job and this is the only place he can clean up. There's bigger fish to fry.
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Oct 31, 2018 14:34
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JacquelineDempsey posted:As for Cythereals's blood bath(room) --- Like I said, I never found out. My boss told me the next day that they'd handled it, and I didn't ask. We didn't have any homeless students at the university. Advantages to literally being in the middle of a swamp - most of the area around the school was federally protected wetland.
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Oct 31, 2018 14:36
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Yeah at a university library at 1AM I highly doubt anyone was shaving. Either someone was so drunk off their rear end they fell facefirst onto the sink and broke their nose, or someone jumped and beat the poo poo out of someone, once again probably involving slamming their face against the sink/mirror and breaking their nose. That's the most likely way you end up with that much blood... not sure how they escaped the library without bleeding elsewhere though. Or a coke-related nosebleed, yeah.
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Oct 31, 2018 15:01
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Proteus Jones posted:Anomalous Library Incident is my band’s name. Mine is "Organic Event", which is what we called any puking/peeing/poop related issue. Our head of facilities went to some big trade show/conference for government-employed janitors. On his return, he made up a box of Absorb-a-stain (that kitty litter you throw on the carpet when a kid pukes on the floor), various antibacterial products, gloves, bleach, etc., and labeled it "organic event supplies", as I guess that must be the official term for gross bodily fluids in a public space. He took it seriously (because he had all the sense of humor of a cardboard box), but we used the term jokingly all the time. "Can one of y'all cover the desk? If I don't get to the ladies room soon, there's gonna be an organic event."
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Oct 31, 2018 15:20
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Cythereal posted:
was she short and hispanic? i went to highschool in north ca with a girl who went to school every day in an elaborate victorian dress with immaculate goth make up she put on every day on the bus with me. no mirror no mistakes. She wasnt a furry but this was mid 90s and furries werent huge then.
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Oct 31, 2018 20:31
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snergle posted:was she short and hispanic? i went to highschool in north ca with a girl who went to school every day in an elaborate victorian dress with immaculate goth make up she put on every day on the bus with me. no mirror no mistakes. She wasnt a furry but this was mid 90s and furries werent huge then. yeah it had to be the same girl in both northern california and florida, because the alternative is that there are two goth girls in the country and that seems pretty hard to believe
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Oct 31, 2018 20:55
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snergle posted:was she short and hispanic? i went to highschool in north ca with a girl who went to school every day in an elaborate victorian dress with immaculate goth make up she put on every day on the bus with me. no mirror no mistakes. She wasnt a furry but this was mid 90s and furries werent huge then. Short, yes. Hispanic, no. She was Asian of some kind, or descended thereof.
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Oct 31, 2018 21:08
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Cythereal posted:Furry gothic girl. She was a student at the university I worked at, and I never saw her not wearing an elaborate gothic or victorian style dress and hairdo - in Florida, including during the summer - with cat ears and a tail out the back. She was pretty normal whenever I had to interact with her, but she was a student there for the last two years I worked at the university and I saw her about every other day, always in those ridiculous dresses with the cat ears and cat tail. Might have been a Lolita fashion devotee, and pairing it up with cat ears/tail matches with Japanese subculture as well.
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Oct 31, 2018 21:18
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Eric the Mauve posted:Yeah at a university library at 1AM I highly doubt anyone was shaving. Either someone was so drunk off their rear end they fell facefirst onto the sink and broke their nose, or someone jumped and beat the poo poo out of someone, once again probably involving slamming their face against the sink/mirror and breaking their nose. That's the most likely way you end up with that much blood... not sure how they escaped the library without bleeding elsewhere though. It's like 90% likely it was someone shooting up (possibly shooting coke). As addiction progresses, veins collapse, and addicts go to ever-increasing lengths to find a good vein. And apply pressure to get it to rise up so it can be pierced. And then sometimes puncture it poorly and spray arterial blood all over the loving place. Shooting addicts also seek inconspicuous late-night bathrooms to shoot up in. For example: https://www.salon.com/2012/11/14/when_i_became_a_junkie/ quote:I jumped around to Santa Fe and Ashland and then came back to LA, pulling geographics as I tried to get clean. But now that I’d been properly turned out, I was a junkie and it was a whole new hell. With needles, you don’t only become addicted to the drug but to the whole ritual of shooting up. One of my most frightening memories: me crouched in my sink with the belt of my robe tied around my throat like a tight scarf, poking a needle into a swelling vein in my neck. There were spray marks of blood on the ceiling, brownish red splatters on the wall. I tried to wipe them off casually as I trembled and tried to shoot myself up again. Shooting coke makes you desperate and willing: the rush is gone in minutes so you shoot up again and again and again to feed the monkey. I became a human pincushion and had track marks all over. Go to very cheap bad hotel rooms and blacklight near the sink or toilet and you will likely see the remnants of blood spatter on the walls. This is why.
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Oct 31, 2018 23:59
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Mostly, I just want to share this, but since this is A/T I shall offer goonlore in the form of a question: Have you read this thread? I live at the library (and you can, too!) It's the rightfully goldmined thread of a homeless goon from a few years ago, which started off with him giving an alternate perspective on weirdos in public libraries.
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Nov 1, 2018 08:20
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Vavrek posted:Mostly, I just want to share this, but since this is A/T I shall offer goonlore in the form of a question: poo poo, I remember that thread, thanks for sharing the link! :hattip: It's a good example of why I never got my knickers in a twist about homeless people using our space. Maybe it's just me, as a psych major who always wanted to help people, but I always viewed my public library as --- call me a weirdo --- a place for the public. My (fairly affluent) town had zero help for the homeless, so especially when the economy poo poo the bed in 2008, I had no problems with unemployed/homeless folks using any of our resources, whether it was a place to thaw your shrimp, a sink to shave in, or just a comfy chair to snooze in while it's sleeting outside. (As Cythereal pointed out, the rich white people who had 4.5 pots to piss in at their McMansions were the real douchebags.) Or a place to poo poo your brains out after eating questionable sausage found on the floor of your car, I forgot about that epic scatological tale. Err'body needs to at least read that part of that thread, click on the "?" under OPs name, it's on the first page of his posts.
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Nov 1, 2018 14:59
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Centripetal Horse was one of this forum's biggest success stories and there's even a happy ending to the catte parts so yeah that's a good feelgood thread to wander down.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:05
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Pham Nuwen posted:yeah it had to be the same girl in both northern california and florida, because the alternative is that there are two goth girls in the country and that seems pretty hard to believe i probably should of mentioned i was friends with her and i knew she went to university of florida my bad.
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Nov 2, 2018 04:13
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JacquelineDempsey posted:poo poo, I remember that thread, thanks for sharing the link! :hattip: Surprisingly to me, homeless people have never been a regular thing at any library I've worked at, as far as I know. I don't have any problem with it as long as they don't cause problems - the one time I was at a library having problems with a homeless person, it was more because she was very, very drunk than because she was homeless.
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Nov 3, 2018 03:53
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