[Publib] Deadly earnest serious librarians
Rebecca Bronson
rbronson at hrl.lib.state.va.us
Wed Aug 9 12:13:42 EDT 2006
Another bemused lurker chiming in Joe. :)
Rebecca Bronson
Reference Librarian
Handley Regional Library
P.O. Box 1300
Stephens City, VA 22655
540-869-9000 (voice)
540-869-9001 (fax)
www.hrl.lib.state.va.us
-----Original Message-----
From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org]On Behalf Of Ann Bever
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2006 9:21 AM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Publib] Deadly earnest serious librarians
Joe,
Fear not! It may be that many of the not-so-serious ones are lurkers
(like me).
Ann Bever
Dallas Public Library
Joe Schallan <jbsphx at cox.net> wrote:
Diane Giarrusso wrote:
"Can't we just have a bit of fun and stop taking every little thing that
we
do or that comes into library land so-o-o-o seriously?"
Good luck, Diane.
I have tried, lord knows how I have tried.
But I am but one against 134,000 (OK, 133,999, since I'm
leaving you out of it, Diane) oh so earnest, serious, take-
everything-at-face-value librarians. I cannot win. My
jokes will bomb, and the one saving grace is that my
audience is too polite to mail rotten cabbage to Phoenix.
I've covered this ground several times, and it's all in
the archives. Once, in an attempt to explain the
phenomenon, I speculated that through some
demographic accident the bulk of librarians were
Americans of German descent. If you know the
upper Mississippi valley, or certain districts of
Ohio and Indiana, you may have personally
experienced the light, dry, sparkling, and ironic
wit of the Germans.
Right.
At the funeral of one of my high-school teachers --
a fellow who had a German mother and an Irish
father -- it was said he had inherited the sober
industriousness of the Irish and the playful and
ironic wit of the Germans.
The German difficulty with irony is well illustrated
by Prof. Dr. Moritz Maria von Igelfeld's diatribe
against the "damned obliqueness" of the English,
in Alexander McCall Smith's "Portuguese Irregular
Verbs" series.
I recommend it highly to nonlibrarians, since it
is replete with the damned obliqueness of the
English (or, in this case, of the Scot).
In any case, a torrent of reponses (all 11 of them)
assured me that German Americans were no
more overrepresented in the library profession
than any other group.
Perhaps it is the fact that the profession remains
86 percent female? I've watched the Lifetime
Channel, and it is deadly earnest serious stuff
indeed, just like relationship flicks.
(The critic Joe Bob Briggs once explained
a surefire method to determine if a movie is
a chick flick: If, within one minute of the end
of the opening-credit roll, a Mary-Richards-type
woman walks into a stylish apartment carrying
a bag of groceries with a baguette sticking out
of it, then it is a chick flick.
Baguettes do not appear in guy movies.)
Here's a test recycled from my April 4, 2002
posting about the humorlessness of
librarians:
A physician and a librarian -- lifelong friends --
love to go jogging together early in the
morning. On one of their outings they get into
a curious debate which quickly devolves into
a full-blown argument. The point of contention
is which profession is more important in the
eyes of God -- doctoring or librarianship?
The doctor tells her friend that library work
is wonderful, but good health is the sine qua
non of human existence -- without it nothing
else is possible. The librarian's retort to her
friend is the she is like a mere mechanic,
attending to the machinery of life but not its
spiritual essence. Medicine ministers to the
body but librarianship nourishes the mind.
Back and forth they go, neither yielding an
inch of ground.
Suddenly . . . a clap of thunder and a flash of
light! The clouds overhead part, and down
flutters a leaf of vellum with a message
written in a beautiful hand. It falls at their
feet and the doctor plucks it up so that
both women can read . . .
"My daughters, do not argue in such a fashion.
Be assured that the work of each of you has
honor and merit in my eyes, each in its proper
place and each equal one onto the other."
"(signed) God, M.L.S."
Now, did you think that was funny? If not,
how about this?
"Why don't the Publibbers laugh at my jokes?"
Joe asked one day. "Because," Karen replied,
"you keep forgetting to embed a 'Humor' tag
in your messages."
"When the librarians parse your text, they have
nothing to tell them that it is supposed to be
funny."
Hmmmm. OK. How about this?
A writer from L.A. was driving through the
Safford Valley in eastern Arizona when he
saw, along the road, a rancher delicately
holding a large pig aloft in his arms, so
the animal could gingerly snap off each
ripe, red tuna along the top of a long hedge
of prickly pears.
The writer couldn't resist. He slowed,
rolled down his window, and with a big
mocking grin said "Well now I guess you
could fatten a hog that way, but it'd take
a long time!!"
The rancher paused for a moment and
contemplated this, and then a look of contempt
for the naivete of the questioner crossed his
face:
"Jesus Christ, man! Don't you know time
don't mean nuthin' to a hog?"
Hmmmm. All right. Yes. But I nicked that
last one off Calvin Trillin, so you can't say I'm
stealing from a less than reputable source.
I have been unfair. 189 of you will laugh, not
just Diane. The other 133,811 (or at least
the ones on Publib) will deconstruct this
posting for its political, social, and philosophical
intent. A thread will develop. Earnest debate
on the appropriateness of hog jokes will
ensue. An ALA round table will be formed.
Resolutions will be passed.
But flame me not: I am already in Phoenix.
Joe Schallan
_______________________________________________
Publib mailing list
Publib at webjunction.org
http://lists.webjunction.org/mailman/listinfo/publib
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Do you Yahoo!?
Next-gen email? Have it all with the all-new Yahoo! Mail Beta.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.webjunction.org/wjlists/publib/attachments/20060809/2f60e6db/attachment.htm
More information about the Publib
mailing list