Wonged

Back dans la journée, my personal heroine Jan Wong wrote a column for the Globe (2001.11.21, A6) describing how Air Canada demanded she sign a letter promising never to bring sharp objects aboard a plane. (She indeed had done so, in the time-honoured tradition of sting operations that airport security always flunks.)

I have a note here from a few months ago reminding me of a dream I had (Martin Amis/Henry James: “Tell a dream, lose a reader”) in which a trim, officiously cheerful middle-aged British man met me in the classic featureless interrogation cell seen in TV cop shows. He spun around then slid over a sheet I was expected to sign admitting my transgressions against the Toronto Public Library and promising never to commit them again.

You and I both know what a “problem customer” is and that I ain’t one.

Tally

• Number of times kicked in metaphorical teeth last month by TPL management: ④

  • If we include Foderick: ⑤

• Frontline staff on whom management turned the screws: ②

Books I read, 2012

2012 year in reading: 136 print books read, 16 of which I had suggested the library buy.

Suggestion box

In part because the library is trying to shame me into terminating my use of blue suggestion forms, I am now documenting the titles I suggest TPL buy. Most of them they do in fact buy, but not without a hazing process nobody else has to suffer through. I’ll win in the end, of course.

Oh, snap

1. TPLFans:

   One bids adieu to @femwriter, who, like Spokesgay & Spokesgaysian, were baffled & stymied by TPLFans. Now a new one to break in, I guess.

2. femwriter (sic):

   @TPLFans you overestimate your impact Joe + underestimate my tolerance. Take care

3. TPLFans:

   @femwriter Your genteel fuck-you was, I guess, better late than never. If you’d shown that kind of moxie before, think of the “impact.”

Anne Marie Akins leaves TPL to work as a flak for Metrolinx. Wait till she finds out I’m also a transit fan.