Cat-eyed

“Save me from myself!” union head’s oversized novelty eyeglasses cry ☞

Gay Objectivist goes to library gay ‘speed dating’ (also: gay)

The Star covered the soi-disant LGBTQ (or was it GLBTQ?) Literary Speed Dating event that took place at Gladstone on July 4 – Independence Day in the United States, the country Ayn Rand defended to the death.

Not quite nose against glass, but close

By incredible coïncidence it became necessary that evening for me to drop by for a spell in the contemplation tank. Anyway, the Star gives (again) soi-disant “[s]creenwriter Jason Holborn, 36” enough rope. He

brought a stack of books and DVDs just in case he got bored talking about one. (Besides, that way he could tailor his chatter if Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead struck a disagreeable political chord.)

“I don’t drink alcohol, I don’t go to clubs – it’s honestly so hard to meet people,” Holborn said. “This is the Nº 1 coolest event I’ve seen. It’s an awesome idea.”

So I sent this guy a message asking, in not quite these words, “Are you an Objectivist and did you really bring Ayn Rand to an artfag dating event?” (I actually used the phrase “a roomful of artistique gays,” but “artfag” really isn’t pejorative. Ask one yourself.) Holborn’s rationally-self-interested response?

I don’t think I’m on Objectivist per se; I did bring Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead to the event. But also Hustle & Flow and some French young-adult books.

Basically, an Objectivist will get as far in gay Toronto as a Log Cabin Republican would in Chelsea. And to think I was worried about those Muslims at the table across the hall.

Superfun teetotaler party idea!

The library – God bless ’em! – has ordered the disastrously reviewed Atlas Shrugged feature film. (“Part 1.”)

Let’s have a fun teetotaler video party at Jason’s house! Who’s in? I’ll bring exactly enough snacks to satisfy myself and I’m sure everyone else can easily do the same. We can debate the video’s ideologically incorrect packaging and cruise through Etsy looking for homemade dollar-sign jewelry.

[CRICKETS]

On my maiden voyage addressing the board, I didn’t expect absolutely nothing to happen. I certainly didn’t expect the board to be baffled into stupefaction by its own procedures, which board secretary (“Administrative Coordinator, City Librarian’s Office”) Nancy Marshall insisted I follow.

I expected to be ignored, an active choice. I didn’t expect nothing to happen.

Further: I am in the top percentile of civilians who follow the minutiæ of the library. Yet I had Janet Davis tell me, in that quiet tone she adopts that cannot help but sound condescending, that the circulation budget was restored in Raymond Cho’s successful motion at Council. It was? I have no explanation as to how I did not know this fact. If it is.

I expected TTC levels of feigned interest. (And TTC-like deployment of procedure to nullify my contribution.) But I didn’t expect nothing.

Barring calamity, though, I am going to outlive the hacks, pikers, ringers, and lobbyists – and the Mr. Magoo manqué – now seat-filling the board. Of course they’re going to stonewall me to the extent possible. (And, because it’s a public institution, I’ll be able to prove it.) Here’s a shocker, though: I’ve decided to kill them with kindness.

When the Toronto Transit Commission were being dicks, I decided there were enough transit fans out there to arrange a tour of the unique design of subway stations. Thus was born the TTC Type & Tile Tour, held across consecutive Sundays to quite a bit of acclaim. In fact, the other week a chick walked up to me in the subway and asked me to put on another tour.

I will. But this time, we’ll tour the library.

Pre-announcing the
Sue-Ann Levy Memorial Library Crawl

Are you a leftard? A right-wing asshole? Does it vary by the day? Are you neither? Well, come one, come all to a whirlwind tour of signature Toronto Public Library branches.

We’ll wait till the snow melts a little, and you’ll need a handful of tokens or a TTC pass, but expect krazy mixed-up shit like:

• A tour of the first eight feet of depth of the Hariri Pontarini–designed Pape/Danforth branch

• Tripling, in one fell swoop, the occupancy of the superdelightful Todmorden Room

• A tragic tale of RFID Gone Wrong at the oldest branch in the city, Yorkville

• A quiet interlude in the contemplation tank at Gladstone, assuming it hasn’t been deemed a safety hazard again, which it obviously isn’t

• Flat-out fandom at the sight of renovation done right at Runnymede

First attendee to set off an alarm walking into a branch gets a vintage library copycard loaded with five Canadian dollars.

If all goes well, we can do the same thing a month later in another corner of the city. Say, hasn’t Northern Elms been in the news lately? I daresay it could use a dozen people showing up at once. Or we could just do the Bookmobile. I promise you that would be the highlight of your week.

Don’t worry, TPL!

You’ll have plenty of notice to fill the affected branches with security guards and worried “femwriters” transfixed with deer-in-headlights expressions. But you can’t keep us out. If you’re smart, you’ll come along. Why wouldn’t you? You’re invited. Everybody is.

Are you Sue-Ann Levy?

You can come too! We can trade hamentaschen recipes and dish! dish! dish! about what’s wrong with Pride.

Journalling

So. Keep Toronto Reading month. All well and good. Then there was the fractured tale of those 99 blank journals. Were they scattered at 98 locations across the city and also at exactly one library branch? Because if so, I found it:

Where at? Gerrard-Ashdale.

But this didn’t make any sense. Surely the nice upper-middle-class petit(e)s fonctionnaires of the Toronto Public Library would not really “fan out” across the city, leaving a blank journal and a ballpoint pen inside, say, Jilly’s, the Empire Club, the Price Chopper on Dupont, the TV lounge at Spa Excess, the ghetto Dufferin 29 bus, one of the ladies’ changing rooms at Holts, any of several Italian and Portuguese “gentlement’s clubs” on Dundas, the TV Shows on DVD racks at HMV, the sole remaining Fran’s, a Tamil grocer on Parliament, Sporting Life, and any of those places they’d never heard of before because they are located north of Sporting Life? Plus somewhere I guess maybe in Scarborough just for diversity’s sake?

Cross-referencing various news reports and press releases, I learned that the books all started out at library branches. What a charming upper-middle-class idea, just right for charming upper-middle-class people, who in this city are well known for their forthrightness, initiative, outgoingness, and willingness to spontaneously share their thoughts in a book they found somewhere that had already been handled by God knows who.

Now imagine what would have happened if, say, on every 44th seat at a few dozen high schools one found a notebook bearing nothing on its cover but an URL. Which of these would enjoy a higher response rate?

I personally won’t so much as initial a cashback receipt at Loblaws with a ballpoint pen, so I guess I’m not in the target market.

NYPL DMZ RFID FAIL

Upon this Sunday visit to retrieve the system’s lone copy of Eye, 15 people were waiting in line to check out their books. The line was down to ten by the time I got there, presumably different people. I thought they had only one checkout station working, but there were two. Except the system was down and they were merely scanning barcodes into Microsoft Word. I rather hope they saved the file from time to time.

Staff passed my items around the barrier to me. We had the same bullshit conversation when I showed them my book from another branch. (Just give me the damned book back. Don’t blow smoke up my ass and tell me you have to check it out again. [What if it’s overdue, and what if it’s already from NYCL?] There is zero chance I am stealing a book from the library when I just handed it to a librarian.)

Are we done yet? Of course we aren’t.

Why were there only two checkout stations? Because more than half the former checkout area is under construction. For what? For those accursed, godforsaken RFID self-checkout machines. This will upend the apple cart at North York Central considerably, because by definition you’ll be able to walk right out with your items. To hell with the barrier.

Except:

• Any item with an RFID has its theft bit turned on – and left on, because they just hand the item to you around the barrier.

• Hence when you walk into another branch that uses RFID, its alarm goes off right away.

• On one of the many occasions this happened (at Gladstone), some queen leapt out of his seat and chased me up the stairs. I let him tell me his bullshit story – twice – about how he has to inspect my item. Then I told him I’d heard him the first time, I knew the system quite well, he didn’t have to chase me up the stairs, and we’ll fix it later.

  Upon checkout, there he was again. Proving for the umpteenth time that RFID involves more employees than ever, three other people listened to my conversation. (So now five people were checking out a single book.) Why wasn’t that book desensitized when it left its branch, I asked? Some branches do and some don’t, he told me repeatedly. So you’re saying some branches are incompetent and some aren’t, I politely declined to say. This went back and forth many times.

  Then, after I embarrassed the other three into going away, I told him he had a personal obligation to figure out a better way of talking to library patrons about its own systems’ failure than chasing them through the library like they’d just stolen a sweater from the Gap.

  At St. Clair/Dufferin half an hour later, the bored fashion victim behind the desk (who visibly had absolutely nothing to do) claimed he couldn’t desensitize the book. Really?

• A book I had also checked out from North York that other day set off the alarm at the new, denuded, gutted, space-profligate Yorkville branch. (Gee, whatever did happen to those priceless solid marble countertops? I had asked well in advance of the renovation and got no answer. Now it’s laminate and green glass. Stay classy, TPL.)

  After the distracted chick behind the desk tried to get rid of me by directing me to the checkout station I had separately already used, she eventually deigned to pay attention long enough to desensitize the book. Except the alarm went off on the way out. (She made a nice, if corny, joke, so it wasn’t all bad.)

  I later talked to a competent person at St. James Town. My item from Yorkville was turned off; the North York book was still on. She fixed it. I made a bet with her that I’d still set off the alarm on the way out. I didn’t.

• Oh, and did you know for a while St. James Town was hiding new DVDs behind the desk because “people take them”? You can’t do that in an RFID branch. Absolutely everything is open and available and borrowable without staff intervention. (I borrow magazines at RFID branches the minute I see them, not after the date stamped on them, if any.)

So: Let’s recap

• On the (now clearly bullshit) premise of checking out the same number of items or more with unchanged staff complement, every branch, even Todmorden, is to be converted to RFID checkout at great cost. (Every item in the system has to have an RFID tag installed, often n tags for n-piece items.)

• For this system to work:

  • Every item has to be instantly available and self-borrowable. Every item already isn’t.

  • Every item has to be desensitized upon checkout. Every item isn’t.

  • RFID branches sending items to non-RFID branches have to send those items pre-desensitized. They don’t.

The result? False alarms go off all over the place. And I assure you this is gonna start making the papers when it happens to befuddled grannies and grumpy right-leaning taxpayers, not just to me.

RFID: The microfiche of the 21st century. You’re gonna regret it. (And for the fifty billionth time, “RFID” is two syllables, not four: arphid.)

It’s easier to get into and out of North Korea than into and out of a branch while carrying an RFID-tagged item. Where’s that union when you need ’em?