Treason! Slander! Pornographic Leather Miniskirts!

Perhaps my favorite repeat library customer, I mean patron, is a pretty friendly, rather shabby older dude who drives a Joad-family-truckster-looking, at least 35-year-old heap that dies about once a month, forcing him to call in and have me renew his couple of dozen books over the phone. He's probably the most avid user of our Interlibrary Loan system, to where I've made him his own file for the many dozens of titles he's seeking. He dresses almost exclusively in a wardrobe of medical scrubs, possibly for the comfort factor but more likely for the cheapness. On this stormy morning when I just saw him, he mentioned that the tornado siren in his neighborhood hasn't been functioning for months, but no one has come to fix it--apparently a government funding problem.

What kinds of materials does this gentleman check out from our library? Well, I'm pretty sure he's gone through the collected works of Ann Coulter at least three times. He's also a reliably dedicated patron of our growing "Fear and Deport All Latinos" paranoiac department. Anything that smells of hatred and distrust of all governments, we can't keep it on the shelves with this guy around.

He's so damn friendly, though. Unfortunately, I know that, unlike myself, he's not just looking at this stuff (or listening to, say, Sean Hannity or Michael Savage, or watching FoxNews) for sick vicarious thrills or to see what the enemy is thinking. I'm fairly certain this fellow is a genuine black-helicopter-watching true believer.

I'm just always compelled to ask him, "So how's Bush-onomics working out for you then?" but I'm usually too busy filling out his latest Inter-Library Loan paperwork or chatting about how hot and run-down our poorly funded little library is.