To Mrs. Chunky Sweater Librarian
If Hamilton County's website explicitly says that I don't need proof of address to get a library card, Mrs. Chunky Sweater Librarian, then I don't think you should suspend my library card application. I don't think I need to make the unneccessary trip back home just to bring a lousy piece of mail back to you, Mrs. Chunky Sweater Librarian, just so you'll be satisfied enough to grant me access to your really puny selection of books and foreign language DVDs. I don't think that you were adequately responsive to my muffled indignation and indirect display of annoyance at the circulation desk which, had you any humane sensitivity, would have moved you to grant me a pass on this one little beauracratic step. And I hope you noticed that, on my return, it was not you, Mrs. CSL, who registered my new library card but Mrs. Old Woman Exhibiting Human Kindness, who did not even ask to see the piece of mail I had returned with.
This trip to the library owes thanks to the History of Political Philosophy, edited by our friend Leo Strauss. I'd checked it out from the Reg before I left, but it's failed to really keep my nose in a book so far this break. I read most of the first chapter on Plato written by Strauss, who pretty much summarized and articulated the arguments in the same way that Herman did, only a lot less inspiring (further proof that Plato goes down better with everyone's favorite Hum professor). There were also many cryptic annotations scribbled in the margins (several paragraphs were labelled "PRoBLeMS w/ DEMoCRACy"), evidence of some student searching for conspiracy in the essay. That's fun. I skipped the sections on the Laws and some other dialogue and went on to the chapter on Aristotle and the Politics, which I haven't even read before. It actually sounded pretty rad, so I thought I might pick it up to read over Christmas break until I decided that Christmastime and Fundamentals were two things I needed to keep in sacred but separate spheres of my life. That's why I'm sitting here with a copy of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America and a Barrington study guide on the LSAT's (more on that some other time) from the Cincinnati public library system.
On a slightly school-related note, I'm weirded out (it's a pleasant, fulfilling weirdness) to discover that every first-year on Facebook I can remember talking with in the Orientation Week advisor sessions is taking some of the exact classes I remember recommending. I just hope I didn't ruin some business-school-bound math major's first quarter by subjecting him to a torrent of Greek Thought and Literature.
And in a local Waldenbooks, they had a copy of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes out for customer perusal. After twenty minutes of reading it I decided that yes, my reason had been sufficiently clouded by nostalgia that I could now eventually buy this set without fear of feeling ripped off by United Press Syndicate.
If Hamilton County's website explicitly says that I don't need proof of address to get a library card, Mrs. Chunky Sweater Librarian, then I don't think you should suspend my library card application. I don't think I need to make the unneccessary trip back home just to bring a lousy piece of mail back to you, Mrs. Chunky Sweater Librarian, just so you'll be satisfied enough to grant me access to your really puny selection of books and foreign language DVDs. I don't think that you were adequately responsive to my muffled indignation and indirect display of annoyance at the circulation desk which, had you any humane sensitivity, would have moved you to grant me a pass on this one little beauracratic step. And I hope you noticed that, on my return, it was not you, Mrs. CSL, who registered my new library card but Mrs. Old Woman Exhibiting Human Kindness, who did not even ask to see the piece of mail I had returned with.
This trip to the library owes thanks to the History of Political Philosophy, edited by our friend Leo Strauss. I'd checked it out from the Reg before I left, but it's failed to really keep my nose in a book so far this break. I read most of the first chapter on Plato written by Strauss, who pretty much summarized and articulated the arguments in the same way that Herman did, only a lot less inspiring (further proof that Plato goes down better with everyone's favorite Hum professor). There were also many cryptic annotations scribbled in the margins (several paragraphs were labelled "PRoBLeMS w/ DEMoCRACy"), evidence of some student searching for conspiracy in the essay. That's fun. I skipped the sections on the Laws and some other dialogue and went on to the chapter on Aristotle and the Politics, which I haven't even read before. It actually sounded pretty rad, so I thought I might pick it up to read over Christmas break until I decided that Christmastime and Fundamentals were two things I needed to keep in sacred but separate spheres of my life. That's why I'm sitting here with a copy of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America and a Barrington study guide on the LSAT's (more on that some other time) from the Cincinnati public library system.
On a slightly school-related note, I'm weirded out (it's a pleasant, fulfilling weirdness) to discover that every first-year on Facebook I can remember talking with in the Orientation Week advisor sessions is taking some of the exact classes I remember recommending. I just hope I didn't ruin some business-school-bound math major's first quarter by subjecting him to a torrent of Greek Thought and Literature.
And in a local Waldenbooks, they had a copy of The Complete Calvin and Hobbes out for customer perusal. After twenty minutes of reading it I decided that yes, my reason had been sufficiently clouded by nostalgia that I could now eventually buy this set without fear of feeling ripped off by United Press Syndicate.
3 Comments:
So I'm trying to get through The City and Man and having a very similar experience. OVERRATED. Except you know we can't really say that because it probably just shows that we're precisely the proles who WOULD miss the deep, conspiratorial esoteric meaning he is trying to convey. Is that not a most brilliant literary move?
1) Articulate a philosophy according to which it's the reader's stupidity that prevents him from understanding the "true meaning" of works.
2) Write incomprehensible and boring books and blame the incomprehension and boredom on the reader.
Are you taking the LSATs now? Are you confused about your future again? And isn't it the Barron's guide?
Yes--what did I write? Oh, I put "Barrington" instead of "Barron." Maybe I wanted it to sound more British?
And the new Calvin and Hobbes collection is on such pretty paper!
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