(no subject)

My coworker was talking about lilacs this morning, which led to me attempting to explain the Glorious 25th of May. I quoted the bit about Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hardboiled Egg and she looked at me, amazed, and asked me how I remember things like that. I told her that I'd read the book several times and listened to the audiobook even more times and she boggled at me again and told me that she doesn't reread books. Which was my turn to boggle, because what? I don't even buy books unless I've already read them and loved them. What is the point of buying books if you don't plan to read them again?

I don't know how common either of our ways of doing things is, though, so I figured I would do a poll.

Poll #10491

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 23

View Respondents

I reread books I like...

View Answers

Frequently
13 (56.5%)

Sometimes
6 (26.1%)

Rarely
3 (13.0%)

Never
1 (4.3%)

(no subject)

And then I had a conversation about victim blaming with my boss.

Apparently, there was some kind of incident this past weekend (about which I have very few details) wherein a teenaged girl gave some older guy help with one of the public computers and later, he slipped her some kind of skeevy note. My boss just came back from vacation and my coworker was telling her about this and my boss's first reaction was, "Oh, why was she talking to him?!"

So I said something about why shouldn't she talk to him? The patron computers are all grouped really close together and people sitting at them often talk to each other and if they have problems, they often ask the people around them for help before talking to the staff. If someone asks a question and you know the answer and that is the extent of your interaction, why the hell should you not answer, if you feel so inclined? I mean, is this a thing we're doing now, where women just aren't supposed to talk to men they don't know at all, for fear that they might do something skeevy?

Fuck that. We don't need to tell women not to answer questions if they feel like they want to answer.* We need to teach men not to give people skeevy notes. Saying that you shouldn't ever talk to people just in case they might do something gross is victim blaming bullshit.

I...was not quite that emphatic with my boss. But I did actually use the words "victim blaming" and was probably a little visibly agitated because she came up a few minutes later and said something along the lines of "I hope I didn't offend you." To which I made appropriately conciliatory noises.

But no. You didn't offend me. I just think you're wrong.




*Leaving aside the fact that, quite often, if a guy talks to you and you don't say anything, that pisses him off and the situation escalates. And that is your fault too, of course, because why couldn't you just be polite and talk to him? No winning for you, ladies.

(no subject)

Have just had to convince a patron - one who has never displayed anything wackier than general grumpiness - that the fact that his computer keeps freezing on conservative political websites and not on liberal ones is solely a coincidence and not at all the result of some sort of liberal hacker conspiracy.

OMG, what is with today?