Things You Should Not Hear at a Library

1. Loud talking
2. Babies screaming
3. Sawing through plywood
4. People yelling "Miss? Excuse me? MISS???"
5. Someone pounding a hammer against a counter
6. A man violently coughing incessantly
7. A doorbell
8. "When the Saints Go Marching In" cell phone ring

Contagion

I just went to see a movie. Per usual, I stopped at the refreshments counter beforehand and got a small popcorn and small diet Coke. After I paid, as I was gathering my movie snacks, the young lady behind the counter - I believe her name was Jaeshida, if I'm recalling that correctly (which is coincidentally my great-grandmother's name) - said to me, "The garbage is behind you."

"Okay, thanks," I said. "Where's the butter?"

She pointed. "The butter's right there. The garbage is behind you."

"Great," I said. I went and buttered my popcorn, then turned to walk into the theater.

"Are you leaving this?" she called after me. I turned around. She was pointing to the counter, where there was sitting the crumpled up straw wrapper I had unsheathed from my straw and left there while I had been ordering, without it even registering as a thought blip on my brain radar.

"Yes...?" I said, kind of confused as to why she thought I might be taking it with me. She looked back down at the wrapper and scowled. And when I mean "scowl," it was a full on, corners-of-the-mouth-turned-down-frowny-face. There was disgust on her face, as if a homeless guy had just ejaculated on her toes.

That's when it hit me: she had repeated telling me where the garbage was because she had anticipated me leaving my straw wrapper there on the counter, dozens of seconds earlier in the conversation. In that instant I felt horrible. I apologized, grabbed the wrapper, threw it away, then apologized again. She smiled, satisfied, and told me to enjoy the movie.

Only a minute later, when I sat down, did I start feeling angry. How many times had I left a straw wrapper on any counter, let alone a movie theater refreshment stand, and not given it a second thought, because it's a totally acceptable thing to do? I just gave this girl $10.75 for popcorn and soda; I'm totally within my rights to leave my crumpled up smidgen of paper on the counter. What, should I not leave my garbage on the theater floor when I'm done? You want me to pick up all the popcorn I've dropped and throw that away too? Blow me.

Jaeshida may not enjoy picking up my straw wrapper and throwing it away. It may not be a dignified responsibility. But you know what? That's part of her job. You don't like throwing away people's refuse? Great. Then don't be a garbage man, don't work at McDonald's, and don't work behind the counter of a popcorn stand at a fucking movie theater.

Shmecmology

Say what you want about the iPod; I never had a Walkman that suddenly changed songs at the slightest dove's whisper grazing its sensitive surface.

Cursing: An Endorsement

The other night I caught the end of the movie THREE KINGS on TV. I don't remember what channel it was on, but they had commercials, and it was edited. This meant that all the swear words were replaced with more suitable words that would, I assume, be deemed less offensive to a mass audience.

While this may be true on one account, the dialogue they chose to censor the cursing with was, to my ears, exponentially more offensive. For example, in one scene an American soldier drags George Clooney to the ground and screams, "You frag me? Now it's my turn to frag you!" A few seconds later, another soldier shouts "Bullsquat!"

Let's put aside for a moment the insult to my intelligence that is asking me to accept that a soldier in the midst of a war would actually yell "Bullsquat!" instead of "Bullshit!" Go back to the first example. "Frag you" is supposed to replace "Fuck you"? "Frag" is barely a real word! No one says "frag you"! This otherwise ordinary piece of dialogue has been rendered completely ridiculous.

All you overprotective parents out there: is it really that important to shield your children's delicate ears from the word "fuck," to the point where you want them picking up vocabulary that has virtually no real-world meaning? Wouldn't you rather they go around sounding somewhat normal, as opposed to saying "frag you" to some kid at school and getting ridiculed all the way home?

It's sadly comical that we're permitted to watch Mark Wahlberg blow the top of an Iraqi's head off in the very first scene of this movie, but must be protected against hearing swear words by having them replaced with nonsensical impostor words. If you really must censor our cinema, just mute or bleep the curses, so we at least know what the intention was. Pretending we live in a world without swearing is just fragging bullsquat.

But Scratching Feels So Good...

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