Oh, Yes I Did!

Last Friday I sent out two cover letters with the following paragraph:

Let me be blunt: as far as I’m concerned, if you do not hire me, you are an idiot. I have labored for two and a half years to try to get a library position, and have been consistently overlooked. I am smart, curious, and capable, and I have instructional and customer service experience to spare. I will be an asset to the library that finally hires me, and I can only hope that you will be that library. Thank you for your time.

OK, so it may not have been the wisest move -- and I do admit that I did it mostly because Dave dared me to. But it is, more or less, how I feel, although perhaps the word "idiot" is a tad harsh. Both the institutions I sent the cover letter to are libraries that I have applied to before, and never gotten much in the way of response back, so I didn't expect to hear back from them anyways.

"We Collaborated With The Cleaning Of The Baths To Loosen To The Toilet Each Sees Is Used."

This is about the only Spanish (aside from very simple statements, like "Me llamo Bill") that I can recite from memory (and I apologize if any grammar or spelling has been slaughtered in the remembering):

Colaboramos con la limpieza de los baños soltar el sanitario cada ve se use.

This used to be posted in the lavatory at De Porres P.L.A.C.E., and I managed to memorize it, before I even knew what it meant. I mean, I had an idea, since the signs were posted above the urinals, but I certainly didn't recognize many words. I actually created a little song with it, which I proceeded to sing for everyone I saw -- which more or less meant Brianna. The song lingered for a while after I left, but eventually seemed to evaporate, just another detail lost in the march into the future.

Then yesterday, I was teaching my students about "clean" and "dirty" -- "limpio" and "sucio" in Spanish -- and when I saw the word "limpio" in the bilingual dictionary, the entire song came back to me. So I thought I would share, because I can't get the damn thing out of my head. Some day, I will record it, and then you'll all be sorry! YOU'LL ALL PAY!! MWUH-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!

Of course, I'm also posting it here so I won't forget it again, too.



On an unrelated note: as I'm looking for a job, I've been paying more attention to the goings-on in my (hopefully) future profession. Hence I was very pleased to find that John Waters addressed ACRL. I find the reactions amusing: the positive reaction isn't really sure that it is positive in any sense except the theoretical, and the negative reaction has trouble putting the offense into words. How old was she that she was referencing "vaudeville"? Really, I have sat through a few of these speeches, and they are ALL relentlessly self-serving, including Barak Obama's spewage at the ALA Conference in Chicago. His single-minded, relentless idolatry of children's librarians left me breathless with boredom for the duration of the speech. (Yeah, OK, children's librarians are great, we get that, but there are whole species of librarians who will never, ever have to participate in anything called "storytime".) I would have paid an extra hundred dollars if John Waters had bum-rushed the stage and started to recite the professional biography of the man with the singing sphincter from Pink Flamingos, complete with a slide show and Odorama.