We pay taxes.  Everyone pays taxes.  We complain about them now and then – but not often.  Everyone complains now and then.  Taxes are annoying.  We hate taxes.  We especially hate taxes on second hand items.  To my mind, there is no rationale for taxing a second hand item.  It is ‘green’ to recycle and, more to the point: the government has already taken their ‘bite’ when the item left the shelf when new.  I hate taxes like that.

But, like I said above, I don’t usually complain.  Not often, anyway.  First it seems pointless.  It is like complaining about the weather.  There is nothing I can do about it so I try to ‘accept’ that which I cannot change.  I try to live by the “!%$##$%” Desiderata whenever I can.  “Gawd, give me the patience and the understanding…………..blah, blah, blah”.

But the main reason I don’t complain is because we get a tax-supported benefit that is invaluable.  We get a gift from the government that is to die for.  We swoon over this.  We love them for this alone (there is nothing else to even like them for).  I am talking about Books-by-mail.  It is the library for the alone, the remote, the isolated, the social pariah, the loner, the hermit and, well, us and the likes of us.

This how it works: we go online to the library and order a book.  It shows up on our screen with the expected wait time – not unlike going to your local library and putting your name on the list.  Typically, you wait a week or so for a ‘normal’ book that has been out for awhile and maybe as long as two months for a recent or popular one.  So long as you have enough books ‘on order’, you are generally well supplied with reading materials.  I go through a couple of books a week, sometimes more.  It is absolutely one of the best societal benefits I have ever experienced.

It may be the only reason I count myself amongst you. 

And yes, that statement remains true even when compared to health care.  ESPECIALLY when compared to health care and doubly so when compared to public education.  Best bang for my tax dollar?  No question – the library.

But not lately.  Lately, things have gone awry.  Two years ago the ‘old dear’ that was the library linchpin for the remote retired and they hired, in her stead, Isabelle Incompetent and her assistant Suzi So Stupid.  It is like being served by morons.

Ironic, don’t you think, to have idiot librarians?  I mean, if they can read, they should be able to package, address and mail.  Ya know?  Not true for our duo of dumb, our cuckoo couple, our tag team of twits, our librarian loons!  For the last 6 weeks, nada!  No books!  It is almost enough to make me listen to the CBC!

OK, I am exaggerating.  Nothing can make me listen to the CBC for more than the news.  And even then………….. (yesterday a ‘main’ news item was about a Quebecois film that is up for an Oscar in the foreign language category.  They hadn’t won or lost yet.  They were just nominated.  THIS is CBC news!)

“Well, Sharon, something might happen somewhere, but we are not sure.  This is Larry Flaccid reporting from a comfortable Vancouver office.  Canada lives here !”  

(whatever that means)

“Thank you, Larry, tee hee, ha ha, heh heh heh. 

They have recently taken to hiring fourteen year-olds who ‘laugh’ as they are talking.  You can ‘hear’ the grin in their voices which is punctuated at the end or the beginning of every sentence with a little ‘half-giggle’.   If there is a better way to announce to the world that you have suffered recent brain damage, I can’t imagine what it might be.

Our own Catherine Rolfsen (a local) is the exception, of course.  

OK, this may just be the ‘bush’ talking.  Seems one can get a little ‘bushed’ staying the whole winter up here.  People get a bit odd, it seems.  It’s a regular occurrence.

For them, tho, not me.