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Friday Frunnies



Lurks,
Well, after that little contretemps with the shredded
active litigation files the judge told me I was going
to have to do "community service".  I said, "I'm an
archivist!  What do ya think I do all day.  Chop
liver?"  But nooooo.  So I go to the community service
office and they assign me a dozen pre-teens fresh out
of the maximum security territorial prison in Yuma and
tell me I got to get them involved in an art project.
So I come back to the archive and go down to the boiler
room to check with the collection finding aid; Fred.
Fred is our E.A.D. (embedded archival detective) and he
was embedded in an oversized wing chair behind the
boiler.  There used to be a plaque on the back of the
chair that said "William howard Taft slept here" but it
got accidentally pried off and accidentally sold on
E-Bay.  I explained my problem to fred and he said,
"Postcards!".  Fred's had this thing about postcards
since the cheeze-whiz that used to run this place
collected them "To document the changing face of
America".  Fred said that was like photographing the
pimples on your face.  He had to catalog them.  So
anyway, I pulled a few crates out of the closet and
then I got my BIG IDEA.  Since all of the major streets
in this burg have been continuously under construction
since 1908 [nothing gets finished because the
technology keeps changing before anything gets done] I
thought about using the postcards and those traffic
cones to make an art "statement".  What I'd do is have
my JDs start at one end of town and stick postcards on
the traffic cones with archival duct tape®.  We would
make a postcard panorama of the US from coast to
coast.  So we started by the freeway with postcards of
Seal Rocks and Cliff House in San Francisco, then Sutro
Heights, Lands End, etc., etc., across the city, over
the Bay Bridge, through Oakland, over the hills and so
on.  My JDs were helpful in keeping the commuters at
bay by waving their AK-47s around in a playful manner.
I think we were about to Fresno when I stepped back
into a turn lane at 22nd and Alvernon to admire my
handiwork and got rear-ended by an 18-wheel milk
truck.  That reminds me of a joke.  A guy goes into a
bar about 10:00 in the morning....no, I think I better
wait until the list goes to bed before I tell you that
one.  Anyway, I went to the E.R with the biggest milk
mustache anyone ever had.  I was in the E.R. about five
hours before they finished the estimate and told me to
come back next Thursday for the emergency surgery.  So
I limped down to the Pancho Villa Peace Bar and
Chimichanga Hut for a glass of fermented cactus juice.
This place is so tough they leave the cactus spines in
when they serve.  Anyway I'm sitting there when a
string comes in orders a drink.  "Sorry, we don't serve
strings," says Paddy the bartender.  "What?"  That
stinks!" says the string.  So the string sneaked into
the bathroom and tied himself into a knot and messed up
his ends.  He came back out and approached the bar
again and again he ordered a drink.  "Hey, aren't you
that string?" asked the bartender.  "No, I'm a frayed
knot."
Dick "He's so old when he orders a three-minute egg,
they ask him for the money up front" King
P.S.  Dick the Archivist's helpful archival hints for a
rainy day:  Is your staff feeling down because of low
pay and poor working conditions?  When you know someone
is coming to use your collection, brighten their day by
taking a glue stick and using it to glue most of the
important documents in the file together.  Allow
sufficient time for the glue to harden.  As the
patron's frustration rises as with attempts to use the
material, watch the faces of your staff light up and
the smiles begin to appear.  Remember, the key to
customer satisfaction is to have a happy staff!  Next
week: How to permanently deacidify paper documents.

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