So, do you want customers or not?

All of the stores in the mall I work behind started opening at 8am during Christmas week. The change in hours, however, was a secret: there were no signs posted anywhere I could see that announced the change. In previous years the exterior entrances all had posted schedules of December changes in hours, but there weren't any this year.

Do they want customers or not? The tenants might want them, but they aren't getting much help from the mall management.

Selling the sizzle, or selling burlap bags

The latest company to purchase all of the advertising space at the Embarcadero BART station is the often-reviled fast-food chain whose coffee surprisingly was rated highest by a rating agency a few years back. Let's paraphrase an acting expression and call it the Scottish restaurant.

Also doing some advertising these days is the leading purveyor of brewed coffee, whose patrons' daily purchases are frequently an example of things to forego in articles suggesting ways to economize. Let's call that chain Celestial Dollars. I've seen one of their billboards at a BART station I rarely go to, and some print ads.

The Scottish restaurant's billboards blanketing the Embarcadero station have a perky orange/yellow bacground; half have snappy sayings along the lines of (I never wake up enough in my morning commute to write down the ads) "brewed just around the corner," "less than half the fare to Orinda" --- a nice acknowledgment of where the billboards are --, and a few others I can't remember. Every other billboard has those lines, on the perky background; the others have up-close views of a the coffee drinks ---- oooh, foam; ooooh, whipped cream and chocolate. As the old saying goes, advertising isn't selling a steak, it's selling the sizzle. The Scottish restaurant seems to be doing a good job of selling, if not the sizzle, then the aroma of coffee.

Celestial Dollars, on the other hand, has its billboard (the one I've seen) and its print ads (I've seen more than one) with text on a burlap bag. The color is a burlapy-brown. There are no photos of coffee products. The texts are either annoying (something about some drink is "like an adult blanky" --- excuse me Celestial, that's WAY too sweet for me) or bland (something about their buyers go everywhere to purchase coffee beans; something that suggests they have high social concerns for those who grow the beans -- true enough for the fair-traded coffee beans it uses, but those aren't the only coffee beans, as I understand it.) Overall the ads are bland. No sizzle; either cutesiness, or an appeal to conscience.

Maybe the blandness of the ads reflects the fact Celestial Dollars hasn't had to advertise much up to now. Presumably this step into advertising reflects the fact that some patrons are listening to those articles on how to save money, and are either switching to the Scottish restaurant, or just plain skipping the chance to not just buy an expensive coffee drink, but to personally micro-manage each ingredient in the drink at Celestial Dollars. For whatever reason, the company is now advertising, but not selling much of a sizzle. I suspect I am not the only person who doesn't salivate at the picture of a burlap bag. Now, coffee with whipped cream and chocolate -- that's another thing entirely.

Checking for children?

The other day I received one of those junk-mail envelopes in the mail that has lots of different ads, more or less focusing on my area. They occasionally have a coupon or two I can use, or can save with the intent to use, so as usual I flipped through all of the ads.

While I don't need to buy any checks right now, the illustrations in the ad from a company that sells checks caught my eye. What caught it were child-friendly designs that took up most of the first and second pages, and a lot of the third. The first page was awash with checks featuring Disney characters -- Pooh and friends; Disney princesses (the ensemble phrase now used for Cinderella, Snow White, Pocahontas, the Beauty with or without the Beast, maybe Sleeping Beauty and the little Mermaid -- I'm not sure;) Mickey and friends, etc; also from whoever produced Daffy Duck and friends; also, for some reason, the Ratatouille rat (I thought that movie hadn't been a very big hit); Betty Boop; and I forget all the others. The other pages were heavy on cutesy little girls, angels, cherubs, etc.

My immediate reaction was to wonder just how many children (mostly, girls) have checking accounts. I must have been avoiding doing some sort of work at home as I kept staring at the illustrations, which showed one design per set on a simulated check, complete with printed name and address. What caught my attention next was that all of the checks in the flyer had the same name, something like George and Mary Smith.

This led, of course, to musings on George pulling out his checkbook to pay for a round of beers with his buddies, and there, for all to see, is a wonderful illustration of one of the Disney princesses on his check. Hmmmmmmm.

I looked through all the sample designs to see what was most macho, and found very few: some Harleys (lots of women ride them too); some macho kids designs (Transformers, Spiderman, Batman); and some rustic outhouses. Maybe there were a few with US flags, US military insignia, and bald eagles, but for the most part, things vaguely male in orientation were vastly outnumbered by all the girlish ones.

I've been mulling over the ad ever since I saw it -- and have meanwhile seen shorter ones in other mailers and in the Sunday advertising supplements, and they, too, all seem rather heavy on princesses, etc. Do men buy these designs? Do they use these designs if purchased by the female half of the printed name? Do these companies know what they are doing? Since I feel vaguely through the looking glass, shouldn't there be checks with Alice in Wonderland?

Woodstock and Warrior Potatoes

Two of the advertising inserts in yesterday's Sunday newspaper had some entertaining stuff.

The insert for the suburban big box store whose name is often pronounced with a French accent had a two-page spread for "Woodstock Exclusives" to "celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival ...." You, too, can now have the Woodstock logo (dove on guitar fret, with one human hand holding down some of the strings) on paper plates or napkins! Or a reversible picnic blanket, solid orange on one side, with a (non-psychedelic) repeating pattern of "3 days of peace and music" on the other side.

The "3 days" slogan is also on plastic tumblers and on some tees. However, in the upper left corner of the two-page spread is a bumper-sticker shaped box, with "Woodstock" and the trademarked logo on one line, followed by "Forty years of peace, love and music" on the second line. Presumably love was left out of the items for sale by the big-box store because someone recognized that in the Woodstock context love was the S in S, D, and R&R description of the sixties (here tactfully not spelled out.)

Meanwhile, in another ad from a big-box store that has a letter of the alphabet preceding "Mart"as its name, there was a two-page spread for Transformers tie-ins from the movie. All in dark colors, except, down in the lower right corner, there was a bright yellow figure, described as "Mr. Potato Head Bumble Spud Taterobt. No ordinary fries, these are POTATOES IN DISGUISE! tm." Only $8.99: I found this so funny I might go buy one. To heck with peace and love.

Wink wink, nudge nudge

A billboard on the SF Muni platform at the Embarcadero Station shows that one company knows some slang -- or has an ad agency that does. The ad is for combined cable and phone services, and says, as far as I can remember: "Check out our package. You know you want to," followed by something like "Proud to celebrate SF Pride." That's the clue as to the slang.

It resonates nicely with the one two billboards away touting solar panels, with something along the lines of "Stimulus packages on the roof." That wasn't intended to be slang, but now seems to be.

Sometime it pays to be semi-awake during ones commute.

I love old dictionaries

Jessamyn West has some interesting comments on ALA's new Connect site: http://www.librarian.net/stax/2773/i-feel-that-i-should-mention-ala-connect/#comment-124372

I added a comment to her post, and felt that I needed to check the spelling of "unfortunately," one of the words in my comment. I used a nifty 1934 edition of Webster's New International Dictionary, unabridged, near the reference desk, and on the way to "unfortunately" I ran across "unforeskinned." Yes, it means circumcised.

Dictionaries: so much fun for simple minds.

An Extraterrestial Rosetta Stone?

Rosetta Stone is a company that sells foreign-language courses in a box -- probably on CDs, maybe on DVD. The only print ad I've seen shows a teenage boy in jeans, a white tee shirt, and a baseball-style cap, against a backdrop of a field. He's holding a Rosetta Stone box, settling his cap firmly on his head, and looking determined. The caption says something along the lines of "He's a hard-working farm boy. She's an Italian super-model. He knows he has just one chance to impress her." I find the ad both funny and sweet -- and sort of wonder about the back story: just where is he going to meet her? How did he find out about her?

Being without a tv, I only recently saw a tv ad for the same product while channel surfing during a motel stay. The tv version of the ad lacked the story line, but instead had a surprise in its list of customers: along with the US State Department (that makes sense) and the Department of Defense (that also makes sense,) there was also NASA.

NASA? Do the available languages include some extraterrestial ones? Let's try a print ad on that one: He's only a dedicated astronaut from planet Earth; she's a Venusian princess with 12 arms. He knows he has just one chance to impress her before being mauled to death by Venusian sabre dogs."

I love advertising.

Spiritual Endeavours in Olden Times

I just stumbled across an 1886 publication by the London Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge: Vocabularies of the Niger and Gold Coast, West Africa.

This is a short publication, with a small number of words and just a few phrases in separate sections for the Yoruba, Nupe, Kakanda, Igibira, Igara, Ibo, Ga (Akra,) and Obutu languages. The vocabulary list and phrases reflect every-day communication, not religious terms, and translate the same English words/phrases in each language.

One approach to spreading Christian knowledge is hinted at by the prominent number of words/phrases involving to beat. The English list of words: beat, to beat, beating, having beaten, I beat, thou beatest, he beats, we beat, you beat, they beat, I am beating, I had beaten, I may beat, I shall beat, I am beaten, I was beaten, I shall be beaten, Beat him well and bind him with ropes, I have beaten his son with many stripes.

A handy verb list, presumably all in the imperative, consists of: go, eat, sit, come, beat, stand, die (!,) give, run.

It wasn't easy being the object of conversion activities in the past.

Author's affection for alliteration is annoying

On BART this morning I started reading American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century, by Paula Uruburu. (New York: Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group USA, 2oo8.) According to the book-jacket, the author is an English professor. My impression is that she may have spent too much time in grad school reading Victorian three-decker novels.

The book demonstrates both a mania for alliteration and a dedication to adjectives and adverbs that scream for an editor. The four-page introduction alone includes, in part, "a winsome, waif-like, and wide-eyed Evelyn Nesbit," "class of calculating Calvinists," "priapic city over which the preternaturally and passionately inspired [Stanford] White," plus a number of shorter alliterative phrases: betrayed and broken-hearted, purveyor and pillager, minted mansions, magnificent mansions, empires of excess, creator whose corrupted Garden, and tiled and terra-cotta confines. Chapter one includes this phrase in a longer (believe it or not) sentence: "a thrilling and ingenious decade of crusaders and con men, cakewalks and coon songs, contradictions and coincidences, class wars and conspicuous consumption ...." Unfortunately, all of the foregoing examples are only a small sample of what's available.

Chapter one also includes this sentence, for a change with few adverbs and little alliteration, but still plenty of adjectives: "The anticipation of a new millennium was absolutely electric as the last minutes of the withering 1800s hung suspended in the frigid air, overripe and ready to drop." I'm up to page 38 and am, without being withered, ready to drop my interest in the book due to the overripe prose.

Where's the Index?

My new phone book arrived in late December. Last week I needed to use the yellow pages to look for a smog check station, and that's when I discovered that the yellow pages index has been done away with. I'm not sure if it was called an index, but it worked like one: you could look up the term you wanted, and find out what heading the phone company was using. I did find the section: auto smog brake and lamp inspection and repair. Good luck, however, to someone looking for a shop that specializes in brake repair, as there is no heading autro brake, and no cross reference. Ditto for "lamp" repair, but there is auto electrical. My general impression is that the phone company is trying to jack up the number of yellow page listings by making it necessary for a company to buy listings under different headings.

A few years back I needed to use the index to look up services for the elderly, and the index was a big help in providing a lot of category headings. Looking in the phone book today, there's a heading for "Elderly Care Product and Services," with one company, and no cross-references. That's really too bad. I needed the information then as my mother had just started the two-year decline that preceded her death, and I was new to the whole field of services for -- well, I guess, the elderly. It was daunting finding information at first, but ultimately I discovered the care company I used for those two years, and without which I couldn't have managed or kept my sanity. I can't remember if I found it through the phone book, or from a flyer at a restaurant in an area surrounded by senior housing and nursing homes. I do know that for some reason, it's not listed under elderly care. Thinking about it today, I'm not sure what all the phone book categories were, so I'm not sure where I would start if I had to do it again, other than looking under nurses of various types. (Just thinking about this has my stress level rising retroactively in what I think of as post traumatic stress from that period.)

Holiday Slog Blog: Week 5

My Speciality: Fine Whines

Monday, Dec 22: The end of the slog is in site: my boss is scheduled to be back on December 26. That means I have to start clearing away all the accumulated stuff on the reference desk -- every bit of silver has a cloudy center.

Friday we received in the mail an envelope from the main branch, stamped confidential, but with no staffer's name. Today, we received another one, without the confidential stamp, but still no name. At least that one I could open with a fear of breaching confidentiality. On Friday I sent a letter to the entire library system asking whoever sent the confidential letter to get in touch -- and that person did, and apologized for not adding a staffer's name.

Wednesday, Dec 24: Today at work we have bagels and shmears; butterscotch fudge; chocolate-covered raisins; a box of See's candy; and pumpkin bread. All these provide noshes for four employees and three volunteers. Hope we have enough. Later: the last volunteer in brought cookies and cheese, salami, and crackers. Maybe we will have enough.

Friday, Dec 26: Hurrah hurrah, my boss is back! And we have even more stuff to eat, thanks to one of our part-time staffers, who brought in panetonne! (And, later, gave me a tin of cookies that I will share.)

An educational holiday newsletter

'Tis the season for holiday newsletters. I rather like the few I get, probably because I don't know anyone with wonder-kids and/or a million dollars they spent in the previous year, so the news in the letters isn't annoying. (However, I find annoying the signature on one composed by a cousin's husband, as it is signed with his name, followed by "and wife [name] and sons [two names.]" If he wants to write cast lists for plays he should do that, rather than sign family correspondence.)

One newsletter this year, from a college friend who lives in Virginia, included a mention of a trip she and her husband had taken around Virginia (maybe a staycation?) and produced this amazing factoid: Sherwood Forest Plantation, the estate near Charles City originally owned by John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States (1841-1845,) is currently owned by the (living) grandson of that president.

What? That's one family with an unusually short family tree. Turning to the ever-helpful World Book Encyclopedia, I found out that after the death of his first wife, (22 months after -- no Romeo POTUS he,) Tyler married, in 1844, a 24-year old woman with whom he had seven children before he died in 1862. Turning then to the Sherwood Forest Plantation website, I noticed it has a genealogy. It shows more than one grandchild still living, all from the second wife, but not all with Tyler's seventh child ( a daughter) as the parent.

I don't know if the current owner is tall or not -- his genes are long, but his jeans might not be.

Burning Love -- or is that the BBQ?

Leah Garchik's column in the December 17, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfgate.com) had this item:

"For $3.99 a bottle, Burger King is out with a new men's body spray, Flame, that "features the scent of seduction with the hint of flame-broiled meat." Unfortunately, they don't have perfume counters at Burger Kings. You have to go online, to www.firemeetsdesire.com, to purchase this product."

I think Burger King is missing a bet here. Why not have a perfume counter, at least during this December. Where better to shop at the last minute? Nothing like buying a nifty gift and getting a nosh at the same time. Then if you're hard-pressed for wrapping, you can put it in the Burger King box or paper your nosh came in -- add a little ketchup to the paper for a seasonal red tone.

Holiday Slog Blog, Week 4

My Speciality: Fine Whines

Monday, Dec 15: Last week I couldn't get the Slog Blog to space correctly -- that's why it looks so terrible.

I may have over-anticipated stress (well, that's what being a pessimist is all about, no?) as the past three weeks have been notable mostly for boredom, with few patrons, few questions, and some inability to get things done because I can't do everything on the ref desk computer that I can at my desk. So I've added boredom as a label, just to show that I can move with the times.

Despair was never so funny

I just discovered http://www.despair.com/, thanks to http://www.librarian.net/stax/2615/sustaining-20-services-in-libraries/ --- I looked at the power point presentation, and came across this quote, under a picture of pencils and the heading "Planning," from despair.com : "Much work remains to be done before we can announce total failure to make any progress."

If you can barely muster even a tepid interest in motivational posters, take a look at Despair, which specialized in demotivational posters that more or less gently spoof the motivators. Wonderful stuff, with full color graphics, just like the motivators -- but without the exclamation points.

Demanding Beggars

No, the title doesn't refer to panhandlers. It refers to an out-of-state public university library that sent an interlibrary-loan request with this borrowing note in the section regarding shipping:

Loans by 1st class or express. Copies by e-mail, express mail.

Well lah-de-dah. We lack the facilities to scan material for email transmission, plus they want an entire small book which we wouldn't scan if we did have the facilities. We mail using library or media rate, whatever it's called these days. We have twice in the past year run out of money for postage. We have no budget for using anything but the US Post Office.

Politeness keeps me from responding that we can't meet their picky requirements; fortunately, the item is non-circulating so that's all we have to say.

Holiday Slog Blog, Week 3

My Speciality: Fine Whines

Tuesday, Dec 8: I rode past my stop on Muni this morning -- in fact, I rode three stops beyond my stop. Fortunately, I noticed we were at Civic Center San Francisco, not Civic Center Oakland, and got off. I wasn't even reading an interesting book: I was reading the newspaper, and not even anything particularly interesting (ho hum, California is about to collapse financially; ho hum, most of the bailout money approved by the feds is already spent; ho hum, some large percentage of people who had their mortgages adjusted towards the beginning of the year are again behind in payments.) I have no idea what missing my stop means, other than the fact that not many people got off at my regular stop -- usually most of the car gets off there.

Friday, Dec 12: Both BART and Muni were slow this morning, so I was already stressed by the time I arrived. I figured it didn't bode well for the day, and that proved true, a bit. The patron who talked a mile-a-minute on the phone yesterday, making any reply on my part difficult, did show up, and was surprisingly pleasant to deal with: maybe she only talks that fast on the phone? I had pulled all the material I thought she could use, so that helped.

Then there was today's example of the type of patron who wants to argue with every statement or suggestion I make. I don't mind someone who says "I've seen that" for every source I suggest (I just tell someone like that that they are doing a great job of research), but someone who just says "what I want won't be in that title" drives me up a wall, primarily because I've never had a patron who explained why that title might not work. I don't ask why it wouldn't, I just plow on trying to find something the patron would deign to look at. What I would love to do is to say "look, I've been advising people on this topic for ten years, and, trust me, this IS a possible source of information." The closest I come is to say "I'll include it in the list of possible titles in case you decide to see what it has."

My favorite patron inquiry was a few years back: a patron wanted to look up person in a specific type of source. (There -- that should be cryptic enough.) We have exactly the type of source the patron needed. When I asked the name of the person she was searching for, so I could include in the call number the volume she would need, the patron said she didn't know the name! I managed to say, with commendable fortitude, that without the name, it was going to be difficult to search this title. (And no, this was not a famous person that I might be able to narrow down through twenty questions.) I'm still intrigued as to how the patron was planning on recognizing the person she wanted if she did look at the source.

I shouldn't be too crabby -- at least I had some reference work. It's been extremely slow all week, again. This leaves me feeling more tired most days than on days with a lot of questions.

San Francisco's last blacksmith, 2008

A blog I follow had this post yesterday:

http://infopeepwork.blogspot.com/2008/12/nearest-book-meme.html Try that post's suggested process -- it was fun for me, with a surprise trip down memory lane. Who knows what you can come up with.

You can see my response just below that post: a quote about Edwin Klockars Blacksmithing, the last blacksmithing business in San Francisco, from The San Francisco Labor Landmarks Guide Book: A Register of Sites and Walking Tours, edited by Susan P. Sherwood and Catherine Powell, (San Francisco: Labor Archives and Research Center, San Francisco State University, 2008.)

What I didn't put in my response is that Klockars Blacksmith Shop doesn't produce horseshoes or decorative wrought iron: it makes "one-of-a-kind tools for ship-builders and industrial supply companies." (p.57)

Treasures, but no Shoppers Rushing Home

The Friday after Thanksgiving I took my car in to be serviced at the dealership in the town near me. Through some miscommunication I thought the work would be done in 4 hours (it was done in 7, "just as I thought," said the staffer who took the order.) Based on the four-hour misunderstanding, I decided I would wander the town's shopping area.

The dealership is in the town with the major shopping area for my part of the county: no enclosed malls, just blocks and blocks of downtown stores. The closest store to the dealership is a big-box store beloved of suburbanites, who generally pronounce its name with a French accent. I got there around 9:00 -- it had opened that day around 6. What I found: plenty of parking spaces in the small front lot (most parking is underground,) and not many people inside. The only place in the store with a crowd --- really, a crowdette --- was the electronics area. The toy area had few people, and was easy to navigate, particularly as I didn't have a cart, having no car to lug any purchased treasures to. There were no lines at the checkout counters, which were fully staffed.

I then walked down the closest street, with shops on both sides. All stores were open (by now it was about 10, as I had stopped first for a scone at a small bakery) but there were very few cars parked. The only store I went into in the first couple of blocks was the Heart Association's somewhat upscale thrift store. It was crowded with a group of three or four women interested in the clothes. I overheard one saying "I'll never shop [upmarket department store two blocks away] again -- the clothes here are great."

Wandering on, I got closer to the street anchored by two chain department stores, one upmarket and one upper-mid range. Now there were lots of people around, but not enough to block the sidewalks. I went into a chain bookstore, and it was pretty empty, except for the cafe. All cash registers for book, etc., purchases were fully staffed: there was one person ahead of me in line. By now it was about 11:30.

I wandered around the street with the anchor tenants and lots of small shops: not many people there either. Certainly no congestion on the sidewalks. I then headed back to a restaurant near the car dealer for lunch, which didn't have much in the way of customers. (And then I got stuck reading old magazines at the dealer for a couple of hours -- the library nearby is being rebuilt, so I couldn't go there.)

I was surprised the next day to read in the SF Chronicle a report that there had been big crowds in that same area I had been in. Maybe at 6am, maybe after lunch, but not between 9am and noon.

Thanks to absent-mindedness, I had to go back the next day to retrieve the jacket I had left in the bakery (just to be polite I had a chocolate chip scone ....) Now having a car, I went back to the big-box store with the French pronunciation to actually make some purchases. I arrived around 9:30: again, plenty of parking outside and few people inside the store. One toy on special that I assumed would be sold out was still available. There were no lines at the cash registers. A number of staffers were wandering around, apparently with maps of where some specials were located, but there weren't any people to give them to.

The one interesting thing about that store is that it had racks and racks and racks of 50% off clothing -- none of the current stuff, and a few items weren't even for fall/winter. The clothing was all very jammed together on the racks -- the whole effect was very different from the store's usual displays. The message the racks sent was that this store isn't doing well -- certainly the lack of shoppers both days seemed to confirm that.

Holiday Slog Blog, Week 2

My speciality: Fine Whines

Monday, Dec 1: An email has arrived announcing the date of the holiday party at the main library. Our party will be sometime in January, as the head of our branch wants to be present for it. She's the one who is on vacation until December 26, then on further vacation for the rest of December. Fa la la la la, la la, la la.

Wednesday, Dec 3: So far, it's been fairly stress-free while my boss has been gone. We've had a trickle of patrons each day, with very little reference work. Instead of stress, I'm feeling worried that I will fall asleep in my chair and fall onto the floor .... I'm impressing myself: very little stress eating, despite a plethora of chocolate candies, and, today, two types of cookies. Since I don't really need any stress to pig out on whatever sweets are available, I'm now hoping that maybe I can keep this up permanently, becoming slender and bee-yuo-tea-full. Let's hope so. With no one to share the reference desk with me, it's starting to look just like my desk in the office, with piles of books and papers all over. Just a little touch of office home away from office home.

Saturday, Dec 6: Fortunately, the powers that be gave me yesterday off for working today, even though that left the library without a librarian. We're only open one Saturday a month, and today it's fairly peppy, which I like.