Note found in a recalled copy of Hypertext 3.0

[philthecow]

If you are reading this book:

Know that I have been carrying it with me everywhere I go, every day, for months. You have deprived me and my thesis of so much knowledge, and I will be absolutely disconsolate until another copy is in my hands or this one is returned to me. I can say the following with a hint of doubt or remorse:

You are a usurper; and I deserve this book more than you do.

4/2/2007

Comments

[justice-fishy.livejournal.com]

I only have one response, buy the book off Amazon and stop bitching...

Unless I'm missing the point entirely

[philthecow.livejournal.com]

The point is the poetry of this person's loss!

[nosuchweather.livejournal.com]

at my school you can take out books for your thesis for the entire year.




it's really, really, really nice. and it sucks big-time to not have the books one needs for one's thesis. speaking of which i am going on amazon right now style.

[duckrabbit.livejournal.com]

That's true at our school too. I don't know what that person's problem is.

[philthecow.livejournal.com]

That I recalled it! *gasp* I'm afraid they'll track me down and kill me.

[crystalpyramid]

They can always just recall it back from you...

[philthecow.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Or, you know, get a new copy from Interlibrary Loan, since it's a library copy and they haven't marked it up or anything, except for this terrifying Post-It note they put in the front about how they hate me.

...I want to know who they are.

[duckrabbit.livejournal.com]

Oooh, so if you recall it, they have to return it.
I'm sure they can wait until you're done with it. Geez!

[philthecow.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't plan to be done with it until May 15th... but yeah. They should buy their own if they're so darn attached to it.

(Poetry, people, don't you see the poetry?)

[nosuchweather.livejournal.com]

i don't know about you, but out here we only have three weeks to finish our thesis. es. the two or three days that it takes for a loan go to through are interminable.

by the same token, why didn't you just use ill? (then again, i have to wonder, why didn't this senior just not return the book and pay the fine, if they need it so bad?)




lauren, i hate to be the one to tell you, but you are racking up some seriously awful thesis karma.

[philthecow.livejournal.com]

I didn't use ILL because the due date was more than four weeks in the future, which is (almost) always an indication that the book is sitting unused in a faculty office somewhere.

At any rate, once a book is recalled, you have a week to return it, which is plenty enough time to get most ILLs through. So they could have gotten the new book and had it in their hands before returning this (unmarked, looking as if it has been practically unused) copy of the book.

*refuses to rack up bad karma*

[liseuse.livejournal.com]

Oh good grief. It's not like it's going to be in someone else's hands forever. Plus, you could just buy it. That's why Amazon exists after all!

Also, my department issued us all with letters to take to the library saying that we could have our core or major dissertation texts out until the deadline had passed so that this doesn't happen. I think people can still recall them, but when they're done with them, we get the right back. However, this is mostly because we all went with odd little dissertation topics which no one else is interested in. I doubt that anyone else wants the 1894 Bullen edition of Middleton's collected works, and if they do, I am willing to pay the fines so I don't have to return them for the next twenty days - which is when I have to hand the damn thing in anyway.

[philthecow.livejournal.com]

And Interlibrary Loan. *shakes head*

There is a strange poetry to this insanity, though.

[liseuse.livejournal.com]

There is indeed. I found myself slightly amused that someone would be disconsolate at not having a book entitled Hypertext 3.0 in their hands, and then I looked it up on amazon, and was slightly less amused. And a little more intrigued.

[miraling.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, the sheer drama of it is amusing. On the other hands, thesis-writing seniors tend to be somewhat less than sane, so you may want to get it back to the library as soon as you're done with it.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

Hilarious! I would reply on the other side of the paper that their sense of entitlement is disgusting and that if they like the book so much they should support the author(s) and buy their own copy.

I'm sympathetic to the high emotion felt by someone who urgently needs a text for their study, but I'm also often bowled over by how college library patrons seem to think the library is an extension of their own living room (did you see the note in the McCabe suggestion book that the library should stock iPod chargers?).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

I mean, iirc, one has something like five days to return a recalled book. That's totally long enough to make arrangements to get it from another library or a bookstore.

[crystalpyramid]

Wait, last time I knew anything about iPods (which was back when the size of a small paperback), you could plug them into a Mac to recharge them. If this is still true, since McCabe is full of Macs, McCabe is already full of iPod chargers.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_swallow/]

Yeah, but you still need a special cable.

[zimzil.livejournal.com]

that's amazing.

[gerbilicious85.livejournal.com]

LOL
I love this person, whoever they are.

[stina-marina.livejournal.com]

now i feel inspired to leave insane-sounding notes in library books.

[stoneunturned.livejournal.com]

Hah! That's very charming.

[pimmers.livejournal.com]

LOL, that is some kind of excellent.

[(Anonymous)]

Lauren,

As an act of reparation for neglecting to send my 20th Century German Thought class a link to Derrida's "Structure, Sign and Play" in due time, I sent out an interesting interactive link to a consideration of the piece that made good use of Landow's principles of hypertextuality (whatever they may be). In a tumultuous spell of twelve-or-so minutes, I realized that the Landow/Hypertextuality of my email was the same as the one that graced a subject heading that I had seen very recently on The Olde LiveJournal, so I quickly contextualized the note above ("a friend of mine"..."at another 'university' "..."recalled...") and sent it out to the mostly-sleeping members of my poor, haphazard class.

My professor, if anything, seemed to approve, so I thought that I would show you the degree of beneficient snideness that this beautiful little piece of angst-poetry and your story at large was able to generate:

Quoting Silke Weineck, Professor of Germanic Literature:

"The lesson, I assume, is that carrying around a book on New Media for months erases all
memory of Old Media such as xerox copies?"

Guffaw, guffaw, guffaw.

Lauren Stokes--how are you? How is Swarthmore? Und Deutsch? Pray tell--what is it that you are studying? Tell me about Hypertextuality! Tell me about exciting, intellectualized things, because I feel that I have been living in a hole made of mud for most of a year!

Yours Robotically,
Jessi Holler,
Lost, Mostly.

[(Anonymous)]

Also:

Note that Derrida's "Structure, Sign and Play" does indeed make up an integral part of the syllabus for "20th Century GERMAN Thought." We don't make distinctions--not in this state.

Mourn with Me!,
Jessi