Gentle/Scorsese: The List with music

Gentle/Scorsese: The List with music: Shutter Island / Icon / Of Grammatology

Gentle/Scorsese faves: Shutter Island / Of Grammatology

Gentle/Scorsese faves: Shutter Island / Of Grammatology

Gentle/Scorsese: The List

1. Taxi Driver 2. Raging Bull 3. Shutter Island / 1. Shutter Island 2. Scorsese by Ebert 3. Of Grammatology 4. The Passion of Martin Scorsese 5. Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective

Gentle/Scorsese list 2

1. Eraserhead 2. The Aviator 3. Fracture 4. Body of Lies / 1. The Complete Marx 2. The Rooster Bar 3. Of Grammatology 4. House of Leaves 5. Moby Dick

Gentle/Scorsese list

1. Taxi Driver 2. Raging Bull 3. Shutter Island / 1. Shutter Island 2. Scorsese by Ebert 3. The Passion of Martin Scorsese 4. Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective

New list

1. Scream 2. Scream 2 3. Scream 3 4. Scream 4 / 1. Fight Club 2. Zodiac 3. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 4. Gone Girl

List for late September

1. Eraserhead 2. Taxi Driver 3. Raging Bull 4. Fracture 5. Body of Lies 6. Shutter Island / 1. The Complete Marx 2. Shutter Island 3. House of Leaves 4. Moby Dick 5. Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective

List for late September

1. Eraserhead 2. Raging Bull 3. Body of Lies 4. Shutter Island / 1. The Complete Marx 2. Shutter Island 3. House of Leaves 4. Moby Dick

New movie and book list before October

1. Eraserhead 2. Raging Bull 3. Cape Fear 4. Fracture 5. Shutter Island 6. Salt / 1. The Complete Marx 2. Shutter Island 3. House of Leaves 4. Moby Dick

The Librarian 2

This sequel to the librarian continues the librarian main character's journey to find and conquer fantastic enemies.  With this sequel, the decision to make the librarian films a fantasy shows some wear and tear, and as a viewer you wish that the main character was more immersed in research and a research environment than in such an unrelated environment.  Following it scene to scene, it is not always easy to follow a plot, and in some ways the events seem too similar to the first film.  One hopes that the third film is a serious film, where he plays a more expected librarian role.  Recommended!

FINAL movie and book list

1. Raging Bull 2. Cape Fear 3. Eraserhead 4. Shutter Island 5. Salt 6. Ted & Ted 2 7. The Wolf of Wall Street / 1. The Complete Marx 2. Scorsese by Ebert 3. House of Leaves 4. Moby Dick 5. Martin Scorsese: A Retrospective

New movie and book lists

1. Cape Fear 2. Eraserhead 2. Prometheus 3. Salt 4. Ted & Ted 2      /         1. The Complete Marx 2. House of Leaves 3. Moby Dick

By a river

I sit on a rock, by a river.  Drops of water collect on my forehead and move down my face.  The wind rushes past my body, thick with moisture.  I run my feet over the mossy grass, and stare into the sun.  Red and brown fish dart about in the river, moving and twisting this way and that.

Personal Boundaries and the Customer Service Librarian

Personal Boundaries and the Customer Service Librarian

By Ted Gentle

            In this modern era, as we attempt to define what a modern librarian is and what his or her role is, we might ask what his or her role as a customer service librarian is.  Similarly, as we ask how we interact with our academic or professional advisor, we might ask what personal boundaries come into play.  For this reason, we consult our basic knowledge of psychology and let conscious be our guide.  We also ask ourselves, “what does it mean to be a contemporary librarian?  Do our current jobs as restaurant employees even count?”  These issues require a new, working definition of personal boundaries.  This definition: personal boundaries require a definition of niceness with said advisor.

            Working as a librarian in the Midwest, I would receive multiple questions from patrons and from my fellow librarians.  It would be difficult at this time to know the difference between simple politeness and a good customer service work ethic.  From here, we simply let conscious be our guide.  What is the limit of personal niceness, and of self-preservation?  You have to fully understand the culture in which you work, and the moral values of that culture.  You also have to understand the moral needs of the person with whom you interact.

            Let me ask: what is the difference between a fast food restaurant and an academic library?  In many ways, both are the same, since both cater to the needs of intellectuals deprived of traditional teaching faculty positions.  Both cater to the needs of the public looking for basic goods and services, even though neither are exactly as full service as a basic or full service Walmart.  However, both strive to be!  As these employees strive to interact with each other, each must strive to be aware of each other’s personal boundaries.  One must interact with each other in a nice way, without being overly interactive or nosy.  The fast food industry is an example of an industry where this is fully realized, although the library industry has some work to do!

            Is there a sincere need in the service industries to change what is viewed as an imperfection?  You must be very careful in doing this!  An attempt to change things, many psychologists observe, ultimately results in the situation itself becoming worse.  A librarian certainly must know his or her limit, and must be a static presence in the library while catering to some personal changes on the part of his or her patrons.  Fast food workers are similar, and cater to the needs of their customers while serving a product that in many ways is not perfect.  Careful, lest any employee impose his or her personal philosophy on his or her customers!

            Is there a place in any service industry for a strict observation of the law itself?  In this way, these service industry worker’s cave in to the slavish needs of their personal superego.  However, in following superego, they neglect the personal needs and the personal boundaries of their own customers and patrons.  Many patrons, oddly, mistake librarians and even fast food workers as affiliates of their child psychologist.  Even if they are not, they are beholden to a moral compass that, even when it ideally references the law, does not embody a slavish adherence to the law itself.  Laws and personal boundaries, ideally, work in a very close tandem to ensure that customer service strategies are implemented without too many problems.

            Can you believe that many service industry workers, including English Faculty, Fast Food Faculty, and Library Faculty, have a difficulty convincing others that their day to day responsibilities matter?  Many social events that they go to feature a mindset where they are encouraged to be attorneys or doctors.  However, their roles continue to be important!  People certainly have a need to eat, and as eateries become more exclusive and limited, Burger King, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut become more important.  There is definitely a need to serve the public in these ways, in terms of both their eating, reading, and recreational habits.  Ideally, all of these activities would be merged in a way similar to a hotel.  However, since they remain separate, they certainly should not compete.  And as they are, personal boundaries that are implicit should be respected.

            Taking all of this in, what is our new definition of customer service?  Customer service, in  my opinion, is defined as items off of the following list:

(1)  You must be kind to others, within reason, as they are kind to you.

(2)  You must provide the service that they request.

(3)  You must respect the law without abusing it.

(4)  You must follow your own moral compass and permit others to do the same.

(5)  You must respect their personal boundaries while providing them with assistance.

Some, but not all, of these principles are taught by many psychologists and by a large number of self-help mentors.  A self-help mentor leads you to believe that aiding others comes before aiding yourself.  However, respecting that person’s personal boundaries actually comes first, so aiding them actually is secondary to assisting them while also aiding yourself.  A customer/patron exchange should consist largely of a transfer of the good or goods in question without violating that personal space.  Anything else runs the risk of offending that person.

            Service industry locations play a greater role in customer service transactions as more and more of their content becomes available online.  Even English Departments, as interested in historical events as they are, are putting more and more of their content such as dissertations and theses online on databases such as WorldCat.  Libraries are similar, with many law libraries using online databases to make items such as DVDs and E-Books accessible to all.  Fast food restaurants use computers and on-the-road navigation systems to deliver their content.  As the business itself becomes more computer driven and automated, the actual workers must perform their standard customer service roles that much more expertly.  As vital as that is, however, they must respect and take care with the people who they deliver this customer service to.

            Does technology create and recreate new definitions of the law itself?  Many fast food workers and librarians, for example, long for the days when their services could be provided more directly and immediately.  If only all cashiers and fry cooks could be farmers, and if only all librarians could simply be monks!  Computers do, in a very complex way, complicate this, making necessary the need to deliver their usual services from a distance as well as in person.  They must study, with a great deal of deliberation, the hearts and minds of their customers and patrons, attempting to penetrate who they are and what their inmost needs are monetarily and personally.

            One must understand that customer service and personal boundaries are inextricably connected and related.  One must attempt to engage the person in any professional, business-affiliated environment in order to make a profit, but one must also keep a professional distance from that person in order to prevent “wearing out his or her welcome.”  To do this, one must choose his or her words quite carefully!  The words must not be too direct or even, as odd as it may seem, too nice sounding!  The fast food worker or librarian must tailor these words to be brief, professional, and in many ways forgettable and not to “stick.”  In other words, to the point, and not too artistic.  One longs to be important to his or her clients, but one must not, above all else, wear out his or her welcome!  The task is difficult, but it is necessary in order to keep the libraries and restaurants of the world filled with people.  The world simply would not turn without too great an amount of unity.

            Now that we have effectively defined customer service, how do we effectively fill the space of our local fast food restaurant or library?  The spirit of creating personal laws, versus actual laws that you find in the local law library, must be evoked and even fully realized.  Artwork on walls, particularly abstract artwork by friends or faculty colleagues, is a great way to create this atmosphere!

The Narrative

The Narrative

            When I was very young, I had a friend named Erik Horn.  He kind of liked to make fun of me.  In one conversation, he mentioned the character Steven Q. Urkel in Family Matters, and he said “got any cheese, got any cheese, got any cheese, got any cheese?”  When he said it, it made me see this:

It made me want to imitate Urkel, to wear glasses, to value what is weak, and to study.  Erik and I got into fights over the years, but over time I learned to rise above it, as you will see. . .

When I was 12 years old, my dad had an affair with my mother and gave her herpes.  In reaction to this, my mom took me to see the psychiatrist, Lee Ascherman.  During those sessions, he taught me to develop my language skills and also gave me the idea to be a librarian (by saying the word “library”).  Most of those sessions involved conflict with my brother, Samuel.  Near the end of these sessions, Dr. Ascherman had a special meeting with my parents, and at the end of it, my dad smiled at me in a way that created the image of the poster for the movie “the 40-Year-Old-Virgin.”  What it meant to me at the time?  That everything that followed from that point onward would be fake.

When I was a student at JCIB high school, I had a teacher named Martin Chambers.  The style of his teaching corresponded with a movement known as modernism, which deals with the idea that life is difficult, with the idea that people are basically good, and that some trends in history cannot be overturned.  Around this same time, I saw a film called “Raging Bull” by a man named Martin Scorsese, which deals with the same ideas involving modernism (the idea that life is difficult, the idea that people are basically good, and the idea that some trends in history cannot be overturned).  High school was also a very difficult time for me, because I felt that people ignored me and that I didn’t fit in.  Because I was the only person there who appeared to notice a correlation between Martin Chambers and Martin Scorsese, I became uncomfortable very easily, and people even feared that I might be gay. . .

After I graduated from JCIB, I attended Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.  There, Marshall Boswell, who resembles Urkel’s perfect opposite, was my Professor.  He taught an odd class where, among other things, he would say the full word “nigger” and belittle his male students.  The class left me with a bad feeling, since it was so different than Mr. Chambers.  He would even end each of his classes with a smile!  I would eventually learn that this idea (of a self-consciously fake smile) was from a movement known as postmodernism, which deals with questioning preexisting forms in terms of race, class, gender, or sometimes for no reason at all.  Another Professor who I had at Rhodes was a man named Rob Canfield, who taught a subject called Post-Colonial Literature.  This class was a more radical questioning of Mr. Chamber’s philosophy, one that sought to challenge ideas of inherent differences using politically liberal and Marxist ideas.  At Rhodes, I also studied the writings of David Foster Wallace, who in books like A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Infinite Jest talked about questioning preexisting forms in a non-political but still postmodern way.  I also matured a great deal in college, becoming more confident, physically cleaner, and arguably less like Urkel and more like Marshall Boswell.

After I graduated from Rhodes, I went to graduate school in English at the University of Tennessee.  There, I had a very upbeat advisor named Misty Gale Anderson and a very intelligent thesis advisor named John Zomchick.  Dr. Zomchick was particularly noteworthy because his classes strongly resembled those taught by Martin Chambers, even containing similar quotes, and caused me to have a more positive view of modernism.  In the summer of 2005, the film “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” finally came out, with the poster of a man who physically resembled me during my college years.  The first appearance of this poster was on the website www.aintitcoolnews.com.  Viewing this poster on this website greatly upset me, which caused me to post under the name “Chief Redcock” to prove that I was not a virgin!

After graduating from the University of Tennessee, I went to teach 6^th grade English at Deep Branch Elementary School.  The location of this school is Lumberton, NC, which has a large, Native American population and which ironically was the setting of David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet.  (Both David Lynch and Blue Velvet, coincidentally, are also the subject of David Foster Wallace’s 1998 essay “David Lynch Keeps His Head”).  Though I thought the faculty at Deep Branch were capable, at times the children were difficult, and I left after less than a year. . .

In the Fall of 2007, I enrolled in the University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Science.  There, I met a number of interesting people, including Jane C. Daugherty, Sara Roberts, Tyler Williams, and Tim Wilson.  Making the transition from teacher to librarian was interesting but challenging, and this period of time was made more difficult by conflicts that I had with Sara Roberts.  Sara was a married woman, and though at times she would be friendly and talkative, at other times she would distance herself from me in order to preserve her marriage.  This conflict would result in tense exchanges between us, including one where she called me a “virgin,” and one where I called her a “whore.”  To further distance herself from me, she would hang out with a man named Tim Wilson, who would engage in exchanges with her where they would both deride me.  This period of a year and a half was very difficult for me, and at times I would drink alcohol and even consider suicide (I would indicate this on the University of Alabama’s website). . .

In the Spring of 2009, I was fortunate enough to get a job at Emporia State University’s William Allen White Library.  Before this happened, the writer David Foster Wallace committed suicide, and I friended Marshall Boswell as a cry for help (the man from Rhodes who taught me David Foster Wallace’s writings).  He accepted the friend request at 12:34 exactly, which indicated that he did identify the intention behind the friend request, but he did nothing about it.  Wallace wrote “The Pale King” shortly before he hung himself which, in another example of a coincidence, resembles the name “Chief Redcock” from my writing on www.aintitcoolnews.com .  After accepting the job, I was asked to be the webmaster, which I accepted with some hesitation (knowing how difficult it can be to get a job, and wanting to fit in).

Around this same time, an incident happened on Facebook involving me and a friend Erik Horn.  My friends’ list on Facebook involves many individuals from my life story, including individuals from my family tree, high school, college, and graduate school.  Starting my job at ESU, my profile picture was an image of me resembling Andy Stitzer from “the 40-Year-Old Virgin.”  After about a month’s time, I began to post written comments on Facebook, and I also changed my profile picture to a black and white image of me outside of my apartment.  In reaction to this, Erik Horn changed his profile picture to a similar image of himself with a man, in an attempt to mock me and make me look gay.  In reaction to this, I posted more upbeat material about what I was doing in the library, book reviews I had written for the Emporia Gazette, and items from the website www.slate.com (a website that Rob Canfield once told me about).  Near the end of my posting, I played a video clip by the band R.E.M. called “The Sad Professor,” where the lead singer appears to give a smile similar to the smile given by Marshall Boswell at Rhodes.  Ironically, the idea of a postmodern smile is also described in the David Foster Wallace essay “E Unibus Pluram,” which refers to an individual conveying an opposite emotion than what they actually experience.

I played this video clip on the weekend after Valentine’s Day, since I was upset that I was still single and bothered by the events at Alabama.  In a strange coincidence, Marshall Boswell changed his profile picture to an image of himself wearing sunglasses and smiling.  Even after some consideration, I have a difficult time figuring out if the act of his changing his profile picture was an elitist snub, a racist joke, or an admission that he is gay.  In retrospect, it seems that the profile picture change was a bit of homoerotic teasing similar to the profile picture change made by Erik Horn.  Shortly after Marshall Boswell changed his profile picture, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island was released in theaters and at the Dickinson Flinthills 8 Cinemas.  The film featured a character named “Ted” who was experiencing an ordeal similar to the ordeal that I experienced at Alabama, where I was having a difficult time relinquishing contact with a girl or “letting her go.”  In the film, the act of letting her go results in his physical and psychological ruin, and at times I felt the same way about Sara.  That the film was made by Martin Scorsese, whose film “Raging Bull” had inspired my thinking in high school, is only one more twist in this narrative!  The timing was so charged with meaning that I actually thought I was in a fake situation created by Lee Ascherman, Marshall Boswell, and my parents to punish me for hitting my brother, Winston (he and I had gotten into a fight prior to my starting graduate work at the University of Tennessee).  To further complicate matters, I had a strange encounter with Professor Connie Phelps in August when I helped her to create a video presentation involving the Education Databases (Education Full Text and ERIC).  After we had finished creating the presentation, she asked me “what is this talk of another degree for you”?  I told her that the terminal degree for many librarians is a Master’s Degree, and she responded that this is similar to the degree that an Art Professor receives.  She then showed me a picture of a young girl with black hair and said “this is my daughter.”  When I paused in my reaction, she said “oh, you will!”  Then, as if she were making fun of me, she said “oohh”!    

This exchanged left me startled, and unfortunately, it increased my feeling that I was in a virtual reality scenario.  It also appeared to suggest that she had been communicating with Sara.  Dr. Phelps saying “oh, you will!” implied that a relationship between Sara and I would occur.  Ironically, this corresponded with my meeting Sara in Washington, D.C. for an American Library Association Meeting, an event that later in my mind would resemble Teddy Daniels meeting his wife in the lighthouse at the end of “Shutter Island”  (Sara’s husband is named Daniel, which implies that I should come first : ) ) .  Afterwards, everything ceased to make sense.  Taking a break from Sara, and inspired by Connie Phelps’ words, I then applied to law schools, but I failed to get into the more prestigious programs.  Then, in reaction to the events that came before the application process, I went into therapy to try and figure out what had happened.  Unfortunately, my thoughts concerning these events were so troubling that I did poorly on my evaluations at ESU, and eventually I was fired for missing meetings.  In therapy, I was surprised and upset to learn that these events had not been planned by psychiatrists, professors, or by my family.

I don’t know how this narrative would end, except maybe with my watching Hugo and then committing suicide, after writing the following note: I want Martin Scorsese to stop making movies, and I want to marry Sara Clem Roberts.