Humidity was fairly high today (now yesterday). I brought a sweater, but the library complex was strangely warmer. It felt like the first really humid, warm day of the year (though I’m sure there have to have been a couple of others). A couple of middle-school girls spent the whole time on the bus home singing some tunes deliberately off-key, setting everyone’s teeth on edge. I went outside around 11.00 and the air was spookily still, then five minutes later, lightning flashed, a warm breeze picked up, and a thunderstorm raced swiftly through the county north and east of Ann Arbor, causing a little rumbling and noise and a strange tension in the air.

There’s an attention-grabbing Library Journal article about “NextGen” users (born between 1982 and 2002) and their attributes. (Courtesy Creative Librarian.) They’re “format agnostic,” they’re “nomadic,” they multitask, they prefer web sites with content richness rather than table-of-contents-centered navigation, and they “find no need to beg for good service.”

Why does it take the publicized photos of humiliated and abused and tortured Iraqi prisoners (which has arguably further ruined our tattered image and made the nation even more vulnerable to terrorist attack) to get the Boy Emperor to, as the BBC put it, ‘make an unprecedented public apology’?

After all, he won’t apologize for the five arrests, the cocaine use, the alcoholism, the DWIs, the casual attitude toward military service to his country during time of war, and the rape of workers, the environment, gays and lesbians, the elderly, retirees, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum …

There is a website devoted to the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, at which you can view a slide show and order a video of the episode. The originator of the experiment, Philip Zimbardo (whose Psych 101 course I took as a freshman), told the New York Times (also reprinted on the front page of today’s Ann Arbor News) that he was “not surprised” that the Iraq prisoner abuse occurred.

Although it’s obvious that Zimbardo isn’t a prison booster (indeed, his whole point is that prisons are by definition inhumane), using the aborted experiment for financial gain (especially when the experiment, originally supposed to last two weeks, had to be terminated after six days because of its effect on some of the subjects) seems to me kind of misguided. Not only that, the potential for his remarks to be taken out of context seems immense.

For instance, the crux of the Times article is not that prisons are inhumane and that the penal system needs to be examined, though Zimbardo is quoted as saying something to that effect, but that the Iraq prisoner abuse was no big deal, no significant failure, because these things happen in prisons all the time. That’s a great message to carry away from this whole sordid affair—that it’s just one more grisly event to which to numb ourselves and for which to make allowances and excuses.

You know, I’m sorry, but I’m on an our-culture-is-crappy kick tonight.

While at that notorious southeast AA middle school, I served a couple of hours in the ‘media center.’ It was fine, I always enjoy that.

But am I a complete old crotchety s.o.b. because I think it should still be called the library, damnit!?

And further crotchetiness ensued when I was shelving returned books for the 900s and came up to the biography section. I had to shelve just-read and returned bios on Steven Spielberg and [gag] Britney Spears between bios of Bessie Smith and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which hadn’t been checked out in a very long time.

Now, I’m sorry again, but I admit to having a bit of hard time lately living in a society/culture which has plunged from the heights of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Bessie Smith to the likes of Mr. E.T. and that trashy blond singer/slut thing in a mere 100 years.

Just call me Grandpa and be thankful I don’t get a t.v. reception.

While subbing today at the city’s notorious southeast-side middle school, I noticed one thing during a geography class viewing of a movie about South Africa and apartheid during the 1980s: The kids were talking and laughing and not paying the slightest attention during the parts where the characters were laughing and having fun. But when conflict came on the screen (a loud argument between two girls), the room suddenly got very quiet and everyone watched in rapt attention. Shortly thereafter, when one girl was crying and being consoled by another character, they laughed at her and called her a crybaby and then resumed their chatter.

Like it or not, our society is in enthrall to violence and conflict. Kinder and gentler is an unattainable myth. It’s all downhill from here. Especially since these kids will be added to the ranks of Ann Arbor’s homicidal drivers in just two years.

I just woke up from two very weird dreams.

In the first, Frank died and I started dating Julia Roberts. Yes, really. And after a month, she proposed. And her mother was talking to me about stuff and saying that I was the one Julia had been waiting on for so long. (The trigger: I read in People yesterday that a 17-year-old kid saw Julia on location and hastily scribbled a sign asking her to the prom. She declined because she’s already married.)

The second dream was just as strange. Back-to-back dreams. My sister was driving her Suburban, I was in a Cherokee and Frank in the Wrangler. We were in Oklahoma City and going back to Duncan. She had a young Asian couple with her. The man rode with Frank, but my sister said this would be a good time for the woman to drive me in the Cherokee. We got in and she proceeded to be unable to make turns and drove through a field, laughing and having a good time, with me trying to turn the wheel back to the road and explaining that she has to take it slow and easy because of the Cherokee’s higher center of gravity. As we were about to get on I-40, the alarm rang and woke me up.

Yeesh.

“Friends” and “Frasier” are broadcasting their final episodes this week and next, respectively. “Friends” I watched occasionally but never really got the point of. Tina Brown has written a scintillating column in the Washington Post about its cultural significance, so I suppose I’ll re-read that and try to absorb the Zeitgeist. (There’s also an interesting story over at The Smoking Gun about allegations of harassment and other generally inappropriate and over-the-top behavior by the overwhelmingly male scriptwriters for the series.) I guess the hype and the nostalgia are more about the “lifestyle” (imaginary though it may have been) that the show represented, as well as the pre-reign-of-terrorism time that the show harked back to, than the show itself and its soon-to-be-fading-celebrity multimillionaire stars.

“Frasier” I watched a lot more. I enjoyed some episodes, found Kelsey Grammer sometimes sublimely funny but generally irritating beyond description, and lost interest once Niles and Daphne got together after, oh, seven years of mooning and pining and Shakespearean intrigue. Now “Everybody Loves Raymond” is the sole surviving veteran sitcom (unless you count “The Simpsons,” still going strong, more or less, after almost 14 years).

It’s supposed to be over 80 outdoors today. No problem, right? Well, in the past two weeks or so, the huge turn-on-the-air-conditioning project has taken place all over campus (I presume); Scott tells me that they have to schedule months in advance and bring in these vast teams of union workers to manipulate the age-old gears and wheels and cogs to bring the air-conditioning apparatus online. No, it’s not all connected to a mainframe somewhere, and I don’t know anything beyond that. It’s COLD in the libraries now after months and months of endless and uncontrollable heat. I dressed in short sleeves yesterday and didn’t bring anything else and regretted it. So, the dilemma is: bring layers or not? I’m thinking a sweater will suffice.