Friday, June 30, 2006

Weird guy in the library

My mom worked in the public library when I was a kid, so I got used to going there a lot. One of my favorite pastimes was to rummage through all sorts of books on the shelves, and take big stacks to a comfy chair and sit and read them. When I got bored I would just take another stack & keep browsing. Sometimes I wouldn't even bother to go back to the chair - I would just sit down in the stacks, pulling books off the shelves and then reading. Of course, I would act all crabby if another patron came into "my" row to get something off a shelf that I was blocking. Bastards.

This was fun for me. But here's the rub: I would really only do this once a week at most. If I were spending hours, seven days a week, aimlessly slogging through library books and encyclopedias, that would be strange. Like the weird pervs my mom would tell me about, the ones who loitered around the library trying to look up ladies' skirts & things. She once got to expel a guy for "masturbating." I didn't know what that was when she told my dad about it, thinking I was out of earshot. Of course, the next day I ran to the library and looked it up in "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and got quite the shock. But I digress.

I started thinking about my behavior on the Internet. Unlike Grant Miller, I am not an afficianado of Ukranian or goat porn, and only rarely even run across smut while surfing. I just engage in the same behavior as I used to in the library as a kid. I just randomly look up shit. And the more shit you look up, the more it leads to other shit. One minute I'm checking out the Star Jones scandal; the next I'm taking some sort of test to see if I have ADD. It goes on & on, and I do it for hours.

Daily.

I have become the weird guy in the libary who never leaves. I have decided this is not normal, and it needs to stop.

So Coaster Punchman has a new policy. No more random surfing for hours daily, ESPECIALLY if I'm supposed to be working. I am now on a strict 3-email-checks-per-day policy. And I will allow myself a quick check-in with my favorite blogger pals once a day. After all, someone needs to keep Echo company. But that's it. The rest of my random surfing will have to wait until I get home from work, and even then I'm putting a cap on it, lest my life become even more pathetic.

Laugh all you want Melinda June - with all the newfound time I will have, I am going to be AMAZING. I might even have time to invent something.

Just you wait.


9 comments:

echo said...

"Hello, my name is Coaster Punchman, and I'm a blogaholic..." WTF??!!?? I never expected a GBCW message from the Cyber Stalker, himself. This is definitely troubling... As long as it's confined to random surfing and doesn't effect your ability to cyber-stalk....

Alas, we will carry on... In your absence I will destroy Grant Miller and dedicate his cyber dissolution to you. I have led him to believe he is safe. He'll never find out that I'm secretly plotting against him! And when I'm done destroying him, I'll take over the WHOLE world! HA HA HA HA!!!! (that's maniacal laughter in case you're wondering...)

...uh...did I say that out loud??

Coaster Punchman said...

I never said I'd quit cyberstalking. That's in my blood. Why just today I obtained the addresses and phone numbers of some of my favorite local celebrities, just to prove that I could.

Echo, will you be my sponsor? You can come to my 12-step meeting and present me with my 30-day chip. God, grant me the serenity....

Anonymous said...

I, unfortunately, do not have the luxury to laugh at CPW now that he has all of this new found time to improve himself. The only thing he has started doing is making demands on me and my time, criticizing what he perceives as things I should be doing but don't, and showing an inordinate amount of generic crabbiness. I'm damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't. SOMEBODY SAVE ME!!!

Coaster Punchman said...

Getting George in line is the first of my projects to which I have more time to devote.

lulu said...

Um.....I think I'm the creepy weirdo in the library, only I'm at the bookstore.

jin said...

I try not to 'random surf' much at all. I swear 9 out every 10 sites I click on have pictures of ugly naked people. I mean without scrolling...I don't even have a chance to 'click away!' Terrible images have been burned in my brain.....

Melinda June said...

Is the guy real in the picture? Cause he's kind of hot.

Coaster Punchman said...

Didn't I tell you? That's Grant Miller!

Dale said...

Looks more like an anonymous hipster.