42. Refrigerator Roy, or Stephanie I'm So Sorry

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Lords:

• Elizabeth is not on the Internet but plugs http://oyate.org/, which puts historically accurate books in the hands of Native American children.
• Erica is already on the roof of your car and plugs Glittermitten Grove, a game which is full of surprises https://store.steampowered.com/app/536890/Glittermitten_Grove/

Topics:

• I'm going to have to ask you to leave the goat outside: driving the bookmobile in rural Washington.
  • Bookmobiles as a center of rural life: https://news.wsu.edu/2015/04/08/the-world-on-wheels-bookmobile-the-center-of-rural-life/
  • "Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the Unabridged Dictionary would come too" and other hazards of driving with books, from Mark Twain’s "Roughing It": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3177/3177-h/3177-h.htm#linkch03
  • The Ellerbe Lawnmower Races: https://www.yourdailyjournal.com/sports/72886/ellerbe-lions-club-hosting-local-race-saturday
  • Hot Saw: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Saw
• Arguing with your husband about the insects in your fridge.
  • The tiny moth that haunts Erica’s fridge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracillariidae
• How do you pick an effective charity?
  • Erica's effective charities:
  • American Civil Liberties Union: https://www.aclu.org/
  • Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org/
  • Natural Resources Defense Council: https://www.nrdc.org/
  • Doctors Without Borders: https://stories.msf.org.uk/rescue/index.html
  • Page Ahead: http://www.pageahead.org/
  • Okapi Conservation Project: https://www.okapiconservation.org/
• Erotica in the public library.
  • Elizabeth says: "The best way to find the erotica in your library is to use the subject headings in the [WorldCat] catalog [https://www.worldcat.org/]. The easiest way to do this is probably to search the catalog for '50 Shades of Grey' or some other erotic novel you know is in the collection, select the book to open up it’s library record, then scroll down to the subject headings and select 'Erotic Fiction.' That should bring up everything in your local library system. If you’re looking for a particular kink, I suggest searching for a reading list on goodreads, then checking the world catalog, located at WorldCat.org to find the library copy closest to you. Remember, even if your library doesn’t own a copy, you can still request an inner library loan- just call the branch nearest to you and ask for help. :)"
  • Menage series H.O.T. Cops: https://www.goodreads.com/series/60473-h-o-t-cops
  • Hot cops, the gay erotica series: https://books.google.com/books/about/Hot_Cops.html?id=z_4Gp2msCZIC
  • A real Tingler: Unicorn Butt Cops Beach Patrol https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24896554-unicorn-butt-cops
• Hiring assistants (for field biology) and then trying to live with them.
  • The Bowerbirds Hymn for a Dark Horse, written during an otherwise unproductive field season: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3JoUAJv82I&list=PLOJWuc3CN303oJ_TuSjU1C4J03uAGWlgv
  • It's all tied up with memories of living in the Rocky Mountains for me, but it's a very North Carolina album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yf1v9_ZOtY&list=RDv3JoUAJv82I&index=2
  • The Bowerbirds get their own details wrong interview: https://redefinemag.net/2009/bowerbirds-band-interview/
  • Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is not just about being neat: https://greatist.com/live/what-is-ocd-not-a-neat-freak#1
  • "[Passengers] always run to the side when there is anything to see, whereas a conscientious and experienced steamboatman would stick to the center of the boat and part his hair in the middle with a spirit level," and other wisdom of evenness from Mark Twain’s "Life on the Mississippi": https://www.gutenberg.org/files/245/245-h/245-h.htm

Microtopics:

• Breaking format.
• Representing Native Americans with integrity and dignity.
• A video game that is full of surprises.
• A baby who wants string cheese so much he pulls the entire handle off of the refrigerator.
• Little walking chaos machines with a penchant for string cheese.
• The story of why you don't have a phone.
• Dying of dysentery because of string cheese.
• Really getting the soap deep into that charging port.
• A giant red school bus but instead of seats it has bookshelves.
• Bookshelves with seat belts.
• A very serious version of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.
• A small town with a population of 300 where nobody sees each other except for once a month when the bookmobile visits.
• A literacy earthquake.
• A therapy goat that doesn't have any paperwork because you just discovered that being around the goat makes you less anxious.
• Spreading hay all over the conference room and letting the guinea pigs loose.
• Guinea pigs who are not embraced by the community at large.
• Goats and libraries being natural enemies.
• An enormous encyclopedia flying at your head every time you hit a bump in the road.
• Small children encircling the Bookmobile and chanting because they are excited for books.
• Lust for literacy.
• Removing the governor from your riding mower and driving it over an obstacle course at 90mph.
• Dividing your lawnmower races into weight classes.
• Souping up your eight foot chainsaw and every child in town immediately crying when you turn it on because your Hot Saw is so loud.
• Taking your three year old to see Jaws.
• Sleeping through Alien (1979) as a six month old shaping your creative direction forever.
• Buying a corn dog the length of your femur.
• A corn dog that is so long that you can't hold it and put it in your mouth at the same time.
• Putting down a blue tarp because it's Washington and everything is done with blue tarps.
• Covering a tarp with dishwashing liquid and then putting kids in full body rubber tubes and goggles with slug antenna and making them race.
• Making your slug race medal out of a metal that is constantly slimy.
• Negotiating getting a minifridge with your future roommate.
• The special kind of organism that can overcome a plant's defenses to live inside of it.
• A moth living in your fridge and your husband is like "that's not my moth."
• Not being able to release your refrigerator moth into the wild because you don't know that biome it came from.
• Finding out what parts of your diet you share with the moth in your fridge.
• A symphony of Roys.
• The ant colony that has entirely taken over the bathroom who are all named Roy.
• The amount of biomass required to observe you pooping before you'll get embarrassed.
• Giving a Lordy award to Refrigerator Roy.
• Whether what a given charity uses your money for is even that effective in the grand scheme of things.
• Not feeling the need to donate to the charity of the week because you've already given money to an organization addressing the systemic causes of the problem.
• Receiving more donations in a week than you have in the past 10 years and not having any idea what to do with the money.
• Giving money to the folks in the office passing the hat around, then finding out that they're using the money to go on vacation.
• Grocery stores gauging your level of disposable income by asking you to make charitable donations at checkout.
• Libraries shifting from providing people books they ought to read, to providing people with porn.
• Judging porn by its cover.
• Recommending Hot Cops without reading it yourself.
• Bodice rippers written in the 90s starting a romantic relationship with a rape, but modern bodice rippers depicting explicit conversations about consent.
• Treating every request with dignity because if you have a cranky day you immediately lose the trust of the community.
• A middle-aged woman from a conservative community trusting you enough to ask for porn recommendations.
• A feud in the garden club about the etymology of the Purple Prussian Potato.
• Coming in every week to ask the librarians how the Purple Prussian Potato got its name when it predates Prussia.
• A librarian getting through the terrible parts of their job so they can focus on the ridiculous potato question somebody asked.
• "Unicorn Butt Cops Beach Patrol" doing what it says on the tin.
• Having to sleep in the same tent as your field assistant for months, but not being able to be friends with them because then they won't take orders.
• Calling a friend who is a manager at a food processing plant to ask for advice on de-conflicting your field assistants who are constantly blowing up at each other.
• Hiring field assistants to measure bird populations for eight months, but instead of counting birds they write a critically acclaimed album about the North Carolina landscape and wildlife.
• All these problems going away if you just had a budget to hire people.
• Having to carry twice as much water because the adrenaline jockey rushing ahead of you thinks he won't need any water.
• Measuring plants for 14 hours a day.
• LI-COR machines that measure leaf respiration.
• Coming back from your field work after six months and your friends gave up on you because they haven't been able to call you on the phone.
• The exhaustion of having to be in charge all the time because you live with your employees.
• Refusing to go to town for pizza because you can't afford to be friends with your employees.
• Realizing you're becoming somebody's dinner party story.
• Developing OCD in your first quarter of college and your roommate moving out because you don't have any coping strategies yet.
• Your time to blossom and find other weirdos like yourself, except it turns out even the weirdos don't want to know you.
• Discovering that you are crazy in your first year of college and then having to figure out how to navigate this country's broken mental health system while crazy.
• Maintaining totally symmetrical stimulus on the left and right sides of your body.
• Steamboat captains obsessed with navigating exactly down the middle of the Mississippi river.