i can play psycho dice!

for those of you who don't know what psycho dice is, it is a game that jim williams, the main character in "midnight in the garden of good and evil" made up. now i reference this book/movie because it takes place in savannah, so this makes it feel more relevant to me--psycho dice, i mean. now jim williams believed that he could use his mind to directly influence events in his life. he used the game psycho dice to illustrate this. he would concentrate really hard on what number he thought he would throw on a die, and then he would toss it. basically, he did a bunch of statistics to prove that he was right (and of course it was a bunch of bull), but nonetheless, he felt it to be true.

so here is my psycho dice story, a story that maybe my mental powers influenced the ending of!

it was a dark and stormy night... JUST KIDDING!

anyway...

a couple weeks into my job, i found out that the reference department processes donated materials to the library. this is weird. that is normally something reserved for the acquisitions and cataloguing departments. but what made this even weirder and a whole lot more upsetting is that i was told that along with processing the donations, we were to provide valuations or appraisals of the materials.

for those of you not in library-land, or who do not work in non-profits, this is strictly illegal. according to irs document 561 (i'm a librarian, of course i looked it up!), an individual is PROHIBITED from assigning a dollar value to donated goods if they are either the donor OR THE DONEE. that would be the library. specifically, a library is considered an "interested party" by the irs. it is the responsibility of the donor to have any materials appraised by a professional before they donate them.

i was upset.

i contacted other fellow librarians and my previous place of employment. i knew that i was exempt from any legal fallout because i would merely be following orders. but i still wasn't comfortable with this. by the way--the library knew this practice was illegal. um, there is no academic library in the u.s. that would provide an appraisal (sorry, they called it a "valuation" and said that it wasn't the same thing. a good copy of roget's proved otherwise!).

i was stressed. i wasn't sleeping. jenna, my co-worker basically told me i would be fired if i didn't do it because that was one of the main reasons the previous head of the department was fired.

but ultimately, i decided i wouldn't do it because doing things that i know to be wrong bothers me that much. so i couldn't stop perseverating over this issue and played scenarios over and over and over in my head. jenna said she really liked working with me...

then the day came. the day when we had no more classes to teach. the day we needed to start processing the massive pile of donations sitting in our office.

and that's when i saw the email "scad libraries will no longer provide valuations for donated materials." i'm sure i caused this to happen... ;)

i promise i will only use my powers for good. well, unless there's some stupid presidential candidate or blond southern landlord b**ch who needs a good whollop (yikes, sorry, that snuck in there. yeah, i'm having problems with my landlord still who still thinks i'm an uptight northerner). but otherwise, i will use my powers for good.