Friday Fifteen

(Link at left)
15 Goofy-Ass Reference Questions I've Been Asked Over the Years
I'm not including the daily ones: Do you work here? Where is the bathroom? Can I have headphones? How does this thing work? Do you have a pencil I can use?
Just the legit Reference Questions From Hell (or Hysteria)

1. "Can you help me check my email?" [depends on what platform you use: Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.] "Oh, I didn't know I needed to sign up first."
2. "How much canned cat food do I feed a cat?"
3. "What does the date after the author's name mean? Is that the year of publication for the book?" [this is especially bad as it was asked by another librarian]
4. "I need some pictures of people in the Bible (or dinosaurs)." [we find the religion (or paleontology) section, and the kid gets more and more impatient] "No this won't work! I need photographs of them!"
5. "Do you have 'The Hobe Bit" by Tall Ken?" [say it quickly out loud, which this gentleman did NOT do]
6. "If my mother's sister married my father's brother, would my cousin and I be more genetically linked as brother and sister than as cousins?"
7. "Can you check on Starz.com (or the lottery website) to see if I won?" [this does happen fairly often, invariably it's someone can't use the library's net access because they owe for printing, or overdues]
8. "My son's teacher sent an assignment home for his parents to do. We're supposed to explain 'stretched liquids' which they did in class today (4th grade). What are they? [never did find out]
9. "Can I just sit down and go?" [in reference to the Internet computers]
10. "Do you have any books on economics for my idiot cousin who been brainwashed by his Democrat friends for decades?"
11. "Do you have a copy of the original Bible? In English."
12. "Who is Pee-lee?" [or, as the assignment sheet spelled it, "Pele"]
13. "I need to know the Russian word for death. For my next tattoo."
14. Multipart phone question: 1) "You know all that stuff going on in Asia? What language do they speak there? Because I thought English was the universal language now..." 2) "What's the difference between 'Crown Prince' and 'Prince'?" 3) "Where does Monaco get all its money?" [This is why I now keep a reference blog!]
15. My all-time favorite: "I'm supposed to read this book for school. Do you have it? It's called Madame Ovary."

And you wonder why librarians are a bit...odd?