Couple of things about a library

I grew up going to the libraries. Libraries of Soviet Union, libraries of Ukraine, then libraries of Russia.

A Canadian library was an uncharted territory until... well, until today. I just love this city's bookstores too much. And I love to own books. This is a very existential need that must be addressed. Books have always been around, for better or for worse, through better and worse. No matter what - there was always money for a good book, even if there was no money for anything else.

Today I finally went to the Greater Victoria public library. A buzzing place! Honestly, as if I stepped into a Ukrainian church on a Monday afternoon, it was full of souls searching for meaning or at least some free entertainment. I was feeling pretty good about myself until I ventured out to a non-fiction section. And there I got profoundly humiliated by the depths of my ignorance of the Dewey Decimal Classification. Profoundly. I lost my bearings and was wandering up and down the isles like a cougar trapped downtown and not making any sense of the street names. I tried to decipher what the heck "330.94 " or "330.94.01.03" etc meant and failed gloriously.

Nothing was alphabetical, nothing had "Languages" or "Geography" signs, everything was these decimals getting out of control. The library, my old friend, was speaking some deep space language to me.

Finally after stalking a fellow visitor with desperate pleas for help and stubbornly following the computer's directions, I guided myself to a mysteriously numbered shelf and found a Bill Bryson book. But then, on the same shelf I stumbled across this gem of a recreational time-waste. Bill Bryson will have to wait.

Then I came home and figured out the god damn classification too because I am a nerd  curious soul.

Class 400 – Language
400 Language
420 English & Old English (Anglo-Saxon)


What the "7" stands for I do not know.

The first book borrowed in a Canadian library is a book that will teach me  to swear in the most convoluted and obscure way, olde English style.

So there you have it, you "clod of puke-stocking roastmeat for worms"

Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer  

(Mark Twain)