SCENE: An urban artist’s studio, the home of AL. Posters and clippings representing Dadaist icons and avant-garde performance artists are on the walls. The “READ” poster from the American Library Association depicting Stephen Colbert is on the wall, with AL’s photo taped over Colbert’s face. Prominent among the books and letters liberally strewn around the room are volumes by Lazlo Toth, The Hitler Diaries, and Atlanta Nights.

AL–a “downtown” artist type–sits cross legged on the floor, typing on a laptop. Nearby are copies of Library Journal, Journal of Access Services, and other library trade publications and journals. As AL types, he pauses to shake a cocktail shaker, and pours himself a martini, which he drinks with evident pleasure.

There is a knock at the door.

AL: (Loud) Who is it?

CY: (On the other side of the door) It’s me, Cy!

AL: (Gets up to answer the door and shows in CY. CY is another artist/actor type, black clothes, disheveled.) Hey! Glad you could come. Want a martini?

CY: Dude, it’s like 10 AM. No thanks.

AL: (Shrugs, takes another sip.) So how is your grant application going?

CY: Ah, not great. Nobody wants to fund anybody to do a “Kabuki Three’s Company.”

AL: I’m shocked.

CY: I know! Japan is cool, 1970s sitcoms are cool. What could be better? (Sighs.) So how about that online performance art thing you were telling me about?

AL: “The Annoyed Librarian?” Oh man! It just gets better and better!

CY: Explain this to me again. You got a grant to impersonate an obnoxious librarian in a blog?

AL: Yeah, basically. It’s such a great gig. I read librarians’ blogs, come up with a contrary position, write that up at length, and wait for the reactions to roll in.

CY: Wait, there are librarians’ blogs? Like “blogs” plural?

AL: Just one of the many odd facts I have learned doing this performance art piece. But yeah, I see what they are into–like something called “Library 2.0”–and I find a way to say that it’s stupid. I figured it would mostly piss them off, right? That I’d get tons of hate mail and everything, and then I’d have some kind of performance project where I’d read it all out loud and call it “Hate Mail from Librarians.”

CY: You aren’t getting hate mail?

AL: Oh yeah! Tons of hate mail. And hate blog posts and comments and stuff. A while back one of the editors at Library Journal called me the “Annoying Librarian”…

CY: Bet you never hear that one…

AL: … and went off about how I was a “right wingnut,” and a “bad guy” and a “coward” for being anonymous.

CY: Buy you aren’t anonymous. You are pseudonymous.

AL: From your lips to John Berry’s ears. Anyway, I’d show you those posts, but the folks at the Library Journal website are total incompetents and the posts are missing and the comments have devolved into links to “midget porn actresses” so there’s no real point. But it’s great for my art.

CY: So the librarians hate you.

AL: Right, but no! Also lots of of anonymous comments from people who LOVE me. Or love the Annoyed Librarian.

CY: Right, Brando. They don’t love you, they love him. He’s a character.

AL: She’s a character.

CY: So you just see what the library bloggers are saying and you say the opposite?

AL: If only it were that easy. No, sometimes it would be just silly to take the opposite position. Like this recent thing with OCLC. Ever heard of OCLC?

CY: Uh, no.

AL: Of course not. But every librarian has. And OCLC is doing this thing where they are saying that all these data records that government employees and librarians around the country have created are now somehow the property of this non-profit corporation OCLC.

CY: First, that sounds nuts, and second I can’t believe you read and understand all that crap.

AL: Yes, and also no kidding. So obviously the Annoyed Librarian can’t come out and say this OCLC thing is actually a good thing–it’s satire, not fantasy. Instead I have to say that librarians are too spineless, slow, and disorganized to actually do anything about the situation.

CY: Smart.

AL: Yeah, but at this point I have lots of practice. I have been doing the same thing with he Amercian Library Association since the gig started. The bloggers all hate the ALA for being too big and too slow and too far behind the times and too generally irritating. Did I tell you I had to go to Anaheim to spy on the last conference?

CY: (Shudders) Sadists.

AL: Right. So it would be obvious this whole thing is a put-on if I said that the ALA is like not bureaucratic enough or too far out on the cutting edge, so instead I say that they hate it for the wrong reasons.

CY: That is twisted.

AL: I haven’t even told you the most twisted part. The blog got picked up as an official Library Journal blog.

CY: These are the incompetents with the editor dude who called you a wingnut?

AL: Yes! Can you imagine that meeting! And now they are paying me! I have them leave the cash behind a dumpster in the park. And that’s not even the newest news. I’m the sole author of an entire issue of The Journal of Access Services.

CY: What are “access services?”

AL: Heck if I know. I didn’t really have to write anything new, either. I just repurposed some old blog posts and prettied it all up.

CY: So you got paid a bunch for this?

AL: Naw, that’s not how it works. Academic journals don’t pay anything.

CY: You really are getting perverse. You said you wrote this whole issue, but there’s an intro by “Wayne Bivens-Tatum?”

AL: Oh yeah. Great name, isn’t it? He seems to dig my stuff. But the great thing is the reaction by librarians. I can just feel the spittle gathering at the corners of their mouths as they write post after post and comment after comment about how this is going to ruin this journal in particular, library journals in general, peer review, and the library profession in general.

CY: You can feel the spittle? Dude.

AL: It’s a figure of speech.

CY: So you must think these librarians are a bunch of losers.

AL: No! That’s just the thing. Some of them are dopes, or a little bit dim. They haven’t figured out who I am yet. But mostly they are reasonably good people, trying to make their libraries better. They are just really easy to provoke.

CY: So what are you going to do for an encore?

AL: Well, the Amercan Library Association encourages self-nomination for the office of President-Elect. Want to be my campaign manager?