Interlibrary Loan of the Wednesday.

Captain ILL was busy shopping for gardening supplies at Fred Meyer yesterday, so he wasn't able to get this report out in a timely manner. He did get a big jug of weed killer, a pair of gloves, and some fancy knee pads though (unlike Superman, the Captain's knees are not invulnerable).

A book like Gunshot Wounds is of interest to anyone in the superheroing business. Captain ILL usually doesn't have to worry about ordinary guns; most bullets just bounce right off him. He does try to stay out of the way of RPGs, tanks, and atomic explosions though. Fortunately the evildoers that Captain ILL usually deals with don't have access to that kind of firepower. Sometimes he wishes that some of his regular supervillains would put a little more thought into their weapons though. For example, The Insidious Carrot has a device that shoots carrots at hypersonic speeds. Sure, they hurt, but being hit with a hypersonic carrot is just embarrassing.

Interlibrary Loan of the day

While Captain ILL normally objects to obscenity in books, and especially in titles, he made an exception in the case of The Two Farms, since the selection of ILL books today is so limited. He supposes if you have to use a bad word like "farm", you might as well use it as many times as possible. Unfortunately, despite the expectations raised by the title, the word "farm" doesn't seem to appear with much frequency throughout the book. The Captain is much too busy to do a page by page count, but he did flip through the book a bit and didn't see "farm" used a single time after the blatant appearance on the cover. Come on people! Let's see some more farmin' ILL requests for farmin' books full of farm ... but only non-gratuitous farming please.

Happy Birthday!

Today is this little fella's second birthday. It's for folks like Jacob here that Captain ILL boots evil; his boots are still too small for effective evil-booting, so he needs somebody bigger to boot evil for him. Captain ILL dedicates his fight for justice this year to Jacob. He wishes his little buddy a long life filled with peace, joy, and as much justice as this old Captain can wrangle.

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Interlibrary Loan of the day

How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and In the Workplace is far from being a comprehensive work. There's no mention at all of kryptonite or mint in the index. How can you have a book about things that make people sick without mentioning mint? Or kryptonite? Captain ILL has had a hard time getting his hands on even a small amount of kryptonite (not for any malicious purpose, of course) and he had hopes that this book would put him on the right track. How hard can it be to locate a substance that glows with a sickly green light? Pretty darned hard it turns out. Even ebay turned out to be a dead end, though the Captain did find several very nice locks for his bicycle. If anyone out there in the internets has any kryptonite to spare, would you please send it the Captain's way? Please though, no mint.

Interlibrary Loan of the day

Journey Into Now is a book about being spiritually awake. Captain ILL sometimes thinks it would be pretty neat to be spiritually awake. He could show up all his colleagues; he's pretty sure that goober Superman isn't spiritually awake. Unfortunately, he's always very busy thinking about all the injustices that have been perpetrated, and worrying about all the injustices that will be perpetrated. Plus, he kind of likes shooting miscreants with lasers, and he's heard that zen monks and all those guys aren't allowed to shoot miscreants with lasers. To top it off, he thinks he's a pretty swell guy, and when you have an ego so swollen your mind can barely contain it, you don't need anything else. Do you?

Interlibrary Loan of the day

Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet has the distinction of having been ILLed a dozen times in the last 5 years. Unfortunately, it is out of print and running about $150 at Amazon so the library won't be picking up any copies.

In any case, while full of pretty pictures, the book is inaccurate on at least one point: it is not the world's fastest flying jet. Wikipedia indicates this aircraft has a top speed of mach 3. The Batplane, however, can fly at nearly mach 6. That's twice as fast! It's too bad that authors can't get their facts straight, especially when there are so many facts available out there on the internets.

Interlibrary Loan of the day

Dear Ann, Dear Abby: The Unauthorized Biography of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren has a pretty descriptive title, so there's no reason to describe the book in greater depth. What is interesting is that Captain ILL once wrote a letter to Ann Landers regarding a tricky situation he found himself in. The situation in question was very complex, but he managed to trim it down to just the salient points in the following letter:

"Dear Ann,

My name is Captain ILL (No doubt you've heard of me, I'm a very famous and successful superhero) and I'm writing to you at the suggestion of a certain amphibious colleague of mine who wishes to remain anonymous. See, I was at this superhero exhibition at Sea World; all the big names were there, but I won't mention any names. Everything went fine until my turn onstage came and, well, to make a long story short, I don't have very good control over my laser beams and I ended up boiling alive half the exibits and giving a certain amphibious colleague of mine third degree burns all over his body. My question is this: to what extent am I legally, financially, and etiquetly responsible for replacing the boiled fishies?

Your greatest fan,

Captain ILL"


Unfortunately, she never responded.

Interlibrary Loan of the day

Captain ILL is a pretty classy guy. Ask anyone, and they'll tell you that the Captain is so full of class that he's got it leaking out of his ears. However, a brief flip through of Class: A Guide Through the American Status System finds no mention at all of Captain ILL. Fortunately, that insufferably arrogant twit Superman also gets no mention. In fact, there's no mention of any superheroes at all, even those few who are billionaires in their secret identities like Batman and Iron Man. In spite of this deficit, there is a useful tip for discerning social class on page 162: "Proles say tux, middles tuxedo, but both are considered low by uppers, who say dinner jacket or (higher) black tie." So if you find yourself at a fancy dress ball where all the gentlemen are wearing black tie and you can't tell the proles from the people who matter, just walk up to one and ask "What the F&@* are you wearing?" It should be immediately obvious after this who the classless twit is.

A Mission at Last!

I got a call late last night from Captain ILL. He told me that he had a hot tip that Professor Perfidy was building some sort of doomsday device in his secret headquarters in the mountains out near Big Four. Unfortunately, the ILLmobile was low on anti-matter, so he needed a lift. Always willing to lend a hand in the fight against injustice, we hopped in my Honda this morning and headed east.

After about an hour of driving during which we occupied ourselves by singing various Neil Diamond songs, we arrived at the trail base:

We applied sunscreen and bug repellent, and started up the trail. Unfortunately, we didn't get far. Professor Perfidy must have gotten wind of our arrival, because the bridge had been blow out:

I wanted to keep going on, but Captain ILL insisted that the park rangers certainly wouldn't approve of us going off the trail and fording the river. The Captain is a real stickler for the rules, but I could see his point, so we came back down and found this nice warning that the kind rangers had left for us:

Apparently, you're not allowed to go tramping about in the woods for free, and they now want me to send them $5 even though the bridge was out and we were unable to complete our mission.

While we were driving back down the mountain (singing more Neil Diamond songs), Captain ILL thought he spotted a giant robot rampaging around up on Mount Pilchuck, so we may be headed up there next. If so, I'll be buying a yearly pass to keep the rangers off our backs.

Poem of the day

Nothing came around one day
took up space, with nothing to say
Nothing's not bad, though not exactly kind
then nothing left but left Nothing behind
if you don't have Nothing, you don't have anything
in a world full of everything, can you do Nothing?


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