I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH THAT THIS IS NOT HOW IT WORKS

I have seen far too many of these stories to allow this injustice against my people to continue any longer.

Man, 89, comes clean, returns book after 76 years

And by "my people" I mean the Library Billing Clerks of America - which might just be me for all I know since nobody else showed up to our convention last year at the Ramada Inn off Route 36 in Decatur.

A story like the above seems to crop up in the news every six months or so.  And by "crop up in the news" I mean that it somehow makes the front page of CNN.  The template for these stories is always along these lines:

(1) Person returns books after X amount of years

(2) Library fines would be something like a dime a day for X amount of years

(3) LOL OMG THAT'S SUCH A HUGE AMOUNT TO HAVE TO PAY FOR A BOOK OMG ROFL!

(4) Nice library just happy to have the book back, won't charge the patron X amount of years worth of library fines.

NO!

NO!

Do you know what I do for a living?  You didn't think that I made all my money blogging, did you?  I bill people for books that they don't return.  And then I argue with those people about how they shouldn't have been billed for the book because we never sent a fucking courier on a unicorn to their front door to deliver a scroll from the Queen explicitly stating that they've had our copy of War and Peace for six months and we would really like to have it back.  That's what I do.  That's it.

If you don't return a book you get billed for it.  Depending on the library, this might just be the cost of replacement or it might be more.  If you don't return a book the library doesn't charge you library fines in perpetuity.  There are probably laws against that.  Think about it: Does anything else work like that?  If you check out a movie from Blockbuster or Redbox, do they charge you the rental fee UNTIL THE END OF TIME?! DO THEY?!  DO THEY?!

NO!

NO!

NO!

NO!

So why would it work that way with libraries?  Just look at all these stories -

http://www.google.com/search?q=library+books+returned+late

There's even one about how George Washington owes over $100,000 for two library books he checked out in 1789 -

George Washington owes $100K in library fines

No!  No he doesn't!

And on a completely unrelated note, here's a metal song I've been working on.  It's probably about 75% done.  I was actually intending to make a death metal song, but this is more thrash than anything else -

http://music.nathanbaty.com/music/QuantumSuicide.mp3