What's going on around here is so bad that I cannot write about right now it so I will tell a funny story instead

I had lunch this week with a friend of mine who is a retired librarian. He told me that he has been seeing a former library patron of his around Berkeley, usually running from the cops.

"Vaseline guy, I used to call him," said my friend.

"He would get a book on art or architecture and sit at a table with it and smear himself with Vaseline and turn the pages with his greasy hands and get Vaseline all over the books."

"One day he got an expensive architecture book off the shelf, opened it on the table and pulled out his tub of Vaseline and started rubbing it all over his bald head, face and arms and I just couldn't take it any more."

"I ran over and snatched the book from him and said, You have to choose. It's either the books or the Vaseline, but you can't have both!"