oy

I've got to make up for last night's depressing post. I'll just give you the URL for the unfinished site? Maybe you could tell me if things are all crazy or illegible or oddly phrased so I could fix them? Except for content, it's more or less how it'll be when it's done. The links should work, which is always a plus?

Click Here!

you see that slogan at the top? ignore it this once.

It's late.

I'm watching Seinfeld, and putting off writing a short story that's actually a rewrite of one I did last year and turned in to my professor (I hated turning it in because it was rushed and I hated out it turned out) so that I can show it to him come January in an attempt to get into a graduate fiction workshop he's teaching. This is the mindset I come to you with.
Just so you know.

Seinfeld, or television shows in general, are weird in that I don't notice the age difference too much: making a sort of never-never land. The difference in real life however, is that ten years seems like a tremendous amount of time. Changes that people go through in half that time can be astronomical. I don't want to get older, I really don't.
I'll know different people, I'll live somewhere else. Maybe even this blog will be a distant memory. I looked at my grandparents the other day --while my Grandma was lecturing me on not having an outline for my life, which did NOT help, faithful reader(s)-- and saw myself in their age. My hands knobbled with age, etc.

But I've got no resolution to this. It's inevitable. On a lighter note, I hope to finish my website around the middle of January. I'd give you guy(s) a link, but I just have an Under Construction page at the URL.
And things will look better in the morning, they always do.

at least the title for the new harry potter is cool

I think that I've missed my calling. I should've been in a soap opera or been a basic cable television judge. I can look shocked. Moreso, I can do it very poorly. I can also pull decisions out of a hat, regardless of any sense of the "law."
Why yes, I have been watching a half hour or so of daytime television.

three horrifying things

1. A "Global Haze" to reduce the earth's rising temperature.
2. The draft possibly being reinstated
3. Zombie apocalypse

already, he's sealed his victory as pop-culture ass of the century

Do you remember, in the Naked Gun movies, how OJ Simpson's character would constantly bumble and get terribly injured usually by fault of Leslie Nielsen? And it was often pretty funny, right? Remember?
And do you remember how he drove home, innocent as he is, very slowly on the highway while being pursued by the police? And how he killed his wife and her lover? And how the glove didn't fit? Right?
Well, most people would happily fade into the farthest part of the collective consciousness. They'd think of their two kids, who still have to go to school with other kids. They most certainly wouldn't create a sketch wherein they try to sell a used Ford Bronco because that would be in terrible terrible taste.

I read something this morning that spurred this post, and all of the above is to get you in the right frame of mind. Or something.

However awful that was, surely (SURELY!) OJ wouldn't do anything on national television. Not during prime time certainly. Because you'd think that deep down, somewhere in a part that wasn't sold to Satan, OJ would think of his kids. This is, of course, assuming that he didn't do it.
Most of all, he wouldn't reconstruct the murders, explaining, step by step, how he WOULD'VE done it. If he had. Which he didn't. No, like Michael "I will not rest until I find the real molesters" Jackson, OJ "I will not rest until I find the real murderers" Simpson didn't do it.
But the fact of the matter is that's exactly what he's doing.
The next thing you know, he'll just dig up his wife with rusty shovels that he's scratched "INNOCENT" into and demonstrate how he would've killed her. But he wouldn't do it on TV. He'd do it in the park, every hour, on the hour.

Because he classy.

just so that when book seven comes out, i can say i said it before it did

R.A.B. is Regulus Black.

easily the most absurd thing he has ever said

There's an annoying guy in my Brit Lit class who, aside from turning around in his seat to stare at whomever is talking, says inane and incomprehensible things. Today he, during a discussion of Shakespeare, suddenly put forth that the Bard was gay to which the teacher (who deserves a medal for not killing him already) replied that those sorts of reports have been made although there is little concrete evidence. He also noted that there were several biographies of late that said similar things about other historical figures; such as Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. The latter was based primarily on a photograph where he is shown in a "gay" stance, and is thus hardly basis for an entire biography. All of this is set-up for the comment for which this post is named.
So, of course, the kid said that Hitler was gay because "he kept his moustache in such good condition."
Needless to say the class couldn't let this pass as we have for so many of his other comments and people began incredulously talking amongst themselves, which unfortunately made me miss his other reasons.

I was also busy laughing with Steve.

NOTE: I would've found the picture, but I don't really want to type "gay" and "Hitler" into Google Images.

like in terminator 2!

If my hands were hit by a hammer, they would shatter and then melt and reform into my hands. Except they would be on the ground and not on my wrists where they belong. So that would suck pretty hard.
I'm trying to say that I'm outside, waiting for the bus, after getting out of Rosemary's Baby for film class and listening to the Sufjan Christmas EPs. It's very cold.
Today's been about mid-way on the "Crappy?" scale for no particular reason. Just one of those days.
I guess that's about it.
I'll probably blog again later this evening, woozy on needing to sleep. It's the last day of my nineteeth year, which is mind-boggling to me.

UPDATE:
Day=Now going all right. In 20 minutes, I will be 20. I don't really have much else to say. I'm watching Scrubs? Good times there.

EDIT:
I just now noticed the link doesn't work. Well, it does now.

how cool is that?

I just want to give a little shout-out to my friend Bob, whose movies are getting closer to actually being flimed. If you have an hour or two, I'd suggest reading Elsie Hooper in its (so far) entirety. Even if you only read a little, you'll be able to see how awesome it is.
There's no comic for his other movie, The Man Who Killed Bigfoot and then Hitler. But it has a pretty sweet title and was published, in script and serial form, on his website for a while until he had to take it down.
So yeah, I'm pretty psyched about it. It'll be fantastic to see it on the big screen.

you know what hurts a lot?

Biting your tongue really really really really hard. And not the side or the tip either, somewhere in the middle, but closer to the tip. You'd think that after almost 20 years with the same tongue I'd be used to it. Or at least I wouldn't bite it so hard it bled.
First thought upon biting tongue: "Holy crap, I just bit my tongue! What?!"

oh man oh man oh man

So. In the next week or so I'm poised to declare my majors, which is, let me tell you, pretty much terrifying. According to my advisor, I'm also supposed to start applying for grad school and graduation during my Junior year. Which is next year. Except I don't know where I want to go, and I only vaguely know what I want to do.
(Well, I know what I'd like to do and pretty much where I'd like to go, but the chances of me being able to do either is, at the moment, nil.)
This is madness, I'm not ready to be in the World yet. Who do they think I am? Some sort of person who is prepared for this?
Bah.

oook

So I was flipping around the televison and I came upon the Medical Marijuana Festival thing in Portland (or Seattle?).

I'll say this about the Medical Marijuana people: They are the reason their cause isn't really taken seriously. Yes, long-haired man with no shirt, even you. Yes, Sublime ripoff band, you too. And the speakers who appear to have dipped into their prescription before getting on stage, if you know what I mean, you're not helping either.
Actually, it's kind of sad. The guy up there now is either severely intoxicated or mentally challenged.

waiting for a customer with half a brain

SCENE: A bookstore, around three. There are many people in the store, milling about; there are several large boxes on the counter, filled with books in various degrees of disrepair. WALT is behind the counter, sitting Cratchet-like, and being pretty awesome. KATHY is off, stage right.
ENTER TWO WITCHES.

Witch, wearing sunglasses: Are you taking in books?
Walt (rising, while giving a purposeful look at the billions of other books waiting to be done): Yes, but only thirty at a time.
Witch (shocked): Thirty?
Walt: Thirty. We can only look at thirty a day.
Witch (to second Witch): They can only take thirty! (to Walt) I have more than thirty. They're from my mother-in-law's estate.
Walt (sigh): How many do you have?

The WITCH points to the largest of all the boxes.

Witch: I've got four of these in the trunk.
Walt: Well, we can only take thirty at a time. You can bring in one box and I'll count out thirty.

Enter, THIRD WITCH.

Witch (to third Witch): They'll look at a box.
Walt (with a hint of desperation): Thirty. We'll look at thirty.
Witch: Bring in a box.

Third Witch begins to exit.

Walt (strangled cry): Thirty at a time!

Enter FOOL, carrying largest box yet, overflowing with books, accompanied by THIRD WITCH. Because the counter for books waiting to be checked has absolutely no room, the FOOL puts the box on the cash register counter.

Walt: That's way more than thirty.

No one takes any notice of WALT.

Walt: So when do you want to pick these up?
Witch: What do you mean?
Walt: Well, there are (gestures to the piles of other books) quite a few people ahead of you. It's going to be a while until I can even get to these, maybe even not until tomorrow. So when do you want to pick them up? Tomorrow? The day after tomorrow?
Witch: Tomorrow.
Walt (setting paper down): Okay, I'll just need you to write your name, address, and phone number here.
Fool: I know how it is, man.
Walt: ...

FIRST WITCH, after writing her information down, removes her 2nd Look Books card; which baffles WALT, as he assumed that their flagrant disregard for what he was saying was a mark of a new customer. WALT begins cursing them all.

Walt: Okay, it'll be done tomorrow. (reaches for box)
Fool (smiling): Careful, it's heavy.
Walt (grinning, because you pander the insane): ...Thanks, I'll remember that.

EXIT, FOOL, WITCHES through the door and likely to the fiery depths from whence they came.

END SCENE.

...school?

Today gets a shoulder shrug. Part of it was okay, part of it (the unbearably pretentious film professor, who, rather than saying "watching movies" says "have screenings"; the bus schedule changing for the worse) was not. Thankfully my other professors don't seem bad, which is always a blessing --nothing makes a class harder to go to than a terrible teacher.
Today we "screened" Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I always enjoy; except the last fifteen minutes which succeeded in reminding me that not only do they seem supplementary, but they also meant I missed the 3 o'clock bus. What sort of madman ends a class at 3:15?! The next bus isn't until 4! I'll tell you what kind: The kind that wears all-black suits, has a shaved head (with bald-stubble), dual earrings, and assigns ridiculous (for that kind of class) amounts of reading. But it might be par for the course? How much did your film teachers assign you to read?
And the days I get home at 5 are the days that I have off. Not the days that I get home at 3. No, those days I get to go straight to work.
(The owner died yesterday morning; though it was no big surprise, it does put things a bit higher in the air. We'll probably hear from her daughter, who took over the managing a week or so ago, in a day or two. Payday's not for another 10 days, so I'm not concerned.)
But it is the first day of school, so things may look brighter in a week or so.

i couldn't find a dry towel either!

Ok, I'm writing this down so that, if I find it I'll know I didn't go mad.
What am I talking about? Laundry.
I went downstairs this morning to put my clothes from the washer to the dryer for obvious reasons. I could see that no one else had switched them as there was no pile of my laundry on the ground. This is something that always thrills me: finding my clean clothes in a wad so that I have iron anything I want to wear. If there was a puddle of water I'm sure whomever it is that does this would make sure they soaked it up. I mean, if there's someone else's clothes in the dryer when I want to use it, I fold them. The last time this happened, all of my clothes were stuffed into a shirt.
But back to the story at hand. I opened the dryer. Nothing. I opened the washer to pull them out and nothing. They weren't in there. They weren't behind the washer. I want to say they weren't in the freezer, but it just occurs to me I haven't checked. They aren't in the freezer. They weren't in my laundry basket. Ditto for in the laundry room, the basement, the first floor, anyone's room, the stairs, etc. My clothes have vanished.
Thankfully, I still have a couple of clean shirts, shorts, and boxers. They weren't wiley enough to go into my closet. However, I am on my last pair of clean socks. And there's no one home to question. This goes beyond inconsideration, and unless I find my clothes hanging up, having been dry cleaned and pressed, I'll just call it malice. Why would they do something like this? It's ridiculous.

And no, they're not outside, strewn in the bushes.

EDIT: They were neatly folded. In a room I hadn't checked. Of course.

there were no other people to witness the stupidity

I had to work my shift alone today, which isn't that big of a deal, but it did seem to bring out my share of crazies. The following is true, though their names have been changed because I didn't get them.
A man and wife came into the store with reasonably sane looks on their faces.
"Donnie": "Who's in charge?"
Now, right here they could be any number of things. See if you can guess: (a) Potential buyers, (b) Money collectors, or (c) Narcissistic Idiots. If you are reading this, you'll know that the answer is (d), Absolute Morons With Short Tempers. Let's see how long it takes those tempers to burn out, shall we?
Me (as I am alone and pretty much the senior employee anyway): "I am."
Muscle-Shirt Donnie: "Oh, great."
Faithful readers and/or people who know me will be able to visualize what's just happened in the time it took him to say Oh, Great: Donnie's stock has plummeted. If you're a jackass, I will probably not help you as much as I would. But anyway, back to the story.
Me: "Can I help you?"
"Marie": "Who's your manager?"
Me: "I am."
More shaking of heads. I can see that part of them is incredulous that some young kid is the head of this particular shift and the other part is thinking that they can push me over. Had they been nice before or had become nice as this goes on, I would've helped them out. But no.
They tell me what the problem is. I won't give you the line by line because honestly I don't remember it all, but I'll give you the main points.
1. Marie gave the store a list of books she wanted.
2. She went to Alaska.
3. Her husband, while she was in Alaska, bought two books for $4.80 each.
4. She already has those books.
5. "I don't read these kinds of books, I read car manuals."
6. She did not give us a list, she told us a list and some lady wrote it down.
Me (after #6): "When you give us a list, or however else we get a list, we put your name and number on the book on the computer and throw the list away." Of course this does not matter nor penetrate their skulls. They want us to be able to read their minds and to stop them when they buy multiple copies. The books, she tells me, weren't even on the list.
I realize that I'm shaking. I shake when people are pissing me off and I'm trying to keep my voice even. It's one of my less useful traits.
They go on about how they don't want a refund (then why are they doing this? I also hate it when people say they don't want credit or a refund or something of the sort, but they clearly do). They say a bunch of other stuff, and mention that they've called and talked to someone who said that they can't help them. Gee, I don't know why, they're so personable. Donnie goes out to get the books after I say that I'll look and see if we can take them for credit.
Marie echoes that they have two copies and don't need two copies and that he (her husband) bought the erranious copies while she was in Alaska. She asks for the owner's name. Every fiber in my being is saying: Say "What??!" very loudly and walk away or do something less pleasant. But what I say as steadily as my shaking will allow is:
"I don't see how this is our fault."
And her mouth drops open. I can see in her eyes that she would like to throttle me. She inhales to say something that would probably be unprintable. So I cut her off with:
"Fine, you want the owner's name; fine, here it is."
Meanwhile, Donnie comes in with the two copies of the two books. Did they think I wouldn't believe them? Whatever. I check to see if we can take them. Karma is sweet: not only do we already have two copies, but they haven't been sold since August 18th. I say that we can't take them, but they can try again some other time. Donnie laughs in that absolutely annoying way that people who are used to getting their way and suddenly don't and they don't believe it laugh.
And because I'm getting riled up just thinking about it, I'm going to jump right to the end.
They storm out and Donnie says "The word is out" like he's threatening to tell all his friends. Oh no, we're going to lose all of our key block-head demographic! I end up shaking for a while longer, but calm down eventually.
And...scene.

it's about par for the day, actually (i can't wait for work!)

Well. This probably entitles me for some kind of Blogger Least Likely To award, but the forementioned pictures won't be up until tomorrow. I don't really have a good reason except I need to finish cleaning my room, which also requires me to recover from the explosion that is my siblings staying here for extended periods. I'm going to try to get it done before I go to work so I can get them done tomorrow morning, and if I get into a real frenzy, maybe even long enough before so that I can take them before and then upload when I get home.
Is this the most boring entry ever? Perhaps.

In other news, Gilmore Girls Season 4 got here today with two Disc 5's and zero Disc 6's. After looking at the Best Buy site, it seems that I'll have to warm up my incredulous voice as they do not accept opened DVD returns.
"I wouldn't have opened it, except my psychic powers are a bit rusty lately, and I wanted to be sure."
"Yes, I bought two copies and Disc Six is just so much more superiour to Disc Five that I didn't even want Five any more, even though it has twice as many episodes."

And I get to work Sundays now because the girl who was going to work only Sundays got fed up with the check thing and quit entirely. Yes! Seven days a week! Let's start betting on how long it'll be until I throw someone complaining about the prices through the window, Western-style. We're having a sale, I give it a week.

EDIT: I have to work 3.5 hours earlier than I thought tomorrow. Which means my plans for the pictures are once again in limbo! Damn you, work!

up here, the air is cleaner, the air is thinner

I'm going to try something new. You can try it too, if you want. But I'll go first.
That's right, I'm going to review an EP and then give you the link to download it. Because that's just how I roll.

The Mountain Goats Jack & Faye
The lead singer of The Mountain Goats reminds me of what would happen if you were to meld Stephen Colbert and Jason Schwartman into a single guitar-strumming person. However, he sounds more like Colin Meloy and Ben Gibbard. But enough with the comparisons! Put them away with all of your misplaced socks.
Listening to Jack & Faye is like finding a book that someone wrote FOR someone else but it's been long forgotten; sitting and gathering dust among other books FOR people, personal personal works that embody a time and place completely. It was recorded in 1996, which is the tip of the tail end of their lo-fi period, and rightly has some of that dust on it. His voice is a little shaky in some parts, most notably on "There Will Always Be an Ireland" without drawing away from the song itself. If you've heard any live Colin Meloy recordings, you'll know what to expect in that respect.
The songs are plains of grass, ancient ruins that have grown over with ivy and bush. Every now and again the music will swell and a backup singer will follow him. You're standing on a hill in the plain and the swell hits you and you follow the wind of it with your eyes down into the valley to the river there. It's a little chilly, but you wore your windbreaker, and that helps.
Maybe you'll find something there you weren't expecting.

[the EP and many more songs, along with ones I haven't listened to, can be downloaded here.]
Also recommended: "Cubs in Five," "Get Lonely" and "Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise," which are available on request or on iTunes.

If I do end up doing more of these, I'll aim for one every week or so. If only to keep my mind off of the insane people I have to deal with earlier in the day.

who were you before the fall?

I officially hate my work.
Why? Well, let me tell you why...
I'm sure I mentioned the whole "Having to Pack and Move a Storage/Former Bookstore Extension Area in 48 Hours." But John came into work drunk as a skunk this morning at 11 and was driven home shortly afterward by a customer to whom I will be forever indebted. I was going to have to tell him to go home when it got slow. I really wasn't looking forward to it. And the customers don't help. If one more customer comes in with shit books and acts like they're bestowing a gift upon us and then gets mad when we don't take them all, I might have to relocate some teeth. And of course nothing relates to the destruction of moral or the skunking of John more than not getting paid and having the owner seemingly disappear. Working seven days a week for a non-existent owner who does not want to pay overtime and yet has a lack of wanting to hire anyone else isn't so hot on the not becoming frayed.
I'm not even twenty. I shouldn't have to feel worn thin by my work already. Unless I was a Doogie Howser, I guess then it'd be understandable.
[/rant]
Sheesh, I can't not complain, eh?
(i was a singer, saw the future laid out in dominoes; now i hunt the buffaloes)

Holy crap, Steve Irwin, so the preview for the news has just told me, is dead. Crazy. And not by crocs either.

That's right, my blog: come for the complaining but stay for the slightly morbid announcements of celebrity death.

flickr?

I'm posting this here mostly so that I, myself, remember to actually do the deed, but I shall FINALLY update the ol' flickr account the next time I have a day off. Which might be as soon as Sunday?
That's right, I use valuable valuable blogging space as Post-It Notes. It'll be like Cribs (Cribz? I don't really know) but with less of me in a doo-rag and a trucker hat flashing gang signs and saying things like "yo" and "word" and more "this is [name of thing]."
Mark your calendars! For an indeterminate date!

EDIT: I actually don't have Sunday off, but I do get out early. So I'll shoot for Sunday.
Why must my schedule be "Days that end in Y"?

EDIT EDIT: Camera=not in the house. I'll get to it as soon as humanly possible.

unintentionally humorous book of the day:

Slipcover Chic: Designing and Sewing Elegant Slipcovers at Home

Apparently covering your furniture with various flowered fabrics is the "in" thing to do. Oh, and ruffles!

now what do we call mickey's dog?

As you've no doubt heard, Pluto is no longer a planet.
There are now eight planets. It must have been an adjustment back in the day when it was inducted into planet-dom, but now it's no more. Well, it's still there, out in the "Trans-Neptune Belt", but you know what I mean. (What about when it orbits in front of Neptune?) I don't know, Pluto never really affected me, I can't name its discoverer, I never did a school project on it; but it was always there: a small ball of ice floating out in the nether-reaches.
What next? Will there be only eleven months? Should February begin locking its door at night?
Like I said, it's not, in the greater Cosmic Sense, huge. Our tides aren't controlled by Pluto. It certainly can't be terraformed.
But those of you who read old scifi in your childhoods will know what I'm talking about. A rose by any other name wouldn't smell as sweet. [Forgive me, I really hate how cliche that sounds, but I can't think of anything else. Look at the posting time.] No one's going to stop and smell the snarglebargin. [Oh man, I clearly need to go to bed.]

I'm just glad I'm not a teacher and I don't have to scramble to change my lesson plan.

tidbit?

Am I the only one who's really excited about The Science of Sleep?

Because I shouldn't be, if I am.

In other news, it is close to 100 here in the daytime. And my family is at the boat all week while I work, which sounds worse than it is.

yadda yadda yadda

Ok, I didn't want this to into something that should probably be titled "Walt Bitches About Stuff & Occasionally Makes a Snide Remark", but I've been working for most of this week and will be working for a good portion of next week, so it's going to for now at least. Like crappy B-sides this entry shall be marked "For Completeists Only."
At work, we have a little list of rules for the books we take in. I know I've mentioned them before, but here they are again, in Handy List format:
1. Have fewer than the maximum amount of the title
2. Not be in crappy condition
3. Not too old; if a Romance, or a cook book, or something we haven't had in before
4. Not a textbook or a magazine
Those are easy enough to follow, which leads us to my first complaint. For the love of all that is holy, why did the owner replace two excellent with two people who have absolutely no experience. In bookstores, I could see. Using the cash register, I can see that too; I didn't have either of those when I started. But I mean No Experience. With retail or retail-related fields. With basic motor functions. With not taking in third and forth copies. New Hiree #1, whom I will call "Gail" because that is her name, I have the most problems with. Why? Because she is as to making things easy as a cyclone is to keeping things neat. I could write pages about that, but I don't want to because I would end up in a corner weeping. Just take my word. I know she can't help looking almost constantly confused or like the last bulb has just blown or those gawdawful pigtails. You're late forties/early fifties. Stop with the pigtails. And what's with wearing aprons? The books rarely explode and only occasionally secrete poisonous substances. Unless those shirts are really expensive. Then why are you wearing those shirts?

Ok, done with that.

New Hiree #2 "Jo", because it is easier/faster to spell than Barbara, has the same deer-in-headlights look as Gail. She also is a closer. Which means that I don't have to. But it doesn't help when I have to go and help her close. Which is, of course, directly related to Gail's muck ups. Oh well, except for easily-freakout-ability which seems to be very In right now, I don't have much of a problem with her.
Now, it's time for my Handy List of How to Get More Books Taken for Credit, as created and used by Walt:
1. Do not, ever, ever come in with a huge box of books less than a half-hour before closing
2. If you are annoying or walk away while I'm looking up a book you wanted to know about, don't even bring books in an hour before closing
3. Because then you are an ass
4. If you are Guy Who Acts Like We Are Buddies But We Totally Aren't, Guy Who Brings In Books Two Minutes Before We Close, Guy Who Brings Books Ten Minutes After We Close And Then Knocks On The Door Until I Ask You What You Want And Then Tells Me A Sob Story, Woman Who Smells Strongly Of Onions, or Guy Who Sits In The Chair And Orders His Daughter(s) Around And Me Too To Get Books Even If I Am Clearly Very Busy Or If The Books Are Right Downstairs Go Down There And Get Them Your Damn Self Or At Least Pretend To Be Polite, I will take as few of your books as humanly possible
5. If you complain about the price, I will stab you. In my mind. If you have a history of complaining you get less than 10% of my attention. Because the rest of my mind is thinking about stabbing or something far less violent, like how long it is until we close or what to get for lunch
6. I lied, the other less than 10% is not paying attention, I'm either thinking about how long until we close or what to get for lunch. Or stabbing
7. Ok, you can bring in a big box of Romances if we've had them in before and I don't have to enter them in the computer. Because those things are hilarious

I'm done with that, and I solemnly swear that I won't talk about work again unless it is a humorous story. If you actually read through this whole thing, I will bake you cookies or something.

it's been one of those days

Oh man, I wrote an About Me for Facebook that was long enough to pass for a blog, so I cut it to post. Of course, once I opened the page and pressed Apple+V, I get a link back to the Edit Profile page. The most ironic, if that's the word I want, part is that I had already filled in the title for this entry. I'll give it a shot though; I remember most of it.

I was nearly in an accident this evening. I was driving down Lincoln from work, mere blocks (two), from my house when a GIANT BLACK SUV OF DEATH WITHOUT ITS LIGHTS ON pulled out to my right. He did stop as an afterthought halfway into the lane, however; which was very nice of him. It's not like I was coasting along, stealth-like, either. I could see why he had gone with the "no lights" motto if it had been light (literally and figuratively). Or day. Or the daytime of the night. But it was none of those. It was dark. I had my lights on. The whole ROW of cars behind me had their lights on. Because it was night. A time for lights.
It did remind me of the other time that happened to me. This was during the day, which was handy for anticipating and side-stepping the Hand of Death. I was driving home from the Park & Ride, minding my own business, when someone else decided to pull the What Stop Sign? trick on me. I had slowed down because anyone could see that she was not about to stop, or even slow down, for anything as meaningless as a stop sign. However, she was gracious enough to leave me half of the intersection to drive through; and to give me the Impatient Wave so I knew that it was clear to pass.
It's like when, after failing to take me out at the knees due to my lightning-quick reflexes, the woman quickly pulling out of the McDonald's drive-thru hollered "Watch where you're going!" How foolish of me to think that, in the little pedestrian crosswalk that I am halfway through, with cars going by stage left, I could walk without care.

I'm trying, of course, to say that I'm tired of studying Poetry.

update time, schmupdate time

Only four weeks and three days until I am done with this quarter. Did you know that it gets warmer later on in the year? Did you know that being in a house with no air conditioning or swamp cooler sucks pretty hard? Because the answer to both of those questions is a resounding "It does". It may be 'cooler' here than in Tucson, but when you factor in humidity and lack of AC, it hardly feels it. I've spent the past week or so fondly remembering watching the mercury rise outside while the temperature inside remained, wait for it, comfortable. Thank God for giant fans and having windows on both sides of rooms.

Classes proceed much as they have: blaahh.

Does anyone remember...and the name escapes me as I write this...the movie with Sara Jessica Parker and Bette Midler and that other woman who play witches, and it has a talking cat, and some kid who moves into town and his sister gets kidnapped by the witches...? Anyway, I have a sudden urge to watch it. Netflix needs to provide instantaneous service. Instantaneous mind-reading service.

Needless to say, it's terribly exciting up here. I'd go out and about, taking pictures and such, but like I said: hot, humid.

birds over the sea

Biology was, blessedly, cancelled today. I'm sitting in the library wondering whether or not I should go to Poetry. It's been one of those days already. Anyway, this is a story I wrote for my Fiction class last quarter, I've been meaning to post it for a while.

It was a Sunday, a day for writing letters instead of receiving them, a day that swept itself underneath Adrian’s door and fogged his apartment with wasted possibility. His sister was telling him about her house in California, how very much the water looked like a painting --so blue! from her window and how long it took Harry to carry all of the boxes into the living room. Adrian pressed his finger to the dirty glass in his kitchenette and slowly wiped away a month of dust into smooth tendrils of nonsense patterns that curled and connected like thoughts running through his head.
“What’s your address?” Adrian asked because they had run out of things to talk about and the conversation lagged, tumbled and lay gasping for breath in a ditch. “I’ll send you a letter.”
“I don’t know yet; they haven’t put the street sign up,” she sighed, and he could hear her breath echoing in a glass like they were talking in a cave. “I hate that there’s gonna be a house across the street soon. It’ll block the ocean and I’ll forget what it looks like.”
“You should take a picture,” he said. Once he said it, he regretted it, the words reminded him of school yard taunts.
It’ll last longer.
“Maybe I’ll just burn it down.” Her voice boomed into the telephone, he was at the bottom of a well and she was leaning over the edge, bouncing the words down; somewhere he could hear the seagulls calling to each other; Go, go, they urged as they circled around the water that sang on its own. “And dance around the fire.” He stared through the lines he had made to the highway that curled around his building; endless hissing cars sped by. “When are you going to visit us, Adrian? You should come visit soon.”
In the evening there was just him and the quiet gurgle of a coffee pot; the secret mumbling of it and the creaking wheeze of the building that crept around his apartment. They were all waiting for Rosemary, who worked in a law office downtown, and came home smelling like old coffee and toner; the smell followed her dog-like, it ran around, nipping at his nose. She came through the door and laid on the couch like someone had thrown her there; one leg over the back, another over the rough arm of it, and arms sprawled behind her head. He watched her when she did this, her quick pantomime motions like she was constantly trying something out in front of a mirror; even when she raised her head and looked over at the coffee pot it looked like a reflection of what she saw once.
“Let’s go out tonight.” He said it as if no one had ever gone out before and the weight of it pressed down on her, pinning her to the couch.
“I’m tired.”
I know you are, but what am I?
“Alright,” he tried to sound casual but suspicion pushed at him and he was certain that it had been in his mouth and she could see it if she looked; maybe she didn’t care. “I don’t know where we’d go anyway.”
She kicked off her shoes and stretched, her toes quivered like ten little birds ready to fly away. He had seen that anxiousness before. It was there while she dressed and how she dried her hair and in the time between sleep and waking up. More and more often Adrian saw it.
They went out to dinner a week later. It was Italian, because Rosemary liked Italian, the sauce and the wine of it; they had met at an Italian restaurant where he worked forever ago. She came in often enough that he knew her name, knew where she liked to sit, and that she was single. The night he asked her out, he got a haircut and stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom saying “Hi” or “Hello” or “Hey.” He was convinced it was the opening that was important. In the end he made a gurgling noise when they were walking to their cars.
“Did you see the plane crash in the paper today?” A plane had lost control in a storm and plowed through a highway in Rome, the fire and smoke pillaring into the black sky. There were pictures on television with somber news anchors who spoke like they knew this would make or break their career, and bleary-eyed mothers who screamed and wept and clutched their rosaries. “It looked pretty bad,” she finished, the furrow in her brow nestled between her eyes for a moment, and took a breadstick.
He drank his wine and poured another glass, “What are you going to have?” He didn’t want to talk about the crash. He wanted to forget everything that was beyond the table like forgetting a dream, letting it fade into vague, disjointed bits of nothing shapes. “I was thinking about the tortellini.”
Their food came slowly on the arms of a sullen waitress, who held their food --tortellini for him, and a mass of cheese and pasta, the name of which Adrian had forgotten, for her-- alternately as if it were garbage and as if it were a fierce living thing that would leap from the plates and attack her. But away from her stained shirt. Always away.
Outside, it had begun to rain, and the rain came down the windows like a frayed curtain, blurring everything. He saw an ambulance race by in a red and blue smear of purpose. It was doing something, helping people. Whenever someone asked Adrian what he did for a living, which was rarely, he would tell them that he was a writer; sometimes, when he was drunk, he would say that he was published too. After all, there had been a small amount of local enthusiasm when he sent off his manuscript --Swing Sets--, and he figured, in a stumble and a haze, that that was worth something. But what little enthusiasm there was seemed to have dragged itself outside of city limits with a broken wing and died there, cawing weakly to the end.
“I wonder what it would feel like to have your life end just like that,” Rosemary said. Adrian chewed a tortellini and watched her fine gold necklace dance against her skin while she spoke. He’d finish the bottle soon.
Would they have to talk about the crash? The lives lost and ruined? He didn’t want to think about any kind of great change, much less something on that scale, it seemed like the end of the world. There were great masses of fuselage wedged into the ground; smoking craters like footsteps. “You probably wouldn’t know what had happened,” he mumbled to get her to drop the subject and to move onto something else.
“But,” she paused and looked purposefully out the window to the wet streets gleaming eerily in the lights. “What’s it feel like to be dead, you know?”
“Probably something like this.”
There had been phone calls when someone’s breathing answered his Hello, and then the sick flat dial tone that resounded in his ear; short messages on the answering machine with nothing but silence.
She looked into his face. His lips were numb and wavered a little.
I’m rubber, you’re glue...
He was more than a little drunk and its blanket clung to him, making him feel more paranoid, more angry, more secure in speaking, perhaps, than he should have felt. “Who’s the guy who keeps calling?” There was a sensation in his stomach that had nothing to do with the pasta, nothing to do with the wine, and everything to do with how he could tell that everything was going to come out of his mouth: tumbling and awkward, covering the table with half-words and spilling onto the floor with no way for someone to come and mop it up. “What’s his name?”

There was a squawking retort, a clattering, swearing mess of sound outside his door. When he woke up, she was gone. There wasn’t a note, she had taken most of her clothes, most of her things, pictures from the refrigerator lay on the floor, little lifeboats on the great tile sea.
He sent letters the next day. Two envelopes: one with his sister’s name on it and LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA underneath, like he was sending it to some misnamed and misplaced Santa Claus, and the other with his name and his address underneath. He also sent a postcard with the Seattle skyline looking how tourists must imagine it: sparkling, with the sun high in the frame, bloated cartoon letters in the lower right corner. That one went to Rosemary’s old house, in case the people there were in the habit of forwarding mail.

seriously.

I have no words for how little I enjoy my classes this quarter.

This excludes, for the most part, my poetry class, because I like the teacher. But I loathe the girl who sits in front and asks stupid questions and makes inane comments that are barely connected to the topic if they are connected at all. And her giggling! Every time she does that uheehuh I shudder. And she does it at the end of almost every sentence and just as often during her sentences. I could do without her.

I have skipped three of my fiction classes. In high school I skipped one class in the four years and when I did, I felt terrible. This is the distaste I have for it.

And the teacher's hair! is so bad!

The biology "textbook" does not answer any of the questions for the prelab. The video we watched in class, which was supposed to answer them as well, seemed to have been taped off the television and there were jumps in it, so the narrator would gear up for an answer and t--e'd have moved past it.

I mean, Heart is not listed in the index, but Covalent Bond is. Come on, people. Give me a break.

supping from the heady goblet of fame

Before I go any further, I must give you the sad news that Fiddy wasn't there.
It was only Jessica Biel, which I suppose was all right, I guess. She's shorter than you'd think, and it was a bit awkward meeting her without my pants on, as I spent the whole day in a hospital gown, but she's nice. I don't really have exciting stories about the filming, as the scenes shot were mainly dialogue and I mostly waited for my scene...Here're some highlights:

While waiting in the small chapel with my dad and two guys who were both sans-complete leg (one was right, below the knee, and the other left, above the knee) to get called for the background, we watched the scene through the blinds on window thinking no one could see us through the glare. When my dad had to walk across the sidewalk again and again and again he found that anyone could see through the window perfectly.

I will be in one scene for sure (without counting my head in the background). While Jessica Biel is being rolled through the hospital on a gurney-bed, when she comes out of her room I'm being pushed in a wheelchair away from the camera. When she is turned down a hallway and taken down it, I'm pushed past in the background.

I also read a quite a bit more of the excellent Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I cannot recommend highly enough.

That's about it, if you want particulars, feel free to ask.

mr cent, i presume?

For those of you who haven't heard, and as far as I know I have two readers (Hi!) and they both know, I am going to be in the Samuel L Jackson movie this Saturday. I play both "person walking by camera" and "misc patient" showing the wide range of emotion that I'm capable of. (If you'd prefer: ...the wide range of emotion of which I am capable.)
Alas, the Samuel L scenes were shot last week, and so he probably won't be there. But apparently 50 "Fiddy Cent" Cent commits suicide at the end of the movie and that's the scene I'll be in.
You read correctly. I'll be in a scene with Fiddy (as I call him, maybe it'll catch on).
That's just how I roll.

I will have my laptop with me in the Holding Room for DVD watching, but if there is internet access in the hospital I'll update the ol' blog as the day progresses. If there is no internet access, I'll be sure to post that evening. There might even be pictures!


Ps. Does anyone else find it funny that the Blogger Spellcheck says "blog" is not a word?

i CAN do the smurf, however

This evening, my AOL service was disconnected due to a Terms of Service violation (TOS). After contacting "Live Chat," and asking a series of increasingly probing questions, I found out that the TOS occoured while my brother was on, and also that he performed a "Board Disruption". So, of course, the following dialogue took place:

YOU: What does Board Disruption mean?
MEl Lei: Unfortunately I am not at liberty to answer that question for you.

Yeeeaaaahhhh.

It all got fixed in the end, and I got an "educational email" that was just a jumble of HTML code; so I still have no idea what a Board Disruption is or how to avoid one.

skool?!

I won't say that my classes are a ridiculous waste of time.
Let's just agree that 2/3 of them seem to be mostly a waste of time.

Biology=a joke? Intro to Fiction=dah?!

Granted, I haven't been to a lab yet, and I'm basing this off of the teachers themselves. But still.
The teacher in my Fiction class is patronizing.
The teacher in my Bio class is repetitive and repeats herself, often she says the same thing more than three times.

I might be wrong though.

oh well

The Samuel L Jackson/Fiddy Cent movie that had begun filming in Spokane has been moved to Canada due to Union issues. I've heard that a good deal of exterior and some interior footage was shot, so there will likely be Spokane-ish parts in it. Although, during typing of this entry, I read that it may be coming back to Spokane from Canada. Due to Union issues.
At least Samuel L has time to shoot some more scenes for his surely fantastic movie, Snakes on a Plane. Guess what it's about.

Hint: It may involve both planes and snakes.

oh noes!

Well, it's finally happened. I think I might have some sort of illness. As today is the first day of my Spring Break 2006 and I get to work for six hours this evening, that's just great. Nothing makes idiotic customers with their demands easier to deal with than what feels like a temperature and what threatens to be a terrible hacking cough.
I drank a Cherry Coke given to me in a dorm yesterday. That must be it. I get an illness for hanging out with people.

Lovely.

whale ho!

Reading Moon Tiger has given me a hankering to write my own life story, but not in a James Frey way, in a non-chronological, well, Penelope Lively way. So here, from the somewhat distant past, is an adventure in Canada. It was pretty much the only one we had.

We had given up trying to contact John McFarland, a man my dad works with who --supposedly-- has a large ocean-going boat and who --also supposedly-- was floating somewhere out in the colder reaches of the Pacific Ocean. We (myself, my brother Evan, my sister Erica, my father, my step-mother, and the two step-siblings aged young and younger) glided out of the bay and onto the deeper waters. The sea was calm that day, my friends. A low mist hung to the flat surface, but dissapated farther out. It was even warm, meaning one only needed a single coat to ward off the really biting cold.
Seals were occasionally surfacing, seagulls were occasionally flying overhead. My dad inadvertently caught a sea slug (max. 12 per day) instead of another fish and Evan kissed it, it was slimy and had short throbbing spike-like protrusions. Anyway, the day was lovely, I hadn't even had an urge (that I recall) to throw the step-siblings overboard and drive off laughing.
A couple hundred feet off one of the various bows a humpback whale crested and dove. Then, not a minute later, it came up again a little farther off. The law dictates that you have to stay at least 50 yards away (correct me if I'm wrong) from a whale. Of course, because we were the only vessel in sight, we went closer. We followed it for some time, it cresting and diving, us motoring and then floating.
The boat we were in was a sixteen foot Boston Whaler. They are unsinkable, untippable. You can cut it in half and it will still work. (Scroll down, it got angry when I linked directly.)
The whale continued to go about its business. Its tail was probably twice as wide as the boat was long, white on the bottom, great knots and bumps on the edges. As it would surface, we could see the spray from its blowhole and hear the air being exhaled. Then, when we were about 20 or so feet away, it dove. Because we were so close, my dad had turned off the motor so as not to disturb it.
We watched it swim under the surface and I realized just how enormous it really was. If you have not seen a humpback whale up close, in its natural habitat or perhaps suspended from the ceiling in a museum, there is no way to describe or understand just how huge it is.
Which is why it came as such a shock when, en route to the surface, the whale --this giant whale that in all likelihood carried a prophet or a wooden boy with donkey ears or a mad seacaptain in its cavernous belly-- seemed to decide that it rather liked the little patch of ocean we were currently floating on.
My dad, watching the whale on its journey, made the insightful statement that IT'S UNDER THE BOAT and tried to start the engine. It gave a little putter and started on the second try, by that time I could confirm that humpback whales probably could capsize a Boston Whaler, as their back stretches wider than the boat.
But it surfaced, not under us, but another 20 or so feet away. Then the rubber raft came toward us bearing two offical-looking Canadians.

Not to arrest us, but to tell us about the whales.

Thanks to Dave Barry for suggesting I choose this to write about.

live! from dullsville, washington

Yeah, I haven't been posting much. Things at the store are dull. Things outside the store are dull. Dull, dull, dull.
I do have to write a story for my fiction class though, so I might post it here as I write.

In other news, my brother's email was answered. By the Strong Bad. The name is "Kat" because he had a cat on his lap at the time. Rock rock on.

Don Knotts 1924-2006

Don Knotts has died.
One of the first movies I remember saying was my favorite was "The Incredible Mr. Limpet." I thought it was amazing that they could turn him into a fish so he could act the part.
Godspeed, Mr. Knotts.

BtB3:SoBtB part 2 (in which I finish the story about david)

The nice couple has left. The store is generally empty; there are old women getting romance novels; I am finishing up a transaction. [cue music]
David wanders up to the counter, holding a collection of horror stories. [weet! weet! weet! weet!] Ha! He's going to leave! He's going to get the book and leave! "All ready?" I ask him, a sliver of hope MAY have crept into my voice, but let's leave that to speculation.
"No man, not yet, I just saw this book," he holds it up, "And it reminded me of this other book I want to get for my friend; do you have any other books that look like this?"
He did not just say that.
"Sorry, I can't look anything up that way. Did you check on the shelf where you got that?"
"Yeah, I didn't see it. Hey, do you have any books by Vincent Price?"
Ah yes, Vincent Price, author of such fine books as "People: The Other Other Other Other White Meat," "Things That Go I Will Haunt You in the Night," and the classic "Goodnight Moon." You know the one.
"Um, was there a title you had in mind?"
"It's my friend's birthday next week and I wanted to get him a book by Vince Price, but I don't know any titles. I'd know the book if I saw it." He thinks. "I saw a movie at his house that had Vincent Price, do you have the book they made out of it?"
Of course, there's still an hour and a half until we close, I've got time. He'll be gone soon. Right?
"Well, what was the movie you saw?"
"The Black Cat or The Raven or something."
For those of you tapping your temple with your index finger, what I suggest next may be skipped. "Oh, those books were written by Edgar Allan Poe, he's down in the Classics section, you might want to try there."
"Thanks man," he turns to go downstairs and puts the book he was holding on the counter, "Can you put this away for me?"
He ambles down, I hear him greet Clint, who offers a less than enthusiastic response. Ah, time to relax and count my lucky stars he isn't talking to me anymore.

INTERMISSION
Man 1: My dog has no nose.
Man 2: How does he smell?
Man 1: Terrible.
(rim shot)
END INTERMISSION

We're about to close. It's three minutes to nine and I can still hear David talking to Clint. It's a sort of steady droning wafting up the stairs. Nine o'clock. Closing time. Being crafty, I decide to call downstairs from the phone upstairs in an effort to get Clint to answer so as to get him out of the non-sequiturian conversation that he is undoubtably trapped in. Patting myself on the back, I call. It rings. I hear it ring. He does not answer.
Eventually, I hear Clint tell him point-blank that we are closing. David comes ambling up, ambles to his things, takes them and begins ambling to the door. Of course he's not buying anything. Clint is turning off the lights. "Have you ever seen The Ring?"
I was sooo close. So close. What should I say? I have, the week before on TV, but that answer didn't work so well with Lord of the Rings... "No." Is it the right answer? Will he say You should and then move on, into the night?
He then tells me the plot, that it is "really scary, man." "Do you have a VCR?" he asks.
"Yes..."
"I'll bring it in, you can borrow it."
"Oh wow, thanks," I say. His hand is on the door. "Goodnight."
He leaves, finally. Clint and I breathe a sigh of relief. "Did he ask you about The Ring?"
"Yeah." We talk about how crazy David was for a while, he asked Clint about books by Vincent Price too. "Why didn't you answer the phone? I was trying to help you out."
"I didn't know it was you. Besides, I don't answer the phone after closing anyway."
He leaves and we give mutual words of good night and see you later. Guess when I see David again.

That's right, never.

every class has one of these

PROFESSOR [who was late because his wife accidently planed off the very tips of her fingers while she was making a violin]: It's actually a pretty common accident.
OLDER STUDENT [who between spouting innane jabbler and being annoying drives me nuts]: Oh, yeah (implied "it is").

What?! What?!

(His wife is all right, she did not even need stitches.)

tales from behind the books 3: son of tales from behind the books

This evening was really slow. I mostly re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince for the third? fourth? time and remarked to myself on the refreshing lack of crazy people. There was a guy who came in at 6 with a box of books and told me that he'd pick them up at 8:45, which fired off the neurons that trigger the stab-customer-with-little-pointy-thing-that-we-stick-papers reaction, which was, as always, followed closely by the no-don't-do-it-you-fool neurons. There was a guy who stayed in the store for like, two hours though. He does not, however, take the staying in the store longest prize. Who does, you may ask? Well that one goes to a man I like to call David...
It's Christmastime, and a young couple is getting handfuls of children's books for their friends who recently had a child. They were brilliant enough to look up all the books they want on our website and to print out a list, most customers come in and ask if we have a book...it was...blue... and their papers are spread out on a section of my counter. I don't mind, it's pretty slow and they are nice people.
Rewind a couple of hours, when in walks one of the ugliest women I have ever seen. Whoops, sorry, my bad, it's a guy with droopy eyelids and long hair and one of those floppy rastafarian-type hats (only black and not as huge). He wanders back into the store for about two hours. After I have completely forgotten about him, he heads out the door. I, per custom, say something along the lines of "Have a nice day."
Why oh why did I say that?
He turns and comes up to me and sets his soda, his bag from RadioShack and his bag from Hallmark down on the couple's papers. He also smells pretty rank, like he's been smoking and boozing for a while. [Clint and I would later argue what he actually smelled like, but that's beside the point.] "I already did," he says, peeling the RadioShack bag from a pair of Sony headphones. "I got such a good deal on these. They were expensive, but they were on sale, man." After he goes over the finer points of why he chose them--
"My name's David," he says, putting out his hand, which I shake. "I'm staying with my mom for a while, she lives in the apartments across from here."
"Ah." What would you say? This guy is not young.
"Hey man," he says to me, opening his eyes wide, "Do you like Lord of the Rings?"
I eye the drink, a puddle of condensation is soaking into the papers. I just want this guy out, he obviously isn't going to buy anything. And he smells.
"Yeah," I tell him, figuring it's the easiest answer.
"Check this out man," he slowly pulls an ordament box out of the Hallmark bag. "It's Gandolf."
"That's cool." Oh God, he's opening it.
"Yeah," It's all the way out of the box now. "I know it's an ordament, but I'm going to treat him like a model or something, man. And like, they had a Sam and Frodo one, but the guy said they were out of it. Sam, Sam was the brains of that group, you know?"
I say I do. Please, make him leave.
"Well, Gandolf is still cool. He has his staff," He points to the staff. "He has his hat," He points to the hat. "That's an awesome hat, man." He starts putting the tiny wizard away and the male half of the couple quickly takes the papers from underneath the drink and relocates them to another part of my counter. I apologize quietly, he smiles.
David takes out a small glass thing with a clock set in it from the Hallmark bag. He proceeds to tell me all about it, why he chose it and then that the salesman reccomended it when he said he wanted something inexpensive for his mother and on and on.
"Can I leave my stuff here?" What? "I'm gonna go look around."
"Um, yeah, ok."

Little do I know, this has just begun...

"my humps" is the worst song. ever. EVER.

Oh my goodness, that song is so bad, I can't even begin to elaborate on it. I--I just had to say something.

tales from behind the books part deux

This happened a while ago, during the annual Sidewalk Sale were we try to get rid of our non-selling, poor-condition, overstock books. Advertising for it it nil, which is why people often come in, worried, asking if we're closing. One year it was so poorly done that sales dropped dramatically; but that's a story for another day.
There are a handful of regular customers, mothers shopping for their children and themselves, old women, old men who are always disappointed if there is a lack of females behind the counter; and most of them I like enough not to sigh when I see them. However, about a half hour before closing during the Sale, a woman comes in with about five books. She has very frizzy hair, a wrinkled windbreaker, a big hiking backpack, and an obviously full fanny pack. She watches me as I check to see if we can take any of her books. I hate it when customers do this. Hate it.
When I ring up her credit, I scan her card and, under "Notes," in captiatl letters, is says something like:
ASK CUSTOMER FOR ID! DO NOT GIVE CREDIT WITHOUT ID! CARD HAS BEEN STOLEN!
That's a new one.
"Um, ma'am," I say, not sure what to make of it. "This says I need to ask you for ID."
"Oh no, that's me," she says, her eyes wide and nodding. The thought crosses my mind that if she had stolen it, that is exactly what she would say. But it's $4.20 in credit, now twenty minutes before closing, so I don't think about that too much. "You see, someone broke into my house and stole my card."
"Oh my." I'm NEVER sure what to say when customers tell me these things. Like the woman in the wheelchair who brought in 60 books and kept talking about how she couldn't walk anymore and how the doctors put her in the chair and how hard it is to get around her apartment and she can't cook anymore, she used to be a gourmet chef, but now she can't cook. All this while I'm ringing in her books. Her cookbooks. Her Martha Stewart cookbooks in never-used condition. Her Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks. When she first started, I almost said something about countertop modification, now I'm sure she was a cook...but gourmet? Anyway...
The windbreaker woman tells me about how many times she called the police, how they don't do anything. How someone in the police force is conspiring against her. He breaks in. He stole her card. Out of her purse. Someone is stalking her, probably the same person who breaks in and steals things. Her eyes start to water up.
The recipt prints, I give it to her and she browses outside until I close.
I'm frightened for her, about the stalking, the police unassistance. Not for too long though, because I remember something Clint told me about her: She's schizophrenic. I remember seeing video of schizophrenics in Psych. And they all ran in pretty much the same vein as the woman here. It becomes obvious she is off her meds, if she's ever had them.
Sometimes a bookstore isn't the happiest place to work.

One day I was alone in the store, one of the regulars, a woman with whom I usually share pretty good banter, came to the register and set down the books she had gotten from downstairs. She comes in with her kids, a son and a daughter. They're cute kids and never cause a scene. All of the books she just put on the counter are about divorce. I remember one of them was how to keep your children from getting hurt. I ran it up without saying anything. When she was at the door I croaked out "Have a nice night" and thought how stupid that was to say. She thanked me and left. I haven't seen her since.

Funny stories later.

tales from behind the books

I work at a used bookstore. Plastic bags stuffed with dog-eared romance novels and cigarette smoke are like my disgusting bread and butter. I get more women in there than I did at Ace. It may be a stereotype, but it's true. The store works on a credit system, we take in books that we can (no more than two of the same title!) and give you 30% of what our price is in credit. People usually have no problem with it. People even don't usually have a problem with the "Handling Fee" that we charge (.50 per book over $4 and .25 per book under). I think it's stupid and don't always charge people for it.
This is all basis for stories to come.
Our prices are not the lowest, but our books are often in pristine quality. They are, in most cases, 40% off the cover price. And here, ladies and gentlemen, is where my story starts.

It's a Sunday, slow as usual, and a little old woman comes up to the register where I am standing with three hardback books. "You are soo expensive," she says as she puts them down. "I don't blame you, honey. But the prices here are awfully high."
I've heard this before. It's an old bit.
"I'm sorry miss, would you like me to see if we have these in paperback?" This works nine times out of ten, they may not have thought about that, maybe the book is new and we probably have it. She has three popular mysteries, since mystery is my section and I just shelved, I know that we have them in stock. Hell, I'll even get them for her. She's old.
"Oh no, that's alright. I have to get them in hardback because my eyes are so bad." Oh man, she sounds like she might cry, which is, of course, a cue that leads into: "It's just I don't have too much money and can't afford to buy them new."

Geez.

"I'm terribly sorry, madam," I say this a lot. "But there's nothing I can do." I feel bad for her, but I saw inside her purse --it's full of receipts-- and I've dealt with enough people to know when they're lying. She's not totally lying, but seriously, I'm sick of people griping about the prices. And they usually mention they saw it at Costco for $5. I ring them up.
"Well, alright. I'll get them. They're just so expensive."
You've got to be kidding me. "If you'd like, I could put two of them on hold for you and you can buy them later."
"No, it's alright. Just I saw them--" stop me if you've heard this one "--at Costco."
I put my hands on the counter and open my mouth and suck in the air that will let me say "Well, go buy them at Costco then" but stop. Richelle, the girl who works with me on Sundays, is watching this whole thing. She's had her fair share of these people too, and probably knows what I would love to say.
The old lady pays and makes her way to the door, saying how very lucky they are to have such a nice young man working for them and how, even though it's expensive, she'll be back. I watch the door close.

She comes back in a half hour later. She bought them at a diffrent store across town. She wants to return them. It is not our policy to make returns, in fact, it is our policy to not make returns. I think seriously about telling her she shouldn't have bought the books if she was going to buy them somewhere else. I think about telling her tough luck.
But I take her card and make the return.

I never see her again.

oh man, but i am exciting

Last night I had a dream that I had to figure out the probability of something (don't ask what, as I only remember the number ".25," but I am pretty sure there was a Venn Diagram). And I could not get the numbers to come out correctly. IS IT A SHADOW OF WHAT IS TO COME?!
As I have a bonus problem with both a Venn Diagram and the number ".25" and also a math test come Tuesday, the answer can only be: most definitely. [Inside joke: I am very bad at math!]
If dreams are our unconscious expressing the frustrated desires of our subconscious and conscious minds, then I must desire to do poorly in math. Which is absurd--->I do not want to do poorly because then I could not get into a sweet graduate school.

I need to get out more.

senior year all over again

Trying to see if I want to, or in fact, am going to, transfer schools after two years brings back all the feels of trying to figure out college after high school; meaning: there are really smart people out there. And also the ever-popular: why did I plan on settling for the U of A for three years?
Because doing so pretty much means that I tried not at all. Which, surprise!, has consequences.
Anyway, long story short is that I will not be going to Stanford and not be able to gloat to my dad via envelopes of what I imagine to be air dewy sweet with the collective intelligence of bustling students. And although my idea of people striding to and from class wearing burgundy sweaters with great white S's on them has been disproved since Mary told me that no one strides to class, I still think it would be better than EWU.
(And there are no burgundy sweaters with great white S's, much to my dismay.)