from work!

Ah, yes, the smell of cigarette smoke wafting down the stairs and from guys whose pants have not fit them for a long time. Now I remember why I liked it better why we had shows outside of the store.

Walt Fact #917

I really really liked Casino Royale. I thought, and it's been a while since I've seen the others, that it was the best Bond movie. Not only that, it was an awesome movie by itself. With that out of the way, I think Quantum of Solace (and yes, I like the title, I think it makes sense) looks even better:



When they both fall through the glass ceiling at 1:25? AWESOME.

no one knows where we go

I keep meaning to go to bed sooner, and failing. I think "oh, I'll just check this one other site to see if there's anything new" and then it's an hour later and I'm still tired. And the worst part is that none of it ever really changes, the new Macbooks are still unannounced (and probably won't be until early October) and Sarah Palin is still, well, not helping McCain (which is fine, but I'm still worried he can somehow turn it all around).

Fuck.

Fuck.

I'm going to bed.

"i am a werewolf."

For any and all interested parties, the Reading Rainbow version of When the Wolfsbane Blooms can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?dgmymy0gmcm
The picture is pretty decent for what it is at the standard resolution and is passable (barely) at full-screen resolution, but it was the best option I was given that didn't make the file size prohibitively huge.

a horribly hilarious story FROM THE PAST

If you meander over to hobbescomics.net you'll see that I've finally updated the site with some new (really old) content! I wrote the story 13 years ago, probably fairly close to the day, and it really really shows it. Or at least I hope it does.
There are a great number of misspelled words. And a great number of silly illustrations. If you look at page five, you'll notice that someone is SO frightened their hair, teeth, eyes, and glasses are popping off of their round, smooth skull.
The copy I have is, as far as I know, the only copy left and even that is not the original. Anyway, check it out, it's pretty entertaining.

making that subtitle inaccurate since 1986

Hey. So. It's been a while. I've been working on a story that I'm probably going to be putting in the save for later folder because it's just not happening. I have ideas for it and I have some sentences I really like, but overall it's been fighting me every step of the way. I recently started reading a book called U & I: A True Story about a writer who is obessed with John Updike. I can relate. The man is nothing if not prolific and has remained well-respected into his later years (which other author can you say that of?) and listening to him speak, the sentences seem to pour out of him perfectly formed. But moving on.
The story started out being about a man and wife with their infant daughter waiting for a bus in a small town and became about the same couple with the same child seeing a man get hit by a car (tapped, would be a better word) and get in a fight with the driver and started being more about the man meeting someone he hasn't talked to in a long time and being confused and unsettled by the ways they no longer match his memory. And then he goes back outside to the bus stop where his wife and daughter are waiting.
I'm not sure why I'm so facinated by the motif (if motif is the word I want) of that sort of family. I have neither wife nor daughter. But they keep popping up. I just need to move on and come back to the story later.

I'll have something more interesting to say later, I'm sure.

EDIT: I love Dylan Moran. He's hilarious! This is from his show "Black Books"

i mean, like, seriously. ew.

Dear Lady Who Immediately And I Am Not Exaggerating People Started Trimming Your Fingernails After You Asked If We Had A Book,

That is NOT socially acceptable. At all. And when you didn't even sweep your clippings away, I was flabbergasted that people even did that. Please never come in the store again.

Thanks!

Walt

write or else

I spent about two hours over Friday and Saturday in the dark. This was something I had planned. During those two hours, give or take, I listened to a man speaking with a gentle accent, a sort of rolling of the vowels, a rising and falling of stresses, as he occasionally shifted from foot to foot, tapping the toe of his shoe to keep time. He smiled and laughed and peered into the darkness over his small glasses to either proclaim or jest. It was, by turns, hilarious and thoughtful.

I'm talking, of course, about Thomas Lynch.

He came to my school on Friday and gave a reading in the recital hall, where he was either accompanied or followed by a piece of music various students had composed for his poetry or essays. The music was often very good, and fantastic at least once and he seemed pleased by it. He read selections from "Sweeney," "All Hallows Eve," the first essay in Undertaking, and one poem whose name I cannot recall.
I went downtown to see him Saturday, my father, a copy of Still Life in Mitford, and my uncle's copy of Bodies in Motion and at Rest in tow. The talk was supposedly called "Undertaking Nonfiction" and was to be about the craft of nonfiction writing. But he didn't touch on that and instead read "Grimalkin" and told its story (a more compact version of which is in the essay of the same name). He read from some articles he had written, some poems I have not read, some essays I have, and talked the whole time about the whys of the writing. When asked, at the end, by some small child "Have you ever cremated an animal?" he answered, laughing, "Not on purpose."
So I went into the lobby, waving to people I know, and had the books signed. He asked me what I did and if I was in the MFA program at Eastern and then if I was going to stay here or go somewhere else for it. In my uncle Tom's book he wrote: "Uncle Tom, Namesake, etc. Best, TL." And in mine he wrote: "Walt- Write or else! TL, Spokane 2008."

Awesome.

you guys.

You guys I love the Mountain Goats so much.



I know that in California, the waves break on the beach
I know that the foam on the breaking waves is as white as household bleach
But can you see that particular white right now?
That's the color of the young star, coming on down
I've got joy joy joy in my soul tonight
I've got joy joy joy in my arms all right
Although you treat me badly
I will love you madly
You really got a hold on me
You really got a hold on me

i am incredibly bored so you get to read whatever i can think of until i absolutely have to do something:

To say that it had been raining long would be laughable. In fact, Rabbit tried it out, and found that he smiled in spite of the sagging in his earthen roof and the fact his whole front was soaked from dumping several pots' worth of water out the door of his burrow. He eyed the roof, tendrils of grass root were reaching stupidly for his rug. If it was still raining tomorrow he'd go out into the forest and fetch some lengths of wood to brace it.
He got word the day before that Rat's home, or at least the part of which he was most proud, had crumbled into the river and that Rat had moved in with Badger and was drinking what little of his store he had been able to save. Rabbit was thinking about all this and wondering if he should perhaps go into the forest tonight when someone knocked on his door. He stepped around the series of pots and opened it to find Hedgehog standing there, her shawl making thin tents on her trembling quills, her eyes wide.
"Rabbit," she said, ignoring his offer to come in, "quick, you've got to help; it's Rat."

And now someone's come in with books, so I'm off...

top five most ridiculous romance titles in a single order

1. Paging Dr. Daddy
2. The Spaniard's Pregnancy Proposal
3. The Italian Billionaire's Pregnant Bride
4. Expecting His Love-Child
5. One-Night Love Child

I've figured out one of the formulas for a romance novel:

The [Profession/Ethnicity/Ethnicity & Profession]'s [Amount of Wealth/Prengnan/t/cy] [Bride/Lover/Secret Lover]

I'm learning so much!

in which i pause for a moment and abandon being self-reflective for at least a paragraph

I've been on Spring Break for the past two weeks, so I've had quite a bit of time on my hands (when my brother wasn't here). I've been spending some chunks of that time playing through Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, which, although it didn't get great reviews, is a lot of fun. There is one particular thing that bugs me though:
If I can pick off a covert agent from tens of yards away even if he's run deep into the shadows, you'd think I'd turn if someone opened a door two feet away instead of continuing to walk from one desk to another/smoking an entire cigarette. After that, sneaking up behind someone and then quietly dragging him to the shadows is considerably less satisfying.

That's pretty much it. Stuff about school comes tomorrow, after, you know, I'm done with it.

Also, Tom Nook is a cheap bastard.

walt: a retrospective

Since I've been going through my closet, I've come across many trinkets from my youth. The most entertaining to find again are, of course, the books we put together in class with our various crafts. When I read this I thought it was too funny not to share:

Dear Santa,
I wish my friends were aliends. I wish Grant and I could be robbots. I wish I was stronger than Hulk Hogan. I wish I was strong enough to jump over the Empire State Building.
Your Pal, Walt

Apparently we were supposed to write down our Christmas wishes? The large card its written in is shaped like a reindeer's head...

i think i know who some makeup artist admires

I just wonder if he's noticed.



On the left, Eddie Izzard; on the right, Susan Sarandon in Enchanted.

it will be too late by the time we learn what these cryptic symbols mean

I saw No Country for Old Men today. If you want a movie that watches like a book, this is your movie. I liked it, and the more I think about it the more I like it. The Coens do some brilliant stuff that I realized only after I had thought about it for a little while. It's not nearly as action-y as the trailer would suggest, and it's not as bloody as some reviews I've read paint it (though there is blood), but there are some good action scenes. So yeah. I'd definitely see it again.

In other news, I'm once again redoing the website to make it less of a pain to update (which, in theory, means I'll be updating it more often. Because I haven't. Because it's a pain. Stupid host not supporting php.) and that should be done in the next couple of days.

Finally, did I ever send any of you a snippet of a story wherein I describe the change from summer to autumn in about half of a page? I thought I typed and saved it, but I can't find it and I can't seem to rewrite it. This would be at least a month ago. I know I'm reaching.

Christmas break! Woo!

oh god i should be writing my poetry paper what am i doing

A bit of backstory:
There is a customer who comes in every day with thirty books. He buys books nearly every day, too, though he never goes over his credit amount. He is very old and has some sort of skin condition. He is the reason Kathy bought hand sanitizer. He is also completely oblivious to any cold he might have, allowing his nose to drip more or less as it desires.

We join our tale, already in progress...

There I stood, horrified, my stomach churning before it really needed to, yet transfixed by the drop wavering precariously from the end of his nose. I wanted to hold a Kleenex out, but didn't want him to move too quickly and risk the drop flinging off toward me. It was like a sports movie or an action movie where something is on the very edge of something, ready to fall one way or the other, and everyone is staring at it, willing it to fall the way they want it to.
I just wanted a tissue or his hand or a sleeve to intervene. I wanted a miracle.

But it fell, slowly, dream-like, to the counter. I drew upon every reserve of self-control so as not to visibly shudder. After he had left --still oblivious!-- I wiped it up with a big paper towel and slathered my hands with santizer before running (like Steve Carrell in Little Miss Sunshine) to the bathroom to wash with the hottest water in the whole world.

ewewewewewewewew

warning! poetry! warning!

I'm pretty much on my way to poetry class right now, but I feel like the ol' blog needs an updating. So here are a couple of poems (without the changes suggested by the teacher and class) that were particularly well recieved.

Where the Creek is Shallow

Earlier he had listened to the gravel under his feet;
His dog’s excited, haggard breathing,
Her ears alert, listening too, for everything:
That far away creek,
And the slowly shedding leaves,
Some branch breaking and tumbling down its tree.
And they began, then, toward the copse, that old gate,
That old stump, a fallen tree--
Its roots torn from the ground and spread
Like fingers are spread from a desperate hand.

Later he will go back home, out of breath and shaking,
With his dog, oblivious, proudly trotting behind him,
And turn the sink on hot, plunge his hands in
And use the soap, wring his hands, and stand there washing.
When he was a boy he went fishing in that creek
And noticed each season’s changing leaves.
But in his kitchen he will notice the flesh of his palm,
The hair on his knuckles, all his fingers there and
Working. A blessed thing that Sunday morning.

Still. His dog laps at his hand and he lets her,
Her nose wet, her haunches wet from the spray against the stone.
Yet he would not stop staring at the body drifting in its tomb;
How, like reeds, the slow flow of the stream undulated its fingers;
And there, like a boat finding shore, some fallen autumn leaf
Did strike against and sail along the useless line of its wasted cheek.
A thought crosses uninvited then, against his numbing feeling:
That if the water were just deeper, the body would float away,
And he could look, away, at it-- not dead, but sleeping.
Not floating, but swimming.

My Own Rolled to my Elbows

I have three hours before
She gets back from class
And I’ve spent most of it
Finding this spot.
My bike is leaning against
The tree I climbed earlier;
My hat is just above my eyes;
I know there are clouds
And sea spray beyond that hill.
I know how her sweater will feel
And I wait.

It is not too much longer
Nor too cold.
The taste of apple is sticky
On my lips.

And that's it. I also wrote a villanelle, but I'm not sure how I feel about it, no matter what my classmates said.

this was probably a bad idea

I had quite an adventure last night, let me tell you. I had just finished closing and, being hungry, began to drive to Safeway. Before I go any further, I've got to give you the lay of the land: The bookstore is in the middlish of a largish shopping center, with a main road as the crow flies from the front door and a considerably less main road to your right as you face the main road. So I don't have to deal with traffic, I usually take the less main road when I go to Safeway, and just drive in the back way. The less main road stops at the end of the back of the shopping center, where it meets what is, for all intents and purposes, a residential street. There are no stop signs on any of the three meeting points, so you've got to be careful when you turn.
Now, I pulled up to the residental street and saw there was a car coming to my left (the way to turn to get to Safeway), and I waited. Once that one passed, I saw another one coming to my right, but since it was at least a blockish ways away, I turned left.
No sooner had I turned left that the car zoomed up and almost hit my tail. The driver, irate for whatever reason, turned his brights way way up and continued to tailgate me like a bastard. I considered stopping, but decided that damage to my car was not something I wanted. Besides, I thought, it's only a short distance to Safeway, he'll continue on this road to the main road up ahead.
No such luck. When I turned onto the back drive to the parking lot, he followed. I hoped he was just going to the store, but to be on the safe side I pulled all the way to the third row of parking spots instead of the first. I parked. He was still in front of the store, his lights on, his car on. I was not about to walk in front of him. Then he swerved into a parking spot, got out, and slammed his door closed.
I am not familar enough with Mr Gandolfini's performances in The Sopranos to make any real comparisons, but if he grew a goatee, he'd probably look something like the man who was glaring menacingly in my direction.
I got out of the car with my bag (containing the chicken I had intended to return [2 weeks past expiration though I bought it that morning]), reasoning that I could run inside or at least escape into the night with my car unharmed.
"Learn to drive, asshole," he shouted helpfully.
"The speed limit's 25 on that street," I pointed out at equal volume.
"Hey, fuck you," he replied.
"Oh, fuck off," I countered, not to be outdone.
We exchanged more pleasantries in this vein, and I began to make my way to the store. I watched him carefully because although he hadn't come any closer, he was clearly still very very angry with me. He was also following me into the store, but through the doors closest to him. Once inside, I walked quickly to the customer service desk with my chicken and got a refund.
When I went back outside later, visions of my wrecked car floating before me, everything was fine. None of my tires were slashed, nothing was in the exhaust pipe, no windows were broken. He was gone.

my submission is in the running!

Please vote for it! (A high score would be nice too)

EDIT: As you may notice from that handy little banner, the voting period is over. Now we wait and see if it gets chosen to be printed. I didn't get quite as many votes as I was hoping to (slightly more than 2,000) but I think it was still a good show. I'm not sure when they'll say what the score was, probably in the next couple of days, but I'll let you know when they do.

Thanks for voting!

haHA

For any of you who remember my brush with fame, the movie I was in came out on DVD recently. I didn't watch it, but my dad did and he assures me it was horrible. I watched only the scene I was an extra in. My dad was not in it, though he was at the filming.
HOWEVER. 28 minutes in, I AM. I apologize for the poor picture quality.
Click the picture for a larger view!





I'm apparently doing my best old man impression. But I'm in it! Now I can say that I shared the screen with Jessica Biel on my resume.

Awesome.