Bless me father for i have viewed, it has been 7 years since my last wizard movie…

First, some business:

1) I signed up for the 5th 20something bloggers Blog Swap, so next week there will be some content produced by someone who is not me and I will be imposing my tomfoolery on someone else’s blog. Take that as a blessing or a curse (or choose not to care at all). Just a heads up on stuff to come.

2) Today is Tuesday was Bastille Day. I don’t care. I’m not French. However, today isTuesday was also the birthday of a great friend of mine. About that, I do care. I’m still not French though. Anyway, Indie Jake is 26 today. I have no particular feelings about the age of 26, other than that it is a good age to have follow being 25. Happy Birthday to him.

And now that the business is out of the way, on to the heart of today’s matter…my internal guilt about having seen Harry Potter.

I assure you, I had absolutely no intention of seeing it at all. I saw the first one a few times (I actually even own it…on VHS….because I have an illogical love of VHS). I saw the second one once, and remember very, very little of it. I have seen none of the ones after that. Nor did I read the books. I bought the first book in Newark Airport when it first came out in paperback because I had a flight delay and had finished the reading material I brought with me. I read 5 pages and then decided that I would rather stare out into the sea of airport patrons than devote effort to reading it. I think I later gifted it to someone. I didn’t even know what number movie/book this was a telling of. The take home message of this paragraph is really that I have zero investment in Harry Potter.

Two things I do have vested interest, however, are beer and my friends not wasting money. So when I called my chum to ask if he wanted a ride to the beer promo night we were attending and was asked if I wanted the extra ticket they had, I couldn’t say no.

The theater we were seeing it at was showing Harry Potter on something like 16 screens, and I’m pretty sure all or almost all of them sold out. I have not seen that many high school students in one place wearing ridiculous clothing since my days of marching band competitions. (Go on, laugh. It’s okay). As we were leaving I happened to overhear the girl behind me comment to her friend about where her dad would be picking them up. Let me reiterate, this is at almost 3 in the morning…on a Tuesday night…and she isn’t old enough to drive herself. If I had asked my parents to pick me up at 3 am on a Tuesday when I was a high school sophomore I would have been laughed out of the room. Get a curfew, sweetie.

Sketchy cosplay and questionable parenting aside, the film was pretty good, and I didn’t feel as lost as I anticipated I would. But I still feel dirty for participating in the opening night orgy.


…figurative orgy that is. But I’m sure some of those folks had some freaky stuff going on too.

My résumé brings all the hr reps to the yard…

I, like many (many, many, many, many, MANY!) other people I know, am currently on the hunt for a new job. You know, one where I can get a proper number of hours and (and I know this is asking a lot) maybe use some of the skills that I picked up in college and the first half of my masters. Because while my typing did improve due to paper writing, I’m pretty sure I could have just bought a Mavis Beacon (does “she” still even exist?) cd for that and saved a lot of time and money.

In anticipation of the potential backlash that I already feel creeping up on me, yes, I know I am lucky to have a job and not be one of the millions of unemployed folks who are out there. I am grateful for my job. I was also grateful for my baby teeth…doesn’t mean I can’t upgrade.

So, as of late, I have been doing many of the things that one is advised to do when on the hunt for sparkly new employ. I updated my resume. I routinely troll the job boards, both general and specialized. I’ve been chatting with folks who might have an IN to throw my way. You know, the standard MO.

But hold up friends, this is the modern age! The age where the internet can make or break you. And really, ::points back at the archives:: I’m thinking I’m probably more in the “Break” category. So I’ve also been doing things like restricting access to my social networking pages and closing accounts for stuff online I don’t (or never did) use. As part of this process, today I decided to Google search my name as if I were a potential HR person trying to discover if the job candidate is a total whacko. Here’s what I found…

I have been fairly effective in keeping my online gallivanting contained. Neither my twitter nor this shit show my blog showed up. In fact, most of the links (that were actually referencing me, not some chick in the middle of the country or in Europe) came from one of two sources: a poem I wrote in 8th grade or one specific book review.

The poem is straight garbage (much like the second verse). This should not be surprising. I can own its craptacularity. I submitted it to a contest because, at the time, I fancied myself a poet. Go ahead and judge, but if you do it means I get to mock you for your misconceptions at 13.

The book review, while rather benign and positive, is problematic on two counts. One is that the book discussed religion so the review was quoted on a bunch of anti-religious communities. But hey, whatever. I read it and put my opinion of the writing out there. For me the more troubling issue is the second one. There is a typo in it.



…maybe I should have bought the Mavis Beacon cd after all.

One i didn’t finish, the other was the phone book…

When you do research, there is a design called meta-analysis. Essentially, you take a bunch of studies that looked into the same question and you combine their subject pools, do some very, very naughty things with statistics, sacrifice three virgins, dance naked under the full moon and recite the Hail Mary backwards in pig latin. Once that is all done you get to use the new data to make much more sweeping generalizations…it’s either pretty f-ing cool or an abomination, depending on who you ask.

Well, as of late there has been a whole lot of bookish news floating about my corner of the intarwebs. I do so like bookish news and I figured that perhaps you, dear reader, might also like some bookish news. So why not do a bit of a meta-analysis of this news? I dare say there is no logical reason why not! (Not that having a logical reason has ever been a requirement for me doing anything.) We will, however, need to skip the analysis bit since the full moon isn’t until the seventh of next month and I need to head over to the store and pick up a new case of virgins next time I’m running errands. Instead, I will just aggregate it all.

~Jen Lancaster has posted a whole mess of suggested summer reading. I would trust her, if I were you. (I, unfortunately, am me and as such have a large pile of TBR books awaiting my attention already.)

~A perennial favorite of mine, Joshilyn Jackson, for making the NY Times Best Seller List. She writes some super fine southern fiction with romance and murder and the like. Y’all should read them too.

~Not really news but the release of Danny Evans’s (of Dad Gone Mad) first book, Rage Against the Meshugenah, is less than 6 weeks away. Despite having not read it, I’m glad to see a book addressing depression in adult males that is also readable being put out. This makes the little psych nerd inside me dance with satisfaction.

~On a more personally important note: A very good friend of mine, who has been fighting to get the words to flow on his first full-fledged novel attempt for a long time now, finally finished his first chapter. I’ve heard the whole story outlined and it’s pretty darn quality. I’m super proud.

For all this bookish news, it should probably be pointed out that I have not finished even one of the ten books I’m supposed to read before September 25th. But I’ll get there. In the mean time 25 lashes to me with a wet noodle for procrastination.



…now if you’ll excuse me, I need to practice my pig latin.

The world is rubber, i am glue…

I never thought I would reach a point where Katamari Damacy was the ideal descriptor…and yet here I am.

For those out there who are not familiar with this particular gem of pop culture, it is a video game where you (yes, you friends!) are this tiny prince (and if you happen to be a male in your early 20s who dressed up like said prince for a Halloween party, you look like this you are probably very relieved that i'm not currently in a place where I have access to the photos of you). Your job is to take a sticky ball and roll it around various boards picking up everything and anything to form giant balls of junk that the King of All Cosmos will then make into stars.

Y’all still with me?

The point is that you can roll up anything. There is practically nothing that you come in contact with that doesn’t try to stick to you. And that’s what I feel like today.

It’s not really all that bad. Some things are pleasant enough and change the shape of my day for the better (such as the unexpected recitation of the Walrus and the Carpenter I was prompted to do this morning) and some are just awkward to incorporate (such as the barista at Starbucks this morning telling me that she was up most of the night because her goldfish is sick and she had to keep an eye on him).

I can’t say I’m not worried that I will encounter something rather poor before this condition passes, but hey, not much to be done. Just gotta take what comes in stride and make the best of the way it shapes my day and directs my motion.



…because the King of All Cosmos is counting on me.