Ever since I saw Das Boot, I've thought about how my life might be improved by having a German yell Alarm! at me at random intervals. Alarm! as used in Das Boot was mostly a command to crash-dive the boat, but I gathered from context that it might also be a good general exclamation of shock and dismay, something demanding immediate action. It's ( Read more... )

The last branch pointed down at my garage, ready to fall at any moment. My mother's friend S. came over to help get it down, since I had neither the height nor the tools to do it safely myself. He got a line around it and I held it while he cut. A ticklish operation, and the old branch didn't want to come loose. When it gave, we were swarmed by ( Read more... )

The moon hung in the sky like a great yellow eye, contrails from long-departed jets drawing veil-like over it. It's the exact same temperature out there right now as it is inside, a perfect snapshot of the waning days of summer just before fall comes and wipes all the leaves away. When I was cutting the branch off the garage last week, I saw that ( Read more... )

Seen at the Cooper-Young Festival ( Read more... )

The house next door went up for rent a while ago. A few folks moved in, hung around a bit. We heard a few drama noises once or twice, then they left. The house was empty for a good long while before someone showed up, cleaned up the place a little bit, and left. Then a new family moved in. They're industrious folk, if the amount of ex-housing ( Read more... )

Finished watching Yojimbo today. Toshiro Mifune is awesome, and I'll have to get Sanjuro soon. I'd watch Hidden Fortress, but the copy I rented has something wrong with the subtitles; I might be able to do some wizardry later to get around that. I've seen about a third of Seven Samurai; I could finish watching that ( Read more... )

I'm writing this from my dining room table.

Media day. Checked out some books at the library, then went and rented a WWII movie and two samurai flicks. Nothing special. Between the two, I stopped in at the Cooper-Young Festival and saw demosth_locke, medievalneedle, xenoweeno, D., and an attorney I work with. It was good to see people, better still to get out of the house. I need to ( Read more... )

Sometimes when I am in just the right frame of mind, I go and visit all of the houses I lived in before I moved out on my own. When you've only ever lived in one place, this is pathetically easy to do. I saw the places where I went to school and parks that I used to play in and the field I learned how to play soccer on. It was a quiet night with me ( Read more... )

Hands smelled of scorched wood for all of last night. You wouldn't think it was a good smell, but it was.

Watched Friday Night Lights on the merits of its soundtrack, but it turned out to be a decent movie in its own right.

The branch is on the curb in pieces. xenoweeno helped greatly.