… would anybody notice?

Perhaps a bit overly zealous since PsychoPhil’s adventure last week, but, where did ExtraheavyMarcellus go? This is all I get:

… even though his last post is still up on Blogtimore:

So the “date” I thought I might be having? Well, maybe she and I should have spoken in clearer terms at work, but when I called her Saturday night to see if she was interested, a guy answered, identified himself as her boyfriend, and demanded to know who the hell I was. She never said she had a boyfriend, and she apparently also didn’t tell him that she was delivering pizzas. It sounded like a guy I know passingly, and a guy she knows well named Alan, but when I asked, “Are you Alan?” his response was: “Ah-hah! She’s cheating on me with two guys!” So I hung up the phone, went down to Atomic Books, picked up Harry Potter, then went to Molly’s and watched The Odessa File with a bunch of other people.

It’s possible I will soon have a job. A good job. With benefits. And a desk. Probably a cubicle. I might have to wear ties. That’s not neccessarily a bad thing as I can then justify buying this. Hey - cheaper than an actual Wrangler. (I might still have to deliver pizzas a few nights a week to make ends meet. I’m so totally cool with that, though). I won’t be blogging as honestly about a “real” job as I have been about pizza delivery because, frankly, if both shops fired me tomorrow I’d be working at two new shops by Tuesday, and that’s not a luxury I think I’d enjoy with an actual, y’know, job.

(Since I have no sense of style … anyone know a website where a fashion-clueless guy like me can figure out what color slacks to wear with what color shirt & tie?)

The cats are still giving me the silent treatment, hiding under the couch. I’m going to go try to play with them. I can’t imagine how much they’re going to hate me when I board them again in a few weeks … got to do it, though … need to kill the fleas.

… back when I was on my tie-buying binge …

… the fourth movie, The Goblet of Fire, opens this November. You can find a cast list here, a trailer here, and even an early review of the (as-yet-unfinished) movie here.

(Oh, and according to IMDB, Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix is already in preproduction and slated for a 2007 release and is being directed by David Yates, whose filmography includes a lot of exercise videos. Will we see Hogwart’s yoga room? God I hope not.)

… (ZOMBIES!!!!), I just shortly ago finished The Half-Blood Prince in someone else’s house with someone else’s yellow lab snoozing at my feet.

Before I go further - let me just say that there will almost assuredly be spoilers for the book contained within this post, and you might be wise (if you desire to be surprised) to move on to another post (there are lots - I’ve a bit of a diahrea-of-the-word-processor on my blog) or, indeed to another blog.

I had a lot of expectations for this book, and only came true, and that was who dies. That was the big tease, if you remember, “someone dies.” And if you’ll remember the last two books — where, also, someone died — the deaths kept increasing in importance. The death in Goblet of Fire was, I hate to say, inconsequential. Who was Cedric Diggory? Someone we’d just met in the book - was he in any of the others? Background player, if at all. Sirius Black’s death in Order of the Phoenix was certainly more dramatic. And let’s be honest — is killing Hermoine or Ron really an option here? No, because while the books are titled Harry Potter and… they’re about the trio of friends. Killing any of those three (before the seventh book, I should say) would be … wrong. So you’ve really only got two options, don’t you? Voldemort, for one, but then how do you end the last book? Dumbledore’s death, although I suspected it, was still harsh and brutal, particularly considering who … y’know … killed him.

Snape.

Who was of course the last person I ever expected to actually be in league with Voldomort, the opening to this book be damned. I could even picture the end of the book, with Snape explaining, “Oh, please, the unbreakable spell can be broken by anyone with a passing understanding of elementary magic.”

Exposition time:

my first exposure to Harry Potter came when I was living at The Colony in Towson. I was friends with the next-door neighbors, one of whom, Liz, was a huge Harry Potter fan. She lent me the first book, and I read the first chapter, didn’t get into it all, and returned it to her. She warned me that I would eventually be taken in by the series, and she was right - I saw the first movie later that year and the next day bought the first four books. I read them within a 48-hour period which was a total smackaroo of Potter-ness. What I liked about the movie was how totally convinced I was that Snape was a bad guy. Yet by the end of the fourth book, off he went, and I was convinced his loyalty to Dumbeldore would never waiver.

And I held that belief, right up to the moment Snape waved his wand, uttered his spell, and sent Dumbeldore falling to his death from the tallest spire of Hogwarts Castle.

I hope I don’t have to wait two more years to find out how this all ends.

ZOMBIES!

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but I’ve just been super super busy this weekend. I’ll post more on that later (maybe), I just want to say that drinking a beer at Molly’s and watching The Oddessa Files was a great deal of fun. In any case, from RetroNintendo.com:

And hat-tip credit and thank you to Amanda of Discursive, who e-mailed me the link and provided me the threat title. Danke!

Mikuru’s blogging again, and this time he even sent me an e-mail promising me he wouldn’t change blogs again (I swear, this is the fourth blog he’s had in a year). You’ll be on the blogroll the next time I edit it — any preference as to what listing you’re under?