Strange moments

So we're watching Diary of the Dead late last night, "we" being Kyle, Sarah, and me. We're crowded on the sofa in the darkened living room hoping for at least a tolerable trip down zombie lane in this, the fifth installment of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead trilogy. Though the movie as a whole was weak and frequently annoying--we would have paid extra for a version without the voice-over--it had two scenes that are worth the cost of the DVD.

I don't want to spoil the first for you, but let me just say that when you combine a deaf Amish dude, a chalkboard, a trio of zombies, and some lost college students, then mix in a little dynamite and a scythe, well, the result is movie magic.

I'm going to tell you about the second scene because even knowing what happens will not detract from its great amusement. A PC is playing a video, one we are to believe has been uploaded to the Web by innocent victims. A child's birthday party is taking place on a house's deck. Onto the deck from the house steps a clown. We three exclaim in hopeful unison, "Zombie clown?!?" The dad points out the clown to the birthday kid, then goes over to the clown and tweaks his nose. The nose comes off in the dad's hand. The clown then bites the dad on the neck.

It was a beautiful thing.

On the non-zombie front, a friend from high school, Lynn, had contacted me a few weeks ago. She asked me if I would sign some books if she sent them to me, and I said, sure. Lynn is a great person, but I'll sign books for anyone who sends them to me and includes a return envelope with postage. Because Lynn was a friend, I ate the postage and envelope costs, a gesture that figures prominently in the story below.

She sent the books, I signed them, and today I struck out to the island Post Office to mail them. I first needed to buy something to put them in, but, hey, the USPS sells this sort of stuff, so how hard can it be?

Here at the beach, pretty hard.

The Post Office here occupies half of the second floor of a small house. The following is what happened once I was inside this tiny space.

*********************************

Me: I'd like to mail these books, but I first need to buy something to put them in. I'll take anything that works.

Clerk (insert your favorite female southern accent here): You could use one of these here boxes. (She points to a stack of them.)

Me: Okay, I'll take one.

Clerk: But they won't fit in it.

Me (from here on, picture me getting angrier and angrier as I struggle to maintain a calm and polite facade): Do you have anything they will fit in?

Clerk: One of these Priority Mail envelopes should do the trick.

Me: I'll take one.

Clerk: You'll want to put some stuff in it to stop them from knocking around.

Me: Okay, I'll buy some of that, too.

Clerk: Oh, we don't have any of that stuff.

Me: I'll send them as they are and take my chances. (I stuff the books and address the envelope.) How much do I owe you?

Clerk: We have to send them Priority Mail because we used that envelope.

Me: Fine. How much do I owe you?

Clerk: Well, I'll have to look that up. (Rifles through book and studies multiple pages.) It could be this one here (points) or that one there; I'm not sure which. Do you know?

Me: No. I'll pay anything that will get them to their destination.

Clerk: (Studies more book pages.) Yup, this is it.

*********************************

Though I think I aged two years trying to mail the books, at least, as Kyle noted, I got a blog entry out of it.

Remind me next time, though, to drive back to Raleigh and send my mail from there.