Winter Blows Through my Coat

I promised myself just three minutes ago if I could sit down, open iTunes and listen to If I Could Give All My Love or Richard Manuel is Dead by Counting Crows, I might be able to mellow out a little. I don't think I've heard it in over a year, but sometimes you crave music like food. Or crack.

While I was brewing up some 6 PM coffee, a few thoughts occurred to me:

I don't write enough.

I don't read enough.

I don't exercise enough.

I work more than I'd like, and I spend a fair share of time with my family, but mostly my time is consumed with doing absolutely nothing.

Then I think to myself, how can one do nothing? It makes sense, but on the other hand it doesn't.

The other night Alyse rode up in the front seat of my car a few blocks to the pharmacy on the corner. I had a burned CD playing and for the first time she heard the song for which she was named. Incidentally, it was the MTV unplugged version which is probably the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. Seriously. If you ever do me a favor in your life, please listen to that song, that version in its entirety.

When I go back and read blogs past, there is a nuance in my writing that slightly annoys me; that annoys me slightly--whatever. But I don't know what it is. Do you? Maybe for so long, I've mistaken being insightful with being overanalytical.

Last night I had a dream I was the captain of a trash barge.

Then I think to myself, can someone really overdo something? At what point does doing something transverse the threshold of being done into the realm of overdoing?

"Don't try to feed me, 'cause I've been here before and I deserve a little more..."

I'm not on a Counting Crows trip, I just forgot my iTunes library is currently not set to shuffle. But now that it's come up, if you've never heard the Across the Wire (VH1 Storytellers) version of Rain King, I suggest giving it a good listening-to. It gets staggeringly beautiful, particularly around the 3:20 mark. The piano at about 4:13 still makes me close my eyes when I hear it. It's probabaly the most subtle thing I've ever come to appreciate about a song.

A couple of years ago, Aaron made me listen to Cold Heart of Stone by Frank Black & the Catholics. I haven't been the same since. I don't know how such a depressing song can make me so happy.

I don't remember just now what it was I sought to edit in myself, but somehow it became mentally intergrated as instinct. I guess if I'm collecting life lessons to pass on to my children, one would be about being careful when teaching yourself how to view the world. When the times comes, I probably won't explain it very well and they won't understand it.

Whatever it was at the time, I thought it was pretty smart.

But I don't think I like it anymore.

Are You Happy Now?

Warner Brothers has confirmed the last film in the Harry Potter franchise, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows" will be released in two separate installments.

That's all well and good, but why wait until the last one? Also, I was pretty disturbed by the information contained in the last paragraph of this article.

Bastards.

Here is the article from the BBC News Website:


Final Potter film split in half

"Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson in Harry Potter
The Potter films have made around £2.2bn at the box office
The seventh and final Harry Potter book will be adapted for the big screen in two parts, Warner Bros has confirmed.

The announcement comes after producer David Heyman admitted it was impossible to cram Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows' 608 pages into a single movie.

"You cannot remove elements of this book," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Fans of the series have been left disappointed in the past when key scenes, including Quidditch matches, were excised for the film adaptations.


The seventh book doesn't really have any subplots. It's one driving, pounding story from the word go
Daniel Radcliffe

Star Daniel Radcliffe told the Los Angeles Times that splitting JK Rowling's final book in two was the only sensible option for the film-makers.

"There have been compartmentalised subplots in the other books that have made them easier to cut - although those cuts were still to the horror of some fans," he told the paper.

"The seventh book doesn't really have any subplots. It's one driving, pounding story from the word go."

In a statement, Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros, added that the split release was "the best way to do the book, and its many fans, justice".

'Exhilarating journey'

The Kill Bill strategy will also have the benefit of boosting profits at the film studio.

The first five movies have made $4.5 billion (£2.2 billion) worldwide - making it the biggest film franchise in box office history, surpassing both James Bond and Star Wars.

Filming for the sixth chapter in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, began in September last year.

It is being directed by David Yates, who will also helm the final two films.

"I consider it a great privilege to continue to bring Jo's extraordinary world to the screen, and to be the director to complete this epic and exhilarating journey," he said.

The first instalment of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows is due in autumn 2010, with part two scheduled for the following summer."

Grounds for Celebration

As an incurable and unapologetic coffee sybarite, I've been recently forced to find ways of cutting down on my coffee expenditures. As one who snubs his nose at the more "affordable" (i.e., inferior) brands of coffee, I am forced to choose among only elitist brands (i.e., Starbucks, Seattle's Best, Dunkin' Donuts, etc.) at my local supermarket. The prices of the latter rising up above $7.00 US per 12 oz. bag, coupled with its 4-5 day shelf life in my pantry, I'm leaning on a habitual crutch that can no longer support the weight of its own expensiveness.

What to do? Give into the true-trash coffee junkie lifestyle of, God forbid, Maxwell House? What of our posterity? What kind of decently-priced coffee can the next generation expect?

On my next grocery outing, desperate for a miracle that could save me from reverting to "waking up with Folger's in my cup," I took a long shot on an oddly-colored vacuum-packed 10 oz. tin can of Cafe Bustelo for the anorexic price of $2.88. Having always been a staunch believer in the adage "you get what you pay for," when I brewed some up at home, I was expecting the dirty acrid flavor you get from single-pack coffees compliments of any variety of dilapidated non-franchised motels.

Upon tasting this Cafe Bustelo, I was not only pleasantly surprised, I was taken aback by how good this coffee was! My week-long dream of finding a great-tasting, inexpensive coffee had suddenly been realized.

I'm not trying to apply any sort of life-lesson here. In most cases, if you need to save money by buying something remarkably cheaper than that to which you are accustomed, you'll probably be disappointed 97.6% of the time. As for me, one who is bound for continual disappointment due to my high expectations and unrelenting faith in value, I've awkwardly stumbled onto my one little success story.

Of course I'll dabble in some of the old luxurious coffees from time to time again in the future, but for now it's Bustelo all the way, baby.


All this talk about coffee got you excited? Read this experiment on the "cheap instant coffee effect" and be immediately brought down from your high.

This Week's Sign the Apocalypse is Upon Us

While browsing through the "Free" section of Craig's List-Tyler/East Texas, I came across this, which I determine to be 100% serious:


Hannah Montana Valentines

Duh.

I saw this on Yahoo!'s main page the other day and gawked at its seeming unnecessariness (not a word).

Not that you care, but I haven't been blogging much lately. This is soon to change. Certain aspects of my life will improve and will afford much more general happiness where there has erstwhile been a sickening lack thereof.

Everything you've ever done wrong is the reason I'm driven.

Worst Christmas Songs: Part II

Song: Christmas Shoes
Artist: Newsong
Released: circa 2000

There's a known philosophy struggling musical "artists" tend to abide by in terms of their own success: When all else fails, appeal to the lowest common denominator. For the self-described "contemporary Christian music group" Newsong, this of course means packaging up the most sappy and puerile storyline imaginable, setting it to a four-chord Garage Band melody template, and selling it to the bleeding heart masses of the world.

Christmas Shoes satisfies this criteria in high fashion. Written from the first-person perspective of a nonplussed holiday consumer waiting in line at a store, Christmas Shoes tells the story of an impoverished boy who pleads with the cashier to rapidly complete his point-of-sale transaction of some shoes he's buying for his sickly mother at home who is nearing death's door.

Observe the little boy's epic address to the cashier as detailed in the chorus:

Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please
It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there's not much time
You see she's been sick for quite a while
And I know these shoes would make her smile
And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight.

After this emotional display, the cashier must have been annoyed with this little kid "hurrying" him, because immediately following this heart-wrenching monologue:

He counted pennies for what seemed like years
Then the cashier said, "Son, there's not enough here..."

This cashier is one cold-hearted bastard! He doesn't care about this kid's dying mother, he's still pissed about this kid telling him to speed things up. Though it is never disclosed what was taking the cashier so long that the boy would ask him to hurry up, it is the boy who does not abide by his own sense of urgency as "he counted pennies for what seemed like years..." I'm also fairly certain there was an omitted portion of this verse in which the cashier explains that he cannot accept food stamps as a legitimate form of payment for the shoes.

Moving on...

He searched his pockets frantically
Then he turned and he looked at me
He said Mama made Christmas good at our house
Though most years she just did without
Tell me Sir, what am I going to do,
Somehow I've got to buy her these Christmas shoes.

Something tells me this kid is no stranger to the art of bilking strangers out of their money. At this rebuttal, typical children would have either run off crying or bluntly asked the person behind them for the cash straight up. But not the unfortunate son of this tale; he understands the subtlety and nuance required to prime a wayfaring bystander for a charitable donation. (More likely and much more obvious is that these few lines were needed to carry superfluous exposition in the song.)

So I laid the money down, I just had to help him out
I'll never forget the look on his face when he said
Mama's gonna look so great...

...I just had to help him out.... I just had to. I'm not sure what it is about the use of the words just and had in this line that infuriates me so. Perhaps because it somehow implies a sort of reserved moral obligation that would have otherwise failed him in similar circumstances with slight variations in regard to the specific situation (i.e., if the boy had been buying a pack of cigarettes for his dying mother). Perhaps because it instantly thrusts the storyteller from the role of random observer to the apparent "hero" of the story, then we're left to guess if all this unnecessary foofaraw is for the own self-serving glory of the narrator.

Then the song is wrapped up in an awkward bridge:

I knew I'd caught a glimpse of heaven's love
As he thanked me and ran out
I knew that God had sent that little boy
To remind me just what Christmas is all about.

As much as I would have hated to suffer through it, something inside me wishes he would have expounded on exactly "what Christmas is all about." Poverty? People dying? Impatient kids? Jaded cashiers? I am obviously being overtly fatuous, but the point is, who cares?

The song is a few lines of mere fiction, not remotely told well, intended to tug violently at the emotional heartstrings of its audience, so they may rush out and purchase related paraphernalia in large quantities. Not convinced this song enjoyed rampant commercial success? After its release, not only was it a #1 single, it also spawned a book, The Christmas Shoes and a made-for-TV movie by the same name "starring" Rob Lowe.

In lieu of posting the actual music video, as originally planned, I found this much more hilarious and very poorly made film-student version:

Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas!

It's good for the soul to revisit clips like this.

Brilliant.

Please to enjoy...

Worst Christmas Songs: Part I

Song: Thistlehair the Christmas Bear
Artist: Alabama
Released: circa 1990

In a generation that has yet to heed the warnings of Charlie Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas about the over-commercialization of Christmastime, many professional musicians see the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ as a quick and easy way to milk the proverbial cash cow for all she's worth. As the royalties of many time-honored standards and Christmas hymns are exceedingly cheap or--indeed--free, this is an easy way for brand-name artists to phone it in and bring home the bling with a minimal amount of effort exhausted.

In some cases, an artist will attempt to really hit a holiday home run by creating the world's next Christmas classic, the next "Frosty the Snowman" or the next "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer," if you will. And yet history tells us that a classic Christmas character cannot be invented through song in the era succeeding the 1950's (i.e., when "Frosty the Snowman" was written and recorded). The innocence of Christmas has been lost, therefore sincerity is impossible to achieve.

The banjo-playing beer swilling country quartet known as "Alabama" saw fit to challenge this assumption, however. In the early 1990's, they wrote and released a song about a magical Christmas bear called "Thistlehair." Already sound like a recipe for ill-placed nonsense? Let's take a closer look:

Unlike his magical Christmas forefathers, Thistlehair has no back story. His introduction in the song is simply:

And in them (sic) woods there lives a bear
Known to all as Thistlehair.

The Rudolph saga gives us a poignant insight into his psychological abuse as a young buck, and how God's twisted design of a mutated glowing red nose gives him value to the North Pole society once it is deemed useful. Likewise, Frosty's creation is fully disclosed within the lyrics of the song.

What of this mystical roving bear? What does he do? I give you the chorus, the pièce de résistance, if you will:

Oh, Thistlehair the Christmas bear
Spreadin' the good news everywhere.
About Christmas time and what it means
To all the children of the world.
Every little boy and girl
Out there, love Thistlehair.

So Thistlehair is an eight-foot, 1200 pound bear with razor-sharp teeth and is used as a vehicle for spreading the word of peace on earth and good will toward men? To children?!?

But I digress. The second verse:

He comes around this time of year
Spreading lots of Christmas cheer.
The kids all love this shiny coat
And the smell of honey on his nose.
He tells them all about that star
And everything that it stands for.
The birthday we all celebrate
Is still our favorite holiday.

I have it on good authority after the release of this song, more than 600 children were killed or grievously injured in bear-related attacks. The main reason cited in the reports were "children attempted to feel the bear's shiny coat" or "children attempted to smell honey on his nose."

While a deformed reindeer could be of potential danger to children, lore never mentions any of Santa's beasts of burden intermingling with children. And a snowman turned living-snowman doesn't seem to be dangerous in the least. (Unless....)

Third verse:

Wherever you find old Thistlebear
There'll be music in the air.
He dances 'round the Christmas tree
Every single New Year's eve.
Then he and all his furry friends
Gatherin 'round the fire again
Singin' 'bout those angels' wings
Gifts of love that Christmas brings.

In short, this song doesn't describe any event in particular, but is more of a characterization of a bear who:

• Lives outside the woods of some nondescript hamlet.
  
• Is known as Thistlehair.
  
• Spreads the news about what Christmas means (i.e., Christmas cheer) through undisclosed methods.
  
• Has a shiny coat and a nose that smells like honey.
  
• Dances around a Christmas tree every New Year's Eve.
  

...and that's about it folks! For these reasons and several more involving hearing the pain-staking country twang of Alabama's voice, this song has earned Drew's stamp of "Worst Christmas Songs of All-Time."

Here's an artist's rendition of what Thistlehair probably looks like:

Surprising?

Hardly.

The Real Chamber of Secrets

In the mystical world of Harry Potter overflowing with trolls, ghosts, poltergeists, and all other variety of well-established magical creatures, I sometimes wondered why Rowling never made allowances for fairies.

Now we know why.

Rowling recently revealed that the late Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore was, in fact, a homosexual.

I have always been a little suspect of how Rowling would sometimes alter characters or back stories from book to book in order to suit a particular plot development, never believing--like many are wont to do--that she had it all scripted out from the start.

This posthumous exhuming of Dumbledore out of the magical closet is, forgive the expression, a big steamy pile of hippogriff dung. Do I care if Dumbledore was gay? Certainly not. In fact, when Michael Gambon began portraying him in the films after Richard Harris' death, it became much easier to believe. My biggest problem with this revelation is, why not have him make his way out of the closet in the books? Now that the series has concluded, it feels as though the story is cemented in the past and is therefore immutable. Any revelations Rowling wants to bring forth only feel like speculation now if it escaped the written word. In short, to say Dumbledore was gay seems like sacrilege.

None too surprising, Rowling has always had a propensity for cozying up to politically correct causes, the Aspen crowd if you will, no matter how irrelative or pointless those causes may be. Yes, mudbloods are equal to purebloods, house-elf slavery is wrong, and we do understand the symbolism of it all. But if this was an important issue to her and she thought about Dumbledore in this light all along, she should have had him come out in the books.

Now I have to go back and clarify my thinking on many things which occurred in the Harry Potter universe now knowing Dumbledore was gay:

• Was Dumbledore originally responsible for the Chamber of Secrets?
  
• What did Dumbledore *really* see in the Mirror of Erised? Would it have shocked and horrified us all?
  
• Where did Dumbledore hide his secret stash of liquid memory for the Pensieve?
  
• What was the point of all those so-called random "wand inspections?"
  

Well, and of course being a live-in headmaster of a school crawling around with the freshest new wizards in Britain. What did J.K. Rowling think would happen given the implications of what's gone on in the Catholic church? Where do you think the term "Head Boy" comes from? Being smart?

I don't think so.


Get an interesting perspective from a gay columnist for Time magazine here. (Link discovery courtesy of Marshall Mitchell.)

Some kind of natural rule that you can't ignore.

The other day, an elder Hispanic gentleman walked into my office. When I asked him how he was doing, he smiled toothily and said in his crackled but soft Hispanic tone, "So far, so good." Without pause he continued, "There was once a man who cleaned windows for a living on the very tall skyscrapers. One day he lost his balance and fell backward off his lift. He was falling down many stories of the building, when someone stuck their head out the window and asked, 'How are you doing?' The man looked down at the ground fast approaching and said, 'So far, so good.'"

Though he smiled as though there may be some cultural meaning lost in translation, I knew instantly what he meant. I've second guessed complaining a lot since then.

If you want something to keep your attention, try checking this guy's collection of WWII posters out on Flickr! I had to stop browsing because my eyes were hurting. Good stuff.

4 months, 34 pounds, and 5 belt notches later...


June 4, 2007


October 4, 2007

You're In Steeler Country

At 3-0, the Pittsburgh Steelers are showing more pith that even the 2005 Super Bowl season, and may end up more like the 15-1 2004 season.

What's even more impressive is how nicely the raw talent of their pre-existing defense has meshed with new defensive-minded head coach Mike Tomlin. After three weeks of play, the Steeler's defense has surrendered only 26 points (the fewest in the NFL); that's 32 points less than the Chicago Bears have allowed and 37 less than the Baltimore Ravens have allowed--both being the two top ranked defenses coming into this season.



It does help that the first few contests have been against otherwise lousy teams, but remember--Pittsburgh held the Cleveland Browns to one touchdown on opening day, and the next week Cleveland battled it out in a 51-45 win over the Cincinnati Bengals, the Steelers' divisional rivals.

We shall see how the season progresses, but all signs point to a continued buffet of delicious victories.

Secret Hasselhoff Man

Why does the Hoff keep agreeing to be in junior high school video projects?

Or, I guess I should say, why do the junior high kids keep asking him?

Accident?

I don't think so. This dog heard about what was going on at Michael Vick's:

Dog Shoots Owner in the Back

Obama vs. Clinton

The perspective that the democratic presidential nominee will come down to Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton is becoming clear, if not down-right obvious; both Obama and Clinton realize such, and this realization has probably prodded the back-and-forth outlashing between the two. Indeed, this rhetoric-fueled rhubarb is becoming quite the tasty tale to follow.


Though Clinton shows a sizable lead in the early straw polls, I don't foresee her maintaining it for long. Her success at this point in time is largely due to name recognition alone; having been the first lady during a successful presidential regime placed her immediately as the forerunner in the democratic race. The American eye, however, is beginning to see Mrs. Clinton's flaws; to name one, her shameful attempts to connect with geo-ethnic audiences.

More recently, she has shown another disagreeable characteristic, and that is one of —pardon the term—being a Johnny—Come—Lately. For your consideration:

Yesterday, August 1, 2007, Senator Obama addressed a group in Washington D.C. about the war in Iraq, but also fighting terrorism at large. Specifically addressing alleged terrorists taking refuge in Pakistan, he commented:

"There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

Later in the day, Senator Clinton was asked to respond to Obama's comments in an interview with American Urban Radio. Her reply:

"“If we had actionable intelligence that Osama Bin Laden or other high-value targets were in Pakistan, I would ensure that they were targeted and killed or captured…”

Hold on tightly, Hillary. This won't last forever.

Listen to the NPR segment.

Find the Pattern!

This could easily be one of those "which one doesn't belong" questions on a preschool test.

No Country for Old Men

The Coen Brothers' new film No Country for Old Men (2007) is, for all intents and purposes, the first inherently Coen film in about six years, and it seems as though they might going back to a more rudimentary style of, say, Blood Simple (1984).

Whatever the case, I'm excited.

Gristlefoot the Goblin

The following correlates with Chapter 26: "Gringotts" of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. It is, in part, a small explanation of how such a serious breach of security was allowed to happen:

Gristlefoot the Goblin slowly traipsed down Diagon Alley as the newly risen sun cast shadows over the multi-storied shoppes and boutiques therein. Having slammed about five firewhiskeys too many last night at the Leaky Cauldron, he was struggling to maintain his composure. His small goblin skull pounding, his beady eyes bloodshot, the only physical relief came in the form of the morning breeze blowing mildly across the back of his sweat-soaked shirt.

As a freshman account manager at Gringotts Bank, he was often the goblin first to arrive and last to leave work. He loathsomely trudged up the vast marble steps leading up to the great bronze doors, suspecting he was putting on some weight as his shirt collar seemed to be fixing itself tighter and tighter around his neck with each passing day.

Already feeling the need to protect this position at Gringotts (which he had inherited from his ex-father-in-law, Doonpog the Dim-Witted only five months ago), he emitted an air of complete and utter desperation in his daily tasks. His last evaluation could be described as pathetic at best, as he remembered botchily scribbled comments such as “unmeticulous,” “inept,” “odorous,” and “a disgrace to goblinkind.”

Gristlefoot oftentimes wondered how he had gone this long without being sacked. He suspected the senior executives of Gringotts were planning a fate for him worse than unemployment, as he was recently “promoted” to the account manager for only the darkest witches and wizards, all of whom were Azkaban alumni. He thought, however, that he had found a temporary solution to this dilemma by simply cowering in shame when he was aware that any of his clientèle had entered the bank. This particular arrangement had worked out reasonably well to this point, as most of his accounts were relatively unheard of in the Dark Wizarding realm; the most frequent visitors were Walden Macnair’s retarded half-brother, Dooley, and Thorfinn Rowle’s cousin, Montey.

He was busying himself by ordering a front desk teller to inspect a bag of coins and decipher for him whether or not they were Leprechaun. He attempted to sound as though he was invoking managerial privilege, whilst trying to disguise the fact that he had no idea what Leprechaun gold was.

“Bogrod,” he started sheepishly, “inspect this gold. It seems some Lepercorn gold has been turning up in recent deposits.” The addressee furrowed his eyebrows at the request.

“Leprechaun, you mean, sir?” he replied sarcastically.

“Yes of course. How silly of ---“ and he fell instantly silent, staring at incoming patrons through the front door. Immediately he shrieked in terror and flung himself under the front counter and out of eyeshot.

Bogrod looked up to the door to see who Gristlefoot was avoiding this time. He had good reason to be taken aback; it was no lesser a dark witch than Bellatrix Lestrange, entering with well-known Death Eater Travers and an uninteresting, nondescript gentleman.

Bogrod greeted them while Gristlefoot cowered silently beneath him out of sight.

"Madam Lestrange!" said the goblin, evidently startled. "Dear me! How--how may I help you today?"

"I wish to enter my vault," the dark, sullen-face witch replied.

"You have . . . identification?" asked Bogrod.

"Identification? I--I have never been asked for identification before!"

Unbeknownst to the affronted customer, Bogrod leaned down and whispered to Gristlefoot, “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know—improvise!” Gristlefoot retorted.

"Your wand will do, madam," he returned to Bellatrix while casting a furtive look to the floor. Miss Lestrange forfeited her wand to Bogrod who eyed it curiously. Gristlefoot caught a glimpse of it as well and suddenly remembered a memo that had passed across his desk in the week prior…something about a lost or stolen wand—it was impossible to remember, but the note definitely had Bellatrix Lestrange’s name somewhere on it. His little goblin heart beat with the all the ferociousness of a thousand centaurs stampeding.

"Ah, you have had a new wand made, Madam Lestrange!" he heard Bogrod say.

‘Bogrod seems to know what he’s talking about,’ he thought, ‘ I’ll leave him to sort out this little mess…’ and slinked away under the grand front counter, his head turned back to ensure he wasn’t seen. He was almost home-free when his head crashed into something. He looked up and saw the contemptuous face of the bank president, Mr. Woopledoo.

“What in the name of Ragnuk the First?? Gristlefoot, isn’t that one of your customers Bogrod is attending to?”

“Oh, um, why of yessir, but…”

“Then why aren’t you handling it?!” Woopledoo shouted back. “Don’t you remember the special instructions on the Lestrange account?”

Though he obviously did not, Gristlefoot shook his head in affirmation and jogged off after Bogrod.

“Wait – Bogrod!” he yelled after the retreating goblin. “We have instructions,” he said while bowing, hoping the dark witch could not get a clear look at his face. He yelled the next sentence slightly louder than bank protocol would dictate in hopes that the nearby bank president would hear him and assume Gristlefoot knew what he was talking about: “Forgive me, Madam, but there have been special orders regarding the vault of Lestrange.”

Gristlefoot leaned over to Bogrod and whispered, “Hey, could you open for me next Monday?”

Bogrod merely ignored him and droned in a monotonous voice, “I am aware of the instructions, Madam Lestrange wishes to visit her vault … Very old family … old clients … This way, please … “

Completely confused by this statement, but only too relieved it played well in his favor, Gristlefoot trotted off victoriously toward the break room.

Sometime later, it may have been fifteen minutes or two hours, Gristlefoot awoke after falling asleep in the break room whilst eating his mackerel sandwich. He presently heard deafening roars and screams coming from the tunnel-vaults. He rushed to the lobby to see what the commotion was about as the wall exploded in a burst of flying marble and stone debris, goblins being thrown in all directions by the impact. Then Gristlefoot soiled himself as he saw a dragon awkwardly struggling to force its way through the lobby of Gringotts, yelping and shooting off long bursts of fire all the while. Without much effort, the dragon burst through the final wall and Gristlefoot watched him soar out over Diagon Alley and into the London sky.

A goblin ran out yelling, “It was Harry Potter! They breached the Lestrange vault! We’re all done for! Bellatrix Lestrange was really an imposter! Run for it!”

Gristlefoot slowly and robotically walked back to his desk, still in shock of everything he’d just processed. He knew what he must do. He flipped through his Rolodex, back to the “L” section and found the entry entitled “LESTRANGE” and he slowly picked up the phone.

This was going to be the hardest phone call he’d ever had to make. Indeed, he probably wouldn’t live to see nightfall.