Friday, March 31, 2006

The Overman goes to High School: Part I

I ENROLLED BACK into my old high school for one day as a visitor Wednesday and followed around Samantha Snyder, an old friend we all refer to as Sam, visiting old friends and some good teachers.

WHEW, I'm really not writing this well...let me try a little harder.

Concentrate...NOW....

The Overman raised his eye lids at six o'clock in the morning and scrambled half unconsciencely with his hand to find a remote that would make the talking stop. When he couldn't, he stood up and crushed the radio on the other side of the room against the floor and smiled about it.

He was up now.

The Overman had went to sleep that morning nearly two o'clock in the ante meridiem, which was against his habit -- had it been completely up to him he would not have slept for hours more -- but he knew there were places to be when the sun rose up, and these were places he did not want to miss.

So here he was now, standing over the scattered pieces of blue metal that was his radio, when he decided to get dressed. The Overman looked through his uniforms and decided on his favorite one:
  1. Silk Boxers
  2. White, Black and Yellow Socks
  3. Dark Blue Jeans
  4. Pocket Watch, Chain Hanging Down
  5. White Dress Shirt, Sleeves Rolled Up
  6. Brown Tie
  7. Brown Suede Jacket, Sleeves Rolled Up
  8. Brown, Fingerless Leather Gloves
  9. Brown Fedora

A Nine-Step fashion programme to becoming the Overman.

Oh, what fun the Overman has in getting dressed, so that just by looking at him you knew he was, in fact, the Overman. But by the time he had finishing with his uniform ceremony, it was six fourty-five and time to leave. That is, if the Overman wants to be to school on time...

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 12:44 PM | | Comments

Monday, March 27, 2006

WEEDS


THE OVERMAN WAS running in what seemed like circles, trying to meet the needs of all those people. He dreamt of fighting the universe to serve the masses. As a waiter, being a person who waits for what he does not know, the Overman had to fight a floor that bent under the pressures of alligators and demons that wanted to stop him from completing his job. And when he believed he could not stand it anymore, those Smiling People Greeters just laughed in his face and gave him more and more to save...and please with how he saved them.

And so, wishing to not be there anymore and knowing that the power was in his hands, the Overman ran towards the kitchen and dove into a small cove where the water turns to ice. The people there were unbearable, yet he was meant to bear them? The Overman screamed, wanting out of this place more badly than any human could ever know. He wanted to leave that place so badly, in fact, that he actually did. His desire swept across the multiverse so powerfully and his wishes pushed so hard that they seemed to bend the very fabic of life itself, and when he pressed his hand against a wall that led into a dark and solemn office, it bellowed open and revealed a field of green grass and sunshine like you could never believe.

And the Overman ran into the field with his fingers almost touching the clouds and smiled, screaming at the tops of his lungs, "I'm free! I'm free!"

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 5:25 PM | | Comments

Monday, March 20, 2006

Oh, the Breaks of Spring...

STILL MAINTAING HIS job, the Overman has no school, no educating or learninations, for seven days, beginning now. Oh, what to do...oh, what do you do? How may I commemorate the blossoming of flowers or the slight movements in the axis of this planet? It seems now that the Overman realizes there is no Cancun for him...neither is there a Marti Gras in New Orleans, but that sort of goes for everybody since the city fell into the fifth dimension over the fall.

Sit and write? Sit and read?

No. There is no just place to be or thing to do, but simply sleep and waste away the days.

BUT WAIT!

With no school or work Monday or Wednesday, I could spend the day at my old high school, West Johnston, visting old and lovely teachers -- as well as younger, lovlier friends. Well, I've already used the Golden Ticket that was today here at my brother's place of residence playing his Not-So-Brand-New XBOX 360 with the wife and kiddies.

So, that is, as they say, that. Tomorrow I will go to work in the afternoon and on the following morning it will be off to school again, just like the old days! I suppose it's time to show my old teachers what a cool and sophisticated Overman their little camel has become...raise the bladders, Seymore! We're off to scholastica!

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 9:37 PM | | Comments

Thursday, March 16, 2006

The Overman makes an Album

I AM FOREMOST a writer. But in my past I have delved into the depths of other artistic extremities, and have for the most part come out fairly successful in the end. Even in kindergarden I drew portraits of my fellow students, and was well known for my quick sketches of Superman, of which I actually sold quite a few of during elementary school, particularly fourth grade. I cannot draw very well anymore, especially not in any creative manner, though I desire going into painting due to my recend fondness of the artform.

But back to my point. I went from drawing, to writing, to poetry, and now I have found a new love in music, and though I have always loved good music (this includes classical orchestral works, middle-century rock and roll, and even some modern forms) I now love making music.

It has always been in my blood to write music. I am, after all, a musician, like my father before me. My brother is a musician. Even I play the saxaphone and piano. Now I have adopted his guitar as my own, even though it should be mentioned that I wrote two songs on the piano that lives in the auditorium of my High School during my senior year, though I gave them no words.

But since I have begun writing songs again, I have written alot, some of which I enjoy werily much. I have thusly ensembled a list of songs that may or may not be on my first recorded CD, of which I still have no title for.
  1. Carry My Love
  2. Till the Darkness is Gone
  3. It Was You
  4. If I Were A Rich Man
  5. The Dark Tower
  6. All Because of You
  7. The Miner on the Hill
  8. Shauna, Dear
  9. Shauna, Dear II
  10. Garden Green
  11. Olivia's Waltz
  12. Can I Go, Too*
  13. When I First Loved You
  14. A Heart for Any Fate
  15. Ode to a Dream
  16. I'm Not Waiting Up For You

It must be mentioned that the asterisk on "Can I Go, Too" only means that it was not written by me, but my father. Every time I make a CD, it will include at least one of his songs.

I'm also thinking about doing a cover, since the Beatles, one of my biggest inspirations, did covers of Chuck Berry songs on their first few albums as well.

But I'll be posting these songs as they become what I would consider completed and publishable material...I'm sure you can't wait.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 11:05 AM | | Comments

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

This Hell brought to you in TECHNICOLOR

The Time Traveler's Guide to Earth, Article 10487

Polo Ralph Lauren: A Technicolor Hell born from the fires of human superficiality. There is nothing genuine about the place; it is only genuine in its own deceptions. Like the Stepford Wives

or a Clockwork Orange,

it exists only in its own falseness. A terrible place one should desperately avoid, lest they wish to become something they do not...homogeneously human.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 6:42 PM | | Comments

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

REAL Art Appreciation

I'VE FINISHED WRITING a song I promised Carrie, one of my co-workers, yesterday. I did this by popping the hatchback to my car and sitting in the back with my father's guitar, playing as the cars went by. It was a beautiful day and my father was inside napping, so this seemed the best place for me. The song is called Carry My Love, which is a play on my friend's name I discovered several weeks ago. I eventually used words from an older love poem of mine called "2 Need U;" I don't really love her, and she knows it, but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to use her name in a song.
I was also going to post last week about a test I took for Art Appreciation which I was certain I had flunked terribly -- I didn't even answer several of the questions, and those I did answer I knew I knew nothing about. However, I opted instead to show the goodness in the class with this post a few days ago. I realize now I should have written about the exam, because I got it back today and realized my score, which counted twice because I completely missed my first exam altogether, was an 83...five points above class average.

WHAT?!
That's right. Every single question I guessed blindly on I got completely and utterly right. Talk about a windfall! Se7en people that took it failed it miserably, so what they were thinking I couldn't tell you. I just went over some material literally minutes before the exam, and here I got a B?
Disgraceful though it is for me to admit this, I had prepared to cheat on the exam, knowing that it would count not only for this grade but for my previously missed exam as well. I got on the computer and typed up the artist's last name, his work, and the year it was painted rounded up about 20 years (that is the margin of error given on the test by Mrs. Efird). I made the font about 9 and printed it out onto a piece of paper no larger than a 3x5 and tucked it into my shirt pocket. But during the test, even when I had no CLUE what I was doing, I didn't take it out.
Alright, so that's probably because she was watching really closely, so technically had I been given a good shot at it I would have looked, but I didn't and right now that's all that matters, because not only did I pass, but apparently I'm above average....and they say I'm not a GENIUS.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 10:49 AM | | Comments

Sunday, March 12, 2006

OLIVIA

I REMEMBERED OLIVIA today and it made me smile. She was a younger girl I knew back when I was a senior at West Johnston High School, then either a freshman or a sophomore, but I really liked her. She was beautiful, unique, charismatic, intelligent, and all in all GOOD. But she was younger than me and I was afraid to talk to her, because I'm an idiot. So, we never gained a real sturdy friendship, although I'd secretly hoped she liked me.

Well, here I am a year later sitting on my lunch break at Ruby Tuesday, alone, thinking about Shauna and things of that nature as I always do when no one is around, when I begin asking myself what I really am looking for in a girl that A) I have not yet found and B) the girls that have of recent years not possessed. I realized all I wanted was someone who I liked, who had a good personality and was pretty, to like me back and not need me to convince them of my feelings. Someone who would be ecstatic to go on a first date with me, who really wanted to ask me but was maybe too scared or nervous until I asked first. In my own, personal nutshell, I want someone to like me who I like first.

But that's when her face slapped itself onto my brain, and I thought of her as possibly the one who got away. I wanted to see her again, and I sprung out of my booth like that's exactly what I was going to do that instant. What meant the most -- and this is very important to the story -- is that as I walked past my fellow co-workers I couldn't help but smile at the thought of her. They'd ask why, and I'd say that is was nothing, but really it was her, and I smiled all the way to the kitchen and back again, eventually got in my car and listened to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band till the smile faded into sleep...I think I'll write her a song now.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 1:20 AM | | Comments

Friday, March 10, 2006

Art Appreciation

One of the books I'm currently writing is called The Ladder in the Backyard, which is about a group of british children who escape from their Nanny at a particularly fancy daycare off the coast of London. They go into the nearby woods and discover a portal into their own lucid dreamscapes, seperating each of the children into their own universes. I wanted the places that they visit to be spectacular and extraordinary, and I have thusly discovered lots of these places in paintings I'm forced to memorize for my Art Appreciation class. Two of these painting which have inspired me are as follows and in no particular order...

OCTOBER IN THE CATSKILLS

SOLITARY TREE

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 1:40 PM | | Comments

Monday, March 06, 2006

Tickle Me Silly

THE OVERMAN LAID stomach up on the floor of his Sociology classroom, his old hat folded up behind his head. Him, in all his glory of tie, vest and brown-suede Members Only jacket, only twenty years too late, sleeping in the darkness where there would soon be a room full of students and a teacher in the front, spouting off her language of social problems, of which the Overman knew a few.

When the first student came in and turned on the light, he awoke with a smiling start and danced for a solid five minutes, and the three that appeared did laugh at his wild ways of inconsistency. When the teacher entered the room, albeit three minutes late, he calmed himself and sat into his chair in the back of the room. Including the older woman at the front of the classroom, there were five people there. And as she began her lecture, the Overman laughed.

It was at first to himself, but then he could not hold it in and it burst like a lemon onto the table. The teacher lady spoke of "Sexuality." The Overman couldn't help but laugh. And so, she asked the boy.

"What is so funny?" And he tried to explain, oh so did he try, but alas he failed and, laughing still, he walked from the room and never came back. Five minutes out of a three hour class, and he laughed all the way home.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 10:58 PM | | Comments

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

1994 SAAB 900 S: A Swedish Wetdream


I bought my new car yesterday in Raleigh for $3,600. The picture above represents it fairly well, only mine is RED like WEAK BLOOD. It has 40K miles on it, which is an estimated 3,333 miles per year. Not bad, I say.

A Raleigh couple bought it in 1997 when it was four years old for their mother who lives in New York, but living in New York she never drove it so they eventually brought it back down and have been using it sparingly between their BMW motorcycle and truck, not really driving it unless it was werily necessary. They sold this and the motorcycle to buy a new car, and that's where I came in, or at least that's where my mother saw the ad in The Smithfield Herald. Here are some of the features I've discovered on this Swedish wet dream:
  • Electric sunroof
  • Electric windows
  • Electric everything, really
  • 6-disk CD changer (in the trunk)
  • A really big trunk, enough so to hold a body
  • V6 2.5L engine
  • A little button on the shifter with an "S" on it...SPORT MODE ACTIVATED
  • Heated driver and passenger seats

All in all, it's an awesome car. I've unofficially burnt my old one, a 1995 Chrysler LeBaron convertable, which if sold for $300 would be over-priced and probably be worth about $100 for each subsequent month for which it ran.

I've been driving my new car around for the past day, went to school, paid for my mother's hair appointment (BTW, she squirmed her way into getting me to sing for all the women at the salon, since, of course, I sang for Clay Aiken's mother at Ruby Tuesday.

Technically, I had my second exam for General Chemistry II today at 1:00...I didn't go. First of all, we don't normally meet on Wednesday afternoons, therefore I have work at 3:45 (the class ends at 3:40). This will be the second exam I've missed in this class, but I will take another 4-question version of it on Friday, as well as a four-question version of the first one as well, which is exceptionally harder than the normal exam. But, I'm supposed to take them as they come, and if I have to take harder tests because I have a job, then so be it. Besides, who really cares about Chemistry anyway?

What? Computer? Why are you melting? Is it because Chemistry built you, and without its knowledge of plastics and metals you wouldn't exist? So now, because I said, "Who really cares about Chemistry anyway?" you're just going to dissappear? NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker at 1:49 PM | | Comments