people are fragile things you should know by now; be careful what you put them through

I just saw a fine film titled Capote, and I have a few thoughts:

A) I had heard that he wasn't allowed to take anything into the prison with him, so in order to retain the conversations he would have with Smith and Hickock he embarked on a mnemonic workout regimen that involved memorizing the Manhattan residential phonebook. This gave him a wonderul party trick - revelers could pick a name or a number out of the book and he would unfailingly reply with the corresponding information. This nice story is not upheld by events in the film, however, as he is portrayed as being able to take many things into the prison with him and his astounding memory for conversation (94% accurate, it is oft-pointed out) is presented as given at the outset. I don't know which is true, and I won't argue with the film's portrayal, but the party trick story used to be one I enjoyed telling (my own little party favor, if you will), and now everyone has seen Capote and I can't tell it anymore or I'll get shot down faster than Harry Whittington wandering too far from the SUV.

2) At the beginning of the film, the filmmaker definitely wants us to know that Kansas is flat. I got the idea, and I thought wow, I could never live in a place as flat as that. It wasn't long before I realized that I live in a place as flat as that. But there's a big lake here, and that seems to make a difference.

iii) In spring of 1999, I was living on a college campus in an alternative housing situation with seven or eight other people in an old house. Crazy busy during that final semester, I welcomed the spring break holiday with open arms, and planned to use the time off to actually relax. No hippie work trips, no Girls Gone Wild™ booze binges, just some time alone with some non-required, non-even-slightly-related-to-schoolwork pleasure reading and nary a housemate within eye- or earshot. The book I chose was In Cold Blood, a work which, spoiler alert!, features prominently in the film Capote (which I have just seen). If you haven't read it, and if you'll pardon my unintended but unavoidable (on account of laziness) pun, it is an absolutely chilling piece of literature. Engrossing, too. Compelling, even. And so it was that I was in an old house, alone, spellbound by a book I couldn't put down until the wee hours when Morpheus (the god, not the guy from The Matrix) finally claimed his little victory and hoodwinked me into sleep. Now, if you're unaware, spoiler alert!, In Cold Blood deals frankly with the brutal murders of four people in a serene old house late at night. This is the material my brain was gorging on just before I went to sleep. And sleep I did, and peacefully, until some time later, though still in the wee hours, when the phone next to me went berzerk and ripped me unceremoniously from my slumber. With an amount of urgency, I answered the phone ringing beside me in the middle of the night in an empty house, coming around just enough that I logically expected to hear some drunk friends regaling me with spoilers from the next edition of Girls Gone Wild™ ("These drunk babes are totally partying with their shirts off!"). Instead what I heard was... well, I don't know, exactly. It sounded like a bit of dialogue coming out of the speaker of a television set showing an old horror film. There was no screaming of either humans or stringed instruments, nothing like that, just some people talking. It was clearly a recording, and it wasn't clear enough that I could make out what was actually being said, but it sounded like a tense conversation. I inquired as to who was calling, and tried to figure out what I was hearing, but it didn't go on for very long before the connection was terminated from the other end. Ha ha, I thought - somebody is having a laugh and playing a snippet of conversation that I'm probably familiar with or that at the very least probably has some element of coolness or humor that I might appreciate, but unfortunately it didn't come through clearly enough for me to let me in on the joke. Not wanting to wake anyone by calling and investigating, I decided I'd phone the usual suspects in the morning and the mystery would be solved. I set about the business of going back to sleep, and even got halfway there when the very same phone went all crazy again. I picked it up and listened. Again, a recorded conversation on the other end, tense but unintelligible. Louder, though, this time, and somehow more tense, creepier. If I wasn't already bolt upright, I made myself so at this time (I really can't recall), trying again to determine the origin of the call and again having no success in the endeavor. It ended, and I jumped out of bed and turned on all the lights in my room. Wishing just for once that I was a sporting-type who would as a matter of course have a baseball bat in his closet, I went searching for something heavy or hard or otherwise threatening. I ended up with a length of one-by, maybe three feet long at the most, something that surely would splinter over an assailant's head with no lasting damaging effects (except to the one-by), but at least it was a stick I could carry around. I threw open my door and left my room, rushing into the hallway ready to strike at anyone or anything that needed it. Systematically I searched the house, going room-to-room, flipping on every light I could find, calling out and hitting walls and generally making a scene. But the outside doors were all locked. The windows were all closed. There was no one else in the house. There could have been, actually - campus maintenance had, only days before, installed a new lock on the door to the basement, but after a few minutes with my ear to the door I had to satisfy myself that the basement was empty. I went outside, locking the door behind me and leaning a chair against it to ensure that nobody would enter the house undetected while I wasn't looking, and I walked around the house a couple of times in large, sweeping circles, shaking the bushes with my stick and straining the limits of my low-light vision abilities. I could find evidence of no one in the area. At this point, my heart had been beating itself senseless for the last 20 minutes; I was out of breath and I was tired, and there was nothing else I could do. I couldn't call campus security - what was I going to say, that I had gotten some weird phone calls so could they come right over please? I had already done all they would be able to do, and having campus security scrutinize the alternative housing wouldn't exactly endear me to my unsuspecting, absent, Going Wild™ housemates. So I went back inside, re-checked the doors, left all the lights on and my bedroom door open, and sat in bed, listening. There were no more phone calls, the stairs didn't creak. The house settled a little, as old houses do, which simultaneously gave me pause and reassured me, as those were sounds that I at least knew. Eventually it was the next day, bright and sunny, and I awoke to the sounds of the first of my housemates returning from their Wild™ revels. I was glad to have company once again, and they wondered why all the lights were on in the house, and I gave the inadequate explanation that I had apparently fallen asleep without turning them (every single light in the place, mind you) off. For the next few days I kept the stick next to my bed when I slept, just in case, and I finished my reading of In Cold Blood during daylight hours only. The usual suspects were all eventually interrogated, but the phone calls remain a mystery.