As this entry will contain spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7), I have decided that - even after 2 weeks - I should put my thoughts on the book behind the read more section.

Without further ado:

read more

'Most Overdue Manuscript. Although many writers have been known to be late with manuscripts, and the dialogue between editors and writers can sometimes reach a fevered pitch of cordial dispute, the lateness of Gerald Frome's celebrated audit of the Reading Catheral repairs of 1364 took 640 years to reach the publishers. Gerald's successive ancestors cited many reasons over the delay, such as not having enough ink, the wrong sort of vellum, noisy peacocks and the dissolution of the monasteries. The descendants of the original publishers who commissioned the work were overjoyed to finally receive the beautifully illuminated manuscript handwritten in copperplate and bound in leather, and returned it with a note saying that they “totally loved it” but suggesting the emphasis of the work be moved away from a spider-vaulted North Arcade suffering from subsidence, and more towards a single career woman obsessed with boyfriends and her weight.'

- The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

[Jasper Fforde, The Fourth Bear, 2006, Hodder&Stoughton]

What on earth is the problem that fundies have with Harry Potter? Some woman is marching through Georgia, book burning, right now, and she is following a well blazed path of religious hatred towards JK Rowling. They have always been good at book burning, fundies of all religions. They have this burning desire to control what the rest of us can read and see and hear.

I understand that - dangerous things, words, when your whole sense of being depends on certainty that only one set of words ever written by humans is true. But why in god's name target Harry Potter?

This is one of the two great burning issues of the day (the other being global warming) and I have devoted a lot of thought (oh, ok, a little thought) to wondering what is going on. I think of the fundies as a kind of strange tribe speaking a totally unknown language and with incomprehensible society and culture and mythology, and every so often I take a peak and try to work out what on earth these strange people are up to now. [The fundies of course are peaking at me on HuffPost, probably feeling the same way, so that's fair.]

The only idea I have come up with, watching them dance around the burning piled up copies of the goblet of fire or the order of the phoenix, is that they don't want comparisons made. Only a certain four writers are allowed to write about magic tricks being performed, and they lived a long time ago. Children reading about Harry's exploits, might suddenly have an uneasy feeling that all writing about magic is made up, and then the fundamentals of fundamentalism would collapse. There must be no comparison with Harry Potter, and certainly no comparison with other religions - in the past and present, people who dared to change religion have been tortured, burnt, hung, shot, beheaded. There are no other options.

The west in general, and the US in particular have long felt the same way about other political and economic systems of course. And every time socialism emerges from yet another failed vicious capitalist state, it is quickly stamped on and destroyed. The treatment of Chavez is just the latest example of this. People must not be allowed to see alternatives to global unregulated capitalism in action. Otherwise, good heavens, they might start questioning their own religion, sorry, economic system.

Poor Harry, he is carrying the burden of a lot of fears out there.

[complete citation from: The Huffington Post - What would Harry do? - David Horton] 

BOSTON- Bruce Huntoon, a copy editor at Pilot magazine, intentionally did not correct the copy of columnist Justin Mann Monday. "I am tired of that insufferable asshole's mean-spirited jokes," Huntoon said. "So, when he described the carburetor warmer as a 'twentieth century' invention, I decided to leave the copy untouched and let him deal with the consequences of his actions. The fucker." Huntoon said the unhyphenated compound modifier is the most extreme step he has ever taken, adding that he drafted a resignation notice that he will hand in should his superiors notice the omission.

The Onion - February 27, 2006 - Issue 42/09

"The fact that war happens is a testimony to failure."
~ Michael O'Flaherty<sup>1

1</sup> Michael O'Flaherty, "We Are Failing the Victims of War" in Ramcharan (Ed.), Human Rights Protection in the Field (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, forthcoming 2006), p. 45.

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages"
~ William Shakespeare

"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."
~ Sean O'Casey

"The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast"
~ Oscar Wilde

"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door."
~ Paul Beatty