You All Knew It was Coming - Epic Potter Post

Mm, Internet. Tastes so good.

The seclusion was successful (totally unspoiled to the end), so I can't complain too much about 4 days without email. It was even vaguely liberating... but I don't plan on doing it again anytime soon.

I picked up the book first thing Saturday morning (pre-orders are for fools, yo. Target had enough copies to build a fort) and by 6:00 that afternoon I was done, stopping my reading only to get an additional Dr Pepper or go to the bathroom.

My full, crazy, and rambling review is below the cut (and chock-full of so many spoilers that your brain will explode). In general though: Tons of love. A brilliant end to the series that managed to be touching and awesome and ridiculous all at the same time. My hat goes off to Rowling, along with my full apologies for ever thinking that she couldn't pull the ending off without messing something up.

Okay, complete thoughts below. Seriously, don't click until you've read the book.


Firstly - check out my track record on predictions! I give myself 10 out of 17, allowing for a little leeway on exact wording. And check out the Snape line! Hot, right? I'm so impressed with myself, even if it was pretty obvious.

Anyways.

So I can properly gush in a second, let me get my annoyances out of the way first:

Lupin & Tonks, both dead?! Offscreen? No. No, no, fuck no. I was pretty sure Lupin was a goner from the second that he named Harry godfather (I mean come on, foreshadowing) but Tonks was just overkill. She got maybe one line in the whole book, never did a single thing, and then *boom* dead. That was really the only part of the entire book that I can't get behind.
My poor dead, Lupin. Nevar 4get!

Other, lesser annoyances:

• The ridiculous ret-con of Harry's invisibility cloak. Yeah, it makes you completely invisible, except when Moody's eye can see through it, when the Marauder's Map can still track you, and Mrs. Norris can sniff you out. *eyeroll*
• Halfway through the book, Hermione being all "Oh, I've never done a memory charm," when she's already sent her parents to Australia with completely new identities, not remembering they've ever had child. In-book continuity, much?
• Jesus Christ, that epilogue. That was the worst, worst, worst thing in the world. Fanfiction-y in a way that almost hurt. Let's not tell me what happened to Luna, or what Harry and Hermione decided to do after school. No, let's have Harry use his children as insane memorial devices. No pressure, child who is named after the two greatest heroes of the wizard world in the last 100 years. Gross. (Also - Scorpius? To borrow an apt line from the 90's - Gag me with a spoon.)

And really that's it, in terms of annoyances. Let the gushing commence!

• Neville! No, really, Neville! Takes over for Harry when there's no Harry in Hogwarts (with Luna and Ginny as his Ron and Hermione, respectively), gets the holy crap beat out of him, leads the revolution, and then kills Nagini by pulling the sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat, while his head is goddamn on fire. Sweet zombie Jesus, the wait was worth the payoff. I *heart* Neville so much. And he's the Herbology professor!
  
• Luna! Fulfilled my prediction down to the exact letter - "continues to be awesome." I'm not saying that you're a bad person if you don't love her, except that you totally are. Her speech at Dobby's funeral was the most perfect thing in the world...
  
• ...except for the epitaph that Harry put on his tombstone. Seriously, nothing in Harry Potter has ever made me cry (not Cedric, not Dumbledore, not even Sirius), but that entire Dobby scene had me weeping like a child. He dug the grave himself! And they gave him clothes! Christ, I'm misting up right now. I cannot believe it, I never even liked his character all that much.
  
• Just pretty much everything in the book once they make it back to Hogwarts (the Lupins excepted obviously): The teachers just going off (McGonaggal leading a charging pack of desks down the hall!), all the students (Oliver Wood!) coming back to kick some ass, Kreacher and the house-elf revolution, Percy and his reunion, Ron and Hermione and their wild make outs when he defends elf rights...the list could go on forever.
  
• She gets her own bullet point: Molly Weasley and her NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH! Just delightful. Quite possibly the only thing that could have been as satisfying as Neville finishing her off. And since Neville already got his moment, I'll easily give this one to her. Kick Ass.

Various other bits that aren't gushing, but things that I really liked:

• Lupin and his early-book breakdown. As I've said a million times in the past, I think Lupin is the most interesting and tragic figure in this whole mess of a universe. Check it: as a child, he becomes a werewolf and is totally shunned. He gets a break and gets into Hogwarts and gets four true friends. So he's happy for roughly 7 years. Almost immediately afterwards, has three of those friends killed and the fourth sentenced to life in prison for killing and betraying the others. Spends the rest of his life hating him and living again shunned by the world. 15 years later finds that 4th friend was innocent and is reunited with him... only to have him die less than a year later in a brand new war against the same foe.
  
  I mean, the guy is basically the living embodiment of the grief of the first war. And suddenly he starts going through it all again in the second war. After he loses Sirius, he is forced underground to work with the werewolves, and he's even more persecuted than before. Even his love interest is almost impossible for him, since he already knows what the potential costs of the war are.
  
  While they are waiting for everyone to come back to The Burrow after the early Death Eater attack, you get that he is finally losing it, and rightfully so. Then you get his complete breakdown with the announcement of the son. It was all incredibly well handled and truthful and in-character. Vicious, but real stuff.
  
  Then of course she goes and kills him and breaks my heart, but whatever. He got to come back with James, Lily, and Sirius in Harry's March to Death. That was at least comforting, since he's all reunited with them and whatnot.
  
  But really, doesn't his life just make you want to cry? Rowling really worked him over, I think harder than anyone.
  
• Man, Dumbledore is stone cold, isn't he? I mean, "Go ahead and betray Harry's departure date. I don't care if people die." All while all the while telling Snape "Why don't you whine some more about being a double agent, ya pansy! Just remember you're doing it for Lily and do your damn job." Top it off with "Oh yeah, so I totally knew Harry has to die to get rid of Voldemort, I'm aiming a human weapon right now so how's about you get off my back about it" and suddenly I'm less confident that Michael Gambon's crazy angry Dumbledore from the movies isn't so far from the mark. Harsh, yet awesome.
  
  (Aside, I love that Rowling was able to get in her usual 'Chapter where Dumbledore explains everything' even though he's already dead.)
  
• And just so I address it, the Snape thing was nicely drawn. That's a good use of foreshadowing for once, and his whole storyline is understandable, if not necessarily sympathetic. To a degree you just want to shake him and be all "She picked someone else, man, pull yourself together," but at the same time it's very 'Awww' too.
  
• While the early middle of the book did tend to drag, (we wander the countryside and don't have a clue what we're doing) I really liked the level of desperation that it started painting, and it carried well through the rest of the book. I always find tone to be the hardest part for Rowling to manage (you go from drama to comedy so fast most of the time it's hard to keep the curve) but she nailed it nicely in this one.
  
• And on that note, the Deathly Hallows business + Dumbledore and Grindlewald backstory should have been far too much extra stuff for the book to handle. And yet, I really think it fit together so well, I can't find anything to complain about. Maybe it's just the euphoria of the initial ending of it all, but I'm really impressed with the whole book.

Jesus, I'll stop there for now. Really I could just go on for days.

Final Words: A great series. Not literary, not groundbreaking, but great in its own right. I don't think I could be more pleased.

(Eww. What's with all this love? I feel kind of dirty.)
(I can't end on that. Seriously: Fuck that epilogue.)
(Okay, that's better.)

Harry Potter and The People Who Are Giving Me A Goddamn Aneurysm

We're still 3 good days out from the release of the last Harry Potter book, and already there are so many spoilers out in the world that I've had to enact my doomsday scenario earlier than expected. I was spoiled for book six with approximately 100 pages left in my first read through, and the horror still haunts me. This will not happen again. Even if it means that I become one of those unibomber-type hermits for the next 6 days.

If you're trying to reach me by email, you'll fail, since that was how I got hit last time. Ditto for message boards and blogs. In fact, I've cut all of the Internet out of my life altogether. The only way I'm able to post this guy is through the ingenious use of my history bar, and after this I'm not opening a browser until I've finished the book unless required by my job or God.

I'm actively considering a ban on text messages also, just to be entirely safe, but think that might be a little overboard. At the same time, though, I'm not overly concerned with what people think. It's all good fun, and I've put an intense number of man hours reading the books, discussing them, dissecting them, and watching movies full of horrible child actors based on them. Yeah, I'm ridiculously over-invested but the release of the last book is only going to happen once. Bring on the isolation, I say. I can stand to look (be) crazy for a week to satisfy my fandom urges.

For now my obsession can fuel me the way the regular Internet usually does.

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Now for the fun part that makes me look as foolish as possible: Predictions!

(Crazy tons of spoilers for everything up to the last book to follow)

I'm always so, so wrong about these things:

• For OoTP, I was 0 for 8 on predictions, including my sincere expectation that Prof. McGonaggal was going to turn out evil, despite how much I loved her. I also picked Dumbledore going down in this one.
• For HBP, it was 1 for 10, and the only right thing I had was Prof. Snape teaching Defence. Things I missed: who the big death would be (I had odds on Hagrid), Draco's plot (which makes me wince, since I predicted the exact opposite of what happened), and even who Harry would date (I know! How obvious was that? I'm so bad at this!)

Anyways, since it's the last book and all, I going to go with the full-on rundown, and then I'll come back on Sunday and be nice and chagrined about how off I was.

Predictions (going from Most Boring to Most Interesting)

• Voldemort dies. (Obviously.)
• Nothing of interest will happen to the Dursleys (since I couldn't care less either way. Although I wouldn't mind some cosmic justice for Dudley).
• Ron and Hermione will survive, and ride off into the sunset together. Although I wouldn't put it past Rowling to take the Buffy sort of route and somehow horribly disfigure Ron (a la Xander and the worst scene in television history).
• Also, Hermione and her House Elf Liberation Front better play some sort of significant role in the plot, or I will be bitter at all the wasted space that storyline took up.
• Filch will bite it, probably defending the school, after finally being able to cast a spell.
• Peter Pettigrew will die saving Harry from Fenir with his silver hand, thus completing his story arc. Also, I'd just like to say thank you to JK Rowling again for not having him kill Lupin in the same manner. Because that was my greatest fear in life from the end of the 4th book until she debunked that particularly convincing theory. I love Lupin so much.
• Draco will survive, and I suppose turn good. Frankly, I want Harry to kill him and be done with it (I see no redeeming characteristics about the boy) but I'd be shocked if that's the route she takes.
• Hagrid - Dammit, I'm going to say that he dies, despite the evidence to the contrary. Have you noticed that I don't like Hagrid? I think Rowling has put enough effort into Grawp that she could bump off Hagrid to make Harry's plight that much worse and still have a giant around to help the good cause.
• In a similar vein, Norbit the dragon will make a dramatic return to help Harry (because I've seen the book cover and I like the idea).
• Snape will die helping Harry kill Voldemort, turning out to be a secret quadruple agent working on the good side. This is also against my wishes, since I think Snape ultimately being evil straight through would be bad ass, if completely illogical.
• (Aside: I really like the theory that Snape was in love with Lily, and her death was the ultimate reason he turned from the dark side. It fits how Dumbledore was convinced of his innocence, what with him being so full of that ree-dik-U-lous obsession with love.)
• Most of the Weasleys will make it through, but I assume Percy will get smoked pretty early on. I'm saying right now, she had best not mess with Fred & George, although I have my fears. Those little throwaway lines about the Prewitts in book 5 sound like doom for F&G to me. But I'm easily spooked.
• Ginny will continue to kick a lot of ass, but I'm very much on the fence about her survival. I think I'll go with Lives.
• Characters who are not allowed to die and must only have good things happen to them: Luna, Neville, and Lupin. You don't touch my favorites, dammit. Neville gets revenge on Bellatrix, but doesn't kill her, and goes on to teach Herbology at the school. Lupin and Tonks get to live happily ever after, since he's already the most tragic character in the whole story and deserves something good. Luna continues to be awesome. That's it, I will brook no discussion at all. LA LA LA, I'm not listening!
• Harry kills Voldemort, and lives. And I really hope that the book ends with something that parallels the first book - someone toasting Harry as "The Boy Who Lived." (The alternative is just wicked depressing)

Whew! Can you tell I'm obsessed? Don't worry, I'm sure I'll take down the list in shame before the weekend is up.

Also, omigosh, isn't it all so exciting?

Good Lord, I'm such a dork.

Cars (not the Pixar kind)

I need a new car. Badly. The Truck of Malfunction (TOM) will always hold a special place in my heart (specifically the place reserved for things that barely work and feel like a circle of hell when you sit in them during the summer in Dallas) but I want to move on.

I had a similar spell once before (I want to say it was back before Christmas, maybe? God, I have no sense of the passing of time anymore.) and I had rationalized it out perfectly. I picked out the car(a sensible and economical Used Jetta) that fit into my mind and didn't make me hyperventilate thinking about the debt. Then two days before I was ready to go pick the car up, I ended up with several unexpected big bills, got spooked, and scrapped the plans entirely.

Since then I've never been able to get the rationalization back to where I was able to commit to more than $5,000 of debt without spontaneously combusting in a parking lot somewhere. Lately, though, with summer back in force, my raise finally kicking in, and my apartment move complete, rationalization has been easy to come by.

So easy, in fact, that now we've swung all the way across the manic-depressive scale and I have to keep talking myself off the ledge of buying something completely outlandish. Because I'm usually so conservative and have to justify every little thing, there's never been too much of a chance that I'll go nuts and blow all my credit in one fell swoop. With the small pile of excess cash I have sitting around though, I am so close to being able to talk myself into something extravagant.

This is the downside to rationalization. When you get as proficient as I am at convincing yourself of things, it's a slippery slope to rationalizing purchasing your dream car, based on the fact that you've put in your dues by driving around a TOM for nigh on to 8 years now, during which time never less than half of it's expected features were malfunctioning.

In my addled brain, I am due, dammit.

The battle wages constantly in my mind now, but I've yet to fall on either side of the fence. No matter what, I have two weeks more weeks to mull it over (I have put an embargo on any purchases before the 31st) but more and more I feel like I'm going to fall on the side of outlandish. I've never put much stock in fancy car ownership, but now that I'm seriously considering it, it's a heady and seductive thing. I mean, have you seen the look of a Jaguar? Just try and tell me it's not worth crippling financial debt to get to own one of those.

In any case, though, in 14 short days I'll actually own a car that has air conditioning. Isn't that just the neatest thing in the world?

Jackass Training for Jackasses

I took the weekend off from exercising for reasons that are less than stellar. (Primarily: "Because I don't feel like it.") So when I got home from work yesterday I did a double session of weight lifting to start making up the difference. I made it all the way through my upper body stuff and then went on to legs and abs. This was not the most brilliant of plans, but I figured it wouldn't have too many negative effects since I didn't have much else to do that night but lie on the couch.

Immediately after finishing, while lying in a crumpled heap on the floor about to pass out, I realized that I still needed to go to Blockbuster and Target that night. Frnak's last movie was due, we had no laundry detergent, and I had not a single clean pair of underwear, socks, or towels anywhere in the house. I dragged myself up off the ground, mopped up the puddle of sweat that I left on the floor, and made my way to the stores.

Understand that this should not have been some sort of super-human undertaking. Both stores are within half a mile of my apartment, it's not like I was trekking across the state to get these errands done. Unfortunately, I was seriously wiped out and just barely made it into the Blockbuster before I misjudged my spatial relation to the Apply For Work at Blockbuster! station, and ran directly into its chair.

This was not your standard fare "distraction, glancing-blow, get-embarrassed-and-keep-walking" sort of crash. No, this was more of a "Dick Van Dyke, sprawling-over-furniture" fall. It caught me directly in the midsection and the resulting momentum sent me flailing forward, taking the chair with me. As I fell the wind was knocked out of me, but otherwise I was just fine. That is, until my knee got caught between the leg of the chair and the side of the station. So when I twisted in order to catch my fall, my knee decided not to twist with me.

It was ugly, painful, and embarrassing, but I survived (mostly because there were very few people around to witness it). By the time I finished picking out my movie and got out of the store, my sore knee was almost limp-free. I considered scrapping the Target run, (usually falling down that early in a trip is a sign that only many more bad things will happen) but I really needed to do laundry, lest I have a lot to explain at work the next day. I pressed on.

Naturally, as I got out of my truck in the next parking lot, I took one step and my knee collapsed on me. I fell directly forward, this time into one of those shopping cart return spaces, smacking my other knee against the aluminum frame, as hard as possible while under my own power.

"Just awesome," I thought while wincing through the intense pain.

I recovered myself and started to head into the store as fast as possible, trying to mask my now incredibly awkward limp as much as I could, now that it was both of my legs. By the time I was halfway through the parking lot, though, I gave up the charade and went with the limp, as it eased the pain immensely.

Sadly, my timing was off. Unobserved by me, at literally the exact same time, there was an old man walking parallel to me about 8 feet to my right. The man had a cane and was walking with a pronounced limp, incredibly similar to my own. As I said, I was entirely unaware of this, until the Target employee at the door gave me the absolutely darkest look I've received in months. I did a little double-take and looked around, trying to find the source of his disdain, only then finally seeing the old man who was entering the store at the same time. He was staring at me with the most profound look of disappointment.

I wanted to stop time at that second, pull them to the side, and plead my case, closing statement to a jury style. I would explain to them that I was not some kind of wildly insensitive mimicking asshole. That I had just somehow managed to injure not just one, but both of my knees in the last 10 minutes in the most spectacular and embarrassing ways possible. That it was a coincidence of epic proportions that we happened to both be walking in the same store at the same time. Usually I'm a nice, upstanding boy. I would make them understand. They would have to understand, and would laugh at the coincidence.

As I raised a finger and opened my mouth to start the denials, the old man shook his head and walked into the store. I turned back to try the employee, but he had already wandered off towards some other employees collecting carts in the lot, no doubt to implore them to "check out the jackass with the fake limp."

And just like that, I would always be remembered as the guy who mocked an injured old man in the Target parking lot. For, I dunno, laughs I guess.

This is just one of the reasons I should not be let outdoors, people.

Today's Language Lesson

Chauvinism does not necessarily have anything to do with gender. Misogyny does.

chau·vin·ism [shoh-vuh-niz-uhm] –noun
1. zealous and aggressive patriotism or blind enthusiasm for military glory.
2. biased devotion to any group, attitude, or cause.

mi·sog·y·ny [mi-soj-uh-nee] –noun
1. hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women.










Doo-dee-doo-doo.

(Courtesy of Becky, who keeps me linguistically honest.)

Independence (from Cholesterol) Day

"Is two pounds of hamburger enough? I only have one pound of sausage and one pound of boudain - that's just four pounds of meat total."

"You do understand that you're the only person eating, right?"

"Well yeah. ...So, four pounds is enough?"

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I don't remember when it became a tradition, but for the past several Fourth of July Holidays, rather than going out and visiting family and friends, getting drunk, watching fireworks, or whatever other publicly endorsed forms of celebration most people engage in, I just eat. A lot.

Which, come to think about it, since this is America - The Land of the Double Cheeseburger, this may in fact be an acceptable undertaking for a country celebration. Until we get to the point where I'm having the above conversation in the Meats Aisle of the grocery store. When I say that I eat a lot, it's an understatement simply because the truth of the matter is frankly horrifying.

What I did this weekend:

1. Arrive at Grocery Store
2. Acquire Shopping Cart
3. Wander down Aisle #1
4. Place anything that looks remotely good in your cart
5. Repeat steps #3 & #4 for every aisle in the store
6. Check out

The only limitation on the above steps is that the total cost should not exceed $100.00. For a single person's meal. For one (albeit very long) day.

I ended up with: the aforementioned two pounds of hamburger, a pound of sausage, a pound of boudain, chips (var. types), Oreos, soft drinks, guacamole, dip, salsa, ice cream, fresh cherries, beef jerky, canned fruit, baked beans, multiple types of bread, condiments, onions, tomatoes, frozen appetizers, and candy (var. types).

But wait. Things that I forgot to pick up and will need to find before Wednesday: french fries, cheese (var. types), potato salad, crab salad, and pie (var. types). Also, I'm considering picking up a steak for dinner, just for completeness's sake.

See, now it looks like an overstatement. But no, I will actually eat all of that, or as much of it as possibly before I reach the point where I am unable to move under my own power. Basically my day will boil down to nothing but eating from 11:00am to 11:00pm. Usually this is accompanied by a Law & Order marathon on TNT, or perhaps the whole Lord of the Rings Trilogy on DVD. It's my one day of pure gluttony/sloth in the whole year. Pretty much just imagine that scene from Return of the Jedi with Jabba the Hutt, except fewer scantily clad women and more Jerry Orbach.

Usually it's quite the undertaking anyway, but this year is especially damning considering that I have been pretty much cholesterol free for 3 months. With the proposed level of fat intake, I firmly plan on stroking out right around 8:00 that night, just as the fireworks begin. But it will be entirely worth it, as there are very few things as fulfilling as purely hedonistic eating. If you never hear from me again, assume that I died doing the thing I loved most in the world - slamming down some pie.

Happy 4th of July everyone!