conuly

I'm going to need to decide on our next book pretty fast. Ana is pushing for Harriet the Spy, but I'm not really sure. We'll probably finish it Sunday, as Jenn's at work for the day and I'll be with the girls.

Like I said, it's a really weird feeling re-reading the book after all this time, and knowing what I do about how it all ends. Every time we get to a part that I know is foreshadowy, and that I'd forgotten about, I feel all weird about it. I actually burst out laughing when "Harry had an uncomfortable feeling that Snape could read minds". Really, Harry? You don't say!

"Why are you laughing, Connie?"
"Oh... nevermind, it won't really be funny for several books, and we're not going to read them that fast."

At school they're encouraged to predict events while reading, and I'm delighted to see that they've successfully guessed that Snape is out to kill Harry and get the stone for himself. They haven't tied this all to ol' Moldy, but that's all right. Boy, is it going to be fun to see their faces when the plot is twisted! I'm all twitchy with anticipation!

1. To the guy telling his friends how "weird" it was that "avada kedavra sounds like abracadabra!":

Yeah, welcome to two books ago. Or two movies, whatever.

2. To the kidlet in the scarf and hat:

Seriously? It's cold for summer, but it's not that cold. And England is warm some of the time. Surely you can show your fandom some other way? (Ah, well, who am I to criticize?)

3. To Donna Andrews:

Yea, verily, your books are the only murder mysteries I've ever read that reference slash, and, in the last one, snopes.com. (And not like it's some new thing the protagonist has just found out about! Will wonders never cease!) But you may want to hire a new proofreader. "Pigeon Chinese" is bad enough, but buried at the end of a book with theme naming (she needs to update that page, btw), it's... a bit much.

4. To the authors of the picture maze book I picked up for the flight:

A. Picture mazes are awesome. (They're not what you think, either.) But as for the last two... Orlando Bloom and Daniel Radcliffe? Right next to each other? Every time I close the book it's like their unrevealed faces are kissing! (Actually, that might not be such a bad thing. I'll be in my bunk now.)

But I was looking up "primrose" to see what it signifies (I can't live without you; early youth; young love) and "petunia" apparently means "resentment, anger" but also "your presence soothes me" and "never despairing". Now I have a guilty notion to seek out all the dratted flower names JKR saw fit to fill her books with - what is it with her and flower names, anyway? (Lupin, apparently, means "voraciousness" as well as "admiration", which I'm sure is very interesting no matter whom you pair him with.)

Win a visit to London to read Tales from Beedle the Bard

Want to get your (gloved) hands on J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard? Amazon.com wants to send you and a friend to London, England to spend a weekend with the rare and delightful book of fairy tales (security guards included, of course), handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling herself. Open to muggles ages 13 and older in 24 countries, the Beedle the Bard Ballad Writing Contest challenges you to creatively answer one of the following three questions in 100 words or less:

• What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
• What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
• What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

English-language submissions will be accepted through 11:59 p.m. PDT April 22, 2008. An Amazon.com committee will select 10 semi-finalist submissions (based on creativity and writing style) from each of two age categories: 13-17 and 18-and-over. Amazon.com customers will determine the two finalists and Grand Prize winner by voting for their favorites. The Grand Prize includes round-trip airfare, two nights lodging at a London hotel, as well as an expense allowance. Plus, each of the finalists from the two age groups will receive an Amazon Gift Certificate in the amount of $1,000.

If you want to enter the contest, you're running out of time!

Man, that was the least helpful comment thread ever.

I do not think I really want to advertise my bad taste in fanfiction, but here it is. (I also watch made-for-TV Lifetime and Disney Channel movies, so you get some idea, I hope.)

Fan logic puzzles.

I thought I knew all of what the dark side of fandom had to offer, but I was wrong. Very wrong.

Severus Snape wasn't that old.

Think about it. He must've been about 20 when Harry was born, so at the end of the series he couldn't've been older than 37 or maybe 40. Which means when the series *starts* he's got to have been in his early 30s, which isn't as old as the books make him appear, especially as wizards seem to live longer.

I mean, reading the books, didn't you picture somebody... older?

"
As an example, Bar-Hillel points to a conversation at the beginning of Book Seven, in which Mrs. Weasley orders her son, Ron (Harry’s good friend), to clean his room. Chafing at the order, Ron starts to say, “Why in the name of Merlin’s saggy left …” before he is interrupted by his father, who scolds him not to talk to his mother like that. We never find out what noun Ron was going to use at the end of the sentence. The omission creates a problem for Bar-Hillel because in Hebrew, adjectives are placed after the nouns they modify. Without knowing exactly what item or body part of Merlin’s was saggy and on the left, Bar-Hillel will be hard-pressed to translate Ron’s question without using judicious guesswork.

“I’ll either have to decide on a noun or completely rearrange what he was going to say in some creative way,” Bar-Hillel predicted."

Okay, now, come one now, everybody, 'fess up. I think we all know exactly what item or body part of Merlin's was saggy and on the left, don't we? Indeed, I do believe this is time for a ( well-placed poll! )

But I thought I'd update you all on yesterday, aka Burmese New Year.

We all went out (to Elise's new school, yay!) and, after a brief period of eating food and (for me) making special emergency trips for some urgent supplies (you know what I mean, and if you don't, I'm sure you can guess)...

After all that, we ran around splashing each other with semi-wild abandon. Hey, it's the reason for the season!

Today, it is rainy. This is much less exciting than buckets of water.

Off-topic, am I the only one surprised that nobody in the last book ( Minor spoiler )

Maybe I'll get around to reading it next week. Don't want to buy it, must read in store or download... which is somehow an ethically trickier ground than bookstore reading.

Numbers 55, 62, and 68 are mine. Gee, they'd make great stories for some of youse guys to write up for me....

(Or any of them would, of course.)

But I could not resist posting a transcript of Jesus' stay at Hogwarts.

Real? Troll? Who knows? Who cares? This is quality fun.

And in it they mentioned a Jewish-run bodega, which really dragged me away from the story.

Jewish people, in my experience, don't run bodegas. They have delis, or corner stores, or kosher delis (any of these can be run by non-Jews as well), but not bodegas. Hispanics or Koreans are more likely to run bodegas.

And then I'm thinking, why is that? Is it just me (and my mom)? Or what? (And is it just me who thinks of a bodega as any corner store that happens to also sell flowers? That's not what the word means, but that's what I think of.)

Interestingly, Merriam-Webster is telling me that bodega is cognate with apothocary, which would be interesting in an HP fic :)

1. In Harry Potter, do the Wizards have a Deaf community? Would their spells be completely different, or would they have to simply adapt to saying things aloud that they couldn't hear? Would they sign "broom for sweeping" differently for "broom for flying" just because? Because, I mean, I totally would.

2. In keeping with that, do very different areas (Asia, Australia, the Americas) separate from Europe have entirely different spells? Maybe spells that only translate partially, not entirely? Like, Summoning Spells in England bring things right to you, but maybe Summoning Spells in Ethiopia drop them five feet away on the ground, and maybe in Japan they hover above your head....

3. How do we know wandless magic is really rare/impossible? It seems logical that wizards had to, at one point, invent wands - and to do that, they must have already had some form of controlled, wandless magic. Perhaps it's simply a lost or mostly-lost art, rather like flint knapping. (I know people have gone through this before, but the question appeared to me now, so now I type it up)

4. Why is that spelled knapping?

5. Why would one want to tickle a sleeping dragon? That seems especially foolhardy and pointless.

6. Why are both Weasley parents redheads? I know there's a high level of inbreeding going on with Purebloods, but still! It doesn't seem to me that we've seen any other redheads in the series....

7. Is it just me, or are Wizards an awful lot like Borrowers, taking things from the rest of the world and then thinking they came up with them themselves?

8. Why is the scoring in Quidditch so messed up? I know JKR sucks at math(s), but this is absurd!

9. What if every book, every story, every stupid fanfic (even the really bad ones) were true in an alternate universe? Is this a scary thought or a fun one?

10. Is Hermione's method of completely and totally assimilating into Wizarding society, to the point where she seems to hardly ever see her parents (much less ever tell them anything about her life) normal? Or do other kids usually have more resistance?

11. Tell me again why Wizards, with their portkeys and floo system and apparation, don't have primary schools...? They really ought to get on that.

12. Tell me again why Hogwarts has no facilities for the mundane aspects of education, like "how to write" and "literature" and "basic mathematics"? Or even "foreign languages"? Most jobs in the Wizarding world seem to be identical to their Muggle counterparts, except that the people involved can use magic. How did Rita Skeeter even learn to write articles? It certainly wasn't at Hogwarts - and I can't imagine entering any form of journalism course with only the education in that respect attained by age eleven (with a few intervening years of practical experience but no direct instruction).

13. How many Squibs, would you say, are killed by their well-meaning (or not) parents? Much like real-life changelings of old, they can't be a desired outcome by most.

14. Why are the Squibs we know so tied to the Wizarding world? If I were a Squib, and I were otherwise me, I'd want to get as far away from the Wizarding world as possible, straight into the culture where my lack of magic was normal, not disabling and pitiful. How self-loathing does Filch have to be to voluntarily spend so much time in a school full of children who hate him and who can do things he can't?

15. Why do Wizards respect current (Muggle) national boundaries? When the Statute of Secrecy was signed, the political map was entirely different! Why are American Wizards not English instead? Or, why did they divide the same way? Maybe, while Muggles were having the Civil War in the US and the North won, Wizards had a similar war and the nation was divided into little bits, each state or region being independent unto itself. Now, that would make for some interesting fics.

I used to know a guy named Sirius.

No, seriously. He lived down the block from me, hung out with my friend Alexis occasionally, and I think his mother drove me to my 8th grade graduation because, after all, it was his graduation too.

And people think it's such a weird name because it's all HP-esque.

You'd think there wouldn't be, seeing as how Slytherin was opposed (possibly even for good reasons, read a great fic about that a while back which I should've bookmarked....) to having muggleborns in the school.

But... Slytherin isn't the one deciding who goes where. Everybody believes the hat is. The hat which *Gryffindor* made. (And I, personally, believe that the hat is just confirming the student's own choice as to which house they belong in, but that's another issue.)

The hat only lists "ambition" as the requirement for getting into Slytherin, right? Not some degree of pure blood, that sort of thing...? So couldn't some naive muggleborn who hasn't somehow heard what "all Slytherins are like" think that it's just the place for them?

They'd regret it, but... is it possible?

If this site is to be trusted, Draco is the same constellation in Arabic, but it's called (transliterated) "At-Tinneen".

*considers that*

I like it!

Hey, it makes a nice change from all those fanfic writers I've seen scrambling to justify calling the boy "My Little Dragon". Does he get to have a pretty pink comb, too, and a tattoo of some ice cream on his butt?

'dul has the week off from his paying job, which he's spending watching the kids and doing his art.

Which gives *me* some time to Read! Read! READ!

Mostly, bad fanfic. I don't know, it's like I'm a glutton for junk food of the mind or something.

I'm itching for some Dudley fic, just to prove it exists, and because my birthday is coming (31st of January) so I thought if I asked now, the birthday fairy would provide.

Hey, I could just post my normal list of toys. For, um, Ana. This is better, isn't it?

_{I probably will make a few new lists later, which you can feel free to ignore, or read as you please}

You've seen this? Good.

What gets me is not all the "proof" that Ron is or could become abusive, but the follow-up that because he's headed in that direction he "will hit Hermione". He will? Why?

Has Ron ever been shown to be particularly violent? I know he's jinxed people - but so does everybody else in that god-forsaken school, and they think this is all in good fun. So, again I say - violent? Won-won? Hermione's more violent than he is!

His lack of violence would not, of course, make him not abusive. I understand that. Indeed, I've often considered that the Weasley household is full of borderline emotional abuse (something I *would* consider a warning sign for what Ron may do in the future - but again, have we ever seen any violence among the family members?) I get that there's other forms of abuse besides hitting people.

But do the authors of this article get that? Because they take this evidence that's kinda sorta convincing (not really, mihi, but I can see how they can come to that conclusion) and then go straight into the twilight zone with this hitting thing. I just don't see it, really.

And I'm posting this just to remind all of youse that yes, there's other forms of abuse out there. Really.

_{Link from ciara_belle}

Yes, when I ask, once more, if anybody has some Dudley fic for me. I know some of youse guys write. Don't you care about me? WHINE! WHINE! Seriously, I'm begging you here. Break free from the mold. Experiment. Write Dudley fic. Please?

This is leading me into two very different thoughts, which, for fun, I'll stick in the same post:

1. I know I do this, but how many others? I often use the phrase "would you?" instead of "please" when speaking, as in "Pass me the potatoes, would you?" Am I alone in this? I can't recall if I've heard other people doing that... (This is prompted by my final please in the first part of this entry)

2. It's very weird how many second-person fics I've seen. You don't ever see this in published works, as far as I know, and I certainly remember being taught that there's only three Points of View in fiction (first person, third person limited, third person omniscient), so why are certain fan fic writers (many of whom are really quite good) being so... experimental? innovative? different? in their writing? It's odd, is all.

At the end of CoS, Molly makes a big deal about how she had "always said" that you should "never trust anything that can think for itself unless you can see where it keeps its brain!"

That's odd advice, isn't it? Not "don't play with your brother's wand!", or "always wear a helmet when on a broom", or "love potions, they're not for fun", but... don't trust things that can think for themselves? Even accounting for some massive hyperbole here, she has to have said it at least once or twice to think that Ginny would know that! Geez, how often would this even come up?

Then I started thinking about it. People in that word trust thinking objects all the damn time. The Sorting Hat? Where does it keep *its* brain? Arthur's car? I suppose the brain could go under the hood/bonnet.... Hogwarts itself? Even if we don't accept the idea that the school is sentient, it's clearly got some kind of intelligence, or it couldn't keep updating itself! (That, or one of Slytherin's descendents was a plumber....) Heck, it's even got some minor telepathy, or appears to, by which it operates the Room of Requirement (notice that the "bathroom" room of that room has chamber pots - it hasn't been updated. Is this significant?) So what is it about not knowing where the brain is that makes the thinking object untrustworthy, exactly?

*yawns* I'm going back to sleep soon. Hi all.

I'm not exactly an old hat at the fandom worlds out there, but I do read a lot. (This is what I say all the time: I don't have any kids, and therefore have never breastfed, but, um, I do read a lot... I don't actually know any ASL other than the sign for "cup", but I do read a lot... I don't know how my mind works (nor yours, for that matter), but, um, I do read a lot....)

Anyway, I've lately noticed something. I don't mind a fic that's written to be "AU", assuming the writer is reasonably competant. It can be an interesting bit of fun, can't it? See what one person thinks would've happened if one tiny thing had been different. And fic that wasn't "AU" when it was written, but is now - sure, I can go with that.

But a tiny thing that the books or the movies or the show say is otherwise, instead of a big change - that irritates me. It really does. Going to Harry Potter, the stories you're most likely to all be familiar with, I can live with Neville being the Boy Who Lived. I can live with certain characters being dead instead of alive, or vice versa. I can deal with slash and so on, no problem. Tell me that a minor character in both books and fic is from a different part of the world than where I *know* they're from? That'll piss me off.

No idea why.

In other news, since I'm supposed to hand over the computer soon, saw the kids today. Ana is such a little actress. Today, I mentioned something involving the word "sleep" to her, and she pretended to lean over and snore. Then, when I said it again, she leaned over more, snored louder. Finally, she flops over dramatically, snores, and gets up going "I wake up!" I almost could've believed her. The new baby is new, and still rather boring. Very quiet, though. I've only heard her cry a few times, and one of those was in the voice mail I got when she was being born, which surely doesn't count. Babies this age remind me of nothing so much as brand new kittens, except bigger and with less fur. Ana, dear one, is torn between being the adoring big sister and being jealous. By their very nature, babies steal attention from older children. Additionally, it's clear she doesn't think it's fair that the baby can nurse all the time, and Ana gets told "no, be patient, you just had milk". When the baby does more than drink milk, I'm sure the apparent unfairness will be more obvious to her.

Just so you know, she seems (right now) to fall more on adoring than jealous. We've only been hyping this new baby for a half a year now, after all... But she gets frustrated that she can't do what she wants with the baby. No, Ana, you can't hold the baby. Ana, you have to be careful around the baby. Ana, the baby already has a hat on. ANA! STOP KISSING HER ALREADY AND LET HER SLEEP! No, she's not going to sing. No, she can't dance. Stop telling her to wake up.

A lot of people have commented disparagingly on the implied "ranking" of the various houses: Clearly, they say, Gryffindor is considered the best, followed by Ravenclaw, then Hufflepuff, then Slytherin, unless you happen to be in Slytherin, and what does being told you're not in the best house do to your precious self-esteem?

Except that this is the viewpoint of a bunch of kids who all ended up in Gryffindor. As I've said before, I'm firmly of the belief that children are sorted into the houses they want to be in. Now, I think this is what makes them who they grow up to be, unlike Dumbledore, who seems to think it just shows who they're going to grow up to be, but that's just a side-conversation.

How do we know that all the other houses have the same ranking system? We know that one kid, impressed at Hermione's knowledge of an advanced spell, was surprised she wasn't in Ravenclaw - clearly, to his mind, his house is best. Hufflepuff is a load of duffers? Maybe - or maybe that's just the view of all the people who aren't Hufflepuffs, and they view themselves differently, the people who support the school. Slytherin means you're gonna be evil? Do the Slytherins know that? Maybe that's a prejudice handed down by the other houses, but as far as they're concerned, they're just interested in 1. being smart and making connections and 2. preserving wizarding traditions, unlike those who'd give up everything they had in order to go with the new.

Maybe they even rank the other houses not just lower than their own houses, but lower than we'd expect. Maybe the Hufflepuffs think that Gryffindors are all irritable, impractical, and flashy - no use to anybody.

Why do we assume that because Harry and his friends, who are Gryffindors think that their house is the best, that means that every other student in the school agrees with the assessment?