7/21: What I Accomplished Today

1. Last night after I blogged, I played the demo hour on the BigFishGame, which appeared to be a sequel to Believe in Santa, a game that came out just before Christmas. It wasn't quite the same game, but it wasn't entirely a different one, either; it changed the graphics slightly, added several different bonus opportunities that changed aesthetics but not gameplay, and gave the game the ability to replay levels, which it should have had in the first place. It wasn't a new storyline, though; it was the same storyline. It's a fun game, but I've already played it. In fact, I've already finished it several times. I'm not buying this again, especially since the only really useful addition, the ability to replay levels, should have been in the original. (One of the additions, a toy you customize and then sell in the next round, could have affected gameplay, but in the first nine or ten levels that I played, I always had the highest level by far more than the price of this expensive toy, so it wasn't relevant at that point.)

2. Got up today at about 12:20. Put on outfit and performed basic grooming needs. Asked Co-Vivant if she was going to Costco at 12:35; she laughed at how quickly I was ready. We went to Costco and bought the Harry Potter book and audiobook (and diet soda and candy bars). Our Costco receipt says 1:02. We ate there. We came home, and I folded and put away a load of laundry; figure it's 1:30 or 1:45 by then.

I finished the book at 7:10.

I won't talk about specifics yet because most people haven't had the opportunity to finish it yet, but I will discuss a few generalities.

a. I do not know what idiots are still laboring under the mistaken notion that the series is for children. The first two are for children; the rest are not. (Tolkien works the same way; The Hobbit is for children, but The Lord of the Rings, not so much.) My older niece is 14, and a mature 14; I'm okay with her reading these books. My younger niece is 11 and can't be bothered with these books--and that's just as well, because they are not suitable for her. Anyone who calls these children's books has either never read them or has really odd ideas about what children might be.

b. I could have told people about the necklace and the 7th horcrux after the last book, but nobody called and asked me.

c. These books contain a man named Arthur with a son named Percival, a daughter named Ginevra, and a son named Ron. (In the original Celtic version, Arthur had his sword, Caliburn [later Latinized to Excalibur], and his spear, Ron.) The denouement perfectly fits what needed to happen from a myth and ritual perspective. Nope, no education at play here.

d. When I started to read, I took off my glasses, as I always do. Then I spent the afternoon sitting or lying in various positions on the bed. I do not know what happened to them, but my glasses are now bent, and I won't be able to get them straightened until Costco Optical opens again on Monday.

e. Very clean; she didn't spend 72 chapters at the end cleaning up McGuffins, like I was afraid she was going to. (I'll probably talk about this more later.) (If you're not familiar with the term, it's from Hitchcock; it's also the name of the weatherman in the very first chapter of the first book, so she planted the seed very early.)

f. Voldemort has taken Lucius' wand by page 10. Could we possibly cut to the emasculation chase any sooner.

g. A few years ago, I was curious about what the Christian opposition to the series was actually focusing on, so I read one of the leading books of the genre. My instinct was again correct; the witchcraft issue is a McGuffin. True, they're not happy about the magic in the books, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that sometimes Harry and his friends don't play by the rules; sometimes, if circumstance seems to require it, they bend, even break, the rules, and they aren't always punished for this.

In short, the morality in the book is relativistic, and the characters exercise critical thinking to evaluate situations. No wonder they hate it.

h. Much less death than I thought there was going to be. (Yes, I did spend the afternoon crying and laughing, sometimes at the same time, so much so that I unnerved my Co-Vivant, but all in all, many fewer casualties than anticipated.)

i. I know it seems odd not to spoil things for readers when I don't have any readers except kamikazes who drop in randomly to plug their own blogs, but it still doesn't seem right to discuss particulars of the plot when most people have neither the ability nor the leisure time to read it so soon. Today and tomorrow, I am special. About Monday, the rest of the world catches up to me.

j. Co-Vivant (who watches the movies but does not read the books) has a job that requires her to wear a tool belt. She is not 5' tall, which is much, much smaller than the manufacturers of tool belts envision, and she has been losing weight, so we keep having to cinch in the tool belt. She asked me to do this again yesterday, and I fiddled with it some, but I don't think it can go in any more; it has so many little pockets and loops hanging from it that we can't make it any smaller. When I informed her of this, she pouted a little and said, "You are a Muggle." And unfortunately, she is right.

3. Don't really remember what we watched on television tonight. I got some Pogo badges to 80%.

4. I have several sorts of research I perform on Harry Potter. I haven't for months, obviously, because I finished the sixth book over Christmas break. This evening, I did most of my thing on the first chapter of the book. I also listened to the first chapter of the audiobook.