Voldemort stole my leisure time, discretionary income and social confidence, so I was not at Infinitus last week. But I wanted to say thanks to everyone on my friends list who did attend and has been posting reports, talks, photos, video, etc. I am very much enjoying the virtual Infinitus experience you all have provided.


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No, not Mao’s wife and those other people who screwed up the government of Communist China. To be honest, I can never remember exactly what those guys did to be (in)famous, and have to go look it up repeatedly. They have something to do with the Cultural Revolution, which I seem to remember was neither cultural nor a revolution, more along the ( Read more... )

Remember how, in Deathly Hallows, Harry paid a token visit to the Ravenclaw common room in search of information on the diadem Horcrux? We saw then the special torture honor that Hogwarts bestows on those students whose wit is their greatest treasure: a system for gaining common room entry that is unique among the houses. While Slytherins, ( Read more... )

I’m so tired of opening this journal and seeing the same picture of J.K. Rowling that’s been sitting there undisturbed since Valentine’s Day that I think a little thought experiment is in order. I’m going to try and see if for once I can post something new without tweaking it for a fucking week beforehand.

For the last month my working life has been ( Read more... )

Note: The previous entry’s warnings about offensive house generalizations and rank self-justification go double here. Also, I've probably been more American-centric than is seemly; sorry 'bout that, but the U.S. is the only country I know well enough to feel comfortable making offensive generalizations about.

One of the things I found most ( Read more... )

Note: Up in the Air spoilers, offensive generalizations about all four Hogwarts houses, and much rank self-justification below.

For over a month I've been struggling to get into postable condition my thoughts about Up in the Air, which I saw twice over the holidays. Coming at the end of a year marked by deep anger at my own employer and sharp ( Read more... )

This is exactly why I listen to them: to force-feed myself a brutally efficient diet of what, in a certain worldview, is current. Liking it is not necessarily the point. I’m 39, and at this stage of my life, if I don’t make a conscious effort to keep up with mainstream pop - a genre that historically I have considerable love for, believe it or not ( Read more... )

Well, yeah. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized…holy shit, it was actually possible. All the apparent problems with this scenario can be dispatched by applying magical solutions, Muggle psychology, or both. Let me break it down for you:

Lily Evans, Harry’s much-idealized dead mother, may have thought future husband James Potter was ( Read more... )

Note: This post is made of pure 100% spoilers.

1. So Neville’s parents are just going to die in St. Mungo’s, still insane? What does it say about the literary conventions that have shaped my psyche that, right up till the last, I was expecting the death of Voldy to break some spell and return them to normal functioning and the Longbottom family to ( Read more... )

Note: Loads of mostly minor spoilers below, but still: 481 pages into a 759-page book, why isn't there more to spoil than this?

Is it me, or is Rowling making a lot of choices in this book whose wisdom is - to put it charitably - not readily apparent?

Things start suitably enough. The Dursleys get bundled off into a witness protection program for ( Read more... )