After having had the weekend to get to grips with my shiny new Word Press upgrade and the even shinier Google Analytics software I have come to the conclusion that there are some disturbing people on the internet and a lot of them turn up at my blog from time to time expecting something else entirely.

The analytics program allows a blogger to see how many people turn up at their site, from where, (although the information is no more specific than where your ISP is based so it’s not like I know anything about you, Mr. Shuji Yakamoro of Osaka, Japan) and interestingly enough, a list of keyword searches that people used to find your site.

The number 2 keyword search leading to my blog turned out to be “Daniel Radcliffe penis”. I also recognize that by putting this in the body of this post, I may inadvertently bump my blog further up this rather distasteful search list, but I felt that I was important to inform everyone that there are a fair amount of people out there interested in this subject. Those of you that visit this site regularly will know that this is not really anything that I’ve discussed at any great length (oh the shameful pun!) so I was a little surprised that it brought more than 40 people to Blogapotamus. So shame on you, you perverted legions, you will find no Potter Porn here.

Mr Radcliffe, incidentally has just turned 18, not only giving him access to £30m, but also the freedom to display his penis freely in films and television. You won’t have to wait long, folks, but you’re not going to find it here.

*thud* *thud* One…two… one…. ONE… is this thing on? *thud*

Blogapotamus Rex has been upgraded, in an attempt to get rid of all of that spam karma tomfoolery, and provide your hostess with some Google-flavoured visitor information about all you people.

Please comment here if you encounter any weirdness.

Thanks,

The Rock Star.

Reason number 8,437 that I married The Rock Star:

“I’ll look after the Prawn on Saturday so you can read Harry Potter as long as you make tea.”

Ladies, please form an orderly queue to be beaten away with a stick.

So, okay, I NEED to talk about Harry Potter. BUT, as a public service to those who have NOT finished yet, let me say again that in this blog, YOU WILL FIND OUT LOTS OF MAJOR PLOT POINTS, SO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE STOP READING NOW. I was going to make the entire text of this post the same color as the background, but after I finished it, I realized that there would be a hell of a lot of aesthetically unpleasing white space. And I hate unpleasing white space, so as yet another public service, I will begin, as is Blogapotamus fashion, with some light expository writing to give you a chance to turn away if you so desire.

Still here? Right.

In a stunning display of self restraint, I was determined to get to the gym on Saturday morning before cracking the spine of the book, which arrived, literally, as I was walking out the door with my bag. Shifting this baby weight has proved slightly more problematic than I had hoped and let me tell you, it was a near Herculean feat for me to walk back up the stairs to the flat, deposit the unopened Amazon package on the sofa and walk back down to the car while my inner 6 year old was throwing a screaming fit on the floor.

Upon my return, however, I wasted no time in tearing the package open, sitting my still overly large posterior on the couch and ceasing to move from that spot for the rest of the day.

First off, I’d like to say that although I have enjoyed the whole series, (but don’t get me started on the apparent lack of ANY form of editing in Order of the Phoenix.) I think JK Rowling will be, on the whole, a one trick pony. Although she was fairly good at gradually increasing the complexity of the storytelling from book to book, I didn’t see a whole lot of growth of her as a writer. I’m not sure she learned anything that will stand her in any stead as she tries to continue her career. (Except maybe the accurate price of a SunSeeker yacht.) Her great strength was in creating a believable world in which to set her story; one enough like ours to be recognisable and different enough to be interesting.

Expoz stops here.

Okay, so, The Deathly Hallows. Rowling loses no time jumping straight into the action, setting the menacing tone right away with a torture scene, giving us an idea of the stakes; Voldemort is Hitler, Stalin and Edi Amin all rolled into one and he’s got his sights set on domination of the wizarding world, and, one gathers, the world at large. He is the archetypal villain; power mad, paranoid and careless about life.

Although Rowling was much publicised for her assertion that “two characters will die” it’s fairly obvious from the start that the book is going to boast a higher body count than Total Recall as right off the bat, as both Harry’s beloved owl, Hedewig and Auror Mad Eye Moody are killed by Death Eaters in an attempt to get Harry to a safe house. The Boy Who Lived is already having what my mother would call “a hobbit day.” (After watching The Fellowship of the Ring, she commented, “Well, that was just one damn thing after another, wasn’t it?”)

Rowling pushes the plot along furiously to highlight the desperate pace that Harry and cohorts must keep up in order to stay one step ahead of the Dark Lord while they search for “horcruxes”; bits of Voldemort’s soul that he has inadvisably divided from himself and instilled into both symbolic inanimate objects and living creatures. We have the usual teenage tantrums along the way (even when life and death is at stake, a 17 year old is a 17 year old and prone to being paralyzed by self doubt even when someone is threatening to blow up your family) and divisions between the holy trinity of Harry, Hermione and Ron; the Father, the Son and the lovable doofus. (forgive me, Goddess of Clarity. He does pull off several great saves along the way as well.) But in true storytelling fashion, the three ALWAYS manage to resolve their differences and prove to all of us, rather nauseatingly, that we accomplish more through teamwork than we would alone. Even “the Chosen One” needs a hand.

The Deathly Hallows of the title finally make an appearance in Chapter 21 when we learn of yet another holy trinity- 3 supposedly mythical objects wrought by Death and given to 3 wizards in a children’s tale. It’s this tale that allows Harry to finally make some sense out of some of You-Know-Who’s actions that he’s been witness to through the psychic link that they share. Voldemort is looking for the Deathly Hallows in order to master Death, making himself not only invincible, but immortal as well. Harry realizes that if he succeeds, they are TOTALLY boned. Lucky for him that he’s already GOT one of them- his cloak of invisibility. The other two, The Elder Wand (the most powerful magical magnifier in the world) and the Resurrection Stone (a stone that allows one to summon the dead) are still missing. When Harry witnesses Voldemort defiling Dumbledore’s tomb, he is shocked to discover that indeed his old teacher and mentor was the last possessor of The Elder Wand, which is now in the hands of his greatest enemy.

Unfortunately for The Dark Lord’s most infamous lackey, Snape, now headmaster of a much changed Hogwarts, Voldemort believes that to TRULY possess the wand, he must defeat its true owner, which, unfortunately seems to be Snape, seeing as how he went all Tony Soprano on Dumbledore at the end of The Half Blood Prince. Snape has an unfortunate accident involving a large snake but before going on to that great Potions Dungeon in the sky, passes to Harry what every fan of the series has been waiting for; memories that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that Snape was definitely NOT the one dimensional bad guy that we all kind of knew he wasn’t but hoped that he’d get around to telling us sooner or later, cause we were getting kind of tired of him behaving like a total dick.

Through Rowling’s convenient flashback device, the Pensieve, we follow Snape thought his first childhood meeting with Lily Evans, (Harry’s mother) their schooling together, Snape’s beginnings with the Death Eaters, his utter despair and remorse for her death at the hands of Voldemort , his pledge to Dumbledore to work to keep Harry safe, Dumbledore’s request to Snape to be the instrument of his death (we knew it) and most shockingly, (but not really if you were paying attention through the last six books) the revelation that Harry will need to sacrifice himself to finally be rid of Voldemort as HE is Voldemort’s final horcrux. Harry’s classroom nemesis has spent his life pining for lost love. Snape, who has been a close second for the title of “Most Hated” for 6 books running, is finally revealed as an unfortunate boy who loved a girl, fell in with the wrong crowd and found redemption, rather than an evil, detention-giving mastermind.

By now, the climactic battle scene is in full swing as the students and teachers of Hogwarts and just about every other mainstay character of the series are in a 10 round, knock down, drag-out magical brawl with the Death Eaters in the hallowed halls of the school itself. There are casualties, most notably, Lupin the Werewolf, Nymphadora Tonks and Weasley twin, Fred, cut down, mid-smart ass remark. Someone obviously neglected to mention to him the rules of being comic relief in an adventure novel: If you’re the hero of a story, you can be the world’s biggest wiseguy, but if you shoot your mouth off without the luxury of top billing, you might as well paint a target on your forehead, wave your wedding tackle at the villain and urge him to come and have a go if he think he’s hard enough.

In the midst of the chaos, Harry manages to slip away to his solitary fate, but not before imparting the knowledge pertaining to the final horcrux (located inside Voldemort’s giant snake, Nagini) to Neville Longbottom, who is proving to be much more of a hard man than previously hinted at in previous novels. On his way to meet his destiny, Harry pauses as he discovers the true nature of Dumbledore’s final bequest to him- the Golden Snitch that Harry caught in his first Quidditch match with the inscription, “I open at the close”. Harry tells the Snitch that he is about to die and it opens to reveal the Resurrection Stone in the form of a ring. (also one of Voldemort’s previous horcruxes, destroyed by Dumbledore in The Half Blood Prince) The shades of all that he has loved and lost appear around him to comfort him as he makes his way toward You-Know-Who’s hide out, where he offers himself up for sacrifice- an offer eagerly accepted by The Dark Lord, who Avada Kedavras him into oblivion the moment he shows his face.

Of course, our erstwhile hero is NOT deceased, as this would prove devastating to both readers and the chances of Rowling increasing her bank balance yet FURTHER sometime down the line when someone offers her a large-ish island somewhere (maybe Maui) to write another book. He instead ends up at King’s Cross Station, which is a sad lookout for afterlife enthusiasts everywhere. There he meets Dumbledore who gives him a hearty pat on the back for being a good little Christ metaphor and provides exposition tying up many loose ends including a) exactly why Harry’s not dead, b) Dumbledore’s own backstory and c) why Harry should go back to finish Voldemort’s sorry snake-toting ass. The scene that I’d expected happened just as I imagined it would- Harry being in limbo and being given a choice of going back to fight or simply to go “on”. Of course, he chooses to return and in a lovely moment that touches on the nature of reality, Harry asks Dumbledore if what was happening was real, or just in his head, to which Dumbledore replies,

“Of course it’s happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

Back in the world, the story comes to several explosive finishes. Neville Longbottom, acting on Harry’s advice, manages to slay Voldemort’s constant, slithery companion and horcrux, Nagini. Molly Weasley dispatches the Dark Lord’s batshit crazy first lieutenant, Bellatrix Lestrange and gets to say a naughty word. (After pretty much having every single one of her family members attacked at some point in the previous six books, one might say she earned it.) And finally, as might be inferred, Harry finally manages to finish off You-Know-Who once and for all. Ever the hero, and enormous display of maturity and wisdom, Harry gives up the Elder Wand (although only after repairing his own which was broken earlier on in the book) and the Resurrection Stone and heads off to, I don’t know, maybe have a little lie down in a darkened room.

The chapter that appeared most often on spoiler sites was the epilogue. I personally feel that Rowling copped out with her “Nineteen years later” stunt, where we find Ginny and Harry, Ron and Hermione cheerfully sending their broods of rugrats off to Hogwarts at Platform 9 ¾. While the ending was “feel good” it wasn’t necessarily “good.” It was the “happily ever after, we’ve named our kids after the fallen, the circle of life, to everything turn, turn, turn, etc” ending that everyone probably thought they wanted, but when they actually read, felt a bit cheated by. Rowling was lucky enough to create an engaging world to set her stories in and we all probably would rather have left it at the beginning of the rebuilding process rather than in the belle epoch after Voldemort’s downfall. While it’s nice to know everyone got it on eventually, I would rather have seen them tackle the hard part; rebuilding after the war.

So there you have it. The Deathly Hallows, more or less. I was working at Borders in Minneapolis, MN when The Philosopher’s Stone made its appearance almost 10 years ago. Snared by the curiously compelling story of the boy wizard, I don’t think that anyone working there at the time could have possibly realized what an unprecedented literary phenomenon it was going to turn out to be. I’ve hugely enjoyed the journey- the anticipation for the next instalment; complaining like a child at bedtime who’s promised the next chapter “tomorrow night” upon completion of each volume.

I look forward to making it again when the Prawn is old enough and to be enchanted again by the story of The Boy Who Lived.

Here’s a thing.

I keep hearing that, just after I flush my loo MILLIONS OF GERMS begin to multiply, forming bacteria utopias in my toilet bowl capable of staging a hostile takeover of a small nation. Many advertisements have been taking great pains to tell me this. My question is…

Who cares? Am I taking meetings in there? Cooking or serving gourmet meals? Washing my hair? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for the unilateral discontinuance of toilet bowl cleaning or anything, but is there a particular reason why millions of germs in my loo should be of concern to me?

This is just one of those things that keeps me awake at nights.

For the love of all that’s holy COULD EVERYONE STOP TRYING TO TELL ME THE ENDING OF THE NEXT HARRY POTTER BOOK?

I understand that in this world of short attention span media, everyone needs to have the next big story RIGHT NOW and waiting until midnight on Friday seems to be a massively unreasonable request but I’d like to say to everyone who’s just dying to tell me the ending of a book that I HAVEN’T READ YET that they should knock it the hell off. I would like this to occur without me having to withdraw from the internet completely until I am finished reading the last tome in the series.

“While on one hand, we are loathe to spoil the ending for loyal readers of the series, do we willingly ignore information that the public is interested in?”

Let me tell you something, media boys. There is far too little mystery left in the world already due to the fact that you can poke your wolfish noses into any nook and cranny you can find and this INCLUDES taking pictures of people doing private things in backyards with high fences and then screaming “THE FIRST AMENDMENT!” when someone comes after you with lawyers. Even the MILITARY has to take extra precautions to keep you from blithely revealing strategies to all and sundry. (Where as fifty years ago, they would have just shot you and buried you in the desert somewhere if they thought you were up to that kind of shenanigan)

It may be a children’s book. It may not be the most astounding work of fiction ever to grace the literary world. It may be occasionally poorly edited. BUT IF ANYONE TELLS ME THE ENDING BEFORE I READ IT MYSELF, I WILL PERSONALY FIND YOU AND RIP YOUR NIPPLES OFF.

Many thanks.

Any evangelist is eventually going to run into something they are at loss to explain about the subject of their fanaticism. Fervent hatred in the service of a loving God, the realization that Captain Kirk really probably COULD kick Captain Picard’s ass, (although the later would most likely best the former in say, speaking in complete sentences.) and sadly, in the Rock Star’s case, the failure of a logic board.

The Rock Star’s Macbook and our Mac Mini have converted us to the growing legions of Appleheads. Over the weekend, however, The Rock Star discovered that his Macbook was stubbornly refusing to turn on following the download of a “power update”. It was rather like the betrayal of a new lover. “How can it DO this to me?” he wailed, gnashing his teeth and rending his garments. It was a pitiful sight.

Once he got over it, he began phoning around to find out who could try to fix it for him. One of a few advantages of a PC over a Mac is it’s inherent fixability. Everyone knows how PCs work and there are simply hordes of unwashed people out there on hand to fix them for you. Macs are much more likely to be sent back to the factory or repaired in a Mac Store. Since we valued village life over hip gadget repair, finding anywhere nearby to affect a repair was going to be a bit of a challenge. The Rock Star finally managed to make an appointment at the store located inside the Bluewater Shopping Centre, a vast commercial emporium situated opposite the Dartford Crossing in a disused chalk quarry. This was the closest repair option and it was over an hour away.

Filled with squee at the prospect of a day at a huge shopping mall, (I embarrass myself at how positively female I can be sometimes) I chucked the Prawn into her cockpit and we were away. (Well, when I say we were away, I mean after getting the Prawn’s food ready, the Prawn’s nappies ready, the Prawn’s change of clothes ready, the Prawn’s new stroller ready and the rest of the three ring circus act that leaving the house with an infant is.) I’d never been to Bluewater, although BoyRacer’s girlfriend, Trumpet, often extols its yummy shopping virtues. Its distance from us has always made it a little prohibitive for a quick expedition just to pick up one or two things.

When we arrived after an hour of fairly smooth sailing motorway traffic, we were jammy enough to get a parking space not far from one of what looked like many entrances to the mall. After disembarking the Prawn, (who was kind of cranky after being hauled, sleeping, from her bucket and placed in her new wheelie bin. Our original “travel system” seems like it would be awesome for, say, polar exploration or something, but if you’re just picking up a few things, it’s a little bit of overkill to deploy something that, in a pinch, could be used to batter down doors.) we headed into the Rock Star’s appointment to fix his much loved laptop.

Okay, first off, WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED ABOUT HOW COOL MAC STORES ARE? Cause they totally are. Apple has such a tremendous leg up on what makes things easier all around, it’s sometimes easy to forget that their hardware is not quite up to scratch. (Anyone who has ever owned an iPod will know what I mean.) At any rate, the helpful, hip and hairy folks there informed The Rock Star that he had a busted “logic board” and that it’d take a couple of days.

In the meantime, the Prawn and I were enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of commerce. Bluewater is an astonishingly finished shopping centre with details that the majority of it’s clientele never notice in their quest for a new pair of shoes or Mr. Whippy- lots of lovely sculpture and carving everywhere. It is a credit to me, I believe, that I came away from a couple of acres of such beautiful shops with only a pair of jeans in my hand. The truth is, I’m much more inclined to buy clothes for the Prawn at the moment, since my post-pregnancy girth is being particularly stubborn to shift. I am beguiled by little pink frilly things. Things with brightly colored stripes and spots. Things that she will outgrow in a matter of months, but this does not stop me. The Rock Star tries to keep me in check, but we’d best have another girl the next time around, that’s all I’m saying. At any rate, I was restrained and the jeans were the only purchase. And some chocolates, but they disappeared before we left.

At any rate, we are going to be “forced” to return tomorrow to retrieve said laptop with Prawn, cockpit, wheelie bin and kitchen sink in tow. We shall see if my wallet can withstand another full frontal assault.

I have to admit to being a slight latecomer to the YouTube phenomenon. I had this idea that it was probably just chock full of videos of a) cats and b) people finding new and exciting ways to injure their groins. Not that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with either of these things, but there are only so many different variations of “cat climbing up someone’s leg” or “man falling off skateboard while trying to negotiate a rail and emasculating himself” that one person can watch. However, I have come around to the idea that you can find literally ANYTHING on YouTube. (At least anything that doesn’t involve porn. You still have to visit serialz/hackz/warez sites for that.)

Everyone else seems to be able to accomplish this embedding of videos thing. However, I believe I am working with an outdated edition of Word Press and am therefore fobidden from embedding joy. However, here are some links to some of my favorite bits of YouTubery.

Demetri Martin- A New York comic explains his “findings”.

Amazing Guitar- This link came courtesy of ukmg. Just goes to show that if you want to do something bad enough, you’ll find a way.

Talking cats- Okay, yeah, you caught me. A link to cats. These cats are slightly creepy, however. I don’t get the feeling the audio has been tampered with at all.

Japanese Tetris Gameshow- Just try to tell me that if we in the west had gameshows like this, that you wouldn’t watch.

Pachelbel Rant- A comedian demonstrates his extreme dislike for one of classical music’s greatest hits.

So it appears that one of the more amusing anagrams of my name is “Batman Led Yeti“. Another of my favorites is “Belated Yam Tin“. And moving in a slightly more disturbing suicide bomber type direction, “A Dynamite Belt“. Find your own anagrams.

Defective Yeti recently had a link to the American Heritage Dictionary’s list of 100 Words that Every High School Graduate Should Know. While it’s not immediately clear what makes these words the benchmarks of communicative prowess, it was an interesting list nonetheless.

Lists like this always give me an uncomfortableness. For someone who likes to think that they have a fair command of language, (at least in the written sense. When I talk spontaneously, I often feel like small demons are taking turns whacking my tongue with bats.) a list full of words that seem vaguely familiar are horrifying. This is because you have an inkling that at some point in the past, you might have tried to use one of these words in conversation and POSSIBLY USED IT INCORRECTLY. This is an awful feeling and although the person you were speaking to has likely long forgotten the conversation, it makes a writer or bibliophile cringe to think of it.

Out of the 100 words (and I was being very honest) there were about 23 that I had certainly HEARD but could honestly not define and about 10 where my definitions were incredibly nebulous. “You know, it’s like, when you do that thing, and feel that way.” That kind of definition. However, I dutifully looked them all up. I had a very dear great Aunt who gave all of her nieces and nephews (and great nieces and nephews. She had about 60. That’s a lot of dictionaries.) a Webster’s dictionary upon graduation from high school and encouraged all of us to write down on it’s back cover all of the words that we had occasion to look up. When I find this dictionary, which I believe to be lurking in our attic somewhere, I will have 23 new words to put down.

I am not necessarily someone who places an enormous value on Words, with a capital W. In Alan Bennett’s superb drama “History Boys”, one of the characters, a teacher, fervently hopes that none of his students remember him for “giving them a love of words.” He says it in a way that betrays his obviously dislike for pretention.

For someone who always fancied herself a dab hand at English, being forced to take an English Senior Seminar in college was a real bucket of cold water over the humping dogs of my ego. Although I’d spent my entire school career at the top of my class in English, I was suddenly thrown into a room of people who could all use these 100 words in everyday conversation. People who understood every theme in every book we read. People who TOTALLY got the movie “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.” People who are now editors of publications, lawyers and doctoral divinity students. Luckily, the doctoral divinity student happened to be a very great friend of mine who was extremely good at explaining things to me so I wasn’t forced to look like the village idiot at every session. This experience kind of unbalanced me in the field of words and taught me the value of not trying to bullshit my way through if I didn’t know what I was talking about. What’s the old adage? Better to be silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and prove it beyond all doubt?

While I was thinking about my English seminar and bemoaning my ignorance of the 100 words list, The Rock Star pointed out that if you were speaking to someone who used more than 3 or 4 of these words in the space of about 20 minutes chances are a) they couldn’t really be considered an effective communicator and b) they might be kind of a dick.

This cheered me to no end.

Happy 4th to all of you folks on the other side of the pond. I’m not into the whole patriotism thing, but I do tend to get a bit homesick on the 4th. There was little nicer than sitting on a blanket with family and friends in Baker Park in Frederick and watching fireworks. Although, I must admit that one of my favorite 4ths was spend in a canoe on the Charles River in Boston directly under the firework barge. That Fourth was memorable for one of the other people in our party, as he rowed out to the middle of the river in order to answer the call of nature and was immediately illuminated by a police boat while trying to have a slash.

I found this “citzenship test” last night on MSNBC. Sadly, my husband did better on it than I did due to the fact that I actually neglected to think about one of the questions before answering. This is probably why I use so much white-out on important forms. It also makes me wonder about my SAT score.