Here's part of what she blogged about recently on LOL:
"I was a little slow at starting, but I finally did. The new Harry Potter book, that is. I need to start earlier in the evening...I could not put it down and finally fell asleep in the wee hours with the giant tome as my pillow. I cannot wait to read again tonight."
Gosh, I wish I could recover any literary or cinematic interest in Harry Potter. Reading her blog reminded me of a time when my little boys and I would share in the wonders of Hogwarts and the whole Wizarding world. I acted out all the parts. I used a United Magical Kingdom of accents and mannerisms. I was known to put on hats, for crying out loud! Even to this day when my kids ask me a question I can't answer I reply, "'Dunno,' said Ron."
But then, somewhere around book five, the nightly Hogwarts Express just sat idling at Platform 9 and 3/4. I don't remember whether it was my boys or me that lost interest first but I do recall the last few nights I was reading Harry before bedtime it seemed that faster than I could say "Surprise, it's Voldemort again," little Itchy and Scratchy were off to sleep.
It's possible that the ever increasing Tolstoy-like length of these novels were tempering my enthusiasm. Maybe I didn't read the stories as theatrically after page 500. Perhaps after page 600 my "Dumbledore" voice was drifting annoyingly close to Gilbert Gottfried. It's entirely possible that after the 1000th time that J.K. Rowling used the verb "strode" that I was holding the word out longer and longer until it had more "o's" than a porno movie.
Either way, the boys stopped asking and I stopped volunteering for "Harry time."
And it wasn't just the books either. I'm not sure that either of us have seen the last two movies. Maybe the boys did at a sleepover or something. Chances are, they saw some of a more recent Harry Potter video just before they conked out for the night.
None of which makes me feel good about me. I miss the days when I wondered what my "Potronus" would be. I wish I could be like "ArtyGirl" again and sit up and read the new Harry Potter book under my covers with a flashlight. I could use a little more fantasy in my life.
As it is, J.K. Rowling has become for me like Norman Mailer or Salman Rushdie. I know the work is popular for a reason, I know why other people like it; I know it's good. I'm impressed, I really am.
Maybe someday I'll draw the scar back on my forehead and read "Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows," but probably just after I finish reading Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses."
Because I had to work on so many lawns as a kid (both my family’s lawns and those of our church because my dad was on the "grounds committee") it was never a chore I looked forward to much.
Lately, however, lawn work is giving me much peace. Having a completely green and healthy lawn has become somewhat of an obsession this summer and I am really enjoying it. After years of seeing spectacular lawns as only a reflection of the middle-class suburban values which shaped me and only begrudgingly doing just enough lawn work to avoid being the neighborhood eyesore, I have found joy in helping one small piece of the planet to flower and flourish.
Perhaps succumbing to the simple joy of the picture perfect lawn is just another sign of aging.
But maybe it has less to do with feeling older and more with feeling vulnerable. The world seems a little out of control to me these days. According to so many knowledgeable US generals, the war we are fighting is unwinnable on its current trajectory but the White House keeps saying it needs more time, more billions and more lives. The White House says that we are winning the War on Terror and that by fighting in Iraq we are keeping Al Qaeda on the defense which makes us all safer. Meanwhile, President Bush’s own Director of Homeland Security says that Al Qaeda is very likely here and in such sufficient pre-9/11 numbers that he has a bad feeling that something major is coming this summer. The President appropriately touts the recent gains on Wall Street to show that our economy is robust yet I’ve never had so many friends who are underemployed, in transition, just doing what they can to take care of their families.
I keep having the suspicious feeling that if we really, really were winning the War on Terror, national property values would be on the rise not decline, more employers would be adding great paying jobs and the economy would be expanding everywhere and not just in the Dow Jones and I wouldn’t be spending so much time getting soaked moving my sprinklers around my flourescent green lawn.
How long will my valley be so green?
As CBS News reported:
"A check of the calendar shows time swiftly running out for President Bush. Eighteen months from today, a new president takes the oath of office."
Regardless of whether the next president eighteen months from now is a Republican or a Democrat, I’ll just be glad to have President Bush out of office. Of course, I also did breathe a sigh of relief when the president recovered quickly from his colonoscopy and Vice President Dick Cheney was no longer technically president today. I have never been so thankful to know that once more President Bush was still in office.
I know people who know him well and they say he is a swell guy and all–and I really respect the way he loves both his daughters–but there is just something about Dick Cheney that has always scared me stupid. Here’s just how much the guy weirds me out.
When I heard that Dick Cheney had spent his "presidency" fishing on Saturday morning at his getaway home in Maryland, all I could picture was Fredo Corleone getting whacked and tossed over the side of a rowboat in Godfather II.
Isn’t that so unfair? While my wife and I were shopping for annuals at St. Paul’s Farmer’s Market, I’m counting the minutes until Dick Cheney is no longer Commander-in-Chief because my distrust of him and the goals of this administration runs so deep.
Cheney spent his entire temporary presidency relaxing and fishing with friends in Maryland and I’m picturing him running murderously amok. That may say more about me than it does about him.
Still, if I were you, I would never go fishing with Dick Cheney in Guantanamo Bay, if you know what I mean . . .
ONLY one week after Live Earth, Al Gore's green credentials slipped while hosting his daughter's wedding in Beverly Hills.
Gore and his guests at the weekend ceremony dined on Chilean sea bass - arguably one of the world's most threatened fish species.
Also known as Patagonian toothfish, the species is under pressure from illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing activities in the Southern Ocean, jeopardising the sustainability of remaining stocks.
Don't worry too much about former Vice President Gore serving enviromentally threatened fish-- many of the people at his daughter's wedding decided to order the Florida manatee mignon or the snow leopard sausage .
NFL star Michael Vick was indicted today on a federal conspiracy charge for his alleged role in a dog fighting venture that operated from a Virginia property owned by the Atlanta Falcons quarterback. A copy of the indictment, filed today in U.S. District Court in Richmond, can be found below. The 27-year-old Vick, whose nickname is listed as "Ookie" in the indictment, allegedly established the Bad Newz Kennels in early-2001 in Smithfield, Virginia. It was this property, for which Vick paid $34,000, that the star athlete and his codefendants used as the "main staging area for housing and training the pit bulls involved in the dog fighting venture and hosting dog fights."
Now I know why they call him "Ookie." The whole story makes me feel pretty "ookie" just reading it. So does this next story:
"He was well done."
That's what one woman said Monday after helping her son apprehend an alleged child rapist using her barbecue meat fork.
"I stuck him in his butt!" Linda Rhodes told FOX News , explaining how she and her son John Jennings apprehended the 17-year-old suspect Friday night in Garland, Texas.
I say a barbecue fork in the butt is a good start for a child rapist but I'm keen on stuffing this guy's pockets with baby-back ribs and then sending him in to clean Vick's Bad Newz Kennels.
And finally, you've got to love it when the cops get it right.
BERLIN (Reuters) - A German man who startled his neighbours when he hurled his computer out of the window in the middle of the night, was let off for disturbing the peace by police who sympathised with his technical frustrations.
Police in the northern city of Hanover said they would not press charges after responding to calls made by residents in an apartment block who were woken by a loud crash in the early hours of Saturday.
Officers found the street and pavement covered in electronic parts and discovered who the culprit was.
Asked what had driven him to the night-time outburst, the 51-year-old man said he had simply got annoyed with his computer.
"Who hasn't felt like doing that?" said a police spokesman.
I agree. In fact, I'm pretty sure the website managers for the new FM1071.com felt just like doing that exact thing everytime the website crashed from all the traffic!
Keep it up!
(But I wouldn't stand underneath the web manager's office window anytime soon . . .)
I ask myself that question a lot when I read the news. I'm oddly fascinated with the probabilities of how somebody--anybody--gets caught attempting to deceive and conceal various crimes and sins.
For example, the arrest of Gopher Dominic Jones, the fourth U of M player to be implicated in a horrible sexual attack. The act that he is charged with is just too gross to talk about in too much detail but you may be able to put it together. While reportedly being shot by a cell phone video camera, Jones allegedly pleasured himself while this woman was passed out drunk on the bathroom floor. After the arrests, according to 5 Eyewitness News, the cell video was erased but later recovered by a federal crime lab. Interception! Guess you cannot erase those completely afterall. If true, Dominic Jones must have gone from "I'm in the clear" to "I'm in the Hennepin County Jail" faster than the cornerback can run the hundred.
What are the odds of that being captured on video, erased and yet still there? One 500? One in a 1000?
In another story that pushes credulity:
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) -- The longtime chairman of the Roger Williams University board admitted Monday to using the N-word during a board meeting, saying it "kind of slipped out."
"I apologized for that," Ralph Papitto said in an interview on WPRO-AM. "What else can I do? Kill myself?"
Papitto, 80, who stepped down earlier this month after nearly 40 years on the board, admitted he had used the racial slur at a May meeting of the school's board of trustees.
He had been discussing the difficulty of finding blacks and other minorities to serve on the 16-member board, which at the time included 14 white men and two women.
Barbara Roberts, then a board member, said Papitto became irate when he discussed pressures to make the board more diverse, at one point using the slur to refer to black candidates to the board.
She said he then told the board he knew he couldn't say that because of Don Imus, the radio host who was fired after referring to Rutgers University women's basketball team members as "nappy-headed hos."
"There was, like, this complete and utter silence, and I was shocked beyond belief and very angry," Roberts said.
Papitto, who has given the school at least $7 million and whose name is on the only law school in Rhode Island, said he had never used the term before.
"The first time I heard it was on television or rap music or something," he told WPRO.
The first time this 80-year-old millionaire ever heard the N-word was in a rap song, on TV or something?
What are the odds, do you think, that the first time this guy ever heard the N-word was in a rap song and used it for the first time at age 80 at a university board meeting?
One in a million?
Although I hate to speak for her, if I were the wife of Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, I would be wondering about probabilities too these days.
CNN reports that Sen. David Vitter broke a week of silence on Monday and, with his wife by his side, denied allegations he had relationships with New Orleans prostitutes.
Media reports surfaced in the past week linking the Louisiana senator to a well-known prostitution case in New Orleans. Vitter attributed those charges to "long-term political enemies" and people seeking money.
"Those stories are not true," he said.
Vitter admitted he made calls to an alleged prostitution operation in Washington, offered an apology "to all those I have let down" and vowed to resume his work in the Senate.
So, Sen. Vitter made calls to the madame's number but it's the only time he's been in contact with hookers? And the one time he does it, he gets caught doing it five years later?
What are the odds of Sen. Vitter having to do another press conference coming up? What are the odds of him having to further explain, "What I meant to say was . . . "?
