beancounters

Yellow fever

So, just what IS Harry standing in on the cover of HP7?

It looks like the Colusseum in Rome, but less crumbled. Hmm. Maybe at the end of the book, Voldemort challenges Harry to an old-fashioned chariot race in an overrated tourist attraction. And one of the rules of engagement is, the participants must wear their baggiest, skankiest-looking school robes. 'Cause day-amn.

Update: Anthony thinks it's that room in the Ministry of Magic where Sirius disappeared/died in #5. Your thoughts? I don't remember it being that yellow.

Later update: Bunny says it looks like our local arena, which would make the Deathly Hollows the new wizarding basketball team. And Harry's pose on the front cover is right after game-winning  lay up shot. I like it.

Quit leaning on the Fat Lady there, Skippy

Well, I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired today - too tired to contemplate a weekend drive into the foothills, let alone a trip to Orlando - but I can't work up any excitement about a HP-themed park.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Universal Orlando Resort is opening a Harry Potter theme park that will let fans visit many of the iconic locations in the books and movies that endeared the boy magician to millions. [...]

"The plans I've seen look incredibly exciting, and I don't think fans of the books or films will be disappointed," said author J.K. Rowling, who has been working with a creative team to make sure the park resembles the books and films.

Maybe my problem is the idea of sharing my beloved Hogwarts with a lot of sweaty tourists. Or having to endure "Diagon Alley" in 100% humidity, looking for a nice bottle of water but finding only pumpkin juice that costs $8.00 a mug. Ick.

Or maybe it's the fact that this picture of the castle looks like it sprang from the vapid imagination of Thomas Kinkade. Everyone knows Hogwarts is gloomy and forbidding from the outside. It's an f'n fortress! And a British one at that. We all know the British and their large-scale architectural sensibilities. Hogwarts was built to keep out catapult-firing Muggles during the Middle Ages, not charm them with painterly light displays!

Austen purists, take heed

Jane Austen has gotten a make-over. [via Bookshelves of Doom]

What do you think? Good idea? Sacrilege? All I know is, if I were Jane, I wouldn't have liked generations of readers to picture me in that little nightcap forever.

Grammar got run over by a reindeer

Sorry, I can't start school yet - I'm reading the very funny Eats, Shoots & Leaves (finally), and am busy laughing about being a stickler for grammar.

I'm not much of a stickler at all. Oh, I know my grammar rules, though you might not be able to tell from the grammar displayed on this blog. But only a few punctuation mistakes really get to me anymore. There was a time I would rant to anybody who would listen, "Look! The grocery store is selling tuna for point-fifty-nine-cents a can! Maybe they meant to write $.59, but who knows? They could be having an amazing sale. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to walk in there with a penny, and take a can of tuna to the register, and say, 'I believe this will cover it!' And then I will ask for my change."

After a while I got tired of all the stares, so I shut it down. Mostly. Except for a lot of eye-rolling. But after this book is read, who knows? Maybe now, no grocery store will be safe from my camera.

So long, Bob

Robert Anton Wilson died yesterday, after a long illness. As author of the Illuminatus! trilogy, Cosmic Trigger, and Masks of the Illuminati, his creativity and his irreverent outlook on politics had a tremendous influence on me. Be sure and read R.U. Sirius's tribute today, as it says what I wish I could.

On his blog, Bob's care-givers wrote this final entry:

Robert Anton Wilson Defies Medical Experts and leaves his body @4:50 AM on binary date 01/11.

All Hail Eris!

On behalf of his children and those who cared for him, deepest love and gratitude for the tremendous support and lovingness bestowed upon us.

But this is what Bob had to say previously:

Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"
The Roshi replied, "I don't know."
Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!"
"Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."

HP7 title announced

::Sigh:: Whatever.

JK Rowling missed her final chance to name one of her books the title I came up with: "Harry Potter and the Night Job of Dismay".

At least, I think it's Latin

Why doesn't the curriculum at Hogwarts include Latin? I've always wanted to know. I mean, 99% of all the spells and charms known to magical folk are of a Latin-ish origin. Unlike the situation in most of the world, Latin is a highly relevant language to the wizarding community. You would think that a good, basic grounding in grammar and syntax would be as important in the magical world as it is in Catholic Seminary.

It's illogical to think this is just an oversight on the part of the school's Board of Governors. I've spent a great deal of time and energy pondering this, and the only sound conclusion I can come to is that failure to include Latin in the curriculum was deliberative action on the part of the administration.

We may never know their reasoning, as it is very difficult to obtain meeting minute notes from the B. of G. Transparancy in governance, a concept which we take for granted here in the U.S., is not the norm within the bureaucracy of the British magical world.

Maybe they believe, if they teach the kids Latin, the kids will proceed to make up their own spells. They're afraid of anarchy, or maybe afraid of injurious new spells that Madame Pomfrey can't cure in the Hospital Wing. That sort of thing.

On the other extreme, though, ignorance is not bliss. You could easily get a situation where a student comes across a spell he can't decipher, and uses it recklessly, as HP did in Book 6. What happened, of course, is that HP nearly killed a student on accident.

Overarching Questions:

Is the withholding of Latin Studies really a sound education policy on the part of Dumbledore and the rest of the Board of Governors? Can we afford to continue to stand by, while the next generation of fictional witches and wizards languishes in ignorance?

Conclusion:

More research is needed. Starting with Book 7.

Owl post question

Here’s what I’d like to know about the owl post in the Harry Potter books. Well, I have a lot of questions, but let's start easy.

Say you’re the Muggle parent of a Hogwarts student, and you need to get an emergency message to your little wizard. You can't telephone or send a telegram. You need an owl to send a piece of mail to Hogwarts, right? But let's say the requisition pet owl that you now own (issued to your home free with your first semester’s paid tuition) is out catching toads or some such. How do you call for another owl ASAP?

There would almost have to be a central owl post office in Britain that includes a Muggle Help Desk and a local telephone number. Your thoughts?

What's left on your reading list?

And without warning, August threw out her hands and cast away the remaining days of summer. Soon, September loomed into view, and those without the means to escape felt like they were pelted with slow-motion pillows during the three day weekend that was Labor Day.

But I digress.

Have received almost all my books for school, which starts in a scant two weeks. They range in topics from the history of California land use planning, to collaborative methods. There's also a provocative book whose theme is that says that citizens actually don't really want to know much about how their government operates - that it's a 150 year-old myth that people yearn for direct democracy and would get much more highly involved with gov't if gov't weren't so flawed. That's the one I've attacked first.

So all these, plus the latest Martha Stewart mag, plus the book for Maya's last bookclub meeting - The Tipping Point - are currently on my reading list. Though to be honest, I will just do a collegiate skim of the four schoolbooks for now.

What are you reading before fall begins?

Do as I say, not as I write

Anthony sent this to me. He thinks Stephen King imploring any author not to send a main character to a cruel and unusual death is the height of irony.

Authors Implore Rowling Not To Kill Harry in Final Book
Two best-selling authors have asked the best-selling author of all not to kill off the central character of her stories. John Irving (The World According to Garp) and Stephen King (Carrie) told a news conference in New York Tuesday that they had written to J.K. Rowling asking her not to kill Harry Potter in the final book of her series about the boy wizard. (Each of her Harry Potter tales has been or will be made into a motion picture. She has indicated that several key characters will die in her final Potter book, which she is currently writing.) Referring to a scene in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Final Problem, in which Doyle killed off his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, King told reporters, "I don't want [Harry] to go over the Reichenbach Falls." Irving commented, "My fingers are crossed for Harry." (If history is any indication, there may still be hope for Harry even if Rowling does kill him off. The public was so outraged after Doyle sent Holmes to his death that it mounted a letter-writing campaign that resulted in the author's resurrection of Holmes.)

British author threatens a nice scar-faced boy who never hurt her and actually has made her a gazillionaire

Why does she say things like this, why? It's not like her work really needs the publicity. You know that the day HP7 comes out, the entire Western world is going to shut down for business while we read it.

LONDON - Author J.K. Rowling said two characters will die in the last installment of her boy wizard series, and she hinted Harry Potter might not survive either.

"I have never been tempted to kill him off before the final because I've always planned seven books, and I want to finish on seven books," Rowling said Monday on TV here.

"I can completely understand, however, the mentality of an author who thinks, `Well, I'm gonna kill them off because that means there can be no non-author-written sequels. So it will end with me, and after I'm dead and gone they won't be able to bring back the character'."

Rowling declined to commit herself about Harry, saying she doesn't want to receive hate mail.

Sweetie darling, go buy yourself some nice barrettes and stop tormenting your readers.

The Prince at the pub

Maya has set up a summer book club for our public policy clique, the Study Buddies.  We are to meet at her favorite pub for discussions, which definitely seals the deal, but don't tell her.

If the selections have a theme, it is surely 'unusual outlooks on public-sector management'. The first book on the list? The Prince. 

I've never read this before. I was prepared for it to be a book about how to commit evil, because the term 'Machiavellian' is practically synonymous with cold, calculating despotism these days. But it wasn't an evil book; his writings weren't advocating long-term oppression of the people, or anything like it. He did discuss oppression, but mainly by citing examples and giving tons of anecdotal evidence as to its low degree of success. In his conclusions, he says the easiest and most efficient ways to a) obtain, and b) maintain power under various circumstances is to win over the people while rendering your actual enemies - those in the peerage - er, obsolete.

At the pub, I made the group consider some of the less savory anecdotes and decide if Machiavelli meant them figuratively or literally. We had four different translations on hand for reference.

Ch 3: "Upon this,   one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can   avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the   injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in   fear of revenge."

Group concensus: Figurative.

Ch. 7: "After this he awaited an opportunity to crush the Orsini, having scattered   the adherents of the Colonna house."

Group concensus: Probably figurative ...

Ch. 7: "Under this  pretence he took Ramiro, and one morning caused him to be executed and left on the piazza  at Cesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The barbarity of this spectacle  caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed."

Group concensus: Literal. Also: yecch. 

So, to recap: Machiavelli. Not evil; merely pedantic. A 15th century Italian public policy expert with a head for analysis and an uncomfortably long memory about those bloodthirsty Borgias and Medicis.  But some very useful lessons to be gained in the area of public management. If you take the advice about the enemies figuratively.

Long strange trip

Doff your tinfoil hats, please, out of respect for the passing of a counter-cultural tradition - Loompanics is going out of business. [via Pops]

Back when I worked in a bookstore, my coworkers and I routinely spent our meager paychecks on alternative literature like the Loompanics books. Oddly, I don't have a single one left - it's as if, one by one, they wandered off my shelves to travel the world by way of other people's backpacks and VW glove compartments.

I am not going to re-order any of them during this final sale, though they're clearing out everything at 50% off. But it's important to have at least captured one of their T-shirts for posterity.

(Wait - Is the phrase "counter-cultural tradition" an oxymoron?)

Tales from The Book of Anne

In two weeks, Anne Rice ... will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord."

Yeah, you read that right. She's an un-lapsed Catholic now.

In [the] afterword she calls Christ "the ultimate supernatural hero ... the ultimate immortal of them all."

What on Earth was the matter with cynicism, Anne? It keeps the rest of us agnostics happy. You should have called me first. I could have helped you save the vampire franchise.

HP6: enforced break

Ultimately, I had to leave off at midnight on Chapter 20, as my traitorous eyes would not stay open.

And I'm seriously considering skipping work to finish the book. Isn't this a prime example of the need for employee stress leave? Harry's about to follow Draco around the castle in his Invisibility Cloak! I mean, show a little compassion here! If I don't stay around, anything could happen.

No? Hmmph. Then I'd better go to my closet and figure out what's still clean to wear, as I did no laundry this weekend.

HP6 Update

Bunny and I drove out of town yesterday to see my family. While we were gone, HP6 came in to the house from Amazon, so it turns out BB was the first in the family to crack it open. (Was that his secret motive for staying home?) He was on page 250 at 4:30 p.m., page 450 at 9:30 p.m. when we came home, and so he probably finished it at midnight after I was in bed! When he wakes up, he'll be insufferably smug, but he knows if he utters any spoilers today, he'll get clobbered.

This morning Bunny got up first, and now has the book in a death-grip. Maybe I'll read a few chapters myself, after she goes to bed tonight.

9:00 a.m. - Bunny suddenly put down HP6 and told me I can read it if I want to. But then immediately she asked if we could do an art project together. Torture! My need to read is battling my good parenting instincts.

9:08 a.m. - She can't find good cardboard to make masks with. Discouraged, and highly perturbed at me, she took HP6 to her room. But I hear her computer now. I should sneak in there and take borrow the book.

10:02 p.m. - She gave up the book to me. Isn't that odd? Who is this child? I'm on Chapter 3.

12:30 p.m. - Chapter 5. Also did the art project with Girl. She just wants to read at her own pace, she says, and doesn't want to keep me waiting. Another day, I'll remind her she should show more assertiveness. In this case, it works too much in my favor.

2:43 p.m. - Chapter 9. It's too horribly hot outside to step foot out the door, unless you're heading to the car to go to the pool, as we will soon. BB's got his own appointments to keep this afternoon. So far, he's told us no spoilers.

5:30 p.m. - Chapter 11. Didn't read at the pool. Aren't I a good mommy?

8:19 p.m. - Chapter 15. Suddenly there was plate with salad and chicken in front of me at the kitchen table. People walked in and out of the kitchen, thanking me for making dinner. WTF? When did that happen?

HP6: Can't help but wonder!

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,
originally uploaded by Julie at juvin.com.

Well, to pass the time before our books arrive from Amazon, and/or we collect our books in a mysterious midnight blood ritual at B&N, let's have some fun for the rest of the day. Let's toss out some things that we think could happen in book six. There are only a few more hours left to speculate! Get cracking!

POTENTIAL PLOT POINTS IN BOOK SIX:

*Grawp re-emerges from the Forbidden Forest wearing centaur-skin mocassins. The centaurs, so demoralized that they lost a fight with one retarded giant, no longer lord it over the other creatures in the forest. They withdraw from all contact with humanity and eventually migrate north. Inexplicably, they take the squid in the lake with them.

*Prof. Trelawney, reinstated as a Divinations teacher but finding her elective course to be considerably less well-attended than Firenze's, explores other career options. Now she heads up the fifth year's Wizarding Job Fair. Her booth, where she reads tea
leaves to divine the perfect career path for each client, gathers a loyal following.

*Draco and Pansy Parkinson lose their virginity together under the Whomping Willow; this starts a dangerous "extreme-sport" craze among the Slytherins.

More?

* With the centaurs gone, the forest’s climate of malevolence lightens considerably. Hagrid moves to downgrade the forest’s condition from “Forbidden” to “Imprudent”.

* A tragedy at Hogwart’s. After the adventure with the Sorcerer's Stone many years ago, everybody forgot about Fluffy, the giant three-headed guard dog in the third-floor corridor. Poor Fluffy, it turns out, died of starvation several weeks after the incident. Dumbledore declares a day of mourning for the poor creature, but the memorial service is cut short when Fluffy’s ghost leaps out of the coffin and kills Mrs. Norris the cat. From that time on, the third-floor corridor is permanently sealed off.

* From the grave (!), Dumbledore charms every Dumbledore chocolate frog card in existence to make them talk. For several weeks, his cards are all the rage, until it's realized they never shut up. Still, seventh-year students are constantly caught trying to smuggle these cards into their N.E.W.T. exams.

* Minister Fudge, his eyes now open, consults Harry Potter almost daily by owl post. At first, he sticks to Voldemort-related matters. Later the owls begin to carry pictures of Fudge wearing ladies clothing and attending gladiator tournaments. The situation degenerates from there.

:::crickets:::

Wow, tough room!

I wish I'd thought of it!

Heh. Dumbledore's death, written in the style of A.A. Milne. (NOT a spoiler - just a parody.)

The story grows
(Tiddly Pom)
The money flows
(Tiddly Pom)
The more it goes
(Tiddly Pom)
On growing.

And nobody knows
(Tiddly Pom)
How it will close
(Tiddly Pom)
How it will close
(Tiddly Pom)
'cept Rowling.

More parodies here. [Via Chaos Theory] And not to be coy or anything, but did I make you read my HP5 parody yet?

Books meme a lot to me

I was tagged by Snowball for a book meme over two weeks ago; I confess it's been sitting in my Drafts folder all this time while I work on sections of it. That's how pathetic I am.

Books have been on my mind lately - I was determined to take a vacation from policy books through the whole month of June. That lasted, oh, a few days! Then yesterday afternoon I went to a lecture from a PPA alum who works in the Schwarzenegger administration. Now I'm all fired up to read policy books again to get a jump on the semester. Freak.

Total number of books I've owned: Heh. Don't want much, do you?

Well, I'll estimate around 3000, give or take a hundred. The odd thing is, I don't remember acquiring them, yet at least once a year BB and I cull our collection and take five or six grocery bags' worth to the used bookstore or to church (for charity). What's up with that? Oh, I know why. BB buys way more books than I do. Hmm.

The last book I bought:  Reinventing Government. Yes, Bill Clinton, the book you recommended all those years ago on the campaign trail still has legs here in Sacramento's public policy program. I saw it in a used book store and picked it up out of curiosity. Now it's on next year's reading list. I've read about half so far.

The last book I read:  Huckleberry Finn. What a wonder. I thought I knew everything about it already just because it is so famous. But unless you live inside a work of literature for a while, and you listen to its voice, you don't know much at all. I'm not saying this well at all, but hopefully you'll get what I mean.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings  - I read The Hobbit on a cross-country trip when I was 12. I liked it all right but it didn't grab me enough to attempt the trilogy; at that time the thing looked too involved and obscure. But when I knew the movies were being produced, I was determined to read them ahead. I started them and couldn't put them down.

A Wrinkle in Time - Read it in junior high school and everything about it stuck with me - the characters, the ideas, the adventure. This book is solely the reason why BB and I will never be able to buy a home in a gated community. We both vividly remember the dimension with the identical houses, the identical children bouncing their identical balls in perfect rhythm ... very eerie.

Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. This is a four-part sci-fi series. I actually started with books 3 and 4 and was able to make sense of it; otherwise, I do recommend you start with the first one. Humanism triumphs over Catholicism, though it does take thousands of years and a time-tomb. Plus, Martin the bad-tempered poet reminds me of Anthony.

Silverlock by John Myers Myers. A fantasy book with a great sense of humor. The more literature you've read ahead of time, the more you'll recognize the characters in the Commonwealth.

Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love. Yeah, okay. Say what you want about the horny old bastard, especially with regard to his later work. This one transcends all the name-calling. I'll pit Lazarus Long against Steven Covey for effectiveness any day!

Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their blog: This time, I am not going to tag anybody. I know it's breaking the Code, but I'm hoping the Code is more what you'd call "guidelines". So if you liked this meme and feel like taking up the mantle, please do.

Will you still love me if I'm only moderately effective?

For years I studiously avoided reading it. Even though my friends raved about it, I stayed away. Even though it became wildly popular, and spawned a franchise of economic proportions that rival many South American countries, I vowed I never would crack open the cover on that book or its many spin-offs.

But now comes next year's public management course reading list. And look what's right smack in the middle.

It's a cult! A cult, I tell you! A cult of work/life balance and spheres of time-managed people! And now they've even claimed the soul of my esteemed budgets (and soon to be public management) professor!

They suck you in, and next thing you know, man, you're into it all ... the Covey dayplanners, the calculators, the posters, the subliminal tapes, the hairdo minders, the kitty organizers ... they'll have you, and there's nothing you can do, because you'll want to belong. That's right! And from there it's just a short step to buying some Dr. Phil underoos, and licking O/prah Book Club novels! I am very worried now.