1. When the Order is making up enough “Harry flavored polyjuice potion” to create six additional Harrys, it says that Harry just grabbed a hank of his own hair and pulled—and it came out with no ill effects. Excuse me?! If I grabbed a bunch of my own hair and simply pulled, nothing would happen—except me having a hurt scalp. Even if I was strong enough to actually pull out a bunch of my own hair at once, I should certainly expect bleeding from scalp trauma! Whatever happened to “accio scissors!” (or shears or whatever they call them over there)? Surely that would’ve been a lot easier for them and a lot less painful for Harry!
     (Actually, the way I shed, it would be a whole lot easier to run my fingers through my hair several times until I found half a dozen loose ones!)

2. Spatial Perception Error: Hagrid riding on Sirius’s motorcycle. If Hagrid is as huge as Jo makes him out to be (dolphin-sized feet and what all), surely he wouldn’t be able to fit on a regular motorcycle?

3. I was going to comment on Hagrid pulling his umbrella-wand out of his jacket pocket on page 58, but it occurred to me that—based on the way that coat was described in the first book—it might actually be possible to stick the umbrella into one of its pockets.

4. Why did Ron get a brand new watch for his seventeenth birthday and Harry get stuck with the hand-me-down? Surely, you give hand-me-downs to your children and new items to your guests? (Somebody call Miss Manners!)

5. This one really gets me…it dogged me the whole time I was re-reading book seven…
     If The Tales of Beedle the Bard is so damn popular that it’s the wizarding version of Grimm’s Fairytales, why haven’t Krum and his Durmstrang cronies heard of The Tale of the Three Brothers? Surely, Beedle’s works would’ve been translated into hundreds of different languages and been read to Durmstrang students just as well as Hogwarts students? Even if the sign of the Deathly Hallows had been inked into Hermione’s copy by Dumbledore or Grindelwald, you’d think that one of the students (either the rebels or the ones “giving the beat-down”) would’ve heard about the Deathly Hallows and put two and two together.

6. I can’t help but think this every time I read something about Aberforth Dumbledore and his “inappropriate goat-charming”…did he really practice “inappropriate” charms on a goat? (What would be considered inappropriate?) Or is “practicing inappropriate charms on a goat” an analogy for bestiality, much like sandwiches are an analogy for pot on How I Met Your Mother?

7. Why, if Harry had sent him to work at Hogwarts a book earlier, was Kreacher still wearing that nasty old towel when the trio showed up at Grimmauld Place? He was never presented with clothes, just sent to work somewhere else. Why wasn’t he wearing a Hogwarts tea towel like the other elves? (I assume the only reason Dobby and Winky wore regular clothes was because they were free elves and had the luxury.)

8. Why would kids who thought they would be attending Hogwarts have purchased all their school supplies before attaining blood status? Surely acceptance letters wouldn’t be issued until each and every new and returning student had their blood status verified? The idea Harry presents of kids buying new textbooks only to never see Hogwarts doesn’t make any sense.

9. Ditching Tonks aside, why on earth didn’t Harry accept help from Lupin? Therein lays another example of idiot Harry Potter and his hero complex. I can understand not telling the minister of magic and certain other people, but Lupin? Really? I wonder how much faster they would’ve finished if they’d had Lupin along for the ride—or at least if they bothered to check in with him from time to time after shunting him back to his new bride.

10. If Dumbledore had never mentioned that he had lived in Godric’s Hollow—much less that he had been friends with Bathilda Bagshot—then why would Harry and Hermione think for one second that that was the place to go to retrieve the sword? I can understand Harry’s desire to travel to the Hollow to see where his life began, but otherwise, that was a worthless trip—not to mention a horrid decision that got the two of them into an arseload of trouble!

11. On that note, why the hell didn’t Dumbledore ever mention that he, too, was from Godric’s Hollow? Was he so damn busy feeding Harry’s hero complex by using him as a pawn that it just “slipped his mind”?

12. Why has no one bothered to point out that Lily and James were 21 when they died? 21! What kind of depraved bastard kills a pair of kids barely out of Hogwarts, then tries to murder a baby in his crib? I realize that Voldemort is the wizarding Hitler, but goddamn!

13. More naïveté on the part of Harry and Hermione…Bathilda “sees” through an invisibility cloak and polyjuice potion and they trust her? They just blow it off as “Dumbledore-like power”? Oh my Goddess…what fucking DUMBASSES! You know what? Y’all deserved to be attacked by Nagini and Voldemort! Serves you right for making too many childish, naïve assumptions!

14. Oh, oh, oh! AND, with Voldemort after them, Hermione is dumb enough to let Harry go with a virtual unknown by himself?! They’re so goddamn safety conscious that they took polyjuice potion for the trip and learned how to apparate and disapparate under the invisibility cloak, but she’s relaxed enough about anybody other than their classmates and the Order to let him go off alone? YOU DUMB BITCH!!!

15. Are we to understand that Hogwarts only gives out academic prizes in your seventh year? Because if that wasn’t the case, we surely would’ve seen Hermione rake in a boatload before this. (When I was in high school, the administration gave awards every year—not just your final.)
     And what about Dumbledore writing an article for Transfiguration Today? Why didn’t Hermione ever do anything like that? She had enough free time between a million classes and feeding Harry’s hero complex that she could knit elf hats and clothes…why the hell did she never take the time out to write scholarly articles? That sounds like it would be right up her alley!

16. I won’t argue this point…I’ll let Ron speak for me, instead: “Why the hell didn’t you take this thing off before you dived?”
     Harry was alone in the woods. He felt safe enough to leave Hermione’s wand beside the pool…why the hell was he so fucking stupid as to not remove the horcrux?

17. How on earth did Hermione keep the trio in a supply of polyjuice potion? Are we supposed to believe that she took a complete potion kit and a cauldron in that giant bag of hers? It wouldn’t surprise me any…
     (The whole “polyjuice potion takes a month to brew” thing is a non-issue, considering they were on the run from August ‘til what sounded like April or May.)

18. I find it extremely hard to believe that Ron simply hissing at the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets got it to open. Parseltongue is a language for fuck’s sake—simply hissing at something isn’t going to cut it!

19. Why didn’t any of the Death Eaters—nay, why didn’t Voldemort—double-check Narcissa to ensure that Harry didn’t have a pulse? Voldemort works all these years to take Harry out, killing hundreds—if not thousands—of people in the process, and he’s so goddamn DUMB as to be defeated by the mere fact that he forgot to double-check for a pulse?! OI!

20. Why the fuck did Voldemort think that Neville would willingly join him as a Death Eater? Why the fuck does Voldemort want Neville as a Death Eater? Because he’s a pureblood? That little setup to allow Voldemort to set him on fire was stupid and implausible.

21. Harry was a dumbass for getting rid of the Elder Wand. ‘nuff said.

1. I try not to let movie rants seep into my book rants, but this one I can’t help…
    Why oh why oh why did they not cast Christian Coulson as the elder Tom Riddle? He was twenty-six when he was playing a teenage prefect, for Goddess’s sake…surely, they could have had him play Voldemort when he came back to seek the Dark Arts professorship? The movie people broke a lot of hearts when they left Christian out—mine included. (I went through the whole book squealing over how they had to bring Christian back. Extremely disappointed that they didn’t!)

2. Ginny is completely irrational when Ron gets mad at her when he and Harry discover her kissing Dean Thomas.
     “If you went out and got a bit of snogging done yourself, you wouldn’t mind so much that everyone else does it!” Really, Ginny? What about those of us who aren’t fond of kissing and who don’t understand the point of “tongue wrestling”; much less what’s so sexy about it? You think me running out and awkwardly frenching some guy is going to make up for all my inadequacies? I think not!¹

3. In chapter eighteen, Hermione says, “I’ve been right through the Restricted Section and even in the most horrible books…” On whose permission? Surely any professor granting permission to use the Restricted Section would want to know why before writing/signing a note to give to Madam Pince, so who granted permission and what excuse did Hermione use? Or is it fully acceptable for N.E.W.T.s students to use the Restricted Section and Jo just never told us?
     (I seem to recall something in the first or second book about older students using the Restricted Section for research for classes like Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts, but I don’t remember anything being said about those students being able to use the Restricted Section freely.)

4. Chapter nineteen again demonstrates Jo’s difficulty with spatial perception—a topic that tends to drive Ashley over at PGG nuts. (Or make her laugh…I forget which.)

     “No more than six at a time!” said Madam Pomfrey, hurrying out of her office.

     “Hagrid makes six,” George pointed out.

     “Oh…yes…” said Madam Pomfrey, who seemed to have been counting Hagrid as several people due to his vastness.

If Grawp is about sixteen feet tall and Hagrid is supposed to be taller than the average male, but shorter than Grawp…exactly how tall/wide does someone have to be before the infirmarian mistakes them for “several people”? Just curious…

5. Page 485: Slughorn calls Ron “Rupert”. I’m guessing that’s a “wink-nudge” to Rupert Grint, who plays Ron in the movies, because she could’ve had Slughorn call him “Randy” or “Raoul” or anything else.

6. “It’s a banned subject at Hogwarts…Dumbledore’s particularly fierce about it…” And who, at that point, gave a shit about what Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore thought? We know that Armando Dippet is headmaster when Tom Riddle is at school, because Jo mentions it in the second book. We also know that Dumbledore is not the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, because at that time, Galatea Merrythought was just getting ready to retire. So what position is Dumbledore in that his thoughts about various topics have any bearing on the school? Deputy Headmaster? Without that information, Slughorn’s statement is confusing, almost anachronous.

7. “It’s me home…it’s bin me home since I was thirteen.” …you didn’t consider Hogwarts your home when you first started, Hagrid? You didn’t perhaps think it was the best thing to happen to you in your entire life, like so many others, and at least call it your second home?

8. At the beginning of chapter thirty, it says that Mrs. Finnegan had difficulty finding a bed in Hogsmeade. Why should that be a problem? It’s a time of crisis and tragedy and other students are being pulled out by the boatload….shouldn’t the rules be bent at least once, and McGonagall allow parents who want to attend the funeral to sleep in the empty beds? We know that Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw all have at least one empty bed by the simple fact that it says the Patil twins and Zacharias Smith have been pulled…why couldn’t Mrs. Finnegan sleep in Parvati’s empty bed? You’d think that would make her even happier, being in the girls’ dorm of her son’s house!
     More than that, there are probably at least a dozen unused classrooms all around the school…why couldn’t McGonagall magic up some sleeping bags and allow the parents to sleep there? That’s almost a better idea than allowing them to sleep in the empty dorm beds…it seems like less of a rules/privacy violation to me.

9. Later in chapter thirty, it says that everyone was wearing their dress robes for Dumbledore’s funeral. Dress robes aren’t on the required clothing list and the only fancy dress event Hogwarts had in the previous five books was the Yule Ball. Who, therefore, actually has dress robes with them? Especially since you would think that the sixth and seventh years would’ve taken their dress robes home when they went home for Christmas that year, or when school let out for the summer. Even those who had them at home couldn’t get them back by owl in time, given how soon Dumbledore’s funeral was after his death.

=====

¹ For the record, I’ve kissed several guys, but never with tongue (despite the efforts of the recipient of my first kiss). I’ve had eleven years since my first kiss to try and think about/figure out why French kissing is so great and it still mystifies me.

I’m going to try this in the style of Ashley from Pussy Goes Grr…giving answers instead of asking questions…

(I, unlike her, will not split into two entries. I can't wait and neither should you! xD )

1. Harry seems to have extreme difficulty leaving the scene before he gets in trouble. In the movie version of CoS, he knows that Dobby is going to dump the pudding on someone in the room, yet he just stands there like an idiot and watches! When he brings Dudley home after the dementor attack, does he race upstairs to avoid the brunt of Vernon’s anger? No! He lingers long enough for Dudley to pin him as the culprit. Dumbass have a masochistic streak, or what?
    (Maybe he hasn’t heard the American cliché “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”!)

2. In order to break through the Fidelius charm, the secret keeper has to personally tell someone the secret. Yet in OotP, a simple piece of paper is sufficient, and in DH, a Death Eater hangs onto Hermione’s robe and is thereby let in on the secret. In a world where the difference between “S” and “F” is a buffalo on your chest, surely being let in on a Fidelius charm takes more than that!

3. I’m under the impression that the Dark Mark is applied through some form of scarification/tattooing and is therefore always present on a Death Eater’s arm in some form. If that’s the case, why were so many people taken at their word that they were simply under the Imperius curse? Surely, detecting Death Eaters is as simple as checking arms! And the Ministry could do spot-checks, too, so the suspected Death Eaters wouldn’t have time to cover up the scar with Muggle makeup or a charm.
     (And if some people are going to argue that just because someone has a Dark Mark doesn’t mean they’ve actually killed or tortured anybody, then, at the very least, no one bearing a Dark Mark should be allowed into the Ministry. Who knows what havoc Lucius Malfoy has wreaked all these years because some dumbass couldn’t be bothered to do a simple arm check!)

4. Dumbledore’s comment that he didn’t make Harry a prefect is because he thought he had “quite enough to be getting along with already” is the worst excuse I’ve heard in a long time. If someone is good at what they do, you don’t give it to the second best person to muddle along—you give it to the best person and let them deal with it however they can. I get that making Ron a prefect allows Harry to do some stuff it would be improper for a prefect to do otherwise, and it contributes to Harry’s whole “Dumbledore hates me” mentality. But Ron has never shown for a minute that he was worth the privileges and duties concomitant to being a prefect and Jo fucked up in giving it to him.

5. Why does Jo always leave in the addresses when she writes her Daily Prophet articles? Does she live in some magical world where putting interviewees addresses in the newspaper doesn’t result in robberies, or is it just some dumb thing that British journalists actually do?

6. What’s a blood blisterpod? Is that an ingredient in the nosebleed nougats or is it—I suspect—the name Jo used for nosebleed nougats when she forgot that she’d already named them?

7. This one is more of an “I’ve wanted to tell someone for ages, but I haven’t had the chance to…‘til now!”
    The information witch at St. Mungo’s says that Arthur has been moved to the “Dai Llewellyn” ward. It would probably take someone with knowledge of both stage magic and metaphysical magick to catch that one: Dai Vernon is a famous magician and Llewellyn is a major Pagan publishing company. Nice.

8. The whole “Sirius gives Harry a magic mirror/Harry decides to never use it” issue is stupid. If you’re going to make a point about writing about a powerful magical object, then the person who has it should use it—otherwise, what’s the point of introducing it in the first place? I grant that Harry does use it in the final book to get help from Aberforth, but I sincerely doubt that was Jo’s original plan for it. It seems—despite Harry’s insistence that he’d never use it— a lot like she had some big plot idea that would require him to use it later on, but she just never went there. With that particular idea cut out of the book—and perhaps the entire series—the mirror issue turns out to be yet another of Jo Rowling’s half-assed ideas.

9. Why in the hell does Madam Marsh ride the Knight Bus if she suffers from motion sickness? At this point, we know that beyond the Knight Bus, there’s apparition, riding brooms, Floo powder and portkeys. If the Knight Bus and brooms cause her motion sickness and (I’m guessing) she’s too scared of being splinched to have an apparition license, why the hell doesn’t she use Floo powder or portkeys?! Having her puking her way through two scenes in the third and fifth books does nothing for the storyline. Thank you for throwing in more extraneous bullshit, Jo!

10. I loathe it when authors don’t go back and check their own work, so they end up being unable to keep their own facts straight.
    The first time Snape uses legilimency on Harry, it says that Harry remembers Ripper chasing him up the tree when he was nine. But in PoA, Harry clearly remembers that Ripper chased him up the tree the year before he started Hogwarts, making him ten, not nine. (Jo can’t even argue that it happened before Harry’s birthday, because if you count an exact year before he started Hogwarts, then it would reverse back to September 1 the previous year, thereby making him most certainly ten.)

11. I don’t get why Cho had to act like a total nutjob in Madam Puddifoot’s. I agree with Harry…why does she think she has to bring up subjects that turn her into a human hose? Worse than that, what the hell does she think she’s doing, dragging Harry to the most romantic place in Hogsmeade? They’re not even dating yet and she tries to push him into snogging and mushy girly shit? PurLEASE! Barf, barf, all the way. Cho is a total idiot—whine to someone who cares, bitch!

12. Harry apparently can’t count. Right after he finds out about the Inquisitorial Squad, Fred and George drop by and Harry complains that Draco just docked them “about fifty points”. Let’s run this down, shall we?

• Harry: five because Draco doesn't like him
• Ron: five for having his shirt untucked
• Hermione: five for being snotty about Umbridge and another ten for being a mudblood
• Ernie MacMillan: Five for contradicting Draco

Total: thirty points

In what math book is thirty points “about fifty”? Someone recently suggested that it seemed weird that Hogwarts graduates are expected to go out into the world with no more than a fifth grade education in the basic subjects—they’re absolutely right: Harry just demonstrated that he couldn’t even do simple addition! (Or maybe it’s Jo that can’t.)

13. Why on Goddess’s green earth does Harry believe for one second that Voldemort has Sirius in the Department of Mysteries? Is Harry that naïve, that he couldn’t imagine that Voldemort might catch onto the fact that he had been having those dreams and use it to set a trap? Hermione was right…if it was five o’clock, then the ministry would have to be—maybe not full of witches and wizards—but have enough circulating around the building to head home that someone would’ve seen two wanted wizards if they tried to sneak in.
    Furthermore, why the hell did Harry believe Kreacher when he said that Sirius was at the ministry and would never come back? The house elf spent the whole of the summer and winter holidays insulting everyone he came into contact with…what would suddenly make him change his tune and tell Harry the truth?
    You know, the more Harry Potter I read, the more I realize that Jo Rowling wrote the books for kids and kids only; clearly thinking that no one would ever stop to analyze her stupid decisions—even when she made quite a few implausible ones.

14. The existence of the Death Chamber begs the question: why is it there? What was it used for? Did the ministry execute criminals before Azkaban opened? (Actually, the Department of Mysteries raises a lot of questions. But I suppose that’s why it’s the Department of Mysteries!)

15. Why the fuck didn’t Dumbledore kill Voldemort when he had a chance? For fuck’s sake…he had a clear shot when Voldemort was yammering away…why not kill him and end it then and there? I don’t care if there was supposed to be two more books in the series and it would ruin all of Jo’s plans—THIS IS THE WIZARDING VERSION OF HITLER, FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!

You know, the more bullshit that Ashley and I nitpick out of these books, the more I wonder if they're worth reading anymore...

This one's been done for a while now...I was just hanging onto it because I thought I would eventually find the words that would allow me to add more...

I love you

I love you
    more than daylight.
I love you
    more than the newspaper in the morning,
    a good book or
    an icy can of Diet Coke.
I love you
    more than I ever thought possible.
I love you
    more than I ever loved him.

I love you with every breathless moment
    of my rather short life.
I love you with every word
    ever written by a man
    dead or alive.
I love you with every word
    ever sung by a woman.
I love you with every word
    ever dreamed of in spirit.
But I also love you
    more than any words
    can ever say.

I love you beyond death.
I love you from this life
    into the next.
I love you
    beyond the gilded stars,
    the glimmering planets,
    and the peerless moon.
I love you
    in the azure waters
    of my Great Lakes.
I love you
    on white sand beaches
    walking toward
    the golden horizon.
I love you
    in the endless forests
    of my childhood home.
I love you,
I love you,
    wherever I shall roam.

Each August, Beloit College puts out a list to help college professors get into the mindset of the incoming class. I always read it, because I find it fascinating.

Below is the list for the class of 2008--those who graduated high school with me...

(Comments by me in red)

Interesting, hmm?

I've been thinking of looking up a list of stuff that happened the year I was born...that might be a future blog.