It's the start of a ...thing.

So, yeah. Youtube Mondays from here on out. Or until I get bored with it.

This week's videos are They Might Be Giants related. (Note that not every week will necessarily have themes. This week just does. Because TMBG rule.)

First up, a Lost/TMBG combo!


And two songs from them:





and, of course, after watching these (and even if you didn't), you are Older than you've ever been...

clickclickclick

Warning: May cause obsessive-compulsive disorder.

(Yeah, I didn't really have anything to blog about today, so it's just a link to a fun time-wasting game. Also while you're there, try this one. I got up to the green level. The mirrored-inverted-moving levels are just insane)

A Million A Day

If aliens arrived on earth, (or, heck, it could be some disease, I suppose) and started killing random people - but always 1 million every single day, it would take them 17.8 years to eliminate the human race.

Possibly longer, since people would still be giving birth.

But imagine that. 1,000,000 people is just about the population of Las Vegas. So it would take 17 years of wiping Las Vegas off the planet every day before all humans were gone.

That is a lot of homo sapiens.

I've thought about having expanding that idea somehow into a story - but I don't really know where it would go. Maybe people start to figure out a pattern to which people are going to be killed? Or they attempt to fight back? I don't think that there is much of a story there. It's just an interesting fact that there are over 6.5 billion people on the planet, and that is a large number that I can't really comprehend.

But I have noticed that a good percentage of my story ideas involve some sort of crisis that impacts the entire human race. Not sure why that idea appeals to me, but it does keep arising in my consciousness. Maybe if I actually finished one of the stories, I wouldn't be so obsessed with that theme anymore. (heh)

That was me

Sometime last night, around 10:58pm Pacific Time, you probably heard "NOOOOOOOO!!!!"

Sorry about that. Blame Lost.

Over worked brain

Just pretend this is part of the other post.

Or maybe I'll just delete that first one, since it was a non-post as it was.

Anyway.

Today was a strange day at work.

And...huh. Now that I'm going to sit down to type it out, I find that I don't want to talk about it. Smooth move, ex-lax. (heh.)

Let's see. What to talk about instead?

When I was a teenager, back in the days before caller ID [god, i'm old], my friends and I would spend a lot of our time making prank phone calls. One that was particularly amusing was when we would call up a fast food restaurant (it was KFC, if I remember correctly), ask for a manager, and then when the manager got on the phone, attempt to make a reservation.
Good times, man.

Eh. I still have my headache.

mimosa

I have a headache.

I should just save this as a draft and finish and publish it later. Instead, I'm going to hit publish now, and see if I blog later.

The first 3 chapters

I am exhausted, so this will be brief.

I started my reread of the Harry Potter series today.

Observations:
Dumbledore says, "He'll have that scar forever." [eyebrow]
And, "Scars can be useful."

Hmm.

Nothing odd sticks out about Petunia at this point. Except that it is stated that the Dursleys and Potters have not seen each other for several years at the beginning - meaning that Petunia had never met her baby nephew, until the Tuesday when Voldemort was defeated.

Dudley Dursley's friend's name is Piers Polkiss. Many wizards and witches have names that are alleterative. (Erm. Not sure if that's a word, but I'm just pointing out that it's interesting that so many characters have the same letter for their first and last names, and that both of the aforementioned kids are [assumedly] Muggles...)

Hagrid borrowed the motorcycle from "young Sirius Black". But... wasn't Black in Azkaban at that point? (I need to keep that question in mind, for when I get to book 3)

I'm surprised at how quick the first three chapters went. Things were so much easier in the beginning...

Is that your walnut?

Random entry:

The creators of Lost announced today that the show will be ending in 3 seasons. They came to an agreement with ABC that the next 3 seasons will be 16 episodes a piece, resulting in 119 episodes total. Personally, I would've rather they stopped at 108, but I figure if I just ignore the Jack-centric episodes, it will most likely result in that anyway, so it's all good.
The good thing about this arrangement is that the writer's now have an end-goal in sight, and they can actually work toward that. Hopefully less filler episodes as a result.

I fired up the grill today, and made some awesome cheeseburgers and hot dogs for dinner. Mmm. I love this time of year when it's nice enough to actually enjoy being outside in the evening.

In the news today - there was a bomb that went off in a parking garage of a casino here in town. Apparently, an explosive device was left on top of a car in the parking garage of the Luxor. Around 4am, two employees were going back to their car. One of them attempted to remove the thing from the roof of the car, and it exploded, killing him.
It totally sounds like it was an episode of CSI.

I picked up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone from the library today. (We own it, but it's currently packed away) I plan on reading about 3 chapters a day ...starting tomorrow, I think. There are 160 chapters in the 6 books, so doing 3 a day will result in me finishing before the 7th book is released. So, maybe not 3 every day. But, yeah, Steph rereading the books to the girls has me interested in rereading the series for myself. And maybe blogging about it on occasion. ;)

I also picked up a cd from The Minus 5. It's a little more countryish than the previous disc of theirs, but it's still enjoyable.

I keep squashing (or losing, temporarily) the drive to write. Ideas keep coming to me, though.
Current stories/story ideas I want to expand upon:

Wolf
Foreign Exchange
Choset/Fulle/Perth story
The Malfunctioners

An idea I had today - Aliens arrive on earth, and announce that in X number of days, they will be leaving, and they will be taking X number of worthy people with them.
I wonder what the reaction would be. Would people attempt to go with them? Try to stop other people from leaving? Try to kill the aliens? I don't know. It was just a thought that I had earlier in the day. My brain wanders at times.

I'd like to meet his tailor

The problem with werewolves in the movies is their clothing.

When transforming into wolves, the clothes (generally) just vanish. [We watched the Buffy episode Beauty and the Beasts today, and it was quite guilty of that. Perhaps Oz's clothes just got absorbed into him?]

An American Werewolf in London got it right in their transformation scene, because David is in so much pain, he removes his clothing beforehand, and morphs in the nude. Good job, movie guys!!

Of course, magically disappearing (or appearing - see below) clothes are pretty rampant in tv and movies.

Heck, in the same episode of Buffy, Angel managed to track down a pair of leather pants, and, despite being out of his mind from hundreds of years of torment, got himself half-dressed!

And when You-Know-Who is reborn in the movie version of Goblet of Fire (another thing we watched today), he arrives complete with magic robes!

And of course, my long-standing complaint about souls/ghosts is that they always appear wearing whatever they died in. I guess fabrics have souls too.

But going back to werewolves - that was (one of) the biggest logistical block(s) when I was planning "Wolf". (Which I still do plan on writing....someday.) How to get past the clothing issue. I mean, yeah having wolf-creatures in various stages of undress might be more accurate, but it sounds kinda silly. (Or kinda terrifying, actually. Seeing some beast approaching you while it has half of Aunt Sally's skirt around it's waist might be disturbing.)
Huh. I guess that could work then.

Doesn't remedy the other end (the changing back. What would all these nearly nude people do?) And...you know, talking through this has actually helped spur some ideas...

Dear youtube

Please create a feature wherein videos can display closed captioning. It doesn't have to be on all of them - that would be a gigantic undertaking - and it should most certainly be an option, not something automatically done, but it would be a most beneficial feature.

Sincerely,

P@, who currently has no working computer speakers

BONG!!!!

Back in 1988 ("Nineteen eighty eight, eighty eight!!") there was a short lived, although quite impressive, sci-fi television show called The War of the Worlds (Yes, it was based on/influenced by the novel by H. G. Wells and the radio drama from 1938 and the 1953 movie of the same name. The show was given a complete overhaul for it's second season, including a name change, and, the general [correct] consensus is that the changes were for the worse)

ANYWAY. While the show (and novel [and maybe the movie, I haven't seen the '53 version]) were worthwhile, this post is not exactly about the series.

In the show, there was a character named Dr. Harrison Blackwood. He was one of those 'free-thinking' types that Hollywood loves so much, and while he was a doctor, he used many unorthodox methods.
One of these was the usage of a tuning fork to help retrieve memories.

When my friends and I saw this, we found it hilarious. (It is rather funny in its outlandishness. I'm not sure whether it was intended to be or not.)
But, the point is, that we began to write stories - sometimes collaborating, sometimes working solo - where tapping a tuning fork would cause the character(s) to remember something else that had happened, even [and especially later] past lives. As the stories progressed, they more or less morphed to where the characters were not remembering the events, but actually time traveling with each 'bong' of the tuning fork, they would be transplanted to a different time (and place, usually). Depending on how deep the "bong" of the tuning fork was, the bigger the change in time/space.
(And, yeah, the fact that when I was 13 I was naive enough to not know the other meaning of 'bong' has definitely brought a wistful smile to my face.)
I'm fairly certain that there was an overall narrative to the tales, as jumbled as it ended up being. Although the fact that the 'bongs' of the tuning forks often worked as deus ex machinas probably would've made our English teachers cringe, they were incredibly funny to a bunch of 13 year old boys. Especially when the 'bong' would result in looping back to a previous memory/situation.

Brian, Matt, Jason and I really got into the Tuning Fork stories for a while there. (I even went so far as to buy a real tuning fork that I carried around. I was such a freaking NERD!!)

Sadly, all of the Tuning Fork stories are lost to the ages. I really do wish that I had kept some of them, or could remember how they went. Maybe I should look into getting a tuning fork.

Bong!!

Of the 15 or 23 people who read my blog, the following will only be of interest to maybe 4 or 8 of you. Yep, I'm talking Lost.

It's not a fully developed theory, and I don't know how much of it I buy myself, but ever since the seed of the idea came into my mind (sometime after "Catch 22" aired), it's been growing.


Spoilers for season 3 up through at least "The Brig" are below:

What if Smokezilla is God?
Not exactly the God of the Bible, but still, an omnipotent judging....being.

In Neil Gaiman's books, gods fade out of existence if people stop having faith in them. I really like the idea that god(s) have to survive on faith. What if that is what the island's security system has to live off of as well?

My island time line would go something like this: First, Dharma arrives on the island, and they either discover Smokezilla or create it. Either way, they start to worship it, maybe. And for a while, Smokezilla lives on a strict diet of Otherosity. That is the only "religion" that it knows, and everything is hunky-dory.

Then, Danielle and her crew show up on the island, and accidentally (?) cause an illness that kills pregnant women on the island.

Now, the Others have to start recruiting people to get to the island.

Somewhere along the way, Smoke(God)zilla learns that there are other faiths. So, since it wants to learn more about them, it begins to bring people of different faiths to the island - Desmond was a monk, Eko was a priest (actually Yemi was, and it brought Yemi there first), Jack has faith in science, John has faith ...in the island (which might be why the Others think he's "special"). Maybe the Island/Smokey/God is looking for a religion that it can call it's own. Maybe God is Lost, and wants to be Found.

Eh. Like I said, not a fully fleshed out theory, and I can confidently say that I would be floored if the show did go in this direction, but if it does, remember that you heard it here first. :)

"The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something." ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I keep holding myself back from creating things. The desire is there, the fear (of it being bad? of failing? of not completing it? i don't know exactly) is just stronger.

Let's see what I can do to remedy that.

(This was totally not the post I wanted to make originally. I have held myself back from that, too. This may be harder than originally intended...)

2 mehgit. 2 mehgit 2 quit

Maybe it's having gone back to work after having 18 days in a row off.
Maybe it's that the amount of work was overwhelming, and I spent a good portion of the day feeling like I was drowning and/or wanting to cry.
Maybe it's rising gas costs.
Maybe it's watching the news, or reading the news, or hearing the news, or the fact that there's news.
Maybe it's riding the bus.
Maybe it's the chaos and clutter.
Maybe it's seeing evolution going on as I walk through businesses in Las Vegas.

Maybe it's just me.

Whatever it is, this yucky empty feeling can stop now, thanks.

Vacation wrap-up

The problem with not blogging daily is that you get out of the habit of doing so. And then, when it comes time to update, you either don't want to, or have so much to say that you don't know where to begin. And/or, you certainly don't remember everything.

So, now that the vacation is over - I go back to work tomorrow - I find myself in the position of having a LOT to talk about, but very little desire to actually take the time to type it all out. The lesson is that when we go on our next trip (be it vacation, or when we leave Las Vegas for good) that we certainly need a lap top. Or I should write things down as we go, so that I can remember things better.

Anyway. List time. Because listing things (in no particular order) seems to be how my brain works best, and because it's one of the laziest ways of blogging and getting information out. The trip was overall a great one, but it wasn't all liquid sunshine and Pepsi. I'll start with the bad, to get it out of the way, and also so that I can end with the positive.

The Bad

- Harper was killed.
During the conference, there was a game of "Assassin" being played. Assassin is played pretty much like this:
Everyone who is playing puts their names on a slip of paper, and the names go into a hat. Draw a name. Whoever you picked, is who you have to "kill" sometime during the conference. To kill a person, you simply have to touch them on the shoulder and say, "You are dead." or "Gotcha" or "I just killed you", or something to that effect.
The catch is - there can be no witnesses.
So, traveling in groups is a safe way to avoid being murdered. However, if you are constantly in a group, it means that you can't do any killing either.
Once you kill a person, they have to give you their target, and that becomes your next person to assassinate.
Harper ended up being killed by a teenage girl who was, apparently, quite good at the game (she had already taken out 10 other people before getting Harper). But the fact that she got "killed" was highly disturbing to Harper. She was inconsolable for at least 45 minutes, until eventually, she was "brought back to life" by the girl who had killed her, and they agreed that they would work together to get Harper's target.
Assassin was fun, though, and I think if Harper plays again, she'll be better prepared for it.

- We got sick
Harper, Irina and I started getting runny noses and sore throats around Wednesday (the 25th). Steph didn't start feeling bad until yesterday. For the most part, I'm over my illness, although I still have occasional bouts of coughing. Being sick is never fun, even when you're in Oregon.

- My boss was in a car accident
On Wednesday the 25th, I got a call from work, informing me that my supervisor had been in a pretty bad accident, and would be out "for a while". The initial call was pretty much right after it happened, and a lot of the information was inaccurate. (I was first told that he had broken his back. I was told later that he has a fractured vertebrae, which is marginally better, but still pretty scary.)
The rest of the week (Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday) I received calls from work, either giving me updates, or asking me work related questions that only I - or my supervisor - would be able to handle.

- We got pulled over for speeding
In Tonopah on the way home. I was doing 51 in a 25. Because 25 is a ridiculously low speed to drive. And also, it didn't feel like we were moving that fast.

- Steph's camera broke
On Thursday night, as we were going into our hotel, Steph's camera was accidentally dropped.
On Friday, when we went to our last fun spot before beginning the boring drive back, we discovered that due to the drop, it was not going to operate anymore. :(

The Good!

- The pictures were still retrievable
If you check out Steph's blog, you can see many of the photos from the trip. Even though the camera won't be taking any new pictures, the ones that were on the card were still able to be put on the computer. Yay technology!

- We were let go with a warning
Thankfully, the cop in Tonopah didn't give us a ticket. (Even though I was going double the posted limit!) A ticket would be the last thing we need. To my credit, I drove the speed limit the entire way home. (Even 25 in all the small towns in Nevada)

- Powell's book city
Dude.
DUDE.
Portland is a very interesting city (although I don't know 100% how I feel about it, and whether I would want to actually live there) but one of the most amazing parts of it was Powell's. Powell's City of Books is pretty much what it says. It's about 4 city blocks worth of used and new books, located in downtown Portland.
Going to Portland for that alone would be worth it. We really needed more time to actually walk through that place - it's huge! - but at least we've now seen it.

- The Oregon Vortex
This was where we discovered that Steph's camera was not working, so we had to buy a disposable. (For 12 bucks!) I just wikied up the Oregon Vortex, and the short article there kinda dampened some of the enthusiasm from the visit, but even if it was just optical illusions, it was still kinda cool to see a golf ball roll uphill, and to witness Steph grow several inches just by moving a few feet.

-Abby's Legendary Pizza
Yummy!

- The Talent Show
Steph got video of the girls doing their hula-hooping at the talent show this time around. Both of them have improved their abilities quite a bit - and they were already really good at the previous conference. Saren even worked in doing some jumps and hula-hooping on her knees.

- Barefoot Boogie
The last night of the conference, there was an all-ages, 3 hour dance. Irina was hilarious, and the girls all had an amazing time. I even let go of my reservations and danced with the crowd.

- Portland Zoo
The San Diego Zoo gets all the press, but I think the Portland Zoo is the better of the two. It's smaller - which means less walking! And maybe it was because it was cooler, or because it was Portland, or because it was a school day, or I don't know - but it was also much less crowded, so that was another plus.

- KNRK
Best radio station I found during the trip.

- Newport Aquarium
Even though I was sick, and completely energyless during our visit to the Newport Aquarium, it was still fun.

- Done blogging
I know I'm forgetting/leaving out a LOT of the experience, but that's what Steph's blog is for. ;)

The trip so far (continued)

Where did I leave off?

Oh, right. Thursday.

Like I said, that day we did not have a gigantic drive ahead of us, so we opted to do a little sight-seeing in Jacksonville (fee non ay! [I really cant stop doing that, Im sorry]) first.

Jacksonville (fee non ay!) is this little town that has maybe 1000 people living in it. (Maybe more, we didnt see the entire town, but i cant imagine that its population is more than 5000.) The entire downtown area is all walking distance, and many of the buildings [and homes] were built in the 1850s - 1880s, so its quite the historic little town. And the fact that it is located in lush green forests only adds to its charm.
While walking around, we saw many many cats just roaming free. The weird thing is, they were all orange. Or had some orange fur on them. It mightve even been the same cat, stalking us. We also saw several ginormous squirrels. I think in another 500 million years or so, those squirrels are going to be running that place. So, you know, be prepared.

We had lunch in The Mustard Seed Cafe, which had some awesome food, and everyone that came in knew each other, and they were all nice and they had Pepsi, of course. After that, we walked up to the town cemetary, because cemetaries are interesting, and because we are morbid. :)
The cemetary probably has more inhabitants than the town.

But thats okay, because that place was really cool. While we were there, we ran into a woman that worked there, and she filled us in on some of the projects that the city has going on with regard to the cemetary - fixing up some of the old plots, completely doing a census of sorts regarding who is buried in what graves, warding off zombies, that sort of stuff.

By around 2pm, we decided to head toward Corvallis. While on the way we drove through Eugene, which.... wasnt all that fab, sadly. Granted, we only drove through one little bit of it, and there could be many other parts of Eugene that are lovely, but we certainly didnt see them that day. Springfield was slightly better, but overall, I think if I had my druthers, Id pick Jacksonville (fee non ay) or Medford as a place in Oregon to live over Eugene or Springfield.

Got to the hotel (the Salbasgeon, which for the first couple of days I refered to as Sebastian, until I learned that it derived its name from 3 types of fish - salmon/bass/sturgeon) around 6ish. Walked across the street to KFC for dinner, came back, and watched the most entertaining episode of Survivor in a LONG time, then took the girls swwimiing for a little while before finally settling back in for the night.

Friday

This was the first official day of the conference, although registration didnt begin until noon.

This is going to sound bad, especially since it was just two days ago, but ...I dont remember what we did on Friday. We did the welcome speech thing...and I know the girls ran around, but I cant remember what the mass majority of the day consisted of, until the pajama party at 8pm. In the morning, Harper, Irina and I had the free breakfast (which was quite deliciious, actually) and Saren adn Steph drove down to Sunnyside Up - a local restaurant where many of the conference attendees were having a pre-conference get together.
The pj party was fun. And wild. It started off with a giant duck duck goose game (although it seemed that adults either werent invited, or simply werent joinng in by choice. I shouldve broken out of my comfort zone and sat in with them, but didnt.) and it morphed into a game of Simon Says, and balloon sword fights, and Dance Dance Revolution and Connect 4 and Blink and knock knock jokes and screaming and running around and fun...

Saturday

This isnt going to be in order, just a list of things that happened, as they come back to me:

- Had dinner at Sunnyside Up. That was really cool. They have this brilliant idea of putting trivial pursuit cards on the tables. hee! Awesome way to kill time while waiting for your food. Plus, lots of local art on the walls, and a very funny sign on the outside door (Steph took a picture of it, so I wont ruin the surprise) Themenu was a little too... new age? hippy? whole foods?...something... for my comfort zone, but i enjoyed the turkey sandwich, and they had Pepsi, so it was all good.

....and again, im gonna cut this short and finish up later...

The trip so far

(Or, what I can remember, and what I can type while everyone else is still sleeping. Letś just call it the highlights, shall we? [also, note to myself - avoid the apostrophe key!])

Tuesday

we left the house around 9;11 in the morning. Although we needed to fill up the gas tank, and turn back home for a few forgotten items before really hitting the road around 945. (And we still ended up not bringing eveerything. Some of the Nintendo DS games, for example, and I had wanted to bring some of ooour board games to share/play, and we forgot those as well. Also, Harpers notebook/journal.)
Anyway. Tuesday was a mostly-driving day. Got to Tonopah for lunch, and while it was slightlly interesting with its historic background of having been a mining town, Tonopah [and most of the Nevada desert] is just ugly. Certainly wouldnt want to live there.
Kept driving -for whaaat seemed like days - and we finnally got to Reno (911!) neaar supertime.
I suppose I should note now that this keyboard, in addition to having the apostroophe phobia (apostrophobia?) also has a tendency to go overboard on leeetters if you hold it down for more than a milisecond. I had been correcting the additional letters and spaces (for the most part) but it is just too difficult to keep doing it, so, there ya go.

Anyway. The first thing we noticed about Reno (911!) was how cold it was! The wind was blowing as wwwe got into our hotel room, and it was damn chilly. Uh-oh, we thought, hopefully the rest of the trip wont be this cold because wwwwwe are really not prepared for it.
Aftr setting up in the hotel room, wwe were getting hungry, so Steph sent me (and Saren) out to get food. On the drive back...it began to snow.
Snow.
In April.
Half my wardrobe is shorts. The girls also wwwere not winterweather equpped. But, as the blizzzzzzaard continued to pour down - and it began to truly stick to the ground - we let them go out and play in the flakes.
When we woke up the next morning, ultimaately about an inch had fallen and remained on the ground.

Wednessday

Another long driving day. Mostly going through mountains. Or, more accurately, snow covered mountains.The snow flurries hit us off and on through most of the drive, as well. Eventually it started to die down, and warm up, but for a while it looked like it was going to be a white christmas um..Earth Day.
Wednesssdays stoopping location was Medford, Oregon, which is a nice midsized town that I think would really not be a bad place to live. Steph likes neighboring Jacksonville (fee non ay!) better, and I agree that either city could be ideal.
We drove around Medford for a while, and had dinner at Abbeys (Legendary) Pizza. Which was a pizza place we had visited on our first trip to Oregon. Yummy stuff. Also, Oregon seems to be a Pepsi loving state. Most eveeerywhere you go, you see signs for Pepsi. Awesome.
Wednesday night, after the superlong drive, the girls needed to unwind, so we all walked over the river (and through the woods, ironically enough) that was right next to our motel, and into what had to be the most incredible playground I have eveer seen. This thing was HUGE! It was alll wood, and had hundreds of hideyholes and a gigantic maze and slides (which the girls didnnt go on because it had rained and they were wet. Vegas slides cant go on because of the heat, Oregon slides cant go on because of the rain) and sliding floors and all kinds of fun stuff. As it started togeet dark, we headed back to the hotel, waatched Lost, and went to sleep.

Thurssday

Since Thursdays drive was not a long one, we decided to investigate Jacksonville (fee non ay!) for a while first.
This is getting a bit long, and its now 8am, and we still need to have breakfast, and everyone is waking up, so I guess I will wrap it up for now. More later.

Water water everywhere

So, Oregon is wet.

But, you know, it really isnt that bad.(We are at the hotel in Corvallis where the Life Is Good Conference is going on, and the hotel has a computer in it with free internet access. [although for some reason hitting the apostrophe key causes the computer to beep extremely loudly])

A full update will be forthcoming, I just wanted to get in a blog entry from a different state. :)

Harry Potter and the Big Fat Spoilers

A while back - maybe as far back as July of 2006, I can't recall the exact time, and I'm too lazy to google it up -JK Rowling gave some interviews about the upcoming final Harry Potter book.

In the interview, she said [begin spoiler for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - highlight to view]
There will be two deaths in the book.
She did not say who, or how, or why, or when. [/end spoiler]
Now, maybe it's just me, but I don't want to know that. Having that information put out there is going to taint the way that I read the book, because I'll be expecting it.

Granted, I was expecting it anyway*, but to have it confirmed by the author is just...slightly diminishes the power of surprise one gets when going into the novel completely unaware, ya know?
Fortunately, I excel at forgetting things, and I am sure that there will be plenty of other twists and turns that Book 7 is going to take, so I'm confident that I will still be able to enjoy the book.

Unfortunately, I know that the Internet does love spoilers. And as the release date approaches, it is going to become increasingly difficult to avoid them. I really hope that I can go into Book 7 as unspoiled as I possibly can. It's the way that such things are meant to be experienced, in my opinion.

*[spoilers for what was previously mentioned about HP&tDH]Actually, I was expecting the death toll to be much higher than just two. I mean, the final battle between Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter and only two characters bite it? Maybe it *will* be higher, and the 2 characters was just a minimum, but even so, I really wish she hadn't let *any* information slip out like that.[/spoiler]

Listen

Kurt Vonnegut has died. So it goes.

It's extremely rare for me to be impacted by the passing of a celebrity. I mean, if anything, Vonnegut was simply a member of my granfalloon. I did not know him personally, I never met him, I have not, in fact, even read everything that he has written.

Nevertheless, I have found this news quite upsetting. Vonnegut was a unique and amazing voice, and I feel a deep sense of loss at his passing.

I can take solace in the fact that he is, of course, still alive and writing, and always will be. (Or, more seriously, that his works will always remain with us. I think I'm going to start working my way through Vonnegut's novels.)

Kurt provided us with a lot of meaningful, witty, cynical passages. His impact on me, and, from looking around the internet, obviously plenty of other people, was profound.

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut.

God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!"
"See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars."
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait...
To find out for certain what my wampeter was...
And who was in my karass...
And all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.

Kurt is up in Heaven now.