Pilot's Log

I've Updated My Presense In Blogged, tho' it doesn't mean much of anything to anybody I know.

Meanwhile (and this is Livejournal-related), somebody has been going around making nonsensical whines in lots of Livejournals--including MINE--about the character of Sevarius Snape and what happens in Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows. Let me make this as clear and succinct as possible: CUT IT OUT!

1) You aren't making friends, whoever you are.
2) I neither agree nor disagree with you. Harry Potter is one of those pop culture things I like but am not a super fan of. I don't read the books, but I like the movies. If you met me in person, you would see why I would identify with Snape on some levels. But I'm not going to get my dander up because of the story or what happens in it. (I have not seen the latest movie yet and probably won't till the DVD appears. I've been buying the Special Edition multi-disc sets when they appear.)
3) Your latest sockpuppet identity has been Banned from my LJ but not reported to LJ's authorities. Just showing up on somebody's LJ to rant and not engage in a more civil manner is rude and childish. Please, learn some manners and perhaps we'll get along fine.

FP

( I'm sure this is all over everywhere by now )

I remember how shocked we were as kids when certain child stars of the shows we loved died from drug abuse back in the 1970s. While it's not exactly the same, those horrible questions are going to come from the young, and how can we answer them?

FP

This is a postscript to that post about the weird Hogwarts dream I had earlier.

When I thought about it, I came up with an invention of sorts. I bet somebody else in Harry Potter fandom has already come up with it, so I doubt I'm stealing anybody's thunder.

It's a parody of the 1920s "Tommy Gun". How it works: you slip your wand into the space on the "gun" where the breech would be on a real Tommy, and then you'd speak your spell into the magazine. The magazine would multiply your spell by fifty, and then you'd fit the magazine to the underside of the "gun". Flip off the safety, and you're ready to cast.

Because of its construction material, it's called a Chicago Woodwind. :)

If something like this is really in any of the post-movies books, then I plead ignorance. As said, I haven't read any of the books. Nor do I read fanfic. *shrug*

FP

Just awoke from a nap.

Premise for a television series...the setting looks like our contemporary world, but something's strange. Like how sorcerors and mages are walking around in public and nobody seems to think it's wrong. The central character is a magic-using private detective, who is capable of time-travel and other useful feats. (Crossbreed Doctor Who with Charmed, Men In Black, Harry Potter, and Sliders and I think I come close to the idea.)

The pilot's plot is set in Washington DC and involves the President of the U.S.' favorite brand of chewing gum. Why is this important? Tell you the truth...I can't figure that part out myself.

In the series, Eddie Murphy would play a recurring role, as a mage who often helps out the hero but just as often is out for himself and in competition with the hero...kind of like Doctor Who's The Master but not as nasty and much more unpredictable. All the episodes with him in the cast, the Nielsen ratings go into orbit and there are rumors of him getting his own series...but he never does.

What do you think?

Hey.

Got our latest batch of DVDs from Columbia House today. Watched Harry Potter IV tonight (Special Edition, hot from the presses). Mother, who is a published novelist, has serious envy for J.K. Rowling and her imagination. Me, I'd have been a totally rabid fan of this stuff if it had come some thirty years earlier. And there's a part of me that wishes that my own stories could emerge into spectacular visions that everybody could share.

But I'm not jealous. Yes, there is luck involved that the right person in the right position has to decide whether your story is the one that gets told large. Many is the story consigned to the furnace for not being seen by that right person. But it's also an effort to write the story, and make it clean and sparkly, and then to present it to the powers that be, right and wrong. This effort is a calling...and often an obsession. Sometimes it becomes a madness. Get it right, and you become a household name like Rowling or Clancy or Grisham. Obsess too much and you die like Henry Darger.

Perhaps I'll get lucky and finish Chillin' Out this year. Perhaps I'll get luckier still and get it published with somebody who'll take it and me to the next level.

Okay, Ms. Rowling, your sole has connected with my butt. I'll see what I can do.

FP

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PS: Just downloaded the DIVX Player so I could see video CD-ROMs I hadn't been able to watch since buying the new compy. Saw the first six minutes of Macross Zero episode 1 as a test and I'm impressed. No stutters or skips. Me likey.