That’s the news doing the rapid aging, not the nerds, in case you were wondering.

Harry Potter is also aging, though — the first book came out in the States ten years ago this September.  To wring a few more rubles out of the franchise celebrate, Scholastic is issuing an anniversary edition with a new cover.

UK bookstore Waterstones has been putting together a book of stories so short, they can fit on a large index card.  Most entries, apparently were gathered through a competition, but they also invited entries from well-known authors — including J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, Tom Stoppard, and Margaret Atwood.  The JKR card was a snippet of a story about James and Sirius.  As the original has now been sold (proceeds to charity) for massive amounts of money, you can read the text here.

Warner Bros. continues to be over-protective of HP.  Seriously, guys.

Another story with castles (but no wizards):  California man from the Netherlands builds his own.

Categories: Harry Potter, books, in the news, movies
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I just discovered the previous post while going through a handful of never-finished drafts.  It dates from a few months ago (thus the subway reference), but decided to put it up for those of you who enjoy navel-gazing.

This post is the one with the actual news.  The job search is actually yielding a few leads, for one.  I don’t want to say too much yet, but I had an interview on Thursday (at very short notice) that went all right, and I have one with other people on Monday, and I’ve got high hopes for that one, too.  So more on those next week, I hope.

The other ongoing project lumbers forward as well.  After some deliberation, I ordered a wedding dress last Tuesday, so that should wander into town in mid-October.  It is, of course, gorgeous, in an understated way.  :)  So now we’re making lists and plotting maps:  possible restaurants for the reception that would be close to the botanical garden where we’re having the wedding, possible hotels that would be close to the reception.  Things we might want to register for and stores at which we’d want to register for them.  What color dress to tell my long-suffering college roommate that she ought to buy.  Supposedly, I should have strong feelings about colors like sea foam or pale peach, but all I’m coming up with is “How about some nice blue or green or purple?”  (Sorry, hon…)

At any rate, things are moving forward.  Some friends gave me a guide to wedding planning published by the folks at TheKnot.com, which has been helpful because it has checklists and timelines and all sorts of details.  But I’ve also gotten a lot of sanity from a book called The Anti-Bride’s Guide, which has the refreshing attitude that perhaps you don’t care to wear a massive fairy-princess dress and do the chicken dance at the local country club.  Which means that I would be scandalously outcast among the characters of Somebody Is Going to Die if Lilly Beth Doesn’t Catch That Bouquet, a hilarious collection of anecdotes about  weddings in a particular part of the South — a birthday gift from the aforementioned long-suffering college roommate.

Speaking of books, this morning I finished The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (long titles seem to be the theme of the week) and enjoyed it immensely.  As Pug can tell you, when I started it, I made some faces and gave him some weird looks — the narrator is on the unconventional side, and cover blurbs that raved about the book did so by comparing it to books and authors I don’t care for.  But I’m happy to say that I kept reading, and in the end, I think the reviewer’s comparisons were misleading at best.  I haven’t read The Sound and the Fury specifically, but I think she merely meant that this book is written in a stream of consciousness style similar to what Faulkner used.  And I think she’s off the mark in invoking The Catcher in the Rye.  Yes, both books are first person accounts of teenage boys who feel isolated from society, but where Holden Caufield feels isolated because he’s a cynical, self-absorbed little prig, this narrator, Christopher, feel isolated because he’s… autistic, perhaps, or something like that — we’re never told, and I’m no expert.  But he’s brilliant, earnest, and observant; and life as he sees it is simultaneously fascinating and awkward.  In the end, it’s a book about discovery and self-empowerment.  What do the reviewers know, anyway?

Also recommended, in a lowbrow humor sort of way:  LOLBush at the Olympics.  LOLcat English sometimes makes me twitch, but it seems appropriate here.  Gotta love the Brits.

And if anyone needs a Serenity fix, I came across this a few days ago:  a brief interlude, comic-style, called “The Other Half.”

Categories: Firefly, books, desert living, in the news
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I kind of assume most people sometimes ponder over the passage of time once in a while. I remember being nine and wondering what my brothers (then toddlers) would look and sound and be like when they were my age. I remember thinking the same thing when I was fifteen. (The younger is now past that and I’m pleased to report that both are bright young men who are much taller than I am, take pride in singing bass, and are just generally a lot of fun to be around.)

When I was in middle school, one of my favorite literary heroines at one point wrote a letter from herself at age fourteen to herself at age twenty-four. I seized on this as a fantastic idea; consequently there are several such letters squirreled away at home. One I was allowed to open when I graduated from college. Another is marked for my birthday this summer, and I think there may be another for next year.

(Mind you, they’re all just sealed with stickers…which I’ve popped off more than once in the interim. Perhaps I should have hidden them from myself more thoroughly.)

Of course, the inherent problem in writing letters to your future self is that all you want to do is ask questions, but most of them are so broad that putting them on paper in no way helps you towards an answer. “Where did you go to college?” it probably says. “Where do you live? Who do you live with? What are you doing with your life?” In the end, the content is not so revealing — of those dilemmas, no reminder is necessary. Instead, I’ll sit and look at the object itself. Look at how my handwriting has evolved: Was this during the couple of years when I dotted i’s with little circles? Did I still write my capital A’s the other way? Look how the cursive has gotten smaller and more compact. And I slip back, remembering the foggy projections: What might I look like, think like at eighteen? Twenty-four? At an age when ten-years-ago you toddled around and watched Sesame Street, ten-years-ahead presented the possibility of equally drastic changes.

And for whatever reason, I don’t remember trying to picture myself much beyond twenty-five or so, at least not from the vantage point of middle school — somehow that was Arriving. That was enough to be Grown-Up and settled, I suppose, into some kind of final form. And, largely, it was because twenty-five was misty enough; anything else (beyond vague images of one day having gray hair and wrinkles) was simply beyond the horizon. Twenty-three, twenty-four, that was what I struggled to picture.

But there she is, reflected on the subway windows and bathroom mirrors and computer screens.

Categories: scribblings
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Some can almost be called news!  All things I’ve found interesting in the past week.

– Impressive, disturbing, and a dark sort of tribute to American capitalism:  we present the Wal-Mart virus.

– By this point, I think most of you have seen Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.  (And if not, it’s still available on iTunes; DVD to come out sometime soon.)  Shockingly, Pug and I thought it was fantastic, and still go about humming about freeze rays and Bad Horse.  Goodness knows it got a ton of media coverage, but I offer a couple of my favorites:  The Dr. Horrible oral history, because it amuses me, and the NPR piece, because I’m impressed that they picked it up.

– The fourth book in the Twilight series, which has been enjoying popularity among those inclined towards YA vampire-romances, came out this weekend to Potter-like midnight release parties.  I know that at least a couple of you have read the books and enjoyed them — and that at least a couple of you have read the books and offered your critiques on them.  I haven’t read any of them, but I thought this Salon article offered what seems to me like some particularly insightful commentary on them.  (And while we’re at Salon, the same writer had some worthwhile notes on Harry Potter 7.  Naturally, it’s an article from a year ago, but I just finished re-reading Deathly Hallows, so I enjoyed that one as well.  I think she’s pretty fair about Rowling’s strengths and weaknesses.)

– And Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (remember A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich ?) passed away this weekend.

Later: Woah!  They’re making a Gatchaman movie?  Carmen, did we know about this?  I don’t really expect this to be what you would call… good, but Cartoon Network ran a dubbed version called G-Force that my brothers and I enjoyed when I was nine or ten, so it might get a few nostalgia points.

Well, now that’s six unrelated topics.  Or five.  Oh well; the title sounds better as it is.

Categories: Harry Potter, books, in the news, movies, television
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