It's time for a PSA by Andee Browne

Riffing off a semi related rant by extrajoker, I'd just like to express a personal peeve and make a request: If you want me to read something, for the love of god don't make any comparisons to Harry Potter. This has happened to me quite a bit in the past month, and I will tell you frankly that if Harry Potter is mentioned anywhere in the conversation you have immediately lost my interest, and I will not read your book. At least until someone else recommends it.

I personally rather like Harry Potter. I own all of it, and harbor a certain smugness about having discovered it before it got shit + fan popular. (Though I'm not smug enough collect the British editions - I prefer the illustrations in the American ones.) I also recognize it's not the greatest thing since sliced bread - there's a world of better written, more engaging fantasy out there. Unfortunately, just about everyone who has made the error I cite above isn't as balanced in their opinions, and their comparisons usually come from either a place of haughty disdain (OMG HARRY POTTER IS CRAP LOOKIT ME BE ALL COOL AND COUNTERCULTURAL BY THINKING SO!) or complete ignorance (HARRY POTTER IS SO COOL JK ROWLING IS THE GREATEST WRITER IN THE WORLD ZOMG). Seriously, I'm sick of all of it. Hell even booksellers do it, as if people won't buy the book unless "If you like Harry Potter Read this!!!" is scrawled across the dust jacket. Either way, people, stop being lazy, leave Harry at Hogwarts where he belongs, and explain why I should read the book using the book text as your primary source of evidence. If I'm interested, I'll read it. If I'm not, too bad, and dragging poor overexposed Harry into your argument isn't going to help you convince me.

Curse you Matt and Trey

It probably says something about the pervasiveness of pop culture over politics that my first thought upon hearing of the execution of Saddam Hussein was a high pitched voice saying "Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatan..." and an image of the deposed and now departed Iraqi leader brandishing a dildo at the Prince of Darkness as Envisioned by South Park. Or maybe it just means I'm a very bad person. After all I did make the icon (which I should retire now).

Other than that... I have nothing intelligent or meaningful to say about it other to shake my head at the idea that things have gotten so crazy in Iraq that the death of the dictator known for being the bug up the asses of three US presidents (a position Kim Jong-Il seems very intent on filling) seems almost like an afterthought. It's like - ok. Saddam Hussein is dead, but we still have a mess we created 90% of to clean up, and the kids we keep sending over there aren't coming home any faster or any less dead. I'm sure there are some Shiites that are raucously celebrating, but in the end... I don't know... The man is dead and nothing has changed really. So what was the point?