2007-07-22, 07:52 PM — Minerva McGonagall is my hero
Warning: Apparently this contains quasi-spoilers...
Update on the Potterthon: I finished at about... hmm, 10 this morning, I guess? Or 9:30. I figure it works out to about 6 hours plus a bit of solid reading. And I did honestly make an effort to read every word, despite what some may say. Had I been reading it with my normal speed, I probably would have finished it in 4 or 5 hours.
It's really quite good, I think, standing back a little now. Intense, dark, and full of all the things I love about the series. It was not exactly easy to read. Not because of the language, which is mostly quite simple, but because some of the content is ... painful to read. There is a body count and some of it is hard to stomach.
I did cry, and I woke fishy up at about 8 this morning (after being up until 2 and sleeping very fitfully afterwards) with my sniffling. Of course, the part I was crying at wasn't someone's death (although I'll admit there was some of that too) but a particular part where I was just so amazed and frightened and proud at how brave some of my favourite characters are. And I was afraid they were all going to die, and I didn't want that to happen. That just goes to show the kind of emotional hold these characters have had on me over the years. I know I'm a sap, but I was pretty amazed. I've only ever wept like that over dying favourite characters. Also, I was pretty tired.
It ended pretty much perfectly. Almost a little too perfectly, with most loose ends wrapped up neatly, and there were some surprises but they were surprises that made a lot of sense. Rowling's pulled off a tremendous feat, keeping track of all of the threads through seven entire books, and managing to tie them all off in a very natural way. All the guns on the mantlepiece went off by the end of the play.
And I'm sorry it's over, but I'm not the kind of person who never re-reads, as we all know. Frankly, I'm mostly relieved. She pulled it off.
2007-07-21, 09:55 PM — Harry Potter and The End
The final Harry Potter book has arrived. I am about to take one last breath on this side of it. When I come out the other side, the world will never be the same...
Actually, I started writing that as intentional hyperbole, but I kind of wonder if it is maybe a bit true. I mean, Harry Potter has been on my mind for a long time now, and soon I'll know how he ends. On the other hand, I have read and re-read any number of wonderful series of books before, and my world really hasn't changed all that much because of it. Other than I feel richer for having read the books. Anything by Patricia McKillip comes to mind, and particularly her "Riddlemaster of Hed" trilogy. Or Guy Gavriel Kay's "Fionavar Tapestry." Tolkein, of course. Lloyd Alexander's "Chronicles of Prydain."
I think the big difference is that this is kind of a global experience, where everyone is discovering the ending for the first time together. It gives the entire experience a slightly different flavour.
700 pages, and just under 36 hours before I have to go back to work. I'll need to sleep for at least 8 of those hours somewhere in there. 16 is probably better for me.
Here we go.
2007-07-19, 10:12 PM — the rotten soccer egg came before the chicken
Bah. To add to my sports geekery, I just need to say something about the Argentina-Chile match in Toronto today. I went in feeling that I wanted Argentina to kick Chile's ass, given the kind of diving and rolling Chile did on the pitch when playing Canada earlier in the tournament. The Canadian players refused to dive, which lead to Chile getting the vast majority of fouls called in their favour. And I don't care what anyone says about who is the better team; you start calling stupid fouls against any team with any regularity, and they're going to lose their momentum.
Tonight was worse, far worse, and not only did I feel sorry for Chile, but I felt sorry for Argentina. I honestly can't see how they can feel that it's a victory for them in any true sense of the word. It was a dirty game, and what was dirty about it was the officiating.
It has suddenly become clear to me why soccer is so full of diving and rolling. It's because it's rewarded by the referees. The problem of soccer isn't the players being dramatic and false, it's the fact that they're rewarded for being dramatic and false. I can't blame the players because they're only doing what has been proven to work. Maybe that's already been obvious to everyone else. It occurred to me tonight that I haven't seen a FIFA U20 game yet that I thought was officiated with any attempt to make it honest.
Soccer officials are lazy. They don't bother to use their eyes, they just check to see who is lying flat. And most of the time it's bullshit. Don't get me wrong. I've tried refereeing pick-up games between kids. I've coached before. I know it isn't easy being a referee -- you can't possibly see everything. Some people are better at it than others, but you would hope that you wouldn't get the laziest bastards as referees at top levels.
And there you go, Canada -- that's why we won't love soccer universally, although it truly is, at its heart, a wonderful game. But you get to any important level and it all goes out the window. The playacting is bad enough, but the officiating is really damn lazy and it makes for a dishonest game, leaving a bad taste in the mouth and the feeling that no one comes out the winner. And what makes it worse for me, as a person who loves soccer and loves the game, is that I seriously doubt that many Canadians watching this World Cup feel all that much differently than I. The concepts of honesty and fair play are something we Canadians hold at the heart of our identity, and they are something that international soccer has shown us it lacks. If soccer is really going to become anything but a minor-league summer passtime in this country, the international soccer community has some cleaning up to do.