Refried Screens

Just when Harry Potter fans thought they overcame the grief of the end, JK Rowling teased that she’s bringing back the bones of the wee wizard…for charity:

Author JK Rowling has penned an 800-word outline of a prequel to the seven book series that has made her into a billionaire which will be sold at the auction on June 10 by bookseller Waterstones. 

I fear some poor, recovering Potthead will spend his kid’s college fund for a peek.  Come to think of it, I actually fear whoever buys the bloody thing.

They’ll end up worse than Gollum trying to protect their precious outline from pesky, hobbit-like creatures.

Oh, the horror!

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In the epic battle between JK Rowling and Steven Van der Ark over a dictionary, Rowling could lose the decision because she’s been a little too fan friendly. Apparently, Rowling has to prove the Lexicon will have a damaging effect on her books:

That’s a tough argument for Rowling to make here because she, in the past, has been so encouraging of fan Web sites and lexicons and the like. This is where she has her major problem.

If smacking down a French teenager wasn’t bad ass enough, I guess she’ll have to kick the living Hogwarts out of some more fans.

Muggles beware!  Your Internets will be your downfall!

Police arrested  a 16 year old who posted his own translation of the latest Harry Potter book on the Internet weeks ahead of the official French release date.  If you think author J.K Rowling was against it, think again:

Neil Blair, a lawyer at the Christopher Little Literary Agency, said Rowling’s agents were “heartened” that the French authorities took action against the teen “to protect copyrights and to avoid innocent fans being duped.”

72 million copies of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows were sold in 24 hours.  So why do you think they’re pressed to prosecute?

Here are three theories:

1) Deathly Hallows is the last book in the series, and J.K. Rowling and her publishers might be feeling the need to squeeze every penny they can get;

2) J.K. Rowling, her publisher, and her agents are still bitter about Deathly Hallows leakage and spoilers prior to the books release; or

3) J.K. Rowling really hates the French.

My money’s on #3.

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Why do you think Rowling authorized the hit on the kid?  And do you think it was right?

This post is intended to assist those coping with the end of the Harry Potter series. You can find the intro to the series HERE. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, Part 3 is here, and Part 4 is here.

Acceptance is the final stage of grief. If you are at this stage, congratulations!
It was a long journey. You have overcome denial, expressed your anger, given up the baragaining, and are out of depression. You have accepted that J.K. Rowling isn’t out to hurt anyone. Harry Potter is her baby and she was a howling, devastated mess after finishing the book. Should we get mad at her for turning her back on the millions of fans who have invested years of their lives in a world that she is ending on her own whim?

Of course not.

Rowling, like Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds, is doing what she feels she has to do.

For those unfamiliar with Galactus, he is a cosmic entity who can only live by feeding off the energy of living planets, much like Rowling, who made her fortune by feeding off the hard earned money of Harry Potter fans.

After Galactus finishes sucking all of the energy from a planet, he leaves behind a lifeless husk. And Harry Potter fans can relate to that, on the eve of the annihilation known as “P Day”.

Like Galactus terminating a planet, ending the Harry Potter series is Rowling’s prerogative. At this stage, fans should follow the example set by the book industry, facing losses in the millions because of Harry’s end, and stay upbeat.
Unlike Galactus, Rowling gave us some really good times and memories over the years: When Hermie slapped Malfoy. Harry freed Dobby. And who can forget when Harry was under the invisibility cloak, unable to help Dumbledore when Snape…

…oops…

….uh, let’s just go to the Inspirational Video For Potter Fans At This Stage:

No matter how anyone feels about the end of the Harry Potter series, they should treat J.K. Rowling with respect and accept her decision. After all, if fans get too crazy, she might destroy Harry Potter’s legacy just to teach them a lesson.
So if you’re feeling weak, remember three words which will make you move on:
Jar Jar Binks.

First it was the drug dealers taking advantage of Harry Potter, now it’s the bookies. According to Bloomberg:

William Hill Plc, a London-based bookmaker, closed bets on Harry sacrificing himself at 2/5 odds on July 17, cut from an original quote of 33/1 in early July. Lord Voldemort, who murdered Potter’s parents, is at 9/4 to kill Harry, and Professor Severus Snape is at 4/1 odds to murder him. The bookmaker took more than 50,000 pounds ($100,000) in bets on Harry’s fate, the first time in the company’s history it had ever bet on a book.

I wonder if J.K. Rowling was banned from placing bets?

Just think what you could’ve done if you actually read those spoilers…other than ruining the ending for yourself.

And if you didn’t place a bet when you could have, you must REALLY be hating yourself now.

By not taking advantage, you’re like Marty McFly, from Back To The Future Part II, who could have used a sports almanac from the past and made a fortune by being a low down, rotten, dirty cheat looking to make a quick buck.

But he didn’t. He took the high ground.

Biff Tannen took the almanac and cheated by placing bets on games, and what did it get him?

A mega casino.

So what if you could’ve been filthy, stinking rich? By not betting, you did the right thing.

It might have seemed as easy as taking candy from a baby, but Mr. Burns thought that too. And look what happened to him…

This post is intended to assist those coping with the end of the Harry Potter series. Other posts in this series will follow daily, until we reach ACCEPTANCE, the final stage of grief. You can find the intro to the series HERE. Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, and Part 3 is here.

Depression is the fourth stage of grief and it refers to a state of melancholia, unhappiness or sadness, or to a relatively minor downturn in mood that may last only a few hours or days.

Fans are depressed, because their Potterverse is coming to an end. How depressed? There is a Facebook group called “After Harry Potter Seven Comes Out I Won’t Have Anything To Live For” :
For All those who have waited year after year for the next Harry Potter book to come out, and feel that after book seven comes out their life will no longer have meaning.
There are loads of members, and they even have t-shirts you can order, even for toddlers who can’t read Harry Potter…

What’s really creepy is the maternity size:

Imagine, some poor fetus, trapped in the womb of a mommy depressed at the loss of Harry Potter. That’s what I call 9 months of hell and some states call fetal abuse.

At this point, Harry Potter fans won’t want to do jack. Half of them will turn emo, some will buy depression tees, a fraction of will engage in cutting, and the remaining group will get laid and wonder what all the fuss was about in the first place. If you know a Harry Potter fan at this stage, please ignore what the Scientologists will tell you about psychiatry. Have your friend make an appointment with a shrink. If they want to see magic, a few rounds of Zoloft, not the Harry Potter Ecstasy pills , will do the trick. Remember, just because the ecstasy pills bear Harry’s initials doesn’t mean they’re endorsed by the Ministry of Magic.

Depressed fans who are pregnant, nursing, or toddlers can’t use Zoloft, but there’s another way of overcoming their doldrums. Music can be used to treat depression, according to The Anatomy of Melancholy. That is what makes today’s Inspirational Video For Potter Fans At This Stage critical. Potter fans may feel depressed and alone. They need to hear that somewhere, there is someone who feels just as lonely:

Join me tomorrow for the last stage: Acceptance.

This post is intended to assist those coping with the end of the Harry Potter series. Other posts in this series will follow daily, until we reach ACCEPTANCE, the final stage of grief. You can find the intro to the series here. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

Bargaining should be the third stage of grief, but a number of fans began their grieving with this step, which is why I’m starting with the Inspirational Video For Potter Fans At This Stage: James Brown’s Please Don’t Go:

Harry Potter means so much to many, both emotionally and financially, author J.K. Rowling has likely received offers to to continue the series from more than just her fans. If someone was desperate enough to play tummy wands in order to get movie tickets, you know that somebody is going to pull a Faust and attempt a pact with the devil to keep the series going. Although some believe Potter fans have already forfeited their souls by reading Harry Potter books, I’m an optimist. Some unholy entity out there has to be desperate enough to take a Potter fan’s soul, no matter how worthless it might be. At this very moment, there probably is a desperate Pott-head searching for a genie or monkey’s paw that can fulfill his wish for more Potter books.

Unfortunately, he’ll end up getting some flawed version of his wish fulfilled, like The Simpsons episode, with a Monkey’s Paw that granted wishes.

Homer made a wish that he believed couldn’t backfire:
I wish for a turkey sandwich…on rye bread…with lettuce and mustard, and…*and*…I don’t want any zombie turkeys, I don’t want to turn into a turkey myself, and I don’t want any other weird surprises. You got it?…Hey! Not bad. Nice…hot mustard…good bread. The turkey’s a little dry…The turkey’s a little dry! Oh, foe and cursed thing! What demon from the depths of hell created thee?!

Although the traditional moral of stories like the Monkey’s Paw or The Fisherman and the Fish is “do not get too greedy, or you will end up with nothing”, I know better. As a fan of the original Star Wars trilogy who had to suffer through Episode One, there are three things you don’t do:

Spit in the wind

Beg a burned out creator to change their mind.

If George Lucas can turn Darth Vader, one of the greatest badasses of all time, into a punk ass, whiny toddler, imagine what a pissed J.K. Rowling can do to Harry Potter.
Jar Jar Binks, anyone?
Join me tomorrow for the next stage: Depression.

This post is intended to assist those coping with the end of the Harry Potter series. Other posts in this series will follow daily, until we reach ACCEPTANCE, the final stage of grief. You can find the intro to the series here. Part 1 is here

Anger is the second stage of grief. Harry Potter fans have been here for a while, cursing J.K. Rowling and her seed by asking “How Could You Do This To Me?” They end up blaming her for the loss of the series. Anger is necessary to overcome grief, according to the Kubler-Ross model. So you should embrace it, just not the same way these people did:

Perhaps you can follow what black kids pissed off at the Rodney King beating did: start krumping!

Something tells me that most Harry Potter fans can’t dance a lick, which is why krumping is the perfect way to learn how. Make sure you post on youtube. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the next Star Wars Kid!

Suppressing anger isn’t going to help matters much. If you’re a Potter fan, you should be pissed if you still enjoy the series. Why should Rowling stop writing? The books haven’t turned into complete crap yet. As fans, you deserve to see your heroes used and abused to a degree that makes them hopelessly pointless. When that happens, you walk away on your own terms, not the terms dictated by someone who has a stranglehold on characters you know and love. If Rowling has run out of ideas, she should license the stories to people who are frothing at the mouth to bastardize Harry Potter.

Look at Star Trek. They had the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, gay fan fiction, cartoons, movies, Enterprise, and now Battlestar Galactica, which is better than…what was that? Battlestar Galactica is not part of the Star Trek universe? My bad. Let’s just go to the Inspirational Video For Potter Fans At This Stage. In order to work your way through Anger, you have to FEEL rage. I’m not going to insult the Harry Potter franchise or it’s fans. What’s the point of that anyway if we still are to be friends? Instead, I present to you a man who inspires Anger in us all:

That’s right, Fed Ex. Who were you expecting? George Bush? Republicans like Harry Potter too, you know.

If that didn’t make you mad enough, someone put spoilers up online. Still not angry? damn…
Sure you’re not taking Harry Potter ecstasy?
Join me tomorrow, for Bargaining.

Saturday, July 21st is considered “P Day“, since it is the day that Harry Potter fans learn the final fate of their beloved heroes. Whether Harry lives or dies, people will be miserable. And misery loves company. Unfortunately, misery loves drugs too.

New York drug dealers hoping to to turn “P Day” into “E Day”, have been peddling Ecstasy pills bearing images from the popular Harry Potter books and movies for $25 a pop. (thesmokinggun.com).

Aren’t Harry Potter fans suffering enough? Is this a dastardly concoction of Lord Voldemort, the Malfoys, or the morally ambiguous Professor Snape? Knowing Snape, he’d probably plead temporary insanity from “wizard mind control” again. And you know what? He’d probably get off, too, leaving some poor, depressed Harry Potter fan turning tricks for a guy who looks like Hagrid, all the time pretending that each john has the biggest wand he’s ever seen.

Not quite the sequel to the series he was looking for.

This post is intended to assist those coping with the end of the Harry Potter series. Other posts in this series will follow daily, until we reach ACCEPTANCE, the final stage of grief. You can find the intro to the series HERE.

Denial is the initial stage of grief. Harry Potter fans will tell themselves “This Can’t Be Happening”. The world they’ve loved for years is crumbling, and they can’t believe it. Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, feels their pain, but is doing the wrong thing to help them cope:

“I can’t say I will never write another book about that world, just because I think: ‘What do I know, in 10 years’ time I might want to return to it’. But I think it is unlikely.”

I know Rowling is trying to prevent some nutjob Potter fan from pulling a John Lennon on her, and who can blame her? Have you seen some of these folks? But Rowling should just bite the bullet (figuratively speaking), be honest and tell them the franchise is dead…from an undisclosed location, of course. If it worked for The Sopranos creator David Chase who fled the country before the crappy Sopranos finale aired, it can work for J.K. Rowling.

Since Denial is the first stage, you need to face facts. The series is OVER. To help you come to terms with this, I have provided the first Inspirational Video For Potter Fans At This Stage: Hogwarts Is Done. So Sayeth Alice Cooper:

Don’t feel better? Good. It means you’ll be ready for tomorrow’s step: Anger.