Last week, when some consumers inadvertently, but legally, acquired the new Harry Potter book from a grocery store in Coquitlam, B.C. they found themselves the subjects of the most insane court order possibly ever issued by a Canadian court.
"(Raincoast Press) sought and obtained a court order banning reading and discussion of a children's book. In fact, Raincoast had asked the court to go even further, by compelling purchasers to disclose the names, addresses and other contact information of any other person with whom each had discussed the book's contents."Apart from my feeling, stronger than ever, that the emperor truly has no clothes on at this point (more on that in a paragraph or two) I'm just wondering when exactly it became okay in a free society to compel citizens not to divulge information that could affect the sales of someone's book? Why exactly are the courts supposed to care about this? Besides, had I been the subject of the order, I can't think of a better test case for individual freedom than this one. Those dozen or so people should have set up a website and crowed the spoilers like there was no tomorrow.
Can you imagine the circus if someone had actually been fined or imprisoned for giving away the ending of a book?!?I've finished reading the first 2 of the series so far. I've seen the movies as they've come out. The movies are better, so far as I can tell, since the books themselves read like the longest screenplay treatments ever written. Nicely plotted, well constructed, sloppily written and without an ounce of real wit. Boring, Boring, Boring. The more the mania spreads the more indifferent I find myself to the entire enterprise.
Plots and plot points are the least interesting reasons to read a book, anyways. I know how Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland and the Oz books "come out". BFD. What amazes me about actually reading those books, or Narnia ar any of the hundred or so children's works I would place head and shoulders above the Potter series is the
writing. Read Alice in Wonderland and just marvel at the language, the levels of meaning, the pure whimsy and delight of it all. Rowling can't hold a bloody candle to this. Knowing her plots in advance really does ruin the books, because frankly that's all they have going for them in the first place. Getting courts to issue injunctions around them strikes me as the ultimate expression that corporations really do run things around here thank-you-very-much. It all combines into a pretty compelling argument to just stop paying attention to it all together.
Okay, so this is the new look for spring. The very latest in slumber breathing assist technology, and it's mine all mine, man. I could not be happier, since it's been a year of feeling better and better tempered with the growing concern that my health was being compromised by a progressively more damaged skin area on the bridge of my nose. This mask not only reverses that concern, but I mean, come on, that thing is dead sexy to boot. It's even better up close and personal, if you know what I mean.
