{"id":158,"date":"2005-07-16T14:57:04","date_gmt":"2005-07-16T22:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=158"},"modified":"2008-06-22T11:16:08","modified_gmt":"2008-06-22T18:16:08","slug":"a-quick-show-of-hands-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=158","title":{"rendered":"A Quick Show Of Hands, Please&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Is anyone out there in my circle of readers besides myself <em>not<\/em> sitting around waiting for their copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to arrive?<\/p>\n<p>Why of course there are, Andrew; those who joined the throngs at the bookstores at midnight. \ud83d\ude44<\/p>\n<p>Look, I&#8217;m happy for all of you, really; the mere fact that this phenomenon has united people from age four to four hundred says something positive about it\u2014so long as mass weddings officiated by J.K. Rowling don&#8217;t follow.<\/p>\n<p>But oh Lord, am I tired of hearing about it. I&#8217;m sure I would love the series. It is, no doubt, what I have been waiting all my life to read. I imagine my very existence would triple in value if I were only to pick up Harry Potter and the Freemason&#8217;s Stone&#8230;.The Goblet of Hemlock&#8230;.The Order of Fries&#8230;.whatever the first book in the series is called.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, it is precisely because of just such adjurations from my fellow carbon units that I will most likely never, ever, ever pick up any of these books. Over time they have metamorphosed from books into a character-building exercise, from an entertaining passtime into something akin to mowing the lawn: a chore that really must be done before it gets any worse. I&#8217;m an adult, so I don&#8217;t have to do things simply because other people tell me that I ought to. At the same time, I&#8217;m just immature enough to not <em>want<\/em> to do something, simply because other people tell me that I ought to.<\/p>\n<p>So, dear readers, enjoy your Potterage. I hope it&#8217;s everything you were hoping for. Me, I think I&#8217;ll spend the time rereading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0312857586\/qid=1121554031\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_bbs_1\/002-8462812-3440001?v=glance&#038;s=books&#038;n=507846\">Shadow of the Giant<\/a>, or playing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockstargames.com\/sanandreas\/\">Grand Theft Auto San Andreas<\/a>, or upping my regimen of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Category:J-Horror\">J-Horror<\/a> flicks while I wait for this thing to blow over.<\/p>\n<p>At least until Harry Potter and the Prolapsed Colon comes out in 2007.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is anyone out there in my circle of readers besides myself not sitting around waiting for their copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to arrive? Why of course there are, Andrew; those who joined the throngs at the bookstores at midnight. \ud83d\ude44 Look, I&#8217;m happy for all of you, really; the mere fact [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roominations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}