10.26.2007

Who gives a grab bag...

A few items that grabbed this page's attention this week, like so many squirrels zipping by my living room window to tease my cat into slamming his head on the window frame before I can let him out....

Dumbledore is gay - This page still hasn't read any of the Harry Potter books, but I know enough about them that Dumbledore is also dead, and contrary to the mesmerized fans base of the J.K. Rowing tomes, a fictional character. I expect that being completely out of ideas, Rowling will sleep on a mattress filled with royalties and whenever she's starved for attention will drop juicy tidbits about other characters.

Islamofascism Awareness Week - Speaking of fictional creations, I can't tell if Anne Coulter simultaneously agitating for human rights for Muslim women while at the same time fantasizing about repealing the suffrage of American women is really funny or really creepy. This page encourages David Horowitz to keep giving her enough rope so that the fantasy of sensible Americans tired of Ms. Coulter's antics will finally come true.

The NFL in Toronto - The Buffalo Bills want to play a couple of games per season at Toronto's Rogers Centre, a stadium with capacity for about 55,000 people, and is still being paid by taxpayers. Ted Rogers and Paul Godfrey are salivating at the prospect of having the Bills relocate to Toronto after the Bills' octogenarian owner Ralph Wilson dies. The NFL prescribes a minimum seating capacity of 70,000, so unless the plan is to suspend fans from the stadium's retractable roof, a new stadium will need to built. Guess who gets stuck with the tab? Besides, REAL football arrived in Toronto this year, and it didn't seem to damage the CFL's Argonauts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have read all of the Harry books, and did not pick up any such inference, despite my finely attuned gaydar. Even his friendly and infatuated friendship with Gellert Grindelwald didn't come across as anything gay to me, but rather an infatuated friendship. Of course, the movie character's another matter Michael Gambon

Don said...

I tend toward the New Criticism school of literary criticism. There's really nothing in the text that I've seen to suggest Aldus' sexuality one way or the other, and now that the books are published, Rowling doesn't get to "add on" by making asides to the media.

But suggesting that she made the comment to make more money? I doubt that too. There are people in the world, for certain, who will continue to chase money long after he or she has more than they could dream of using in their or their childrens' lives, but given her publishing history (and the lack of garbage add-on books and absurd product licensing for her own gain), I don't think Joanne has proven herself among them.

The only think that would make me happier than having the Bills move to Toronto and fail miserably when everyone there realizes that four downs is super-dull (though I think that fits the Dullest City in History), would be for the Argos to respond by moving to Buffalo and being enormously successful.