Petition to buy shampoo for Snape

Disregard the title.
This is not about Harry Potter.
There, now you know. You're free to leave this page, sigh from relief, or maybe even read on...

Okay, okay, that isn't a complete truth. I mean, I can't write the day after seeing the concluding chapter of my childhood series played out on the big screen without at least mentioning it! And I'll simply ask a question to those pseudo members of Dumbledore's Army which truly befoggles my poor vacation struck brain...If wands can be won by simply disarming someone, then why don't wizards have, like, stashes of wands that they've won?  This is a major plot point, guys, a major theme which was only brought up once Harry's wand was snapped back in Part I. Maybe I'm being silly. But besides crying hysterically during Snape's emotional memorical breakdown (men have feelings??), that question kept popping up like the bad-flavored Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans (in any of the books, does anybody ever actually find one that tastes good?)

Back to reality now. (Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?)

Back to reality now. Hey, I'm legal! Hey, I have (hopefully) 70+ years to do all the things I can do now that I'm legal. In fact, I should have been trying NOT to do those things before, since technically I only had 18 years to savor that!

Outside there's a boxcar waiting. Pixies. Quality music. Meaghan Smith. Quality cover. Check it out.

Dude, after spending two days in Memphis, I think I'm gonna like it. The barbecue is amazing (eee the vegetarian thing has descended into 'portion control' at this point), though the college food was barely edible. I love the classes I'm taking, though there really is not a whole bunch of variety (no 'Jane Austen' course or 'Psychology taught in the tradition of Sylvia Plath' or 'Underwater Basket-Weaving' or 'Picking your nose with a pipe cleaner') . There are some super cool hipstas like me (breaking into college buildings at night is so badass, and, like, spacey, man), but millions of bros and 'business' majors too (no judgment yet, though! I won't remember more than five or six names/faces anyways).

No math or science, did I mention that? I get at least a semester of simply exploring those subjects which I believe hold my true passion. Perhaps I will enjoy my studying, maybe find some people who like tea and discussing literature and listening to Frank Sinatra for two hours every Sunday night. Or maybe I'll study abroad somewhere and never, ever come back. Geeze, I wish I had the money/talent/balls to do that.

It was interesting, meeting people at orientation. Okay, my social skills are not the best. Best word to describe me with new people: forgettable. Anyways, very few people knew others. Most of us were thrown into this sea of new faces, a new city, a new lifestyle, a new FREEDOM. A deja-vu high school experience, except there's no home and old friends to go home to at the end of the day. Instead, there's the dorm and your roommate and Facebook to connect with home. And many people are thrown off by that. And when you see these people, obviously big fish at home, thrown into this ocean of other big fish and bigger fish, it's almost amusing. It would be, if I didn't feel the exact same way.

I can't wait, though. After eighteen years with all of you Dallasites, I'm ready to sign out permanently in a month. I'll be back de temps en temps, mais je voudrais voir le monde, seulement Tennessee maintenant, mais perchance other exciting places soon.

For Harry Potter fans

Superstitious people say that when you experience a full body chill, it means that someone is walking over your future gravesite. If that's so, then I'll probably be buried right in the middle of Trafalgar Square, where thousands of people gathered yesterday for the final red carpet premiere of the Harry Potter series, which opens next week on the very night of my 18th birthday. Of course, the wizarding age of becoming legal is 17, so the correlation is slightly off, but still, it is the end of childhood for me and for those cute little wizards and witches who somehow all had the luck to grow up and be attractive.

Although I didn't start reading Harry Potter till about 7th grade, and I've never been one of those diehard fans (quite frankly, some of those movies are pretty dull, the books are angsty, and the characters don't use NEARLY enough magic as Rowling created potential for in her world), for a fiction writer to reach this degree of fame in this century without any "Wizards Suck" movies made and actually receiving positive reviews from critics worldwide and even from the Vatican press? (Catholics have pretty darn good taste, man) Admiration and obsession are warranted.

The Harry Potter books are absolutely absorbing. There is one degree of literature and film that I call 'the vicarious dream', when the reader or viewer feels such a degree of oneness with the work of art that he or she is overwhelmed at the end and needs a moment of reflection and that sense of deep regret that there aren't 100 pages left to read. Woahhh when teenagers want a 500 page book to be longer, you know there's something special in there somewhere.

So I am putting aside the four other books I have started in the past couple weeks (Satanic Verses, Autograph Man, To the Lighthouse, Eating Animals) which have yet to catch my fancy (Virginia Woolf uses 11 commas on the first page, in one sentence, of her sensationally successful novel. And peers always tell me to cut my sentences down...) and rereading that final Harry Potter. I will probably be disappointed by the movie. I've been disappointed by all the others and all movie ever made based on my favorite bits of literature. Yet, I will conform, for the world for once made a good choice in choosing a global obsession. It'll all be over in a few months; the new Twilight movie will hit like a hangover, and an even newer craze will strike. But perhaps, Harry will remain that childhood favorite. Nancy Drew prevailed, the Simpsons prevailed, Woody Allen prevailed, Potter will prevail.

And Malfoy will always be my favorite.