Potteriana

• Wanna see Fleur Delacoeur topless? Clémence Poésy has been cast as Fleur in Harry Potter 4, and she has conveniently already been naked in a movie. Criswell predicts: this movie will become very popular after the release of HP4. (She's also a bit older than Fleur, but I don't think it'll be a problem.)
  
  
• I'm amazed, but not really surprised, at the vituperation being directed at Cuarón. Clearly HP3 was the best of the three movies (according to me and Rowling both), and clearly this was because he departed from the text in a way Columbus was afraid to, but to hear some fans on alt.fan.harry-potter tell it he's the Antichrist, and probably the scoundrel behind Amelia Earhart's disappearance as well. How dare he add shrunken heads?! Let's string him up for not having all the Crookshanks scenes from the book! Who said he could invent a new kind of Honeyduke's candy?! I thought the ire directed at Peter Jackson might have been an aberration, but, sadly, no. All these people need to rent Adaptation and/or take a few deep breaths.

Unrelatedly, elysdir has pointed me to an addictive new Flash game from the makers of GROW. Tontine is sort of a Whack-a-Mole game. A new critter appears on each level; the data beneath each critter tells you how many whacks it takes to whack it, how many points you get for doing so, and how much life energy you lose for letting it go unwhacked. (Each heart is full o' 50 to begin.)

(N.B.: I haven't been posting personal updates of late because my life has been deathly boring for the last week, not because anything is wrong. If anything happens, I'll let y'all know. I had sweet potato fries tonight; that's the highlight of today.)

New highlight

Oops—I unfairly maligned my new sandals by stating that the sweet potato fries were the highlight of today! While the fries were indeed quite tasty, and the Jamaican restaurant I got them from apparently served David Byrne (!) last night, it is more significant that I am now the proud owner of a new pair of Ecco sandals.

My last pair served me well for four years, so I am expecting big things from these. They have only two Velcro straps, compared to the three on the previous pair, and this made me suspect them of feeling a little loose on my feet, but I've been wearing them all night now and I think they're quite the thing.

(David Byrne was in town for a concert at the Power Center, which I knew nowt of. This makes me sad; he was eating dinner literally thirty yards from me last night. *sigh* I wish we'd still had Young Adam at my theater, in which case he might have noticed that I'd put "MUSIC BY DAVID BYRNE" on the marquée and stopped in to say hi.)

(Well, he might've.)

Softening

The 9/11 Commission found no link between Saddam Hussein and Al Quaida. Well, sure, we knew that.

But the AP Yahoo! story used to say this "bluntly contradict[s]" the Bush White House. Now, four hours later, it says it "rebuff[s] Bush administration claims." Interesting.

Place names

I'm going to Nags Head, NC this weekend, for a get-together with Kendra's family. In the general vicinity:

Duck
Kill Devil Hills
Gum Neck
The Great Dismal Swamp
Askewville
Burden
Riddle
Old Trap
Harbinger
Scuppernong
Goat Neck
Valhalla
Spot
The Alligator-Pungo Canal
Swanquarter

We will be in Dare County, which is the county from which the Roanoke colony disappeared, leaving only the word CROATAN carved in a tree. We will try to be careful. It is also home to Kitty Hawk, which we will be driving (not flying) through.