TriumphAnt

Just when you thought it was safe to skip Pottermania…

Along comes a phone call from your offspring who has one more day left at her UofT camp and so asks if you would PLEEEEAAAASSSSSEEEEE!!! mind joining the midnight madness to grab a hot-off-the-press copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (or as the dimbulb “Have you read any media at all in the past month???” Loblaws sign-writer wrote on a carefully-lettered sign atop a huge pyramid of the books the next day, “Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows”. As an aside, I know whenever I think “bestselling books”, my feet beat an immediate path to my neighbourhood gargantuan grocery store.)

Where was I?

Oh yes.

On the previous go-round of the new Harry Potter book release, one of the few remaining independent bookstores in Ottawa, Shirley Leishman Books, got royally toasted in that chapter of the ongoing Pottermania. Late in the pre-release hype period, a huge Shoppers Drug Mart right beside them in the west-end mall where they are located advertised that they, too, would be rolling out as many copies as people might want for $10 less than the price for which Leishman’s had already announced they would sell it. In consequence, Leishman’s, a bookseller for whom customer service appears very high on their Mission Statement – and they live it – saw a great many potential sales turn away and traipse through the adjacent Shoppers door. That story came immediately to mind when offspring made her request, so I figured why the hell not?

If Leishman’s were going to do it again this time, that is. So earlier in the week, I had phoned the store and was told that not only were they doing it again, they were bringing in a “Mad Science” show to fill the last hour before they flung open their doors at midnight.

Mad Science bills itself as a “provider of science enrichment for children” and from the very name of their representative at the mall this night, “Kaboom”, they seemed to promise a good time would be had by all. The energetic young performer turned up in an apropos lab coat, along with a brace of cases filled with laboratory paraphernalia, various multi-coloured solutions and a vast cauldron that could comfortably have held four basketballs. Distracting – for almost an hour – a growing number of young, sleep-deprived, chocolate-wired Potterphiles was a formidable challenge. (Leishman’s management had thoughtfully laid out a couple hundred chocolate cupcakes as well, to the teeth-grinding appreciation of the parents of those same children who no doubt foresaw the difficulty of getting their charges to sleep even after they got back home in the wee-wee hours.) “Kaboom”, however, for the most part carried it off, although I noticed that she did cast the occasional nervous glance at the mall’s overhead sprinkler system heads as she ignited several small squares of flash paper.

It was her finale, however, that drew a well-deserved chorus of ooooohs and aaaahs when she dumped her entire remaining supply of dry ice into the cauldron. Instantly, great billowing clouds of cold mist burbled up from inside the huge pot, spilling over the side and roiling outwards along the floor to swirl thickly around the delighted audience. Even Hogwarts’ Potions Master would have applauded that!

Then suddenly, it was the duly appointed hour. (The store manager had actually linked her computer to an international time clock and so was able to initiate a final ten-second countdown.)

The move to the doors was exceptionally well-managed, too, with several pre-opening announcements having made it abundantly clear that (1) pre-paid buyers would obtain their copies by flowing down the left side of the store to the pre-order table; (2) cash buyers were to proceed to the cash register halfway down the right side of the store; and (3) most important of all, there were more than enough copies of the book for everyone. Tonight, she said, would pose no threat of “sold out”, even if people wanted multiple copies.

It was actually a lot of fun… except for that moment when an older gentleman, probably a well-intentioned grandfather in search of a copy for a grandchild, collapsed at the door. From among our excited little community, however, there swiftly emerged not one, but two physicians. An immediate loosening of a shirt collar and a “Please give him a little space” request later, by the time the paramedics arrived just minutes afterwards, it already looked as if an ambulance trip was not going be required.

For my part, my loud offer to crack open my just-purchased copy and read the last five pages to those still in line behind me was met with a chorus of what I would characterize as “something less than enthusiasm”.

But I discovered that far and away the greatest sacrifice to come on this evening – this morning, I guess that would be, midnight being the launch time – would be from one of the store staff, who told me during a brief conversation before the doors opened that she would be departing after the last customer had been served for a kids’ camp, Camp Opemikon, on Christie Lake outside Perth (about a 90-minute drive from this mall). And at what she guessed would be about 4 am, she was going to tiptoe into one particular cabin to carefully slide some eight copies of the book under eight pillows cushioning eight sleeping heads, where each of those lucky despite-being-far-removed-from-any-retail-venue campers, her daughter among them, would discover the hefty read upon waking later that same morning.

Now THAT’s a heck of a Mom!

Oh… and as a further PS (Potter-Script), the latest film go-round, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is wonderful. It seems apparent to me that the crafters of the cinema franchise recognize that the audience upon whose original fandom their entire foundation is built is aging, because the storyline honestly bears no resemblance at all to anything that you might call a “children’s story”. Evil is rendered as really evil and in this film is terrifying. (Never mind “May be too intense for younger children”; this one oughta warn off anyone with a faint heart regardless of your age!)

And anyone who toils in a bureaucracy will revel in the portrayal of the meddling of the We-know-what’s-best-for-you “Ministry of Magic” in the administration of Hogwarts Academy.

The only nitpick I have is that a couple of formerly prominent other characters have been reduced to mere cameos in this movie. The young Draco Malfoy, Harry’s peer and previously a significant foil, barely registers despite a prominent appearance by his even more sinister father, Lucius. Meanwhile, Harry’s “muggle” (ordinary people) family, the Dursleys, who previously have been played for laughs and probably elicited considerable audience sympathy at being saddled with an adopted wizard-in-training, in their short appearance here are so repulsive that, sadly, you can’t wait for them to vacate the screen.

= = =

Your tax dollars at work.

With one minor alteration, the message text reproduced below is word-for-word just one and half paragraphs of a six-paragraph memo that landed recently in our entire department’s e-mail inboxes. The only change is the omission of specific people’s names. Lord knows I don’t want to run afoul of any Official Secrets Act.

The test is to see how far you can get before you reach that state of bureaucratic catatonia known as MEGO (for “My Eyes Glaze Over”). For me, it was much earlier on… at the appearance of the third consecutive passive-voiced verb near the end of the first paragraph. No one in government, you see, ever actively “does” things. No one ever actively “agrees” to anything. Things are passively “done” or “undertaken”, while other things are “agreed”. Even at the end, you will notice, no one commends the workers. They simply (and passively) “are commended for their work”.

It goes a long way towards helping us all dodge any follow-up blame. Sure, it was done, but I didn’t “done” it. Nope, not me.

I’d say, “Enjoy”, but it is just too painful.

- - -

“Good morning,..

…

Furthermore, it has been agreed that the regional TSO and other NTM personnel currently responsible for ED, OP/SWYL and BP functions within their region will continue to perform these duties until CSA establishes a new administrator network to relieve regional TSO/NTM personnel of these functions. The transfer should be completed by fall 2007 (but can be up to 6 months from July 9, 2007). This should give ample time to transfer these functions to their new business owner given the upcoming summer holidays and the size of the administrative network.

Finally, we want to take this opportunity to thank [Names 1, 2 and 3 omitted] for the tremendous amount of work and efforts they have devoted in support of these projects and in ensuring we maintain an excellent service delivery standard throughout these years. They have done an excellent job adapting to the ever increasing evolution of the projects and are commended for their work...

Thank you
[Name 4 omitted] / Head of National Voice Initiatives

Pour / for
[Name 5 omitted] / Manager, National Telecommunications Management”

= = =

I keep turning up tunes of inspiration among the many musical interludes that originated on Sesame Street. In this case, it’s the song that introduces the show’s classification skills segment, “One of these things is not like the other”.

Or to put it another way, “We blew the budget on Spellcheck but maybe next year we’ll be able to afford an editor.” Ironically, it’s from an online media site called Media Circus, where an article appeared on July 14 about newspapers who “spike”, rather than publish, stories that might reflect negatively on the people who own the newspapers. It included this sentence in a paragraph about other past examples, in this case William Randolph Hearst:

“At the height of his power in the 1930s he owned 46 publications, and when he was implemented in the murder of film producer Thomas Ince, most of them chose not to report it.”

Implemented, implicated… tomAYto, tomAHto… What’s the big deal? Well ordinarily not much, especially in an online environment, but in this case it appeared in a site by and about media people, Media Circus (http://www.jointhemediacircus.com/mediacircus/), a branch of The First Post, whose producers describe their mission this way: ”The First Post is a free and independent daily online news magazine – a place to find out what the news means, a place to read about the issues of the day in short, sharp, informative articles.”

See? Doesn’t say anything about “edited”.

Now all of that being said, it is a damned interesting little corner of the internet and I do commend it to anyone with a curiosity about any of the ancillary topics that surround the process of reporting the news. Which is why I included the link.

= = =

And on the positive “10 points for style” side, an Associated Press story that appeared in the July 23 online edition of the Globe and Mail was about wine lovers who are scouring the Macedonian countryside around Gradesnica, where a French troops’ trench system was known to have existed when there was a World War I battlefield on the site. Apparently shellfire from the 1916 battles that occurred there buried many cases of vintage wine and cognac that had been distributed to French officers. Those bottles, which have begun to turn up in lots of 12 and 24 at a time, have been described as “the nectar of the gods” by the villagers who first unearthed and then tasted the cognac. Collectors have apparently agreed, and now the finds are fetching prices as high as $7,000 a bottle when they are sold.

The Globe headlined the story:

“Soldiers gone but their spirits live on”

I love that.

= = =

There was an episode of the TV show X-Files several years ago that was built around a small group of chameleon-like beings who had the power to blend so effectively into their backgrounds that they became pretty well invisible in natural surroundings. In the forest, for example, the only way viewers saw them was when what looked like a section of ordinary trunk suddenly “blinked its eyes”, scaring the bejeezuz out of you the first time it happened.

Well imagine my surprise! It turns out that one of the cunning camouflagers apparently has made his way to my father-in-law’s yard in Ancaster, Ontario, where apparently I managed to snap him just in mid-blink while masking himself as a birch tree.

Until la prochaine.