The dumbest protest I've ever seen...

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

I know about a book full of witches, demons, devils and incest....

[Jay 2K Winger]

Gonna echo the Harry Dresden love. Except...

I've always wanted to be there when someone went off on a tirade about how evil the HP books are... Just so I could lend them one of my Harry Dresden books.

Now THAT'S evil.

Hey, now. Harry Dresden is NOT evil. He bends the rules when it suits him, pisses off pretty much every magical entity that's stronger than him, spits in the Senior Council's face almost every time he sees them, and casually screws up people's lives because he can get away with it without violating one of the Laws, but he's not EVIL.

It's a very fine line.

[LingualMonkey]

Off topic in terms of protest, but this is absolutely the greatest idea ever for the ending of the Harry Potter series:

http://www.homeonthestrange.com/view.php?ID=169

[Skelly]

That reminds me of a story were an indian skeptic challenged a tantric guru life on TV. The guru had claimed he could kill people just by a specific ritual. The guru couldn't find a way to avoid the challenge and tried and tried and tried... He had to be remininded that pressing the temples of his victim hard doesn't count. The TV station canceled the following programs and continued the life broadcast, only to see the guru fail misserably. There are videos of that on youtube, the guru getting more and more frantic, the skeptic staying alive and smilling.

Reminds me of that video with the martial artist who claims to be able to fight using only his ki. He demonstrates it against what I assume is a bunch of rather gullible students. Then later in the video he faces off against an MMA fighter, who is rather unimpressed by his hand waving and such. Let's just say that the ki guy gets beaten rather severely and is carried away on a stretcher.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Dumb and polite . The funny thing is that the magic in the Potter books are so obviously fake. What does those protesters think will happen if children point a wand at someone and say "petrificus totalis"?

The only thing I ever worried about with the kids and wands is that someone would get their eye poked out at one of the release parties. I worked a midshift for one of them at Store1 (they preferred to have me on register for the Saturday morning craziness), then changed into jeans and flip flops and hung around for a couple hours (my then-boyfriend was a photographer and was taking pictures for the store so I got us some dinner and stuck around). I had to tell several kids to stop swinging their wands around so much before someone got hurt.

I don't recall ever getting anyone protesting or complaining about the content of the books...I guess there's not a lot of religious fundyism around here.

At Store2 I worked the day of one of the parties (I think a mid again) and we were all assigned to a house, and at least wore the colors (or as close as we could get - I wore a navy polo shirt and dark khakis for Ravenclaw's blue and bronze), and one of the managers was head of each house. (Some people went all out with the dressing up, but I wasn't staying for the whole party and I actually had to do work during the day so I didn't bother). They guy who was head of Slytherin had a long black coat and green striped tie...he looked more Matrix than HP, though.

For the last party I was no longer working in the store but I volunteered to work at Store2. I think I just wore black and I got one of the baseball caps so I wore that. I spent most of the time at the wristband table outside, so I didn't have to deal with the crowd too much (we had police on hand to keep the store at capacity). At 15 minutes before midnight I went behind the cashwrap to get ready to bag for one of the cashiers. Then I helped clean up for a while but then I decided..."I don't work here I'm going home."

At that one they had a girl come straight from her wedding. She had talked to the community relations manager beforehand and they agreed to hold bracelet number one for her, so she picked it up first thing in the morning...then later in the evening she came from the wedding, in the limo, with her husband and the whole bridal party. She wasn't first in line but she was in the first group to get on line. I wonder how her husband felt about her spending the honeymoon reading a children's book.

[dalesys]

...I wonder how her husband felt about her spending the honeymoon reading a children's book.

Hallelujah! For once she isn't talking while I'm busy!