Shaggy, Dan, and I were at Sam’s Club on a soda run, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was playing on several of the large screens. I only caught a moment of the film — the Death Eaters were terrorizing the Quidditch Cup crowd. I watched as the crowd of thousands scattered in panic, fleeing before a dozen spell-flinging evil wizards, and I wondered…

This is not a muggle crowd. This is a crowd of magic-using folk. Don’t most — if not ALL — of these people have wands of their own? Why are none of them counterspelling, or attacking back?

What would happen if everybody at the Superbowl over the age of 16 had been trained in the use of a handgun, and was currently carrying… then, suddenly, a group of armed men with RPG launchers attacked the stadium?

Answer? Lots of panic, lots of fleeing, but in short order it would quiet down, and there would be several dead men lying beside their RPG launchers. After all, at least a thousand of those fans would NOT panic, and would shoot back.

The Harry Potter universe is an armed society. A very, very well-armed society. Those wands are far more powerful than handguns, and the grown-ups give them to children who carry them around all day at school.

(Note: I know, I know… it’s a FANTASY, and it was originally written for CHILDREN. But just because it’s fantasy doesn’t mean it we can’t comment upon the internal inconsistencies and incongruities of the fantasy world.)

In most cases, 95% is as close to 100% as makes no practical difference. Oh, sure, over time that 5% may add up to be a significant AMOUNT, but few people will quibble over it. Foods are advertised as being 95% fat-free (which means they’re 5% fat), students who score 95% on a test are happy with their “A” grade, and none of us want to catch one of those hemorragic fevers that kills 95% of those infected, because we know that even if we end up in the 5% category, we’ll still be miserable.

I just turned 38. That’s 95% of 40. It’s also 50% of 76, which is older (by two decades in my Dad’s case) than the last two generations of Tayler males.

But I’m not depressed. I’m happy. I’m a full-time cartoonist, and on the “survive to be 40 years old” quiz, I’m getting an A.

–Howard

As sandratayler mentioned, chalain and I nibbled on a habanero pepper last night.

I need to do a full write-up of this event. I need to post the photos, with commentary. I need to post the video.

But first, I need to eat a box of bandaids.

Ordinarily I’m always working. Technically, given my line of work, THIS is working. But today was nice, because after painting Sunday’s strip (the one that just aired, yes I was a little behind on the colored-and-uploaded buffer) and uploading it with the rest of next week I took a 90-minute nap, and then decided to read a book.

The book review is here, and one of the co-authors, seawasp, is a mutual LJ friend of mine.

I must say, it was a GREAT day. I have piles of work to do on Monday, including what I hope to be a 10-day mad dash to finish the digital pre-press work for the book. I have a busy day on Sunday, too, which is fairly typical for active Latter-Day Saints. Today, then, seemed like a good day to take off. Granted, I only took HALF the day off, and then I turned my vacation time into a book review, which technically recategorizes the second half of the day as work, too, but still… it FELT like a vacation.

And that felt good.