784!

That's the page count that's being reported for the American version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which reportedly will mean my British edition clock in at around 700 or so.

This will make Hallows the second longest book in the series, and while some people have been critical of Rowling's inability to cut it down, I actually prefer the longer books. The strength of Rowling's story has always been characterization and the detail which she puts into Harry's world, and a longer book just means we get more of that. Otherwise we'd have novel equivalents of the movies, and nobody wants that.

Of course, none of this will matter if Rowling has decided to kill Harry. Based on the responses I received in my highly scientific poll*, if Harry dies at the end of the book culture and civilization as we know it will cease to be and everyone will join mass suicide cults. Talk about pressure.


*Poll may not be highly scientific.

Pirates!

The trailer for the third Pirates of the Carribean movie came out yesterday (or the day before, it's so hard to tell with the web sometimes). You can check it out here.

Not a bad trailer. Lots of action, including some sweet shots of a pirate armada and Chow Yun-Fat as a particularly badass pirate. I really wanted to see Keith Richards though. No dice, this time anyway.

It'll be interesting to see when I see this movie, since I will be in Las Vegas celebrating Mr. Bartley's soon-to-be-lost bachelorhood when it comes out.

Bracket Time

In general, I pay almost no attention to college basketball. Maybe that's because the Gophers haven't been good in about a decade, but it's also kind of because there are so many damn teams it would take a ridiculous amount of time to actually be aware of them all, let alone know anything about them.

However, I do love the NCAA tournament. In fact I think it's one of the best sporting events of the year, especially the first weekend. During the first two rounds (the first round is Thursday and Friday, the second Saturday and Sunday) there are so many games going on that invariably three things happen:

First, there are always good, close games. The teams are so pumped up that everyone is playing their best, and you always end up with amazing plays in the final minutes and seconds that decide the game.

Second, there are always upsets, or at least possible upsets. Sure, a 16th seed has never beaten a 1st seed, and only two 2nd seeds have fallen to 15th seeds in the past 10 years, but other than that, I guarantee that over the next two days teams that experts picked to go deep into the tournament will lose. Brackets will be shattered. People will look like morons.

Third, there are so many games in the first two rounds that it creates a unique situation in modern sports: there will be almost no commentating. Sure, the courtside people who are calling the games will make comments and talk about matchups and stuff, but there's no post-game wrapup from the main desk. Just Bob Costas saying "And now that you've just watched that thrilling conclusion, we're going to send you out West where there's an even bigger upset brewing...." Just great basketball back-to-back-to-back.

Sometimes I Hate Computers

Because only with computers can an hour of your work suddenly vanish. I was writing a lengthy post for my fantasy baseball league in preparation of our draft this coming Saturday. It took me awhile because I was doing short profiles of all the managers, and with tweleve teams in the league, I was working on it for about an hour. Then I went to post it, and the damn system errored out on me. Unlike some programs (thankfully Yahoo mail now does this), you can return to the page and still have your lengthy composition intact. No such luck here. And of course I had no desire to just write it all out again. Ugh.

Dude, Where's My Car?

Well, I didn't get towed.

After two massive snowfalls in a week (at least 12 inches both times), if I had left my car in one spot for the last 5 days I wouldn't be able to find it right now. As it is evertime I've gone outside my legs get cold because snow goes up to my knee every time I try and get in my car.

Seriously though, I took a nice long walk yesterday during the second big snow, and it renewed my belief that there is no natural occurance as beautiful as a snowstorm. You can make an argument for a spectacular sunset, but give me some big snowflakes creating a blanket on the world anyday. Especially when it's just wet enough to stick to trees, powerlines, squirrels and anything else that it falls on. By the end of my walk I looked kind of frightening-probably helped by the fact that I did six or seven summersaults into massive snowbanks.

This winter started off pretty crappy, thanks to the damn El Nino effect, but with a nice sub zero strech at the beginning of February and these snowstroms things aren't turning out as bad as I thought they would. Now we just need it to start two and a half months earlier and last until April (or, as Calvin put it, "If I was in charge, we'd never see grass between October and May").

The photo is from Duluth, which is getting pounded even more thanks to the Lake Effect. Ahh, to have Lake Effect Snow.