The HARRY POTTER Chapter J.K. Rowling Wisely Excised

Posted on December 20th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

From an earlier draft of the first Harry Potter novel:

Harry, Ron, and Hermione are among the first-year students being shown around the grounds of Hogwart’s, seeing the various magical places, learning the various magical rules.

Then they turn a corner inside the castle, and encounter a student who, engrossed in a book while reading, bumps into Harry and almost knocks him over.

The student steadies Harry and yells at the top of his lungs, at point blank range. “I’M SORRY!” he screams, in a spray of spittle. “ARE YOU OKAY?”

Wincing, Harry says, “It’s all right.”

“IT’S MY FAULT FOR NOT LOOKING WHERE I’M GOING! SORRY, MATE!”

“It’s okay,” says Harry. “Really.”

Another student comes walking down the same corridor and, in a voice meant to project, calls out to the first: “HEY, RUPERT! WHAT’S UP! AREN’T YOU GOING TO PROFESSOR SNIGGLEWORT’S CLASS?”

“YEAH!” the first one calls back, in a voice that could blow out the rafters. “I JUST BUMPED INTO THIS FIRST-YEAR! I’LL BE RIGHT WITH YOU!”

“OKAY!” Friendly enough, but still projecting at a hundred and seventy decibels, the second student turns to the aghast group of first-years and cries, “HELLO ALL! ENJOY YOUR YEARS AT HOGWART’S! COME ON, RUPERT! YOU DON’T WANT TO BE LATE!”

“CATCHING UP! SEE YOU, EVERYBODY! SORRY I DIDN’T LOOK WHERE I WAS GOING!”

They join up and proceed up the corridor, their jet-engine voices ensuring that their conversation remains audible even after they’re just dots at the end of the corridor.

The proctor proceeds with his tour, and not long after that they pass a wing which sounds like a stadium after the home team has just scored. Pandemonium, everybody emoting at volumes designated to render everybody else in sight deaf, though the doors are open and the astonished tour group can see that the students making these noises are doing so while sitting in an open library, studying.

“HEY! JOHNNY! DO YOU HAVE THE NOTES FROM POTION CLASS?”

“SURE, PHIL! HERE THEY ARE! CAN I BORROW YOUR PENCIL?”

“ABSOLUTELY!” And so on.

As the tour group moves on and leaves the noise behind them, Harry ventures a timid, “Um, what was that all about?”

“Oh,” the tour guide replies. “That’s Hogwarts’s fifth house. Hollerin.”

Tags: Harry Potter, humor | Category Books, Fantasy, Humor, Writing

A Scene Some Seem To Envision

Posted on December 18th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

Originally Published On Facebook Dec 18 2014.

A SCENE SOME SEEM TO IMAGINE.

“Hello, Sandy?”

“Yes?”

“I’m your rapist.”

“Oh! You’re early! I didn’t expect you to arrive for half an hour yet. I haven’t even finished cleaning the place.”

“Well, rapist. Boundaries. You know. Should I come back?”

“No, no, you’re here now, so. Do we just go to the bedroom, or what?”

“After the paperwork.”

“Paperwork?”

“Yes. I brought the forms. They won’t take long. Let’s sit over here.”

“Sure. Before we sit down, would you like me to get you anything?”

“Some water would be just great.”

(Returning a few minutes later) “I didn’t ask if you wanted ice.”

“This is fine. Please sit.”

“Okay. What’s all this then?”

“Okay. These forms document that the sex act we’re about to have is being committed against your body without your consent.”

“Gee, doesn’t signing the form kind of contradict that?”

“No, it’s only if you fail to sign the forms that you are presumed to have consented. If you sign the forms, you document that this is a legitimate rape, and that you are therefore entitled to medical decisions over your own body.”

“Oh, okay. This is more complicated than I thought it was. But I wouldn’t want anybody to think this rape wasn’t, you know, legitimate.” (Reading over contract) “Sounds pretty straightforward. Where do I sign?”

“Here. And here. And here. Put the date here. And here. And here.”

“Okay.”

“This second form documents that your bruises and internal injuries and broken jaw all result from acts committed against your will, and not rough sex. Sign here. and here. And here. And here. Put the date here. And here. And here.”

“Okay.”

“This third form documents that you are a nice religious girl.”

“Why would that even be an issue?”

“Legitimate Rape has been defined by real experts, male experts, as primarily that committed against nice religious girls, saving their virginity until marriage, whose lives of dedicated chastity can actually be traumatized by the acts committed against them. Girls like that, it’s been argued, will still qualify for the rape exception for abortions, while girls of less elevated moral character are not quite as upset by the experience and can endure their unwanted pregnancies with relative aplomb.”

“Wow. You must have some real experience at this.” (Thinking about it) “Well, I’m not a fanatic about it, but I’m willing to attest that I’m religious, sorta.”

“Whatever. Sign here and here and here. Put the date here and here and here.”

“Okay.”

“Now give me a thumbprint.”

“Here. Wow, that was like filling out a mortgage.”

“Okay, now we need to get it witnessed and notarized. I invited your mother.”

(Door opens) “Hi, dear.”

“Hi, Mom. Thanks for coming. This is my rapist.”

“My, what a fine-looking young man. Where do I sign, honey?”

“Here. And here. And here. Put the date here. And here. And here. And all these other places.”

“Wow. That was like filling out a mortgage.”

“That was what I said, Mom.”

“That was cute.”

“Thank you, young man.”

“And thank you, Mrs. Johnson.”

“Can I just ask my daughter if she’ll be over for Shabbos?”

“Well, I can’t guarantee that, ma’am. You know.”

“That’s right. What a silly old goose I am. I hope you make it, honey!”

“Thanks, Mom! I hope I live to see you again!”

(Door closes)

“Is that it? Does the rape start now? I have to go to work in the morning.”

“No, Sandy. We still need that notary public to render it legitimate.”

“There’s a drug store on the corner.”

“I know. I’ve been stalking you, as you know.”

“Boy, are you thorough!”

“Just trying to live up to those new governmental regulations. This used to be a lot easier, but now the paperwork can be a real…well, bitch, though that’s a word I try not to use outside the act itself. It shouldn’t take more than five minutes to go down there, get that seal on the document, make copies, mail them in, and come back, so we can get started.” (Slyly) “Unless you don’t care whether it’s legitimate…?”

“No. I’ve always been a stickler for the formalities.”

(Deflated) “Okay. If you insist.”

“Don’t be such a gloomy gus! I am, other than that, so UP for this!”

(Brightens) “You’re practically…asking for it.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s another form. Can you catch up to your Mom before she reaches the stairs?”

Tags: Abortion, Politics, Rape, Religion, Sex | Category Commentary, Politics

Please Save Us From Self-Described “Law and Order” Candidates

Posted on December 16th, 2015 by Adam-Troy Castro

There are few things that chill the blood more than a politician who proudly describes himself as a “Law and Order Candidate.”

Well, we can actually make an exception to that. The late Fred Dalton Thompson spent a year playing the D.A. on LAW & ORDER. He also ran for President.

I have no problem calling him the LAW & ORDER candidate, because that’s geeky and painful.

But when any other candidate calls himself the Law and Order candidate, it speaks volumes. And this is why:

Nobody sane is against law and order.

Nobody thinks it would be great if we had more child molesters or rapists.

Nobody thinks home break-ins are just swell.

Everybody worth listening to thinks that when bad guys do bad things, they need to be arrested and tried.

So every candidate who’s not a total bull-goose loony is a law and order candidate.

But the candidates who sell themselves as Law and Order Candidates?

Are always in the business of telling you that the streets are worse than ever, that criminals are worse than ever, that your family is in worse danger than ever, and that the only solution is to vote for them and make things tougher, more repressive and crueler; to roll back any protections possessed by the accused; to sneer at any attempt to address the causes of community crime at a social level in favor of stepped-up efforts to keep the animals caged.

The most frightening thing about Law and Order Candidates is that they know any retreat, even in the face of situations where law enforcement is wrong, makes them look too nuanced and weak, and so they double down in the face of atrocity. Some cop shoots a kid who has his hands up? If you condemn that, you’re against Law and Order! Another cop brutalizes teens at a neighborhood pool party? They were misbehaving! If you condemn that, you’re against Law and Order! Some guy is on Death Row after having a confession coerced out of him, and says a simple DNA test will set him free? Fight until your very last breath! You can’t get these criminals get away with anything! Besides, freeing even an innocent man will weaken the Death Penalty, which is an absolute good!

Donald Trump is the epitome of a Law & Order candidate. And this is why that’s a bad thing.

In New York we had the tragic case of the Central Park Five, a group of mostly black (and one Hispanic) teenagers who were accused and convicted of a savage assault on a female jogger. If you didn’t live in or around New York at the time, you have no idea how deeply and completely demonized these young men were. Why not? There was no doubt that they had done something beyond evil. But the rhetoric in the newspapers, on the radios, and from the mouths of our Law and Order candidates was that they were something like Orcs, creatures of unrelenting undiluted corruption whose eyes were as devoid of soul as the eyes of sharks pulled from the sea. We were told again and again that we shouldn’t even consider them human.

Even before their conviction, there was evidence, if only anybody had the wit to see it, that they had been railroaded, and were in fact innocent. It ultimately came out, years later, that they were.

These boys – and I call them boys because that’s what they were – had their childhoods ruined, their lives forever blighted, their features paraded before the public as the faces of evil, because cops could not be bothered to look at the spot where that poor jogger was brutalized and acknowledge that the crime had been committed by one person, not five.

The City of New York eventually settled with those boys — now men —  and gave each of them one million dollars for every year he had spent in prison, totaling forty million in all.

And here we get the behavior of the Law and Order candidate; Donald Trump attacked this as stupid and outrageous. According to him, these boys were no angels! If they were not guilty of that, they were guilty of something else! Besides, think of the awfulness of the crime! Bringing it back to the horror of which they were fully innocent. Because if you think of the horror, your heart will explode with rage, and he can prosper by telling you where to put it.

Law and Order candidates don’t want you think about justice; they don’t want you to think about nuance. They don’t want you thinking about innocence or guilt. They don’t want you thinking about what’s right or wrong. They want you to think about how there are evil people out there and how the only way to fight them is to be tougher, angrier, less open to appeals, always moving in that direction, never ever stopping to think that we might have gone too far.

Getting you to agree that there are some people who really do need to be beaten without restraint, or shot without consequences, or imprisoned without reprieve, or executed even if there’s exonerating evidence that some Judge out there really does need to see, is easier and more comforting than imagining that some social problems might have more complicated solutions.

A Law and Order candidate has the easiest job in the world. All he has to do is show you whatever awful horror story crime has occurred last, and make you angry. Better yet, he can excoriate any opposing candidate who wants to talk about anything else, for “ignoring” that issue. How wonderful! You can attack somebody for simply being able to think about more than one issue at a time!

This is the benefit of being a Law and Order candidate. You can get the constituency that doesn’t like to think.

Now, I concede that not all Law and Order candidates are bad people. Some simply have a tough view of law enforcement, and bill themselves that way. There honestly is no problem with that, in moderation. The problem is that among so many, the scorn for moderation is the problem.

Nobody’s comparing all Law and Order candidates to Hitler.

But I am asking you to remember that Hitler was a Law and Order candidate.

Tags: Adolf Hitler, Assholes, Donald Trump, Fred Dalton Thompson, Law & Order, Politics, Race, Republicans | Category Commentary, Politics