Pottermore: The Saturation Point. By “The” I Mean “My.”

I just accidentally found out about Pottermore. Guess what it means? More Harry Potter! In the form of more backstory explaining more answers to all your questions. Worried that you would never find out exactly why so and so did such and such? Tired of speculating about it with fan friends? Losing sleep in the middle of the night because new theories occurred to you that fit textual evidence and opened up new possibilities about characters and their motivations? Well, worry, tire, and lose sleep no more! JK Rowling is thoughtfully creating a new online experience to put to good use all those pages of background information that didn’t make the cut into the books (for lots of reasons, as many of them literary as practical).

Because I am not on any of the mailing lists, I have not been aware that I should be hotly anticipating the launch of this mysterious project that people were suspecting would expand the Potter universe. How expansive Pottermore will be remains to be seen; right now the only option is to register your interest, and there’s an invitation to return July 31, 2011 for more details. The whole shebang is scheduled to open in October.

Click here before proceeding.

TMI, Or, Too Much Information? Also, Cake.

I’ve been composing this blog mentally since listening to a discussion of the critical reaction to The Killing on the “Firewall & Iceberg” podcast this morning, and it’s gone through a variety of thesis statements and witty titles. I was going to channel my inner Neil Gaiman and call it “Veena Sud Is Not Your Bitch,” until I realized that I have no inner Neil Gaiman and didn’t want to make a fool of myself by presuming so, even facetiously. Then I was going to go on a little Internet Rant about all those people going on Internet Rants about the ending of a show they already didn’t like, but didn’t like even more come Monday morning, but the irony/hypocrisy seized my fingers and I was unable to type. Then it was time for lunch, which was brought to me by a playdate’s parent for free. I didn’t even have to change out of my bathing suit.*

Jack in the Box Egg Rolls**

*Not Shown

**I always thought it was weird that a fast food restaurant could get right old school egg rolls of the kind you can’t even get at Chinese restaurants anymore, until I learned that they make them with MSG. I remember well the year MSG disappeared from all the Chinese restaurants for “health reasons” and “popular demand,” because it was the year egg drop soup became watery and I had to move on to hot and sour.

You can read in a variety of places all about how the show runner of The Killing broke an implicit contract with viewers and insulted them with the ending of the first season and wasted three months of Sundays of people’s time and all kinds of invective ranging from carefully analytic to frothy tirades. All kinds. Critics are mad, fans are mad, and I don’t really understand the rage, but I do understand that there’s rage and there’s Internet Rage, and Internet Rage is a group process that doesn’t necessarily reflect actual emotions on the other side of the keyboard. If I can go by my own habits and the habits of people I post with on boards that discuss TV and other topics. For example, a particularly upsetting episode of, say, The Office Season 3, could have had people seething and hollering in the episode thread, but being funny and charming one minute later in the job thread or the chit chat thread.

Now I have to take a break to put a crumb coat on a cake I’m baking for Husband’s 60-year-old coworker who had a JoP wedding over the weekend and who, if I really had to guess, probably doesn’t need anything as a present. My Aceling of Cakes was excited about making a tiered cake for a while, and claimed first rights to cut off the dome, but now he’s crapping out on the crumb coat. Dude, no one wants to frost the crumb coat. It is admittedly the suckiest of the coats, but it’s the most necessary, especially on a pretend wedding cake with frosting tinted very slightly off-white because I have only real vanilla extract in the house instead that artificial colorless vanilla stuff.

Yes, I Did Drink All That Soda Today