azurelunatic | Bring On the Censors (or, "Why One Noisy Lady Doesn't Like Harry Potter")

I used to work as a cashier for Sam's Club, and I met a lot of interesting people. One day, when Bette and I were working on the X Items Or Fewer lanes, some lady came by with the latest Harry Potter in hardback. I commented on what a good series that was, and how especially good that particular one in the series was. The lady flared up and said that they were HORRIBLE books, because they promoted alcohol!

I was a little taken aback, and interested, because most people objecting to them do so on the basis of the magic (though, interestingly, there is never Religion mentioned in the books; I'll grant that a fair number of the kids at Hogwarts must come of Druid or Wiccan or other backgrounds, but I'll bet that there are a good number of Christian students as well... they work on the practical aspects of magic there, not the religious.) and I made a comment about the British view of pubs being somewhat different from the American.

The lady brushed that off as a given. That wasn't a problem. The problem was that Norbert the dragon was given whiskey, and he grew, and that portrayed strong alcohol as a positive, nurturing influence, and that was the Completely Wrong Message to be sending to young, developing minds. And she was going to read through this latest book so she could give a full report on it to the administration of the school where it was on the list for kids to be picking a book to write book reports about, so she could tell them how horrible it was. And she fumed off, full of righteous wrath (but no whiskey).

Checking out the next customer (who was doing the headshake number), I reflected how yes, whiskey is used to nurture the growth of Norbert -- who is a Very Dangerous Dragon... if you're going to take it that far, take a look at what the alcohol is portrayed as being healthy for...

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I've heard of people saying Harry Potter books espouse alcohol because the kids drink ginger beer in town and the upset house elf gets roaring drunk. Really, I think the Harry Potter books espouse train-riding much more than they do drinking.

butterbeer, actually. The alcohol content is so incredibly very low that a human kid would have to drink enough of it to get very, very sick before getting drunk, but a smaller house-elf drinking butterbeer in inordinate quantities gets plastered, and the kids are rather horrified.

I need to re-read the whole series.

And not to mention the magic horses that only drink the finest single-malt whiskey...

I don't think we're going to have any problems with kids vs. alcohol in this house: Nephew was interested in the vodka-mixture that I was brewing, and wanted some. I dipped my finger in plain vodka, and allowed him to taste my finger, then told him he could go wash out his mouth if he wanted to. He wanted to.

He also wanted some beer, until he was instructed to sniff what it smelled like, and told that it tastes about like it smells.

We did get the "Grown-Ups Are Insane" look from him over that one, when he noticed we were still sipping the stuff.

Mommy has a strict rule of No Spellcasting When Drunk, which is a logical precursor to No Driving When Drunk, which would be visibly enforced if we had a car.

I still have enough of a sweet tooth to not be interested in alcohol. It smells like cough syrup. Yick.

No X-ing While Drunk would provide a good lead-in for lessons on how to assess one's current mental state and abilities, based not only on "I feel this right now" but also on "External evidence suggests that I should be impaired in this way right now".

Good plan, there. We've already succeeded on the "Go potty when your body tells you that you need to" issue, even when playing computer games. (That was an issue, for a while.)

As I was prone to very bad bronchitis attacks, I never disliked cough syrup, since taking it made the very bad coughing diminish to a level that would let me get some sleep. The only unpleasant aspect, in fact, was the way that the Robitussin would make me sneeze every time I took it -- not sneeze attacks, just t'choo-aaht'choo-aaht'choo after swallowing the stuff -- and that was a very temporary effect.

I avoid beer. Anything I drink, alcohol-wise, has to be relatively sweet. Unadulterated vodka is too much for me. The one incident with the five straight shots of whiskey at that party of Shawn's is a fluke.

Watch the Lunatic forget a closing tag! Please insert a </i> after the sneeze sound effect.

Huh. I still get a lot of nasty lung infections (I'm not sure how one who is not a doctor is supposed to tell the difference between pneumonia, bronchitis, and just plain lung infection.). I've learned to take Robitussin, especially towards the end of the infection when my body wants to do those horrid spasming coughs that involve gagging and can prevent me from talking, but I still don't like it. I try to deal with the flavor, though, since it works better if it isn't washed down with water.

I have been known to sleep through coughing and through blowing my nose. (I am apparently incapable of properly disposing of tissues in my sleep, however.)

If you can extend "go potty when your body tells you to" to sleeping, eating, eating particular foods, getting fresh air, drinking water, etc., Nephew will be better off than most people. It's hard to listen to those signals, but it's so worthwhile.

I dunno from lung infection, because that's not a diagnosis I've personally ever received, but I can tell *exactly* when my bronchitis turns into pneumonia. I don't know what the medical definition/differentiation between the two is, but I always know when I hit it. I learned the hard way, when I was pregnant with my sixth child. I got pneumonia and didn't realize it, because it had been SO LONG since I'd had it...I was treating it as just a return of my bad bronchitis, really. I'd gone for most of a decade without it acting up, so that when it did, I had forgotten...I just figured, "this is how bad it was, yep." But when I ended up giving birth prematurely and then landing in the hospital *myself* for pneumonia...I realized I'd better learn the difference.

What I've found, personally? I can't sleep lying down when I have pneumonia. If I've been having bronchitis problems for more than a few days, and suddenly lying down results in non-stop coughing, or coughing often and bad enough that I can't get to sleep unless I'm propped up? I've got pneumonia. It's flawless. I've had pneumonia three times since RC was born a month early, and I've caught it at less than a quarter-sized spot on my x-rays EVERY TIME. Because if I can't sleep lying down, I will be AT the doctor's office the next day telling them I need chest x-rays. And every time, I've had a small patch of pneumonia.

I'm not sure if I've ever received a formal diagnosis of lung infection or if it's just a layman's term for deep chesty productive cough.

From what you've said, it seems that one difference between bronchitis and pneumonia is that pneumonia shows up on X-ray. That agrees with the dictionary, which I just thought to check and says that bronchitis is only the bronchial tubes, while pneumonia is the lungs. I don't think your diagnostic will work for me, but it's interesting to know about.

We're trying. We could use a course or so in it ourselves, sometimes.

Mommy has a strict rule of No Spellcasting When Drunk

There's an online pagan clothing store, who's name I forget. But it'd be perfet there.

Of course I'm thinking of the 'higher' Mommy ;)

Would that be azuregreen?

Bring On the Censors (or, "Why One Noisy Lady Doesn't Like Harry Potter")

ginger beer + house elf

Re: ginger beer + house elf

Re: ginger beer + house elf

Re: ginger beer + house elf

No Fireballs While Drunk! Bad Witch!

Woops.

Re: No Fireballs While Drunk! Bad Witch!

Re: No Fireballs While Drunk! Bad Witch!

Re: No Fireballs While Drunk! Bad Witch!

body signals

This needs to be on a t-shirt.

Re: This needs to be on a t-shirt.