The New Harry Potter title has been announced.

I think the book will pan out like this:

Its all a dream and Harry wakes up at his sexually abusive step parents the Dursleys. Having no magic powers, and knowing his parents died due to a drug overdose, he hangs himself.

AP stages their photos

The following are two AP photos:

From CNN:



From DrudgeReport:

For God's sake, you would think they would move the shooter away from the same graffiti. However, the addition of the Keffiyeh over the face in the second photo was a nice attempt at making it look different.

Sad really.

P.S. Shooter, for your next photo op, you might want to drop your non-firing elbow, you know, to make it look like you have fired a rifle before.

Just a funny thing I came across

Pretty Christmas

I went crazy with Christmas lights and my house is pretty well lit. It was worth it though. Prior to this, the wife would take the kids driving around and spot the houses with nice lights... "Pretty Christmas outside John-John's window... Pretty Christmas outside Elizabeth's window" being the operative call words.

Well, I was stringing up these lights well after 10:30 at night. Elizabeth was outside with me "helping" by putting empty boxes in her red wagon. So... the time comes to light-er-up (I have a remote on/off switch so I can stand 40 feet away and push a button so they all come on at once). When I do, Elizabeth's face gets real wide-eyed and she turns to me and says, with a great deal of pride, "That's MY house." "Pretty Christmas at MY house!" and gives me a big hug.

Christmas lights - $350.00
Hanging lights - 5 Man-Hours
The look on my daughters face when HER house gets Pretty Christmas - Priceless.

And the First Lotto number is...

My daughter insists that I tuck her in at night.

In fact, even when she is not going to bed, she will tell me that she is "going night-night" and will lie down on the floor in order for me to tuck her in (using whatever blanket is handy) right then and there. Ever since she was an infant, I always do the same thing. I make sure she is in a comfortable position, place a blanket over her and, with the tips of my fingers, make sure the blanket is shoved about one inch under her body all over. When this routine is over, I lean over, say "night-night" and give her a kiss on the head and tussle her hair.

This does not get old.

Last night, my daughter and I were playing in the living room and she said, "Daddy, YOU go night-night." So, I proceeded to lay on the floor while Elizabeth ran out of the room. She came back from the laundry room with a king size sheet, one quarter crushed up in her arms with the remainder in tow behind her dragging on the floor.

She proceeded to spread the sheet out as flat as she could over me and, with the dedication of a hospice nurse, proceeded to tuck the sheet under me in the same fashion I do to her. Mind you, with her little hands, this took about 10 minutes. Then, when she was done, she stood back to view her achievement, smiled, and proceeded to climb on top of my back. Then, after scaling Mount Dad, she gently kissed the back of my head and said "night-night daddy" and tussled my hair.

A child's mind is kind of like a running lotto machine. There are a lot of balls bouncing around in there and, notwithstanding all your efforts, you are forced to sit there and wait until the balls come up that chute to see if you are going to be a winner. When she climbed up on top of me to give me a kiss on my head, it was like the first ball was called and, with muted excitement, I looked down on my sheet to see that I had my first match.