Tuesday, July 26, 2005

I can't seem to beat my old boss into the office

  • Bring It On was my featured Netflix comedy today...I love how my movie recommendations are so random, yet so predictable at times.
  • I'm at work 5 hours early and already fighting with annoying people who take advantage of the fact that I'm at work early. I'm going to pretend I'm not here, and I won't be working.
  • Yup, freaked out about the Boy Scouts last night, convinced it was for camping in the thunderstorms. Also (not convinced, just) concerned that my father was involved, and had to call home to make sure. He's going down on Wednesday. They hadn't heard of it either, and I freaked my mom out. They are convinced Joe is fine (and why wouldn't he be?) but cell phones are banned at the Jamboree. There is 1 kid with a phone card for the whole pack (or troop, or cluster, or whatever they call themselves) and I assume 5 pay phones. for 44,000 12-15year olds. Yeah, right.
  • Have been reading the JK Rowling interview at mugglenet (yes, i know, im over the edge) and I found this snippet marvelously entertaining:

    ES: Is there a ratio of Muggles to wizards -

    MA: Or in Hogwarts.

    JKR: Well, Hogwarts. All right. Here is the thing with Hogwarts. Way before I finished “Philosopher's Stone,” when I was just amassing stuff for seven years, between having the idea and publishing the book, I sat down and I created 40 kids who enter Harry's year. I'm delighted I did it, [because] it was so useful. I got 40 pretty fleshed out characters. I never have to stop and invent someone. I know who’s in the year, I know who's in which house, I know what their parentage is, and I have a few personal details on all of them. So there were 40. I never consciously thought, “That's it, that' s all the people in his year,” but that's kind of how it's worked out. Then I've been asked a few times how many people and because numbers are not my strong point, one part of my brain knew 40, and another part of my brain said, “Oh, about 600 sounds right.” Then people started working it out and saying, "Where are the other kids sleeping?" [Laughter.] We have a little bit of a dilemma there. I mean, obviously magic is very rare. I wouldn't want to say a precise ratio. But if you assume that all of the wizarding children are being sent to Hogwarts, then that's very few wizard-to-Muggle population, isn’t it? There will be the odd kid whose parents don't want them to go to Hogwarts, but 600 out of the whole of Britain is tiny.

    Let's say three thousand [in Britain], actually, thinking about it, and then think of all the magical creatures, some of which appear human. So then you've got things like hags, trolls, ogres and so on, so that's really bumping up your numbers. And then you've got the world of sad people like Filch and Figg who are kind of part of the world but are hangers on. That's going to bump you up a bit as well, so it's a more sizable, total magical community that needs hiding, concealing, but don't hold me to these figures, because that's not how I think.

    That would be how I would write a book. 8 million pages of backstory for 3,000 pages of book.

    posted by kate @ 7/26/2005 09:30:00 AM

    • 0 Comments:

    Post a Comment

    << Home