Disclaimer: I'm not a Harry Potter fan. Haven't read any of the books. Have seen some of the movies and thought they were all right. But I can't ignore this. It is getting too big. Or at least annoying.

A few days ago, author J.K. Rowling revealed a juicy bit of Harry Potter backstory when she told a reporter that Albus Dumbledore is gay.

That news was greeted by me with some eye rolling, but I put it aside and forgot about it. After all, an author in her position needs to do a little headline grubbing to make sure that the books keep moving off the shelves, especially when there are two movies yet to be made. Although this isn't exactly the way I would have gone about doing it, especially when the Harry Potter series is supposed to be a done deal, but that's just me.

But apparently this isn't the first time she has spilled aftermarket information about the Potterville. She's also dropped hints about what some of the characters do in life after Hogwarts. I know that a writer's head is full of their little worlds, including a lot that never gets included in the finished product. However, Ms. Rowling is supposedly working on two separate book projects right now, and her mind is supposed to be on those. The Harry Potter universe is finished, according to her.

I've been through this. There's a lot of stuff I didn't put in my books that was cool. I even know what happens to some of the characters after the events in a given book - and at least one character has one more book full of adventures that will probably never be written. Deciding which part of the story to tell is a part of the creative process.

But it sounds like J.K. has either not had a lot of experience in dealing with rabid fans ("What was the combination to Kirk's safe in episode 26?"), or else she feels compelled to spill details before and after the seven books take place. Either that or she has gotten an inflated sense of her own importance as author of these books, and feels compelled to trickle out more details - especially if it's a slow news day and the press keeps asking.

A shame, because what she's done two things. She's started the wheels of disenfranchisement turning within her fan base, and she has opened the floodgates for Potter-themed slash fiction. Not saying that there wasn't any before hand, but her current behavior is almost inviting it. She'd better not complain about it.

If she's going to keep doing this, she needs to do either one of two things. First, she could go the Tolkien route, shaping all the outlines, notes, and cocktail napkin scrawlings into a book of pre- or post-history. That would be better than tormenting fans like she is and put more money into her coffers (not that she needs any more, but you get the point).

Second, she could just plain shut up.

I know which one I'd prefer.

Meantime, here is an insightful piece from the Dallas News about the whole subject that pretty much sums up my feelings about the situation.

By the way did you know that Andy Birch...

From my friend Scoob comes a bit of news that I should be happy about - but I'm not sure I am.

He sent me this article discussing how plans are afoot to bring my favorite comic strip, Lio, to the big screen.

("But Faust," I hear you cry, "I thought Calvin and Hobbes was your favorite strip!" Of course it is - I think it's the best comic strip of all time. But alas, it is no longer in production. And of all the current crop of strips out there, Lio is my hands-down favorite, appealing directly to the part of my funny bone that loved Charles Addams and Gahan Wilson.)

While I'd love to see this happen and get the strip more exposure (none of the local papers here carry it, so I get it delivered daily to my inbox from here), I can't help but think that this is a bad idea. True, the Addams Family movies were well done for being based on a series of spot comics, but there are some differences with Lio. First and foremost, it's a pantomime strip. While there are onomotopaeic sound effects and the occasional label or sign, Lio is silent (although others have been known to talk). Those of you who don't think this is a problem haven't seen the first Mr. Bean movie, where they couldn't make it through without having his Mostly Muteness talk (and shame on me, I haven't seen the second film yet).

While the right director could make a go of this (I'm thinking Barry Sonnenfeld, who made the Addams family films, could pull it off - much less so Cinematical's other candidate, Tim Burton, who is too uneven and heavy handed with his own vision), the odds of it being a bust are high. But I'm guessing the odds are even higher of it actually making it to actual production.

So while I hope that if it does get made, it's great. If it's not great, there's still the strip to fall back on. What if it doesn't get made? Eh. Thanks to Bill Watterson, there'll never be a Calvin and Hobbes movie, and I'm fine with that, too. My advice to Lio's creator, Mark Tatulli, is to take the advance and run. And I'm speaking from experience.


One of Lio's charms is that he knows he's in a comic strip. This is one example. Lio has also invaded other strips during his career.

Here are some recent links to things I found interesting of late, which may or may not be connected. It just depends on which Universe you live in.

Reasons the Indians Lost. I'm not much of a sports fan, professional sports even less so. I do like LaCrosse, which combines all the best parts of hockey, soccer, and basketball. I like baseball, but find the number of games in the pro season endless and intimidating. If pro baseball had a season like pro football, I would probably be a big fan. As it is, I tend to like baseball teams with short seasons, like the Hoover Sweepers.

Hence, I don't watch pro baseball unless a team of interest makes it into the playoffs - which the Cleveland Indians did recently. Of course, they maintained the tradition of breaking the hearts of their Northeast Ohio fans, but not before giving us some thrilling moments.

In an attempt to make sense of their recent loss to the Boston Red Sox, Rob Treynor, a friend from Last.fm, has written an essay on the reasons the Indians lost. It makes about as much sense as anything else does.

Opening the Doors on Parallel Universes. I have a basic problem with Alternate Universe theory. Suppose we find a way to travel between them. It's going to take a bit of doing to find one of the many infinite universes where Adolf Hitler never existed (and don't forget, without him, women might still be homebound housewives, and I for one would not exist at all - so in one of those parallel worlds, you're not reading this right now).

The reason for my theory is that, with 6.6 billion people making untold decisions each day, the result is untold Parallel Universes virtually identical to this one, with the exception of one event that is insignificant. For example, you hop to the universe next door, it looks identical - except I didn't go to Starbucks this morning - I ate oatmeal at my desk instead.

Boy, what an exciting universe that must be.

And when you get done with the insignificant Joe Clifford Faust universes, you have to deal with all of the others. Like the one where your neighbor mowed his lawn a day early. Then the one where your neighbor mows his lawn on Tuesdays instead of Thursdays.

Then you get to the one where your buddy in the bowling league rolled a 217 instead of a 216. Then the universe where Stephen King used @!!* instead of &*@! on page 329 of his new novel. Now work your way across the world and end up with that last guy in China and the day he decided not to pedal hard on his commute to work, and got there on time instead of a couple of minutes early.

All of those universes virtually identical to this one - so identical you can't tell the difference. It would take an enormous amount of work to find something that is really different.

And don't give me that song and dance about the Butterfly Effect. Yeah, that's a cool theory, but let's face it... with millions of butterflies taking wing every day, it's rather unlikely that every single one of them is going to affect some world-wracking change.

Anyway, here's a recent rather unimpressive article about how mathematics have allegedly proven the existence of infinite Parallel Universes, which in turn led to a long thread of Digg comments that is one of the most entertaining and creative things I've read on the web in a long time.

Meantime, if any of you travelers find the universe where pro baseball has a 15 game season, let me know.

I'm not one of these guys who worries about leaving a legacy behind. I haven't thought about it much at all. Maybe it's my Christian outlook - I know I'll keep going on the other side. Maybe it's because two permutations of my own genes are already walking around on the planet, so I know I'll be remembered for at least a few years after I've departed. I never really worried about my books being around forever, which is a good thing, since I've seen things like Ferman's Devils being taken out of print before Boddekker's Demons hit the book stores.

Still, I found out a short time ago that I do have an odd legacy floating around out there.

It seems that sometime during the late 80's or early 90's, there was a student who hated a teacher. Pretty typical story so far. We all have them.

Only this student decided to lash out. He remembered reading about a technique of harassment in a book, and after an afternoon at the library, carried out his plan. Soon the teacher was getting so many magazine subscriptions that the post office refused to deliver them - he had to come and pick them up.

The only flaw in this student's plan was that he had an accomplice. Now, my father taught me early on that two men can keep a secret if one of them is dead. But this student did not know that. His accomplice got a little bit too self-congratulatory, and pretty soon the cover was blown. The student and his accomplice were caught and almost - but not quite - suspended from school.

Apparently, this little trick became the stuff of legend at the student's school, because a few years later, after the student had departed, the same thing happened again - to the same teacher. And who knows - maybe every few years at this school a teacher of wrath becomes buried in periodicals.

By the way, the book in which this very clever student read about the harassment technique was called... The Company Man, by yours truly.

The reason I know about this is that the student recently emailed me and ratted himself out. I'm still trying to decide if I'm outraged or delighted. Call me bemused. And grateful that Andy Birch wasn't a serial killer.

Meantime, this student has become very successful with his own business... delivering pizzas. If you haven't read it, yes, delivering pizzas is an important thing in the Company Man universe. Although I know I can't take credit for his career choice, the irony is certainly not lost on me.

As for me, I've found out that time is the best avenger. No, I'm not talking about foes getting old and dottery. For some reason, the kind of people that really rouse my ire are the kind that self-destruct. A boss who was less than ethical and treated me less than fairly and ended up firing me (although I might have deserved it - might have) later had his life uprooted when he was arrested for shoplifting something really, really stupid. And many years after I left town, my Teacher of Wrath spectacularly flamed out when he was caught in a compromising position with the teacher wife of another teacher - in a camper at the local fairgrounds.

Honestly. This is great stuff. If I wrote it into a novel, the editor would make me change it to something more believable.

The lesson? There are three. Time wounds all heels. Don't get on my bad side. And Karma is a bad, bad mistress.

Today's category is music videos. My wife tries to watch the VH-1 Countdown on Sunday mornings before we head for church so she can keep up with what is happening in the music world. Part of that is her profession - she teaches at a local college, and wants to know what her students are putting into their brains.

Me, I don't care so much. I've never really floated down the mainstream of music. In fact, I'm drifting even farther down a tributary of stuff nobody has even heard of, pulling up great local and regional acts because they're fresh, they're new, and they don't sound like anything else out there.

So I half-heartedly watch the video show, and ponder that maybe the age of the music video has stagnated. I was really starting to believe that the last group with any originality to their music videos at all was Eels, with their stunning videos for Novocain For The Soul and Last Stop: This Town.

Then I stumble across this video quite by accident, and my faith in human creativity gets restored. The concept is simple. Irish folk musician Fionn Regan performs his song Be Good or Be Gone live in a whole slew of odd places, and lets the ambient sounds hamper or enhance the performance. It's great.

(Hmmm, the video refuses to imbed, so you'll just have to go here to see it.)

So my wife and I called our daughter on The Other Side of the World this morning. We timed it so our early morning call would arrive there in mid-evening, and I was armed with a cheat sheet I made of Tour Guide Russian, just enough to introduce myself to Host Mother and ask for Daughter.

Well, Host Mother was a sharp sort, and my Tour Guide Russian was just good enough that she figured out who I was, and Daughter was on the line before I could finish asking for her.

We chatted about many things - what was supposed to be a 10 minute call came close to 40. Almost one of the first things that she said was, "I heard about the school shooting in Cleveland this morning."

Not literally as we were talking to her - news of the shooting was splashed all over the Cleveland news when I got home for last night's 6 pm broadcast. That would have been 8 am this morning Far East Russia time. She was just settling down with her bowl of Snow Flakes - The Russian answer to Frosted Flakes - and the Russian morning news started talking about Cleveland, Ohio.

So Vladimir Putin's state controlled media once again paints the United States in a flattering light. Of course, this was his directive to them just a few months ago, so they're just doing what they're told their job.

My daughter wanted to be in Russia for their election. She will, but I'm glad that she's out in the boonies as opposed to a more metropolitan place like Moscow or St. Petersburg. Things run a little slow out there - they still have a statue of Lenin in the town square, although I hear that he's hailing a taxi now instead of pointing the way to the future. If there's any excitement, it'll likely happen in the west - and she can observe.

(Reasons I'm glad I believe in God #6,437 - I can't take care of my daughter where she is now, but there's no doubt in my mind that God will. So the Faust genetic tendency to worry about The Russians is effectively suppressed.)

In the meantime, Daughter is being treated very well. As a rare Native Speaker in that part of the world, she's the hit of the English class. And the Rotary club there is being extraordinarily generous in arranging for her to soak up as much of the culture as she wants (which, knowing her, is an enormous amount.)

I was thinking after talking to her this morning that it was a good thing I was never an exchange student. If I'd gone to any foreign country and been treated like she has been thus far, I wouldn't have wanted to return. Not that I didn't love my parents. What I hated was high school. And going back to mine would have been a huge come-down from wherever I would have been.

On the other hand, maybe the peers in my country of choice would have seen me for the pathetic, geeky proto-nerd I was back then. Ah, well, I never had the interest or the opportunity, so I shan't lament.

Meantime, at the end of our phone call with Daughter, I had her thank her Host Mother for taking such good care of her. Daughter did it while we were still on the line, and it was neat to hear the Host Mother's reaction.

Afterward, I started thinking that we should do something nice for the Host Mother. I thought, wouldn't it be cool to send her something she couldn't find there, something that was quintessentially American, something that represented this country on a number of levels, something that shouted out U.S.A. the instant you saw it.

It didn't take long for me to come up with a something that worked on all those levels. This is it. Think she'll like it?

I guess you could say this is my latest acting gig. The cable show I moonlight with needed a promo to run on some of the other cable stations, and this is what Henry J and I came up with. Since Henry J is the host, it fell to me to play the part of Blind Melon Faust, an incompetent blues singer. This spot is intended to be the first in a series of spots covering the adventures of the hard-luck musician.

The irony is that I was never in this to be a star. I'm perfectly okay working behind the scenes for the show. But when you work in a small crew, you have to step up and wear the dark glasses when your name is called.

Preface: Don't get too excited. I don't know if this will become a permanent feature again or not. All I know is that when I pasted all my earlier 100-word stories together for this page, I realized that for the most part I really enjoyed writing them.

And you have no idea how hard it was for me to resist putting a little mini commentary with each one.

So here's a new 100 Word Story for you. And all I will say is that it is based on a rejected series of radio spots I wrote for a client at my day job, and I liked the spots enough to keep the idea from going to waste. Their loss is your gain. Or not. - JCF

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Things came apart when the police caught me driving in the penguin mascot costume. Now it's all over between us - she won't speak to me, her father won't be out for another six months, and I'll never be able to look at a hamster again without weeping. But I did learn few things. For example, I learned that you can't return certain pieces of clothing after they've been worn, and you can't replace your future mother-in-law's cat. In any event, when I get these casts off, I'm going to make things right. If I ever get a next time.

Well, here it is - version 8.0 of the web site. I just realized that this site will turn 10 in May of next year, and if this design stays up until then, then the average length of time a design lasts me is 15 months.

But with this version it's not so much the design, which is supposed to resemble manila folders with those red DynaLabels or whatever they were called stuck to them. Kind of like what you'd find in an old school writer's filing cabinet.

No, what's different here is under the hood. I purged nine years worth of stuff off of the server and planted this site from the ground up, without much recycling. Before I had planted layer over layer over layer, and it was time to just bulldoze the thing and start over. So that's what I did.

So in a nutshell, here are the differences:

• All of the previous incarnations of The Word Foundry/White Moments are now gone. Some material has been salvaged and is now in the Useless Info folder. But all of those old posts are gone. Don't worry - they've been archived and I'm thinking about how I can recycle all of that old writing advice I had posted. If anyone wants it.
  
  
• Navigation to my novels has been restored. Actually, it never left, but whan I went to version 7.0, I was in an odd frame of mind and basically trashed my legacy of writing. This version paints a much more balanced picture of who I am, and I think that brief mental illness that led to v 7.0 is over. Heh.
  
  
• I'm working on putting some kind of a storefront up in case some of you out there still want to get your hands on some of my stuff. And my next project is to get the VBS Kit versions of The Terrible Misfortune finished and on the shelves.
  
  
• Part of the plan is to pick up the blogging again on a more regular basis. The vacation is over, right?

I guess that's all. There are still a few places where the doors are blocked off and sawdust litters the floor. But for the most part the new digs are 90% up and running.

So welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while. I'd discuss why, but I don't want to spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that I'm one of those folks who can't live without the dots...

There Are No Dots!