Fluids
Friday December 12, 2025
It may not surprise you to hear that babies excrete many fluids. Desmond, for instance, this very day has expelled vomit, saliva, feces, urine, and mucus. In this house, we call them spit-up, drool, shit, piss, and boogies. One day, when he’s a little older, we may modify the terminology.
I don’t have much more to say about it. He excretes fluids. Sometimes he cries after he does it. Goose, now a volunteer member of Child Protective Services, makes a note in his doggie clipboard and looks scornfully at us. But you know what, Goose? The other day, Des shit directly onto the changing table, mere centimeters from my hand, and I didn’t so much as flinch. That’s parenthood: The indifference to fluids.
Anyway, you rightfully guessed I had no topic until Thursday afternoon this week. Lindsay and I started watching the Harry Potter movies this week, as is our December tradition. So, special edition:
One Book: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The objectively best book in the series.
One Hollywood: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The best movie in the series, but I will permit Deathly Hallows, Part 2.
One Food: Elf Slave Labor Roast Beef
I think it’s fair to wonder if J.K. Rowling isn’t secretly a Death Eater herself. The transphobia is weird, sure, but the treatment of house elves in the books is straight up crazy. They’re literal slaves, and she goes well out of her way to mock the bejesus out of Hermione for having the audacity to suggest Hogwarts shouldn’t operate on slave labor. It’s a completely unnecessary, non-plot-related arc in the books; the only reason it exists seems to be for Rowling to justify the American prison labor system and suggest slaves liked the freedom of responsibility granted by forced labor. “But pure bloods are bad,” blah blah blah, non-human — yet fully sentient and intelligent — creatures in this series are treated like complete ass
One Pet Peeve: Underage Magic
Lindsay and I are not fun to watch the Harry Potter movies with. We love these movies, but they are not good movies. They are riddled with plot holes, technical oversights, and corniness, all of which are forgiven because the franchise was made for children, and it still has a strong nostalgic pull. If there’s one thing that drives me nanners from the movies, however, it’s the CONSTANT use of underage magic outside of school.
Repeatedly, in basically every movie, we are reminded that underage witches and wizards are not allowed to do magic outside of school. The enforcement of this edict is through the “Trace,” a magical marker on all underage wizards that detects when they unlawfully do magic. And yet, repeatedly, Harry or his friends use magic outside of school without consequence until the story decides there should be a consequence.
In Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry’s somehow blamed for Dobby the House-Elf doing magic, even though he’s PRACTICING MAGIC IN HIS BEDROOM IN THE FIRST FIVE SECONDS OF THE MOVIE. In Order of the Phoenix, the Trace actually works, and he’s expelled from Hogwarts. Why did the Trace accuse Harry of Magic committed by Dobby, but accurately caught him two years later? Why does the Trace not seem to care about underage wizards literally flying cars in Muggle neighborhoods or Hermione brazenly fixing Harry’s glasses in the middle of Diagon Alley? Because… reasons.
Sorry, got hot.
One Person: Arthur Weasley
FUCK Arthur Weasley.
Okay, have a good weekend.