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Remember the last Great Depression?  Me either, but I remember what my grandparents said about it.  During these economical strenuous times would I recommend a Harry Potter marathon?  That’s right.  12 hours and 21 minutes of Harry Potter.  And WTF is a Jabberwocky?  A car from overseas?  A secret move in Street Fighter?  A skin rash produced by a noxious weed in India? 

The country is close to serious turmoil.  Or I should say the country is prairie-dogging economic turmoil?  If you happen to miss the eloquently described definition of prairie-dogging from a little fat girl in the movie Rat Race, then you, my friends, are missing out.  More importantly, there’s more you’re missing out on if you haven’t seen the news.  Things are bad.  Pretty bad.  We could be approaching another Great Depression.  In that last one, my family lost some strings of mountains in the now-known Great Uinta Mountains National Park in Utah, a string of keys in the Florida Keys, and a few other non-property assets.  If this one really happens, I hope my family fares better than the last one.  Three weeks ago, my mother Laurie withdrew all her money from Wachovia Bank, a popular bank in the Southeast.  The following week, Wachovia Bank went under.  People lost their money, their jobs and their trust in “the system.” I’m assuming this same incident happened in many different places with many different banks.  The result of such has helped contribute to a distressingly large drop in the Dow and NASDAQ.  It’s a bad time for stock broking.  Everything is down, except for Campbell’s soup.  Campbell’s Soup has actually risen in stock value.  I hear Stephen Colbert has a huge stockpile of Campbell’s soup in his studio, but you didn’t get that from me.


On the agenda, there are many things to fix this receding recession, but the most popular right now has been the $700 billion buyout bill.  It went through finally!  But it has not helped very much.  Throughout this process of approving a buyout bill, there have been some major concerns over its responsibility.  Some people are concerned with the government’s involvement in helping corporate America.  Regardless how this plays out, I hope everyone in this nation is humbled and opens its eyes to what is most important: family.  There aren’t many things in this world that compare to the importance of family.  Throughout these hard times, if we’re positive and find happiness in the basic elements of life like families, food, friendships, water, Rock Band 2 (but not for the Wii – bad idea), etc., this period of hardship could be a good memory for everyone for years to come.


Let’s change paces.  It’s getting too serious, too political and too mushy.


This past weekend I had the crazy idea of a Harry Potter marathon.  Summer is over and its mid-way through fall, and it hit me, where the crap is Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Prince?  It’s been a year since the long, boring fifth book’s movie; where is the next movie of the beloved series?  I checked IMDB and they say we don’t get it until July 17, 2009!  So in my depressed stupor, I decided to watch the five preceding Harry Potter movies straight through.  No breaks, no trips to the grocery store, and no watching my beloved Gamecocks beat Kentucky.  Nothing but Harry Potter, Harry Potter, and more Harry Potter.  I planted my butt down on my couch and watched them all.  Yeah, it took 12 hours and 21 minutes.  Yeah, I am fluent in like 30 something spells now (most of which are defense spells learned in the DA).  I think I figured out when Dumbledore stopped hiding that he was gay.  (The Goblet of Fire.  His hand flicked a lot differently from the first three.)  And I’m trying to figure out what happened to Voldemort’s nose.  I’m still trying to decide if this marathon answered more questions than it created. 


Here are some of my questions: Why Daniel Radcliffe?  I hope the first casting director got fired.  Whose voice is the snake in HP1?  Why is Hermoine, the cutest HP character, introduced so late into the movie (36 min. in)?  After all those elaborate feasts, how are any of the Hogwart’s students skinny?  Why hasn’t Filch been any more involved and animated like he was in the first HP?  “You must have you wits about you.” 


Now I do not recommend anyone to go through what I went through.  By the third movie, I was experiencing fatigue.  I was beginning to dislike one of the most popular fictional characters ever created.  During the Goblet of Fire (#4 for the less-than-fanatic HP fans), I was dreading life.  The fourth was my favorite, too.  It was the first decent movie in the bunch (Thank you Mike Newell).  When I hit play on the last movie, Order of the Phoenix, I was on the verge of tears.  I had watched almost 10 hours of movies; not to mention, 10 hours of a series!  I was so tired, that I was emotionally tipsy.  I was so tired that I started losing my “wits.”  I was physically angry at Dolores Umbridge and at Harry for being keeping everything in.  Why was Umbridge terrorizing those poor kids?  How could she be so oblivious?  That lady was brutal to those children.  Think of the trauma those kids must have been subjected to because of her.  And poor Harry; his hand must have hurt so badly.  Harry didn’t deserve her totalitarian treatment.  I think she deserved a worse fate than her centaur kidnapping.  I was on the brink of tears during this part of the movie because I was so tired and Harry Potter-overloaded.  That’s what will happen to you if you do a 5 Harry Potter movie marathon.  You will get emotional and cry. 


I’m changing pace again.  I’m sorry; my ADHD is bad today.


This column/blog is titled Jabberwockies.  This is a word you probably have heard at some point in your life, but you probably couldn’t define right now.  I couldn’t for the majority of my life.  Jabberwocky is one of my favorite words, and it’s not even a word.  Literary genius Lewis Carroll wrote this nonsense poem back in 1871 entitled “Jabberwocky.”  What started out a poem written to teach others how not to write poems, has become “the example” in the writing world for nonsensical language. 


In some ways, I want to translate for Lewis Carroll.  In this column, I’d like to take my over-ambitious mind, my sporadic writing abilities, and my desire to market my knowledge and experience with others, and translate events in this world into something we can digest.  Jabberwockies is my way of taking things that are nonsensical and converting them into something valuable.  I’m not attempting anything amazing or noteworthy; I’m just trying to inject a different perspective into people’s lives.  Differences are good.  That is a lesson I learned way too late in life.


Quick story:  I was 19 years old and was too closed-minded.  I was from proud-of-our-heritage South Carolina, and anything my mother did or said was absolute fact or truth.  Anything contrary to the way my mom did something was wrong.  I was living out West; it was my first time away from home.  One day I was folding laundry with a friend of my mine and I noticed he was folding his towels differently than I did.  Differently than my mom did.  He was doing it wrong.  He was dead-wrong.  His folding method was less efficient, less logical and completely improper. 


This is when I decided to inform my friend of his obvious errors.  I said verbatim, “You’re folding your towels wrong.”


Nonchalantly, he replied, “No.  I’m folding them differently.”


All of sudden, at that exact instance, the world made sense.  People made sense.  Cultures made sense.  My stupid friends made sense.  I had partaken of ambrosia from the gods.  I felt like a new person.  Knowledge has set me free.  The guys from Jackass made sense.  Liberals like Al Gore and Bill Clinton made sense.  Farmer Fran, the guy that wore overalls and had nipple rings (and shouldn’t have) from The Waterboy, made sense.  It was a defining moment in my life.  My friend still doesn’t understand its impact on me.  That minuscule bit of knowledge has made one of the biggest impacts on me. 


Ok, lecture’s over.  Class dismissed.  Your homework, read Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.  It’s below. 


Wrote this while listening to the Once soundtrack.


Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”


‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”


He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.


And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!


One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.


“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.


‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.