Morality in Harry Potter

I am very disturbed by the morality that Harry Potter teaches children, particularly in the realm of political discourse. The whole "Wizarding World" is constatly locked in this deadly, dangerous, epic struggle against an evil wizard (Lord Voldemort) who is bent on taking over the entire world, not just the wizarding world.

The Wizard Council, if they were truly going to do the right thing, ought to approach the United Nations Security Council, and various foreign leaders and plan a strategy for moving forward in the campaign against Voldemort. There's no way, that "magic" is so much more powerful than modern technology that the US military, or the NATO peacekeeping forces wouldn't be able to handle the small rabble of Death Eaters he has at his disposal. He has maybe a few hundred. The US military is many thousand strong, with guns, bombs, and missiles, and jets.

Their isolationist attitude is counter-productive. The rest of the population has a right to know what sort of danger they are in. Everyone ought to have a say in how magic might be used to benefit humanity as a whole you see? And there are plenty of things in the muggle world that the wizards would benefit from as well. For instance, the internet, Facebook, Wikipedia, MSN Messenger, automobiles, cell phones, etc. By cutting their children off, by playing "Muggle artifacts" off as quaint or not as useful as magic, they are actually forgetting the utility of a highly sophisticated civilization.

And this is nothing when it comes to the learning of the modern world. There are so many philosophers, scientists, and theorists (from Plato, to Nietzsche, to Darwin, to Marx, to Hawking, to Buckminster Fuller) that they don't get exposed to. Without a proper training in college level ethics and philosophy and science, for chrissake, they are not going to have a very balanced view of the world, nor can they be expected to use magic in a way that is benevolent and responsible.

And what about literature? What about Keats? What about Shakespeare? What about Douglas Adams? Dickens? Isaac Asimov? Nabokov? Dosoevsky? They don't get any of this stuff. At least, not that I can see.

J.K. Rowling, you're on notice, until Harry Potter reckognizes that the muggle world is not such a terrible, "backward" place.

The Final Say

Arrested Development is the greatest TV show to grace the small screen. Ever. Period. And that includes the future.

Of Rags and Riches

I recently went to the theater to watch a movie. As with any movie-going experience, there were previews. All of them sucked. But this one sucked the most for a number of reasons. Material Girls stars Hilary Duff and Haylie Duff. The Duff sisters. Obviously, I will never, ever, under any circumstances put myself through the drudgery of watching this film, but it's an interesting concept. It used to be common in popular literature, and even in film in America to write the "great american what-have-you." A great many of these were what you could call "rags to riches" stories. Born a poor farmer, so-and-so claws his way against all odds to the top of some sort of financial empire. The struggle made him what he was. His roots in poverty gave him a connection to the common man. His dream and personal resolve made him great. Blah blah blah.

It is now increasingly common in literature, film, and pretty much everything else, to tell a completely different kind of story. It's the "riches to rags" story. Material Girls (starring the Duff sisters) is one such film, though I suspect that since this is going to be a popular American comedy, that they will probably get back to riches by the end of the movie after having learned a "very valuable lesson."

Of perhaps more important impact and astonishingly higher quality is the hit Fox TV show "Arrested Development." Compellingly (surprisingly so) narrated by Ron Howard, this fast-paced, off beat comedy has been drunkenly declared by myself at many parties to be the "best show on TV," and this should be enough for most people to accept it as truth. Again, "Arrested Development" is a riches to rags story.

It appears upon close examination of this new type story that's just now being told, that we have a backlash against the rags to riches American Dream. It appears that someone out there is trying to establish as a point of fact that riches are transitory. Where once people liked to dream wistfully of what they would do when or if they ever became extremely wealthy, it now has become extremely trendy to look upon the wealthy, particularly the idle rich, with a certain degree of contempt, and to imagine how wonderful and perhaps even entertaining their downfall might be.

While the characters in the Duff Sister's Movie are probably contemptible on every level imaginable, so are the characters in "Arrested Development." Not a single person, not even Michael, the least morally bankrupt character, is completely beyond reproach.

I think this is a very interesting trend in mainstream media, and I think we will see a lot more of in the years to come. That is, unless some horrible catastrophe strikes and we are all wiped off the face of the planet, and all cinema, literature, and art created by human hands is utterly destroyed never to be seen, heard, viewed, or cared about by another other creature until the end of time.

Dr Kuha out.

Practically a Joke

There is this thing about people you know. This did not happen to me as such, though it did happen in a way that directly affected my life. Imagine this as a practical joke. Leave a dead catfish in the gutter outside your friend's house.

That's it. Just leave a dead catfish in the gutter.

I don't know if you are aware of a what a S.E.P. field is. A Somebody Else's Problem field. It's a sociological phenomenon generated by anything that is simply too wierd or too disturbing to contemplate or deal with. So when someone leaves a dead catfish (a very large dead catfish) in the gutter outside your neighbor's house, the tendency is to do absolutely nothing about it.

The eventual outcome of this disturbing phenomenon is that roughly a week and a half later, there is a rain storm and all of the maggots that have been burrowing around inside the rotting carcass of the catfish come out to the surface and writhe and undulate and spill out onto the street.

Of course, just across the street lives a doctor with a fairly high-quality camera and a weblog of some degree of infamy who has been taking pictures and cataloguing the entire decomposition of the catfish.

My analysis of the situation is that the house outside of which the catfish now resides (in the gutter) is inhabited by college students who don't feel that their neighborhood is sullied nearly as much by the catfish as by their own presence (their yard is routinely strewn with empty bottles of Keystone Light and Michelob bottles...utter dreck), and therefore feel little or no need to interrupt the gentle but inevitable decay of what at one point in time was a very sizeable and impressive catfish.

The rest of the neigbors ignore the problem because it's not theirs. And so the catfish, bloated and corpulent, reeking, oozing strange and disturbing fluids, remains. In the gutter. Waiting for the monthly rumble of the street sweeper.

It could be read as an allegory for some greater truth. And that is what I challenge you the reader to come up with. Whoever comes up with the best "meaning" for the catfish in the gutter outside my neighbor's house, will have my eternal respect and admiration, a gift that transcends mere money.

Commies Suck

Take a close look, dear friends and readers. Sherwin Williams Paint, known by many for their truly staggering, nearly all-inclusive, verging on absurd in its diversity, palette of latex paints for all your household needs, may not be what you think it is.

Oh sure, they seem reputable; they couldn't dream of getting into nearly as much trouble as an Enron executive, however, I think that may not always be the case. I believe--and I think that if you follow me closely, that you will also agree--that Sherwin Williams Paint is actually a front company, secretly funneling money to an underground communist conspiracy.

Oh yes, it's true. And the evidence is all here in the logo. First of all, let's look at the can of paint in the logo. It symbolizes the organization itself. S.W.P. supposedly stands for "Sherwin Williams Paint," however, I believe that their clever use of an acronym opens it up for multiple interpretations: i.e. the Socialist Worker's Party. Coincidence? I think not.

Also, and this is simply too obvious, the globe in the center of the logo symbolizes the planet Earth. But what is that coming out of the paint can? It's red paint. Red paint. And what is the universal color of communism? I think my point is clear.

And let's not forget that they are using a "Cover the Earth" slogan. This could be seen literally, as though the company simply wishes to cover the entire planet in a uniform coat of high quality glossy latex. But in this environmentally conscious day and age, this seems unlikely. Thus, it can only be the case that the red paint in the logo symbolizes a political ideology. And the only political ideology associated with the color red is: you guessed it Communism.

To make it even more apparent, take a very close look at the globe itself. You can make out the outline of northwest Africa and Europe. That means that at the top of the globe is North America. Yes, that's right. America is their first target in a worldwide Communist coup d etat!

I rest my case.

Now you ask, "What should we do about this, Doctor?" I'll tell you what we should do: inform everyone you know about this conspiracy. These two-faced collaborators with Red China and ex-Soviet socialists are probably responsible for our failure in Vietnam! They sabotaged us from the inside! They're probably even funding terrorism (uh...moreso than our own government already is, and well...everyone who uses gasoline).

Do not use their paint! They must be stopped! Brought down in the name of such ambiguous ideas as "Freedom," "Democracy," and "The American Way of Life!" Because if you don't, the commies will take over. And if that happens, God help us all, because the Good Doctor is fleeing to Canada where they have nationalized health care.

Get Down with the Sickness

Dear friends and readers, it has come to my attention that one of the things that we have not been doing, and should, in the interests of the greater good for all, infect more celebrities with life-threatening diseases and maladies.

Take Michael J. Fox, for example. He has Parkinson's Disease. If it wasn't for him, $74 million would not have been raised to help fight parkinson's disease and his own waning career.

Christopher Reeve, is another fine example. He is dead. There is another foundation set up to raise money to find a cure for, oh, I guess it's paralysis and not death.

I think the most important lesson we can learn from this, is that celebrities exist for only two purposes in the general scheme of things: 1) to entertain and titilate our senses with their "talents." and 2) to get horrible diseases that millions of people suffer from every day and get no special recognition, and then go on to raise ridiculous sums of money in the fight against that disease using their fame (their money maker) to fight the good fight against whatever.

The Good Doctor's prescription: Start infecting individual celebrities with all sorts of horrifying maladies (i.e.leprosy, kuru, and herpes, you know, all the really prevelant diseases facing Americans), in the hopes of finding swift and viable cures. Because it's only when the people that we love have those diseases that we're actually going to do something about it. And let's face it, the only people in this world worth loving, are the people in the highest income brackets with the easiest lifestyles: celebrities.

I hereby invite all of my readers to name a celebrity, and then a disease that said celebrity ought to be inflicted with, and then project the potential money that might be earned by their foundation. Put all suggestions in the comments section.

Soap Cult?

Has anyone else seen this ad campaign? I'm beginning to wonder if something is really amiss in this world. I mean, well-known soap manufacturing companies are using tongue in cheek advertisements to recruit for a strange snake cult?

First of all, they hit people at their most vulnerable: when they are suffering from the guilt of a "questionable hookup," as they call it. Like, for instance, if you were caught by your friends doing the nasty with an old woman in a walker with electrodes connected to your taint. Obviously, this is pretty useful for anyone trying to start a cult. Many cults find new members by recruiting at colleges (i.e. the Giddeons and the US Military) and universities when young people are adrift, still trying to find their way in this world.

But this ad campaign is specifically targeted at people suffering from sexual guilt. This is morally reprehensible. There is nothing wrong with old ladies in walkers and electrodes. If that's what turns you on, and your friends make fun of you for it, then they shouldn't be your friends, because they are prudes and fascists.

I say to you, Order of the Serpentine: You can't have our nation's youth for your devilish rituals, and sweet-smelling soaps. Cease and desist, or the Good Doctor will come down on you with the full authority of his station!

In case you were wondering....

how the Good Doctor spends his time, I think that now would be a good time to share a little bit of myself with the rest of the world. I am posting on the internet, a portion of my work. Depending on the response, and whether or not anybody actually likes it, I my post more. Over the next couple of weeks, I will add a chapter a week, until the story is finished. While I fully intend to do a real post here at The Office in the next day or so, this should tide all my loyal readers over until then.

The link is here.

A Fundamental Restructuring

I don't know if it's going to last the year. Frankly I doubt it. There's a family of six in Boston somewhere that's just this very minute tucking in for bedtime. They don't realize it, but their very way of life going to end before the kids are even out of college. Everything that we do, everything that we take for granted sits on The Razor's Edge. On the one side of that edge is the Pirhanas of Uncertainty. The other side is worse. That one has rotating knives.

Global warming is irreversible. Did you know that? It can't be fixed. There is no solution. The world will continue to get warmer, bit by bit. Even if we stopped burning oil today, we are still screwed. The only thing we can hope to do is damage control. Only we can't even do that. You know why? Because there's 6 billion people on this planet that all want a piece of the pie. There's 300 million people in the united states who couldn't live without oil for one day, let alone for good. They can't do it. And China has even more people. More people who will use even more oil. We'll burn it all up. And when we run out, we'll find a way (I believe there's a process) to turn coal into a cheap source of diesel fuel. We'll convert all of our cars to diesel. We won't burn ethanol. Fuck that. That's lame. It's dorky to like trees. It's stupid and hippy-ish to think that maybe, just maybe there's something more important than how much money you earn each year. We are addicted to our high speed internet, our Hummers...mmm...Hummers...

I know, I know, you're saying, "When did you get all serious, Doctor?"

I've always been serious. Look over it all. Everything I say is riddled with only the most serious, the most pressing, the most urgent of tones. I don't joke around people. I only tell it like it is. And I'm sick of how it is.

The Fornication of MInd and Body

Let's not quibble about the details, dear friends and readers. That's the place (the details) where all of the niggling little intricacies of life take place. We are above that. We like it up high, in the lofty places. We like clear distinctions, polar opposites, and overly unnatainable ideals: Good vs. Evil. God vs. Satan. Heaven vs. Hell. Bush vs. Kerry.

It's even too easy in some ways to see what's right when you lay it out so clear and plain. When you make it a heads or tails flip of the coin, then the problems of life disappear. You do or you don't. It's not about the details. It's about the broad sweeping generalizations.

When you can distill life down to it's very essence, when you take out all the, "who nuked whom's," and the "who tortured who's political prisoners for fun and profit," and the "who was building weapons of mass destruction, but really wasn't, only we thought they were and I guess we were wrong, but we aren't going to outright say so on TV, because then people will think we made a mistake even though we did, but that's not the points."

Because when it all comes down to it, it's about values. Are you going to stand on the side that has values? Or are you going to be on the side that kills and eats babies? You see? It's that simple.

The tough part is deciding, in fact, which side it is that eats the babies. That I couldn't figure out. And I'm the Good Doctor, for Chrissake.

You knew what this was! And don't pretend different!

We all knew it was bound to happen. We sat there, pretended it wouldn't. Hoped beyond hope that maybe hope wasn't the worthless, irrelevant virtue that it is, was, and always will be. We ignored it, figuring the problem would right itself over time, that maybe, this day wouldn't come. But it was inevitable. It has come. And there's nothing, not a goddamned thing!!! any of you can do about it.

Yes, and don't pretend that you don't know what I'm talking about! I see you all there, sweating under the interrogator's lamp, begging for a glass of water, to wet your parched, and bitter palettes. Oh yes! You all knew. And yet you did nothing.

Yes, my friends, the day has arrived. The day, the hour, the motherfucking minute, that I got bored, and made another blog post.... It is 10 minutes to 10, on a saturday night. I am home alone, and you are all to blame for not calling me and telling me what the fuck was going on tonight. I hope you're proud of yourselves. And to hell with Froyd and whatever flippant comment he's going to throw down there!

Haha, I'm just kidding you guys. It's all good, right? I was just messing around. I do get so terribly bored sometimes.

The Anarchist's Healthy Heart Wiki

It is time, my gentle friends. The wonderful good people of cyberspace, the e-verse, and the lower planes of internet pornography, the one true place to get your voice heard (albeit edited, revised, and re-edited, chewed up, spit out, digested, and mulled over, after being marinated in a nice red wine vinegarette) is finally online! The Good Doctor, in his eternal benevolence, has added a new chapter in the history of cyberspace. And, gentle readers, here, the moment you've all been waiting for: The Link to the Ultimate Headquarters of Doctor Kuha's Office:


here

My Blog Sucks

Yes, it's true. I admit it freely and without reservation. My blog sucks. However, it does not suck as hardcore as so many blogs out there. In fact, I myself am totally awesome, so it sort of counterbalances the suckiness of my blog.

Let's just hope, for good or ill, that the Good Doctor will be around for many years to come, giving advice, keeping it real, and making people less sad than they would normally be if it wasn't for him. Even if it has to be through his sucky ass blog.

Good night and The Good Doctor bless you.


P.S. The picture of Rodney Dangerfield is merely designed to really freak the shit out of you.

Proof that Jesus DID die in vain.

An Anthem For The Little People
by Dr Kuha

“who is the Vice President?”
someone asked me the other day…
i said Richard Cheney
and said to Go Away

part of me wanted to lie
to say it was Lenin or Leann Rimes
to falsely educate an ignorant person
a sort of violence of the mind

how do you not know?
it’s not like Dick is new…
and perhaps most importantly of all…
how on Earth did you slip through?

who allowed this to happen?
who deserves the blame for this?
this travesty of boorishness
i knew who the VP was when i was six.

i tried not to dwell on it
while i shrugged into my coat
but some things are hard to forget
when these people get to vote

An Imposter is on the loose!

My friends, I have no pretty pictures for you today. Nothing that will brighten your mood, or elevate your spirit, or even give you a little chuckle. No, today, I bring you a warning, and it is a warning most dire. There is an imposter. This man pretends to have some sort of relation to me, but believe him not; they are all vicious lies. Not a word of it is to be believed. You must not allow his vicious slander to taint your view of me. I am not the evil man that this bastard wants you to think I am.

And so I propose that we destroy him once and for all, before his poisonous, treasonous, malignant, tainted words can turn you against, me, the Good Doctor.

A tragedy in the making

Six uncouth ruffians looking to pillage, a day late, a thousand dollars short, an anachronistic display of brutality and wonton disregard for anything pure and healthy. They were not recieved well at the Gala Event of the season. Stealing all of the patrons' valuables, they had to make off quickly, efficiently, and perhaps a bit ashamedly when the S.W.A.T. team arrived.

There's no place in this world for the likes of Vikings, Barbarians, REAL Cowboys, and rowdy rough-rider types anymore. Oh sure, there are pirates on the high seas, but the style is gone.

What must it have been like to see the sacking of Rome? No matter what side you were on, whether you were filled with fear or gleeful triumph, it would have been an amazing sight to behold. I miss the good old days. The days when men were men and women were women.

Oh sure, I'm too young to remember those days, but I can still remember them fondly in one way or another.

A savage youth with bright blue eyes and a depressed countenance signals the time to battle! Let the savage winds blow and the the barbarians ride again leaving the true art of destruction in thier wake.

Nintendogs

I'm going to be serious for a second. I made an interesting observation yesterday when I was at the family farm. One of my little cousins was playing this ridiculous game (Nintendogs) on the Nintendo DS, when my grandma's dog (a friendly yellow lab) came up to see her and see what was going on. But she was so absorbed in feeding, grooming, and training her electronic pets, that she pushed the real dog away.

What does this mean for humanity? I am fairly certain that it means that real pets, living, flesh-and-blood animals are obsolete and really should only be used for slave labor, since these electronic pets are so much more interesting. I mean, really, how can our family dogs compare to the sheer interactivity and reliable behavior of a pet based on a computer algorithm? They can't.