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First Look: Harry Potter And The Cursed Child
Here is a review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Spoilers? Sure.
Now, from what I gather, sometime during the original series, Voldemort managed to impregnate Draco Malfoy, and is the true father of Scorpius. Due to the fact that Harry Potter was somewhat telepathically connected to Voldemort at that time, he’s kind of the dad too.
It is now the year 3030. Scorpius Malfoy and Albus Severus, Harry’s other son, are dating. And not just casually—they’ve both thought about who would be their groomsmen. Meanwhile, another one of Harry’s sons, James Sirius, is battling a pretty heavy heroin addiction. It is hinted that this has caused Ginny, Harry’s alcoholic wife, to elope with Dudley Dursley.
Then, in a breaking of the fourth wall, all of the characters suddenly realize that they are in a play, which itself has been novelized by two dudes who did not create the series which was the basis for the play that was turned into this book.
Lord Voldemort Originally Created By Ayn Rand To Be The Fountainhead Of Objectivism
Ayn Rand’s ideal man.
THE LITERARY COMMUNITY—J.K. Rowling recently confessed to plagiarizing a large portion of her Harry Potter series from a manuscript she discovered in Ayn Rand’s tomb, titled The Virtue of Voldemort. The nearly 8,000 page draft, unfinished at the time of Rand’s death in 1982, was to be the story of Tom Riddle, aka Lord Voldemort, a supremely talented individualistic wizard and the ultimate hero of Objectivist philosophy.
J.K. Rowling admitted that she raided Rand’s black marble tomb in search of the manuscript, a mythical book which until now was only rumored to exist, much in the same way Lord Voldemort acquired the Elder Wand from the white marble tomb of the deceased Albus Dumbledore.
According to Rowling, the original text portrayed Lord Voldemort as the protagonist, personifying the ideals of Objectivist philosophy, with Harry Potter cast as a communist degenerate who unselfishly took the lives and feelings of others into consideration during his time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Previous heroes of Objectivism include Howard Roark, a rapist; Henry Rearden, an adulterer; Ragnar Danneskjöld, a pirate who robbed the poor and gave back to the rich; and a variety of other grown human beings who acted like that one kid you knew growing up who would steal the ball and run off when the game didn’t go his way, ruining the fun for everyone.
After vilifying Voldemort, Rowling took other extensive creative liberties with Rand’s version of events, most notably flipping the main theme of the story around, and making a hero of Harry Potter.
A journal of handwritten notes by Rand, found with the newly discovered tome, highly contradict the spirit of Harry Potter we all know and love and dream about today:
Character sketch of Harry Potter, the half-blooded commie hypocrite asshole, by me, the greatest writer ever, Ayn Rand.
–Potter spends the first ten years of his life living, for free, off of pure generosity from the Dursleys, who owed him NOTHING, yet were kind enough to take him in after his parents dared defy the greatest wizard ever to live, Lord Voldemort. He then expects to be treated as an equal to their son, Dudley.
-Potter yearns to become an Auror, and one day work for the Ministry of Magic, an institution hell-bent on stifling innovators like Lord Voldemort, whose only crime is being unique and perfect and hot and sexy and powerful and I would let him do ANYTHING to me.
-Potter jacks a bank. This would be okay, but instead of stealing from lazy gross poor people who could stand to learn the value of not being lazy and gross and poor, he attempts to seize a goblet from the Lestranges, a wealthy family who were smart enough to be born of pure wizarding blood. Hell no you di’int, Harry.
-Potter shares a large amount of his gold to fund the poverty-stricken Weasley twins’ joke shop. Gold he acquired by winning a contest in which his rival was supposedly ‘murdered’ by Voldemort, conveniently leaving Potter as the victor. Gold that shouldn’t be shared, because no one should share anything with anyone because we all have our own crap to deal with and everyone should be selfish dicks and not help other people because only look out for yourself and no one else and I’m Ayn Rand and powerful men can bone anyone they want because they’re men and they’re powerful and that’s hot and what woman wouldn’t want to be boned by a powerful man and poor people are poor because they just can’t be as good as rich people and they never bothered to learn words like ‘opulent’ and ‘ostentatious’ like I did so I’m better than homeless people I really am because I’m Ayn Rand and everyone could be rich if they wanted but they suck too much at being selfish so only selfish people get to be happy.
The notes go on like this for hundreds of pages, Rowling reported.
Rowling omitted nearly all scenes involving He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, including a disturbing rant that Rand called in her notes ‘the greatest love tableau ever painted,’ which Rowling confirmed was a 75-page God-forsaken hellbroth of pent-up lust between Voldemort and Dolores Umbridge in which quote ‘Tom’s snaky, bone-white body stood quivering before her chubbiness, a chubbiness that suggested a life of indulgence, a life she deservedly took from the mouths of the looters and altruistic.’ (Editor’s note—that’s really how Rand wrote)
Truly disgusting stuff.
Lonely disciples of Rand, who have no friends, have criticized Rowling’s modified tale for reducing Voldemort to an incompetent hack who couldn’t even kill a baby, while normal people generally enjoy the story of Harry Potter.
Here’s What I Learned From My Centaur Research
I was watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix this past weekend. As a herd of centaurs galloped across the screen, my gaze wandered down. The junction of horse and human occurs just above where the groin of the man would be and fuses into the area near the horse-half’s front shoulders.
I got confused. Where are the genitals on these things? Roving scientific interest—my desktop wallpaper is definitely not a picture of a centaur—anymore—filled a time slot I had open on Saturday afternoon. Do the mythical beast’s reproductive organs rest where they would on the anatomy of the human, or near the back, like a horse?
I had to take into account that the film is PG-13, so there was a chance that if any private areas were in fact located near the front, the filmmakers might have opted not to bump up to an R, or even NC-17 rating by having the turgid penis of a made-up animal flopping around on the big screen, thereby outlawing a sizeable chunk of the ticket-buying demographic from gaining access to theaters.
I took it to Googolplex. This website, authored by a German doctor, is the centaur equivalent of Gray’s Anatomy, and even brought up another interesting point—how does the spinal system work, being that the bodily fusion creates a 90-degree angle? I couldn’t be bothered with that, though—it wasn’t what I came for, and I feared I would be sucked further into an already dubious rabbit hole.
Then this came up:
Not only did I find the genitals, it looks as though we’ve been using the wrong phrase all this time—horses are hung like centaurs. This interpretation may prove unreliable, though. The issue of the spinal cord, for instance—it appears to curve into the lung cavity, and disappear, which would render the entire back half of this man-horse paralyzed. There may be better drawings out there, but please understand that while I do have the time to find a better one, I don’t want to. Googling centaur penis has more than likely already landed me on a ‘person of interest’ list somewhere, and next time I move I’m going to have to go around and tell all my new neighbors ‘hey, could you sign this thing saying that I told you I’m a pervert, blah blah blah, it’s just a formality, yada yada, I’ve changed my ways, bing bang boom.’
So I’ll just believe what this drawing says.
Resignation Letter, Or, ‘The World’
I just quit my job. Weeks before I knew I was going to quit, I wrote this resignation letter. Then, in the excitement of finally being able to quit, I forgot to bring it with me when I actually did quit. Balls. Not a big deal, though: it was purposely designed to confound, flummox, and bring about the general idea that I was somewhat unstable, thus making my hasty departure a point of concern rather than indignation.
The highfalutin verbiage and esoteric references would have been lost on the audience anyway. I mean, the one guy has had the same handlebar moustache for at least two decades. And last year, he didn’t even tell us when one of our coworkers was murdered by his girlfriend (Sadly, I didn’t make that up. She ran him over with her car. Management said not one word about it, to avoid giving people a day off for the funeral. Again, I can’t stress this enough: I didn’t make that up.).
Having said that, I now realize he would have thrown the letter in the garbage after he read the first line anyways. Here’s what I had:
The World*, or, My Resignation
Dearest Bob:
If you’re reading this, that means I’m already dead.
Or not. Anyhoo. Where to begin. At the beginning, I reckon.
Some 900 odd days ago, under Libra’s balanced gaze, a new cycle began, I playing The Fool. As time shifted I slowly toed my way through the major arcana, in both work and private life, ultimately culminating in this letter, which as you see above, I have entitled ‘The World.’
To come at it from another angle—the Moirai may now weave my tale. Read:
In that September of 2011, Clotho, Spinner of Life, dealt my thread. Her sister, Lachesis, drew her rod and measured it. Now, this night, governed by the fish Pisces, Atropos The Unturning, eldest of the three sisters, must now brandish her abhorred shears, and make her calculated cut.
Main point being, in the Menippean satire that this job, and consequently my life, has become, the ultimate communication of this letter is that I am quitting, if you didn’t get that already.
Now, by this time you may have noticed that I have left this communique with the front office and vanished, while the traditional two weeks of notice have not yet passed. None of us need worry about this. In the vast scope of geological time, after Armageddon has come and gone, whatever form it chooses to take, be it Ragnarok, The Four Horsemen, The Karmatic Wheel coming to a stop, Nuclear Winter—I can assure you that my swift exit from this company will not matter in the least.
At that time, when aliens, remaining humans, cockroaches—whatever is left, really—pick through the rubble where once stood this office/warehouse compound, I can assure you that my failure to give the traditional fourteen days forewarning will not be mentioned, nor will it even be relevant.
As Elton John once sang, we are nothing more than a candle in the wind. Or Kenny Wayne Shepherd: cold on ice, joker on jack, tears on a river, whisper on a scream. It doesn’t mean a thing.
And thus, as mysteriously as I arrived, I now dissipate, into the nether regions of the working world. May dementors eat my soul should we cross paths again.
Love,
Guy that don’t work here no more
*In Tarot readings, The World card can represent a cycle completed.
Predictions For The Outcome Of Harry Potter
I am now deep into Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, book three of seven in the wildly popular series. I’ve stayed sheltered this long, having avoided the bombardment of hype surrounding the final book nearly seven years ago, as well as the film adaptations. I think I’ve got some of it figured out, though. Here are a few of my predictions for how the story arc will play out.
—Harry and Ron become so fed up with Professor Snape that they get him arrested for being a pedophile. How do they do that? I thought I’d never ask. In a genius ironic twist, the two boys use the knowledge they gain from the Potions class that Snape teaches, to concoct a Love Potion. They sneak it into Snape’s lunch, causing him to become hopelessly in love with those surrounding him, i.e., a bunch of young witches and wizards. Now, the magical lifestyle differs from that of Muggles in many ways, but I assume that pedophilia is frowned upon even in wizardry.
—Or maybe pedophilia is accepted in the wizarding world, which is why everyone hates Voldemort and his womanizing.
—Oh yeah, Harry and Ron get the Love Potion on themselves and start dating.
—A larger portion of the next book will be devoted to the Dursleys, where we find that their treatment of Harry is justified. Think about it: I’m not even finished with the third book, and Harry has already broken enough rules to justify expulsion from Hogwarts several times over, including illegal use of magic in the Dursley home. Rules are rules, Harry. Deal with them like the rest of us.
—Hermione is going to kill herself after graduation, when she comes to the realization that a degree in witchcraft is worthless. Her resume, citing arithmancy and transfiguration as her ‘special skills,’ will be used on job search websites as template of how not to get hired.
—I know Dumbledore dies, but not how. My guess is a coprophilia exploration gone wrong.
I can’t wait to find out how close I am on all these.
Don’t Mess With H-Pott
Word to the wise:
If a huge fan of the Harry Potter series encourages you to read the books, don’t do what I’ve done, which is mock and ridicule the character names in front of that person. They’re sacred or something.
While I have finished and enjoyed the first book, I upped the entertainment level even more by putting my own spin on things. For instance, Harry Potter became Harry Butthole. Draco Malfoy became Draco Milfboy. Professor McGonagall became Professor McFartsicle. Hilarious stuff like that.
But instead of telling Harry Potter fans that you did that, just keep it to yourself, man. Trust me.
The Philosophunculist 
