Monday, January 21, 2008

Dear Pope Benedict XVI

If I daydream about things that cannot be proven at my work, I get fired. I understand that in your job that is exactly your job description.

However, the recent schizophrenia about Harry Potter books is confusing. First it was good, now it's evil. I am going to let you in on a little secret.

Although you have never seen your boss, nor heard from him, you belive you have a boss. Even though you never got a message from him that you didn't need to decipher wether this is a random incident or a memo from your boss, you still need to believe in your boss. That's fine. I cannot dispute that fact. Believing in it is your job security. But living your life in this kind of belief may compromise your judgement, and therefore I am compelled to inform you:

Magic does not exist.

Harry Potter cannot fly with a broom in real life. There are no spells and witchcraft. In the books you have to use your imagination to make Harry fly and in the movies it is only special effects. You can find out more about special effects if you check for example Industrial Light And Magic's webpage. (Please note: The "magic" part in ILM's name does not mean they do real magic.) You cannot gather mana and you cannot wave a magic wand and do miracles. Doing miracles is the sole right of your boss, if he exists. Also, there are no Dementors, nor Basilisks. No Thestrals nor Griffins. They are figments of J.K. Rowling's imagination. The milestone in Alchemy, the philosopher's stone does not exist either. You cannot convert lead to gold without the help of science. And our current level of science doesn't even work that well. We can create lighter atoms from heavier ones, like Uranium and Plutonium. And we have the basic knowledge how to convert hydrogene into helium. But we can't even get the latter one to work sufficiently. So don't be alarmed for the philosopher's stone and converting lead to gold either.

I know it is easy to mix up the fictional books, but remember this rule of thumb: Your book tells that it is real. J.K. Rowling has never tried to tell us that Harry Potter really exists. She says the character is fictional and as a matter of fact the book can be found under the section called "fantasy". Please try to separate your book from other books that do not claim to be true, but in fact honesty tell you they are fiction.

While I'm at it, I will hereby inform you that Smurfs don't exist either. So no worries about Gargamel making a magical potion out of Smurfs. There's no Saruman and no Merlin, nor Wicked Witch of the West. Mickey Mouse is an animated character who had been drawn to wear a wizard's apprentice's clothes in Fantasia.

For me Smurfs, the Bible and Discworld books are as fictional. But Smurfs and Discworld have less writing staff. I would recommend that stick to one fantasy land and discard the fear of others. If you play Dungeons & Dragons and immediately after that Nethack, you might mix up characters, as Cacodemon and Floating Eye are actually the same character. As a player that would make a small difference in real life, but as your job is to prove one fantasy-world exists, I would stick to only one, if I were you.

If you have irrational fears of other fictional characters, please do not be afraid to seek help. There are professional people who are trained to deal with people with this kind of delusions.

1 comment:

Uku said...

This was good! Really good! :)