What's Going On Here?

I thought I'd provided a general update regarding this blog and some items of interest. The general answer to the question posed in the title is "not a whole lot". The real brains of this outfit has always been Merlin, and he is currently working like a dog on his doctorate up at Fordham U in the Bronx. Although he hasn't blogged here in quite some time, he can sometimes be found over at John Granger's blog commenting under his "secret identity", Brett. Cubeland Mystic likewise has decided to close up shop as far as blogging goes to concentrate more time and energy on his fiction writing. He has two books in the works and we wish him the greatest success. I have been blogging over here lately my relatively new, "kitchen sink-style" blog I named Contra Pauli for lack of any other name. The name is part tribute to the now defunct political parody blog I was part of for a time, The Contra Crunchy Conservative, and partly a shtick where I demand my readers offer heated criticism of anything with which they disagree. The content of Contra Pauli tends toward religion and society in general, but we get into film and music quite a bit as well with a touch of politics and all sprinkled liberally with my acerbic sense of humor. If you don't mind a few inside jokes, come on over and take a gander. As far as HP blog news, I see John Granger has a new post on the (rather unnecessary) proof that Rowling did intend Harry Potter to be an alchemical work. I'm sure the quote from Rowling herself will not satisfy those resembling Flat-earth Society members or the moon-landing deniers. Travis Prinzi continues his PubCast series which I highly recommend. He's currently on his 18th installment. He mentioned Dan Radcliffe's question to Rowling ("Isn't he [Dumbledore] dead?") and speculation stemming from the response last month. Sword of Gryffindor remains the first place I go to check on any Harry Potter news. I won't be formally shutting down Muggle Matters by any means. We'll leave it open indefinitely and as always, I welcome all readers' comments.

Cubeland Mystic Joins MM

I'd like to extend a massive, mythopoeic Muggle Matters welcome to the Cubeland Mystic who just joined us. Cubeland Mystic has several blogs, most notably The Immaculate Direction. Cube -- as I, being a lazy typist, like to call him for short -- is an ardent fan of Lord of the Rings even though he's new to the world of Harry. He has many good insights like this one, "Who are you?", on his blog asking which character from LotR readers relate to the most. Excerpt: This post has been in the works for quite awhile, so I have given this idea a lot of thought. At first I really thought I identified with Sam, since we share a love of gardening. I love Sam, he is a great character. Sam is Joe six pack. It is not difficult to imagine Sam tailgating, wearing his Steelers jersey, working a barbecue full of brats with a beer in his hand. Sam would lead his parish’s Knights of Columbus council. But as much as I tried to make this fit, it just did not work. He goes on to say that he relates best to... well, I'll let you go read for yourself. But maybe we could talk about which Harry Potter character we identify with the most in the comments here. Welcome again, Cube, and feel free to post on any of the great mythopoeic literature that we celebrate here.

Muggle Matters Switched to "Beta"

I took the plunge and converted Muggle Matters and my other blogs to Beta, Blogger's newer improved format. It makes changes much quicker to implement by eliminating the need to continually "republish" and features a new spell-checker which is much faster -- although I still wish you could add your own words. Best of all, we can now categorize posts with labels which appear at the bottom of each article. If you would like to comment and you are having problems or if you find any dead links, please feel free to email me using the link in the left column. UPDATE: This link will help anyone get through the tedious process of converting to Blogger Beta.