Why The Harry Potter Films Would Have Been Immeasurably Improved By Obscenities

Swear words are terrible things. They allow uneducated people to display emotional sincerity without going to the trouble of learning how to read or spell. But sometimes they're a necessary evil. Ostensibly, for providing a bit of cathartic relief. Letting loose a steaming barrage of the kind of choice curses that would make a sailor blush at the bedpost you just stubbed your toe on, or the cruel, sadistic god that put the fucking thing there, is, without a doubt, really goddamn satisfying. Script writers don't know this. No Hollywood hack has made the connection between their grizzled, any-means-necessary action hero saying 'fuck', and anything other than: 'that sounds really cool'. Swear words are either thrown around film scripts like pills at post-movie-premiere coke parties or absent entirely.Why? For the goddamn kids. That's why. But kids love swearing too. Probably even more than us, considering it's slightly fresher comic territory to them. Not that I'm advocating screaming obscenely at toddlers in supermarkets, they've got parents to do that. What I am saying, is that we could do with a little more realism in our fantastical wizarding adventures. Harry Potter needed swearing. And seeing as J.K. Rowling is a regular reader of blogs written like Tyler The Creator trying to get himself fired from a modelling agency, I'm in a unique position to get a few changes made.

By book four, The Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter has so much unbridled testosterone swimming around his body (I'd like to see you find a private moment in the Gryffindor dormitory for a bit of me time) that he starts flying into random fits of pitiful, impotent rage. Mostly at his friends. Because he knew they wouldn't fight back? Alright, I'm not going to insinuate that Harry Potter was a pussy on top of all the other heretical things I'm about to say. The point is, Harry was sexually frustrated to a degree most of us with our internet connections and lockable bedrooms couldn't even begin to empathise with.

What? Like you'd do any different if you were magic. 

He's not alone in this, yet, amazingly, he's the only one who really seems to show any signs of the crushing impact of puberty. This would have been easy to overlook, and maybe it was the director's fault, but Daniel Radcliffe played 'angry Harry' like someone complaining to their pharmacist that the oral pill didn't clear up their thrush. You'd think that that would be reason enough to give Radcliffe the liberty to give Felton the occasional 'eat a dick, Malfoy, you're dad's in prison I'm sure he could give you a few pointers'. You'd also be equally justified in thinking that 'joking about your dead parents' has got to be one of the top three reasons to scream profanely at someone before hitting them with a spell that produces some kind of extinction-level event for faces.

In the books, Rowling instead opts for craven bullshit like 'Ron swore loudly'. Obviously, as a reader you're able to construe whatever foul vocabulary you like from that. But in the films, there's nothing. The occasional 'bloody hell', true, but that phrase hasn't offended anyone since people stopped using rocks as cutlery. And if you showed them one of the films to test it, they'd just assume your DVD-player was magic. When the most offensive thing you can possibly call someone is 'mudblood', a term referring to the questionable nature of one's ancestry, you're uncivil-vocabulary is going to be pretty limited. Swearing is the major social infraction that all children start making at varying ages, everywhere. Yet at Hogwarts it's all very well-mannered indeed.

Student misdemeanors at Hogwarts in general are ridiculous. As a pupil, you seem to have a choice between the most benign forms of rebellion, or, joining a not-exactly-secret, necromantic cult slash terrorist cell, whose only discernible goals are inconveniencing school children with unfortunate facial scarring and bringing back conical hoods.

Also, hating on minority species. Which does beg the question, are there disenfranchised wizards out there who only tolerate goblins because their food's good? Or centaurs because they're good at maths?

Hogwarts isn't an unbelievable institution because it teaches children at the ages when they are most impulsive and irresponsible how to blow holes in walls or rear flesh-eating potted plants, it's unbelievable because these children aren't dicks about it in any kind of way anyone could empathise with. Never, at any point during the seven books does Jay-Kay describe kids sneaking out to the Three Broomsticks with the vain hope that Aberforth won't I.D. them, or smoking wizard weed behind the broomstick sheds before Herbology. It's not like it would have been hard to get away with anything like that, the teaching faculty is quite obviously brain dead, let alone responsible. For example, when Gilderoy Lockhart says he got lucky with a ten, that means another Hogwarts teacher left a Year 7 unattended. They're also all perfectly happy allowing a school house that churned out every evil human being to ever menacingly wave a piece of wood to continue, unsupervised. The Sorting Hat, if anything, would actually have made policing the wizarding world easier, via a thorough screening test. The second that obnoxious piece of felt uttered the word 'Slytherin', whoever was under it could have been conveniently escorted into a side room and humanely destroyed. But no, at some point someone must have said: 'nah it's fine, they can't all turn out to be xenophobic serial killers, right?' That's one fucked up PTA meeting. Although in fairness to all those present at it, when deciding on a new Defense Against The Dark Arts teacher they did take the moral high ground and decide not to discriminate against the suspicious-looking applicant wearing a turban. Not that that worked out well in the end.

By this point, you must be saying to yourself, 'but Will, surely an esteemed scholar of pop culture such as yourself would know that there is a least one case of swearing, in the Deathly Hallows to be exact. When Mrs Weasley is fighting Bellatrix she screams - "not my daughter, you bitch!" Also, what was the relevance of the last paragraph?' Well you'd be right hypothetical reader, although why you waited this long to bring that up is a mystery to me. All I'm saying is it seems amazing to me that there wasn't at least one character, among Rowling's horde that was a little more down to earth. A teacher maybe, that had the testicular fortitude to pipe up with: 'Dumbledore look, shouldn't social services be dealing with this shit?' Or 'Jesus Hermione, even that stick up your arse has a stick up its arse. Don't you ever get tired of being a passive-aggressive bitch?'

I'm glad that it's Mrs Weasley who finally let's loose a fraction though, casting Julie Walters for the scene in the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was genius, even though when she was first brought onto the project no-one had any idea. She's so convincingly hostile, I'm not even convinced she's acting. I think they just repeated the line to her a few times and opened the door of her cage with a barge hook. I hope they had a good plan to get her back inside after filming though, there aren't enough tranquiliser darts in the Jurassic Park Big Game Hunt to bring down a Julie Walters after it's made a fresh kill.

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Watch 200 pounds of wild animal savage Johnny Depp in drag, right here. 

GL3 Stat-Tracker: Fantasy Edition

My blog is the reason dogs can't see colours, if you email a link to it to someone you know, all their houseplants die and it will one day be used by a defense lawyer to clear my murderer's name. So Noni White, Paul Edwards, Mike Grocott and Jim Darrall, I can only apologise for this terrible violation of your privacy. But fuck it, it was funny at the time. 

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Lady Whitebane, Warrior-Princess of the Upton Forest Clan

(Anona White)

Amazon

Weapons: Compound Bow, Poison Arrows, Convincing Arguments

Armour: Skimpy

Accuracy: Myopian

Driving Skill: Irrelevant

Rationality: Womanly

Special Ability: Exhaustively Pointing Out Your Faults

Egbor The Surprisingly Polite

(Paul Edwards)

Berserker

Weapons: Battle Axe, Claymore, Your Own Goddamn Severed Arm

Armour: Wicked Facial Hair, Apparently

Strength: Ridiculous

Agility: Glacial

Intestinal Fortitude: Blessed

Special Ability: Punching You In The Gut Until You Throw Up

Grocotian, Senior Book-Master

(Mike Grocott)

Librarian

Weapons: Really?

Armour: Hahahahaha!

Intelligence: Sagely

Wits: About Him

Repartees: Biting 

Special Ability: ...the Dewey-Decimal System... I guess?

Pius XII, Adjutant 1st Grade of the Oxfian War-Church

(James Darrall)

Cleric

Weapons: Twin Sabres, Catholic Guilt

Armour: Suspiciously Effective

Dexterity: Unsurpassed

Charisma: Self-Entitled

Luck: Absurd

Special Ability: Making Good Girls Go Bad

Alexander The Mysteriously Swaying At Two In The Afternoon

(William Franklin)

Rogue

Weapons: Rudimentary Explosives, Salty Language

Armour: Pointless

Constitution: Ox-Like

Charm: Rapey

Ethics: ...huh?

Special Ability: Vanishing (With All Your Mead & Maybe Your Daughter/Mother/Sister)

GL3 Stat-Tracker: FIFA 5-A-Side Edition

Anona White

Team Captain

Team Management: Draconian

Training Programs: Sadistic

Tactics: Scorched Earth

Opinions: Unshakable

Sportsmanship: Derisive

Taste in Men: Predatory

Paul Edwards

Striker/Oldfag

Endurance: Barbaric

Savagery: Savage

Passing: Inaccurate

Eyesight: Squinty

Family Guy Knowledge: Academic

Taste in Women: Marital

Mike Grocott

Runner/Ball Boy

Fitness: Impressive

Accessibility: Impaired

Personality: Judgmental

Opinions: Unfounded

Fashion Sense: Pun-based

Taste in Women: Ambitious

James Darrall

Centre Right/Blood Mage

Positioning: Implausible

Accessibility: Laughable

Vocabulary: Extensive

Reason: Confusing

General Knowledge: Unfair

Taste in Women: Exotic

William Franklin

Left Back (at the bar)

Weight: Considerable

Ball Skill: Nonexistent

Footwork: Hilarious

Attendance: Occasional

Music Taste: Better Than Yours

Blood Test Results: Medically Impossible

Virginal Hobbies! 6 Ways To Sabotage Your Chances of Ever Getting Laid Again.

It's been statistically proven that for every five normal, healthy human beings capable of fitting comfortably in society, there's one 'nerd'. The stereotype made famous by 80s High School films was the first place your mind went to when you read nerd I'm guessing. Well, I'm not exactly guessing, I inserted a peculiar breed of earwig into your brain a few weeks ago that gives me regular updates on your thought processes via Twitter. But the modern nerd is now a very different creature, some of whom are actually capable of not spending approximately 16 hours day getting repressed childhood memories beaten out of them by well-toned sports players in fetching knitted sweaters. Some have even found love! Granted among their own kind, but I'm not here to help you fledging nerd-sacs relieve yourselves of your collective virginities, that's a job for roofies and Furry conventions. No, as ever, I serve a higher purpose. Namely, aiding you in maintaining your perennial loneliness. Hell, I refuse to be the only one.

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Play Videogames!
Casual interest in anything is fine, but it seems the second a hobby starts to take up more than 2 hours of your life a day and 3 hours of what would have been time to devoted to masturbation at night, it's suddenly a socially reprehensible thing to be doing. It rarely even matters what that hobby is, everyone likes music for example, but when you accidentally let slip that you own one of Damon Albarn's teeth or have a near academic knowledge of Eminem's daughter's school timetable in conversation, you've all of a sudden got less chance of putting your dick in something living than a panda going through a mid-life crisis.

'I'm thinking of getting a Ferrari'

This actually includes videogames, or at least some of them. A passing interest in Call of Duty or FIFA is actually expected of most men. It proves you've got at least some hand-eye coordination which is (I'm told) something a human female looks for in a potential mate as opposed to conducting foreplay like a quadriplegic disarming a nuclear bomb by candlelight. Getting a World of Warcraft subscription would probably do the trick, but actually maintaining it is a searing pain in the balls.

Collect something!
Ritually hording items of little or no value to the rest of the world is a pretty sure-fire way to announce that you've never felt the warmth of a woman's touch. But naturally, the extent of your alientation is going to depend entirely on what exactly it is you're collecting. In this case it's got to be something pretty fucking lame, like coins or stamps or sweaty tennis towels. In the interest of your privacy, you don't want to be lining the walls of your habitat with hookers' fingers or photos of your local primary school. There's an un-widely known bylaw that allows the Police to skip past the requirement of a warrant to search your premises for dead bodies and the like if you're found with trophies like that. And I'm pretty certain you don't want anyone poking around you're basement unless they're tied up in there. Obviously, you also don't want to be hoarding awesome things like Superbowl rings or v-plates either.

Study Mathematics!
If you're a student of mathematics, I would just skip to the next entry right now, because everything I'm about to say is going to make you seriously rethink your life. And I don't want to be responsible for yet another young suicide. Not out of any ethical consideration, it's just that I get tired of tabloid reporters hassling me for interview time. Trust me, that gets pretty fucking tiresome after the 3rd or 4th instance. Also, Maths students can be quite useful for fixing my laptop, which isn't so much true as it's just a shallow, transparent excuse for me to include this picture:

There's a point at which even someone like me, who looks like a zeppelin painted a pasty flesh colour and then partially deflated  (although I do tend to explode less when I take a drunken nose-dive) can attract a female. But that's because a natural talent for 'spontaneous' eloquent wit so razor sharp I haven't needed to shave in 8 years just about makes up for a lifetime of alcohol and pop tart abuse. And also because I despise mathematics. The things I did to my textbook back in Secondary School should count among humanity's most terrible hate crimes, yet there are people out there who willingly sign themselves up to study it.

There's never been a more nerdtastic subject in the history of human thought. Early Man may have kept tallies of how many times he'd slept with his neighbour's wife three caves over but you can bet your ass he didn't fucking enjoy it. And every time I meet a maths student who isn't a maudlin wreck counting down the days until their bourbon and sleeping pills get delivered I become a little more certain that the world is categorically, batshit insane. All I'm saying is, taking up maths as a hobby is probably the most reliable way of ensuring you'll never sleep with me. [FUN FACT! 5 minutes after this article was posted, applications to maths courses went up 600% nationwide.]

High Fantasy!
If there's one most effective way to attract the derision of every woman in your immediate vicinity and inspire every man to charge blindly in your general direction and try to kill you with whatever they're holding, it's enjoying fantasy. Fantasy novels, videogames or films fill human males with the kind of Viking Warrior Bloodlust you'd only otherwise see at Tesco when the cashier gives Chris Brown the wrong change. More than any other interest on this list, fantasy can be combined with other virginal pursuits for double, or even triple forced-abstinence bonuses! Take your average role-playing-videogame and throw in some compulsive loot collecting and a few mentally-crippling statistical calculations and you've got a one-hit KO to your junk. After all, if your not going to use it, why let it waste space in your inventory?

Watch Sci-Fi!
Knowing literally anything more about Star Wars than, didn't Family Guy do something with it? Is enough to mark you out as socially inept to a degree that modern science is still unable to equal. For example, consider the following: if I said that you're mother's so fat Obi-Wan Kenobi thought she was a moon and you thought that was funny, congratulations, you just became a curse on the human gene pool.

Sorry, I meant to say Moby-Wan Kenobi

Not only is admitting your sci-fi-fandom in public as dangerous as fantasy, it's somehow, even more humiliating. The last time I saw someone accidentally announce they loved Firefly, it was more awkward than the last time your parents let slip your middle name was nearly Broken-Condom. I don't know why this is, maybe it's the fact that most sci-fi heroes are sculpted, lycra-sporting lotharios, constantly bedding sexy alien women with (you would assume) conveniently humanoid genitalia. A far cry from standard fantasy tropes, which usually involve little more than a chastened princess and the odd lusty bar-wench. Which might explain how hilarious it is that greasy virgins the world over hold William Shatner up as the pinnacle of sexual masculinity, when clearly they think the g-spot is some kind of weak spot in a Boss' defenses. Although, that's actually pretty on the money now that I think on it, the trick is to stun it with an arrow first before going for the sword swing.

Samuel Lear: Just The Facts

Samuel Lear is the erstwhile Editor-in-Chief of Redbrick, the University of Birmingham's student newspaper. In return for the stellar work he's done in the past year, I've decided to immortalise him in the only way I know how. No holds barred, Pulitzer-worthy, face-punching journalism! I proudly! But apologetically, present: Samuel Lear's Man-Facts!

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Samuel Lear writes 200-character tweets and Twitter doesn't fucking dare stop him.

Irony cannot define Samuel Lear.

Samuel Lear once got an iPad pregnant because millions of years of evolution weren't looking.

Being editor has a few privileges. Being Samuel Lear has all the privileges. 

Samuel Lear's regal nature actually echoes back through time, inspiring Shakespeare when he was on a really sweet opium trip.

Samuel Lear has a book containing over 2000 personal pick-up lines. But the use of any by anyone not medically classified as Samuel Lear will increase the sale of rape alarms by 400% nationwide.

... ladies.

The sun cannot look directly at Samuel Lear.

Samuel Lear's CV is just a mugshot of himself attached to his Criminal Record. I'd like to see the Editor that doesn't fucking hire him.

Every single time Samuel Lear cracks a joke, the corpse of Bill Hicks shoots its hand up for a high five.

Samuel Lear's headlines are so manly, just reading one will make a woman limp for days.

When you're tired of respecting Samuel Lear, you're tired of not living in constant, agonising pain.

The secrets to true happiness, man's existence and to beating Mike Tyson's Punch Out came to Samuel Lear in a dream. Unfortunately, he forgot them in another dream.

This game was just ludicrously racist. I mean, Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's racist.

Samuel Lear framed Roger Rabbit.

If you're reading this in the dark, Samuel Lear is standing behind you right goddamn now.

Samuel Lear has never once called tech support. His laptop is simply too afraid of him to break.

In 1925, Parliament passed a law preventing Samuel Lear from ever taking part in a game of Trivial Pursuit. Because he always won in like 6 moves, it was just unfair to everyone else.

Samuel Lear sleeps with both eyes and the Guardian open.

Samuel Lear is so sexually charged, his erection can only point towards magnetic north.

Saying Samuel Lear's real name out loud will open a portal t- Christ! I just said it! Why?! Why can't I type in my head?! I can't help loving the sound of my own voice! God forgive me! My hubris has doomed us all!

No 'journalists' were harmed in the writing of this article. Well, not many anyway.

Whaling Under The Influence: A Drunk's Guide To Negotiating Sex With Fat Chicks

Do you crave companionship? Do you feel you say just the wrong thing at just the wrong time? Do you want to jam your dick in a woman that could be confused for a manatee, even by a shark? God's only creation known to boast Olympic Golds in Whale Detection and Murder? [While we're on the subject, seriously, fuck sharks. Why don't people realise they're the Creator's way of saying: "See, this is why I gave you legs. Stay the fuck out of my oceans." Makes you wonder what he's keeping out there. Meth lab probably, how else do you explain Australia?] Anyway, if so, are you in luck! Let's be honest though, you're toasted, you need to get this thing done quick before irreversible chromosomal damage or worse, whiskey dick. To hell with what Science or Religion might say! Those prudish fucks don't know how to have fun anyway! You my friend, are getting laid tonight!

***

You've probably heard that statistically, as a nation, fuck - as a species, we're getting fatter. But actually finding a woman that you could lose your phone, wallet and keys in is pretty tough. Large women rarely congregate. They're like Will Smith in that film, except instead of drinking scotch in the street and generally acting like a bitchy queen, they do something meaningful with their lives. Like gargling your balls for a packet of Iced Gems. HANCOCK. That was the film. Seriously, the only thing that could have stopped that movie sucking harder than a Dyson somehow engineered with pornstar DNA, would have been Charlize Theron taking her bra off. Seriously, has Will Smith ever been involved in anything more shameful?

Oh, right.

Even in crowded rooms fat chicks have a knack for blending in (it's a vestigial behaviour from back when they needed to to camouflage themselves in packs of cave-men in order to hunt). A neat trick is to scatter a handful of small objects into the air (carpet tacks usually work well) and see if a prime specimen's gravitational field draws them into orbit. Once you've picked out your chosen cetacean, wade through the school of ladies to reach it - they have a symbiotic relationship, like those birds that clean crocodile teeth for amnesty from a swift, violent death. A lot like that now that I think about it.

How's your gag reflex?

The plus size woman is a notoriously elusive creature, prone to random, crippling attacks of paranoia and easily spooked by strange objects like salad forks and penises. Despite this, they have surprisingly short attention spans, so if you don't keep one constantly focused and engaged, they may forget who you are or wander off into traffic. For that reason it's important to bring a large supply of Ritalin, but disguise them as raisins. Like pheasants, fat chicks go wild for raisins [NB: if you got that reference, congratulations on having a successful and rewarding childhood]. I've also found a lot of success baiting bear traps with take out Wagamamas.

It's unlikely that you'd have to talk to the creature, in our early stages of evolution, we were too busy doing awesome shit like killing mammoths with sharp rocks, or carving rudimentary pornography on cave walls to invent ear muffs. Naturally, God stepped in (like the gentleman that he clearly is) and fixed things so that the first place you put weight on is the subcutaneous tissue of the inner ear. Obviously, the kind of girl you're looking for thinks exercise is an archaic form of masturbation. Which is fine, only she couldn't find her G-spot with an oil rig and 2 rows of flood lights. So she hasn't heard anything clearly since her GP told her that 25% of her blood was butter when she was in primary school. If you're going to say anything, remember to focus on a point somewhere above her head so you're not speaking directly into her face, you wouldn't want her to mistake all the tequila on your breath for halitosis. Not that she would know what that is.

Knowing what this abomination is would also prove you had a more literary childhood than me.  

It gets pretty simple from here, just slip the bitch some roofies (disguised as raisins remember) and chaperon it back to your godawful apartment or whatever hovel you're currently living/squatting in. Now you've just got to get busy, gettin' busy. Mixing food with fat sex is a logical fallacy. But nothing is more awesome than fat sex, so if you try to mix it with anything else, no matter how awesome that thing might be (gin, LSD, videogames, whatever) you are diluting fat sex. However, it is also dangerous, common injuries include: crushed pelvis, punctured lung and catastrophic internal haemorrhaging. Therefore, it is vitally important to agree on a safe word or phrase that could not be confused for the conventional pillow talk/smack talk/screams of horror that usually accompany intercourse. Some examples of what not to use are below:

'I... I can't breathe'


'You sure have a lot of orifices'


'OH GOD! MY BONES!'

Something Else That Isn't An Essay

I feel like I should apologise to those of you who read yesterday's post who didn't have a near-academic knowledge of Pokemon but I'm sure you can empathise. When you have a deadline towering over you it's natural that you'd turn to something your mind naturally drifts to when looking for another way to occupy your time. On that note, here are ten other things I'd rather do than work.

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10. Spend 10 minutes on the phone to any company's customer assistance department.

9. Co-write a screenplay with M. Night Shyamalan.

8. Lunge wildly at the Pope.

Look at him. He's just begging you to do it.

7. Slap-box a lion wearing Lady Gaga's meat costume.

6. Drink 'responsibly'.

This guy knows what I'm talking about.

5. Furiously defecate on the White House lawn. Dressed like a ghost.

4. Do jumping jacks on a prayer mat, stopping every 30 seconds to call Allah a pussy.

3. Put my dick in a blender. Or Ke$ha.

2. Be violently sodomised by a prison inmate named Scrunchie.

You want to know how he got the name? So does he.

1. Get punched in the testicles by Martha Stewart. Just because there's the added horror that when she finishes, she'd lean down and whisper: 'your genitals are now a rippling puddle between your legs, it's a good thing.'