Showing posts with label breakfast. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breakfast. Show all posts

Monday, November 7, 2011

The science of wordless spellcasting

I'm Harry Potter. I wake up in my bed, in the bedroom of a pretty normal looking modern Muggle-style house. The opposite wall, across the room and parallel to my bed, had built-in bookshelves from the ceiling down to about 3 feet off the floor. Below each column of bookshelves were three drawers.

In the previous dream, just before I woke up, a friend of mine had used the spell "fermata" to close the front door of a house we were getting ready to go into. I decided to test the opposite spell, the spell for opening things, "abierto" (I have no idea if either of these are real spells in the Harry Potter universe). I point my wand at a drawer and speak, "abierto". I mess around with my pronunciation, at first rolling my "r", then switching to a British (RP) "r". Then I start stretching out the pronunciation slowly. That's when I notice something weird.

I decide to experiment. I point my wand at the drawer, thinking the word "abierto" in my head, while starting to say "aaaah" out loud. In anticipation, the drawer begins to open. I push it shut. Interesting. Now I point my wand, think the word "automatic", and start to say "aaaah" again. This time nothing happens. Iiiiinteresting. I test it a few more times, then rush downstairs to tell Hermione.

Downstairs in the house, there are a lot of other kids (presumably other students) milling around. I walk into the small kitchen, where Hermione is making herself breakfast alone. I excitedly tell her to guess what I found out. She says "Hmmm... could it have something to do with..." (I forget what she referred to, but it wasn't remotely related.) I shook my head, smiling. Then I explained to her what I had found out, with "aaah" and "abierto" versus "aaah" and "automatic". You didn't need to say the whole spell, you just had to be focused on the right spell and begin speaking the spell.

"Woww, cool!" said Hermione, meaning I had told her something she didn't already know. And I was happy that she was excited.

[Note: This has everything to do with me currently reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.]

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Talking windows spoil breakfast

A girl finds out the house next door is possessed by several spirits. They talk through the windows of the house, animatronic like. One was a German military officer, another was an American military officer. Others talk some too but don't introduce themselves. They order some food for delivery or something. The girl sleeps there overnight. She has some weird inflatable nylon doll, as big as she is. Upon waking up, she finds it has deflated. She complains to her parents (? they're kind of old) next door and tries to reinflate it (the bottom is just like a bag end that ties closed, but she finds it has holes elsewhere.

While eating breakfast with her parents (?) and one other, younger woman (not sure what anyone's connection to each other is), the older lady and her husband begin to be poltergeisted by the spirits of the house next door. They take the woman's (gray) hair and start blowing it up and out, and spinning it in circles like fan blades. She initially doesn't react, but then she tries to go outside. She steps out into extreme wind. The father (?), now scared, tries to secure the girl, but cannot reach her. The wind blowing inside makes it difficult to move, and he seems to keep suddenly teleporting to different positions in the room when it seems like he's getting close. The end is kind of gruesome.