'Everyone's Favourite Four Letter Word'! How the song came about?

Hi,
    My name is Surjo and I write and sing songs for a living.

You can hear and buy my new album 'The Key Has Turned' at
 :https://www.oklisten.com/album/the_key_has_turned

    Well, those are the words of 'Everyone's Favourite Four Letter Word'. You can read and enjoy it because that's what the song is really about. It's about having some fun but there is a small message that runs underneath it.

I've wanted to write this particular song for a while now, but I hadn't put pen to paper for it. The song title had come to me in 2010 or 2011 but that's all I had uptil Nov 2014, because I didn't quite know how to phrase my feelings about that particular word. All the basic concepts were apparent to me, in terms of the versatility of the word. I talk about how it can be used as a verb or a noun in the song, but it can be used as an adjective or an adverb with equal ease. I wanted to write about these things and the unfailing regularity with which it shows up in common speech today, but I didn't have the glue to stick all of the narrative together.

What changed that feeling was when I was in the audience this year at NH7 Weekender in Kolkata. Over the course of two days, a lot of F-bombs were dropped on stage, and they were dropped in a variety of different situations which really had me thinking and that's when the creative juices started flowing, because I wrote the song soon after coming back home(Jamshedpur) from Kolkata.

Three specific acts caught my attention for their use of the F-word. The first was Monica Dogra, who is well celebrated for her many interests and her pursuits regarding those interests. She's an actress, for those who've seen 'Dhobi Ghat' (I haven't, I've heard she's the actress in that movie). She's part of electronic duo Shaa'ir and Func, where she's the Shaa'ir and Pentagram's Randolph is the Func. And then she has own album now which gives her a solo project as well, plus she was the host for the music TV show 'The Dewarists' on Star World. So, Monica Dogra was the second-to-last set on Day 1, and since we were waiting for the last act (Bhayanak Maut, heard a lot about them, and walked out 10 minutes into their set, not to my taste), we sat through her set too, as it was in the adjoining stage to the main stage.
   She starts her set, and if I recall correctly, it was her, a cello player and the almighty laptop on stage. I never saw the set, I was just listening to the set, my friend and I had positioned ourself in a manner where coincidentally we couldn't see her on stage. Props to her for trying hard to sing and put on a good show, but the music seemed insipid (to me) and there wasn't much audience reaction (obvious by the lack of noise before, during or after her songs), which led her to using a couple of F-words in her sentences. Now, I can completely understand the frustration of people not being interested in your craft, having been through such times myself, and it is a soul-crushing blow. Her decision to use the F-word was what intrigued me though. Did she use it display her assertiveness? Her level of cool? Her I-couldn't-give-a-hoot attitude? Her aggression? To hide her insecurity? Nevertheless, there weren't too many of those moments, but the appearance of the 4 letter word did interest me some.

Moving on to Day 2, and two artists caught my ear that day with their usage of the 4 letter word. The first one being French duo 'Inspector Cluzo'. A guitar player and a drummer on stage, with more of an act than a band, more entertainment than music, more theatrics than verses and choruses. I don't think there was a single song I watched which they played from start to finish without stopping to talk to the crowd midway (or quarterway, or 20 seconds in to the song). To be fair though, their stop-start nature had me moving back and forth between stages, so I might have missed songs where they did play the entire song without pauses. But their usage of the F-word, while prolific in quantity, was calculated in presentation, as in it was rehearsed. They had a 'F*** The English' narrative throughout their entire act, so they'd stop, blast the English, and then carry on. So it was part of their narrative and executed with a swagger I haven't seen before. That had me thinking again, since the circumstances were very different to Monica Dogra's.

The third band of the day using F-words prodigiously was The Ganesh Talkies. First things first, I like the band, I've bought their album and listen to the songs all the time. I think it's widly entertaining music, and they do write dance as one of their genres and they might be quite right. A lot of that music is super groove worthy. Now, coming on to the F-word scenario. The band was doing quite well in their performance, they were tight, it sounded amazing and the crowd was having a blast. There was, however, one song where the crowd didn't quite get into it. Maybe they were just tired, but the singer took offence to the lack of reaction and out came the first F-word. Again, I understand the frustrations of people not accepting your creation in even the smallest of manners, so I understand her frustration, it's only her choice of words that I didn't understand. But that first F-word wasn't cringe-worthy, it was just tossed out there with just the slightest hint of worry, but the more worrying thing for me was that the first F-word was like a floodgate opening. A floodgate containing a river of F-words. The singer after that went into using F-words quite liberally, to the extent where she had 5 F-words in 2 sentences. Which again got me to thinking, why is she using so many F-words? She might be alienating her audience a bit here, and on cue, some of the people started walking out of the set. Again I pondered over the possible reasons and could come up with the same options as I had for Monica Dogra, and if I were to choose one of those options, I would say it is to hide insecurity (if the people mentioned above happen to read this, please don't get all hot and bothered about what I'm writing, it's my deduction and therefore can be completely wrong).

Nevertheless, these 3 incidents affected my thought profoundly enough where I started thinking up of the lines in the song while I was on the train home. 'You can use it on stage, I hear that's all the rage' comes from this particular experience. I then realized that I would like to narrate it in the form of short stories that bring about the different aspects of the F-word, and I had a blast writing the song and now I have a blast singing it to people and watching their reactions.

So that's the story behind 'Everyone's Favourite Four Letter Word'. 

How the Key wound up turning!

Hi guys,
    My name is Surjo and I write and sing songs for a living.

Check out my new album here: https://www.oklisten.com/album/the_key_has_turned
(You might be hearing them right now from my reverbnation widget, if you like it, please go to the above link and buy the album for Rs. 100 and support my survival. )

I just wanted to share the process as far as I can regarding how the album came about.

One of the first things I knew for sure about the album was in fact the album name, because 'The Key Has Turned' isn't just a random choice of phrase.

                                          

I've always felt that my abilities as a student of music and as a musician in general were pretty solid, which I referred to as my engine. So my engine is pretty solid but my ignition key wasn't functional for a long period of time. But a series of circumstances finally led to the key turning and my engine revving on and now the album has been released and it's been well received so far. (Thank you)

One of the main factors of course was me deciding to part ways with Shilpa Rao. I've been playing shows with Bollywood singer Shilpa Rao for the last 3 years and I was managing her tours for the last year too. I gathered a wealth of experience and knowledge in the process, and I'd like to believe that I did fairly well as her manager, but the entire experience was altogether too time consuming and frustrating and the massive realization dawned on me that the many sacrifices I had made to be a professional musician were going to be wasted if I didn't have my own identity, and this wasn't the identity I wanted. Still get enquiries for her everyday though.  

Another thing was some minor changes that I made in my outlook towards my life. The way I've been brought up has made me a guy who hates social visits and going out of my house in general, but then I decided to change that slightly so that I could expand my horizons a little bit. So I decided to travel small distances for pleasure, which uptil that point was a no-no for me, all my travelling till then had been strictly for work. So I would go out to Kolkata to catch some bands I respected and met people and friends and was amazed by their fantastic spirit. That inspired me enough to know that push had come to shove and it was time to put my money where my mouth was. 

Being as inspired as I was, and this is late August, early September in the time frame, I decided to write songs in the manner that I had wanted songs to be written. I didn't have a band at my disposal so I decided to write an acoustic album, songs that'll work well with just an acoustic guitar. I also wanted to have a good number of songs, I didn't want a 6 song album or an 8 song album. I wanted double digits. And till that point, I just had one new song written and that was what eventually became 'Blank Page'. 

The sudden desire to write and to ease up about my life in general led to me spending a lot less time obssessing about pure guitar development and more on songs in general and slowly but surely I started writing about events and topics that I had always wanted to say something about. Also, 'Scream' was part of the same mould of songs, so I knew I could put that in the album as a bonus track. 

The entire album was written, recorded, mixed and mastered in 3 months. Out of that, the majority of the time was spent in writing the album and rehearsing the album, whether it be at home or at the shows I was doing at Cafe Regal before the release of the album. The final process of recording in earnest began on the 11th of Nov, guitars were tracked that day, then on the 12th the vocals were tracked and the two days for a combined recording time of ten hours or so. Then 12th night (Shakespeare reference??!!) and 13th morning, afternoon and evening were spent mixing, where my laptop decided to hang as often as possible to make my life miserable. Then the rest of 13th was spent setting up the album for OkListen while also preparing the physical CDs, which carried out into the 14th which was the day of the release. So it continued till 3 hours before the release that I stopped working to prepare the album and started prepping myself to head over to Cafe Regal for the launch and the show which I was supposed to perform. 

I will be writing more about each song in detail in later editions of the blog. 

Till then, take care.

                                                                                                                                                                

Everyone's Favourite Four Letter Word!

Hi,
    My name is Surjo and I write songs.
 
    Check out my music here: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialSurjoMusic

'Everyone's Favourite Four Letter Word

Welcome to my poem,
It's all about a word
A word for making babies,
Or just for flipping the bird
It's only four letters,
And it rhymes with truck,
Scream it when you're happy,
Or even when you're stuck

You wake up on a Monday,
And you've got to go to work
Flashes of last weekend,
And is that why your head hurts?
Still you rush, and now you're ready
So you walk outside the door
Pull it shut, all good oh but
Your keys are on the floor.

What do you say??? Duck?

You can use it as a verb,
You can use it as a noun
When the word is said on TV,
You hear a funny bleeping sound
It's a wonderful tool,
I'm sure you must have heard
I'm talking about everyone's favourite four letter word

The weekend's finally here,
And you're out with your friends
Need a place to drink,
No more sitting on the fence
Walk into a disc,
Blaring music, shining lights,
See a girl on the floor,
In stunning leather tights

What do you say???? Holey Puck?


You can use it as a verb,
You can use it as a noun
When the word is said on TV,
You hear a funny bleeping sound
It's a wonderful tool,
I'm sure you must have heard
I'm talking about everyone's favourite four letter word

You can use it on stage,

Seems like that's all the rage

You can use it in your classroom,

Sex no bar, nor age

Not that I'm saying you should use it at school,

But this four letter word serves us better than 'cool'

You can use it as a verb,
You can use it as a noun
When the word is said on TV,
You hear a funny bleeping sound
It's a wonderful tool,
I'm sure you must have heard
I'm talking about everyone's favourite four letter word

A Pig's Life!

Hi,
    I am writing about an event which I saw happen right outside my house. The reaction to the event was immediate though it has taken me a lot of time to write about it. Initially, I wanted to write a song about it, but I just couldn't frame the subject matter in the manner I wanted to because some of it is not conducive to song material, but I haven't given up on the idea just yet. Maybe writing about this might clear up the roadblocks.
 
    Ok, I stay in a relatively remote location on the outskirts of Jamshedpur, as a matter of fact, the flat we stay in is the last bit of heavy duty construction in the direction. After that, it's all thatched houses or one-off bungalows. Just out of the boundary walls of our housing complex are a couple of thatched roof houses and the families that stay there. They raise chickens and a couple of pigs apart from whatever it is they do for a living.

   I was reading the newspaper one morning when I heard real loud shrieks from the pigs. I didn't want to pay attention at first, but a minute or so of continuous shrieking later, curiosity got the better of me and I went to my window to have a look. I saw that there were four men with ropes and sticks and were trying to subdue one of the pigs so as to tie it's legs together. The truck they came in was parked a few metres away. After another minute or so they had tied the limbs together and were ready to cart the pig away to the truck. All the time they were physically on top of the pig trying to subdue it, the screams were immense. The moment they let go of him, the pig stopped his screaming, which was funny to me because it's legs were tied together, was it only the physical threat that caused it's fear, was the much greater shackling not a factor here?

 Nevertheless, as they slung the pig onto the pole and were carrying it to the truck, I started noticing a few other things, because my mind had already started running. The other pig, his brother, maintained a small amount of distance, but far more important, maintained his silence the entire time. That struck me as fairly odd. I noticed that the truck was full of pigs, similarly tied and on their way to inevitable doom, yet not a peep from any of them either. Is the threat only really serious when it is that close, if you can't see your immediate doom then you have no reason to be afraid?

Now that they had put the first pig in the back of the truck they came back for the second. This is when the second set of screams started. The men tried to get on top of the pig and subdue him, same routine as before. Just that, on the basis of incredible struggle and strength, the second pig wrenched free of their grip and raced away, only for me to see that they had managed to tie their rope around ont of his legs, so he wouldn't get far. The pig ran to a distance, and then was stopped, since his rope ran out, but he never started screaming.
 Again, I found that very odd, does the pig not realize it's trapped? Is the threat only worthy of a notable response when it is immediate? Nevertheless, the men adapted a different approach to subduing this pig. No longe did they go directly after him, because they already had him on their rope. Now they would let the pig do their work for them. One of the men had a staff, with which he prodded the pig, who at the time was running back and forth along the arc that the rope was allowing him. After being prodded, the pig modified it's direction. This exercise continued till the pig was actually prodded right into the back of the truck and the pig itself jumped into the truck, all with minimum screaming and effort. All the other pigs maintained their silence throughout.

Now that's the story, and this was my reaction to it. This might reek of confirmation bias to some, so I'll get that out of the way first. The moment I saw this, I compared it to the life of the youth of our country. For years they are left to their devices, with no real training or information to deal with the real world, and then we are thrust out into the meat-grinder with no real alternatives, skills or choices. Once confronted with the real world, most of us immediately protest once the threat is upon us, but are not really sympathetic to anyone else's cause save ours. And once the threat has been made, the writing is on the wall, then the protest stops and this weird acceptance creeps into the system, one which is vastly more disheartening than the feeling of protest.

 Now there are some who will submit directly to the system, their initial protest a feeble and short-lived burst of adrenaline. Some will fight and try to escape the system, never realizing that the system has a grasp on them and has had it for as long as the system has deemed it necessary. All their efforts, while pursuing liberation in their mind, are in fact making the job of the system easier in subduing them. The end result remains the same. The system wins. I realize that the time between seeing and writing this has adversely affected my enthusiasm for the event, and I've retold it to a few people with quite a bit more irony in my delivery. Hmmm, interesting. As someone who is often struggling to stay away from the system, I wonder if I am feeding it directly with my lifeforce, God I hope not.

Yo Yo Honey Singh! The Champion of Urban India?

Hi,
    For those who have read previous entries to my blog, the title must surely come as somewhat of a shocker. I urge you to read on, and vent post reading. A few things out of the way before I begin; firstly, I have not heard all of Yo Yo Honey Singh's songs, only a few, don't know which one's he has sung, and have not heard them in efforts to research for this train of thought. Secondly, I have not used Wikipedia or the internet to research various aspects of his life, because quite frankly, I don't care much about his past or beginnings.

  For those who haven't read my blog and don't know why I am writing this about their hero; I'm a pro-musician, have been playing guitar for the last 17 years and am very curious to know how you got to know about this article. Is it because it has to do with Yo Yo Honey Singh?

   Now on to  what I want to write about. It's about Yo Yo Honey Singh. If you haven't heard of him while you have access to the internet and TV in India, then you are part of an overwhelming minority, or are trapped under a rock. I'll be using the abbreviation YYHS to refer to him for the rest of this article, because it's tedious to type out his full name, and he does insist that Yo Yo is a part of his name. He's a singer who is the flavour of the season, and what a strong flavour he is too. It is difficult to move anywhere in India without running into the legend of YYHS. I want to narrate a couple of anecdotes before I launch into my analysis. For the past year, I had been acting as tour manager for Bollywood soul diva Shilpa Rao, and as such my phone number was made public, which resulted in a lot of phone calls and messages from her fans in and out of the country, they who wanted to speak to her, profess their love to her, marry her, meet her, give her their lyrics, the whole nine yards. Two calls stand out in memory for their disconnection to Shilpa Rao. It was almost in the same manner, I'd get a call, it was a male once and a female the other time. They told me they were huge fans of Shilpa Rao, I offered to deliver a message to her from them. They hesitated, told me it wasn't necessary, and then went on to ask for YYHS' number. I would inform them that I didn't have his number, they'd ask me to ask Shilpa Rao if she did. And as a rib, I narrated the entire incident to her, and asked her whether she had YYHS' number. She burst out laughing and said she didn't.

   That's the impact this man has on the masses of our country at the present time. He has reached a level of visibility and success that has hitherto been unseen. He's on TV shows as a guest, he's on TV adverts, and he has just been given his own show on the Star Network, where he'll be a mentor to those who are looking for the opportunity to showcase their songs to millions. This kind of stardom is unprecedented. Those who have been industry stalwarts in the past, have not had the exact same path. Daler Mehndi blazed a trail in the mid-nineties, but due to the lack of the internet and TV exposure at the time, he didn't quite get where YYHS is at now, had Daler been here now, it might have been a different tale, but we'll never know. Jal, the Pakistani band who was at the hearts of everything romantic in the mid 2000s didn't quite reach YYHS' level as well. In the information age, a simple look at the Facebook stats of artists reveals his reach. His Facebook page has 24 million likes, which is ahead of Aamir Khan, SRK, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Sonu Nigam, A R Rahman, Shreya Ghoshal, Sunidhi Chauhan, Lata Mangeshkar, Sachin Tendulkar, and pretty much everyone else Indian.

   So what is it about YYHS that has captured the imagination of the nation? I know for a fact that he has a vast number of detractors too, especially in the demographic of parents who are concerned as to the result his lyrics have on their impressionable children. I also know that his isn't the most musical act in town. His live performances are more show than substance, so why is it that people don't care for the negatives and seek out this man, whose positives are hard to find and harder to explain. My opinion on my own question came to me while I was listening to 'Khoj' an album made by Delhi band 'Antariksh'. I feel 'Khoj' is an amazing album, and quite different to most Hindi rock acts of past and present, yet whenever I shared the album with my friends, most of them have been lukewarm to the band and their album, citing various reasons as to why they didn't like it. So it was while listening to the album, that I did a quick mental check for the songs of 'Khoj' against the songs of YYHS that I'd heard and I formed concrete opinions as to why YYHS works like a charm.

     I had first heard of YYHS when he was just HS and hadn't begun to YY between his house and the bank collecting ludicrous sums of money. I was in college, so almost 7-8 years ago, and there was a song which was all the rage. It was titled 'C***', a (Hindi?) word which translates to a certain part of the female anatomy. The lyrics were filth, and obviously, captivated all the guys in my hostel, and in the college in general, and across all colleges too I would think. Here's a guy, who is basically talking about a guy's innermost primal feelings, in the innermost primal language, that which is normally used after lusty drinking sessions and such, with the exception that it is not on any inner level at all. He's loud, proud and completely unabashed in his lyric, his delivery and his clear desire to get as many people to hear it as possible. I'm sure that his lyric isn't quite as crass anymore, but I have heard some of the complaints from parents about a lyric to do with '4 bottle vodka' or some such, while he was on Kapil Sharma's family friendly comedy TV show. By the way, Kapil Sharma's Facebook following is also behind YYHS' and this guy has the highest rated non-fiction TV show in India today.

   Therein lies the charm of YYHS. He is essentially what India is growing into. Our country is a juxtaposition of a schooling system which champions fear, decency and hard work for continued minimal success, and a political system which will choke you till your eyes pop out. As a result, most of young urban India, while having jobs that pay their bills, and put food on their plates, are in a state of almost constant disillusionment, and with no forum to express their frustration. The kids are taught English at school, asked to use English in the workplace and in every professional interaction, yet they are far more comfortable in a tongue that is neither Hindi, nor English, nor Punjabi. Young Indians are now most comfortable in the tongue of abuse. Abusive remarks are used like punctuation, language no bar, I have seen that in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Oriya, Bangla, everywhere. I'm a musician who's had to travel a lot, and I've studied in a college where students from all stratas and states come to study, believe me, I've seen this for years, being a constant F-word user myself.

   This is also a time when young Indians, despite the frustrations, are in fact more confident in their own ability than ever before, and part of the frustration has to do with non-utilization of that ability. That's a dangerous mix if you think of it, confidence, which has come from years of education, hard-work and an iron-will, matched up with a society whose extreme pragmatism wants to confine the same confiidence it has bred. What results is a youth, whose inner-mind is extremely volatile, fractured and looking for a space to release. This is where YYHS steps in.

   He's not the most skilled musician in the world, he probably isn't the most skilled musician in his house, but let's face it, YYHS, isn't selling just music, he's selling himself. The sheer outrageousness of adding the Yo Yo to his name, which might be dumb to anyone who stops to think about it, is now the biggest separating factor between him and his contemporaries. He has a stage-name that trumps all stage names. This is no pen-name, no pseudonym, no Bachchan, or even no Eminem. This is as basic as branding gets, add something you associate immediately with the genre of rap and hip-hop to your name. And there you have it, Yo Yo Honey Singh. The sheer brazenness of it is what I think is so attractive. In a society where the youth are constantly encouraged to cross their T's and dot their I's, to maintain their social standing at all costs, here is a guy who creates an all new social standing for himself, as good a dream as any for the young Indian.

  It doesn't stop there, aiding YYHS' juggernaut is the incredible role that social media plays in the life of urban India today. I saw a married couple at a coffee joint where for the first ten minutes both husband and wife were just texting on their phones, then the wife showed something on her phone to her husband, following which she went back to her phone, the husband started and finished a call, and then proceeded to stare out the window, their coffees came, were consumed and they left. My 9 year old cousin knows which is a timeline photo, which is a profile photo, and going closer to home, told me yesterday 'You don't know about Yo Yo Honey Singh, where've you been, don't you know we all love him?' These aren't isolated cases I'm sure, as can be evidenced by his tremendous following on social media.

   So there you have it. A guy, whose pretense is that he makes no pretense. What he thinks is what he says, and if it is foolish, rough around the edges, rustic, then it's your problem to deal with, not his. If the music isn't great, or lyrically stimulating in the traditional sense, again, deal with it. If the live performances aren't great or really true, again, deal with it. Which I think is exactly what young India wants to portray to the entire world. We're here, and we're taking over, and deal with it.

PS. I'm not a fan, just an analysis of what I can see.

Harry Potter. The Multibillion Dollar Underachiever!

Hi,
    This is going to be long, rambling and will contain quite a bit of vitriol. It is a sentiment I have always felt but have never expressed in print, although I would whenever a discussion of said topic arose in the context of a conversation. I am talking about Harry Potter, the multibillion dollar franchise, based on the story of the boy wonder (??) wizard who fought against all odds to defeat the greatest dark wizard of all time in an amazing one-on-one contest, in a series spanning seven books and some more movies (8?? 9?? Not sure, not going to google either).

   Despite the premise always being there in my brain, it has been thrown into sharp contrast thanks to the latest giant in the realm of fantasy, George R R Martin's 'Game Of Thrones' < A Song Of Fire And Ice, for those who have read the books>. The books, and the subsequent TV series are as different to the J K Rowling's masterpiece, in that, despite being set in the realms of fantasy, GOT has far stronger storylines than HP. Good and evil are actually evenly matched in the series, and there is regular proof to show just how nasty and evil the bad guys can be. Granted, the HP series is targeted for children, so maybe all my arguments fall short on that simple premise, but since I am well into adulthood, I shall air (my) greivances about my intelligence getting insulted.

   Without drawing constant comparisons with GOT, let me launch into my laundry list of complaints. The final image of the series is the fairy tale happily ever after for Harry. He's married to the girl he likes, he has kids with the girl he likes, he names said kids after people who have died so that he could marry said girl and father said kid. The initial image of the series, is of a scrawny unloved kid, who's abused by his guardians and a bully of a cousin, who has a lightning bolt across his forehead and tends to perform unexpected feats of 'magic' under duress. So obviously, this is the story of one boy's trials and tribulations to restore some respect and normalcy into his otherwise difficult life.

    That's where it loses it's charm for me, this boy is touted as 'The Boy Who Lived' and 'The Chosen One', (which are amazingly good names to have on your business cards). Yet, all he works towards is being as normal, nondescript and mediocre as possible. It doesn't make sense, the responsibility of a whole world is on you, a world which is clearly non-human, since they have a separate word for humans ( Muggles, you muggles), and yet, all his goals and dreams are distinctly human (and middle class) in nature. I have a gift that not many people possess, I have been blessed with talents within the realms of that gift which not many people possess, I have the blessing and well-wishes of the best of the race to support me at every turn, you know what, that's too much pressure, let me just make sure that they all disappear (read die) so that I can marry my girlfriend and have kids and pay their fee from the wealth my parents left me, because I was so desperate to leave the confines of these people who wish me to be better that I dropped out of school to escape the whole gimmick altogether. Ya, what does Harry Potter do in adult life?? I'd like to bring in a common sentence from my own life here..
What do you do now??
I'm a pro-musician.
Yes, but what's your job?

   He knows from the time he is 10 years old that one of the most skilled dark wizards is out to get him, the fact that he's an orphan is because of said wizard, the fact that he has a wicked permanent tattoo is because of this dude, yet, HP has never felt any urgent compulsion to open a book and learn a few things that might help in his massive quest to defeat 'He Who Must Not Be Named' (Can you imagine that guy's business card?). Now, there'll be people jumping to his defence saying that he has passed all his tests at Hogwarts, and some of them with above average grades, but to them I say, the dude didn't know how to mend a cut at the start of the last book, how to mend a cut. There was a high chance of him bleeding out before he would have even met Voldemort for the final showdown. Tetanus was as big a scare for HP as The Dark Lord. All those months of hiding amongst different forests and so on, thank god Hermione was with him, he wouldn't have lasted more than a day without her.

    So let me talk a little bit about her, everyone thought, including Dumbledore, that Harry would bag Hermione, but true to his underachieving form, he went for Ginny Weasley. She already has a crush on me, and isn't clearly superior to me at first glance, even though she grows far greater, so I'll choose her. Snare em while they're young Harry, I mean for a guy who lived in a cupboard, you got game.

    Going back to straight facts against Voldemort. Simply put, there is no way he wins that fight. I cannot even begin to express in words how stupid that outcome is, one of the most underwhelming fights of all time. Just to put some perspective on the situation. Severus Snape, clearly the greatest occlumens of all time since he fooled both Voldemort and Dumbledore under their noses, never picked a direct fight with Voldemort. When Voldemort was a spirit in the jungles of Albania, people still didn't assemble forces to go seek him out because they were still scared, case in point, Prof Quirrell. He found Voldy, and Voldy conveniently consumed him. That's how strong he was even while he wasn't human. When Voldemort came back, and was having issues with wands and so forth, Snape still didn't pick a fight with him, for he must have known he'd clearly lose. Why I mention Snape is because, in Harry's fight against Snape, he was severely, severely outclassed, so far that Snape in fact suggested that he go and learn some more. He was slower than Snape, and in everyway inferior. Yet somehow, in every fight he has had with Voldemort, he matches Voldemort for speed. I just can't believe that. In Voldemort Vs Dumbledore, Harry clearly has a hard time following the quickness of the spells and counterspells. He could feel the force of Dumbledore's spells as they went past him, and Voldemort more than matched him, so he obviously had similar power behind his blows. I'm supposed to believe that Harry Potter, who couldn't open a textbook to learn a spell to heal a wound, has the same willpower as Voldemort to hold onto those spells everytime their wands clashed. Potter, who at the end of the first fight is heavily fatigued, and full of cuts and scrapes, and bleeding, and emotionally wasted and drained, seeing the deaths of so many, and seeing how Snape saved his butt on several occasions, has enough reflexes to match a fresh Dark Lord, but of course it wasn't that. It was some convoluted trickery and wandlore nonsense that killed the Dark Lord.

   Also, yes, I get that The Dark Lord chose him, and put some of his qualities into him, clearly, hard work and willpower and respect for magic wasn't in the list, and you just can't spin that anyway for me. His arrogance is beyond legendary. If you're a worthless git who doesn't appreciate the value of things, then just keep them safe. What gave you the right to throw the Resurrection Stone in the forest for anyone to find, or to throw The Elder Wand (the same wand with the convoluted trickery and wandlore nonsense which saved his ass) away, for anyone to find. Those are amazingly powerful magical objects, the stuff of folklore, people go through entire lives on quests to find those objects, and you were enough of a prick to throw them away. And he's supposed to be a Horcrux too right?? Weren't those things supposed to be full of dark magic? I mean one of them nearly took Dumbledore's hand off, and of course accelerated his death. What did Harry ever do that was amazing in it's self-defence? Fainted, put his hands on another man's face, broke an arm, got lucky with a sword and phoenix tears, fainted again, learnt a Patronus charm that he couldn't execute to save his life.. Literally, he couldn't, read the books, Rowling put in a nice bit of proxy there to save Harry's pox-ridden ass. He shot out golden sparks from his wand once, that no one, including the best wandmaker alive, could explain. That's what it took to save him, clearly stating that this is out of everyone's area of expertise. Oh, and if you thought Harry knew a secret spell for Golden sparks that'll keep Voldemort at bay, no sir, he didn't know how to mend his own cuts.

   Now, the final nail in the coffin, because this is literally that. The number of people who passed away to save his miserable worthless little behind isn't even funny. Off the top of my head, his parents, Sirius, Remus, Tonks, one of the twins, Severus, Mad-Eye, Neville's parents went insane, Hedwig ( a damn owl did better than him), Dumbledore, Cedric, old man guarding Voldy's paternal home. Now those from the other side who died because of fighting in this stupid battle. Bellatrix, Crabbe, Goyle, Voldemort of course, amd many more whose names I can't remember, because the writing doesn't focus on them that strongly. They said the dark side was getting stronger, but they said it in one sentence without any real implications being shown to the readers, because little children don't want to read about bad guys killing a lot of innocent people. Voldemort is the real hero, he kept repeating, I don't want to waste magical blood, please stop the fighting. He is the one who actually cares about the race at large. Harry just wants a normal life with the girl he snared while she was young (yet made out with quite a few before she finally settled for him), and wants to learn how to parallel park. I'm surprised he even put his kids at Hogwarts, and seriously, what's his job?

   All these amazing people, who've spent years getting to be amazing, all gave their lives up for this one jackass. I mean I quiver with rage everytime I think about it. Good vs Evil, and the triumph of good vs evil, but my God, this wore thin real quick. The series should be named, Harry Potter, and the kick up his backside that he should have received a long time ago. No Harry, but seriously, where do you work?