Harried by Harry hype? Here's how to survive it

We know you're out there. You're so sick of Harry Potter you want to puke. You think the Harry hype is nothing more than a merchandise-heavy marketing ploy to promote a gazillion-dollar Hollywood flick and a children's book series that doesn't interest you in the least.


	Two devotees arrive at a London cinema for a showing of the Harry Potter movie on the day of its general release Nov. 16. AP photo

You don't want to hear the name Harry Potter. You don't want to have any part in the Potter pandemonium.

Well, you have a challenge ahead of you. The book series' author, J.K. Rowling, says she has planned at least three more volumes in the Potter series. The film version, which was released in the United States last week (as if you didn't know), is bound to fuel magic-manic people through the holiday season. A second movie, based on book two, is already in production.

You need a plan to survive in the weeks, months and, conceivably, years ahead, if you're not wild about Harry:

1. Find yourself a Potter-free zone.

Surround yourself with like-minded folk. This will mean restricting your movements about town and your tendency to do things like shop, eat out, attend sporting events, pick up your dry cleaning and generally live a happy, fulfilling life. But you can't have everything.

Specifically, STAY AWAY FROM:

Schools (too many enthusiastic children), playgrounds (ditto), parks (again), toy stores (do you get the picture?), your own home (if you have children), bookstores, malls, Target, libraries (especially "restricted sections"), movie theaters, magazines, television, newspapers, radio, the Internet, office water coolers and England.

Instead, HEAD FOR:

Men's rooms in truck stops, the customer service department of your local cable company, and the mountains of Afghanistan. These, unofficially, are your best bets.

2. Learn to kill the conversation.

Let's imagine you release yourself into the world and somehow find said self at a holiday party, assaulted by a Potter fan. Instead of simply waving your hand dismissively at the enthusiast (which may, to some, seem rude), we suggest that you pretend to mishear what the person is saying and enthusiastically turn the conversation to other, more weighty, arcane topics that will send your Potter aficionado running back to the bar for another glass of wine. Some examples to get you going:

If someone says "Muggle," insist on talking about "mugwumps," the term, of course, for the public moralists of the Gilded Age who refused to support their Republican party ticket in the presidential election of 1884 and instead voted for Grover Cleveland.

If someone uses the term "Dark Arts," fall into a lengthy discussion of Picasso's Blue Period, giving your keen insight into how the sentimentality of these works seems to arise from the artist's feelings of isolation, as he was only in his late teens and was dirt poor.

One word about "transfiguration" is the perfect excuse to wax poetic about the debate between the theological debate of transubstantiation vs. consubstantiation.

If the Potter rotter mentions "Ron Weasley," let him or her know immediately that the weasel is indeed an agile, flesh-eating mammal of the genus Mustela, and perhaps refresh the speaker with your Biology 101 knowledge of the classification stem encompassing kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species -- in that order.

If the Harry lover sidetracks you by bringing up the film's director, Chris Columbus, refer instead to Christoforo Colombo and compare and contrast this Italian-born explorer's incentives and goals with those of Vasco da Gama, who was Portuguese.

3. Stay away from ordinary objects.

They are part and parcel of Potter magic and could therefore spark an inadvertent Harry conversation.

To wit, avoid at all costs: jelly beans, brooms, owls, trains, mirrors, trolls, fires and fireplaces, forests, Coca-Cola, castles, capes, dragons, motorcycles, umbrellas (especially pink), mailed letters, eyeglasses, cats, pubs, elixirs and potions, ear wax, apothecaries and stones.

4. Master a haughty clueless look.

If, in the course of your Potter avoidance, you should happen to come across the following words, uttered by your formerly helpful grocery checkout clerk or perhaps your sister's precocious 9-year-old, simply raise your eyebrows and act as if the speaker has done nothing more than sneeze. Under no circumstances should you encourage anyone to explain the following:

Petrificus Totalus!

Slytherin

Remembrall

Quaffle

Diagon Alley

Chocolate frogs

5. Move.

If all else fails and you feel your mental health rests on the total removal of Harry from your consciousness (or, alternatively, a prescription for a mood-elevating medication that is not covered by your current, complex health plan), flee the country. Do not seek refuge in Romania, Wales or Norway, though, which, as everyone knows, are riddled with wild dragons and the witches and wizards who study them.