Dr. Frank's What's-it

"...a long history of acrobatic hermeneutics somewhere in the vague area of free speech..."

I am sure the august academics in this Crooked Timber thread on how true freedom of expression requires the suppression of certain undesirable sentiments have their hearts in the right place. Like them, I am generally opposed to undesirable sentiments, by definition.

Yet after reading the post and all the comments, particularly those casting scorn on the apparently outmoded, stuck-in-the-Eighteenth-Century American understanding of free speech, all I can say, nevertheless, is: thank God we have a First Amendment around here, in the end.

Prized Possession! Untidy Bedroom! Booze!

Spinebreakers is Penguin's new teen lit web site. They interviewed me a ways back, via AIM. You can find chunks of the interview and other King Dork-related stuff on this page, including the re-designed cover image above and this sweet little video review.

Go to the "books" menu of the site's main page and select "hot reads" for similar items concerning other Penguin-y books by people like Nick Hornby, Sarah Dessen, and Meg Rosoff. (Ian Fleming and George Orwell, also, though Animal Farm seems a bit neglected at the moment...)

"People will kill their puppies to stop global warming these days..."

A pretext whose time has come.

Don't help make cars with nobody please

Found on Piedmont Avenue:

It looks like a "to do and not to do" list, though to what end? The layout is hard to transcribe in plain text, but here are the main points as I can make them out:

-- No Sex mondays for 140 Days As Adults and Tennagers

-- Take Driving lessons with Children ages 12 - 20 years

-- Take Guitar Lessons

-- Help Children to go to zoo not church

-- Don't lead Children or Families to making Hospitals again

-- Don't help make cars with nobody please

-- Don't let children be baby sitting strangers children

-- Mondays Tuesdays Wendays Thurdays Sundays for 6 hours with a baby sitter and no time to lead children to sex to

-- Adults find aduts work 2 jobs

-- Help kids get ged at home study course at home w family

-- Don't lead children to be homesexual as a aunt before you die

Quarterlies and the Red Menace

I'm basically a good citizen, i.e., I'm terrified of what the government will do to me if I don't knuckle under to its outrageous demands.

Today they're re-distributing more of my imaginary income from the future to those more fortunate than myself, that is, them. They want a share of estimated theoretical money you might make in the future, but expect you to pay with a check from now? And this is what we fought the Revolution for? It is as if the Pharaohs have returned, Indy.

This is the sort of thing that turns good people into Republicans.