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Before I start slinging superlatives, I need to thank RL La Fevers for creating Nathaniel Fludd and writing his world into existence. Special commendation goes to you for introducing a new series written at the much ignored third grade reading level while at the same time refusing to talk down to the reader by presenting historical, geographical and cultural information in a fascinating,

Short story collections for kids are very rare these days, and, while I haven't read very many in my life, I suspect that Joan Aiken has to be one of the most prolific and excellent writers of short stories for children in the 20th century. A Necklace of Raindrops came about when, in 1968, Aiken was to write stories from a list of 200 words for younger readers in America - much the way Theodore

Authors/Illustrators: Zhaohua Ji and Cui Xu

No! That's Wrong! is a lot of silly fun with wonderful illustrations... and a brilliant underlying message about the steady democratization of information.

Plot summary: A passing wind lifts a pair of underwear off a clothesline and sends them flying onto the head of a rabbit. The rabbit immediately thinks that this is a hat and goes off to share the fancy new accessory with his friends. The rabbit's friends all agree that it is a fabulous hat, but an invisible chorus keeps calling in from the borders of each page to correct the wayward bunny. (No! That's Wrong!) A vagabond donkey even comes up to correct the rabbit by showing him a men's underwear catalogue. The rabbit tries to conform to conventional wisdom, but in the end decides to rebel against the chorus and wear it as a hat... if he says it's a hat, then by golly, it's a hat! And a fabulous one at that!

The passing wind that serendipitously lifted that pair of underpants? That wasn't just some randomly mischievous breeze... those were the winds of change.

It is clear that Rabbit represents the current information revolution that is drastically altering the way in which we view the world. We live in a world where we no longer need to be confined by the definitions that are handed down to us from on high.

Look around you and you'll see the signs all over the place. The mainstream news media is being undermined by bloggers. CNN runs regular segments about the latest video on YouTube. The encyclopedia is being supplanted by Wikipedia. We no longer collect information, we create it.

All of which are signs that we no longer need to rely on the establishment for our information and that we are looking at the eventual demise of the traditional concept of authority. Case in point: The character of the donkey is an especially targeted attack on the waning reputation and crumbling prestige of Academia.












The donkey (or jackass) appears in thrift store suit like so many disheveled college professors in their ratty corduroy jackets. The donkey attempts to assert his authority on the matter of the underpants, but ultimately it is in vain. Academia, which for so long had the power of authority and an almost monopolistic claim over knowledge is slowly losing it's edge. The ivory tower has lost some of its sheen.

(Question: Is the fact that the donkey pulls out a men's underwear catalogue meant to represent the conservative accusation of the uber-liberalization of the academic elite and its alleged disregard for "traditional" family values?)

By refusing to kowtow to the naysayers of the establishment and tearing down the borders of the page, Rabbit is releasing himself and his compatriots from the arbitrary confines placed upon them by the power elite. As noted linguist Noam Chomsky wrote:

"Unfortunately, the act of 'definition' is the most widely accepted form of oppression in the world today. By assigning arbitrary 'meaning' to arbitrary words, restrictions are being placed on the very way in which we are allowed to think. Limiting our ability to think limits the ability to communicate, which in turn limits the ability to act as a group, which ultimately limits our ability revolt. It is precisely these types of deviously subliminal mechanisms that undergird all modes of oppression. Now, this is not to say that Merriam and Webster are the worst tyrants of our time, but they may just be the most effective." (Language and Mind, p. 137)

However, this form of oppression has been slowly eroding over time. Jumpstarted by the advent of the printing press and continuing through with the rise of the internet, the spread of information has exponentially gained in speed and in breadth. Information is now so readily available that the classic vestiges of authority have lost their stranglehold on knowledge and meaning--the consolidation of information is a relic of the past. The world is no longer exclusively defined top down, now it is being defined bottom up as well. And when bottoms are up, the only sensible thing to do is to wear underpants on your head.





Viva La Revolución!
















Surprising Underpants on the Head News Update: Just when you thought Washington couldn't get any more ridiculous... during a Congressional hearing on possible violations of the Geneva Conventions regarding torture, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) hones in on the phrase "panties on someone's head" in an attempt to undermine the Inspector General's argument. Unfortunately, by distorting and making light of the situation, he only succeeds in demeaning himself and his office.

Though he's certainly not the first and he certainly won't be the last.

It's not a box, it's Michel Gondry's latest project!

I read David Vann’s A Mile Down early one Saturday morning when I thought I was going back to sleep but didn’t, in one luxurious unstoppable four-hour marathon that meant the cats sulked in the living room because I didn’t top off their food bowls and I was late to some meeting I had sworn I would be on time for and I kept thinking how can I keep reading without coffee but David Vann is like the best French roast, he’s a mainline jolt to the neocortex because he’s fun and exciting and you hate him and you badly, badly want to be him.

“Him,” of course, being the narrator of A Mile Down. Maybe I would actually like David Vann in person, in fact I met him at a reading and he was kind and polite but had a wrinkle in his forehead that meant “I am running late for class, would these people stop chatting,” which is ok because where he teaches being late means he is going to have to discard all ideas of driving and just fly there, lecture notes zipped into his backpack as he cruises at low altitude over Tallahassee, which seems perfectly reasonable because after you read A Mile Down you think if David Vann can’t actually fly he will find a way to raise the money to try to do it anyway, even if he gets too close to the sun and his wings fall off, maybe even twice, and then everyone will say “We forgive you, David!” (well, not exactly everyone, some are quite pissed and he is contrite though I bet they’d rather have their money back) and he will tilt his crazy charismatic smile in your direction and you will give him money and he will build more wings.

Because “A Mile Down” is a true story, as they say, about a guy who charms money out of friends and acquaintances — twice — to go to sea in a dubious boat — twice — which is going to be his Get Rich Quick scheme so he can sail and write for the rest of his life, and you can use “sail” and “write” to substitute for anything you’d rather be doing, maybe something pious like volunteering in food banks, maybe something fabulous like every day you get up and read for four hours before you do anything else. Which would be cool. Even though the moral is your wings keep falling off. Which again is ok because people pay you to put them back on, which is the part I’d like to figure out, except I suspect you can’t learn that charisma thing.

But now David Vann is a professor with a teaching load and is not sitting in the middle of an ocean in his own boat with water like “a bright metal sheet crumpling without sound,” as he writes toward the end of this excellent very unstoppable book.

Though I do wonder, what next.

Which is a thought that makes me grin.

Go, read A Mile Down, even if you think you don’t read books about guys in boats, and I generally do not cotton to swashbuckling guy-lit, my idea of using the sea in literature being more on the order of Jane Herself, with the sea in Persuasion a genteel abstraction, not something that can swallow you up in a heartbeat, particularly if you’re young and rash and crazy and charismatic and people give you shitloads of money.

And if you are a librarian and you buy this book, and you should, right now, please do not immediately jam it somewhere in the Dewey section where it will sit unnoticed, but put it on a table with a big arrow over it, maybe with other books like Into the Wild and The Orchid Thief, lovely books about humanity not only unbound but even a bit unraveled, books that are also, like A Mile Down, ultimately about the full-tilt drowning power of love itself.

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