I'm a contractor. This means I've moved around a lot working in different offices, and I've often lamented the lack of a means of checking my email and searching for jobs without using the client's Internet facilities (which would probably be barred anyway).

Anyone who's tried to do serious browsing or emailing on a mobile phone will probably relate to how bloody frustrating it is, so I decided that a small laptop was needed. One I could bring into work and connect to mobile roadband with. I needed something light, with a proper keyboard, reasonably sized screen, but small enough to be innocuous and not arouse corporate suspicion that I may be writing this review rather than designing service management processes. I didn't want to spend a lot, and there isn't a lot available under the £400 mark that I was prepared to live with or spend the money on. Most options were compromises between price, weight, and functionality.

Except for the ASUS Eee PC. A small sub-notebook running a customized Linux build and coming pre-loaded with Openoffice, Skype, and several other tools.  The manufacturers have done a good job of providing you with just about everything you'd need day to day. You can create documents, spreadsheets, and databases. You can watch movies (DivX supported out the box), play a few games, listen to MP3s and connect to the net through the built in wireless, modem or RJ45 network port (or external USB 3g modem but more on this in a moment) and talk to people on Skype and Pidgin instant Messenger which supports major chat networks (MSN,AIM,YIM,AOL, and ICQ plus others). Handily, and curiously, the manufacturers have provided application icons which are links to Google Docs and Wikipedia - giving these the impression of being applications rather than mere web addresses.

The 7" screen is small but usable, and the battery life is quoted as being 3.5 hours (depending on use). The Eee has a QWERTY keyboard which, though smaller than a full size keyboard, still allows fairly rapid typing with few mistakes once you get used to it. The Eee has 3 USB 2.0 ports, and external VGA connector as well as headphone & microphone jacks plus a smart card expansion slot.

In the box, as well as the Eee, mains charger, manual, quick start guide, warranty card and restore CD come a support CD with Windows XP drivers and an instruction guide detailing how to install XP. Having even having been a Windows user for years, I'm actually very happy with the standard Linux OS and applications and installing Windows is something I've not needed to consider.

The Eee PC comes in several variants, there's the 2GB version and the 4GB versions available at launch, and recently an 8Gb version has been released also. Both the 2Gb and 4Gb can come either with or without a built in webcam - the Surf model deontes that the unit doesn't have one. There doesn't appear to be a 'Surf' version of the 8Gb yet, although with ASUS having recently announced at the CeBIT show that a whole new version was being launched (with a 9" screen and more storage amongst other changes) it's possible they may not want to put more effort in developing variants of the existing range.I mentioned 3g mobile broadband. Extensive reviews of Internet forums and other reviews indicates that a few 3g USB modems are supported out the box by the Eee. One of these is the Huawei E220 which, handily, is provided by ThreeUK on their mobile broadband package and which, if you sign up for a 12 month contract, costs £10/month for 1Gb transfer and will cost you £50 up front for the modem (it's free on 18 month contracts).

Mobile browsing is impressively fast on HSDPA (3.5g) and on 3g networks. The Eee performs well although is slightly slower at loading sites such as Facebook. Overall, browsing is a pleasant experience.

If you turn off wireless, dim the screen, turn off sound and don't connect to the net, then I can realistically use the Eee for about 3 hours before getting low battery warnings. With the external 3g modem connected or wireless turned on, this drops to roughly 90 minutes in total, (slightly less if I split this into several sessions throughout the day with multiple power ups and shut downs). There's still enough juice to turn it on, check my mail and surf for 10 mins and shut it down again about 4 or 5 times during the day as well as play the frozen bubble game for a while! So for my usage, the battery life is just about sufficient.

Overall I'm very very happy with my purchase. It does what I need it to, and more. For the money this is awesome value when you consider what it does. However there is one huge downside. When I use it in the office, everyone comes over and wants to have a play, which is a nightmare when I'm trying to poke people on Facebook. But then again I should probably be doing work anyway...

Seriously. I love Lost, but it's getting a bit over the top now. Heroes is awesome and I will brook no opposition, but even though it's well scripted and produced, you still don't believe it's actually happening. Jericho had potential but went off course and struggled to get back on.

Entourage is real. It's really happening. Right now. Well, that's what I believe. And therein lies it's genius. I'm inexorably drawn into the lives of Vince, Drama, E and Turtle and the obnoxious, offensive and deeply funny charm of Vince's agent Ari Gold.

Why am I drawn in? Because, to an uneducated Brit who's only ever seen New York a couple of times in the flesh, Entourage has that tangible reality of all great series. Friends had it in spades, Sex And The City had it (several times a day in Samantha's case) and shows like CSI certainly do.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that Entourage is a male version of Sex and the City.... So now I have a major decision to make. Do I ration the last 7 episodes of Season 4, or watch them all in one go in a great big Entourage orgy?

I already have my own talk show, hosted at BlogTalk Radio called The Cyber Mix Tape Show. I never gave it much thought or time, as my blogging life is constantly threating to take over my real life. Now it looks like 2008 will be the year that sends my Google search results string through the roof. (Try typing my name in Google and see how many fun links you find..I do it once a week just for shits and giggles) After meeting up with everyone from Blogcritics.org over at BlogWorld Expo, I was informed of our new channel at BlogTalk. One thing lead to another and somehow I found myself with a nice little show.

I have already given the CMTS a test run, but my official first show kicks off on Friday, November 23rd at 9pm PST. I plan on having a few callers, and talk about everything good in the world of urban entertainment and news. You can check my first test show now at BlogTalkRadio. I had a chance to talk to JhaVoice and underground rapper Armel The Great, who has history with GZA, Sonz Of Man & The Wu Tang Clan. It was a nice little piece, only spoiled by the shortness of the broadcast. Trust me, our future shows will be off the hook! The main subject of the this week's show will be "If Hip-Hop Is Dead, Who Killed Her?" Give me a call on Friday and let me know what you think about that!

BlogCritics is one of the most respected and influential independent interactive online magazines.

The new channel, to appear on the Categories page, will feature a stable of BlogCritics writers and editors covering such topics as Pop Culture, News, Sports and Technology, just to name a few. The hosts will have their own live talk radio shows and be able to conduct round-table discussions with listeners, sharing their views and opinions as a complement to their written commentary that appears on BlogCritics.org.

"BlogTalkRadio gives our writers and readers the power to take their online commentary to the next level" said Eric Olsen, Blogcritics founder and publisher. "BTR's wonderful user-friendly technology affords our personalities the opportunity to make our coverage of popular culture and world events even more immediate and interactive, as well as opening up a variety of topics that full-length article writing and editing time constraints do not allow us to address. BTR also affords another outlet for the many interview opportunities presented to us each day - we are very excited!"

Commenting on the announcement, Alan Levy, CEO and co-founder of BlogTalkRadio stated, “The new BlogCritics Radio channel will provide BlogTalkRadio’s listeners with a plethora of additional shows, opinions and information on a vast array of topics further enhancing BlogTalkRadio’s appeal and reach. Our platform is the natural extension for BlogCritics writers and contributors.”

For more information about Blogcritics Radio, please tune into The Alan Levy Show on Tuesday, November 20th at 3pm ET, where he and Eric will discuss the new channel or check out the press release on our press page for additional details.

Write one nasty dissenting profanity-laden review of a fanboy’s favourite TV show and all of a sudden your Blog is blocked; but not because of the dissenting part, because thus the flaw would be to easily revealed. The real reason must be hidden with subterfuge. The excuse instituted was because of my affinity to use the word fuck. I love the word fuck. It’s a malleable word and I see nothing dirty about it. But then I’m French, there’s not much I find dirty.

But let’s be frank, the blogosphere (there’s a word I despise using) is filled with blogs with profanity, pornography and things much more prurient and nauseating than my liberal use of the word fuck, even on the WordPress network of Blogs.

I have also tasted the backlash of fanboys before when I reviewed Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children for the online magazine Blogcritics.org in which I harshly criticized the hyper-feminization of the male characters in the story. They came out of the woodwork and many comments on the reposted review on my old blog had to be deleted for all the hateful nasty and distasteful crap they contained that were beyond anything I could possibly come up with using the word fuck. And my policy is not to delete comments, even the ones I don't like, but they were really horrid.

So earlier this week, following the despondently tedious 6th episode of Heroes I posted an open-letter to Tim Kring, Creator of the series, letting him know that I had given up on his series. Not that I think he would read it. My post was more soliloquy than it was a true open-letter. Click Here to read my post. It was written in what is my off-the-cuff manor, which is how I always write. I write as I feel. How I feel depends on what chemicals are currently influencing my brain functions. Brain-manufactured dopamine can be a bitch sometimes.

A few hours later, someone posts a comment to my blog post:

Wow, a little angry are we? I can understand your frustration, but since you are incapable of using polite language, I’ll be blocking your blog entirely.[my emphasis]

Pity, you almost had something interesting to say, but then it’s hard to get past the cursing you inserted more frequently than Tim’s obvious hints in this episode….

Pots and kettles… pots and kettles…

(And I can’t wait til next week to see how wrong you are…..)

Angry? Me? Why yes I was. The potential of this series had been completely squandered. Yes I was angry. That’s the difference between a real fan and fanboys. Fans support until the shark has been jumped. Fanboys, they are fans no matter what and they defend with the maniacal dogmatic determination of religious fundamentalists.

Block me? Fine don’t visit my blog. I use foul language all the time. It’s how I write. Deal with it or go to Disneyland. Either way I’m not changing my writing style. My blog, my sandbox, fuck off.

But I figured, it was removing me from its newsreader or something. That was until I went looking for what others were saying about the inadequate episode. Well looky here… my blog appears NOWHERE. I started looking for it, purposefully. It was for all intent and purposes, gone from all Heroes related discussions on the WordPress network.

Not being too much of an idiot I quickly put 2 and 2 together. That fucking fanboy is either a moderator or an administrator at WordPress and it blocked my blog from the system to cut me off from the discourse, the dialog and of course the traffic. Well I wasn’t gonna let IT push me around.

IT blocked me under mendacious pretenses on top of it. Because of my profane language? What? Since when has bad language been an issue for censorship on the blogosphere? So you know what this is, right? This is a frustrated little fanboy who couldn’t handle having the object of its obsession getting trashed around like the 6$ hooker that it is. And IT happens to have admin rights on the WordPress network. Yes an upset nerd with access to the Big Button decided to censor me like a Republican would like to censor evolution in High Schools.

So now we have to watch what we say or else the little basement-dwelling momma’s boys with delusions of Pinochetism will censor you and block you because they don’t like what you say. Yes just what the last bastion of unfettered free speech needed, dictators with their trigger-fingers on the ban buttons.

A new era of thought-policing terrorism begins where the leaders of the grass-roots of self-publishing are letting little would-be word tyrants take blogger’s hostage because they don’t think our content should be published on an ideological basis and then hide behind codes of conduct to accomplish their goals. The TOS wasn’t broken and yet I was banished to some sort of WordPress limbo for having ideas that weren’t in concordance with those of one of their draconian admins.

In the words of R.J. MacReady: "Yeah Well Fuck You To!"

Fortunately, thankfully there are still level-headed and reasoned individuals at WordPress for within minutes of sending of my letter of complaint, my blog was unblocked and reinstated and for that I am grateful. And despite hours of being blocked from the network, and this is my little revenge, I had the largest traffic day my blog has ever had so far. So Neener-Neener IT, your planned really backfired on you in many ways.

I have yet to receive an e-mail of acknowledgment/apology from WordPress concerning the rectification of this act of discrimination. Probably because they don’t want to admit that someone on the inside did this and would rather blame it on a technical glitch in the system. But either way apology accepted.

But in the end, I AM, THEREFORE I GLOAT so: Basement Dwelling Virgin Fanboy 0, Darkly Dreaming David 1.

Real fans of Bob Dylan will probably have a lot of these recordings anyways, but if done right these box sets can be worth getting for the booklets, liner notes and bonus material. There is an extensive review of the album at blogcritics.org It is being released in 3 versions, a deluxe 3 disc set, a 3 disc set and a 1 disc version.

Here are the track listings for the different versions which release October 2, 2007

Single disc

1. Blowin' in the Wind
2. The Times They Are a-Changin'
3. Subterranean Homesick Blues
4. Mr. Tambourine Man
5. Like a Rolling Stone
6. Maggie's Farm
7. Positively 4th Street
8. Just Like a Woman
9. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
10. All Along the Watchtower
11. Lay, Lady, Lay
12. Knockin' on Heaven's Door
13. Tangled Up in Blue
14. Hurricane
15. Make You Feel My Love
16. Things Have Changed
17. Someday Baby
18. Forever Young

Deluxe edition

Disc one

1. Song to Woody
2. Blowin' in the Wind
3. Masters of War
4. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
5. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
6. The Times They Are a-Changin'
7. All I Really Want to Do
8. My Back Pages
9. It Ain't Me, Babe
10. Subterranean Homesick Blues
11. Mr. Tambourine Man
12. Maggie's Farm
13. Like a Rolling Stone
14. It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
15. Positively 4th Street
16. Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
17. Just Like a Woman
18. Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)
19. All Along the Watchtower

Disc two

1. You Ain't Goin' Nowhere
2. Lay, Lady, Lay
3. If Not for You
4. I Shall Be Released
5. Knockin' on Heaven's Door
6. On a Night Like This
7. Forever Young
8. Tangled Up in Blue
9. Simple Twist of Fate
10. Hurricane
11. Changing of the Guards
12. Gotta Serve Somebody
13. Precious Angel
14. The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar
15. Jokerman
16. Dark Eyes

Disc three

1. Blind Willie McTell
2. Brownsville Girl
3. Silvio
4. Ring Them Bells
5. Dignity
6. Everything Is Broken
7. Under the Red Sky
8. You're Gonna Quit Me
9. Blood in My Eyes
10. Not Dark Yet
11. Things Have Changed
12. Make You Feel My Love
13. High Water (For Charley Patton)
14. Po' Boy
15. Someday Baby
16. When the Deal Goes Down

Every year I used to review every first episode for the fall season and then pick my favourite new series of the year. But that was when I used to write for the online magazine, Blogcritics.org. Since I don’t write for them anymore because of their bullshit editorial rules, such as not being allowed to write words like bullshit and contractions like gonna and wanna, and that pissed me off, where was the creativity? Were we writing an encyclopaedia? So I don’t do reviews anymore because they chew up to much time. But I will give out my pick for this year’s best new show.

Last year the obvious pick was everyone’s favourite serial killer, Dexter. No show could even come close to touching this gem. It’s brilliant, dark, funny, sexy, bloody and hypnotic. Michael C. Hall is bloody brilliant in his role as Dexter and any story that has me rooting for a serial killer gets my nod.

This year’s new crop wasn’t much to look forward to but a few were sticking out.

First and fore most I was looking forward to Bionic Woman the most, for the simple reason that the Eick, one of the geniuses behind the still greatest television series of all time, Battlestar Galactica, was behind it and that was good enough for me. Add to that the presence of Starbuck as the villain, Katee Sackoff; another added bonus. And of course it was a remake of a childhood classic. In my mind it couldn’t miss.

But unfortunately the sparks did not fly for me tonight. It’s not a disaster, it sure doesn’t suck, I like it, but it didn’t pump my nads like I hope it would. The intro was way too quick and dirty for the complexity this character could have. The depth of character just isn’t as developed as I hoped it would be. Everything was rushed. Blah!

I was expecting a reimagination of the same level as Eick and Moore had dished out with Battlestar Galactica, where they had taken a cheesy poor-man’s Star Wars and elevated it to pure genius that surpassed all kinds of levels of sci-fi and wiped its ass with Star Wars and Star Trek. So I think perhaps my expectations were too high.

Then on the good tip from Shan, I tuned in tonight to Dirty Sexy Money. This was a surprise to me. Michael C. Hall's former Six Feet Under co-star as the lead as a lawyer for a super rich New-York family. This family makes Paris Hilton look sane. And the lawyer will be driven insane. Unfortunately I don’t think they can keep this up, as good as this episode was, without getting on my nerves with all their rich snotty antics. But I’ll keep watching.

This leaves us with the real hit for this year, and finally we get an adult television show for adults that’s actually also very smart. I’m talking about the depraved and hilarious Californication with David Duchovny. This show manages to be perverted and heart-warming at the same time. Hank Moody’s self-destructive non-stop bender is only redeemed by his never ending strive to be a good father to his daughter. He’s a total fuck-up and yet I can’t help but look up to this asshole pedantic elitist character only because he has this complete fuck the world attitude and gets away with it somehow. Hank’s my hero. Californication’s this year’s new no miss show.

Peanut Peacock: Alinea The Restaurant (Chicago)

Menomena: Rotten Hell

This video for Menomena's Rotten Hell from the Oregon band's latest album, Friend and Foe, regains some of the underlying experiential thematic meaning that is attached to the age-old image of the school lunchroom food fight.  In a cleverly droll take on the song's lyrics about violence and self-righteous moral conviction ("Well it's high time we stepped outside, Drop the gloves and settle this like a man"), this juicy video clip gathers a group of uniformed schoolchildren and has them flinging sloppy, sloppy spaghetti at one another.  Presented in a manner that creates an affective counterpoint to the actual ongoing violence of the pasta combat, the action is captured in slow motion from the initial incident of provocation to the concluding full-fledged Braveheart-style battle charge, the video's emotional impact is at the same time elegantly alluring, touching and hilariously eccentric.

Technorati: piece de resistance, resist, resistance, children, adolescents, schools, education, higher education, Antioch, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Yellow Springs Ohio, The University of Chicago, Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis, ISPP, Alinea, Chicago, Peanut Peacock, Rotten Hell, culture, cultural, social, society, celebrities, politics, political, video, videos, music video, music videos, photo, photos, photograph, photographs, photography, YouTube, WordPress video, WordPress blog, Wordpress, blog, blogger, writer
Be Social:

Some writers about the internet have contended that what is now known as blogging began in an atmosphere of relatively democratic equalitarianism. Lately, some websites in the world of blogging have declared themselves to be much more accomplished or worthy than others. The claims vary from having members with more superior writing skills, to having large coverage, to being the most “popular” blogs.Blogcritics (Blogcritics.org) is a glaring example of the first type of arrogance. It presumptuously advertises itself as a malicious clique “of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, technology, and politics.” How seriously superior are Blogcritics writers? Judge for yourself by these two extracts from articles published last month:

1. John Lennon Message from the Great Beyond?
April 25, 2006

Now, this is one of the strangest things I have heard in a long time. While I am skeptical about all things supernatural, it strikes me as imprudent to dismiss alleged out-of-this-world occurrences out of hand. Sure, there are lots of kooks and gullible souls - and charlatans too - but more is happening in the cosmos than humankind will ever completely understand.

[Imagine John Lennon working for peace from the grave...] The Evening Standard's This Is London reports that psychics claim John Lennon, the activist and musician assassinated in 1980, sent the world a message from...well, from wherever he is right now. The message reportedly was broadcast via a worldwide pay-per-view seance produced by UK firm Starcast Productions and shown on US television last night. And what did the former Beatle have to say?

"Peace...the message is peace."

2. My Love Affair With Dr. Martens
April 02, 2006

For my 30th birthday a very dear friend gave me a pair of shoes. They were dirty and ripped, the soles were completely worn out and they smelled of 15 years worth of feet. In fact they used to be my shoes before I gave them to this friend. Yet as he passed these old, degenerate shoes to me I couldn't help but beam with appreciation.

Rewind about 12 years to 1994. I was a senior in high school. Nevermind had been out for a couple of years, Grunge and alternative were still all the rage. My wardrobe was full of flannel, t-shirts, baggy pants and sneakers. At the time I was well into a pair of skater-styled Vans. The hair was long, the attitude sullen.

Enter Dr. Marten. I had eyed many a pair of those brown leather beauties many a time. But at over $100 a pair, neither my wallet nor my mother was willing to shed that kind of dough.

Ah but my brother, the savior of footwear, the beater of siblings, tormentor of all things me, came through like a mackerel in cheese. He gave me my first pair of Dr. Martens, and he didn't even charge me a dime, or a wet willie.

It seems my brother had received the shoes as a gift from a buddy. The buddy had bought them and worn them for a year or so before he decided to buy a new pair. My brother, likewise, wore the shoes for another year or so before deciding to buy his own new pair.

I loved those shoes. They fit so well with my whole style in those days. They were comfortable, wore well, felt great on my size 11 feet, and looked pretty stinking cool.

After three years, I finally decided to get myself a new pair. I did the loyal thing and promptly gave the old pair to my roommate. He wasn't quite so dedicated to the now five-year-old, fourth generation shoes as I was, but they were donned by his feet at least once a week for the next year. Yes, he liked them so much he bought himself a new pair of Doc Martens. Yes, he gave the old pair to a mutual friend….At this point I lost touch with the shoes.

When I opened the bag that was my birthday present and found those shoes, I couldn't help but get a tear in my eye. Once the smell of six pairs of feet over many sweaty years wafted away, I got a big grin on my face and knew I was looking at the best present ever.

Coming home to my little den, I placed the old Doc Martens next to the pair I bought in their stead, some ten years prior. A pair I still wear to this day.

Judging from those articles published by Blogcritics, who on earth could dispute its claim to be the home of the most seriously superior writers in the world of blogs? Well, maybe, me for one….

The second claim to being the most worthy are those sites that proclaim their immense size of blog coverage. Technorati.org is a prime example of a site that makes this pompous claim: “What's happening right now: Currently tracking 37.6 million sites and 2.4 billion links.”

Then, finally, there are the blogs which aspire to nudging themselves up into the ranks of the “most popular,” as judge by the number of links to them that they can manage to accumulate. Technorati, for example, regularly lists the the 100 most popular blogs in the kingdom of blogs or, as they put it: “The biggest blogs in the blogosphere, as measured by [the number of] unique links in the last six months.”

The conclusion of this brief overview is that blogging appears be an electronic media format that has undergone a regrettable transformation from its early atmosphere of equality and democratic participation, to its present position characterized by politicized claims by some major blogger websites of superiority, domination and control.

Shame on Her, Shame on Us, Shame on All of Us

Last week, on a widely-read writers' blog, I published this brief discussion during the media's histrionic and wildly inflamed coverage of the emerging revelations about Kaavya Viswanathan’s plagiarism in her first book, Opal Mehta:

"Is it hard work being a poser?" One commentator has pointed out that this is the taunting question that one high-society classmate asks Opal Mehta near the conclusion of Kaavya's first novel, a book for teenagers. And this is the very question that has come back to contemptuously haunt Viswanathan herself.

[A critic] recently has published a very interesting and well-written article that compares the seriousness of her offense with the exaggerated fabrications contained in James Frey's memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Unfortunately, the comparison seems to be based upon demonstrating that plagiarism and imaginative fictionalizing are not the same thing. Most readers might respond that this difference needs little explanation; it is self-evident.

Another issue that [critic] brings up in his comparison of the two works is the question of literary worth. Again, the issue begs the point: it is generally acknowledged that romanticized novels for teenagers are by their nature characterized by a lack of literary merit or value.

For me, the simpler, but far more important point is that long-term memory is highly inaccurate. Some have wondered whether the plagiarism could be accounted for by the phenomenon known as cryptomnesia, the unknowing appropriation of what one has read as part of one's own thinking? Experimental psychology has provided some evidence for instances of this. But to claim that such out-of awareness influences could account for the now many more than forty instances of similar or exact replications is simply not believable.

It is the very accuracy of Ms. Viswanathan's copying that gave lie to her initial attempts to explain away what she had done.

Some days later, however, my attention now has turned to another deplorable aspect of the plagiarism controversy, this time focusing upon the harrowing behavior of the critics themselves. Our present electronic technology, along with the incessant and often ruthless social interaction that it has enabled in the digital age, has driven the interest in this controversy into a state of uncontrolled mania.

In today’s climate on the Internet, critical examinations of literary works have become a form of mob rule, fueled by a feverish global beehive, pulsating everywhere at once. And if an issue is interesting enough to serve as a forum to give blogger-critics their own “fifteen minutes of fame,” it can incite a frenzied horde of amateur analysts, each with a world-wide publishing medium in the living room and what appears to be unbounded amounts of free-time. The expressions that ensue are typically characterized as the unbridled release of personal narcissism.

It has turned into a frightening incarnation of mob rule, fueled by a sense of blood lust. The amateur critics as “petty gadflies” (as one writer has called them) have become a pack of wolves all smelling blood, circling for the final kill. Suddenly, not to excuse Viswanathan’s blatant act of plagiarism, this mob-like tyranny has become more dreadful and loathsome that the original act itself.

As a monumental testament to sick and perverted dark humor, the on-line peddlers of "The MehtaMorphasis Award" (snipurl.com/Mehtaward) were offering $75 (not exactly the size of a Nobel Prize) for the most eloquently crafted moral to a week of charged debate surrounding the frothy, ephemeral novel.

Among the submissions were:

The controversy may deservedly be far more interesting than the story itself.

I might agree, but with the caveat that the far more compelling aspect of the controversy is how easily it can be to forget our sense of humanity, instead either joining or implicitly condoning the mentality of mob rule with the aim of fatally attacking its target. In this sense, the controversy is compelling because of the tacit acceptance of totalitarianism that the critics’ frenzied excitement seems to display.