Haven't Joyce's relatives tried to keep his sexay letters private? I wonder how Eco fared when he wrote his Joyce essay.

Sure there have

Aha! Add that to the Tolkien research entry on Wikipedia!

ION, 8-year-old boy suspended for sniffing marker

A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.

"It smelled good," [Eathan] Harris said. "They told me that's wrong."

Eathan shyly shook his head "no" when a reporter asked if he knew about "huffing."

[Principal Chris] Benisch stands by his decision to suspend Harris, saying it sends a clear message about substance abuse.

"This is really, really, seriously dangerous," Benisch said.

In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to "become intoxicated."

A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.

Of course, we don't know the specifics, such as "how long was he sniffing it?"

Also, good thing they don't use mimeographed paper anymore.

Ah, the real purple prose!

Re: the Lexicon case, the fannish reaction (drop an anvil on RDR's head) has a couple of elements.

1. SVA is going to profit from the work of fans. Bad form!

2. SVA & RDR dicked around with WB and JKR and the court, submitting bullshit filings, didn't even have an IP attorney on the case, failed to provide a copy of the book at a time when they would necessarily have had a book.

3. SVA & RDR are relying on the fact that JKR had approved of the Lexicon when it was online-only, and may in fact be arguing that she waived her opportunity to disapprove of it--this despite the fact that the online Lexicon had a lot of analysis and critical material, none of which appears in the print edition.

What fans fear from that argument is that if SVA & RDR win, other copyright holders will interpret the decision such that they feel obligated to shut down all fan resources on the net in order to protect their interests.

I have to admit I have no sympathy for SVA & RDR: they've behaved unprofessionally in the extreme, with no appreciation for the precedent they could be setting. They're trying to rally the troops with the cry of Fair Use, and while they may indeed be operating legally, their behavior has been such, and the possible outcome so negative for other fans, that I rather want them to lose. Or settle! Settling would be good! No precedent!

...So I guess they don't make fruit-smell markers any more? I mean, they all smelled like petroleum underneath, but it was a very watermelon-y petroleum!

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Luke McFarlane from Brothers & Sisters has officially come out in an interview with The Globe and Mail: [link]

I need to go to work. But I'm sick! I just don't think I'm sick enough to not go to work. And I think it's a sinus infection, and probably not contagious.

Someone tell me to go to work!

I read an interesting essay a couple years back about Joyce scholars, and how they have to mollycoddle some grand-nephew of James Joyce (invite him to symposia and let him ramble at length; not publish anything embarrassing etc.) or else they can't get permission to quote from Joyce's works in their scholarship. And how it drove them all bananas, but that there wasn't anything they could do about it.

I think I read Ron Rosenbaum writing about that in Harper's. Stephen Joyce. I read another something about him recently, but I don't remember where. Rosenbaum has also been in touch with Nabokov's son, who is under orders from Nabokov's will to destroy his last, unpublished, not-quite-completed manuscript. He's told Rosenbaum that he thinks it's the best thing his dad wrote, so he can't quite decide what to do about it.

Of course, we don't know the specifics, such as "how long was he sniffing it?"

...So I guess they don't make fruit-smell markers any more? I mean, they all smelled like petroleum underneath, but it was a very watermelon-y petroleum!

Mr Sketch Scented Markers!!