December 6, 2007

On this date in 1933, US Federal Judge John Woolsey ruled that James Joyce's Ulysses was not obscene. OK. However he did offer a separate opinion which declared it obscenely dense. "Man, that took me forever," Woolsey said from the bench, shaking his head, his eyes red from strain and exhaustion. "Half the time I didn't know what was going on. Also, the last 45 pages don't have punctuation. Spoiler!" The courtroom crowd stared at him, uncertain. "You know... spoiler. It's what you say when you're revealing important information about a book or a movie." Silence. "Here used ironically because I said it AFTER I revealed something, and also because Ulysses is one of the most important books written in the English language and has been in print for like seventy years, so it's sort of fair-spoiler-game at this point, right? Plus, that's a structural thing, not a plot one. Wait, I mean it was just published. When am I? What year is this? I wish to offer an opinion! I WISH TO OFFER AN OPINION! GREEN IS THE BEST FLAVOR! FORCE ASD GOODAS JUU! Mleh! MLEH!"

Woolsey then sentenced himself to ninety days in jail, which he then declared he'd already served.

Woolsey was weird. Obscenely weird.

*****
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I'm not going to mention that it's Finland's Independence Day, because then IBEater Morgan would accuse me of just trying to bait her into responding. So I'll say that instead it's Finland's Dependence Day, and they're still under Russian rule. Always have been.

ALWAYS WILL BE.