Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

It's Dorothy, Dammit, Not Harry!

Dorothy Potter has become the first poet to win the Australian Primier's Award for Literature. Potter planned to followup her prize-winning novel about Jupiter's moon with a work tentatively titled In Your Face, in which poets take over the Australian government and citizens resolve their disputes through slam sessions instead of courts.

Natsume Soseki is considered to be "the Charles Dickens of Japan." (And that link will take you to the English translation of Kokoro, selected for the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works.) Soseki is so renowned that he can be found on the 1,000 yen note. Japan Today reports that English translations of seven of his works will be published in the United States as early as May.

Some moviegoers are terrified that "666" is appearing on tickets for Passion of the Christ.

Proving that the First Amendment means about as much today as pocket lint, the federal government is warning publishers not to edit manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations. Editing paragraphs or correcting syntax amounts to "trading with the enemy" in the eyes of the Treasury Department. But the government hopes that certain forms of subject-verb agreement will demonstrate conclusive proof of an Iraq-WMD link.

Jennifer Howard takes over for Bookslut and is convinced that Monday morning pre-9 a.m. after the Oscars is too early to think about anything literary. Nonsense. The ceremony was so predictable and bland that I haven't thought about it since 10:30 p.m. last night. If anything, one should think about books and crack as many dirty jokes as possible well before 6 a.m. It's either that or a bloody Mary to get the brain working on a Monday morning. [UPDATE: And Howard's doing pretty well so far. Of course, cover David Markson and you've won brownie points with me almost immediately. However, Jen, it's BOOKslut, not FILMslut or WHEDONslut.]

But since we mentioned it, Grambo did a better job than me at capping the Oscars last night. One last thing I'll mention: Naomi Watts is a thin and stunningly beautiful woman. But who was the idiot that put her in a Spandex dress last night? Was this some kind of Twiggy complex? And putting M&Ms in The Wizard of Oz is just plain wrong. The worst thing since Fred Astaire danced with a Hoover. I will never eat a package of M&Ms again. Never. Seriously.

Posted by DrMabuse at March 1, 2004 06:23 AM