Leisurely mornings at work followed by leisurely afternoons of reading are few and far between anymore, so today felt pretty good. I finished up Fahrenheit 451 again today, this time actually reading for enjoyment. I tell ya, this Bradbury guy really knows how to get fired up. Instead of any quotes off the top of my head (OK, knock it off with those grins and cheers), I'm just going to take a quote out of his coda to Fahrenheit and let you all compare it to a Ctrl-W masterpiece.

"[...] For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water conversationalist (sic), pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run, and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my "Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" so it shapes "Zoot," may the belt unravel and the pants fall.

For let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton, or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontesably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer -- he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my words. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It's my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I've won or lost. At sunrise, I'm out again, giving it the old try.

And no one can help me. Not even you."

I love this guy.