Up all night filing to America. The usual all-night schedule: surviving on caffeine until 3AM, at which point my concentration descends into near collapse. Brain inexplicably gains second wind an hour later, and then continues working with steadily escalating urgency as the sun creeps up the horizon. By the end of the morning I looked like Eraserhead.
Two unusual wrinkles to this allnighter. First: Urinal is below shoulder level, made of shiny porcelain. Hand dryer is also below shoulder level, made of shiny porcelain. For for at least three seconds, my post-3AM thoughtsponge was unable to differnentiate between the two. Second: when I did my triumphant walk outside at 8AM, it was already cook-a-kitty-on-the-street hot.
Little else to report from Ghana, so thank god for this NYT story about Westchester county using Archie comics to fight underage drinking.
"Hey kids," [Archie] says, "Drinking can get you in trouble. If you use false ID to get a drink you are committing a misdemeanor and can be arrested. Do you want that on your record when you apply to college or for a job?"
Ah shaddup, ya eunuch.
Okay, Kevin Smith has mined all the issues of repression in Archie comics better than I can here, so I'll just skip that rant and head straight to likely repercussions of said agitprop.
Let's say this succeeds in affecting the judgement of one guilty, soft-headed, eager to please kid. Say he loves these comics. Where's he going to go when he wants to read more about Betty & Veronica's Adventures in Incurious Virginity?
The local comic book shop, of course. Been to one lately? Here's how it goes. Jimmy Sadsack--who can't handle the moral ramification of a drinking a solitary Schlitz--walks in and is suddenly up to his eyeballs in gigantic green cleavage, smoking clergyman, homicidal dairy products.
The place is packed to the gills with barely covered boobies and gore--all legal! He can buy all the books about gladiator chicks he wants, and none of it goes on his college application! Two years later he's wearing Green Lantern t-shirts, writing Buffy fan fiction, obsessed with Weezer. Thanks to Archie for a bridge toward a healthy pubescence.
Think I need the sleepy.
