Eye Of Newt, And Toe Of Frog, Wool Of Bat, And Tongue Of Dog, For a Charm Of Powerful Trouble

We're coming to you today from deep in the stacks of the Main Library here in the marbled halls of IM Central, specifically the fiction department. We like to come down here every once in a while and relive our salad days as professional transmitters of literary culture to the upcoming generation.

What a professional joy it was to watch young eyes light up when we read them the dirty parts of the Canterbury Tales, or to tell them when Shakespeare wrote "Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry, stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie" he wasn't talking about sheep herding, or that if Blake had written "Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained" today, he would have flunked his abstinence only class.

Yes, what a marvelous journey we took through the limitless universe of fiction. Watching students discover a magical world that ran parallel to their own, in fact supported the world they had to live in and, though the pages of a book, was always available. We like to think that through our ministrations the students were able to apprehend what Charles Eliot meant when he wrote, “Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”

We tell you this by way of establishing our credentials to speculate that Newt Gingrich doesn't have many non-fiction friends because he gave a speech the other day that came almost exclusively from books. Fiction books:

If you get a chance, read my friend Bill Forstchen’s novel, One Second After, which describes the fate of a small town, after an electromagnetic pulse attack. This book was inspired by a report that Congressman Roscoe Bartlett got seven nuclear physicists of enormous experience in our nuclear weapons industry to jointly produce. It’s based on fact, it is accurate, and it’s horrifying, and we have zero national strategy to respond to it today.

Forget EMP's Newt. What about Leningen Versus the Ants? It's based on fact, it's accurate and it's horrifying. In fact as we speak illegal immigrant fire ants are pouring across our boarders into the south and we have ZERO NATIONAL POLICY to deal with them today!

And I strongly recommend Alex Berenson, a New York Times reporter, who recently wrote a novel called The Silent Man, which is about an effort set off a Hiroshima-sized weapon in the Washington DC area at the time of a State of the Union.

One measly atomic bomb, Newt? Really? What about Beowulf? Not only is Grendal showing up whenever he feels like it and killing the warriors of Herorot, but his mom and an unnamed dragon are also wreaking havoc all over Geatland and we have ZERO NATIONAL POLICY to deal with them today!

But I’m not telling you these things to frighten you! I’m telling you for the same reason you tell your children to put on their seatbelts.

Wait a minute, so you really don't hate us for booting you out of the centers of power and assigning you to the periphery of wingnuttia? You really are just looking out for our own good? No hard feelings? You really would just like to show us the Cask of Amontillado?

Hmmm...you're not Greek are you?