Also in the NYT of 6/1/14 was their Book Review section, dedicated to summer reading. Twice I took the paper out to vanish from my premises but a last look revealed more interesting unread reviews. Inside the back cover were two folks answering "What is the best 'bad' book you've ever read?" The lady of the two answered, "Go Ask Alice".

There is a bit of relief here. This work from that year of late polarity shift, 1971, was declared a fraud. The writer was a therapist and Mormon youth counselor who also wrote books in diary form allegedly from teens involved in such things as affairs with teachers and the occult. Our reviewer shakes her head at the whirly gig language about the effects of those awful drugs.

I never read the book or sat through the telefilm. The former was seen in classrooms during my career and I remember a random look in which the subject had tried to alert school authorities as to the extent of the drug problem and in the school hall was jumped and planted a rude kiss by one of the boys as students cheered and faculty were absent. Then when I turned on the ". . .Alice" movie of the week a moment many years ago I saw the scene in which one of her drug buddies shows up at her baby sitting gig and is tormenting the child. The cathode went off posthaste.

What is, to be not so clever here, really fake? The vicious boys of a noted southern California forced "dating" ring pummeled a girl in the hall after a charge, filed after one of their members committed a rape hot on the heels of a Catholic youth leadership meeting, were dropped.

Oh, all right, "allegedly" raped. We know who the privileged are in our society, and no apologies to the due-process liberals for using the "r" word twice.

Well, in keeping with the oft-iconic and equally oft-reviled NYT, why was the actual Bible (let's have an in-joke and say "King Dan Version") written? We don't know, though hillsides have definitely been shaved bare printing the debunking and pieties over the years. The renegade ham radio channel in our area has users who proclaim "It was written to keep [insert racial slur involving disdained occupation and nationality] in line."

Very sad when the renegades are little more than the usual small minds bowing to a clear channel.

The unclean lines between the concrete and suggested will use up a few more electrons in lieu of pines here. Was Paul the replacement Apostle knocked down on the road to Tarsus by an occipital seizure? Was he covering up for his own potentially fatal way of life in his admonitions? The influence has definitely been massive.

At any rate, thanks for another stay in the Dan Gent Hotel and you never know, one day I might peruse other literature you will find on the night stand.