Happy New Year!

Good Morning! And Happy New Year! Did we all stay up late in our separate parts of the world to ring in 2009? (Oy! That brought it home! Holy cow! 2009?!) Time flies when one is having so much fun, I guess. I decided to ignore the festivities altogether. Stayed home (wasn't feeling well anyway) and watched the History, Discovery and SciFi channels. SciFi was having a Twilight Zone marathon. I only caught one full episode. It was fascinating!

It was about a monster government (our own) who had "proven" there was no God and was "liquidating" all obsolete people. In the episode they had a librarian on trial. Because he could also make furniture they had left him alone "until now". Apparently they had destroyed all books because they were "frivolous" and supposedly did nothing but promote lies -- especially the Bible, this faux government said. So, because this librarian was insistent upon the value of books and especially the Bible, the government determined he was obsolete and an enemy of the state. They decided to execute him on live television. Their victims were allowed to choose the time, place and method of their "liquidation". The librarian chose a bomb and locked his judge (for lack of a better word) in his room with him. The idea was that the librarian was facing his death calmly and reading from the Bible (surrounded by innumerable books) while the government official panicked and begged to be let out of the room. In the last moment, the government guy added "for the love of God" to his plea. The librarian said, "Yes, for the love of God I will let you out." He did just that. After the way he behaved under the pressure, the government official was charged as obsolete and an embarrassment and was taken into custody to be liquidated himself.

I was fascinated by this story. The unabashed promotion of books, learning and especially the Bible mixed in with a radical warning against large government. Politically and religiously charged...I wish I had a copy of it to add to my growing collection of literary theory books!

Want to see this episode of "The Twilight Zone" for yourself? It's on CBS.com: http://www.cbs.com/classics/the_twilight_zone/. The title is "The Obsolete Man".