Mark Twain's unfinished children's "book" is now finished.

To say Mark Twain has an "unfinished" children's book soon to be published is a bit fast and loose with the facts.

Doubleday Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, plans to release the lighthearted Twain fare on September 26, 2017, after author Philip Stead and illustrator Erin Stead worked to complete the book.

According to Doubleday, the story--The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine--"follows a young boy who eats the flower sprouted by a magical seed and gains the ability to talk to animals. From there, the boy and his new animal friends go off on a wild adventure to rescue a kidnapped prince."

So, it's like Jack and the Beanstalk meets Doctor Doolittle.

In 1879, while the family was visiting Paris, Twain apparently told his daughters a bedtime story following the plot of Prince Oleomargarine. Afterward, Twain wrote 16-pages of notes on a potential full-length book, but left it at that. For over 130-years, the notes remained lost until scholar John Bird discovered them at the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California at Berkeley in 2011.

Somehow, 16-pages of Twain's notes evolved into a 152-page storybook with illustrations by two other people.

Notes = 152-page book.

A "Twain" book.

Notes.

Based on this metric, I have written tens of thousands of books. It's impressive, if I do say so.

Plagiarism in the crossword puzzle world will shake your foundation in all that is good in the world.

Right?

Crossword puzzles are cozy, something grandparents and people riding the subway have done for years to pass the time. In a world of ambiguous moral grays, crosswords are literally one of the few things that are black and white.

Just like plagiarism is black and white. You either commit it or you don't. In the world of crossword puzzles, plagiarism is a rarity, mainly because of the whole "puzzle" angle and its complexity toward stealing from someone else for fifteen across, five letters, starts with "t." (Hint: "thief.") Now, though, a scandal has rocked the nebbish crossword world, striking fear into their bowtie community.

Timothy Parker, who edits puzzles for USA Today and for syndication, allegedly stole large elements of New York Times crossword puzzles. The website FiveThirtyEight dove down this rabbit hole, and found nearly 65 identical puzzles with Parker as editor over a 17-year period, or roughly four puzzles a year being, ahem, borrowed from the Times. It wasn't just that Parker was the editor, but the listed writers of the puzzles simply didn't exist.

FiveThirtyEight reached out to Parker, who didn't deny there were striking similarities in the puzzles. "To me, it’s just mere coincidence," Parker told the website. "We don’t look at anybody else’s puzzles or really care about anyone else’s puzzles."

This is like when I tell people it's a mere coincidence that I look like Chris Hemsworth. Sure, it's uncanny, a mere coincidence, but sometimes people can't believe that it isn't Thor writing an obscure blog about books and words and education, that I could have such a ripped physique simply from typing on a laptop and eating Twinkies. Crazier stuff happens. Like crossword puzzles being plagiarized.

Meanwhile, USA Today asked Parker to take a seat while they investigate.

What's a seven letter word for "oops"?

Ah, that's right: jobless.

Formerly closed Sweet Briar College is not only operating, it's growing.

Sweet Briar sounds like it should be the name to a long lost Ben & Jerry's flavor. It feels graham cracker based, something with a raspberry or strawberry swirl. Mmm, tasty Sweet Briar!

Except Sweet Briar is apparently a community located in Virginia, one completely lacking in ice cream deliciousness. It is also home to Sweet Briar College, a single sex school of 250 students and 100 faculty that announced in March of 2015 that it would close its doors at the end of the summer session due to huge financial burdens. This impending doom brought alumnae, students, and faculty together to refashion the school. Out went the board and president. In came new blood.

It worked. Things came around. According to USA Today, Sweet Briar College announced that 1,099 prospective students have applied to the school this year, up from 751 in 2015. Money is flowing in. Things are looking up.

Tony Lilly, a Sweet Briar English professor, is hopeful. "There is a sense of security, but I think that’s tempered by an acute sense of the precariousness of liberal arts education in general," says Lilly. "I think one of the lessons [...] is that if it can happen to Sweet Briar it can happen to anybody."

So you're saying Sweet Briar flavored ice cream could still happen then? That's how I'm reading all this.

Delaware bedbugs are voracious readers.

Delaware libraries have a small (heh-heh) problem, in that returned books are increasingly showing presence of bedbugs.

According to the city of Wilmington's library system director, Larry Manuel, it's not a crisis necessarily so much as "one here, one there – we're not talking about hundreds."

Bedbug infestations tend to show up in increasing rates at travel locations, where guests get caught in a hotel, motel ("...Holiday Inn!"), or Trader Vic's Travelodge Emporium type location that might not have been properly disinfected. Libraries, on the other hand, have largely remained safe from the scourge.

Things took on a new angle in the Delaware libraries bedbug wars when in the town of Selbyville a chair was found infected. The chair was removed and the building was treated by an exterminator.

The real question here? Considering that bedbugs only subsist off blood, all affected books were Twilight, right?



Source Story: USA Today

The Kansas City Chiefs kinda/sorta killed a guy.

The Kansas City Chiefs football team isn't very good. They're 1-9 on the season, last place in their division, and aren't going anywhere any time soon. They haven't gone anywhere since 1969, when they last won a championship.

Loren Lickteig was a diehard Kansas City Chiefs fan. Now he's just dead, and sticking it to his beloved team from beyond the grave.

Before he died, Lickteig prepped an obituary column in which he let his frustration with the Chiefs be known.

There you have it. We all knew it, but we never had proof: The Kansas City Chiefs are as bad as multiple sclerosis.



photo: The Kansas City Star, via USA Today

Even Superman is quitting the newspaper business.

The Daily Planet has hired Clark Kent as a reporter since 1940, but even Superman has his limits.

In the latest issue of the comic franchise, Clark Kent channels the feelings of everyone in middle management and goes on a diatribe at work--culminating in his quitting the newspaper business.

If you worked at the same place for 72 years and had a meager 401k plan, you'd probably quit, too.

Superman writer Scott Lobdell tells USA Today, "[Superman] is more likely to start the next Huffington Post or the next Drudge Report than he is to go find someone else to get assignments or draw a paycheck from."

Maybe Superman should look into a job at Newsweek?





photo: DC Comics, where apparently Superman lets out his anger on internet servers.