Oedipus was a detective in search of himself.

How could Harriet Miers know her path was his as she led her search committee toward the next Supreme Court Nominee?

How could I know how similar to Jackie Mason I would feel in expressing that parallel?

Is a "how could you" question answerable or rhetorical, asked by someone making a point?

Yet I ask it.

-- How could you? I can't even look at you. Don't let it happen again.

Sunday, October 2nd from 5PM to 6PM at the Bryat Park Book Fair, continued.

As for my Book Fair report, following Art Spiegelman in the New York Times Book Review tent was Pamela Paul to personally introduce us to her new book, "Pornified."

If you sense a kinetic energy in your hotel room, then perhaps it's because, sniff-sniff, it's been pornified!

In case I was not already alarmed by my potential comments about a hundred million dollar industry, following Pamela Paul and a summer camp break with Christopher Lehman-Haupt, was author Ariel Levy, introducing her new, red book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, describing her undercover work during the spring break shoot of a show called "Girls Gone Wild." (This show, immortalized by Larry David in a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode, is mostly comprised of minimally solicited public-breast-bearing "reality" clips. In syndication, perhaps it should rerun as "Girls Went Wild.")

If I add anything to the self-perceptions of the "wild" ones whose body displays were freely offered to cameras in those episodes -- especially to those who masturbated –- it is this suggestion; rather than being victimized in retrospect, consider the respect you offered to a 100 million dollar industry and its customers by mooning them.

Perhaps there are times when the act of observing something does NOT change it. Let voyeurs watch. The power to change in their observation is negligible compared with a scientist looking for an electron through a microscope.

Yes, bodies are fascinating, ever-surprising in their breath-taking beauty, and worthy of time spent looking at them.

No, I haven't seen March of the Penguins, but I'll bet we benefit by observing them, too.

If pornography is images of people who prepare and present themselves and others in various displays of sexual arousal then, yes, the world is pornified.

But what is pornography? The knowledge of it, like the knowledge Adam and Eve acquired about being naked in the Garden of Eden, was contained in the definition; "I KNOW it when I see it."

The standard has become what a community/planet will tolerate.

Perhaps for sexual arousal to be pornographic a measure of self-hatred is required.

Pamela Paul's featured video description was of “sheiks” clenching Abu Ghraib prison photos as they surrounded the military-garbed woman they held responsible.

In this video after a suggested decapitation they drench the woman with their self generated kinetic fluids.

“Masturbatable,” perhaps with self-hatred. Consider, in response to the blinding rage "generatable" from the previous near-dada description, how powerful emotions (i.e., hate, love...) readily couple with physical feelings of sexual (reproductive) arousal.

-- Don't just stand there, do something.

-- I can't. It's on film; it already happened.

-- How could you? I can't even look at you. Don't let it happen again.