tom tomorrow

December 3, 2002 11:10 AM

Total Information Awareness v. Holden Caulfield. Great Tom Tomorrow cartoon on our new "permanent records" under Ashcroft's plan. What books did you check out of the library as a teenage "malcontent" that might arouse suspicion today?
posted by serafinapekkala (23 comments total)

I read a biography of Hitler when I was about 12 and got very strange looks from the very children's librarian who presumably helped select the book for purchase. I also remember the Judy Blume Resistance among the sixth grade girls, surreptitiously passing around "Forever" in homeroom and hoping not to get caught (it depicts a high school girl losing her virginity...to a boy who nicknamed his unit "Ralph"!). Ditto for all those Jackie Collins books, Our Bodies Ourselves, Rubyfruit Jungle...today I'd probably get busted for checking out Al Franken and Bill Maher.
posted by serafinapekkala at 11:15 AM on December 3, 2002

hmm. sounds like a conspiracy to me.
posted by grabbingsand at 11:16 AM on December 3, 2002

I was a content teenager.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:27 AM on December 3, 2002

This is sort of off topic i suppose, but i will be turning 19 on december 9th. I have recently purchased my own house, using inheritance money. Oddly enough my house is located on Holden Drive. Just creeps me out when i think about it, Catcher in the Rye is about growing up to fast, and i am growing up to fast on Holden drive..... No real point, still i revel in the irony of it.
posted by sourbrew at 11:47 AM on December 3, 2002

I once dated a girl who liked to keep all her kings on the back row.
posted by muppetboy at 11:52 AM on December 3, 2002

I try not to read in general just to avoid this sort of thing. You never know what sort of trouble reading can get you into. Therefore, I, for one, welcome our new totally aware overlords.
posted by risenc at 11:55 AM on December 3, 2002

My subversive teenage reading list consisted of that ever-popular malcontent homebrew: modernism, mayhem, and Marxism. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man! Helter Skelter! The Communist Manifesto! Oh yeah, and sex and Hitler, too. (Usually as separate topics, I hasten to add.) Fear of Flying! The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich! Yep, them's good reading.

My subversive 30-something reading list hasn't changed all that much.
posted by scody at 12:06 PM on December 3, 2002

So this cartoon... it vibrates?
posted by jammer at 12:35 PM on December 3, 2002

Well, I was told by parents of a friend that because I checked out Soviet Life every month the FBI was probably keeping a close eye on me. Without that resource, however, I would have been completely unaware that the latest five-year-plan had brought modern conveniences to a village north of Sverdlovsk, where the grain blew in the breeze with a Kodachrome glow, and gleaming tractors were driven by pretty women in fetching head-scarves.
posted by dhartung at 12:37 PM on December 3, 2002

I would think that our new Totally Aware (TM) overlords would like it if we failed 8th grade civics and had no clue about our right, non?
posted by Pollomacho at 12:51 PM on December 3, 2002

Erich von Daniken - 'Chariots of the Gods'; Lyall Watson - 'Supernature'; The Dunlop Book of Facts.

Sadly, I still hardly ever read fiction. God, I know that says something about me...
posted by dash_slot- at 1:09 PM on December 3, 2002

"Catcher in the Rye is about growing up too fast"

I don't think that's what Catcher is about at all.
posted by muppetboy at 1:12 PM on December 3, 2002

Toadal information awareness
toadally.
posted by nasim at 2:16 PM on December 3, 2002

Is that really the TIA logo in the cartoon? Pretty rad...
posted by ph00dz at 2:47 PM on December 3, 2002

The Catcher in the Rye wasn't about growing up to fast. It was about alienation, authenticity, and how one becomes an authentic person, without conforming to society's conventions.
posted by SweetJesus at 3:15 PM on December 3, 2002

I knew someone who made a point to go into the Russian bookstore just long enough to get on camera. He felt it a civic duty.

I feel it's my civic duty to raise suspicion about myself at every opportunity. (Checking out suspicious books. Learning Arabic. Whatever.) What's the point of living a squeaky clean life if you can't use it to bog down the works?
posted by small_ruminant at 4:06 PM on December 3, 2002

The best thing about the voices in my head is that no one else can hear them...not even the TIA.

And they say the neatest things, too.
posted by FormlessOne at 6:06 PM on December 3, 2002

The girl I loved (unrequitedly, mind you) bought me a copy of Mein Kampf for my 16th birthday in 1981. I still don't know what she was thinking.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:25 PM on December 3, 2002

Ugh, it really annoys me how the logo in the background of the cartoon isn't quite right. The light rays don't quite cover the earth. Dammit, that's really frustrating. Further inspection reveals that the normal logo has it right...

Damn, that's really annoying.
posted by Dillonlikescookies at 8:51 PM on December 3, 2002

"Lenin:Hero of the Revolution" I doubt it would be considered subversive today but in mid 80's it probably would have been. After reading it's rather fawning portrait of Mr. Lenin I was really surprised that it was in my high school's library.
posted by MikeMc at 9:37 PM on December 3, 2002

Erich von Daniken - 'Chariots of the Gods'. . .Sadly, I still hardly ever read fiction.

uh, von Daniken is nonfiction?
posted by Vidiot at 9:49 PM on December 3, 2002

Ira Levin's "This Perfect Day," a great but little-known 70's dystopia (seriously!) from the author of "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Boys From Brazil."

The Family (not the Manson one) has taken over the earth with their eugenic, blissed-out peas-in-a-pod people. Preteens "fuck" and "suck" in Meadian bliss, but "fight" is a dirty word. Nonconformist Chip schemes to bring it all down, man.

Found in my middle-school library. Come to think of it, after the Apple II in the gifted room, "This Perfect Day" was the best thing that happened to me in middle school.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:13 PM on December 3, 2002

When I was twelve, I skimmed through Lolita, looking for pornography.
posted by jonz at 10:36 PM on December 5, 2002