“The freshly poured cement naturally attracted graffitisti with popsicle sticks, determined to immortalize themselves. Inevitably, one of these was an ardent young swain who wished to proclaim his undying love to the ages. His chilling masterpiece of… er… concrete poetry is located right at the foot of my walkway, where I must look at it every time I leave my home. It consists of a large heart, within which are inscribed the words:

TOOD + JANEY

“Now, I don’t know about you, but I decline to believe that even in this day and age, any set of parents elected to name their son Tood. I am therefore forced to conclude that young Todd is unable to spell his own goddam name… despite having reached an age sufficiently advanced for him to find young Janey intriguing. As I make my living from literacy, I find this sign of the times demoralizing. We are all, I hope, terrified at the growing prospect of a nation of illiterate voters attempting to make responsible decisions about complex and urgent issues of science and technology, issues whose cardinal points simply cannot be condensed into a ten-second sound bite. He who cannot read, cannot reason. And we know that the trend is in that direction.”