Back to School Shopping

The ads for pencils, erasers and school clothes have started appearing in newspapers already. You're reading the paper in the morning and out come these vilely colorful reminders of servitude. It is still July forgodssake. I am compounding the felony by inserting this art. Think of them not as tools of a dimly remembered punishment but as objects d'art. There is a certain "thingness" about a pencil sharpener drawn simply, and a pencil is just a hexagonal stick sharpened to a point with a bit of rubber at the other end.