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Good morning all, and welcome to a very brief Radio Free Monday!

I only have a few things to share this week, so I thought I'd remind everyone that last week's RFM was all in the comments, which you can check out here.

Give For Free:

Xandii linked me to a contest her college theatre program has entered to win a new light board. A group of students designed, directed, and filmed a four minute video and they need votes to win! Go, watch the fire-spinning, and click "like" to help Stephens College get a new lightboard!

News To Know:

mk_tortie linked me to a story called ILU-486, which is a short fictional piece about illegal abortions in a future US where birth control is outlawed. It's been getting huge attention over the weekend, well-deserved, and I'm pleased to be able to say I actually know the author and watched the formulation of the story take place. THE CIRCLE OF LIFE, GUYS.

@air_ocean on Twitter linked me to an article about PayPal requiring Smashwords to remove certain kinds of erotica from their digital shelves before doing business with them. Now, the content they want pulled -- incest, rape, and bestiality -- is like a top-three-turnoffs list for me, but financial institutions should not dictate what creative institutions choose to showcase, full stop.

spiderine and I were discussing the old "Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark" book series the other day, and she linked me to a story about how the art has been changed. I found the art in those books genuinly traumatic as a child (didn't stop me from reading them, mind you) so I can't say I'm 100% sad about it, to be honest...

pinkfinity wanted me to remind people that Ascendio is coming! Ascendio is a Harry Potter con taking place in Orlando this July, and they've extended their call for papers through the end of February. They're taking submissions not just for papers but also workshops and panels across a variety of subjects including publishing, YA lit, handcrafts, and fan culture. You can read more about Ascendio here!

Just For Fun:

If you enjoyed my story of my trip to the Vienna Beef hot dog factory a few weeks back, well, signups are open again! They book far enough out, at this point, that you could probably sign up to do the tour, then plan a Chicago vacation around it...

A Seven Nation Army: a Suits vid, to showcase what Suits would be like without USA's "Blue Skies" edict. Essentially, a trailer for an imaginary Suits-On-HBO. And a very catchy tune!

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can always post items for my attention in comments here (or on any post) or email me at copperbadge at gmail dot com. If you're not sure how to proceed, here is a little more about what I do and how you can help. Remember, brevity is the soul of RFM.

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We really love chicken in ( A Cheaper World. )

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Wow, who didn't post at all this weekend? That'd be me. I suspect I didn't have anything to talk about; aside from upending a bag of rice on my kitchen floor while making enchiladas, I spent most of my weekend alternating between sleeping and Netflix streaming movies.

Today I am doing all this scheduling, and I keep mixing up March and May, because they both start with M. I am a special kind of awesome, you guys.

...yeah, that's all I got. I'd say I want something interesting to happen so I have something to blog about, but that way lies DANGER.

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I think I have hit my World War II saturation point.

Not that there isn't more I could learn, because lord knows that war was fucking endless, but I've hit a point somewhere between "Okay, I knew that" and "Oh god, I'm falling asleep".

At Myopic Books down in Wicker Park I happened to pick up a copy of Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy To Steal The World's Greatest Works of Art by Hector Feliciano. And it's a good book! But I keep dozing off while reading it.

( More Nazi Art History. It's a thing. )

So, I didn't finish it, but I don't regret buying it; it's a nice addition to my little shelf of art-crime history books. I might never be a master forger or a cunning thief, but it's fun to play a bit of pretend sometimes. Certainly if I ever end up on the trail of looted war art, I'll have a solid foundation upon which to build.