Well, it’s short work week for a lot of people here in the U.S. We’re going to take a half-day here at the ol’ blog.

- From Techdirt comes the news that the publication of a Catcher in the Rye “sequel” has been blocked. They ask, since when did he U.S. ban books? There you have it: What obscenity couldn’t do, copyright can.

- On second thought: From Slashdot comes a story of a couple who’ve been sentenced to serve a year and a day in jail for distributing obscene materials on the Internet.

- But it’s not all bad news at Slashdot; they’ve also got a story about a giant, world-spanning colony of ants.

- Meanwhile, over at The Awl, they celebrated the birth of Franz Kafka, and mourned the death of Mollie Sugden, this week.

- Well, the big story on a lot of blogs this week was of course the death of Michael Jackson. We’ll only link to two posts that relate, because you’ve probably seen as much as you’d ever want to about MJ, over the past week. First, Jezebel asks, Was Michael Jackson More Normal Than we Thought?

- Also, the increased traffic from web surfers looking for Jackson news nearly crushed some major news sites. (Via.)

- And, finally, This Recording has posted a piece from the J. D. Salinger of Comic Strips, Bill Watterson; an appreciation of the classic strip, Krazy Kat, from the forward of a new collection. (Via.)