Play it safe, kids.

Check it out!

I’m editing, among many other things, a book for elementary school students. The first layout just arrived on my desk. Perhaps I have too much on my plate, for look what has slipped past my guard: right on the cover, a kiwi-flavored alien from the planet Condom!

First thought: Gotta change it, or else I’ll have legislator Lee Ching-hua breathing down my neck.

But my memory rushes back to that night sixteen years ago in the university library, where I read a Rolling Stone interview with Prince. When asked about the Lovesexy album cover—which showed the diminutive genius nude upon a lily, the flower’s stamen curled toward him—His Purple Highness spoke words that have stayed with me, and which I have come to recognize as true.

“All that album cover was, was a picture,” quoth he. “If you looked at that picture and some ill come out of your mouth, then that’s what you are—it’s looking right back at you in the mirror.”

So there. The one-eyed monster stays.