You're gonna be bothered by how cool I am.

I have not the words to describe the awesomeness of J.K. Rowling's utter schooling of Steve Vander Ark and his publishers yesterday, and none of my own to describe my thoughts on what I have learned about today's proceedings. But in reading about Steve's tears and insistence that the meanies at RDR books made him do it, I was forcibly reminded of a villain from 18th century British literature. Specifically, from one of my two favorite novels on earth, Tom Jones.

George Blifil - Tom's foil throughout the novel - is a boring fellow, but has the slightest funk of The Creepy lingering about him. When, at the end of the book, the full measure of his villainy is unveiled, it is our hero Tom's task to meet with him and verbally evict him from Squire Allworthy's household forever. Here is what he finds (bolds mine, and sorry that it's most of the paragraph, but it's too delicious to miss):

Jones went up to Blifil’s room, whom he found in a situation which moved his pity, though it would have raised a less amiable passion in many beholders. He had cast himself on his bed, where he lay abandoning himself to despair, and drowned in tears; not in such tears as flow from contrition, and wash away guilt from minds which have been seduced or surprized into it unawares, against the bent of their natural dispositions, as will sometimes happen from human frailty, even to the good; no, these tears were such as the frighted theif sheds in his cart, and are indeed the effects of that concern which the most savage natures are seldom deficient in feeling for themselves.

[snip]

Blifil was at first sullen and silent, balancing in his mind whether he should yet deny all; but, finding at last the evidence too strong against him, he betook himself at last to confession.

All that remains now is that pesky confession part. But aside from that, I can't think of a more perfect image of what we've seen today.