4:30 PM -- The AP reports on a man who fights fire with fire:

Tom Wayne has amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Prospero's Books.

His collection ranges from best sellers, such as Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" and Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities," to obscure titles, like a bound report from the Fourth Pan-American Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1910. But when he wanted to thin out the collection, he found he couldn't even give away books to libraries or thrift shops; they said they were full.

Time out... Has anyone else noticed the uncanny repetition of the name "Tom" in this story?! WEIRD! Anyway...

So on Sunday, Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society's diminishing support for the printed word.

Or in protest of keeping inventory.

The fire blazed for about 50 minutes before the Kansas City Fire Department put it out because Wayne didn't have a permit for burning.

Whoopsie-daisy!

"After slogging through the tens of thousands of books we've slogged through, and to accumulate that many and to have people turn you away when you take them somewhere, it's just kind of a knee-jerk reaction," he said. "And it's a good excuse for fun."

A "knee-jerk reaction"? Well, you got the jerk part right.

— Red Panda, Slogging the Slogged, Light Reading