I worked hard, I believed in the American Dream, I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, I paid over $70,000 on my student loan debt, and still I was EDUCATIONALLY SCREWED!

The Velvet Machine is a unique blend of thought-provoking essays, humorous anecdotes and real-life adventures as told by two of today's most bold and candid authors. In Part One, D.J. Blue (The Good Life Chronicles) features sociological food for thought in his Velvet Communique series. He tackles a variety of issues, including the root of all sociological evil, a hypothetical explanation of the sleep mechanism from a mathematical perspective, the meaning of dreams, as well as opinions on education, marriage, baseball, and glazed doughnut selection. In Part Two, newcomer S.K. Black paints a colorful, honest and sometimes amusing portrait of Midwestern culture. He also pushes the boundaries of decency with some eyebrow-raising poetry. But the cornerstone of Black's piece is his droll yet insightful narrative of a trip through America's heartland, where everything from Kansas cowgirls to Texas State Troopers is experienced and discussed. The Velvet Machine is a cerebral, boldly provocative, and sometimes amusing book which will make an impression on the reader and will not soon be forgotten.

Who is responsible for juvenile delinquency? Mark D. Jacobs uses ethnographic, statistical, and literary methods to uncover the many levels of disorganization in American juvenile justice. By analyzing the continuities betwen normal casework and exceptional cases, he reveals that probation officers must commonly contrive informal measures to circumvent a system which routinely obstructs the delivery of services to their clients. Jacobs defines the concept of the "no-fault society" to describe the larger context of societal disorder and interpersonal manipulation that the juvenile justice system at once reflects and exacerbates.

When we talk about sex—whether great, good, bad, or unlawful—we often turn to consent as both our erotic and moral savior. We ask questions like, What counts as sexual consent? How do we teach consent to impressionable youth, potential predators, and victims? How can we make consent sexy? What if these are all the wrong questions? What if our preoccupation with consent is hindering a safer and better sexual culture? By foregrounding sex on the social margins (bestial, necrophilic, cannibalistic, and other atypical practices), Screw Consent shows how a sexual politics focused on consent can often obscure, rather than clarify, what is wrong about wrongful sex. Joseph J. Fischel argues that the consent paradigm, while necessary for effective sexual assault law, diminishes and perverts our ideas about desire, pleasure, and injury. In addition to the criticisms against consent leveled by feminist theorists of earlier generations, Fischel elevates three more: consent is insufficient, inapposite, and riddled with scope contradictions for regulating and imagining sex. Fischel proposes instead that sexual justice turns more productively on concepts of sexual autonomy and access. Clever, witty, and adeptly researched, Screw Consent promises to change how we understand consent, sexuality, and law in the United States today.