The Lexicographer's Rules

"The CafŽ St. Pierre, a pleasant tree-filled spot where we often stopped for a drink, had the most impressively armed security guard I saw. He looked like a Sierra Leonean rebel. In addition to his machine gun he had an array of bullets crisscrossing his chest, probably because a couple of weeks earlier the previous security guard had been murdered while on duty. An attorney for the United Nations was dining there at the time of the murder and discovered that, while she was terrified, to others it seemed routine. 'The couple crouched under the next table began introducing themselves,' she told me incredulously. When she returned later that week to pay the abandoned bill for a half-eaten pizza, it was waiting with these words written on it: Les clients sont partis sans payer sur le coup de l'emotion, or 'The clients left without paying their bill due to an overwhelming bout of emotion.'"

—Fl‰neur. K.A. Dilday writes about Port-au-Prince, Haiti.'

"Was rock criticism ever influential? I have my doubts. I know it reaches people who care about music and who want more variety, depth, honesty, independence or crankiness than they get from other sources of information about music. (It also reaches some very touchy musicians.) But popular music too rarely informs broader culture journalism. Most of my fellow newspaper writers would probably agree that in newsrooms, rock critics are seen as dealing with mere 'entertainment' and 'kid stuff'Ñeven when an Eminem album is a more complex cultural artifact than most movies, TV or fiction. And pundits who wouldn't dream of not knowing about The Sopranos cheerfully flaunt their ignorance of gangsta rap, which has far greater cultural repercussions."

—Rock Critics. Steven Ward interviews Jon Pareles, music critic for the New York Times.'

"Some nights when I'm done with my shift, I look at all this cash I have to give to the cab companyÑwith not much left for myselfÑand then I realize my rent is due. That's when I joke to myself, 'You could always keep on driving. You know, just head south for the border.' But then I think, 'In a big clearly marked taxicab, you wouldn't get very far.'"

—Los Angeles Times. Revenues for cab drivers in San Francisco have dropped as much as 60 percent as a result of the economic downturn there. "I drive my cab 25 days a month, and over the past few months I've seen my monthly take-home drop from $2,300 to $1,900 and now $1,400."'

"A couple of goats ended up under the wheels of a KingAir once and according to Somali compensation law the herder got paid double their value. I guess they're all in on it now."

—The Guardian. Joe Brunswig, Somalia's chief air traffic controller in charge of a "Mickey Mouse operation," is plagued by goats. "My fire trucks spend all day chasing them off the runways. Those herdsmen can't seem to keep away."'

"When their livestock is infected, farmers routinely get twice the value of their animals, while greedier ones are getting tens of thousands of pounds for cows worth just a few hundred. Across the country there are dozens of foot and mouth millionaires, with the biggest payment going to a farmer in Scotland who received a cheque for more than £4 million."

—London Observer. Some people suspect these new millionaires have intentionally infected their herds with foot-and-mouth disease; farmers whose herds remain uninfected paradoxically have fared the worst. "My heart bleeds for those that have this disease and have lost their animals, and I don't want foot and mouth anywhere near my farm, but at least they have assets that have been turned into cash."'