The Lexicographer's Rules

"What breed of idiots would voluntarily reduce government income at the start of a war? Beats me, but they bred enough of 'em to populate the executive and legislative branches and have some left over to publish newspapers: walking around yesterday I saw no less than five front pages that called new tax cuts an 'Economic Boost' rather than 'Suicide.'"

—Bellona Times. You "might've missed confirmation of the prediction that some numb brains would soon be fumbling for a definition of 'terrorism' that excluded birth control clinic bombings. Next prediction: Congress will end up having to specifically single out anti-abortion terrorists in an amendment as 'the terrorists we're afraid of annoying,' much as sexual orientation is explicitly called out of hate-crime bills on account of too powerful a political constituency wants to hate selected sexual orientations."'

"It's a sorry man that would sit still during a hijacking now. It would be a bad idea for someone to try to hijack a plane while I'm on it, I'll tell you that. I think the American citizenry as a whole, especially males, are pretty pumped about this now."

—New York Times. A pilot's perspective: "There is a presumption on my part that male passengers will not sit in their seats and just allow something to happen and be passive about it. Everyone recognizes that the traditional hijack scenario of 'I want to go to Cuba,' or 'I want money,' or something of that nature, the extortion scenario, that has all changed. Everyone recognizes that once you're in the air, everyone's welfare depends on pilots being able to fly that airplane." Or maybe everyone talks a lot of bull until the moment of truth. Will they have the desire, the chance, the power to make a move?'

"Last year, in an effort to cement Pak-Afghan friendship, Pakistan dispatched a football team to play a friendly against Afghanistan. As the two teams faced each other in the stadium at Kabul with the referee about to blow the opening whistle, bearded security forces entered and announced that the Pakistani footballers were indecently attired. They were wearing normal football shorts, whereas the Afghans were dressed in surreal long shorts which came down well below the knees. Perhaps it was felt that the rippling thighs of the Pakistanis might cause upheavals in the all-male audience. Who knows? The Pakistani players were arrested, their heads were shaved and they were all flogged in public while the stadium audience was forced to chant verses from the Koran. This was Mullah Omar's friendly warning shot to the Pakistani military to assert the independence of his leadership and his loyalty to Bin Laden."

—Counterpunch. Religion is not necessarily a binding factor in political loyalties. "Till now the Pakistan army (unlike its Arab counterparts) has avoided a coup mounted by captains and colonels. It has always been the generals who have seized power and kept the army united, largely by sharing out the pieces of silver."'

"Three Thanksgivings ago I was at a friend's house in San Francisco (who'd struggled mightily to accommodate two vegans, a dairy allergy, a wheat allergy (mine) and an allergy to nuts among her seven guests) One of the guests (vegan) went on for the entire meal about what a despicable holiday Thanksgiving was, a celebration of imperialism, the subordination of the laborers who'd planted, irrigated, and harvested the vegetables and fed and slaughtered the turkey, etc., an exhortation to consume, an advocacy of carnivorousness, boy did the sanctimonious bore go on, I nearly fricasseed her. And then there was this Christmas dinner a few years ago where there were two Mormons, two pagans and two atheists. It sounds like a joke, right? 'A Mormon, a Pagan and an Atheist sat down to Christmas dinner.' The first argument erupted over the proper way to say grace. And, as you might imagine, it wasÑor felt likeÑhours between grace and dessert."

—Caterina. "It's terrible to hear secondhand about New York replacing itself piece by piece since I last lived there, it's startling to see how fast it changes when it's a year or more between visits, but then again we're replacing ourselves cell by cell all the time."'

"What we're seeing now is the lack of good leakers. You go to the Pentagon and you talk to your sources. They won't talk to you on the phone any more. They want you to physically visit with them. They don't want to sit and talk with you in their office, they want to walk along hallways with you and fake as you ask them questions that can be answered very quickly."

—The Australian. Sally Jackson reports on the difficulties of reporting a war with no front, run by a government with zipped lips, in competition with big-spending media peers.'