To my knowledge, no one on earth who has given me grief in the last fifteen years has ever coughed up so much as a perfunctory apology, let alone any reasonable form of compensation. Hanlon's Razor, as least as sharp as Occam's, says "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity," and I am not one to impute malice where it does not exist — admittedly, some people's repetitive failures at clue acquisition make me wonder — but extenuating circumstances won't reduce the workload one bit, and I resent bitterly the notion that I should be forgiving while I sweat.

Some of this, I think, has spilled over into my reactions to the events of the 11th of September. The direct effects on me have been fairly close to nil, but the voice within me is still screaming, "Why isn't someone being roasted on a goddamn spit for this?" Of course, roasting the appropriate someone(s) is not a goal easily attained, as Donald Rumsfeld will happily (or at least serenely) remind you, and then there's all that due-process business in the Constitution that we take seriously, except in the case of people who are believed to possess hemp and/or sidearms, which for some reason annoy the government. And while I'd like to believe I have dovish tendencies — for one thing, it makes it a lot easier to peruse Utne Reader — lately I'm much more of a porcupine than a dove. Coworkers and relatives who consider me to be a prick anyway will be less than surprised.