To justify the ways of God to men, sayeth John Milton, blind dead poet

Be honest. When you first heard Bush utter “the war on terror,” you knew we were in for another interminable, vague “war” that had all the trappings of the usual wars/campaigns/grand ideological undertakings we [I refuse to scare-quote “we,” even though it stands in for America/Americans, and a few (or many perhaps) would not self-identify as that] have been undertaking since oh say, the late 19th century. Let's stop "wars on" anything: poverty, drugs, war, terror. In the War on Poverty, were poor people the enemy? Let's just use euphemisms for war: "there's a small fire that we need to put out pronto" and what not.



I'm not even concerned with making sense. The malt o meal in the cafeteria today made me seriously take stock of the efficacy of making sense, of which I am not altogether dubious but still.

Patriotism: that thing you do when you do that thing.
Narrative linearity: that thing you do with stories that arc like balls thrown to receivers running fade patterns to the back pylon.
Procreation: that thing you do when you reach that age with the complicated roman numeral symbolism.
Bite the Lip Face: that thing I do when a student says something funny and I want to laugh but I can't because the funny thing is made from words upon which I, as uber-authority, should frown. Cf. when student asks, "Hey, Mr. Hagen - is jism an example of onomatopoeia?"