AN ESPECIALLY BAD DAY. God knows, there's always a lot of stupid shit on the internet, but sometimes the computer screen seems like a window into an old-fashioned lunatic asylum.

Lileks unleashes wrath he previously reserved for Salam Pax and Michael Moore on Patrick Stewart. When in this sort of five-hours-without-a-cigar fury, Lileks doesn't argue, he chews pet peeves till his teeth squeak. For example: Stewart is in the theatre, that effete, hairspray-smelling makework program for enemies of American common sense ("Noted: the future of humanity shall consist not in getting this place right but watching angry Pinter screeds about that wretched meat we know as our own flawed species.."), whereas Lileks is "about seven Atkins-assisted days away from a six-pack" and wrestles alligators for a living, when not advising our Commander-in-Chief on matters foreign and domestic (Have the burger without the bun, Sir; you'll be energized and hostile all day long!) and pwaying games wif his widdle dawter.

Half the ravings lament that the man who played Picard on the TV does not share Lileks' world-views, and then the other half is devoted to detailing the unworthiness of this, this actor to advise the President on interplanetary foreign policy. Jesus Christ. Someone give him a breadstick.

Further down the sludgestream Clifford May does the "imminent" routine again. I thought we'd seen the last of this one -- noted that Bush didn't use the word "imminent" to describe Saddam's attack on the West, but he did use so many scare tactics, including imagery such as "one vial, one canister... could bring a day of horror like one we have never known," that he might as well have. But May has a new angle:

Here's one straightforward way to express it: When a knife is raised and pointed at you, and you block the thrust -- that's not pre-emption. That's self-defense, a common sense response to an imminent threat. By contrast, pre-emption is when you recognize that someone means you harm, glimpse a knife -- and take action before seeing the weapon poised for an imminent strike.

Someone should tell May that if one is a paranoid lunatic, such moments of recognition come rather easily, even if the knife is as imaginary as Saddam's WMDs. Frequently the paranoid will blame another party for his confusion: death row inmate Scott Panetti, for example, blames an alter-ego named Sarge, while Bush blames one named Faulty Intelligence.
Fascinating behaviors, all of which should be observed far, far away from the cutlery drawer.

Speaking of the clinically insane, Peggy Noonan blames 9/11 on the real Axis of Evil: Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Whitney Houston. Her friend Mickey Kaus declares we must not set a bad, breast-exposing example to "young, angry Muslims," who may decide to attack Rhythm Nation for its prurient dancing girls. In which case it will all be Janet Jackson's and Justin Timberlake's fault. Just as Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli caused the Holocaust.

I can tolerate the presence of such sad cases, but Lord it's awful when they start screaming.