"Have you heard of a dictionary?"

My inbox seems to be filling up lately with an unusual amount of mail offering all manner of products for personal enhancement. I can't imagine why anyone would respond to any of these messages, let alone open them. As a Vermont campground caretaker remarked years ago, "Takes all kinds — and we got 'em."

Note to spammers: if you want to break through the first layer of my defenses, you need to pick a more convincing return address name. Anything from "Mushroom F. Underrated" or "Mazourkas O. Nitrated" might as well say DELETE ME NOW.

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Did Canada issue a warning to its citizens abroad yesterday urging them to return home with all possible speed? Dozens of cars with Ontario and Quebec plates zipped past me as if I was standing still, some doing better than 80 through construction zones. Amazingly, the state police cars just sat there and ignored them.

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Leave it to William F. Buckley Jr.:

Some years ago I was a defendant in a lawsuit brought by a creepy fascistic outfit (they are now out of business), and the question before the jury was whether I and the magazine I edited were racist. The attorney had one weapon to use in making his point, namely that we had published an editorial about Adam Clayton Powell Jr. when he made a terminally wrong move in his defense against federal prosecutors. The editorial we published was titled, "The Jig Is Up for Adam Clayton Powell Jr.?" On the witness stand I argued that the word "jig" could be used other than as animadversion. The feverish lawyer grabbed a book from his table and slammed it down on the arm of my chair. "Have you ever heard of a dictionary?" he asked scornfully, as if he had put the smoking gun in my lap. I examined the American Heritage College Dictionary and said yes, I was familiar with it. "In fact," I was able to say, opening the book, "I wrote the introduction to this edition." That was the high moment of my forensic life. And, of course, the dictionary establishes that the word “jig” can be used harmlessly.

HT: Justin Taylor

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