Get out your dictionaries, kids, and your red pencils: We’re redefining another word today. Last time we jittered “homeland” into “place a bunch of people live, despite the fact that most of us can clearly identify at least part of the land of our ancestors’ birth [the previous ‘homeland’].” Today we’re changing “principle” from “a rule or standard, esp. of good behavior; moral or ethical standards or judgments” to “something Dick Cheney doesn’t want to do.”

Remember Spy? This blog does. All journalists of a certain age are invited to pull up a handkerchief and contemplate what might have been. (I never did write for Spy, but I know someone who did. He’s a very cranky, bitter man. He moved to Seattle — cause or effect, we’ll never know.)

And the award for Best Anthropomorphization In A Press Release goes to…

Joe Buck? JOE $*&!# BUCK is the replacement (as if!) for Pat Summerall? Leave it to Fox to catch Monday Night Mayhem and draw exactly the wrong conclusion. My cat poops better sports commentary than that guy.

John Ashcroft isn’t just offended by free speech; he’s offended by free breasts, as reported by ABC News. A reminder to those of you who slept through art history: Justice is typically portrayed as blind and naked to convey the impartial and forthright nature of same — which means, I suppose, that the ony reason Ashcroft hasn’t kicked about Justice’s blindfold is that he just assumes the artist misplaced the gag.

My friend Rob puts it best: How on earth did this essay make it into a “mainstream” newspaper? I am in awe, I am enthralled, I am in utter agreement, and I am hereby starting the Neil Gabler Fan Club. Pay attention; this is the most on-point thing you’ll read all week.

There are children in Australia forming suicide pacts, but I understand from government sources that this is commonplace in Australia. Does that seem, I don’t know, wrong to you?

There’s ASCII art and then there’s ASCII-inspired art. I didn’t say there was a lot of the latter, but there it is. I realize that non-geeks might say this guy needs a hobby (another hobby), but I’m going with the succinct Slashdot opinion: badass. Where do I do to get some Modulex blocks? (And to follow up that, this.)

More fun with airport security — yes, it really is as dire as you suspect.

KMart is dying, and it has inspired a magnificent essay by Hank Stuever in the Washington Post. Behold his work, ye mighty, and despair:

In any case, the thing to love about Kmart is that a small child is always about to knock over all of the ironing boards, in a great commotion of noise, followed by a spanking, the kind of spanking you didn’t think got delivered in America anymore (because you’ve spent too much time in Target, and not enough time in Kmart), and it will be hours before anyone will come along and rearrange the ironing boards that wanted so badly to be chic.

We are *so* not worthy.