I've spent a lot of time down on the corner
Tasting tears and spilling whisky on the floor


Armando Mariño, De Koons à Duchamp, 1999

* From Harper's February 2008:

-- Number of confirmed suicides in the U.S. Army in 2006: 102

-- Number of years since accurate record-keeping began in 1981 that the rate was as high: 0

-- Number of states where a court has held that women must return engagement rings if the wedding doesn't happen: 18

-- Ratio of the total square footage of the world's Wal-Marts to that of Manhattan: 9:7

-- Amount that DC city officials were found last fall to have embezzled through a dummy firm called Bilkemor LLC: $346,700

-- Average percentage by which a woman's left breast is larger than her right: 4

* Blackwater dropped blinding tear gas on Iraqis, US soldiers in 2005. excerpt:

"Blackwater security contractors employed in Iraq dropped a blinding riot-control gas on Iraqi civilians and US military personnel on a busy Baghdad street in May 2005, according to the reporter who first broke the NSA wiretapping scandal in the New York Times.

"'The copter dropped CS gas, a riot-control substance the American military in Iraq can use only under the strictest conditions and with the approval of top military commanders,' James Risen writes. 'An armored vehicle on the ground also released the gas, temporarily blinding drivers, passers-by and at least 10 American soldiers operating the checkpoint.'

"CS gas -- 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile -- is among the most common tear gases used by law enforcement and militaries in conflict zones.

"Use of CS gas in war is prohibited by the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (signed in 1993), as it could trigged retaliation with more toxic substances such as nerve gas. 'A 1975 presidential order allows their use by the United States military in war zones under limited defensive circumstances and only with the approval of the president or a senior officer designated by the president,' the Times notes."
...
"The revelation raises new questions about the purview of private security contractors in Iraq and how much authority they have to exercise military-like action without following the rules of engagement or international treaties that the Pentagon requires its troops to follow."

* 12 timely deaths.

* "Whenever I can afford to do something, I do it." -- Thurston Moore