You can imagine what the advisers are telling Junior Assad: "Your statues are much stronger than Saddam's. His were hollow, and bolted in place with inferior metal; yours are solid, and are anchored to a depth of three feet. Let the American tanks come! Their gears will strip and their engines whine in defeat as they attempt to pull down your statues!

James Lileks

Categorized in : Feet Stronger Tanks

I’ll feel that horrible feeling in my stomach you get when you’ve gone over to the Dark Side. But I’ll be fine. That’s the good thing about the Dark Side. Eventually, your eyes adjust.

James Lileks

eye dark feelings

We always ask where the time went. We never ask where it's coming from.

James Lileks

asks

Yay Condi Rice. I want her to go to Saudi Arabia, and I want her first words upon getting off the plane to be 'I'll drive.'

James Lileks

yay arabia want

There are three stages to a man's life. 1. He laughs at Clark Griswold. 2. He sympathizes deeply with Clark Griswold. 3. He laughs at Clark Griswold.

James Lileks

three laughing men

I don't believe in the very concept of "first thing in the morning." I'm a "third thing in the afternoon" fellow.

James Lileks

afternoon morning believe

When your opponent sets up a straw man, set it on fire and kick the cinders around the stage. Don't worry about losing the Strawperson- American community vote.

James Lileks

fire worry men

Contempt for the things people choose of their own free will is, at its heart, contempt for free will.

James Lileks

free-will heart people

The worst thing about depression isn't the sense that you're accentuating the negative, it's that you're seeing things the way they really are, stripped of the illusions you use every day to divert yourself from the Yawning Maw of Futility. It's the wind that blows off the snow and reveals the stone.

James Lileks

yawning blow wind

Calculus destroys self-esteem on contact.

James Lileks

calculus contact self-esteem

I'll start drinking tea over coffee when the big hand is on Never and the little hand is on Ain't Gonna Happen.

James Lileks

coffee drinking hands

The mind forever turns on the lathe of its own contradictions.

James Lileks

contradiction mind forever

The newspaper is a lecture. The Web is a conversation.

James Lileks

lectures newspapers conversation

The al-Qaida cell broken up near Buffalo, N.Y., contains some citizens who also found themselves in Afghanistan, training for the Great All-Around Satan Smiting. Treason? Oh, of course not. They were on a religious pilgrimage and got lost. Happens all the time. I knew a kid who went to Lutheran Bible Camp and turned up six years later in a Christian Identity compound with a shaved head and a Hitler mustache.

James Lileks

religious christian kids

The (campaign) ads all have the same tone - the voice is hushed and amazed when talking about The Enemy, as if you should worry how this amoral, power-mad, extremist puppy-strangler clawed his way out of hell and landed in your district. And the voice is happy and relieved when talking about The Most Noble Candidate, as though he's Santa, Will Rogers and Lincoln all rolled into one.

James Lileks

mad voice talking

The popular Arab imagination is a pliant and inventive thing; it can explain any defeat. It is a compass that always points toward the Jew.

James Lileks

compass defeat imagination

The International Criminal Court, like most international institutions, is a wonderful idea. A noble idea. All it needs to work is planetary government, worldwide democracy and the triumph of reason over tribal loyalties, political doctrines and individual ambition. In other words, it requires that we all live in the world described by the "Star Trek" television shows.

James Lileks

loyalty stars ambition

A Children’s Museum, however, is more of a Funatorium. You are encouraged to touch things, which is poor training for subsequent museum visitation.

James Lileks

training museums children

The same people who accuse America of coddling dictators are sputtering with bilious fury because we actually deposed one.

James Lileks

dictator america people

Modern death is a matter of bright rooms and hard machines. Live long enough, and you might be filed away in a nursing home, your history scoured away, your life winnowed down to a few items on the table and some pictures of people who don't come around enough. When you are about to pass on, there is no quiet to attend you: busy fuss and professional zeal strive to bring you back, nail you to the soft cross of the rented bed.

James Lileks

nursing home death

If Mother had to be told not to shove the entire brick of Ivory up Junior's hindquarters, constipation is the least of his problems.

James Lileks

ivory juniors mother