Never stop learning

Things I learned from the Chicago Fire Marshal today during our office fire drill:

1. Instead of evacuating the building during a fire, we should all go to the 18th floor and congregate together in a confined place until the man with the mustache says we can leave.
2. Do not stop to bring coffee or water with you when fleeing a fire. Spilled beverages may cause firefighters to trip, causing a "log jam" which means the fire department "will be killing people." I didn't know the fire department killed people, but I suppose these are the reasons we have fire drills.
3. The Fire Marshal isn't sure, but he suspects that having 300 people gathered in a confined space on the 18th floor and blocking all the exits might constitute a fire hazard.

This is what I learned on my lunch hour:

• It's hard to look gangsta when you're cross-eyed, Escalade notwithstanding.
  
• There are far too many kinds of chicken salad.
• There are some people who would rather have attractive shoes than have shoes that allow them to walk on stairs without a spotter.
• There was no impromptu ticker-tape parade celebrating the departure of Alberto Gonzalez.
• The Flaming Lips are better than a lot of things.

In other news:

• Irony!
• Democrats only want to stop the genocide in the Sudan because everyone in Darfur votes democratic.
• Since hell is already frozen over, Bob Novak decided to write a column about how awesome Chris Dodd and a bunch of leftist South Americans are for dealing so effectively with "narco-guerrillas." I believe this is Novak's secret plan to derail Chris Dodd's campaign by associating himself with Dodd, but as I said earlier, why waste the effort?
• I will refrain from quoting The Who when presenting this tidbit about the man who will be the interim replacement for Alberto Gonzalez:

When Clement appeared before the Supreme Court on behalf of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in the Jose Padilla case on April 28, 2004, skeptical justices asked him about the risk that a detainee like Padilla might be abused while in custody. Clement's response: "Where the government is on a war footing ... you have to trust the executive to make the kind of quintessential military judgments that are involved in things like that." When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that some governments engage in "mild torture" to obtain information from detainees, Clement shot back: "Well, our executive doesn't."

Eight hours later, CBS News aired the first photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib.

• The headlines of the Chicago Tribune website right now tally up to at least 9 deaths over the course of five articles, and that's not counting Michael Vick's apology for killing dogs. The Chicago Tribune is depressing.