Don't go trick or treating! Make sure your kids don't keep the candy they get from your neighbors, because they're probably in on the plot! Follow your kids around tonight, because terrorists might kidnap them from your suburb's streets! And if you don't believe me, it's all in this article! (Link pilfered from Carol.)

Damn it, I'm sick of all this crap. The government and the media aren't doing much except to make people all agitated. And I still think we'd have been a lot better off without that damn FBI alert that came out earlier this week -- people, unless you have definitive information on when & where & how this attack is going to happen, don't say anything. Americans are already freaking out and "keeping their eyes open for anything out of the ordinary," but there is no ordinary anymore! When I hear stories about people mailing in moldy food for anthrax testing, when I hear about people refusing to let a plane take off until Arabic passengers are removed from the plane, when I hear parents telling their kids they can't trick or treat because they're afraid terrorists will kill them or kidnap them or infect them with something, when I hear about metal detectors being installed in mall entrances -- that's all out of the ordinary. Keeping my eyes open for it just convinces me more & more that Americans are getting completely overwrought & blowing this situation way out of proportion.

Bloody hell, looking back on it now, I'd prefer for the nation to be worried about the whereabouts of Chandra Levy and what Nicole Kidman's going to do post-divorce. It's a hell of a lot less annoying for those of us with common sense, and it's a hell of a lot less agitating for people with nothing to do except worry about what could happen. Yes, Nicole might spend the rest of her life as a divorcee, but at least that kind of worry isn't transmittable.