You Know You've Done Something Bad When . . .
When I was in grad school, I knew a sweet, genial man named K. He was a big guy from rural Louisiana who cooked a mean gumbo. One night at a party, in his usual expansive manner, he started telling a story about his childhood. I don't remember the details now, but it involved a visit to some classmates of his who lived in a two-story house. When K. goes upstairs to use the bathroom, he discovers a snake curled up in the toilet bowl. Completely freaked out, he runs downstairs and starts hollering at the kids and their parents, trying to convey the essential badness of what he's just seen. At this point in the anecdote K. waved his hands about and imitated his gibbering young self: "No no no! There's a snake in your toilet! You guys have done something wrong!" It is in honor of K. that I have christened my politics-as-usual tag "Snake in the Toilet."