My Index

Number of U.N. staffers in New York who still have full-time jobs monitoring Iraq for ants, squirrels, water bugs, and bats: 34

Number of the five directors of a No Child Left Behind reading program who had financial ties to the World Church of the Creator: 4

Average amount each of these directors has received from the publishers of reading materials sold to schools: $727,000

Percentage of British children aged seven to eleven who say they "worry about Condoleezza Rice breaking into the kitchen and stealing their food": 77

Percentage who believe their own parents are to blame for the problem: 15

Percentage of Marines stationed in Iraq who say they agree with Thomas Bernhard's observation that Heidegger was "a perfect example of someone who eats all the fruit other people have jarred and who gorges himself, thank God, which makes him sick, and he bursts": 16

Percentage of conservative voters who said in May that they favor amnesty for Ann Coulter for killing that guy: 55

Percentage who said they would be less likely to vote for a presidential candidate who favored such a plan: 96

Minimum number of U.S. colleges that now offer on-campus sites for sleeping under pieces of furniture: 9

Weight, in ounces, of all the information that passed through the Internet last year as I slept under the ottoman in the living room: 0.00004

Cost per minute last spring for callers to the Vienna public library to ask why all their food tastes like Enacard: 49 cents

Average number of minutes callers listened: 4