Occasionally I hear some editor is mortally wounded by some snide thing I’ve typed and I’m always amazed. It’s not personal. Peccadillos are for pecking, aren’t they? And I’m resigned to what a friend noted eons ago when I first started freelancing: No one said you have to die solvent. But I sometimes still have to stop and wonder why cranks get ostracized and crazies stay on good terms. Which most recently came to mind when I saw the judges for a certain contest and remembered the wild story I heard about a  press trip in France: Booze in prodigious quantities, underwear out the window, chocolate up the wazoo. And this is your ambassador? Sticks and stones are messy. Words must really hurt.