Men get very fond of the things they defend, especially when they find themselves defending something stupid.
Theodore Sturgeon in his wonderful short story, The Widget, The Wadget, and Boff
A commonplace book: an old-fashioned literary diary for recording interesting items from reading you've done. I use mine to record snippets from reading, conversation and life in general. (The early 2003 entries are from a period some years ago -- before the blog age -- when I tried an online commonplace book as a straight web page.)