Lately I’ve been spend­ing too much time read­ing right-wing blogs and Face­book pages. Usu­ally I leave this dirty job to Roy Edroso, but one or two have got­ten under my skin and I can reli­ably be found check­ing in here and there. It’s like sneak­ing cig­a­rettes when you’re try­ing to quit.

You won­der who the 18 per­cent are who think the pres­i­dent is a Mus­lim? I found a few. They use words like “usurper” a lot, not a com­mon vocab­u­lary word for those who insist that this or that “needs warshed.” But it’s one of those dog-whistle words; Google “obama usurper” and you get 101,000 results. This is a typ­i­cal usage, blah blah blah birth cer­tifi­cate blah blah blah. Google “obama mus­lim usurper” and you get even more — 559,000.

Then I read this lat­est blog by Roger Ebert, and a phrase jumped out at me:

This many Amer­i­cans did not arrive at such con­clu­sions (about Obama being Mus­lim, or the Antichrist) on their own. They were per­suaded by a relent­less process of insin­u­a­tion, strate­gic silence and cyn­i­cal mis­in­for­ma­tion. Most of the lead­ers in this process have been cau­tious to avoid actu­ally say­ing Obama is a Mus­lim. They speak in coded words and allow the impli­ca­tions to sink in. I recently watched Glenn Beck speak­ing at great length about Obama’s Mus­lim father, but you would not have learned from Beck that the father, who Obama met only once, was not a prac­tic­ing Mus­lim in any sense.

Strate­gic silence. Yes, that’s it exactly. This, when I pick it apart, is why I’ve reached the point where I feel more or less per­ma­nently furi­ous at about half the coun­try. I lived in Indi­ana for 20 years, feel­ing like a drag queen in Salt Lake City, but I got used to it. I used to believe that I could call many of them friends, that they had some­thing to offer. We dis­agreed, but, I would tell myself, they had arrived at this point in time via a dif­fer­ent path than mine; of course they reached some dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions along the way. (This was not always an indul­gence granted in return.) When they lost the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, I fig­ured they’d be sore about it, but I didn’t antic­i­pate a two-year tem­per tantrum, aided and abet­ted by their highly paid mouth­pieces, who smirk through their silence when their idiot min­ions roar about Marx­ism and social­ism and Mus­lim usurpers.

Ebert thinks Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin may announce their intent to run for office when the for­mer appears in the latter’s state on — would you look at that? another coin­ci­dence — Sep­tem­ber 11. I dis­agree. I think the chance these two will step off the Col’ Col’ Cash Express is slim verg­ing on none. I think we’re due another stu­pid rally and more tire­some sto­ries in the papers. But I think his con­clud­ing point is apt: It’s time for respon­si­ble Repub­li­cans to put up or shut up. Remem­ber when John McCain gen­tly told that crazy lady that no, his oppo­nent wasn’t a Mus­lim? I get the feel­ing the pow­ers that be in the Repub­li­can party look at that moment and smack their fore­heads: No won­der we lost. The money, and the mojo, comes from the cra­zies, and who cares if they get every lit­tle fact right? Facts are too easy to refu­di­ate, whereas urban leg­ends can be posted end­lessly on Face­book, e-mailed around the globe and oth­er­wise allowed to slide.

By the way, may I just say one more thing before I leave? I read not long ago that Sarah Palin was unin­ten­tion­ally con­jured by women like me, who “looked down on” women like her and the mil­lions she man­gles speech for. Because we are elit­ists. Because we know what “semi­otics” means. Because we say, “that car needs to be washed” and don’t buy Cool Whip, or what­ever. Well, if that’s true, I’m very sorry, believe me I am, but let’s not go all holier than thou just yet, shall we? Who, may I ask, referred to the cervical-cancer vac­cine as “the slut shot,” and said that any girl receiv­ing it would take it as an e-ticket to Promis­cu­ityville? Who sent me sheafs of let­ters after I returned to work fol­low­ing the birth of my child, inform­ing me I was an abu­sive mother? How many times have I been told I’m part of the “cul­ture of death?”

Maybe they didn’t mean any­thing by those charm­ing com­ments. If so, like Mitch McConnell, I take them at their word.

OK, enough rant­ing. I need to get some work done today. Blog­gage? Maybe:

Via Hank, a mall that’s deal­ing with its teen prob­lem son­i­cally, via a device that emits sounds irri­tat­ing to young ears. (What? When there’s all those Billy Joel CDs lying around?) You know what I fear as I age? The loss of my sense of smell. Kate’s always iden­ti­fy­ing mys­tery odors in our house that I can’t detect. I feel as though I’ve started down the path toward Foul-Smelling Old Lady­hood, and there’s no turn­ing back.

Via LA Mary, some video of crea­tures who dance bet­ter than I do: A dog. And a baby. Yes, another danc­ing baby. I know, I know. But this baby is amaz­ing.

And via Gawker, this is pretty amaz­ing, too. For those of you with pow­er­ful proces­sors, I rec­om­mend Arcade Fire’s new video, which is inter­ac­tive and Goog­lerific. Yes, by all means you should enter the address of your child­hood home.

Errands! Edit­ing! E-mail! I have an e-ticket to the grind­stone.

A ques­tion for you fre­quent fliers: Do you ever fly first class?

I don’t travel often, but I fly at least once or twice a year, and in all that time, I’ve been seated in first class only once. It was when the pud­dle jumper from Key West to Miami broke down on the run­way. (Add “do you smell jet fuel?” to the list of things you don’t want to hear two stew­ardesses mur­mur­ing to one another back by the gal­ley.) I missed my con­nec­tion, and I was rebooked back to Colum­bus in first. With­out going into too much detail about what hap­pened on my last night in Key West, let me just say that a first-class seat going home felt like a gift from… well, not from God. God would never have rewarded bad behav­ior that way.

But it was won­der­ful. The wide seat, the halfway-decent food, and espe­cially the Bloody Marys, which started on the ground and con­tin­ued with­out so much as a raised eye­brow until I drifted off into a lovely nap some­where over Ten­nessee — it all felt pos­i­tively lux­u­ri­ous, at least as com­pared to the con­di­tions in steer­age. (And this was 1980. Con­di­tions in steer­age weren’t all that bad.)

I had a friend at the time who trav­eled often for busi­ness, and always flew first-class. It was com­pany pol­icy that the con­sult­ing work they did had to include the expen­sive ticket, and she always said that if I ever needed to travel as much as she did, I’d under­stand why. Oh, I under­stand.

Over the years, I’ve known many peo­ple who brag of their abil­ity to get upgraded to first, either through strate­gic deploy­ment of frequent-flier miles, shame­less flat­tery of gate agents, or equally shame­less lying about bad knees and hips and pound­ing migraines. One guy just had the gift, he said; he had mas­tered the com­bi­na­tion of grovel and assertive con­fi­dence that made the per­son with the power help­less before the request, and would unhook the vel­vet rope to the front of the air­craft.

I ask because there’s always a pause dur­ing board­ing when you have to stand in the aisle right inside the door, and you can exam­ine the lucky 16 or 20 or how­ever many who have the good ticket, and while there are always the obvi­ous can­di­dates — the women with expen­sive jew­elry, the guys whose innate impe­ri­ous­ness screams CEO, Sarah Palin — there are always a few wild cards, too. The ratty-looking guy with the enor­mous stom­ach — does he absorb the extra cost as a com­fort mea­sure? Because I wouldn’t want to pack that bas­ket­ball into coach, either. The kid star­ing out the win­dow with no evi­dent par­ent — an unac­com­pa­nied minor? Some­one tell her it’s not like this, and not to get used to it, she’s just get­ting the parental-guilt upgrade.

David Sedaris once wrote amus­ingly about fly­ing first-class transat­lantic on Air France — I guess when you sell books like that guy, your pub­lisher doesn’t mind pay­ing — and being asked if he’d mind if the crew seated some­one next to him, some­one who spent the entire flight sob­bing. Hav­ing flown transat­lantic in coach, I can say that if that kind of mid­flight upgrade doesn’t cheer you up, you’re prob­a­bly sui­ci­dal. My transat­lantic flight nearly fea­tured a mutiny; a big­ger seat would have made it that much eas­ier to bear. (Con­fi­den­tially, I’ve always wanted to make that cross­ing on a no-name freighter, maybe in an unused crew cabin. I could get some read­ing done and stroll on the deck twice a day.)

But the best com­ment on the sub­ject was, of course, “The Air­port,” one of the best “Sein­feld” episodes ever. I’d like one of those ice cream sun­daes.

Bleh day, bleh me, bleh blog­gage:

Said it before, say­ing it again: You should add Planet Money to your book­marks. Espe­cially if you’re not much of a money per­son.

“Deliv­er­ance,” the novel, recon­sid­ered. I missed this last week, but the novel’s been out for decades — the recon­sid­er­a­tion didn’t get stale in seven days.

Tonight marks the offi­cial announce­ment of the end of the war in Iraq. Years ago, when my crappy news­pa­per planned a spe­cial Vic­tory in Iraq issue, my hus­band spoke up at the meet­ing and said it was a ridicu­lous idea, and that we’d be there for years. It got him scowled at, but it’s good to know he was right.

And here comes another hur­ri­cane. Time to get to work.

It’s good to get away from time to time — visit your bud­dies, observe the strange ugli­ness of the Bronze Fonz, swing over to Madi­son for pitch­ers on the ter­race at the Wis­con­sin Union. Planned cor­rectly, and with a lot of dri­ving, a good week­end can be as much fun as a week­long vaca­tion. I’m grate­ful to all who hosted, cooked, drove and oth­er­wise extended Dairy­land hos­pi­tal­ity.

The sou­venir of the week­end — besides a mild hang­over — was one of these, a Himalayan salt plate. I didn’t spend $60 for the big chunk, but I fig­ured for $18, I could take a chance that my disk of pink rock salt might be an inter­est­ing addi­tion to my bat­terie de cui­sine. It cer­tainly was an inter­est­ing addi­tion to the TSA work­ers’ Sun­day, as it got my bag yanked and hand-searched:

“Do you have ashes in here?” the guard asked.

“No, but I have a disk of Himalayan rock salt,” I said. “It prob­a­bly has lots of min­er­als in there, too. Should I unwrap it?” He said I didn’t have to go that far, but he got a chuckle that any­one would buy a chunk of salt to serve food on. Obvi­ously some­one who doesn’t watch the Food Net­work.

Here it is, in case you’re won­der­ing:

Impulse pur­chases — they’re what make our econ­omy strong.

I’ll be get­ting away a lit­tle later this week, too, tak­ing Kate and three friends for a two-day Cedar Point adven­ture. We chose this late date on the advice of fel­low Michi­gan­ders, who swear by the secret week before Labor Day, when Ohio and Indi­ana kids are back in school and the Mit­ten rules the penin­sula. Short lines for roller coast­ers, etc. We shall see. I think the only thing we can rea­son­ably hope for is good weather. Fin­gers crossed.

For the moment, how­ever, it remains sti­fling. The last few days started won­der­fully, with bright blue skies, low humid­ity and rea­son­able tem­per­a­tures, but once again, some­thing hap­pened and the heat set­tled in on Sat­ur­day. I am ready to wear some­thing that doesn’t need to be white and absorbent. I guess I’ll have to wait a while for that.

Can’t have too much sum­mer, I guess. So let’s skip to blog­gage:

Because I don’t expect the rel­a­tives of excep­tional peo­ple to be excep­tional as a default, I am not sur­prised to learn that Mar­tin Luther King’s extended fam­ily is a lit­tle, how you say, daft. But I found this story on Alveda King, Glenn Beck’s new BFF, to be instruc­tive:

Alveda is dis­mis­sive of (Coretta Scott King), who died in 2006, say­ing, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t, she didn’t … There­fore I know some­thing about him. I’m made out of the same stuff.”

Oh.

(And may I just say, it was won­der­ful to be [mostly] away from the inter­net for two days, and thus be spared Beck­a­palooza? I may throw my lap­top away.)

Things you shouldn’t do when you’ve been drink­ing: Try to climb out on a win­dow ledge on the 22nd floor to take a pic­ture.

Finally, some­thing that frosted my cook­ies last night and con­tin­ues to do so: The egg indus­try says it’s time to say farewell to poached and sunny side up. Because how can they pos­si­bly keep 50 mil­lion damn chick­ens healthy? I’m now pay­ing $2.50 a dozen at the farmer’s mar­ket I guess, what? Per­ma­nently.

Must run — manic Mon­day.

Bronze Fonz, Mil­wau­kee river­front.

Sorry I’m late today. School reg­is­tra­tion this morn­ing, fol­lowed by school-supply buy­ing, fol­lowed by FIX THE PRINTER NOW SO I CAN PRINT LIZ’S BIRTHDAY CARD fol­lowed by this.

I’ll be late tomor­row, too. Actu­ally, I’ll be gone tomor­row. Doing a lit­tle trav­el­ing this week­end, off to see the Trowel Tart in Wis­con­sin. I’m fly­ing. In case you were won­der­ing what it costs for a 75-minute flight from Detroit to Mil­wau­kee, the answer is: Too damn much. Northwest’s hereto­fore rea­son­able fares between its Mid­west­ern cities went pfft when it was swal­lowed by Delta. Still, it offers mul­ti­ple flights daily and the only non-stops, although I love to see what Travelocity’s bots can cob­ble together for me — sure, I’d love to go from Detroit to Mil­wau­kee via Atlanta and Hous­ton with a fly­ing time of 11 hours; and I’d save $20? Sign me up.

But never mind the cost — how often do you get to visit your best friend? Never often enough. Plus, a side trip to Madi­son is on tap, and that includes our other great pal, Dr. Frank. Who is now, a quick Google tells us, is on YouTube. Look at that mop of Irish hair. You’d never know his mother was Eye-talian.

So, with that, I make this a lame-ass fly-by. Let’s go right to some blog­gage:

Sto­ries you can’t make up, from the pharma beat: There’s a new drug to treat impo­tence. It’s made by a South Korean firm called Dong-A Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

As of late yes­ter­day after­noon, this guy was on track to be the next Susan Boyle, but what the hell, maybe you haven’t seen it yet. Most excru­ci­at­ing can­di­date inter­view ever.

While we’re on the topic of amus­ing videos, via Hank and Kim Sev­er­son, a fine col­lec­tion of Wendy’s train­ing videos from the ’80s. Go ahead and make fun, but remem­ber — that’s when Wendy’s had its mojo work­ing. Now? Well, Dave is surely spin­ning like a lathe.

Did you know the case that led to this week’s stem-cell rul­ing started with a com­plaint filed by the peo­ple behind the “snowflake babies” pub­lic­ity stunt? I’m sure that had noth­ing at all to do with it land­ing on the docket of a right-wing judge. No, not at all.

OK, I’m off to pack and groom. Have a great week­end, all.

A few peo­ple for­warded me this list today, about the worst bed­bug infes­ta­tions in the coun­try. To my amaze­ment, Cincin­nati tops the list. Colum­bus — such a clean city! — is right behind. Detroit is No. 5, Day­ton No. 9, and Bal­ti­more — hey, Lipp­man! Feel­ing itchy? — is No. 10.

For the record, I have never seen a bed­bug, or felt one’s bite. I know they’re a prob­lem in New York (No. 7), but until I read this, I never dreamed they were mov­ing west. I blame washed-out Brook­lyn hip­sters leav­ing Williams­burg to move back in with mom and dad in Wor­thing­ton. Along with all their lit­tle friends!!!!!

The first per­son I knew who picked up sca­bies was gay. It was the ’70s, and we all know what that meant. He got sca­bies, then crabs, then hepati­tis, then AIDS, and that was that. But it was the sca­bies that freaked me out. I knew the chances of me ever hav­ing unpro­tected anal sex with a stranger were pretty damn slim, but you could get sca­bies — he told me, scratch­ing his arm — from sit­ting on the wrong couch. Yikes.

Alan had a friend who got the same thing in a Motel 6 (he swears), and for years on our many trav­els by car, he refused to even con­sider stop­ping there. (The prices for more respectable lodg­ings in Santa Fe changed his mind, and we found the Motel 6 there to be nicer than many Hol­i­day Inns.)

Every night I troll the nation’s news­pa­pers and wire ser­vices for health news, and I am here to tell you: From micro­scopic to smashable-with-one’s-foot, them bugs is gonna get us all. What doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger, and you can never kill them all. That said, I am never buy­ing another piece of uphol­stered fur­ni­ture used, and any­one who comes into my house is going to have to stand on the back steps for skin inspec­tion and fumi­ga­tion.

Which just dis­lodged a mem­ory from “Gone With the Wind” (the novel): As the sol­diers begin walk­ing home after the war’s end, Mammy polices hygiene at Tara, requir­ing all to strip naked and sub­mit to hav­ing their clothes go into “the b’iling pot,” while simul­ta­ne­ously scrub­bing down with lye soap, fol­lowed by a home-brewed dysen­tery rem­edy: “…one and all, they drank her doses meekly and with wry faces, remem­ber­ing, per­haps, other stern black faces in far-off places and other inex­orable black hands hold­ing med­i­cine spoons.” Such happy slaves. Such a fas­ci­nat­ing book.

When­ever I men­tion it, I teeter on the brink of a doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion. I’ll spare you and skip right to the blog­gage:

Why does every­one assume Mrs. Tiger Woods learned about his cat­tin’ ways via a super­mar­ket tabloid? I’ve sus­pected from the begin­ning the rev­e­la­tion came at her gynecologist’s office, deliv­ered with averted eyes and maybe involv­ing, yes, crabs. Not that she will tell you.

Rich peo­ple of means, please learn to grow old grace­fully. Plas­tic surgery might fool some peo­ple in your 40s, but down the road, it will only make you look like a mon­ster. Your wife, too.

With the retire­ment of the Crown Vic Police Inter­cep­tor, com­peti­tors are rush­ing to fill the mar­ket for police cars. The Freep show­cases the con­tenders, includ­ing one from an Indi­ana startup called Car­bon Motors. One of the police sta­tions around here has a tricked-out Mus­tang, and no, I don’t know why, either, except that they had the money and felt like spend­ing it.

Mean­while, the News looks at 75 years of the Chevy Sub­ur­ban. You have to really love cars to live in this town. Tol­er­ate ‘em, at least.

Thank God I have Tom and Lorenzo to tell me Isabel Toledo now has a line of shoes at Pay­less. And they include a fetch­ing fake-fur boot, just in case I need to make some extra coin on Wood­ward some grim win­ter.

Have a great hump day. I’ll be humpin’ copy, as usual.

So, every year in August there’s this thing in Detroit called the Dream Cruise. Peo­ple in clas­sic cars take over the out­side lanes of Wood­ward Avenue between 9 Mile and… I dunno, a few miles beyond that. Loop around, rev their engines, etc. It’s very grass-roots; it went on for a while before it became an offi­cial event, and they don’t even shut down Wood­ward to non-cruise traf­fic. (Although you’d be a fool to try to drive any­where in the area for the whole week­end.)

My friend Michael has his office on Wood­ward, and while in past years he’s avoided the place like nuclear waste, the last cou­ple he’s decided to embrace it, and hold a client-appreciation party Fri­day and Sat­ur­day. We went on Fri­day. You can find Dream Cruise photo gal­leries all over the web, but I give you but one:

I guess this is a 1957 Chevy cus­tom job. The year of my birth! A friend of mine got one — not the limo, heh — from her classic-car-crazy father, for her 16th birth­day. I drove it a cou­ple of times, although its totally cherry con­di­tion made me ner­vous; if my friend’s dad knew how much she liked to party dur­ing her lunch breaks, he never would have given her the keys. If you ever saw a turquoise and white ’57 Chevy tool­ing around north­west Colum­bus and envi­rons in the mid-’70s, that might have been us.

Truth be told, I don’t really get classic-car restora­tion and cul­ti­va­tion, but then, my hus­band has a boat, so I guess I really do.

A few years ago I did a story on hybrid dri­vers who “hyper­mile” — try to get the best pos­si­ble gas mileage out of their vehi­cles. One was a big domestic-industry booster, and drove a Ford Escape hybrid. He and a few of his hyper­mil­ing friends put a lit­tle unit together and rolled in the Dream Cruise, and got booed. He was gen­uinely stung, but I think he under­es­ti­mated the douch­i­ness of the local boost­ers. Clas­sics are a tricky busi­ness, as thou­sands of inher­i­tors of lov­ingly restored Packards or Model Ts have dis­cov­ered when they tried to put their dad’s baby on the mar­ket and were greeted with a parade of yawns. The classic-car buyer is middle-aged or older, and inter­ested in recap­tur­ing his lost youth, i.e., the car he seduced his girl­friend in when he was 17. For peo­ple who are 45 today, that was only circa 1980 or so, and I’m sorry, but for my money that’s when the magic went out of the mar­ket for good. The Honda Accord and Toy­ota Corolla of that era were great cars, but it’s hard to imag­ine any­one get­ting teary-eyed over a restora­tion of one today.

I once inter­viewed a guy in Fort Wayne with an under­ground garage, a real Bat­cave with secret entrance and every­thing. He was into Corvettes, and had at least a dozen down there, all medal-winning restora­tions. He didn’t do them him­self, but wrote the checks for oth­ers to do so, then drove away to the car shows. “Let me show you some­thing,” he said, rais­ing the hood on a 1970s-era mon­ster, one of those with a 427 or 454 or some ridicu­lous V-8 like that. He pointed to spots inside the engine com­part­ment with sloppy paint over­spray. There was also a big, splat­tery drop of a totally dif­fer­ent color.

“I saw that, and about hit the roof,” he said. “And my guy tells me, no, this was the qual­ity of work­man­ship for the mid-’70s. When they’re judg­ing, they look for those details.” Some­one tell the UAW. This cracked me up.

Lots of Corvettes in the Dream Cruise, need­less to say. About a mil­lion Mus­tangs, of every shape and size. Chrysler Ply­mouth Bar­racu­das, Super Bees, all that rumbly mus­cle stuff. I looked in vain for a ’66 Cor­vair, the car I learned to drive in, the car my mother (and I, and all of us) loved, the rea­son she never trusted Ralph Nader again. And then I looked at Kate. Bored. To. Death.

I have to teach this girl to drive a stick shift in a cou­ple years. It would be nice if she would show at least a min­i­mal inter­est in the ped­als.

So, some blog­gage? Let’s see what we’ve got:

The stem-cell rul­ing. Sigh. Con­ser­v­a­tive jurispru­dence — proudly march­ing back­ward! I hope this guy is right.

Min­ers trapped for months, a 60-mile-long traf­fic jam that hasn’t moved in more than a week — and so the human race plods onward.

Man, I’m gonna kill the inven­tor of the gas leaf blower. For now, though, I think I’ll go to the gym.

Last week the roof project finally con­cluded with a lit­tle mop-up: A guy came out to rehang the back-side gut­ters and install a cou­ple more down­spouts. Now our brand-new roof will shed water effi­ciently. I pause to stick my fin­ger in my cheek for a weak pop, and then I wave it in the air and say woo. Big effin’ deal.

This is new for me. In the past, I had pride of own­er­ship in almost every repair we made, to this house and to our last house. There’s some­thing about car­ing well for one’s house that’s always res­onated with me, but not so much any­more. It’s true that a new roof doesn’t sat­isfy like a new kitchen, but it still felt vir­tu­ous, because you were adding to your home’s resale value and main­tain­ing the prop­erty, which reflected on the neigh­bor­hood and made every­one rest a lit­tle eas­ier at night.

But our real estate mar­ket can be explained in a head­line which I swear I’ve read 400 times in the last five years in the local weekly: Has the mar­ket hit bot­tom? The answer is always the same: Maybe. The answer is always wrong, because the cor­rect answer is: No. So putting a roof on my house, which used to feel like for­go­ing a new dress to put the money in the bank, now feels more like tear­ing up hundred-dollar bills and throw­ing them into a flush­ing toi­let. And as long as we’re read­ing the Obvi­ous News, it seems I have lots of com­pany.

When this reces­sion is over — if it ever is — and the his­to­ri­ans start to sort it out, I don’t think any­thing will be as impor­tant, in the long run, as what it did to real estate. It’s still my main dis­ap­point­ment with Barack Obama, that he didn’t launch a big show trial on Jan. 21, 2009 that would have marched the Wall Street shit­heads who wrecked the hous­ing mar­ket before a tri­bunal of fore­closed and washed-out home­own­ers and a judge that was a com­bi­na­tion of, ohhhh, Al Sharp­ton and Judge Judy, say. His gavel would be over­sized, and he’d be wel­come to use it on both his bench and the defen­dants’ heads. A guil­lo­tine would be right out­side the court­room, and we’d use it until the rope broke and the blade dulled.

That, at least, would show we take the dam­age these peo­ple did seri­ously. Peo­ple who don’t own houses or apart­ments get a lit­tle impa­tient with this, and I guess I don’t blame them, but trust me: This crash hurts every­one, owner or not. For those of us who don’t live in the places where the mid­dle class are shut out of own­ing real estate — which is to say, most of the coun­try out­side of New York City, San Fran­cisco and much (but not all) of Los Ange­les — our houses are the most expen­sive thing we own, and are far more than a place to lay our weary heads and store our record col­lec­tions. The sale of my par­ents’ house pro­vided half their retire­ment stake. They were of the gen­er­a­tion that saved up for a down pay­ment, shopped care­fully, bought and stayed put. No flip­ping or trad­ing up for them. Three bed­rooms, 1.5 baths, bought in 1962 and sold in 1995, paid off and worth seven times what they paid for it.

My gen­er­a­tion was dif­fer­ent, but not Alan and me, so much. This is our sec­ond house, in our sec­ond city. I pay extra prin­ci­pal on our house every month, although God knows why. Opti­misti­cally, it’s worth half what we paid for it. Recov­ery of our pur­chase price might be 20 years off. The Detroit Metro has spe­cial prob­lems, to be sure, but the whole coun­try is sweep­ing up this wreck­age, and I will never for­get who caused it. (Hint: It wasn’t Bar­ney Frank.)

For years, for prac­ti­cally ever, real estate was the safest invest­ment you could make. My mom started bug­ging me to buy a condo as soon as I had a full-time job. You couldn’t lose. Every­body pays some­thing for hous­ing, after all, and you might as well pay your­self, plus the mort­gage inter­est is tax-deductible. And hous­ing always went up. It didn’t rise at the redonku­lous rates of recent years, but a steady 1 to 3 per­cent was a given.

And while I may be over­stat­ing the virtues of own­er­ship, I still firmly believe that a neigh­bor­hood of own­ers is, in the broad­est terms, bet­ter than one of renters. When you have a finan­cial stake in some­thing, you pay more atten­tion to it. You care if the local schools are good, even if you don’t have chil­dren in them. You don’t like it when your neigh­bors let their lawn go to prairie (unless every­one else’s is prairie, too). You keep the walks swept. It’s the broken-window the­ory on a less dra­matic scale, and for gen­er­a­tions, it worked.

But that’s only part of it. Local gov­ern­ments rely on property-tax rev­enues to pro­vide ser­vices. When prop­erty val­ues slide, so do tax receipts. We’re only begin­ning to see these prob­lems, cities let­ting streets go or not replac­ing light­ing or lay­ing off fire­fight­ers. And how long did I say it might be before recov­ery?

When you think about it, pretty much every­thing in our econ­omy is pred­i­cated on the idea that we’ll always be grow­ing. (Cer­tainly our health-care costs have done that.) A few flat years we can han­dle. But a full-on retreat, a crash? This is new for me. Last week our bor­ing old city coun­cil got a lit­tle testy over some penny-ante travel for the city clerk, noth­ing big, but one of the mem­bers grumped that they were look­ing at another enor­mous short­fall the fol­low­ing year, and nick­els and dimes add up. I can’t imag­ine what they’ll be fight­ing over in three years. Prob­a­bly which one gets to quit first.

My house, my mill­stone. But with a nice new roof.

So, a lit­tle blog­gage? Sure. Scott Rosen­berg at Salon looks at a phe­nom­e­non I’ve been see­ing in my news search­ing for a while now: The con­tent farms have gamed Google. Don’t be evil!

“I think his dad’s bought them off, some­times. He’s prac­ti­cally sell­ing dope out of the trunk of his car. I have to give him one thing, though. Watch­ing his per­son­al­ity dis­in­te­grate made me give up pot for good. Well, that and the fact the shit makes you so fuck­ing retarded these days. The last time I smoked was spring last year. I was so para­noid I walked out of the house and hid in that big wall of shrubs by the soror­ity house. And the girls started that god­damn singing. ‘Together for­ever. Together for­ever.’ Do you have any idea how much that sounds like you’re eaves­drop­ping on some kind of blood sac­ri­fice?” — why I added Coozledad’s blog to my RSS feed. I was miss­ing too many of these, or dis­cov­er­ing them days later.

Another great Tom-and-Lorenzo Mad Style entry, this one on Francine Han­son, played by the sub­lime Anne Dudek.

I’ve taken a casual inter­est in Stephanie Sey­mour ever since Alan and I dis­cov­ered the “Novem­ber Rain” video on MTV. One of us would always say to the other, “She dies in the end.” Today, the NYT did a silly-season Sun­day Styles front on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of her mar­riage to Peter Brant, described as “a taller, more dash­ing ver­sion of Buddy Hack­ett.” Her “Novem­ber Rain” role was described thusly: “she por­trayed a bride who dies.” Every­one remem­bers her!

So have a great Mon­day, all. Mine will, as usual, be busy.

Well, that’s one way to man up a mini­van.

I have a meet­ing at 9 a.m., which is to say, in eight hours. That’s fol­lowed by another meet­ing, an inter­view and the usual fam­ily oblig­a­tions. My plan to have Me-Time Fri­day — or even a quiet hour to update my stu­pid blog — just col­lapsed, but ah well. Here, have some blog­gage:

Roger Ebert, mak­ing a lit­tle list.

What is Chris­t­ian Recon­struc­tion­ism, and is that why Shar­ron Angle is such a nut case? (Some of these alarmists need to spend a year in Indi­ana. This stuff is just nor­mal there.)

As seen on TV, all you peo­ple just need to get your minds out of the gut­ter. It’s a shake weight, OK, you shake it. Sheesh.

I may not have much today, but maybe if MMJ­eff isn’t too busy, he can lay out the Holy Stones of Newark/Glenn Beck story in bul­let points. It’s actu­ally kind of fas­ci­nat­ing.

See you next week, all. Or maybe at Sat­ur­day morn­ing mar­ket.