A while back I believe I men­tioned that scrap­ping is so vir­u­lent here that busi­nesses have taken to secur­ing their rooflines — the fron­tier that must be crossed to get at the valu­able rooftop air con­di­tion­ers, with their coils of tasty, yummy cop­per — with razor wire. That was so 2006. Note the adap­ta­tion of this gas station/mini mart on the Grosse Pointe border:

A taste­ful cage. Adap­ta­tion! There’s hope for us yet.

In honor of Hell Week, more three-dot linkaliciousness:

First came the earth­quakes, great heav­ings of the earth the made a mock­ery of all man’s works. San­dra Bul­lock won the Oscar for wear­ing a blonde wig and sport­ing the worst south­ern accent since com­mu­nity the­ater. But mankind didn’t know it was doomed, that this truly was the first rum­blings of that rough beast, its hour come round at last, until sunspots drove all the Toy­otas crazy.

Roy Edroso is leav­ing New York for love. Best of luck, Roy. That must be some love to trade Brook­lyn for Bryan (Texas). He’ll still be blog­ging, at least until he gets shot in a bar for being a filthy hippie.

The New York Times busi­ness sec­tion takes a look at the sticky topic of fem­i­nine hygiene adver­tis­ing. Hmm. Well. OK:

Mer­rie Har­ris, global busi­ness direc­tor at JWT, said that after being informed that it could not use the word vagina in adver­tis­ing by three broad­cast net­works, it shot the ad cited above with the actress instead say­ing “down there,” which was rejected by two of the three net­works. (Both Ms. Har­ris and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the brand declined to spec­ify the networks.)

“It’s very funny because the whole spot is about cen­sor­ship,” Ms. Har­ris said. “The whole cat­e­gory has been very euphemistic, or pater­nal­is­tic even, and we’re say­ing, enough with the euphemisms, and get over it. Tam­pon is not a dirty word, and nei­ther is vagina.”

I’d like to see the script that uses that word before I pass judg­ment. Vagina may not be a dirty word, but it’s cer­tainly an overused one. I’ve car­ried one around every day of my life, but it only took about 18 months from the day you started hear­ing it on broad­cast tele­vi­sion to get thor­oughly sick of it, espe­cially at an all-star event like a Joan Rivers roast. I’m with the screen­writer of “The Oppo­site of Sex” on that one:

Lucia: Vagina, vagina, vagina. Does that word do any­thing for you?
Bill Tru­itt: I don’t think it does much for any­one, gay or straight.

The ad exec­u­tive com­plains you can’t say “vagina” in a tam­pon ad, but I’m not sure I want to see it there. “Buy Tam­pax tam­pons! Your vagina will thank you!” (That could work, actually.)

J.C. was clean­ing out his video archive and sent this. Always nice to remem­ber the good times.

This is the final week of dead­line mad­ness, so expect even more spot­ti­ness and fly-by updates, but hell, while I’ve got you…

I’m still amazed at how lit­tle cov­er­age the Mex­i­can drug wars are get­ting north of the bor­der, but maybe this lat­est story will goose some­thing along. An Amer­i­can con­sulate worker — preg­nant, no less — and her hus­band, gunned down in their car while their infant wailed from the back seat. From what I’ve read of the killers, I’m amazed they left the baby alone. The num­bers are aston­ish­ing: Ciu­dad Juarez had 2,000 mur­ders last year, the high­est in the world. The weekend’s death toll alone was 20.

It wouldn’t sur­prise me if this isn’t our next stu­pid mil­i­tary excur­sion — south of the bor­der. How fun that will be.

Else­where in the Bad News for the Forsee­able Future front is a story we’ve been see­ing in fits and starts for a while — call it Our Crum­bling Infra­struc­ture, Water Divi­sion. A few months before New Year’s Day, 2000, a 23-inch water main broke in Fort Wayne, and drained a big chunk of the city for a few hours before they could get it fixed. This was dur­ing the great Y2K scare. Remem­ber, apoc­a­lyp­tic fan­tasies are never a hard sell in Indi­ana, and rather than doing what they might have done — cope with a lit­tle hard­ship for half a day, or use it as an excuse to go out to din­ner in another part of the city — instead res­i­dents fell out for their local gro­ceries to strip the shelves of bot­tled water. Shov­ing matches broke out in store aisles; it was all a lit­tle unsettling.

That story points out what our paper did back then — these pipes are old. The main in Fort Wayne was made of cast iron, for cryin’ out loud. The one in the open­ing anec­dote of the story dates from the inven­tion of the light bulb. And while cast iron is sturdy and our water infra­struc­ture has cer­tainly done its ser­vice, well, noth­ing lasts forever:

Today, a sig­nif­i­cant water line bursts on aver­age every two min­utes some­where in the coun­try, accord­ing to a New York Times analy­sis of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency data.

Falling free­way bridges, crum­bling infra­struc­ture (much of it effec­tively ignored for a cen­tury), crazed mur­der­ous drug lords — have I brought you down enough on this dreary Mon­day? Yes? Well, maybe we need a kit­ten picture:

See you folks — with my red, glow­ing eyes — later.

The jour­nal­ism world, such as it is these days, is dis­cussing Randy Michaels’ no-no list. The for­mer radio wreck­ing ball, now the CEO — I get dizzy just think­ing about it — of the Tri­bune Co. issued a list of 119 words and phrases that must never, ever be heard again on the company’s news-talk sta­tion, WGN.

This story is being spun as a mon­u­men­tal case of micro­man­age­ment. It is. How­ever, it is noth­ing new. Every media out­let in the world has a boss who hands down these edicts; it’s one of the perks of the top job — cre­at­ing a world unto your­self in which no one ever, ever uses the word butt. The only thing that makes this case dif­fer­ent is the fact it’s the CEO doing it. In most com­pa­nies, espe­cially one like the Tri­bune Co., inevitably referred to as “trou­bled,” the CEO is — should be — the big-picture guy stand­ing on the bridge look­ing at the seas ahead, scan­ning for ice­bergs, not going below to instruct the coal-shovelers on the proper angle to wear their sailor caps. Not in Chicago, evi­dently. Ah, well.

Here’s the other thing: Michaels kind of has the right idea, or seems to have backed into the right idea. A big chunk of the entries on the list are the sort of trite jour­nalese that any­one with a sen­si­tive ear hates — clash with police, say, or went ter­ri­bly wrong, or one of my per­sonal pet peeves, diva. (I pre­fer the sim­pler bitch.) Look­ing at the rest of the list, though, I’m going to assume the smart part of it is sim­ply a case of a mon­key bang­ing out the first act of “Ham­let.” Remem­ber, this is Lee Abrams’ other half.

I’m going to fur­ther assume that many of these words never made it onto WGN’s air to begin with. Fatal death for instance. An intern might write that, but pre­sum­ably it wasn’t a rou­tine usage. Ditto bare naked and med­ical hos­pi­tal. I looked in vain for con­tro­ver­sial, and didn’t find it. He got famed in there, but not all its vari­a­tions; gen­er­ally, I fol­low the rule that if some­thing is famous, you don’t need to remind people.

The list also bans cer­tain words jour­nal­ists rely on to pro­tect our­selves — alleged, for one. Laypeo­ple hate that one. I think Eric Zorn tack­led it after the Flight 253 near-disaster, when a reader com­plained that we shouldn’t be call­ing Umar Farouk Abdul­mu­tal­lab the “alleged ter­ror­ist.” Zorn said yes we should, because that’s what we do — it’s not the news media’s job to decide when you’re guilty, but a court of law’s. If you don’t like it, you can always move to Afghanistan. Or tune your radio to WGN.

Zorn looked at the list, and the fall­out, on his blog yes­ter­day. In his defense, Michaels and his under­ling point out there’s noth­ing wrong with striv­ing for clear writ­ing, from the CEO all the way down. Agreed. But please explain, gents: What’s your prob­lem with pedes­trian? Is there a bet­ter word for a per­son walk­ing across a street? Or offi­cials? Don’t for­get that news writ­ing evolved the way it did because those sen­tences have to carry a lot of freight. It’s eas­ier for lis­ten­ers for a broad­caster to say “city offi­cials said” rather than “street depart­ment, police and fire and parks and recre­ation super­vi­sors said.”

With that, I go behind closed doors. I seem to have turned a cor­ner, health-wise, but not work-wise. So you all enjoy Fri­day, and I’ll see you in the wake of the weekend.

If you read news­pa­pers, you might notice the ombudsman/reader rep­re­sen­ta­tive is occa­sion­ally called upon to respond to the hand-wringers among the sub­scriber base who com­plain there is never any “good news” in the paper. This isn’t dif­fi­cult, because it’s sim­ply untrue. Every sin­gle edi­tion of vir­tu­ally every metro daily printed con­tains a heapin’ helpin’ of so-called good news, and except in extreme cases — 9/11, say — there is usu­ally at least one such story on the front page.

They never answer the obvi­ous follow-up ques­tion: Why would any­one want to read nice sto­ries about brave Boy Scouts when you can watch the video of the bridal shop brawl — a story that comes with a great, made-for-tabloid name — on YouTube? I don’t know much, but I do know this: Right now, a pro­ducer from “Bridezil­las” is speed-dialing that fam­ily and pray­ing some­one else didn’t get to her first.

Why would you want to read about upright pub­lic ser­vants, when you can read about dis­graced for­mer Detroit city coun­cil pres­i­dent Mon­ica Cony­ers, who went to court to be sen­tenced yes­ter­day and unleashed the furies. To be sure, you could won­der if this even counts as news, as Monica’s furies are rarely leashed at all; she can’t even check into a hotel with­out the police being called. After try­ing to with­draw the guilty plea she nego­ti­ated and signed eight months ago, she threw this into the mix: “My hus­band is an older man,” and pre­sum­ably inca­pable of car­ing for two teenagers (although he retains chair­man­ship of the House Judi­ciary Com­mit­tee). John Cony­ers didn’t show, by the way, although he was said to be in his office in the same build­ing when the hear­ing was tak­ing place. Yet another strange mar­riage in a world full of them.

Speak­ing of which, I won­der what Mrs. Massa is think­ing these days. I met a gay vet­eran in a bar in Key West once. Which branch? I asked. “The Navy, of course,” he replied. “Of course?” Weeks at sea on a float­ing tub full of men. Draw your own conclusions.

Well, pals o’ mine, I wish I could tell you the Buckley’s did the trick, but it didn’t. I feel as awful today as I did yes­ter­day, but now I have twice as much work to do, so I must away. A lit­tle bloggage:

I’m won­der­ing if Kate is going to want to see “The Run­aways.” My guess is, not if it means sit­ting next to her mother while Dakota Fan­ning sings “Cherry Bomb.” The whole movie looks a lit­tle, uh, mature.

This is very obscure, but I had no idea: Lynda Barry went out with him? Really? Really.

God, I feel like crap. Please to for­give. We’ll try again tomorrow.

A few weeks ago, we bun­nyproofed Kate’s room and started let­ting Ruby in. She imme­di­ately estab­lished the spare bed as her favorite chillin’ spot. At first I thought it was for the view from the win­dow, but then it occurred to me: Cam­ou­flage.

She spent the first week or so beat­ing the crap out of all the stuffies, butting and nib­bling and doing her bunny-punch (a sur­pris­ingly effec­tive move, not to be con­fused with the rab­bit punch). Now that she’s estab­lished her­self as the dom­i­nant doe of the war­ren, she can rest in regal peace, which is what she does up there for hours on end. She will accept your trib­utes now. Make them leafy and green.

Overnight, my ill­ness has taken a turn, and I’m off to find some­thing called Buckley’s. It’s on the rec­om­men­da­tion of one of our stu­dent jour­nal­ists, who says, “You will curse me when you take it and bless me later.” Hmm. Well, I’m out of Nyquil and Dayquil now, any­way. I’ll try anything.

If I don’t find it in the first three U.S. phar­ma­cies I try, I’ll head down­town and cross the bor­der. (It’s Cana­dian, and you will not be sur­prised to learn that one of the first busi­nesses you see when you emerge from the tun­nel is a phar­macy. Gee, I won­der why?) If noth­ing else, adding eight bucks in tolls and an inter­na­tional excur­sion will guar­an­tee that I feel bet­ter tomor­row, on the same the­ory that says the food comes right after you light a cig­a­rette, the funny sound dis­ap­pears when the mechanic is lis­ten­ing, etc.

A lit­tle blog­gage to start the discussion:

The double-chinned dough­boy behind this story — Marc Thiessen — was on the Daily Show last night. You know some­one is a bas­tard when even my mild-mannered hus­band starts jeer­ing at the TV.

While we’re on the sub­ject, no doubt Jihad Jane will be today’s talk­ing point at Fox News. She is said to have made her al-Q con­nec­tions through that covert web­site, YouTube. I haven’t seen a mugshot that screams CRAZY this loud since, um, Amy Bishop.

(By the way, has “I am Dr. Amy Bishop!” become a catch phrase in your house­hold, too? It just seems to work for so many domes­tic situations.)

OK, then. Exit, cough­ing weakly.

The state of state bud­gets all over the coun­try is the same — sea of red ink, soon to be joined by more oceans of carmine blood, as pro­grams and jobs and salaries and the like are slashed in a des­per­ate effort to keep up.

(This makes our con­ser­v­a­tive friends very happy, of course. But let’s leave that argu­ment for another day. Actu­ally, let’s not have that argu­ment at all. BO-ring.)

Here in Michi­gan, where blood and red ink and dys­func­tion and all sorts of malev­o­lent forces col­lide on a daily basis, they’re talk­ing about cut­ting the Pure Michi­gan cam­paign. Which is? Glad you asked:

I know some of you have video blocked, so just so you know, Pure Michi­gan is the state’s tourism cam­paign. Nar­rated by native Tim Allen, these are 30-second spots tout­ing the state’s beauty to poten­tial vaca­tion­ers around the coun­try. But it’s more than that — the ads air on local TV as well. Full of swoop­ing heli­copter shots of blue lakes and white sand and green forests, it’s not just a lure to spend your dol­lars in-state, but a form of ther­apy for a state that’s beaten down, but still has an Upper Penin­sula. I always watch them when they come on, and not because one fea­tured the chan­nel in front of my friends’ sum­mer cot­tage. (The one whose depths con­tain the crude rub­ber toy exclu­sively employed for humil­i­at­ing pho­tographs of those who fell asleep before the oth­ers at the nightly par­ties? you’re won­der­ing. Why yes. And who hurled it there, after star­ring in a par­tic­u­larly ran­cid series? You’ll have to see if he ‘fesses up in the comments.)

The total bud­get for the cam­paign is $30 mil­lion. The Senate-approved bud­get bill whacks that by half, led by a sen­a­tor from Novi who is also behind the move to slash or elim­i­nate the film­mak­ing tax credit that’s led to so much lights-camera-action around here of late. She’s what Cool Hand Luke would call a hard case. The dis­cus­sion, as you can imag­ine, is about whether the ads are cost-effective, and var­i­ous resort-country busi­ness­peo­ple are step­ping up to tell the media yes, it boosted busi­ness. My ques­tion is, but are they effec­tive as ther­apy? Is there ever a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for feel-good spend­ing by a gov­ern­men­tal body? Espe­cially in a time when we could use a lit­tle good feeling?

The “I Love New York” cam­paign, you might recall, was launched in some dark hours for that state, dur­ing its largest city’s Travis Bickle period. Times Square was all porn palaces, the sub­ways smeared with graf­fiti. I’m sure some pub­lic ser­vant there said pro­claim­ing love for this place in ads run­ning in Cleve­land and Atlanta was a waste of tax­payer dol­lars. Who remem­bers them now? And yet the logo — designed by Mil­ton Glaser, pro bono — endures today and is among the most suc­cess­ful brands in adver­tis­ing his­tory. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. and Mrs. Bean Counter.

Michigan’s a pretty beaten-down place at the moment, but we still have our looks. And our Upper Penin­sula. It would be nice if our leg­is­la­tors would remem­ber that once in a while.

OK, blog­gage:

While we’re talk­ing video, the Butt Drugs com­mer­cial. Which shows the best of Indi­ana. Snicker.

Lind­say Lohan makes a des­per­ate plea for atten­tion. It’ll prob­a­bly work. It’s work­ing now.

And now, off to work.

How well I recall those hal­cyon days when news­pa­pers had space and occa­sion­ally put some­thing in it. The wires were like our own pri­vate inter­net, bring­ing the won­ders of the world to our desks. One day, it brought a lengthy Sun­day piece over the tran­som, an excerpt from a new book, “The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly Amer­ica Cheats the Childless.”

It was set up as a day in the life of a child­less woman, let’s call her Betty Bar­ren, as she nav­i­gates her hos­tile world. Ter­ri­ble things hap­pen to her. She has to cover for a co-worker who left early to watch her kid’s soc­cer game. Another one is out on mater­nity leave and it was recently announced that when she returns, she’ll be work­ing reduced hours, which equals more work for Betty. Betty finally is able to get away from this hor­ri­ble place — nearly suf­fo­cated by all the feath­erbeds lying around — and stops at a drug­store for headache relief. She pulls into a space, only to see the sign: Reserved for expec­tant moth­ers. Not that she has much money to spend on Tylenol, any­way, the par­ents hav­ing sucked up all the tax credits.

It went on at some length like this. Poor Betty! Is she the unluck­i­est child­less woman in the world? No, just typical.

As an intro­duc­tion to the nascent social move­ment some­times known as the Child-Free, it was an eye-opener. I did a lit­tle inter­net research, the inter­net being where a lot of them hung out, bitch­ing on Usenet boards about all those things Betty endured, and about a mil­lion more. They had their own vocab­u­lary. Chil­dren were spawn, sprogs or crotch­fruit. Par­ents are breed­ers, of course. There were long, long threads on whether this or that celebrity or super­model had lost hot­ness since she sprogged. (The con­sen­sus, inevitably, was that she had.) There were self-righteous rants about not tax­ing the frag­ile earth with more destruc­tive humans, inter­spersed with whin­ing about why they can’t stay home from work when their pets are sick. (They all had pets. They called them “fur chil­dren.”) There were even a few beefs I could absolutely get with, about mis­be­hav­ing tod­dlers at sym­phony orches­tras and the like. But the over­whelm­ing impres­sion was of a group of peo­ple car­ry­ing a dou­ble load of resent­ment and free time. Yes, even with all those unpaid extra hours at work, cov­er­ing for the parents.

“The Baby Boon” excerpt was of a piece with this, with the same tone of hec­tor­ing indignation.

(I should pause at this point and say that I don’t want to make this a debate over the choice of whether or not to have a child, which is about as per­sonal as it gets and, ulti­mately, not very inter­est­ing. There are rewards and costs for both choices. I enjoy many friends and acquain­tances in both camps, and love them all. And in case you’re won­der­ing, every anec­dote about Betty Bar­ren can be matched with one from the other side, about Patty Party and her ten­dency to show up for work late after a night on the town, etc. The tax pol­icy, etc. I’ll leave for another day, although the late jour­nal­ist Mar­jorie Williams took the book apart rather ably here.)

Any­way, after read­ing Betty’s sad story and a gloss over the ter­ri­bly unfair cul­ture and gov­ern­ment poli­cies that sup­port this state of affairs, I scrolled back up to see who had writ­ten this screed. Eli­nor Bur­kett. The name stayed with me.

So when the lady in pur­ple hip-checked her part­ner away from the micro­phone last night at the Oscars, surely the rud­est dis­play in some time, I knew there was a rea­son her name sounded famil­iar. Her speech was mush, by the way, but I love the look on his face. You will not be sur­prised to learn they’re not speak­ing. Salon has a back­grounder.

And if you’re still inter­ested, John Scalzi’s “Trolling the Child­free” is sort of mag­nif­i­cent. Oh, and I always park in those “reserved for expec­tant moth­ers” spaces. They’re not enforced by law, and my sore knee fre­quently both­ers me more than a late-term preg­nancy ever did. If any­one ever chal­lenges me, I plan to say, “The doc­tor just called. It’s twins! I’m so happy!”

So how was your week­end? Mine was OK, except for get­ting sick with some sort of chesty/bronchial thing. I swing between 100-degree fevers and soak­ing sweats, which isn’t pleas­ant. But I’ll survive.

I think.

Ever since we lost our best buddy last sum­mer, my sister-in-law has been send­ing us what­ever shots of the dog she turns up in her vast files. (She’s a pho­tog­ra­pher.) This one came to Kate in her Valentine’s Day card. I think she’s try­ing to kill me:

Nine­teen ninety-nine. What a year. Our girl was out of dia­pers, the econ­omy was strong, a Demo­c­rat was pres­i­dent and hardly any­one had heard of al-Qaeda.

And look at that face. (Whichever face you like.)

Not much this morn­ing, but maybe later. Talk amongst your­selves, eh?

The head­line I’ve been wait­ing to write: Cause of death is elec­tro­cu­tion, but not by urine.

Thanks! Noted.

I defy you to read the first three para­graphs of this Laura Berman col­umn from the Detroit News and not read the rest:

The pres­i­dent of the Detroit school board, Otis Mathis, is wag­ing a legal bat­tle to steer the aca­d­e­mic future of 90,000 chil­dren, in the nation’s lowest-achieving big city district.

He also acknowl­edges he has dif­fi­culty com­pos­ing a coher­ent Eng­lish sen­tence. Here’s a sam­ple from an e-mail he sent to friends and sup­port­ers on Sun­day night, uncor­rected for errors of spelling, gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion and usage. It begins:

If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emer­gency finan­cial man­ager for Detroit Pub­lic Schools, move Mark Twain to Boyn­ton which have three times the num­ber seats then stu­dents and was one of the reason’s he gave for clos­ing school to many empty seats.

The col­umn goes on to describe Mathis’ epic bat­tles with the writ­ten word, ask­ing whether his abil­ity to suc­ceed in spite of it (he has a bachelor’s degree from Wayne State, but it took more than a decade to get, because he couldn’t pass the Eng­lish pro­fi­ciency exam) is good news or bad. There’s no clear answer, but it made me think about writ­ing and what it takes to do it a) well and/or b) com­pe­tently. You can imag­ine my feel­ings about it; look­ing back on my roman­tic his­tory, I don’t think I ever had a seri­ous rela­tion­ship with a man who couldn’t turn a phrase. They var­ied widely in for­mal edu­ca­tion, but they could all write a decent let­ter or inscribe a book with style. It’s not like I went look­ing for them; it just worked out that way. I doubt a math PhD would marry some­one who couldn’t bal­ance the fam­ily checkbook.

Over many years, I’ve man­aged to over­come my belief that bad spelling is a char­ac­ter flaw, and friends, that has taken some doing. I’ve known enough very smart peo­ple who could barely spell cat and dog that I’ve grown into the belief it’s a form of learn­ing dis­or­der. (First, I have to believe you actu­ally tried to learn, how­ever.) One of my col­lege boyfriends handed me a gro­cery list once: chese, pasto (penny), letus. I still get an occa­sional e-mail from him — funny but atro­ciously spelled. I don’t think he even sees the mis­takes, and has the sense to rely on proof­read­ers for his busi­ness correspondence.

Oth­ers would feel the same way about me, and my math­e­matic illit­er­acy. I can do the big four — add, sub­tract, mul­ti­ply and divide — but Kate, in sev­enth grade, knows bet­ter than to ask me for help on her math home­work; she out­ran me with num­bers a year or two ago.

But at least I’m not in charge of any­one else’s money, or doing cal­cu­la­tions of load-bearing pil­lars. Mathis is on a school board, its pres­i­dent. And he’s a liv­ing embod­i­ment of that con­tem­po­rary night­mare — the diploma-holding (degree-holding!) grad­u­ate who’s func­tion­ally illiterate.

Of course, Detroit is a spe­cial case:

“We picked him (to be pres­i­dent) because we thought he has the intel­li­gence for it and the tol­er­ance for dis­rup­tive behav­ior,” says Rev­erend David Mur­ray. “He has that type of calm.”

This is a dis­trict where board meet­ings often fea­ture “dis­rup­tive behavior” — a citizen’s group orga­nized a grape-throwing inci­dent on one mem­o­rable occa­sion — so maybe this is a spe­cial case. But I doubt it. Grosse Pointe’s most recent board pres­i­dent has a blog that he not only writes him­self, it con­tains his own com­plex but under­stand­able analy­ses of finan­cial doc­u­ments. You could hardly pick a bet­ter exam­ple of how far apart two adja­cent dis­tricts can be in this strange land of south­east Michigan.

OK, folks. Back to the grind. I’m a word-churning machine for the next fort­night, and the warmup has lasted long enough.