A commenter below wants to discuss the Sopranos. Fine with me — so do I. And fortunately for me, I think Amy sums up the season pretty well right here, so I don’t have to.

But I will say, even I was stunned by last night. David Chase has thrown it down for the last time: This man is truly evil. Enjoy him if you must, but we’re gonna make you squirm.

Every so often, when I’m feeling self-pitying and a little drunk, I’ll tell someone that my greatest regret in life is not having more children. Only the boldest among them ever point out that whenever I’m actually in charge of more than one child, I behave like Courtney Love with PMS.

This weekend was Mass Garage Sale weekend back in Fort Wayne, when two adjoining neighborhood associations urge all members to sell all the crap in their house. The association buys classified ads, and at the crack of 8 a.m. the whole neighborhood fills with crap-seekers from all over northeast Indiana. (To understand why this is one of the two or three social events of the year in my neighborhood, it would help to be a Hoosier, but if you can imagine, you know.) Kate’s been bugging us to let her invite her Ann Arbor friend Sophia to spend some time with us in the Fort, and it seemed like this was the perfect opportunity. We’d sell our crap and hang the screens on Saturday, then head up to the lake on the way home, weather permitting. We’d have takeout and cookout and ice cream at Zesto, and oh what a time we’d have.

And, truth to tell, we did. But I’d forgotten the most important rule of parenthood: That one child has the maturity and IQ of one child, but two children have the maturity and IQ of half a child, and when you throw one more in, well, forget it. I was reminded of the days of Taryn, Kate’s playmate in the years 4 and 5, who would openly speculate that they could probably throw themselves in front of passing cars without bodily harm, because they could hang onto the bumper whooping down the street, the way the characters in Warner Brothers cartoons do. I gave each of the girls $5 and told them to go hit the sales until they’d spent it all. Moments later, Kate appeared in tears — she’d lost her fiver “and now Sophia will get all the stuff.” This was only the first eruption in what would become a long, hot day, made more so by the passing parade of crap-seekers.

Oh, look, here’s one: My age, minivan with bad muffler, teenager in the passenger seat. She chooses three clothing items thisclose to the rag bag, then goes back to the van to get her 75 cents. I follow her, to save her a return trip. The back of the van is a forest of car seats. “Wow,” I say. “How many you packin’ there?”

“Five,” she says. I ask if she’s providing daycare. Nope, that’s her grand-nephew, grand-niece, grandchild, two-year-old and I forget who the other kid was — maybe the fifth was the teen. Just another action-packed life in the Hoosier state.

Things improved, though, and we saw “Shrek 2″ and got ice cream and doughnuts and ended up at the lake, where my first paddle back to the Puddle — a sub-basin cut off from most boat traffic by its narrow channel — was a veritable Marlon Perkins special. Sighted: A beaver (“Keep up the good work narrowing that channel!”), enough enormous leatherback turtles to cast a disaster movie, snakes, a pair of swans with one on the nest and tons of red-winged blackbirds. I got close enough to flush some nesting females, and saw their nests, which appear to be wispy grass cups held in the tenuous grasp of waving cattails. So much of nature seems to have such a tenous grasp in the world, it’s a miracle any reproduction gets done. Nevertheless, the blackbirds defended their nests as valiantly as the swans.

If you want to see action, you can go to a garage sale, or a swamp, two habitats with a wealth of observable behavior.

Is it foolish to post your AIM ID on a blog like this? Will it get you, instead of the occasional howdy from readers, just a bunch of come-see-my-webcam-I’m-down-to-my-PANTIES!!!!! IM spam? I did instant-messaging back when I was on AOL, and while it was interesting at first, ultimately I decided it was just a different form of CB radio, and gave it up.

But when I went to Mac OSX, with its much-improved iChat program, I realized I was wrong. I’m a writer with small-c catholic interests in capital-W Writing, which is to say, I’m interested in how we figure out each form for ourselves — how fiction is different from nonfiction, which is different written letters, which are different from e-mail, which is different from instant messaging, which is different from text messages on your cell phone, and all the rest of it. I like the way IM chats fill a niche between e-mail and phone calls, how you can do it while you’re doing something else. I also like the dog picture that’s my current IM avatar.

Which sounds, I realize, like a bunch of masters-thesis crapola to justify my occasional enjoyment of internet chatting. Nevertheless.

If you’re looking for me online, e-mail and I’ll send it. But right now I’m going for a bike ride.

…the short piece I wrote about screenwriting for the Journal of the Knight-Wallace Fellows is up.

(This runs counter to my naturally modest and exceedingly self-effacing nature, plus the picture shows the full effect of months of eating like a starving hog and hours of sweaty frolic on the Argentine pampas. I’ll have you know I’m exercising daily and eating stuff like turkey in hopes of getting reacquainted with my actual chin.)

Remember that scene in “All the President’s Men,” where Jason Robards/Ben Bradlee says, “We stand by our story.” Yeah, it’s fading for me, too. Maybe, someday, it’ll be gone forever. The better for me.

I’m just reading about an editorial in a Massachusetts newspaper, the Lowell Sun. The Sun published a photograph of two men kissing, to go with a story on the same-sex marriages happening there. Some people called to complain and others called to cancel their subscriptions, so what do you think happened?

1) The Lowell Sun’s version of Jason Robards said, “Tell ‘em we stand by our story,” or

2) They published a cringing editorial apologizing for the terrible offense.

You know the answer. Here’s an excerpt: The Sun photo wasn’t intended to shock readers. Rather it was to inform them of the freight train arriving at “Massachusetts Station”, whether we like it or not. Soon that train will depart for other parts of the nation, and arrive with similar force.

If The Sun could turn back the clock, we most likely would select a less intrusive photograph not because the original photo was wrong but because it didn’t fit the go-slow approach we’ve endorsed for a better understanding of this sensitive issue.

Now, I didn’t see the photo. Maybe the kiss was really out-there. Maybe one guy was bent backwards, his throat bulging from the pressure of the other guy’s tongue waaaaay down there, plus someone’s hand was on someone’s ass and leather was involved. Maybe one guy was in Elizabeth Taylor drag. Who the hell knows? But I’d be willing to bet the picture was like dozens we’ve seen since this began in San Francisco earlier in the year — two men exchanging a rather tame kiss on the courthouse steps.

Anyway, that’s not the point. Anyway, it sort of ties in with what people have been saying lately about newspapers v. internet news sources, although it sort of doesn’t, either. (Can I see the hands of everyone ready to entertain the idea that some people searching for the Nick Berg beheading video aren’t looking for evidence of Islamofascism but just might be in the same demographic that made “Faces of Death” such a barn-burner? Thought so.)

Anyway, this was the gist of my Fellowship application, all those months ago: That newspapers have lost their nerve, and when you lose your nerve, you don’t have much more to lose. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve been asked, in a newsroom, “Do you think this will offend our readers?” I wouldn’t be looking for a job today — I’d be living in my beachfront villa in Barbados. And it wasn’t over gay kissing and beheading videos, either; one editor fretted that running a photo of an Olympic beach-volleyball player going up for a spike would offend our readers, because her shorts had ridden up enough to show a sliver of her ass. It just never ended; for years we had an across-the-board no-dead-bodies-ever policy, which had a way of being suspended if the dead bodies were really far away. (In other words, we didn’t run the Pulitzer Prize-winning, iconic photo of the Oklahoma City bombing, but we did run an utterly gruesome picture of dead bodies in the Moscow theater after the hostage siege.) We didn’t run “grief” photos. We dashed out words like “hell” and “damn.” We trod on eggshells.

Now, it’s not as simple as just “throw the stuff in the paper no matter the content.” Your daily newspaper is one of the few general-audience publications left in the household, and in trying to offer something for every niche, it has to be careful. What offends Grandma doesn’t offend her grandson, but more grandmas than grandsons are subscribers these days, and so nine grannies on the phone to the editor can swing a hell of a lot more weight than the membership of the AARP in Congress.

Only guess what? Granny is dying, and her grandson isn’t taking over her subscription, and all over the country editors are tearing their hair out, holding meetings where everyone agrees: We need more pop music coverage in the paper! When the answer, in my opinion anyway, is really very simple: Lead with confidence you’re providing an indispensible product. (Also, this part is very important: Provide an indispensible product.) If Granny calls about the kissing men on Page One, you say, “Ma’am, this is what’s happening in your community. This is our job. Thanks for your call.” None of this go-slow crap. You can’t edit your newspaper to be inoffensive. The news is offensive.

If you’re now thinking, why should I listen to you, you big Hoosier loser?, well, go ahead. You can see where this bold thinking has led me in my brilliant career. It’s just something to consider.

On to other topics:

During my stay in the undisclosed location, I picked up Jane Smiley’s new book, “A Year at the Races.” It’s all about horses, and as a middle-age-horse-crazy gal myself, I’m enjoying it very much. You might, too.

However, avoid “Something’s Gotta Give” if at all possible. That’s unless you’re doing a master’s thesis on the fine art of the phoned-in performance across the board — actors, screenwriter, director, everyone — in which case it’s your foundation text. Roger gave it three and a half? God help us all.

The sky was so blue at 7 a.m. it was just…bluuuuuuuuuee. I’m talking unearthly. What can I do to honor such blueness, I thought. Decided: Go to history class. The KWF history subgroup’s fave prof is having a summer-term lecture on the History of Warfare, 1500 to Present; I thought I’d drop in.

Unfortunately, I remembered the day (MWF), the hour (9-11) and the building (chemistry), but not the room. I wandered through two floors of lecture halls before giving up and sending an e-mail from the Chemistry Learning Center, yet another computer resource available to anyone who walks in and looks like she knows what she’s doing. Not that I know what I’m doing in a chem lab. The warning signs on the doors — DANGER ACETYLENE DANGER HIGH MAGNETISM DANGER EXPLOSIVES — are enough to send me running from the building.

So I didn’t get two hours of war history. But just the act of pedaling down to campus, of riding across the Diag again — oh, it was a bittersweet feeling. I loved college the first time around, and loved it more this time.

(Just got a reply from the prof: The midterm’s Friday, and Monday’s lecture starts the opening campaigns of WWI. On the one hand, I’m not surprised — the guy does have a no-nonsense, move-the-ball-down-the-field teaching style. But I’m disappointed I missed 400 years in three weeks. Talk about snoozing/losing.)

Now the day is fleeting, and I have to get some work done. In the meantime, amuse yourself with this oh-for-God’s-sake angle on the death of Tony Randall. You’d have to look pretty hard to find an obit that ignored “The Odd Couple” to single out, oh, a lesser example of Randall’s work, but fortunately, I did the looking for you.

OK, it’s wrong to laugh at another’s misfortune. And the behavior in these circumstances doesn’t exactly seem…rude. But don’t you wish that more people answering their cell phones would find them suddenly bursting into flames?

I mean, you know, like at movie theaters. Or in class.

UPDATE: Oh, poop. The link requires registration. Here’s the money part:

New Paltz � Matt Erhorn was pumping gas into his car at the Route 299 Courtesy Mobil station at about 9:30 p.m. Thursday when he reached into his pocket and answered his ringing cell phone.

���Erhorn refused treatment at the scene and didn’t answer his phone yesterday.

If you want to know the technical part — why answering the phone set off the gas fumes — then go ahead and register.

From the beginning, the worst thing about the Abu Ghraib affair was this: That every humiliated prisoner puts scores of innocent American troops in heightened danger. That while Leash Girl might be back in Fort Bragg safely gestating her little Damian, what she left behind makes her fellow soldiers that much more unsafe. Anyone who thinks we aren’t thisclose to a barracks bombing or some other mass atrocity as a result of this simply isn’t paying attention. Nick Berg could well be only a warmup.

So what’s the reaction in the whistle-blower’s hometown? Oh, they have their priorities straight:

“They can call him what they want,” says Mike Simico, a veteran visiting relatives in Cresaptown. “I call him a rat.”

Sorry for the lack of activity around here. I feel like a deflated balloon these days. The hours are empty, and yet strangely purposeful: Find the next thing. Only the next thing is like something in Tony Soprano’s half-hour dream sequence last night — in the firm grasp of someone I’ve whacked. No, that’s not quite it. Still.

I start the day making a list: 1) Exercise. 2) Find the next thing. With the weather finally warm, the first is easy. Number 2 gives me problems.

Don’t read anything into that last sentence.

We opened the lake cottage yesterday, and got the usual early-season bad news — who’s bought what, etc.. A nearby shack, unoccupied for years but on a nice lot, finally sold for a preposterous price, which means we’ll likely have a new whiny rich neighbor building a horrible huge house nearby. I wonder what he’ll do when he discovers he has about six inches of water going out 50 feet or more — dredge, probably. Or try to. Then, when the DNR denies his permits, whine about his property rights.

Can you tell I’m feeling peevish?

The brown drake mayflies are hatching with a vengeace, in numbers not seen in years. A simple walk across the lawn kicks up clouds of them, which then land in your hair, on your nose, on your glasses. Houses and trees are covered with them. It’s really kind of cool. Years ago a friend of mine in the U.P. invented the Cedarville Sling — gin and Squirt with a hexagenia mayfly on the rim of the glass.

Speaking of peevish, I’ve been wondering what the reaction was to the Catholic bishop who said parishioners who vote for pro-choice politicians should not receive communion until they repent, although, God knows, that probably won’t be enough: “It might take a public recantation,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “There is no sin that is unforgivable” but Catholics shouldn’t vote for candidates who support abortion rights and “then slip off into the confessional.”

Oh, and that’s not just abortion rights, by the way. He also singled out euthanasia, stem-cell research and gay marriage. I’d imagine birth contol is on the list, too, but he didn’t say anything about it, so never mind.

From reading Amy’s blog I know the conservative Catholic reaction, but I was interested in the rank and file. So I asked cradle Catholic Dave:

I can’t believe there are still any Catholics with minds of their own left.� I can’t understand why anybody is still taking communion from these creeps.� I don’t understand why anybody even sets foot inside a Catholic church anymore.� I can’t imagine how that bishop can have the gall to speak as though he has any moral authority left and I can’t imagine how anyone in his diocese keeps from laughing in his face.

I don’t know how many other Catholics feel the way I do, but our church is full every Sunday.� I’m guessing that a lot of the men are there for the same reason I am, to make their wives happy, to present a united front for the kids.� But I don’t know.� I see a lot of guys who look like they’re really praying.� My wife won’t talk about it with me, other than to say that the priests don’t represent the church.� But if they don’t, then what’s the church?� The ladies in the Rosary Society?� They’d love that.� Power hungry harpies!

Glad to know I’m not the only peevish one around here lately. Off to the bike lane and the iPod — anything to get Diane Rehm off the soundtrack, which will no doubt help my mood.

We like precise weather information in our household, so I can tell you what the conditions were in our back yard at 10:30 a.m. today — 70 degrees, relative humidity 93 percent. For those of you who live outside the humidity zone, I can tell you this means the effort of lifting a cup of coffee to your lips causes sweat to drip off your nose. I had a cafe date with Fatih and Idil, and wanted to arrive exercised and showered. I arrived sweaty and late.

Oh, well. This didn’t stop Fatih from his customary over-the-top Turkish greeting, calling me, for the millionth time, “my favorite American.” The cafe owner, a fellow middle easterner, was unimpressed: “My favorite American is Julia Roberts.”

Turkey isn’t really the Mideast, is it? But it’s not really Europe, either. If nothing else, I have my acquaintance with Fatih, Yavuz, Idil and Nursen to thank for our family’s latest catch phrase for when we end up in the weird hinterlands (lately, any place outside Ann Arbor): We are in eastern Turkey now.

What a nice visit we had, a little post-Fellowship fellowship. They’re awaiting the birth of their little American citizen, I’m awaiting the end of Kate’s school year. None of us have jobs — they’ll be looking when they return to Istanbul, aided by the absurdly low salaries paid to nannies there. Evidently you can hire a Moldovan woman to care for your child, clean and cook for about $300 a month. If you’re lucky, she might have a medical degree. Yes, your own personal five-day-a-week pediatrician and household chef.

“I don’t know if I’d like a pediatrician vacuuming my carpet,” I said. “I’d think she’d have special reason to be irritated.”

“No, they’re the nice ones,” Fatih said. “The greedy ones become Natashas.” (A Natasha is a prostitute, and you can probably guess why they call them that.)

The wind is howling — tornado warnings north of here, severe t-shorms coming this way. So let’s round up a few links, for the bare handful of readers who come our way over the weekend:

Poor Diane Kruger: Tall, thin, beautiful, but not beautiful enough. Slate explains the problem Helen of Troy poses for casting directors. I can’t imagine looking like her and then having to read a bunch of reviews written by nose-picking movie critics, complaining I don’t have what it takes to launch a thousand ships. She looks plenty pretty enough to me, although she certainly doesn’t look Greek.

The Boston Globe Iraq sex pictures story is just too weird for words, but even more worrisome is the objectionable picture itself, which even an amateur surfer of internet porn could tell you depicts …internet porn featuring actors, not the real deal. Sometimes I think a dirty mind is one of the most valuable assets a working journalist can have.