This may be it for a few days, I fear. As my old pal Steve “Not that one” Austin used to say, I’m busier than a dawg with two …never mind. But until I return — let’s say, next Sunday/Monday — here’s something to page through if you like: “Detached,” a story in graphic form by James Burns, brother of my good friend J.C., among other key relationships. It’s not about web-slinging, but suffering a detached retina three weeks before you’re supposed to move from Indiana to Georgia.

Any comments? Leave them here or with James. I’m sure he’d like to hear them.

Me, I’ll see you on the backside of this busy busy week.

Spam comes in waves, I’ve noticed. OSX Mail gets most of the e-mailed stuff, but lots gets into the comments, and that’s a pain in the butt to handle, MT Blacklist or no. It’s all the usual stuff — penis enlargement, drugs by mail, hot babes just waiting for you to chat with them. Lately, I’ve noticed a spike in fake college degrees.

It’s a nuisance, but it isn’t. I’ve always thought of bottom-feeding advertising as an id of sorts. These folks know who their audience is and where they go, online and otherwise. Right-wing political magazines have — or used to have, anyway — lots of ads for increasing your vocabulary. There was a certain Charles Atlas sell job going on, a sort of “Tired of your college-educated liberal friends kicking sand in your face?” pitch that I always found endearing, sort of. It reminded me that the first time I heard Rush Limbaugh — and I’m talking about way before he was famous, when he was on something like five stations — I said, “This is a fat guy who cannot score with chicks.” And was I right?

I suppose fairness demands I note that left-wing publications have their own id-ads, mostly for products with guilt-free pedigrees and, of course, personal ads.

It’s been a cool June. Coolish, anyway. I find it delightful. There’s a perfect temperature that our house just loves, somewhere in the low 70s, when the windows can stand open all night long and the breeze blows through all the rooms. You can have your air conditioning — give me those nights when the air is filled with the happy sound of illegal fireworks exploding until midnight and beyond.

Heh. That’s my hood.

A few things:

Ron Reagan sounds insufferable, but an interesting sort of insufferable.

Every time I hear that journalists are elitists who are out of touch with the people, I think: Well, it’s not our salaries that make us that way. Gerald Ensley agrees.

I have a secret fantasy life, and it mostly involves food. Baking, to be specific. I have two dreams: 1) To make a buche de noel on Christmas Eve some year when I’m not running around like a crazy person; and 2) To make a wedding cake. Turns out my new friend Hank Stuever shares at least half this fantasy. Only he and his colleague Linda Perlstein actually did it. Eating it, too is their story of how it worked out. Long, but funny:

Things I never thought we would use to make a wedding cake, but did: a power saw, a metal sewing ruler, dental floss, a shish kebab skewer, a Sharpie marker, pantyhose.

Pantyhose! That must be the secret ingredient!

I have little to report today — you really don’t want to hear about Kate’s lemonade stand this weekend — but a few interesting things to recommend.

The NYT has a piece on a FW hometown boy who sits at the right hand — the far right hand — of Karl Rove. He used to write occasional op-ed pieces, too, but I haven’t seen any for a while. The one I remember most was his self-prescribed reading list for the year, every month given to an improving Great Work of Literature. The one I remember best was November, when, he announced, he would read “Ulysses” AND T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets.” My friend Dave the English professor quipped, “I think he’d better save that for a month with 31 days.”

Also, I didn’t see “Fahrenheit 9/11″ this weekend and I guess I can wait for the video, but I saw enough of it in clip form to get the gist. I haven’t read a review yet that didn’t read like a blind-men-and-elephant thing, until I saw David Edelstein’s in Slate. I thought this simple observation was dead-on: “Fahrenheit 9/11″ must be viewed in the context of the Iraq occupation and the torrent of misleading claims that got us there. It must be viewed in the context of Rush Limbaugh repeating the charge that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered in Fort Marcy Park, or laughing off the exposure of Valerie Plame when, had this been a Democratic administration, he’d be calling every day for the traitor’s head. It must be viewed in the context of Ann Coulter calling for the execution of people who disagree with her. It must be viewed in the context of another new documentary, the superb The Hunting of the President, that documents—irrefutably—the lengths to which the right went to destroy Bill Clinton. Moore might be a demagogue, but never—not even during Watergate—has a U.S. administration left itself so open to this kind of savaging.

Finally, newspapers are general-interest publications, and hardly anyone is a true general-interest reader, so there’s always stuff you don’t read. For me, for most newspapers, it’s most of the sports section (OK, all of it), Omar Sharif’s bridge column, the club listings and a few more items. I pride myself on being generally curious about the world, but hey — life is short.

So you can see my frame of mind when I started this L.A. Times column earlier this week. It began:

It was our housekeeper who first spotted the tiny grains of what looked like black sand in the corner of our kitchen floor.

I have a 1,200-bottle cellar next to our laundry room…

That’s where I stopped. Life, short, etc. (Pause.) OK, I skimmed the rest — a detailed description of how you can protect your wine cellar while your house is being tented and treated for termites.

Ohhh-kay, then. More tomorrow, I think. Probably.

I have to admit it: I feel a little guilty about making fun of Clinton’s book, because … well, because I didn’t read the book. In that, I’m like most of the people making fun of it now, frankly. Sorry, Michiko Kakutani may be a New York Times book critic, but I don’t believe she had time to plow through all 957 pages before panning it so viciously. Neither did the approximately 956 other pundits getting a quick 650 words out of it before they started their summer vacations.

That’s the dirty secret of modern life: It moves so fast you just have to fake it. Not sometimes, most of the time. When you’re a pundit, you have to do your faking in public.

No wonder the public hates us.

OK, that’s enough of that. Talker of the day: Indiana gets a bunch of money in settlement of a suit involving CD pricing, so they spend it on CDs for public libraries. But what happens next? The Indiana attorney general steps in and decides Meredith Brooks (remember her?) is too hot for the state to spend money on it. This album is, anyway. Must be that “Bitch” song.

Saints preserve us.

No, I’m wrong. This was the talker of the day:

An assistant manager at Champs Sports in the Oakdale Mall sprayed a flammable substance on a spider and then set it alight Wednesday, causing a blaze that evacuated the mall, village police and fire officials said.

That’s a link worth following, if only to see the pictures. I actually feel sorry for the dope. Like lots of disasters, it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. As Jeff Foxworthy might say, “Hey everybody, watch this.”

Personally, I give spiders amnesty. They kill flies and other nuisance bugs, and any that give me a problem are captured humanely and escorted to the property line.

Busy, busy weekend ahead. I doubt I’ll be back before Sunday. But you folks have yourselves a good weekend.

Oh, dear God. You know, as much as I’m amused by the idea of Bill Clinton getting a jillion-dollar advance for his book, and driving conservatives crazy by lining them up around the block for an autograph, and writing 957 pages in the first place…well, I’m amused. I just think it’s funny the way it makes steam come out of their ears and all that, the same way they think it’s funny the way Michael Moore gets all apoplectic about Bush’s National Guard service.

And then I read the first sentence of “My Life” — thanks, Slate, for reading it so I don’t have to — and I just…cringe:

“Early on the morning of August 19, 1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about six thousand in southwest Arkansas, thirty-three miles east of the Texas border at Texarkana.”

I mean. The weather report. The name of the hospital. The name of the town. A handy locator map. This guy is a one-man Gannett newspaper. And it’s not just because I’m a copy editor now, either; this is just flat wrong. Where are the editors? Does no one edit the president? Does no one say “Please, less”?

Someone should.

Another interesting tidbit: Clinton was in DeMolay. I knew a boy in Demolay when I was very young. He took me to see “A Clockwork Orange” when I was 14 and he was…older, anyway. He explained DeMolay, but I never, ever got it. Of course, I was Catholic at the time. Just thinking about it now, I’d bet anything he’s a Mason now. He was just the type.

Oh, well. The predictable second-day story to the Clintonmania first-day stories from the east coast was summed up here: Go to a local bookstore, note lack of Clintonmania. Extra credit: Quote someone saying “I disagree with him morally.” Extra extra credit: Note Republican senate candidate in his own sort of mess of late.

Hum to self: When will they ever learn? Oh when will they ever learn?

Because I’m tired, and because nothing much happened today other than beautiful weather and a lovely June day, here’s a note from Deb. I’ve been here so many times I can’t tell you:

I went to a jewelry party last night. kind of like a tupperware party, except it’s all sterling silver. what a fiasco.

at this point I tune them out, thinking, “you do not belong in this room. order something and flee.” I wasn’t even planning to buy anything, but ordering would get me out of there gracefully a lot faster than NOT ordering. so I pony up $30 for a nice pair of square cubic zirconia posts and get the hell out of there.

I think Deb should write a book myself. Note the lack of a weather report in the above pungent passage.

Tomorrow.

Whoever in the comments corrected me on the name of the camp destination: You were right. It’s Bloody Gorge, not Gulch. Evidently I’m the last to know. When Kate and Alan pulled up to the house after he picked her up at day camp, she caroled out to a neighbor, “We went to Bloody Gorge!” Another neighbor, my age or older, called back, “I went to Bloody Gorge at day camp, too!”

I told you this camp has a history.

The trip to Bloody Gorge — which seemed to involve wading, in socks, shoes and clothing, into water to the knees — was a huge success. Kate was dirty in the way that only kids who have truly played themselves to exhaustion can be dirty. I mean: She was coated with grime. I’m washing her clothes now, stained brown to their very warp.

What a great day camp. If I left her in it all summer, she’d be truly feral by Labor Day. But happy.

Oh, well. I don’t want to get all Lileks on you here. I’m just casting about for material, and hey, look, there’s a kid in the house. Maybe this blog is finding a new theme. Chapter 1: Daily Life with Links; Chapter 2: Re-invention; Chapter 3: Whatever Comes Next. In these mild days before Whatever Comes Next, some linkage:

One of our most interesting KWF seminar speakers last year was Republican pollster Bob Teeter, who died this week. During his introduction, he mentioned he had a place on Coldwater Lake, where our little cottage is. Alan says he recognized him from the water and thought he sailed an E Scow. Hot boat. Too bad.

We lead their guys around on leashes, they cut our guys’ heads off — a look at beheading as a tool of terror, by the AP.

Another key-to-the-city type greeting to the returning sabbatical-takers: Welcome to the Fort! You’re just in time for the TB crisis!

One of our fellowship speakers last year was a funny guy who talked to us about the nomenclature of jurisprudence — why we say “at odds,” what do we mean by “just,” etc. That he made this into a comedy routine tells you why he’s a law professor and we aren’t, or maybe it doesn’t. It was an entertaining talk. Then he went off on a side trail, discussing risk and childhood.

“You know those stories about the knights in armor, how they’d get suited up and then they’d have to be hoisted onto their horses because they couldn’t mount otherwise?” he said. “That’s a kid on the west side of Ann Arbor, learning how to ride a bike.” Parents strap their kids into every possible sort of pad and shield, because God forbid little Megan might fall and skin her knee.

I thought about Ann Arbor kids again today, when Kate went off on a treat we thought would be denied her this summer — a week at the Franke Park Day Camp.

This is a hugely popular city program that’s been going on for nearly 50 years, and normally if you don’t sign up the first week after registration opens (in February), you’re out of luck. We got shut out last year and didn’t even consider this year a possibility. But lo, there were openings late, and we got her into one.

It’s popular because it’s a real leave-it-to-Beaver summer day camp — no computers, no weight loss, no SAT drills, just fun and games and singalongs and getting dirty. And because it’s Fort Wayne and not Ann Arbor, it’s totally un-p.c. The kids divide up into Indian tribes, and there’s a powwow on Wednesday.

But I hadn’t realized just how far we’d come from Ann Arbor until today, when she reported one of the activities. “We dug for bullets on Bullet Hill,” she said. Bullet Hill, they were told, was an old police firing range, and the ground still contains rounds and rounds of spent ammunition. Kids, go dig and see if you can find a bullet of your very own!

I still find this story a little dubious — How much digging can Bullet Hill sustain? How does one find a bullet in the ground? — but just the idea is so amusing. I tried to imagine Ann Arbor kids being told to root around for spent shells and pancaked slugs as part of a summer camp activity. Clamor for the cast-off detritus of our gun culture! Clutch lead slugs in sweaty palms! Finally I gave up; it just wouldn’t happen.

Kate said one kid found a whole bullet and others found “squashed bullet parts.” She found nothing. Tomorrow’s activity: A trip to Bloody Gulch. Oh, I can’t wait.

Not much linkage today — I’m still up to my neck with trying to get acclimated to my new job and schedule — but I thought this odd NYT story about Metallica going through therapy, en masse and in front of cameras, was sort of cool.

Take care. Tomorrow.

Does Father’s Day exist if no father is in the house to be served breakfast in bed? You tell me. Alan spent the last week cutting grass, trimming hedges, selecting annuals, planting said annuals, driving to four different places to see if anyone had tomato plants left so we could at least try to get a few of our own even though it’s way late to be planting them, planting said tomato plants, repotting the rosemary, whipping the herb garden into shape, and am I forgetting anything?

Oh yeah — he did some plumbing, too. On Saturday I came home from work and he said, “I want to paddle my kayak. Let’s go to the lake.” I said, “I don’t really want to, and Kate’s playing with her friends so she won’t want to go, either. You go on ahead.” So he did, and didn’t come home until Sunday night. Was this an appropriate honor for a hard-working father? I say yes. I say a dad who works hard deserves a 36-hour solo holiday, and that’s the way it is in our house. You gotta problem with that?

Actually, I’ve known couples for whom such behavior would be grounds for divorce — no, has actually been grounds for divorce. I once knew someone who was said to file for the Big D because her husband failed to buy her a Mother’s Day card — the nerve!

“I don’t get it,” I said when I heard this. “She isn’t his mother.”

“But they have a baby,” I was told. “And so it was his responsibiity to buy the Mother’s Day card on behalf of the baby.”

Ohhh-kay.

“How is Alan celebrating Father’s Day?” my neighbor asked today.

“Hell if I know,” I replied. A healthy relationship leaves both parties room to grow and change.

So that was Dad’s Special Day.

Note, above, that I was talking to my neighbor. That’s another sign that I’m home. Weeks passed in Ann Arbor without exchanging more than a nod with our neighbors, but you can’t say that about Oakdale, where we’re on cup-of-sugar terms with our neighbors at all four compass points and then some. Two have keys to my house. One helped us get our water turned back on when the valve siezed up. One cuts Kate’s hair. On weekends, when the kids are running from house to house, we walk in and out of one another’s living rooms as though it were a commune. If someone’s out on the porch with a beer, you stop. (This is a good way to get a free beer.) My neighborhood may have its rough elements, people still drive too fast through it, we still have idiots who keep pit bulls, but it’s the friendliest place I’ve ever lived, and for that, I’ll always be grateful.

It occurs to me this entry has passed without a single link. Sorry. It was a beautiful day. Oh, wait: As long as we’re talking about neighbors, here’s the obit for our late neighbor Chuck, one of the best. Four Purple Hearts. Could he ever tell stories.

Since it keeps coming up in the comments, let’s just throw in a link to the Deteriorata, shall we?

I mean, for the sake of reference.

P.S. “Remember the Pueblo.” Good lord, but there’s a measure of one’s time on earth, isn’t it? If you remember it, you’re over 40. If you’re under 40, no months-long, constantly updated news event was ever less consequential in the long run.

I got home from work today and Alan had something important to tell me: Our ex-neighbor Chuck Gibson died yesterday. I can’t say I’m surprised; the last time we saw him he looked awful, and he’d had health problems for years. But I felt sad just the same. I’d been meaning to track him down, now that we’re back in town. I got on the bike to think about it. A storm was banging around up north, but it was sunny where I was and they don’t call them widely scattered showers for nothing. So off I went.

Into the park I rode, back out from under water but redolent of recently flooded ground — 10 past poopy diaper, I guess you’d call it. It was hot and humid, and there was mud where it shouldn’t be, and puddles that were gross to go through, and all the rest of it. The storm continued to bang away in the north, the sun continued to shine where I was. Bob Dylan was on the iPod. I rode on.

It’s strange to ride on a flat course again, after all the up-and-down of Ann Arbor. Thought: How can I make this more challenging? Thought: Ride faster! So I flew, something I rarely do since I knocked out my No. 9 incisor on a headfirst tumble three years ago…this week, now that I think about it. I went as fast as I dared, panting in the stink, thinking, Chuck, where did you go? My neighbor said at the end he called for the friend he was staying with, said he felt awful, and just died. What happens when the light goes out? Is it a chemical reaction that fails to happen anymore, or what? A bolt of lightning cracked ahead of me and the thunder was fierce. Finally a cloud rolled over the sun; I was still miles from home.

The skies opened. I hate riding in the rain, mostly because I wear glasses, which are impossible to keep clear. Then the sun came back out, while the rain continued to pour — unusual, but it happens (it’s how you get rainbows). I headed for home, soaked to the skin, no longer minding the puddles, sun shining through a significant shower. It occurred to me this was a natural occurrence of “Hollywood rain,” the sort you usually only see in the movies, because it’s fake rain, shot with a Rainbird sprinkler on a sunny southern California day. The pavement steamed, the gutters streamed, Jimi Hendrix came on the iPod — “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).” Thought: Am I in a movie? Hendrix soundtrack, Hollywood rain, emotional subject matter — all the signs say yes.

A brush with death, either as a participant or observer, brings predictable reactions. Some people get horny — this one’s a classic. Others get mordant and depressed. This is what happens to me: My senses open wide, and I pay more attention. Death comes for all of us, I guess, and sooner or later we’ll be the ones whose name is passed around on the telephone lines. Someone else will go for a ride in the rain. But for now, we’re all still alive and it’s someone else’s turn.

That’s today’s edition of Five Pointless Paragraphs. Thanks for your patronage!

In other news at this hour, I thought this story, about a TV reporter yelling at a gay activist for writing something “cruel” and “defamatory” in a memory book devoted to Ronald Reagan, was an absolute stitch. I also liked this line, from the TV reporter’s official station bio: She was crowned Miss Majorette of Illinois in 1993 after fifteen years as an accomplished competitive baton twirler.

I guess one sign you’re enjoying parenthood is that you keep changing your mind about what the best part is. Once Kate grew out of the screaming-colicky-hellion stage of infancy, I wanted her to stay a baby forever. Six months was my favorite age. Then 10 months. Then she was a toddler, and even though it was like having a miniature Joan Crawford in the house, that was fun too. Then the period when she referred to our state capital as Nipply-napolis. But I’m changing my mind yet again. Yesterday, at breakfast, she called from the living room: “Mom, what does…t-y-p-h-o-i-d spell?”

“Typhoid,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“Just doing a crossword puzzle,” she said. And that was that.

Oh, this is the best, I tell you. The best.

Is this the return of the Single Long Entry? It may be! More tomorrow.