Yeah, I’d say going two weeks with one-third of the house out of commission was worth it.

Did you have a good weekend? I had a good weekend. Didn’t do anything much, other than reassemble the house, do grocery shopping, attend two soccer games, ride 30 miles or so and finish stripping my oak table project. It’s amazing what you can get done when you close the laptop on Friday afternoon and say, “See you in three days, bub.”

I did see part of “Baghdad ER” on Friday evening, though, which left me in no mood to deal with what has become a hardy perennial of patriotic holidays in blogdom — some weasel telling me What It Means, and How It Must Be Honored. (That link takes you to a TBogg deconstruction of one such example, btw.) I have so little to say to these youngsters it can be compressed into one word: Enlist. I mean, just shut up about doing your part on the home front and hearts and minds and all the rest of it. If you’re so sold on this war, go see your uncle, raise your right hand and make the pledge.

This piece didn’t help, either. Warning: Very long. Very sad.

Forgive me, I’m cranky. It was a very hot weekend, and given the occasion, it had the effect of making every SUV that passed me on the road seem to coruscate. I’m thinking of ordering a supply of magnetic bumper stickers — no, those are too easily removed. Maybe, instead, the ones that go on with Krazy Glue. I’m going to save them for Hummers, which seem to be every third car on the road here. (It’s a proud GM product.) I try to stay evenhanded when considering SUVs; some of my best friends drive them, and many need them. Yes, really. But Hummers? They make my eyes cross with rage, this silly macho pretend Army truck with a kickin’ sound system. It’s like seeing a Vogue layout that puts Kate Moss in camo, one stiletto’d foot up on the running board, touting the hot new military-inspired looks for fall. Just…cross-eyed, I tell you. Anyway, back to my bumper stickers. I think I’ll order two. One will read, THIS VEHICLE RUNS ON THE BLOOD OF U.S. SOLDIERS and the other, IF YOU WANT TO DRIVE THIS VEHICLE, JOIN THE ARMY.

Maybe I should lie down instead. See if this passes.

Well, I have plenty plenty work to do today, and plenty plenty coffee to make the work go fast. In the meantime, a mixed bloggage grill:

Nathan Gotsch steps in to guest-edit Fort Wayne Observed for the next few days. His first big post is yet another story I didn’t see in either of the dailies, about a Fort Wayne girl gone bad, and then gone badder.

Once a craven weasel, always a craven weasel: Pat Robertson claims he can leg press 2,000 pounds. Slate sets us straight on what leg presses really are: Dropping your leg-press numbers in casual conversation is like bragging about how fast you can do the TV Guide crossword puzzle. Simply put, the leg press is an ego boost for the beginner lifter. There’s no easier way to move a large amount of weight.

I have no idea what this comic strip means, but just imagine it running in an American paper. “A Mexican shit bath?” Hmm.

OK, then. Off to clatter the keys for fun and profit. Let the comments be your playground.

I didn’t find this clip, The Poor Man did. There are so many outstanding single shots in it — I can’t decide between Miles in the foreground w/ Trane in the background awaiting his solo and the trombone player taking a drag on his cigarette — that you’ll just want to watch it over and over. I didn’t buy this record until I was 35, a mere 33 years after its recording. Proof that every day in every life, something amazing can still drop into it.

There must be something in testosterone that goads men into establishing silly clubs based on pointless physical achievements. A guy I knew in high school spent some time at the south pole, and at a subsequent reunion reported he was a proud member of the 300 Club. The sole requirement and initiation ritual is a nude dash from the sauna in the geodesic dome outside to the marker for the magnetic pole and back inside. Membership trials are open anytime the difference between those two environments is 300 degrees Farenheit — usually -100 outside, 200 above inside.

At the time he told me this, the internet as we know it didn’t exist. Is there possibly a website for these shenanigans?

Well, what do you think?

One of those links is for a women’s initiation. I take back what I said about men.

Last night’s British-press perambulations was the first time I ever heard of the Kingsley Challenge, however.

Described by its originator as a “near-impossible feat,” it requires those who accept to row a mile, run a mile and ride a mile (horseback) — in under 15 minutes. Held in London’s Hyde Park on the summer solstice, it’s not open for public participation, probably to keep it from being overrun with Type A Yanks looking for some cool physical-culture tourism opportunities. It sounds like fun, though.

So does the 300 Club, for that matter. The first of those links up there contains male nudity, although the naughty bits are so shrouded in steam and frost it’s practically work-safe.

Holiday weekend ahead — the Detroit techno music festival and probably some boating is on our agenda. Maybe both at the same time. Have a good one, y’selves.

A telling anecdote in a column in yesterday’s DetNews. A respected former news anchor is speaking about the pervasive bias against African-American history in today’s newsrooms and offers this as proof:

WDIV sent the reporter airborne [in a helicopter] as part of a story about renovations to a safe house on the Underground Railroad. Dutifully, she called back to the newsroom. “We found the house, and we found some railroad tracks,” she said, “but I can’t find the place where the tracks went underground.”

You know, I wouldn’t waste half a minute arguing against the idea of pervasive bias against African Americans, in newsrooms and elsewhere — racism is simply part of the fabric of the nation. But in this case? Um, no. A journalist who doesn’t know the Underground Railroad wasn’t a choo-choo train that traveled through subterranean tunnels probably doesn’t know who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb, either.

He’s giving the wrong speech. This one is from “Got Makeup? Great moments in TV journalism.”

Polyurethane Day One commences with a disappointment — there will have to be a Polyurethane Day Two. The humidity is too high to allow two coats today, but as many have pointed out, it’ll be worth it. And because whining about home improvement is the world’s most boring topic, let’s limit it to three sentences, eh?

A couple weeks ago the Wall Street Journal had a story on Zillow.com, the real-estate spy site that has everybody snooping on everybody else. Went there and Zillow’d my own house first. It estimated it at $100,000 less than we paid for it, pegged the taxes at about half their current level, undershot the square footage by 20 percent and dropped a bathroom. So much for that. It got closer on our Ann Arbor rental, but had nothing at all for our Fort Wayne abode; the Fort’s not yet in the database.

Fort Wayne’s never in the database. Poor Fort Wayne. The latest candidate to be named as a possible buyer for my old newspaper is Black Press, a Canadian company. At first I thought, “Black? Canadian? Could this possibly have a connection to disgraced press mogul Conrad Black?” (I figured maybe there could be a $300,000 consulting contract to be had for reading the paper and discussing it with the publisher.) But no — different outfit. If, indeed, this Canadian company buys The News-Sentinel, it will settle in with such siblings as the Lake Cowichan Gazette and Kamloops This Week. What a stunning comedown. When Alan got promoted he was sent off for a few days of KR management training (aka “Prick School”) in Miami. He ate Cuban food in Little Havana and watched people feed romaine lettuce to the manatees in Biscayne Bay.

Then it looked as though Gannett would buy the paper. Then a chain based in Fargo (where there are no manatees). Now it seems whoever offers $299 for the office equipment can just walk in, slip a halter and lead rope over the heads of the few staffers worth leading to yet another auction ring and throw a match over their shoulders as they exit the building. I used to take a certain amount of pride in working in America’s smallest two-newspaper market. With the sale of the Philly dailies, the story of KR’s dejected dozen effectively ends. No one cares who ends up owning the paper in places like Duluth, Wilkes-Barre and the Fort, do they? I guess we’ll find out.

Finally, the internet has spawned many puzzling success stories, but none more so than Glenn Reynolds, who has built a career as a pundit on such Chance-the-gardenerisms as “heh” and “indeed,” and now seems to have even the Wall Street Journal buffaloed. Read this and tell me if it makes a damn lick of sense to you, because it didn’t make any to me.

Oh, and P.S. The Reynoldses have one (1) child themselves. I guess parenthood just wasn’t prestigious enough for them.

Sorry for the light posting of late. It’s been a busy week, compounded by the fact my afternoon downtime (yes, a nap — sue me) has been impossible, due to Project Floor. Do you have any idea how the sound of a nail gun travels? Today is Sanding Day, although there may be some staining, as well. Just had a stain-approval meeting. Alan attended, along with his Super Stain Vision. There were two to choose from, and I couldn’t see a dime’s worth of difference between them, but Alan could. He always can. I delegate all paint colors and now, stain shading, to his superior eye.

At this point, my eyes burning like Drano-scrubbed orbs, they could paint the thing green and I wouldn’t care. (Too much.) I stay up until after 1 a.m. and rise before 7. I need my damn nap back.

What do I do until 1 a.m.? I read the world’s English-speaking press for a corporate client, and let’s leave it at that. However, in the months I’ve been doing this job, I’ve fallen hard for the British press. I wonder if they’re having the same problems with declining readership that we are. Hard to imagine — they’re as lively a read as I’ve ever seen stateside, and they’re like that pretty much every day.

At least they know the proper attitude to take toward Madonna: She insulted George Bush, simulated sex and suspended herself from a giant mirrored crucifix, head adorned with a designer crown of thorns (provided by Cotter Church Supplies, LA) in an all-out attempt to get someone, anyone out there, riled.

When she unveiled it, you couldn’t take your eyes off it - not as a thing of beauty but as an object of sheer, sinewy significance. Even the bouncers looked scared.

Apparently, in this show, Madonna puts her leg behind her head. Shocking!

Sweet jayzus, the sanders just started up. (Whimper.)

Go ahead — have a Jimmy Hoffa cupcake.

The Chicago Tribune has bandwidth to burn, so rather than link it here, go on over to Eric Zorn’s joint and check out the best fake movie trailer I’ve seen since “Shining.” (One f-bomb warning, but, you know, entirely in context.)

(OK, that probably deserves its own link. “Shining,” that is.)

Someone called what happened to Barbaro on Saturday “the dark side of racing,” but it’s more than that — it’s the dark side of keeping horses. For all their strength and speed and beauty, horses are surprisingly delicate animals, prey to a whole host of physical complications that can cut them down justlikethat, most of which are the result of our insistence that they live the way we do.

In the wild (and understand, horses are not really wild animals, not after centuries of domestic breeding) a horse would graze around 20 hours a day, moving idly across grasslands, drinking when it’s thirsty and running only when pursued by predators. It would lie down only briefly, sleep standing up. Movement and grazing, though — that’s its nature. So what do we do? Lock them in barns, turn them out briefly, feed them concentrated grains to make up for 20 hours of grazing and try to channel all that strength into our own idea of competitive pursuits, even if they do seem to work in concert with a horse’s own instincts. Disaster is a byproduct.

Whenever a horse like Barbaro “breaks down,” the horseman’s euphemism for the frequently grisly fractures that end racing careers and, nearly as frequently, a horse’s life, people are puzzled and ask: Why can’t you just put the leg in a cast?

For lots of reasons. This Slate Explainer does a fine job laying them out in layman’s terms. Poor Barbaro. Fingers crossed.

No comment.

What a weekend. Two soccer games, the first sail of the season, the St. Joan of Arc fair, a dinner out to more or less celebrate our anniversary, and flower day at the Eastern Market. One of those weekends when you need another weekend, just to recover.

You don’t need a blow-by-blow, but hear this: I’m terribly disappointed that I didn’t win the Basket of Cheer at the St. Joan of Arc fair — a wheelbarrow full of so many bottles of booze I could have opened a tavern and not restocked for a year. Five bucks seemed a small price for a chance to win this third-place prize (first was a new lawn mower, which I don’t need). Ah, well. I guess Jesus loves me anyway.

The first sail was glorious — stiff breeze straight out of the west, clear skies, a rare day above 70 degrees. I picked up a little split of champagne en route and we all had a drink, plus a bit for the boat and the lake. Kate made a face at her own taste, and we told her about Dom Perignon’s eureka moment when he accidentally made champagne (”I am drinking stars!”). She was unimpressed. I wonder if any of the Dom’s Own was in the Basket of Cheer.

So, bloggage:

HoffaFest 06 — No body yet. We’ll keep you posted.

But many bodies in the Wayne County morgue after some bad heroin comes to town. Gotcha WMD, gotcha WMD!

He climbed Mt. Everest, even though he’s… something. Gay, blind, whatever.

I should say, though, that errors are errors, and then, there are errors: The lead story on Indiana’s NewsCenter Sunday 6:00 P.M. newscast was that former Mayor Ivan Lebamoff “was laid to rest today.” According to Eric Olsen, funeral services had taken place earlier in the day at St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church. … Funeral Services will be held on Monday at 11:00 A.M.

Every so often people ask me what’s the big deal if newspapers and TV stations cut staff, so what if fewer people are there? So what if we save money by hiring greenhorns? So what, so what, so what? Well, because sometimes you bury a guy a day early, that’s what. Presumably they spelled his name correctly, though; I’ve tuned in local TV in Fort Wayne to find a former mayor, Win Moses Jr., ID’d in his super as “Wynn Moses.”

(Oh, and speaking of local media and the work it’s been doing lately, Fort Wayne Observed broke the actual news of the former mayor’s death more than four hours before the evening paper did.)

Curse you, John Scalzi, and your infernal link to the Make Your Own Motivational Poster generator.

Between you and those damn videos, I may not get anything done tonight.

Housekeeping note: I put up a few recent clips in pdf format on a new page, The Clip File. It’ll be a work in progress.