Picked up a Free Press yes­ter­day, which is, I remind you, the win­ner of Detroit’s news­pa­per war. Within a decade, they’ll stand astrad­dle the pile of bloody corpses alone and bel­low their ter­ri­ble thanks to the heav­ens. (And won’t that be some­thing to see, eh?) The paper seemed thin, and was. Ah, but it was a Tues­day, and my last dim mem­ory of the busi­ness side is that Mon­day and Tues­day are not wide spots in the rev­enue stream.

Good thing. I started pay­ing atten­tion to the ads. In the A sec­tion — vari­cose vein treat­ment, the Michi­gan lot­tery, air duct clean­ing and, oddly, two for dif­fer­ent piano stores. (Is June when you buy a piano? I had no idea.) In Metro — more air ducts, cell phones, some odds and ends, the obits. Busi­ness? Cars and com­put­ers. Sports? Cell phones, a get-rich-quick sem­i­nar. Fea­tures actu­ally had the most indi­vid­ual ads, mainly for more vari­cose vein surgery, den­tures, calls for vol­un­teers for med­ical research, some­thing called “vir­tual colonoscopy.”

Ah, here’s a quarter-page ad for an all-natural colon-cleansing prod­uct. A woman is leap­ing into a man’s arms; both are open-mouthed with delight, and who wouldn’t be, given this head­line: “No more con­sti­pa­tion, hem­or­rhoids, or gas!”

Are any themes emerg­ing? Yes. You have vari­cose veins and den­tures and a colonoscopy in your future. You’re in the mar­ket for a nice upright piano, now that you have time on your hands to finally learn to play. Hello, grandpa.

Edi­to­r­ial images are shaped in con­fer­ence rooms, but adver­tis­ers know. The lit­tle dis­play ads in the clas­si­fieds are as clear an indi­ca­tion of a publication’s id as you’ll find. I once wrote a col­umn about this, after notic­ing that in con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal rags, you’ll find entice­ments to build your word power and learn how to stop mov­ing your lips when you read. In lib­eral ones, many 1-by-2s offer­ing to intro­duce you to girls who share your beliefs and val­ues. If you want a flat­ter­ing look in the demo­graphic mir­ror, try Wired or Van­ity Fair. (Although I often won­der, when­ever I see ads for Gucci, all of which seem to fea­ture mod­els with limbs that stretch the length of a fur­long, and all of whom seem really, really angry. Peo­ple only smile in the ads for cos­metic den­tistry, and even then, in the big­ger national books, it’s a know­ing, ironic smile. The mod­els — they’ve seen too much to ever beam hap­pily again.)

Ooooh-kay, then. Stop me before I buy a cell phone with Blue­tooth ever again. Did you know you can upload MP3s from your lap­top and make them ring­tones? Why didn’t any­one tell me this? Is it safe to say I’ll be the only per­son in Metro Detroit — per­haps any­where — using “Itchy­coo Park” as a ring­tone? That’s for all callers except those from my home num­ber, which got “Pen­nies From Heaven,” mainly because it has a nice mean­der­ing tin­kly piano intro, which is all you’ll hear, any­way. Bil­lie Holiday’s ver­sion, if you’re tak­ing notes.

Blog­gage:

I’m going to be read­ing this book, if I can stand it. Josh Mar­shall has a suc­cinct sum­ma­tion of why: I said he was impor­tant. You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you? God help us all.

Ash­ley has another cri de coeur from New Orleans. I hope he never shuts up.

In Detroit, teenage girls from the sub­urbs hang out in drug houses. Some­times they die there.

Jon Car­roll was a boy in south­ern Cal­i­for­nia when Dis­ney­land was being built, which gives his take on it a cer­tain author­ity: When Dis­ney­land opened, the world was so naive that injectable sub­stances sug­gested noth­ing more than a peni­cillin shot. Later on, a new gen­er­a­tion of cit­i­zens began vis­it­ing Dis­ney­land. The Dis­ney­land brass did not like that devel­op­ment — as the brochures dis­played at the museum made clear, Dis­ney­land was a park designed by white peo­ple for white peo­ple, and employ­ees were for­bid­den to wear beards, mus­taches and a long list of other offen­sive things that might sug­gest devi­a­tion from the norm. Which was ironic, because peo­ple soon dis­cov­ered that get­ting loaded and going to Dis­ney­land meant a day of big fun. It was an end­less play­ground for peo­ple who said “oh wow” a lot. You could, you know, shake hands with Goofy. (“Shak­ing hands with Goofy” would be a pretty good code phrase for any num­ber of pro­scribed experiences.)

And now, a glance at the weather map shows giant red blobs headed our way. Best get this uploaded before the power goes out.