The Los Angeles Times online crossword is easier than the New York Times’. It also has a faultless interface that never falters, making speed part of the experience and leading to my daily back-and-forth e-mail with Eric Zorn; if you can beat 7:23, you can beat me today. (Late-breaking reply from Eric: You’ll have to squeak in under 6:38 to beat him.) I’ll give you a 20-second head start if you’ve never done the LAT puzzle; puzzles have their own underlying logic and favorite wores, and it takes a few run-throughs to get the hang of a new editor. I frequently think that Uma Thurman will live forever, along with Nick and Nora’s dog Asta, for having a short first name that’s mostly vowels: 42 across: She killed Bill.

The NYT crossword is more difficult and has a suckworthy online interface. I figure if paying the outrageous monthly home-delivery price for the Times (59 tax-deductible dollars per, but still) qualifies me for anything, it should be a crossword experience to match that of its Tribune Media services competitor, but no — I had to download a craptastic Java applet, which was slow and stupid and didn’t work well. I tried the iPhone app for $1.99, but it’s also clunky, features only a few puzzles free and has the worst background music imaginable, yes, worse than Scrabble.

Also, maybe someone could enlighten me: We all know Will Shortz is editor of the NYT crossword, but what’s involved with “editing” a crossword puzzle? It either works or it doesn’t, right? Is he the one who tells the originator, “I think what you need here is an Uma Thurman clue,” or do people who sprinkle their puzzles with Uma, Asta and Oona just know he’s the one to sell them to?

Bonus fun fact for Hoosiers: Shortz is an IU grad. Degree is in “enigmatology,” the only known possessor of such a sheepskin, in a course of study he designed himself. Fun fact for all, via Wiki:

He says that his favorite crossword of all time is the Election Day crossword of November 5, 1996, designed by Jeremiah Farrell. It had two correct solutions with the same set of clues, one saying that the “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper (!)” would be “BOB DOLE ELECTED”, and the other correct solution saying “CLINTON ELECTED”.

I’ve had my problems with computer games in the past, but with the LAT crossword, I think they’re solved. It has a beginning, a middle, an end, and a crowing or cowering e-mail to mop up, and then I’m done. All my bad habits are now on the iPhone, encapsulated in one game (Wurdle, an electronic form of Boggle), and lo, it appears I am not alone. Fortunately, I can leave my phone on another floor and get some work done.

Which I should go and do now. I was out and about all day yesterday and short on the bloggage, but you shouldn’t have to do bloggage on the day Sarah Palin appears on Oprah. Sounds like she did her usual. Let’s all say it together: Poor, poor bunny rabbit. Everyone is so mean to you! You thought Katie Couric would be just another mom, talkin’ teenagers and the gray hairs they give ya. But no.

You should have plenty to bat around today. Thanks for that sweet potato recipe, Mary — I think I’m going to be making that one this year. The week should ease up considerably by tomorrow. I’ll have more of my head in this game then.

Today is Alan and Kate’s birthday, and if birthdays aren’t a reason to get out your Fostoria square cake stand, I don’t know what is. Square cake stands require square cakes, however, and I didn’t have any square cake pans. We were at a mall on Saturday, so I stopped at Sur la Table.

There were millions of cake pans in all sizes. Every single one was flared at the top, just a little bit. For a layer cake, you need straight sides. I told the floor guy I needed straight-sided pans, and he ushered me into the “professional” area. The cost differential between an ever-so-slightly flared 8×8 amateur cake pan and a plumb-line straight professional pan? Two-point-six-to-one. Sometimes I hate cooking. The clerk suggested I make it in a 9-by-13 pan and cut it in half. This would yield two layers measuring 9-by-6.5 inches. This is not square. Sometimes I hate myself.

But the cake turned out OK:

That’s devil’s food with vanilla cream cheese frosting, by the way. I’m writing this before it’s cut, but I suspect it will be a little dry, based on its texture coming out of the pan. My cooking’s in a long slump these days; there are times when I just knock around the grocery store waiting for inspiration to strike, and it never does. The farmer’s markets are dwindling and I don’t have the effortless summer bounty, all of which tastes good with a little grilling, a little olive oil and a little salt. I cook for two people besides myself, one of whom doesn’t get home until 9:30 p.m. or later, the other essentially indifferent to everything that’s not an Oreo, pasta or bowl of cereal. I’m looking at another winter of soups, and I’m already dispirited.

Poor me.

(UPDATE: The cake was fine. As was dinner: Pork tenderloin with cranberry-rosemary sauce, au gratin potatoes and sauteed spinach with garlic. Perhaps my mojo is returning. And happy birthday to Mrs. Blonde Mannion, who also had pork tenderloin with cranberry-rosemary sauce for her birthday dinner.)

I guess we should run with the food theme, then. I ordered my Thanksgiving entree Saturday — a cruelty-free, pasture-raised, no-bad stuff, all good-stuff turkey from a CSA provider. They had pictures of the turkeys milling around their pasture pen. I expect I’ll be presented with the bird’s autobiography, attesting that its life was long and good out there in the pasture, and that it was ready to sacrifice its life for our harvest banquet. At these prices (don’t ask), it better. All I ask for is a little fat; the last chicken I bought from the “Amish” place at the market was so skinny it looked like it ran marathons.

I have my problems with the Amish, but the chicken place at the Eastern Market proudly advertises its Amish sourcing, so (shrug). I only object when I hear anyone claiming Amish poultry are somehow purer than that of your basic nightmare operation; my very own husband wrote about Amish chicken operations, and the only differences between them and Tyson’s are a) size; and b) the kid dumping the pharmaceuticals into the feed bin has a bowl haircut. If that makes you feel better, fine, but don’t delude yourself.

The rest of the menu is unplanned, but for the staples — potatoes, dressing, gallons of gravy. For four people I’m not going overboard, but hey, it’s Thanksgiving. Suggestions invited.

Bloggage: There’s no nerd like a typography nerd.

If you don’t like what they’re saying, just claim they’re lying. Repeat. Fact-checking the fact-checker of the fact-checker of “Going Rogue.”

Why I will never understand corporate finance:

In a positive sign that General Motors Co.’s restructuring is off to a good start, the company today said it would begin repaying U.S. government loans later this year, ahead of what is required, and that it lost $1.2 billion in the third quarter after emerging from bankruptcy.

No wonder this company got so screwed up.

Looks like Michigan is out of the race to house Gitmo detainees. Damn. One typical winter should have been enough to extract signed confessions from the lot of ‘em.

Off to do what I do on Mondays. Whatever that is.

Sarah Palin names George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” as one of her favorite books back in the day, when she was a voracious reader. Hey! We have something in common. I liked it, too. I think I was around Kate’s age when I first picked it up. It’s the perfect starter novel for a kid transitioning to adult material, just serious enough to let you know you’re reading something Important, but at its most basic level, simple and easy to follow.

Or as my old colleague Bob once noted, it’s so sad when Boxer dies.

In honor of the five hours of sleep I got last night, in anticipation of a weekend spent lolling and cooking and making birthday cakes and studying Russian vocabulary, just for the hell of it — let’s make today a short one.

Go ahead, laugh, I did: Irish priest kidnapped in Philippines released by MILF. Don’t they have dirty-minded copy editors at the Christian Science Monitor? Or are they just having a laff? You could spend all day writing subheds for that one: Pleads for recapture, say, or Announces engagement, plans to leave priesthood. If you must know without clicking, it’s Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Worth your while: A 3-D recreation of Capt. Sully’s genius flight, and thanks to crinoidgirl for finding it.

Even cooler: Starlings in flight. About the only time you’re going to see starlings appreciated in this space.

Now I must shop. See you Monday.

I’m about to put the Vietnam Veterans Memorial back in my attic-brain, but before I do, I want to consider monuments and memorials a bit longer. What happened to the wall in its early years — the addition of the two sculpture pieces and the flags — is probably nothing new in the grand scheme of commissioned art, but it might have been the opening shots in the Great Representation Wars of the latter years of the century.

When the monument to Franklin D. Roosevelt was in its design stages, the wheelchair question was batted around vigorously. Wikipedia provides a sketch that seems in accord with my memory of the time:

The statue of FDR also stirred controversy over the issue of his disability. Designers decided against plans to have FDR shown in a wheelchair. Instead, the statue depicts the president in a chair with a cloak obscuring the chair, showing him as he appeared to the public during his life. Roosevelt’s reliance on a wheelchair was not publicized during his life, as there was a stigma of weakness and instability associated with any disability. However, many wanted his disability to be shown to tell the story of what they believed to be the source of his strength. Other disability advocates, while not necessarily against showing him in a wheelchair, were wary of protests about the memorial that leaned toward making Roosevelt a hero because of his disability.
The sculptor added casters to the back of the chair in deference to advocates, making it a symbolic “wheelchair”. The casters are only visible behind the statue.

I’m trying to imagine being the artist saddled with this albatross of a commission, the weekly calls from the committee. Casters? My office chair has casters. So does yours, most likely. I guess that makes it a symbolic wheelchair, but (smacks forehead). It reminds me of a story I did once upon a time, about an artist in Fort Wayne. The guy worked as a school custodian on the graveyard shift and spent his days painting. He favored large canvases and photorealistic scenes, and worked slowly on his creations; it took him months to complete one. He also liked to paint in public places, and that, coupled with his easygoing, genial, not particularly artistic nature, made him a welcome guest in most of them. At the time I wrote about him, he was working in the library, but he had also done a stretch in the lobby of a local company.

If I’m remembering this correctly, that piece, the one done in the lobby, was of a night scene — the lobby at night, in fact. It was a commission from the company’s art acquisition committee, and in the months it took to complete, provided entertainment to the workers as they passed through. Late in its execution, he added a figure to the canvas — a janitor vacuuming the carpet. Suddenly, everyone was an art critic, but particularly the art committee. They began making subtle suggestions; are you sure you want that guy there? Does he have to be a janitor? Would you consider another sort of worker? The pressure built until someone floated the idea that the commission might be at risk if he insisted on keeping a janitor in this otherwise lovely scene of their lobby. The guy shrugged and said OK, I’ll just return your deposit and clear out, then. The committee backed down. Which goes to show you a lot of things, the main one being: Art by committee isn’t really art at all.

Getting back to the Vietnam memorial, I was struck then and am still struck by the stridency with which these groups push their agenda — the three-soldiers addition to the complex was carefully crafted for ethnic diversity, but didn’t satisfy the women who served, so they got their own sculpture, and…feh.

The Vietnam memorial has to have been an influence in the makeshift-memorial trend of recent years. The number of soldiers who came to leave dogtags, boots, photos and other mementos at the wall has to be a moving force behind the people who go to fatal-accident sites to leave flowers and teddybears. Or maybe there are huge gaps in my cultural-knowledge base, but my parents had a friend who was killed in a car crash, and they did their mourning at the cemetery.

OK, a little bloggage:

Jon Stewart — or his staff, anyway — earn their money yet again. Actually, they all deserve a raise for, well, click through and see.

Via Jeff TMMO, a fine Timothy Egan rant in the NYT, wondering if it’s time to put up the barricades. Well, actually that’s my reaction, but he’s dead-on.

Good gravy, this woman is a bleeping moron. Larry King finally grows a pair, and drives Jesus Barbie away.

And now, work begins. For me, anyway. You folks, keep surfing the internet.

I wonder if, in years to come, some bright scholar will name Maya Lin as the fulcrum upon which everything we believe about dying in service to one’s country shifted. Lin, the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., pulled off something magical and strange with her beautiful black wall, which before it was even built divided the veterans of that misbegotten exercise into two camps; one called it a “black ditch of shame,” and the other said, “I dunno, it’s got something going for it. Let’s build it and see.”

The wall was built. The wall began attracting visitors. The wall became something bigger than itself. The wall became the most popular monument in Washington, and not just because the veterans of the war it memorialized were still alive. The wall became something much bigger than a war memorial. It’s a therapy session for everyone who sees it.

The black-ditch-of-shame crowd was flummoxed, and insisted on tarting it up. A bunch of flags were added, and a sculpture of some soldiers, and another sculpture of female service members, but someone had to realize they’d been defeated. Who goes to the the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to see the flags or the sculptures? They go to see the wall, and they want to see the wall because of the names.

Lots of war memorials feature names. There was one in my hometown, an archway entrance to a public park, with bronze plaques on either side, with lists of local soldiers who served, and one with those who died. My friends would sometimes pick out a grandfather or uncle in the service list, but the killed-in-action side by definition left fewer survivors to run their fingers over the letters.

But the Vietnam wall names were different. It was all the names, not just one town’s, and the brutal and elegant simplicity of their presentation — they’re etched in a timeline of when they died, starting in a trickle with the “military advisors” period of the war, swelling to a crescendo in the late ’60s and tapering down again as we packed our belongings and took off from the roof of the embassy — underlines the futility and stupidity of the war. All those boys, sons and fathers, brothers and uncles, gone. For what? The wall asks a question. You provide the answer. It’s why everyone who goes there cries.

Ever since, memorials of all types have included names, lists of names. It’s perhaps insulting to think memorial designers want a popular site, but all those pictures through the years, of crying survivors at the Vietnam wall touching names, making rubbings of names, watching their own reflections in that polished granite, the reflections crossed by names — it has to be an influence, and not just on designers. Look at the Oklahoma City memorial to the bombing there. If the 9/11 memorial at the World Trade Center site is ever built, it too will include names. (Lin designed that one, too.) It’s no longer enough to lump the dead in one big number, perhaps under the inscription Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Now you have to name every casualty.

President Obama spoke yesterday at Fort Hood, at a memorial service for the 13 people who died during the shootings last week. I didn’t see it live, but I started seeing the reaction online almost immediately. “Best speech ever” was the general tone, even from people who can be reliably counted on to hate everything the president says. I made a point of catching it on C-SPAN later. It was a great speech, masterfully delivered, but we’ve come to expect that of Obama, the first great orator of the 21st century. But what spiked it deep in the brain were the names. Because there were 13 and not 300, he could give names and brief biographies:

Major Libardo Eduardo Caraveo spoke little English when he came to America as a teenager. But he put himself through college, earned a PhD, and was helping combat units cope with the stress of deployment. He is survived by his wife, sons and step-daughters.

Staff Sergeant Justin DeCrow joined the Army right after high school, married his high school sweetheart, and had served as a light wheeled mechanic and Satellite Communications Operator. He was known as an optimist, a mentor, and a loving husband and father.

The names, in this case, were not just a reflection of today’s army, but of America itself: Staff Sergeant Amy Krueger… Private First Class Kham Xiong… Private First Class Aaron Nemelka… Men, women, this one an Eagle Scout, that one an immigrant, this one the daughter of a father from Colombia and a Puerto Rican mother.

I don’t know how much of his own speechwriting Obama can do anymore. I don’t really know how much he’s done since he began his run for the presidency. Good writing takes time, for both thought and revision, and time is something he of all people is chronically short on. But I will say this: His speeches sound like they came from him, from what we know of his heart and mind, and I have to think he has a heavier hand in their crafting than some previous occupants of the office.

If nothing else, at the subconscious level, that speech acknowledges what is becoming painfully obvious about this incident at Fort Hood: It was Vietnam on a different scale, a series of stupid decisions and a case of willful blindness, culminating in a massive and unforgivable loss of life. It demands an accounting and a reckoning, and we hope that will come later.

Until then, what we have are the names.

Last summer I wrote about going to the 48 Hour Film Challenge awards, held in a loft overlooking the Packard-plant ruin, and how the arsonists trashing the place thoughtfully put on a fire for us. I think I also mentioned the truck sticking out the window:

Turns out the truck exit was an ongoing project. In September, someone finally got it all the way out. Was it captured on video? Do you even need to ask? The whole package, from the Wall Street Journal, ran last week.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, urban exploration — which is the highfaluting name for people who trespass in abandoned buildings without malice; the rest we just call thieves and vandals — lends a certain energy to the city, and draw more eyes to the beauty of what’s left behind and standing open to the elements. I’m consistently amazed by the things you can find here, from the guy who turned up Marvin Gaye’s checkbook and fur-storage bill in the old Motown office building to the darker, more heartbreaking archaeology undertaken by Jim Griffioen in the abandoned schools. There’s an immature part of me that looks at a crew of guys pushing a truck out a fourth-floor window and says, “There’s something you wouldn’t see in Fort Wayne, ain’a?”

But the adult thinks something else, and finds this the most interesting line in the story:

Its current owner, Romel Casab, did not return calls seeking comment.

The fact the Packard plant even has an owner astonished me; I thought the place had been lost to unpaid taxes eons ago. Casab is a well-known real-estate speculator, and I’m sure he’s hidden himself behind layers of corporate structure, for whenever the inevitable happens; someone is going to die in this building if they haven’t already, and given the legal precedents on attractive nuisances, I’d like to know how he’s insulated.

What am I talking about? No one came after Matty Moroun when the homeless guy got frozen into that warehouse hockey rink last year. The insulation is: No one really cares.

Anyway, I think the anonymous explorer/vandal in the story said it best: “If you decide you want to push a dump truck out of a window, this is the place to do it.”

So. How’s your week going? My sojourn at Wayne State went well. I’m always struck, when I visit, of the difference between it and other college campuses I’ve spent time on. It really is the United Nations of higher ed, so much more diverse in its student body than, say, the University of Michigan, which was hardly White State itself. As usual, there were plenty of girls in Islamic head scarves, dressed otherwise exactly the same as their fellow students, except for the long-sleeves-and-pants thing, which doesn’t look out of place in November. I don’t know if it’s intentional or what, but it underlines that you can cover up a lot of a woman’s body and still have a girl who can turn heads, a fact that probably drives their fathers insane.

Afterward, a Habana wrap at the Russell Street Deli — black beans, roasted corn, tomatoes, onions, peppers, lime vinaigrette, a sprinkling of that light, crumbly cheese. Never has vegetarianism tasted so good.

Which brings us to the bloggage:

Speaking of Jim at Sweet Juniper, you have never seen kids’ Halloween costumes as cute as his kids’, and they’re all handmade.

And now I must hie myself to yon gym. The trainer says he’s going to put us on the ergometers, i.e, rowing machines, i.e. TORTURE IN MECHANICAL FORM, for the remainder of the month. It would be so, so easy to skip. But I must not.

The longer we keep a rabbit in the house, the longer I think it belongs out of the house. Not to live out there — it is a pet, little miss I will be petted oh yes I will — but for a stretch of outside time every day. I’ve been carrying the cage outside, removing the bottom, and sitting her in a sunny patch of grass for a few hours, and she always comes back in feeling better. She likes the sun on her face and the wind in her fur.

But the cage is too small. Of late I’ve been scanning Craigslist for a secondhand puppy exercise pen, one of those things that comes in panels and is about knee-high. There are several places in the yard we could set it up, and put ol’ Ruby out there for a daily sniff ‘n’ hop.

Then I look at the picture on the wall, an octavo print of Audubon’s Red-Tailed Hawk, two of them fighting for the rabbit in one’s talons. In some prints, the rabbit is having its final bowel movement; Kate called it “the rabbit pooping” when she was a toddler. I’m wondering what the chances are of looking out the kitchen window some fine spring day to see Ruby flying away to be a raptor’s lunch. That would be a bummer, but also sort of interesting, in the there’s-something-you-don’t-see-every-day sense of the word.

A friend was walking his dog on the ice in the U.P. one fine winter day, and looked up to see a bald eagle studying the two of them. Eagles eat fish mostly, but if one can carry off a 20-pound salmon, you wouldn’t think a cairn terrier would give one that much trouble.

Of course, the world is a dangerous place for animals of all sorts, even those living in the protection of a nice zoo somewhere. The deer at the National Zoo jumped into the lions’ enclosure, and whether or not it immediately said uh-oh, I think we took the wrong exit is lost to the ages. If nothing else, it put on something of a show for the spectators:

It’s not as bad as you fear. There’s something awesome about predators in action. The fact the deer died and the lion didn’t get her meal is sad. One of the very few zoo stories that belonged on Page One but didn’t get there happened when i was in Columbus, and two workers stayed late, had a few drinks and pitched a troublesome, butt-nipping goose into the jaguars’ enclosure. Nowadays, they’d shoot a cell-phone video. At least you’d hope so.

Guys, I promised a friend I’d take his Wayne State class this morning, and I have to get out of here. For bloggage and discussion, I suggest we take on the “Mad Men” finale, which I stayed up late to watch and which I will bet you Joan’s gold pen necklace you’ll find so, so, soooo good. And this from the comments of the last thread: The auction for the old midcentury modern furnishings at Connie’s library, complete with a note from herself. I’ll be going at top speed until 1 a.m. tomorrow, so that’s it for me. Happy Monday.

Is this a winter-is-coming thing, or an Obama-is-deploying-the-black-helicopters thing?

Now it can be told: I knew some people in Fort Wayne whose son-in-law was shot in one of these incidents like the one yesterday. It was also at a military base; it was what’s come to be known as the Fort Bragg sniper incident of 1995.

Now it can be told because I didn’t tell it then. It would have been a fine localization for a national story, but not everything has to be localized, especially when a man is fighting for his life for weeks and months on end. From what I recall of their account, the soldier/shooter took a bead on a row of officers overlooking an athletic field and started moving down the line. The first man was killed, the second one paralyzed. I think my friends’ son-in-law had just enough time to react, and was shot in the abdomen. He nearly died, but he didn’t, and when he recovered he was transferred to a teaching position at West Point.

I wonder if they gave him a Purple Heart. I’ve come to think of these incidents as skirmishes in America’s war on…something, even as I know they’ve happened elsewhere in the world. They still seem so uniquely American.

I haven’t had the heart to really go looking for reaction to yesterday’s news from Fort Hood. This is one of those stories where I think I’m going to stick to the best of the official accounts and stay out of Blogland. Recalling the reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings, I don’t want to accidentally run across John Derbyshire calling American soldiers a bunch of cowards for not “taking him down while he was reloading,” which I recall was one of his gems of insight following Mr. Cho’s rampage. I’ve already heard that soldiers on the base don’t walk around armed, and I’m sure that even as we speak, some keyboard warrior is calling that policy pussified, that they need to be strapped at all times. I might even agree. When it comes to guns and violence and crazy, maybe the whole country is a war zone.

At this point it seems the decent response is to maintain respectful, alert silence while we wait for the fact-finding to find some facts.

And how convenient: This attitude meshes perfectly with my need to be at a meeting in 30 minutes, and get out of here early. May I just say before I go, however, how much I enjoyed all of your comments yesterday, about how you found yourselves here at NN.C, whatever path you took. One of the coolest things about this site, no, the coolest thing, is the comment chorus, and how my part is only prelude, like in “Henry V.” Last summer I had lunch with an out-of-town friend who said he never misses a day, etc.

“And how about those comments?” I said.

“I don’t read the comments,” he replied.

WhAAA? Rob, if you’re reading, you’re missing the best part.

Now to wash my face. Defeating Eric in the crossword will have to wait. I’m running late.

There are stats nerds on this here internet, but I am not one of them. Every so often I run across a blogger who uses their stats program and its tracking powers to hunt down and punish readers who have displeased them in some way — posting IP numbers, sometimes names, in one case contacting some poor shlub’s boss to complain (he had displeased the blogger from a work computer) — but I can’t do that. I even feel bad (sometimes) about blocking Dwight; I ran across a few of his comments while hunting down some old posts, and it reminded me he was once just an occasionally sharp-tongued guy who simply disagreed with most of us, before he became a nasty old troll.

I believe we all have enough forces of evil tracking our every move and dollar spent. We don’t need another. Also, most of the crap displayed on my Google Analytics dashboard is over my head, and I don’t want to bother learning about it.

There is one facet that never fails to amuse, however: the search terms that bring readers here.

Once, early in this blog’s life, I got a nice note from a teacher in Los Angeles. I’d gone through a rough day at work with a knuckle-dragging boss and was feeling lost in self-pity and self-doubt — I’m going to DIE in this awful place, I just KNOW it — when I opened her e-mail. She told me how much she loved the blog, and confessed to having used passages from it in a writing class (my heart, it soared!), and closed by telling me how she found me. She’d been searching “puu-puu platter” and came across something I’d written about Polynesian restaurants.

It was a miracle, I thought, suddenly grasping the truth: I was living in a world without editors, but with search engines. Boss Hairy Knuckles couldn’t hold me back in a world ruled by the Google.

As frequently happens, it didn’t quite work out that way. The Google could hold us both back — and most of the other journalists we knew — by torpedoing our industry below the waterline. But for a writer who always felt misunderstood in Allen County, Indiana, finding readers from around the world was something of a thrill. Still is.

While I never write with search terms in mind, I like to think our discussions here are electic and wide-ranging, small-c catholic in the best sense of the word. You’ll find all sorts of arcane words and phrases batted around here; let’s take a look at a few:

** My name is the first and second most-searched term here in the past month, but guess what numero tres is? Cane rat bouillon, dropped in the comments once by our very own Coozledad, in a discussion we had earlier in the summer about lousy restaurant food. It accounted for 224 visits, and what’s even more amusing is that cane rat bouillon searchers spent three minutes on the site and visited 1.3 pages. Welcome, cane-ratters.

** No. 4 is fort wayne mediawatch, and fuck those guys. The last time I expressed that opinion, they got all huffy and rattled their wee plastic swords and threatened that if I didn’t stop saying mean things about them, they would write about me on their two new blogs, Why We Hate Nancy Nall and That Stupid Bitch, Nancy Nall. Both are empty, so no link, and besides, why should I drive traffic to them? Let ‘em whore for it like everyone else. Moving on:

** cokie roberts interesting nancy nall, which appears to be an accidental collision of those words in the comments somewhere; I haven’t written about Cokie in forever.

** No. 8 is the full Fresian name of our own Connie, whose last name I will obscure so it doesn’t come up in yet another search. The entry was one where we discussed our unusual names.

** No. 16: free crack. Heh. Sorry, folks.

** No. 19: nancynull.com. For the first 16 years of my life, no one ever misspelled my last name. Then one of my friends started calling me Null, and that was that. It obviously unleashed a demon.

After about 25 or so, the searches fall to single digits — of searchers, that is, be they human or ‘bot. Still, the things they’re looking for! Queen Noor plastic surgery and jon meacham tiresome fool (he’s the editor of Newsweek), smashed tits and death of the adverb, drug-seeking behavior and spook beckman.

Every so often I get these community-college catalogs offering various one-off classes. I’ve changed my mind; I’d take one called The Thorough Appreciation of Google Analytics. Someone, please offer one.

OK, that’s it for today, then. Oh no, one bit of bloggage. Fisticuffs at the Washington Post! Platform-agnostic shit content-management system bullshit… I love it: