Phrases I don’t want to hear anymore:

Shocked and saddened.

Our hearts go out to…

I know, I know — not everyone is gifted with the language, and these phrases are simply what we say in particular situations, like “pleased to meet you” and “I’ve had a lovely time.” But let’s at least admit that they mean nothing anymore. Not when you see them in places where they don’t belong, at a time when the only sane response is silence, or, failing that, a full-throated scream.

Someone in Newt Gingrich’s office, in Sarah Palin’s office, thought something needed to be said, and so they said that. My advice would have been to keep their yaps shut. But here I am, yapping, so what the hell. It’s a free country.

For whatever it’s worth, I don’t know that I have anything to add, other than to note some things you should read, if you haven’t. A lot of these have been widely linked, but what the hell, not everybody lives on the internet these days:

Garry Wills, “Our Moloch.” Elegant, spare and as incisive as a shiv:

The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?

“It is an object of reverence.” You got that right.

The most complete and concise single account of what happened in those 10 minutes that I’ve yet seen, from the Hartford Courant. A very tough read. This was the worst of it:

Lanza next arrived at teacher Victoria Soto’s classroom. Soto is believed to have hidden her 6- and 7-year old students in a classroom closet. When Lanza demanded to know where the children were, Soto tried to divert him to the other end of the school by saying that her students were in the auditorium.

But six of Soto’s students tried to flee. Lanza shot them, Soto and another teacher who was in the room. Later, in their search for survivors, police found the remaining seven of Soto’s students still hiding in the closet. They told the police what had happened.

…Police investigators were still stunned Saturday by the scene they encountered at the school a day earlier, in particular by the seven surviving — but shocked — children hiding silently in the closet in Soto’s classroom.

“Finally, they opened that door and there were seven sets of eyes looking at them,” a law enforcement officer familiar with the events said Saturday. “She tried to save her class” he said of Victoria Soto.

And I’m sure nearly everyone has seen this by now, “Thinking the Unthinkable,” another very tough read by a mother of a boy who sounds very much like Adam Lanza.

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am Jason Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.

And finally, we should end on a note of at least something resembling our better angels. The president’s speech Friday:

“This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter, and we’ll tell them that we love them, and we’ll remind each other how deeply we love one another. But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight, and they need all of us right now. In the hard days to come, that community needs us to be at our best as Americans, and I will do everything in my power as president to help, because while nothing can fill the space of a lost child or loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need, to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories, but also in ours.”

We need to be at our best as Americans. So let’s see if we do that.

It’s been a top-rack sort of fortnight around here, which has nothing to do with booze. (Well, a little.) Rather, it’s what happens when everyone is on the go, few meals are being served, and the dishwasher’s top rack — where the glasses and coffee cups go — fills up quickly, and the bottom rack — where the plates and silverware goes — sits empty.

Also, the kitchen table is strewn with newspapers and favors from the auto-company holiday parties Alan’s been attending all week. Right now: The New York Times, the Detroit News, some sugared almonds and a CD of the guy who won one of “The Voice” competitions, who was also the entertainment at the party. Can’t remember his name. You’re not going to make me get up and check, are you?

[Pause.]

Chris Mann. I have no idea who he is.

And that’s one of the ways I keep track of things around here. There are days when I feel as though I could give you a snapshot description of every countertop, tabletop, closet and drawer in the house. I know the sound every appliance makes. I know how much laundry needs to be done and how soon we’ll need milk and orange juice. I’m not terribly organized, and I’m not the most efficient housekeeper out there, but I know my own house, the wages of years of working at home, spending long moments staring at a computer screen, trying to concentrate enough to come up with a new way to say the same old stuff.

And today I’m off. Burning up some v-days before the end of the year. I thought of making a quick run south to the Columbus Dispatch holiday party, but then Kate had her road test scheduled today, so that’s what I’ll do instead. Blogging in the morning for a change, seeing if it makes me any chattier, being all fresh and newly caffeinated ‘n’ stuff.

There’s about 10,000 words I could write about trying to teach a teenager a) stick-shift driving; and b) how to drive in combat conditions, which is what Detroit urban transportation is, but I’ll spare you. Tuesday, on my way home from Lansing, I was on the second-to-last freeway of the four numbered routes I take. I-696, the worst of the lot, four lanes of bumper-to-bumper, high-speed lunacy, the closest a civilian will get to driving the Brickyard 400. A Malibu drifted into my lane ahead of me, pretty far — both tires crossed the line. Then it overcorrected back and weaved into the lane on the other side. Classic drunk move. It was around 6:30 p.m., a little early for that, but what the hell, it’s holiday-party season. I saw my chance to pick up speed and pass before the driver came back into my side. Glanced over: A girl about Kate’s age, holding her phone directly in front of her face, with a passenger of the same age, doing the same thing. It’s days like this I want to grab my child, open the panel in her back, and dial back her age settings to 9 or 10 — before the teenage sullenness, before driver’s licenses.

Instead, I will bring you some bloggage:

What a week in the legislature. Assuming the gubernatorial John Hancock or non-veto, soon you’ll be able to take your gun to church. Quoth a supporter:

State Rep. Joel Johnson, R-Clare, called the bill a “pro-public safety bill” because it allowed gun owners to be an asset to public safety in volatile situations.

Yeah, baby! MMJeff, you’d best make that sermon sing, or we’ll be pulling out the shootin’ irons!

Also, the abortion restrictions passed, but not without compromise: You no longer have to give your aborted fetus a proper burial. And — compromise lives! — the bill that would allow your Catholic pharmacist to remain in prayer while you take your birth-control prescription elsewhere died on the vine.

They’re going for the citizenship thing on the voting form again, however.

A moment of silence, then a beep: The inventor of the bar code is dead.

And with that, I have filed 671 words that took me 30 minutes to write. I should do this morning thing more often. Happy Friday, happy weekend.

For those of you who’ve expressed concern about the comments, rest assured I hear you. There’s an expression about bad apples and barrels, but I don’t think it’s entirely true. I’ve seen with my own eyes how often one contrary voice, one bad attitude, one Mr. Grumpypants, can clear a room, an office, a blog comment section, the way a bad egg fart clears an elevator. So I feel your pain.

That said, I’m not banning anyone from the comments. At least not yet. I know that balancing voices in a comment section can sometimes be a tricky matter, because most of them aren’t balanced at all. Birds of a feather, etc., to add a second cliché to this entry.

To be honest, while I love having my opinions affirmed and echoed and repeated back to me in different words as much as the next person, I can’t take too much of it. I lived for 20 years in a state where I frequently felt like a stranger, where you couldn’t put a bumper sticker making fun of Dan Quayle on your car without risking it being keyed. I liked and respected my neighbors (most of them, anyway) who disagreed with me on issues ranging from presidential politics to the cultural impact of “Dark Side of the Moon.” After a few years, I came up with a sentence that I would sometimes repeat as a mantra: Everybody arrives at this moment in time via a different path, and they may have drawn different conclusions along the way.

Also, I was a newspaper columnist, a job where your very own employer regularly runs letters from readers opining that you suck. So I’m sort of used to that.

Ultimately, I think most of our right-leaning commenters here offer a lot, because ultimately, they help make for a spicy mix. As I’ve said before, I think of our comment sections as sort of an idealized tavern, or maybe a cocktail party, with tables here and there, different conversations going on at each, people flitting between them, agreeing, taking offense, whatever. (Prospero, however, will always be the guy at the end of the bar, bellowing opinions and sometimes falling off his stool.) If someone here bugs you, I’d ask you to just slip past his or her name and really — don’t let it get to you. Because, ultimately, it all boils down to this.

Let’s keep having fun.

Speaking of our most prized commenters, I’m indebted, once again, to Jeff, for digging up this old story by Gene Weingarten, which I read and then forgot. Shouldn’t have forgotten this profile of a man who doesn’t vote, because he doesn’t give a rat’s ass:

We took a list of 90-odd names, eliminated those people who were not from battleground states (we wanted people with resonant nonvotes) and then started telephoning. To eliminate any bias in our choice, we decided to profile the very first person who agreed. The first name on the list, as it happens, was Ted Prus. Here is how the call went:

“Hi. This is The Washington Post. Are you registered to vote?”

“No.”

“Are you planning on voting?”

“No.”

“We’d like to write a long story about you. Would you be interested? It would make you famous.”

“You mean a famous idiot?”

“Actually, we’re not sure. There’s no guarantee one way or the other.”

“Sounds good.”

I guess I have to see “Zero Dark Thirty.”

What it’s like to be in a mass shooting. HT: Laura Lippman.

And tomorrow we start anew. On the downside of the week.

Everybody wanted to have their picture taken with the rats. I mean, who wouldn’t?

It was a cold morning, and I walked around a bit before noon. The debate was going on inside, the Capitol doors were locked, but the mood was pretty upbeat outdoors. Everyone had to know this was a done deal, but they were going to make a fuss just the same. Some people drove a long way:

I love those jackets. Maybe I should join the Steelworkers apprentice program. And now I wouldn’t have to pay dues.

Even the horses wore riot gear:

But there was no riot. The Americans for Prosperity got their tent pulled down, which I suspect is exactly what they wanted. And this happened:

I’d like to know what went on between the edits. Seriously, when I was there, it was a high-spirited, but not mean-spirited, crowd.

One of the big rats was moved to the top of the east-side steps.

But in the end, this was a total rout for the GOP. This Jonathan Chait piece gets to the heart of it, as does this Yglesias piece. And a few zillion more that you can easily find with a little Googling. In the meantime, I recommend this Gene Weingarten Sunday story on the ongoing — yes, still — case of Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, he of “Fatal Vision,” “The Journalist and the Murderer” and many other articles and tomes. It’s a good read, pegged to the entrance of none other than Errol Morris on the scene, but the chat he did about it yesterday is better:

I remember the killings. I was an 18-year-old hippie at the time, roughly the same age as Helena Stoeckley. I didn’t do as many drugs as she did, but I did plenty, including mescaline, LSD, and heroin. When I read in the newspaper that Jeffrey MacDonald – still presumed an innocent victim – told police that his attackers had been vicious hippie intruders who chanted “acid is groovy – kill the pigs,” I knew he had done it. As did every hippie in every city who read that statement with any degree of analytical thought. No self-respecting killer hippie would ever have uttered, let alone chanted, that uncool, anachronistic thing as late as 1970. That was exactly what some ramrod-straight 26-year-old Ivy League frat-boy doctor who was contemptuous of the counterculture would have thought a hippie would say.

I was only 12, not a hippie (although an aspiring one), still innocent of the drug culture, but I recall having almost the exact same thought. An early sign of my ear for dialogue, I hope.

Yeesh, this was a long, tiring day, and all I want to do now is rinse it off, maybe with a glass of wine. I leave you with this:

One step forward into the new day, eh?

Edit: I hear the complaints about the comments of late. Considering responses. Please stand by.

I usually go to Lansing on Mondays, but I decided to go today this week. Apparently it’s going to be Michigan rock city; I may not even be able to reach my office — my parking space, anyway. If I can slip away, and get close enough, I might get some pictures. But I’m not optimistic. The state police seem to be loaded for bear. We’ll find out what democracy looks like.

There is so much to say about this, but for obvious reasons, I can’t say too much. My boss has compiled a few links, but there are many, many more you can find with a few keystrokes. One thing seems obvious: This is a political move, and a bold one. This Free Press editorial — 900 words and change — has a strange tone, like a wounded lover. You promised, and you lied to us! Very odd. But it gives you a sense of the emotional stew here, too.

For now, we must gird our loins for the morning. I made pie. And some soup. I’m calling it Beta Carotene Stew, made from oven-roasting a butternut squash, a fat sweet potato, a couple of carrots and, just for the hell of it and because I had them, a couple of apples. Cook down some onions in butter, add a bunch of curry powder, add the roasted stuff, get to work with the stick blender. Thin it out with vegetable broth and enjoy. It’s like eating a bowl full of vitamins. By tomorrow, I’ll be able to throw away my glasses.

So, some bloggage?

Some of you who visit don’t read the comments, so you may have missed Charlotte’s post about her grandmother, who died recently. Here’s your second chance.

I was also sorry to hear about the death of Bob Pence, a Fort Wayner who joined us here from time to time. I corresponded with him for a while, and I wrote a column about how the river was undermining Thieme Drive, where he lived. He had a sly sense of humor; by the time I met him, he’d been through a lot, including a cancer that nearly killed him. His website endures, however, and you can enjoy some of his photography, mainly of small towns in the Midwest and, um, tractors. He was a farm boy, and loved the equipment. He would have been fun to go through the Henry Ford with.

Time to gird my loins for Lansing. Fingers crossed it’s not too crazy, and if it is, that I get a coupe of decent pictures. Happy Tuesday, all.

I’m not sure what percentage of annual jewelry sales happen in December, but I’d be willing to bet it’s a lot. Between engagement rings and year-end bonus spending, the final quarter has to be critically important for any jeweler’s balance sheet. Hence the ads:

(B.C. Clark doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m going to talk about today. I just threw it in for Hank, who loves it so.)

No, I’m thinking about the female image in jewelry advertising, and the problem it poses for creative directors. Because here’s the thing: Generally speaking, you can’t afford fine jewelry until you’re a little older, but putting Mikimoto pearls on wrinkly necks isn’t going to sell too many of them. But if the model is too young, it just looks weird. Princesses can wear zillion-dollar necklaces when they’re 19. Everyone else should be at least 30. Which brings me to this girl:

She’s been in the holiday ads for a local jeweler — and nowhere else I’ve seen — for a few years now. When she started, she looked like the prettiest member of the Michigan State junior-varsity volleyball team, bedazzled for some rich creep, like the girls in some “Taken” fantasy. She still does, to my eyes. Do you think a girl like her would wear a snake around her neck? Someone that wholesome should be in pearls, or maybe a diamond pendant.

Sometimes you can get away with a young model — it all depends on the context.

I swear, I could search “jewelry ads” in Google images all day. Some strange ideas out there.

Of course, women aren’t jewels, they’re people. Here’s my jewel, Sunday night:

I remember her first bass lesson, the teacher said, “You’ll look at a lot of butts.” He wasn’t much of a teacher, but he was right about that.

That’s at Cliff Bell’s, a local jazz club. The DSO program she’s in has a jam session every month there. Show up, bring your fake book, and dive in. it’s intimidating, but it works.

And now the week begins. On Tuesday, the state legislature will pass right-to-work legislation, capping one of the most extraordinary lame-duck sessions anyone can remember. Push aside the vitriol, and this column captures the sentiment of the moment. It’s going to be a bear; I hope I can see enough of it to get a few pictures.

In the meantime, a little bloggage:

A look at a bottom-ender, trying to make her way out. Another great Anne Hull piece from the washPost.

Have a great week, all.

Art gallery in a former police precinct. Another Detroit attraction.

Banksy, too:

I was working on a post yesterday, before:

1) House guests;
2) Work;
3) More work;
4) Chinese food and two bottles of wine;
5) RIGHT TO WORK BILLS OMFG LANSING WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP;
6) And probably some other stuff I’m forgetting.

So one more open thread, and we’ll get back to normal business.

In the last two days: Two round trips to Lansing, multiple long drives around the Metro, a couple fingers of scotch, a Christmas party at the gov’s mansion, a lot of work, and coming tomorrow? House guests. You can see why I’ve been a slacker around here the past couple of days.

Also, this was the scene yesterday at the Capitol. Wisconsin II: The Madisoning could be opening here any day now.

And I don’t have my shopping done. Not even close.

But I do have some weak-ass bloggage.

Dave Brubeck at the Kennedy Center Honors, having what looks to be the peak experience of his life:

This is a terribly sad story about a woman with a terribly sad — and misunderstood — condition, with an even more terrible and sad denouement — suicide.

The final days of a Detroit institution. One of my FB friends, an old music-scene hand, recalled when the Pogues were about to go on next door, and the lead singer couldn’t be found, until he was, having a couple with Steve.

It’s 11:30. I think I may die soon. So g’night.

Long day, late night, another long day ahead, followed by another late night. Which means? Open thread.

You might start the discussion here. I’ll be back eventually.