It had to happen sooner or later: Driving down I-96 Monday morning, passed a little nook of woods, cut back deep enough that it’s a good bet very little sun ever shines down directly. And saw? A red sumac, living up to its name. Bright autumn color, the third week of August.

Well, summer never lasts forever. As Ned Stark is always telling us.

So, winter is coming. But first will come fall, which explains the next thing I saw: A minivan with what looked to be a professionally made rear-window cling sticker: I WILL NEVER VOTE REPUBLICAN AGAIN.

Oh, what a long, long autumn it will be.

As usual, Charles Pierce has a better handle on this than I have. In the rest of my life, we have conversations now and again about tribalism, which seems to be the only word for a world with bumper stickers like the one above, not to mention party leaders like this one, who took it upon herself to elaborate on what Todd Akin said:

Ms. Barnes echoed Mr. Akin’s statement that very few rapes resulted in pregnancy, adding that “at that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it. That’s more what I believe he was trying to state,” she said. “He just phrased it badly.”

Blessed. Hmm. I remember, many many many years ago, when the idea of adopted children searching for their biological parents was just starting to take hold, watching a TV documentary about it. They’d had a couple happy-ending stories, and then one that was, well, the opposite: A woman who had been raped — legitimately! — in the classic sense, dragged into a dark alley and raped by a man of a different color. She had the child, gave it up for adoption, and 20 years later opened the front door to find a biracial young man standing on her doorstep saying hi mom. The woman was horrified and, frankly, terrified.

She’s probably dead by now, and I can’t imagine the reunion went anything other than badly. Maybe the son would like to talk to Rep. Akin.

Well, let’s not dwell on this unpleasantness, shall we? We need something fun. How about…dog shaming. Via Hank. I laughed so hard I think I aspirated a bit of food.

You could try a cat shaming site, but face it — cats can’t be shamed.

Happy hump day, all.

It’s still undetermined as I write this, but if I were a betting woman, I’d wager that Todd Akin is toast by the time you read it. What else is there to say about the guy? I really have nothing to add, but I’d like to draw your attention to this piece from TPM, which isn’t unique today, about the myth of no-pregnancy-from-rape that persists in many quarters. Garance Franke-Ruta takes it apart — with citations that may make you feel a little nauseous — here. Avert your eyes if you’re breakfasting, as you’re about to read about secretions:

The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are “one in millions and millions and millions,” said state Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature’s leading abortion foe.

The reason, Freind said, is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to “secrete a certain secretion” that tends to kill sperm.

That’s from the Philadelphia Daily News, but it’s something I’ve read or heard elsewhere, often enough that I’ve come to think of it as the obverse of the other side’s protestor-who-comes-in-for-an-abortion story, as detailed by Frank Bruni earlier this year.

“Really, that’s so very rare, it just confuses the issue,” one woman told me in an interview. And many others, since.

You see the obvious implications here: If you got pregnant, then it must not have been a real rape, right? (Dirty dirty dirty slut. Enjoy your shaming, and learn.)

But the news cycle moves so fast, I’m relatively confident that most of you have already thrashed this out by now. So let’s move on! To skinny-dipping:

On a trip billed as a foreign policy fact-finding mission last year, a large group of Republican members of Congress, and some of their staff and family members, decided to take a swim in the (Sea of Galilee) after a long day.

Several members — including Representative Steve Southerland II of Florida, who jumped into the water holding hands with his 21-year-old daughter — said they were moved to dip for religious reasons. (The sea is believed by Christians to be the location where Jesus walked on water.)

While most of the members remained clothed, or largely so, Representative Kevin Yoder of Kansas decided to disrobe entirely, as reported first by Politico on Sunday. This sent most of the members fleeing for the shore, said a participant, and prompted a harsh rebuke the next day from Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader who was on the trip but did not swim in the sea.

Now, I’ve admitted to this practice myself, although I’ve mainly limited it to the Great Lakes and a few unnamed farm ponds and so forth. But I hope this admission has more grace than Yoder’s:

“A year ago, my wife, Brooke, and I joined colleagues for dinner at the Sea of Galilee in Israel. After dinner I followed some members of Congress in a spontaneous and very brief dive into the sea and regrettably I jumped into the water without a swimsuit.”

I, on the other hand, regret nothing. Right, Borden? I certainly don’t regret this spontaneous gift from Coozledad:

Yoder, row your bone ashore.

A year ago, my wife and I
Had some dinner
Drank so much I pissed my clothes
(a beginner)
So I dived into the sea
(for a brief rinse)
Ben Quayle had to follow me
(only makes sense)
Refrain-
Yoder pack your junk away
Gal-li-lee-uh
No one here but old Ben Quayle
Wants to see yah.

This morning my Facebook was ablaze with Tony Scott suicide news, with a few expressions of disapproval. As usual, more was revealed, and now it looks as though he might have had some reasons. (Or might not have.) His work was uneven, but like his brother, he favored that lush cinematography that featured lots of blowing curtains. The first film of his I saw was “The Hunger,” which I remember as a pretty good guilty-pleasure Whitley Streiber thriller and a fairly mediocre adaptation, but quite lovely to look at, and isn’t that half the battle? I also remember the audible revulsion when Susan Sarandon kissed Catherine Deneuve. Well, that was Columbus in the ’80s.

Whatever made him go over that bridge railing, I guess he had his reasons.

Tuesday, is it? Well, I hope whatever you do today, you have your own reasons.

Forsooth, “Henry V” was a disappointment. It’s really too bad, as it’s my favorite of the history plays and one I was really looking forward to. I told Kate all the way there that it contains one of the greatest follow-me-boys speeches in the English language, and she should watch for it. Alas, as drama the St. Crispin’s Day speech played more like Ben Stein in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” than, well, this:

Love me some Kenneth Branagh. What’s he up to these days? I heard him interviewed on NPR around the time this film came out, and he talked about the day he was playing Henry V onstage, and lost the glove he needed for a key scene. Shakespeare doesn’t specify many props in his plays, but the glove in “Henry V” is key. So he had to turn to the actor at his side and ad lib, in Elizabethan English, something like, “Fluellen, hast thou seen my glove?” Fluellen blanched and ran offstage to fetch another out of wardrobe, while Branagh wandered around the stage, freestyling in iambic pentameter to the other actors. As he did so, he spotted the glove; he’d dropped it a few feet away. He picked it up, returned to his mark, and continued the scene, just as Fluellen runs back onstage with a second one. I doubt if many people who were unfamiliar with the play even noticed the glitch, although he said that when he was leaving the theater that night, a passing car stopped, the window rolled down and a voice came from within: LOVED THE BIT WITH THE GLOVE.

Fortunately, the weekend improved after that. “The Pirates of Penzance” was a great deal more fun, and “42nd Street” even better. But you know, it’s really hard to go wrong with a) tap dancing; and b) “We’re in the Money.” I remember when the show opened in 1980, it wasn’t well-reviewed. It must have aged better, because it passed as a pleasant blur of tappin’ and singin’ and lots of sparkly costumes.

And now I’ve had my dose of theater for a while, at least until someone presses tickets to something else in my hand.

Stratford has changed since we were last there, and hasn’t. Same restaurants, same tourists, same townie kids hanging downtown after dark. I considered asking if any of them knew Justin Bieber, but thought better of it. After all, there’s plenty of Bieber-material on the web. (David, Adrianne? CLICK THAT.)

And so concludes the week of vacation. I saw friends and family, absorbed culture, rotated my tires. I’ve had worse weeks.

You guys, on the other hand… Did I mention what my heart did when I came home, after 36 hours without internet service, and found 136 emails waiting for me, nearly all comments? Did I? Well, it sank. It sank because I knew I’d soon have MEGO syndrome, and I did. Is this what it’s going to be like through November?

Please, say no.

On the other hand, when this is part of the election-news cycle, how can things not get crazy from time to time?

So, because I have to get ready to go back to lovely Lansing, a few notes:

Would my fifth cousin a million times removed, my reader in Connecticut who does Nall genealogy, get in touch? I got an inquiry from a Googler looking for Nall family info.

While this story in Salon takes some cheap shots at Tampa, I do think its foundational thesis is sound: If a world run on Tea Party principles is something we want, then Tampa is what we’ll get.

A good week to all.

I did a little cycling today — nothing crazy, but as usual, you go for a ride, you start thinking about dying on a ride. Twice in one week recently, I had motorists pull out in front of me, close enough that I had to do the I’M RIDIN’ HERE Ratso Rizzo thing. Both drivers were on their phones. One was on her phone and looking at a cute doggie being walked on the other side of the street.

Whenever this happens, I’m amazed at how angry I can get, justlikethat. I think it has to do with the nature of the exercise — your legs are pumping, you’re feeling good, the blood is running high, and then someone gets in your way, and THIS WILL NOT STAND. I’ve stopped listening to the iPod on the bike the last year or so, because music only makes it worse. God help you if you cut me off and “The Rockefeller Skank” is in my ears, because I’d kill someone under those circumstances.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I understand how the lawyer in New York got hit by a lunatic cyclist who simply couldn’t accept the fact that a crowded urban park is perhaps not the best place for speed training.

It’s so hard to compromise, especially when you’re a high-achieving New Yorker. Where I live, the residents get amazingly whiny about being asked to lock their damn cars, as though they live in Mayberry and not across the street from one of the most lawless cities in the union. I guess in New York, when you’re a hard-charging Type A training for your ninth triathlon — and of course you’re doing the Olympic distance, and not the wussy sprint — no one wants to be told they should put that bike on a train and go somewhere you can do 35 mph speed pieces. Not when Central Park is right down the avenue.

And now you’re bored to death. Here’s another lawyer story:

Remember the guy, a Michigan assistant attorney general, who was obsessed with the gay student-body president at the University of Michigan? And put up a scurrilous blog about him, and stalked him, and went on Anderson Cooper, displaying perhaps the most obvious case of shall-we-say-supressed-weirdness ever?

The student-body president is still dealing with him, and today won a $4.5 million settlement against him. I haven’t been following the case terribly closely, but I heard the victim offered to drop it all in exchange for an apology. Refused.

And while it might be fashionable to think this is about freedom of speech and gay rights, what it makes me think is, how the hell did this guy get hired as an assistant a.g. in the first place? I know not every lawyer can be Atticus Finch, but lordy.

Not too much of a segue here, but if you live in Michigan or care about actual election-related shenanigans, I suggest you read this. It’s sort of appalling.

We’re off to Stratford in the a.m. Three plays — Henry V, Pirates of Penzance and 42nd Street. We few, we happy few. Please, play nice while I’m gone, eh?

Because the laptop is in the midst of a 30-minute software upgrade to Mountain Lion;

Because you guys spent all day fighting, not that I object to those things, because it made cleaning Kate’s closet more interesting, what with the many, many breaks I was taking;

Because no one wants to hear about anything else I did today, which boiled down to biked/swam/cleaned/sorted/grocery shopped/software upgraded…

here are a few links.

I don’t know what’s more depressing about this story, that an IQ of 125 is enough to disqualify a person from service as a police officer in certain parts of New York state, or the fact it apparently took 16 years for the case to make its way through the courts. But hey, here you are: Court of appeals upholds job discrimination on the basis of intelligence. The plaintiff chose a career as a prison guard instead.

Well-known local personal-injury attorney, who is blind, suffers significant but not life-threatening injuries when he’s hit by a cyclist in Central Park. P.S. He is blind, and was in a pedestrian walkway. So far the chatter online is about the police estimate that the cyclist was traveling at 35 mph at the time of the crash. Most seem to believe this is a wild exaggeration. I think they’re missing the point; serious urban cyclists travel at breathtaking speeds these days, and I saw them with my own eyes when we were in NYC a few years back. It may not have been 35, but it was way up there. I can’t imagine what would happen if, say, a blind person took a wrong step or two. (I guess we know now.)

Anyway, I’m sure the conversation will center on the fact that this is a PI lawyer who was hit, and ha ha ha, that cyclist better hope he has a good lawyer, too. I’d rather it be about the WTF speeds of travel in a crowded urban park.

Me, I’m still enjoying being off. Play nice today, if you can, eh?

Looks like it’s official. New thread, cuz I know you guys are going to want to talk about that.

(Tried to write something last night, found myself plumb out of gas after a day of bothering people on the phone, researching tax policy and exchanging emails about the election. Wouldn’t you? Now 6:47 a.m. Let’s see how this goes.)

Early morning, hoping for rain. The radar is encouraging, but it’s been a lying bitch for weeks now. The lawn is still green(ish), but that’s due to the sheltering effects of the front-yard oak, not sprinkling. Honey Boo Boo chile don’t sprinkle, and look, look! It’s taken only hours for me to internalize Honey Boo Boo and, in essence, justify whatever dollars were spent on producing that carnival of American entertainment. And I didn’t even watch much of it. Alan vetoed it after a few minutes, but I caught a bit here and there — the family ultrasound of HBB’s older sister, who is pregnant. HBB’s mother, June, revealed she’d been 15 when she’d first become a mother, which was presumably before she married her husband, Sugar Bear, and certainly before she started attending auctions to buy outdated or fell-off-the-truck packages of Chips Ahoy, another little snippet I caught. After the ultrasound, we learned that the family refers to a woman’s genitals as her biscuit.

“Because when you get a biscuit — a good biscuit, like at Hardee’s — you can kind of pull ’em apart…” — June throws her head back and laughs, and thanks! Thanks, June and Honey Boo Boo! Now I can never eat a biscuit again. Although I had a neighbor once who called that same thing a muffin, and I still eat those.

In time, it will pass. The American freak show. I bet they don’t so anything like this in Turkey.

I desperately need coffee. I should have exercised this morning. Maybe a bike ride later? I’m hungry. This is my brain in the early morning — Travis Bickle without the guns: I tried several times to call her, but after the first call, she wouldn’t come to the phone any longer. I also sent flowers but with no luck. The smell of the flowers only made me sicker. The headaches got worse. I think I got stomach cancer. I shouldn’t complain though. You’re only as healthy, you’re only as healthy as you feel. You’re only as…healthy…as…you…feel.

It takes three to make a trend, but I think we have a good start on making naked DUI into a Thing.

First, the Rev. Peter Petroske, Catholic priest, arrested and suspended for driving through Dearborn naked and drunk, and I really wish I knew more, but I don’t. There’s a lot about Fr. Petroske’s background in the story. Commenters who say they knew him say he’s a great guy. The priesthood is stressful. I hope he gets the help he needs.

And then, today, Randy Travis, upon whom I once had a 10-minute crush, before the gaydar kicked in, now reduced to raving in the back seat of the squad car, naked and drunk and threatening to kill the cops.

I do not mean to make light of what is obviously a couple of miserable human beings, but it’s odd how these things come in clusters. I’ve been naked and I’ve been drunk, sometimes at the same time, but I’ve never considered going for a drive while in that condition. And for that, the world can be grateful.

I sense we’re already lowering the tone.

So here’s this: Gawker had a little exchange with Henrik Rummel, aka Boner Rower. He is one hell of a good sport:

What was your initial reaction when the story of your boner hit the internet? Have you gotten a lot of feedback? New fans?

I laughed very hard! I woke up my girlfriend and told her the story. Then I told everyone else I knew, except my parents.

Wise choice, kiddo. Now your mom will never find out.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that gymnastics is over. I don’t know how many more plucky brats I can handle. These track athletes are much more my speed, although I don’t really get the obsession with makeup some of these women have. When I’m sweating, false eyelashes are the last things I want to worry about, but then, it is worldwide television and there’s a lot of money lying on the ground for a fetching athlete to pick up, whether or not she’s a winner. So: Plucky brats bad, lanky brats with false eyelashes good.

Failing that, you can always go for a reality-TV show. What do you call a vagina?

Coffee. Cooooffffeeeee…..

Election night, and the returns are coming in, pretty much as expected. Pete Hoekstra will running against Debbie Stabenow in the fall. Gary Peters will be my new congressman. The Detroit Institute of Arts will most likely get the small tax millage that will allow them to stay open. And my phone will stop ringing. Four more calls today, one coming as late as 3:30 p.m. I was ready to kill. I could have let the all go to voicemail, but our landline rings so infrequently, to have it chirping all day just chaps my ass. So I pick it up, and immediately hang up. And this, my friends, is a first world problem.

The only seriously contested races are small enough that they won’t have clear winners until tomorrow. If only there were a news product that could reveal these things bright and early, that we could read over coffee.

Here’s one: The utterly FUBAR’d mess of the 11th district, left behind by one-time presidential candidate Thaddeus McCotter. The evident winner — at this hour — is inevitably described as a “reindeer farmer,” which he is. I’d like to know more about him, but he’s given virtually no interviews. That’s because it came out some time ago that hey, he’s an actor:

Bentivolio, a Milford teacher, had a prominent role in a low-budget Michigan-made film — “The President Goes to Heaven” — released last year that pokes fun at a fictional character based on Republican former President George W. Bush.

In the 85-minute satire, Bentivolio is the chief physician at a place called the North Oakland Medical Center, where the fictional president has had a stroke and lies in a coma but is able to hear and understand those around him.

The nurses berate the comatose president for ordering the planes to be flown into the towers, killing their loved ones. A conspiracy theorist on a TV screen details the urban myths about “our allies” being responsible for the attack.

And the comatose president, whom the viewers can hear but the actors can’t, says he knew something was in the works, but “only Dick knew all the details.” (An apparent reference to former Vice President Dick Cheney.)

I would like to party with Kerry Bentivolio, reindeer farmer. And he’s very, very likely to be going to Washington by the end of the year.

So.

Because I have an RSS feed set up to search “grosse pointe,” I got this column yesterday, which isn’t about GP at all, but Mitt Romney, and contains this lovely turn of phrase:

Who is Mitt Romney? He’s a public figure for whom, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, there’s no “there” there. He’s a shape-shifter, an identity hijacker, a human being who would rather appear to be than actually be. He’s the living incarnation of the self-seeking, ethos-free, “always be closing” vacuousness of the hedge fund set. He’s the Golem of Grosse Pointe, the Dybbuk of Darien, the animated spirit of vapid wealth. He is soulless and amiably amoral ambition made flesh as a candidate for the highest office in the land.

The Dybbuk of Darien — now there’s a movie.

It seems I had more to blog today, but I didn’t write it down. Maybe it will come back to me tomorrow. Oh, I remember: Hank on Honey Boo Boo. A classic. (Link fixed.)

I’m thinking it’s a day for another links’n’stuff post, because Mondays suck, and this one sucked audibly.

So:

There was a time in American journalism when you couldn’t say “boner” in the newspaper. You still can’t. Online, you put it in a headline. Poor guy. Or maybe not.

Great Olympic moments, nostalgia edition: When Tyson Gay became Tyson Homosexual.

It’s election day in Michigan. The phone rang incessantly all weekend. Robocalls. Today I came home and found four on the machine, answered two more, and found another on the machine after I stepped out for a while. I’m ready to call in an airstrike on the whole Wayne County Commission.

More tomorrow. At least I hope so.

Yeesh, this heat is getting on my last nerve. The last few days have been less hot than it’s been in the worst weeks of summer, but so muggy my glasses steamed when I got out of the car last night. My scalp never feels entirely dry, and that spot at the base of the skull? Swampy. Ick.

So when Alan accepted a night at Comerica Park as part of an automotive media event Friday night, I was highly dubious. “Field box or suite?” I asked. Suite. He thought so, anyway. I enjoy a night at the ball park as much as the next girl, but it was 91 degrees at 6 p.m. Even the most casual business casual is miserable in weather like that.

I settled on khakis and linen, but needn’t have fretted. Because it was, indeed, a suite. And General Motors’ might be the second-best in the whole joint:

Let me put it this way: One of the GM people brought her son and another boy. After a couple innings, they went next door to get an autograph, having spotted Willie Horton sitting a few feet away, in the owner’s suite.

Add the air conditioning and the food, and all I can say is, this is civilization. Of course, now I’m spoiled for the field seats more or less forever.

Tigers won, 10-2. But you Clevelanders already knew that.

The rest of the weekend went swimmingly. Eastern Market (sweaty scalp) followed by errands (sweatier) followed by gym (total schvitz-a-thon) followed by cooking and shower and cocktails with friends. I indulged in a little Laphroaig, not my usual summer drink, but oh well. I thought it tasted oaky and peaty. Alan took a sip and said, “lavender and manure.” For this you pay $9.75 for 1.5 fingers, but it lasted a good long while.

And now to the bloggage. Because it seems we’ll never see the end of our peculiar American insanity, I offer the following as a cautionary tale:

Ugh.

After last week’s bite-the-medal photo array, I offer…kiss the medal. I guess it beats “swing it around your head and smack someone on the head with it,” but it does make for some repetitive photography.

This picture, however, of the first woman from Saudi Arabia to ever compete in an Olympic Games, sort of touched my heart. The look on her face. She didn’t last two minutes, but I have to think she did some good for somebody in that time.

Onward to the new week. Still enjoying summer, despite its best efforts to kill me.