Tuesday links and pix, because I’m tired and all I want to do is watch “Game of Thrones” on my iPad, because wouldn’t you?

Flickr isn’t turning up anything good, so I went through my own photo library. Have I used this before?

Yet another Saturday Morning Market shot — a couple of skinny little boys with a very involved mother, singing “Folsom Prison Blues” between market sheds. They didn’t appear to have a busker’s license, and my guess is they were booted pretty quickly, provided the enforcers could get through the layers of awwwwwing fans.

And now on to the links:

Neil Steinberg, the Sun-Times columnist, took note of Ann Romney’s bon mot yesterday with a note of respect:

I thought it was a joke when I first read it. But no. Ann Romney, Mitt’s wife, when asked how she responded to those who said her husband is “too stiff,” really did say “I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out because he is not.”

Satire must bow and recognize a force greater than itself. No exaggeration can improve upon what these people are actually capable of saying. The mind reels.

Meanwhile, Strip Search Sammy Alito lives up to his nickname. Along with his confederates.

A couple of you mentioned going to the Titanic exhibit at the Henry Ford here in the other D (Dearborn). We’ll be doing so as well, and if anyone wants a drinkie or two with the hostess, you just rustle me up.

Something I did not know: “Dixie,” the unofficial anthem of the ol’ Souf’, wasn’t written until 1859. It was written in New York City, of all places, for a minstrel show.

Zzzzz.

Such a strange story in the Freep Sunday, a Rochelle Riley special on the aftermath of a case everyone who was paying attention in 2005 knows about — a mother and her two sons, killed instantly by a drunk driver. The case was especially egregious in the details: It happened at midday. The driver was utterly shitfaced. He hit her car, stopped to make a left turn into the dentist’s office, at an estimated 70 miles per hour. There wasn’t a single skid mark to indicate he tried to slow down first. He was driving a Yukon, she an Accord. So, so awful. All Gary Weinstein’s chickens and their dam in one fell swoop.

This was in 2005. The driver, Tom Wellinger, was tried and convicted of second-degree murder, and is serving 19-30 years in prison. So what’s the story about? Forgiveness.

Now. If you know me at all, you know I am a world-champion grudge holder. If you were filling out brackets for this sport, you’d be smart to have me and David Simon in the final four, perhaps with an Albanian and Sicilian blood-feuder. It’s not that I’m incapable of forgiveness. I just don’t like the version peddled today, in which you forgive someone who has wronged you by hugging them on Oprah’s set and then adding them to your Christmas-card list. This seems crazy to me. This is the forgiveness I practice: I decide to put stuff behind me. And then I move on. But I reserve the right to not like the other person forever and ever.

Because what else can you do? It’s been my experience that when you get seriously fucked over, it’s pretty rare for the fucker to come back later and say, “I did a terrible thing to you. I apologize, and I ask your forgiveness.” Nooooo. They go on about their lives, eating ice cream and otherwise not being bothered by the face they see in the mirror every day. Life could hardly go on, otherwise. Because we’ve all been that fucker, sometime, to someone. We might not even be aware of it.

But this new brand of forgiveness is the hot thing now, and it’s the bass line of this piece by Riley, which promotes a film project called Project Forgive, being produced by a woman who knew both men at the center of this story — Weinstein the widower and Wellinger the drunk driver, and here’s where I start to look around for the nearest exit:

“There are two Toms,” she said (of the killer), “Tom, this man who killed a family and is in jail, and Tom, a beautiful, loving family man who happened to make a horrific mistake.”

Sure, that guy. Stories at the time indicated this beautiful man was on an epic bender at the time, with a blood-alcohol content around .4. Riley picks up on this ironic detail:

The saddest twist of fate, she said, was that Tom Wellinger’s immediate family had flown to Michigan the day of the accident to stage an intervention over his drinking.

It was scheduled for the next day.

That is not the saddest twist of fate, sorry, no. The saddest twist of fate is the three dead people, and have you ever been to an intervention? Frequently, the person at the center says, “No, I’m not checking into your little rehab center. In fact, I’m leaving right now” and walks out of the room. But she’s going somewhere here, and it’s in the direction of forgiveness. Then this mushroom pops up in the middle of the copy:

(Weinstein) also attributes much of his success and life philosophy to Landmark personal development seminars, something that he said chased away many girlfriends but intrigued the woman he eventually married. (His wife) attended a seminar with him and eventually became a Landmark leader.

What is a Landmark personal development seminar? There’s no explanation. So I went a-Googling. And wow:

If, like me, you are not in the habit of sharing highly personal tidbits of your life with 148 strangers for 13 hours a day, three days in a row, then let me, uh, share with you what that experience feels like. It feels like intergalactic jet lag, or like someone has pumped your head full of a global weather system, heavy on the cumulonimbus. Some of the 148 strangers were crying so much, they looked as if they had been boiled.

And wow:

After nearly 40 hours inside the basement of Landmark Education’s world headquarters, I have not Transformed. Nor have I “popped” like microwave popcorn, as the Forum Leader striding back and forth at the front of the windowless gray room has promised. In fact, by the time he starts yelling and stabbing the board with a piece of chalk around hour 36, it’s become clear that I’ll be the hard kernel left at the bottom of this three-and-a-half-day Landmark Forum. I have, however, Invented the Possibility of a Future in which I get a big, fat raise, a Future I’ll Choose to Powerfully Enroll my bosses in, now that I am open to Miracles Around Money.

And an even bigger wow:

Though it’s hardly a secret, Landmark does not advertise that it is the buttoned-down reincarnation of the ultimate ’70s self-actualization philosophy, est.

Dragging that around in your backpack — to borrow an image from “Up in the Air” — you almost have to find yourself confronting your wife’s killer in a jail cell, and asking after his kids.

“I want him to speak so that the world will know he’s not a monster,” Weinstein said. “My understanding is that he’s not. I can appreciate that people who know what happened to me think I should be vindictive against him for what he did. But I don’t come at it from that point at all.”

Again: Wow. I can’t figure if this is brilliant or not. If I’d done something like Wellinger did, I think a fate worse than death would be to have my victim’s survivors embrace me like this. To care about my family. To tell people I’m not a monster. Maybe this is jujitsu. But there was a strange undercurrent to this story. Some things can’t be forgiven in that way.

Or maybe I’m just in dire need of a Landmark personal-development seminar. Has anyone here done one of these?

How was your weekend. We saw “The Hunger Games,” about which I’ll have more to say tomorrow. In the meantime? Bloggage:

For you photography nerds, inside the 3D conversion of “Titanic.”

Thirty-six billions dollars’ worth of student-loan debt is held by people 60 and older. (Speaking of wow.)

Remember when college riots were sparked by politics and anger over national policy? Yeah, me neither.

Monday awaits! Another slog of a week, but one I’m happy to participate in.

I was having office hours today when the department secretary stuck her head in the door.

“You haven’t responded to your invitation to the diversity awards,” she said.

“I never got an invitation to the diversity awards,” I said.

“It’s in your mailbox.”

“I have a mailbox?” Kidding. I learned I had a mailbox about six months ago, maybe longer. I hadn’t checked it since. So I found it — it’s in an office I never visit — and pulled out the invitation to the diversity awards. Also, one to the department Christmas party and something from the president informing us of the rich menu of learning experiences available on campus. I reached all the way back, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

And pulled out something that looked like the paychecks I used to receive before I signed up for direct deposit. Surely it was some sort of tax document. Dammit, already filed, I thought, ripping off the zip tabs on the ends, wondering if I’d have to file an amended return.

Unfolded it. It was a check. Made out to me. For several hundred dollars. Dated April 27, 2011. I have no idea why I was paid by check when it was supposed to be coming electronically. Don’t know why I didn’t notice I was short, except that adjuncts are paid through the term and when the term stops, the money stops, and this was likely the last one of the term. I probably thought it just stopped early.

I could go on at great length explaining my budgeting process to you, but it would only serve to make me sound even stupider. As it was, the two or three people I had to explain this to by way of getting it voided and repaid looked at me like I’m some silly rich twit who didn’t even know she was short an entire paycheck a whole year previous.

“I’m not rich!” I told them. “I’m just dumb.”

In three to five days, I will have a brand-new check. In four to six days, I predict a bill will arrive for precisely that amount.

One of my longer-term resolutions this year is to get certain financial ducks in a row. So if you owe me any money, please send a check now. Or just order lots of Amazon through the Kickback Lounge.

The WSJ had a story Thursday about how high schools are dealing with the prom-dress problem, i.e., enforcing the dress code necessitated by the new prom dresses.

“New prom dresses?” you ask. “How new can they be?”

How about this new, to use an extreme example, but not all that unusual, evidently. The story says that the trend toward cut-down-to-there, slit-up-to-here, tight/plunging/see-through dresses is coming out of Hollywood, driven by “Dancing With the Stars,” the Real Housewives and J-Lo, mainly. I urge you to take a walk through the Promgirl online catalog, and marvel — at the models, all of whom look like Kardashians on the far side of 30; at the cutouts; at the boob jobs; at the…whatever this is. Do any of the girls whose mothers permit them to walk outside the house dressed like this have any sense of propriety? Or are they all raising their girls to be sold into white slavery? I tell Kate if she wants to dress like this, I will teach her to say, in Russian, “My name is Olga, and I cost two hundred dollars.”

Best line from the story:

Southmoore High’s guidelines say male students must keep their shirts on all night. “We don’t care that you work out,” the guide states.

OK, then! Got any bloggage? Yes, and a wide variety of it.

From New York magazine, President John Tyler, born in 1790, our 10th president, has a living grandson. Yes, grandson:

Both my grandfather — the president — and my father, were married twice. And they had children by their first wives. And their first wives died, and they married again and had more children. And my father was 75 when I was born, his father was 63 when he was born. John Tyler had fifteen children — eight by his first wife, seven by his second wife — so it does get very confusing.

A T-shirt company in town sells a wide variety of shirts promoting various parts of the Metro — one emblazoned Taylortucky, for a downriver community; another showing a sombrero-wearing cactus for Mexicantown. But it wasn’t until it released one for Dearborn that featured the city’s name in Arabic letters that the shit hit the fan. Maybe that’s too strong. It was more like a vile fart in front of an air conditioner. I still want one.

Dig it: A nice piece on a Detroit urban farmer, and mine on the Mower Gang, if you missed the link in the comments yesterday.

There’s a second Mad Style post today! T-Lo, the gift that keeps on blogging.

A good weekend, all. Sorry I’ve been so uninspired, of late. It’s been a killer week.

A woman approached me at a freeway exit today, holding a gas can and rattling off a mile-a-minute story about running out of gas, being late for work and panicked about losing her job. She didn’t look like she worked at Victoria’s Secret at Macomb Mall, but it wasn’t out of the question, either. Please, please, please, she said.

I gave her $4. There’s at least a 50-50 chance she spent it in a nearby crack house, but I always consider the possibility she really needed the money. You have to make a decision about these things in half the cycle of a red light, and what the hell — will your karma be terribly dented by a kindness to a drug addict, even if it’s not the kindness they need? The last thing she said as she moved to the next car?

“I’ll pay it forward. I will.”

Let’s hope so.

I felt the need to rearrange karma a bit yesterday, having read about what most seem to consider a fairly disastrous argument for the Affordable Care Act earlier. Well. If it goes down, I look forward to the GOP’s “modest, incremental fixes” of the existing unsustainable reality, not to mention the usual preening about the greatest health-care system in the world.

What happened to the solicitor general? It sounds like he was utterly unprepared to be aggressively questioned. He was asked if the government could require people to buy a burial plot. Maybe if a burial plot cost $100,000, and your failure to afford one meant we all had to chip in for yours? I’d say yeah. (My boss Derek says, “Ask the government if you can bury your aunt in the back yard, and see what they say.”) The more polite commentators are pretending John Roberts is a wild card — ha! — and, of course, Clarence Thomas sat there like a toad who hasn’t had quite enough hours in direct sunlight yet.

A long day, followed by a long evening. Grading papers. Grading, grading, grading. My eyes are crossed.

Looks like Gawker noticed Frank Bruni’s column Sunday, too:

…Here are a couple questions.

1) If you were a vocal anti-abortion protester, and you needed to get an abortion, would you select the very abortion clinic that you had protested for years? The one that is staffed be people you had stared in the face and called “murderers” for years? Would you seek out those “familiar faces”? Or would you maybe go somewhere else?

2) How did this young lady enter the clinic without being spotted by any of her co-protesters?

3) If you were a virulent anti-abortion protester who suddenly and hypocritically sought out an abortion from the very people you had been calling murderers for years, would you return to that very same clinic a week later to call those very same people murderers, even though you knew that they knew you were a horrible liar?

These are the very same questions I asked! Bruni hasn’t responded to Gawker, but he has his defenders out there, and I seriously don’t get it.

Did I mention my eyes are crossed with fatigue? They are. I’m going to bed.

Another perfect — mostly, anyway — weekend. The heat abated, a little rain fell down, we went to a party, I hit the gym. The grocery-shopping went off without incident. (It usually does.) And I started, and finished, our taxes. They were easier than ever, and unless I screwed up something completely, we’re getting a small refund. Weak with relief, we immediately celebrated by going out to dinner at Cliff Bell’s. Red meat! Bottle of wine! Two fingers of Knob Creek over ice for my gentleman friend! The director of Kate’s jazz program at the DSO was playing with his band, and they were very fine. Who could ask for more?

I am a child of children of the Depression, however. When a few days go well, I automatically brace for twice that many to go the other way. And when they go the other way, I rarely think things will be better soon. This is what the last decade in the newspaper business taught me: Things can always get worse, and likely will.

Still, a good weekend. How many read Frank Bruni’s Sunday column? No, not the one about his gout, but the tidy little tale of the unnamed college acquaintance who recently came back in his life, reading from a script that sounds more or less exactly like the one you can hear in every tent revival, except everything is flipped around — the guy starts out as a religious prig, and gradually the scales fall from his eyes, and now he performs abortions.

The comments are piling up, and they’re what you’d expect — “deeply moving,” “amazing,” “wonderful,” etc. I didn’t read every one, but I wonder how many had a b.s. meter start wailing at the final anecdote of the column:

He shared a story about one of the loudest abortion foes he ever encountered, a woman who stood year in and year out on a ladder, so that her head would be above other protesters’ as she shouted “murderer” at him and other doctors and “whore” at every woman who walked into the clinic.

One day she was missing. “I thought, ‘I hope she’s O.K.,’ ” he recalled. He walked into an examining room to find her there. She needed an abortion and had come to him because, she explained, he was a familiar face. After the procedure, she assured him she wasn’t like all those other women: loose, unprincipled.

She told him: “I don’t have the money for a baby right now. And my relationship isn’t where it should be.”

“Nothing like life,” he responded, “to teach you a little more.”

A week later, she was back on her ladder.

Excuse the longer-than-normal quote, but I wanted to get it all in. It so happens I’ve heard this before. Over the years I’ve interviewed several abortion providers, and they’ve all — every one — spoken of this phenomenon, of the protester they all know who shows up as a patient one day, claiming her abortion is different, and her abortion is justified. I’m not calling them liars, and I’m not calling Bruni one, either; to be sure, I recall reading a NYT piece on abortion on one of the Roe vs. Wade anniversaries that quoted a couple of women in clinic waiting rooms expressing this very sentiment. I’m opposed to abortion, but this time is different.

I get it. But this particular case just doesn’t pass my personal smell test. She needs an abortion, so she goes to the clinic she stands outside, on a ladder, no less? What did she tell her fellow protesters, all of whom would have recognized her as she walked in or out? She chooses the same doctor she regularly calls a murderer? She tells him a story, trusting that he’ll keep her secret — which he’s obliged to, by law and ethics — and then gets back on her ladder to call him a murderer again? This is one too-perfect anecdote too far. Also, note this saint-in-human-form’s reaction when he sees her missing one day — not thank God that bitch isn’t here today, but I hope she’s OK.

I get suspicious when people in stories like this don’t act like people, but more like characters from Central Casting. That’s all.

I’d be interested in hearing other takes on this one.

Which might as well take us to the bloggage, which is good ‘n’ plentiful today. Sorry to dump another NYT link on you; I know they’re curtailing the monthly allotment of free reads soon, if not already. But this is a good one, a look at the now-closed Wigwam, the legendary high-school gym in Anderson, Ind., the second-largest in the state. It seated 9,000 and once upon a time, every seat was filled. But times are different now, in Indiana and everywhere, and the expense of maintaining such a facility could no longer be justified by the cost-staggered school district.

It’s a good story because it looks at all the reasons this is happening, which is more than most Hoosier journalists do; they tend to lay the blame on the 1997 decision to divide the hoops championship by enrollment, still seen in the state as the end of the magic — “Hoosiers” could never happen again!, etc. The NYT story points out that decision was a long time coming. It’s a sad story, and it’s more complicated, in every way, than you might think.

Yesterday was the 101st anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire; LGM has a briefing. I bring it up because “This American Life” replayed the retraction of the Daisey-monologue show Friday, and I heard Charles Duhigg, NYT reporter, speak the essential truth of Apple and its factory conditions in China. He said something like: We once had harsh working conditions in this country, and we decided to end them, so that no American worker should ever suffer the fate of the girls who leapt from the Triangle windows to escape the fire at their backs. We could export that, our humanity, but we haven’t, and now countries around the world are waiting for their own Triangle tragedies.

Wonkette had the best single snark on Dick Cheney’s heart transplant. It’s funny, but I’ll let you read it yourself. As for me, I wish him a thorough healing, in the best sense of the word. I’ll let you figure it out.

Finally, although I do not wish to bum you out at the beginning of the week, this really must be seen to be believed. Thanks, Zorn, for alerting us to “Obamaville.” (He’s calling this stuff “scaroin.” Fitting.)

A great week to all. Onward to Monday.

I don’t think Alan’s been to Lansing since we’ve lived in Michigan, and now that I’m here a day or two every week, it’s not like I’m an expert or anything, but I know my way around more than he does.

The other day I commented that Lansing reminded me of another place we’ve lived before — Fort Wayne.

“Really?” he said.

Sure. Sorta-high-rise buildings, a certain Stalinesque look to a few of them, a domed structure at the middle of it all, and of course, that low, evergray sky.

He was surprised. He thought Lansing was like Ann Arbor, with a major university weaving its way through the town, his wife wandering out at lunch to eat at some cool vegan restaurant where the wait staff all have dreadlocks. That kind of thing.

Alas, no. East Lansing is nowhere near the capitol building. Here’s the sign on the lawn of one of our neighbors:

Ah, the rich economic loam of a white-collar government-dependent city — consultants. My favorite is CPAN. And, of course, the Rockstar Factory.

If there’s a cool vegan place within walking distance, I haven’t found it. The other day we ambled over to the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

Speaking of government, perhaps you’ve heard what’s happening in Detroit these days. The city is teetering on the brink of Chapter 9, with fighting over what role the state will take in whatever comes next — emergency financial manager or consent agreement. There are public meetings and lots of yelling.

So, you might ask: What’s the city council president up to? This.

You know what I love best about this? It’s a two-camera production.

I know the set of “fans of smart medical ethicists” isn’t very large, but I’m in it, and my favorite is Art Caplan. He used to write a syndicated column that was distributed on the Knight Ridder wire, and I admired how he could take cases from Baby M to something you never heard of, and always manage to say something interesting about them. Later on, I’d love him for a more personal reason — you could call him, and even though he’s a big fromage and you’re just some yutz from Fort Wayne, he would take your call, or call you back, or give you his personal cell number, or whatever.

Anyway, he’s leaving the University of Pennsylvania, where he’s been forever, and going to New York University. The Philadelphia City Paper marked his exit in their Bell Curve column:

Famed medical ethicist Arthur Caplan is leaving UPenn to work for NYU. “They promised me an unlimited supply of drifters to just fuck around with in my lab,” he shrugs. “I’m making a monster that I plan to marry and then hunt for sport. Is that wrong?”

Both Ron and Derek had good blogs at 42 North yesterday. Ron’s here — on lying liars and their lying lyingness, and Derek’s here, about the various outrageous abuses of sunshine laws in this state, and probably yours, too.

These issues wouldn’t be so critical if we didn’t have so many people like this holding public office:

Five (International Baccalaureate) students who traveled to the Dominican Republic over spring break – Abhijay Kumar, Rahul Gannapureddy, Kyla Roland, Jessica Khoury and Kate Kreiss – described a program that makes them want to come to school every day.

“You learn how to talk to people who have different views than you, in a constructive way,” Kreiss said. “I personally believe the IB program is preparing me more for the real world.”

…Board member Murray Kahn said students who spoke glowingly of the program used some of the same language he had read on the IB program website.

“I’m hearing indoctrination,” he said, “and it concerns me a lot, because of where this program originates.”

Your school board. Hard at work.

Hello, weekend! Think I’ll do our taxes.

Before I forget, a movie recommendation we caught last weekend on On Demand cable. (It sounds strange to write “on On Demand,” but stranger to write, “a movie we demanded to watch last weekend.” How about “a movie we watched via On Demand.” Does that work for everyone?)

Anyway: “The Other F Word,” which I thought we could enjoy as a fam, seeing as how it had cross-generational appeal — a documentary about some of the most notorious punk rockers of the ’80s, now responsible fathers. It was an amusing little trifle, and if it boiled down to, essentially, “one day you’ll have children, and you’ll understand,” it didn’t make it any less charming.

The central through-line was the story of Jim Lindberg, lead singer in Pennywise (I’ve never heard of them, either, although I’m told they were big. Or maybe the pictures got small.). He has one of those double-edged swords — a band that has enough success after a couple of decades to provide him and his quartet of blondes (wife, three adorable daughters) with a comfortable California living, but only if he’s willing to spend three-quarters of every year on the road, screaming into microphones. It’s not exactly a hard-knock life, except it is. He’s a funny guy, and at one point, pausing near the bunk area on the band’s tour bus, notes that the smell is “a mix of farts, ass, feet…and a hint of balls.” I’m sure it sounded like heaven when he was 25, less so today. But what do fathers do? Take care of their families. And so he soldiers on, worrying about father-daughter dances and recitals.

Around him, his fellow punkers do the same, with varying degrees of success. The women are all but invisible, not all the stories charming — it’s depressing to hear how many of these angry men started as angry boys, abandoned by their fathers. But you have to salute their onward-and-upward response of trying to do better by their own children.

Was it worth a night out in the theater? No. Was it worth $5 and a bowl of homemade popcorn on the couch? Sure. Warning: If you choose to do the same, know that the R rating is due to profanity so thick it turns the air blue, but unfortunately isn’t deployed very imaginatively. Lee Ermey, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Woo woo woo.

So let’s skip to the bloggage:

Only in Ann Arbor:

A 34-year-old Ann Arbor man was sent to the hospital with a head injury after another man punched him on Saturday during a literary argument, according to police.

Things missing from this story: WHAT THEY WERE ARGUING ABOUT, although there is mention of a condescending remark that led to the fracas.

(A word we should all use more: Fracas.)

I think Prospero/Malvolio could probably riff on that one for a while. Me, I’m off to bed.

I didn’t hear every word of the “This American Life” walkback of “Mr. Daisey Goes to China,” the riveting hour of radio aired in January that turned out to have…well, you can read the stories everywhere. The economical phrase is “numerous fabrications.” But I heard enough, and for the record, the most interesting segment was the one at the end of Act 2, where, after an agonizing grilling by Ira Glass, Mike Daisey (the monologuist whose truthy monologue the show was based on) asks to come back and say a few more things.

Glass notes that he thought Daisey was going to cop to a few more fabrications. But no. He wanted to make an extended argument that embroidering the facts of his monologue about Apple’s manufacturing processes was defensible to make an emotional connection with the theatrical audience, and that emotion raised awareness, and therefore, was a type of truth, if not a journalistic one. (At least, I think that’s what he was saying.)

Glass countered that theater was one thing, and journalism was quite another, but if a person stands up on stage and says, “This happened to me, it really did,” even in a theater, then the audience has an expectation that what they’re going to hear is factual.

This fascinates me. Every so often I go on a tear against urban legends, which used to arrive regularly via email and now arrive regularly via Facebook updates. No, U.S. congressmen and presidents don’t get obscene, six-figure salaries FOR LIFE because someone told you via email. No, a bunch of U.S. Marines didn’t beat the crap out of a guy who stole the Toys for Tots donation bowl; the thing that looks like a clipping from the paper is doctored. No, the Obamas didn’t have that conversation in a restaurant, the punchline of which suggests that Michelle made her husband what he is. And every time I do, someone says, “Oh, I figured it was bullshit, but I passed it along because it’s a good story.” In other words, Daisey may be onto something. When Mitch Albom was caught pre-writing a story that hadn’t actually happened yet — an act he called “a wrong assumption,” some of his biggest defenders were readers, who said, essentially, big deal. He thought it was going to happen, and he’s real busy, and anyway it’s a good story and what’s the harm?

The harm is that facts are facts and truth is truth, and sometimes they don’t always mesh perfectly.

I think that’s the last time Ira Glass uses a theatrical piece as the basis for a show, however.

Some purty good bloggage today, plus a picture. Stand by for links!

Adrianne? Hank? Adrianne’s friend whose name I forget? Remember that bar we went to in D.C. by Union Station, the one Adrianne picked because she has that Irish nose for a good place to meet friends and raise a glass or two? Place called the Dubliner? Guess who stopped by on St. Patrick’s Day. And we missed him.

A great piece in the WashPost about the culture clash perfectly crystalized in the case of the Priest and the Lesbian and the Communion Wafer at Mom’s Funeral, which we discussed last week. A piece of work, that priest:

In 2008, he lectured at the Conservative Institute of M.R. Stefanik in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. He called for moving “away from secular political democracy or political liberalism” in order to “usher in what I would call post-secular democracies.”

“An urgent return to the religion and the metaphysical realism of the West, combined with the promotion of free economies and a sound political foundation is what is now needed to preserve civilization,” he said, according to text provided of his speech, adding that “the Western radicals think they have seen that dark world and they like it, the Eastern Europeans can awake them from their deadly delusion.”

Post-secular democracies. Wonderful.

Finally, how my husband, who just last week remarked, “Never do I feel more out of touch with my fellow Americans than I do during March madness,” spent part of the weekend:

Taking down our basketball hoop.

A wild weather evening in our part of the world yesterday. I’m sitting in the car place, waiting on an oil change and watching the news footage scroll by, and it’s a standard-issue tornado damage — houses reduced to matchsticks, the usual. But no injuries. Presumably someone will get a splinter or a nail puncture before the mess is cleaned up, but it’s times like this we should all join hands and thank civilization for our infrastructure, the things we all take for granted — weather alerts, in this case.

I remember turning my ankle on a sidewalk-repair job in Buenos Aires that didn’t have so much as a strip of yellow tape to warn the pedestrian. The Argentine capital has many charms, but for all our whining about the lawyerizing of American culture and so forth, we live in a pretty safe country, all things considered.

(If I were writing this screenplay, this is the part in the story where I am killed by a stray bullet fired by an armed citizen practicing their right to self-defense, perhaps with ammo purchased from Michi-Gun, the actual name of an actual gun store in the next strip mall. Actual motto: “We aim to please!” God bless America.)

Speaking of which! Here’s an actual movie trailer for an actual movie with that actual title — God Bless America — which seems to consist entirely of sweet Freddie Rumson from “Mad Men” on a killing spree, taking out people who chap his ass. You know, the standard antihero thing. I’m interested in what sort of arc Bobcat Goldthwait might be able to squeeze out of that story, but not enough to pay to see it. Even with Freddy Rumson.

If you feel like going on a killing spree — or even just stamping your feet a little — watch Stephen Colbert take apart Rick Santorum’s latest. I heard the NPR version today, in which Santorum claims his previously quoted remarks — that he thought Puerto Rico could become a state, but only if they were willing to make English the “main language” — were twisted. OK, whatever. I’m sure he believes it in his heart.

The hell with that — how about a stop by the South by Southwest festival. Thanks, Hank, for the tip on this lively read of the music part of the deal. Lively turns of phrase: The Mean Jeans are “a Portland trio who sound like the Ramones with a colony of fire ants dumped down their boxer-briefs.” Yeah.

And for me, that’ll have to be it. Enjoy your weekend. I’m spending mine grading papers.

I didn’t make a pie for Pi Day. But I did eat a cupcake, in keeping with my contrarian mindset.

I wished it was pie. But sometimes you settle.

Another day I’m ending with a cluttered head, but nothing really coming to the forefront. I’m more of a stew today, so let’s see what sort of things will rise to the top with a good stir.

“Luck,” the HBO series about horse racing, was cancelled today, after a third horse had to be put down, following an on-set injury. Hmm. I’ve been giving it a chance, but I wonder why — it’s a little too self-consciously arch. (That’s redundant, isn’t it? Archness is self-conscious by nature, right?) But I liked the racing scenes, and the horses in general, although if you know anything about riding, you could see the jockeys struggling to ride the races they’d been directed to, with some hauling so hard on their mounts, the horses’ mouths gaped open. There was one making-of featurette that showed just how the cameras got that close — jib arms and a speeding truck, mostly. I liked Gary Stevens, a real jockey who acts on the side. I liked Kerry Condon as an Irish exercise rider trying to break into the bigs.

Didn’t like: All that Milchian dialogue, which some people love, but mostly gets on my nerves. And the dead horses, of course.

Great headline on a newspaper story — the only place you find ’em anymore — about the primaries Tuesday.

Page through a WashPost special section on cherry blossoms. (Man, I’m getting tired. I just typed “cherry bottoms.”)

And while we’re there, check out the photo gallery for the White House state dinner last night. As usual, Shelley O shut it DOWN, as T-Lo would say. But there were some other contenders.

And now it’s the Ides of March, only it feels more like the Ides of April around here. Yesterday I opened the windows for the first time, and once the morning rain passes, I think I’ll do it again.

But before that? Poached eggs.