Happy Valentine’s Day. And thanks to the Carolina Biological Supply Company, which in return for providing today’s image would like a linkback. Yeah, whatever. That’s the organ all the fuss is about, the twitchy little fist of muscle that keeps it all going. Bisected. Kind of gross-looking, isn’t it?

But let’s move on from this Hallmark holiday — yes, yes, I love you all. Very much. THIS much. Mwah. This, on the other hand, is amazing: Sweater Vest is beating Mittens in his home state. What’s more, Santorum is “surging,” the polls say. Santorumentum! (As Roy would say.) How did this happen? How does Romney find the strength to get out of bed day after day and face an electorate that, frankly, dislikes him so much it would vote for Rick Santorum as an alternative? I’ll say this for the last two presidential election cycles. They’ve been excruciating, but they haven’t been dull.

Meanwhile, I hope your VD is going well. I think this date hits some people harder than others. Alan and I are both working hard enough that we’ve agreed to put off any celebrating to the weekend. I think a chocolate pie will be involved, and yeah, probably some wine because what else is there to do in February? (Did you know that more babies are born in November than any other month? Because what else is there to do in February?)

I don’t have any more links. I’ve been up to my eyebrows in research and student papers all day. And all I want to do is imagine Mitt Romney, candy and flowers in hand, being kicked to the curb by Michigan. So chime in with your own. Please.

Two noteworthy deaths over the weekend, which lately I’ve been trying not to take personally. Every light extinguished before the threescore-and-ten mark is a reminder to be aware of how close eternity is, how suddenly it can be your time. Although, if longevity is your aim, it helps not to be a crack addict, too. Right, Whitney?

Right.

First was Jeff Zaslow, the Chicago/Detroit journalist and best-selling author. He plowed the same ground as Mitch Albom — inspirational, uplifting nonfiction — and managed to make you want to smile rather than roll your eyes, no small trick for a veteran eye-roller like me. I confess I didn’t read any of his books, but only because inspirational, uplifting nonfiction isn’t my thing between hard covers. But I was a fan of his columns and longer features in the Wall Street Journal, the former of which were loosely organized around themes of personal growth and change, the latter just good stories. Poynter has organized a links page with some of his best work. My favorite — an account of the Miss Cass Pageant here in Detroit — is there, but the link only takes you to the teaser page. Grr. There’s plenty more to read, however.

Many people in Detroit knew him well, but I barely knew him at all, having toiled alongside him in the press corps at the 1983 Miss America pageant. Zaslow was working in Orlando at the time, and Miss Florida that year was a real spitfire, the wealthy daughter of an orange grower who came into the pageant just weeks after being arrested for drunken driving. He was following her. I was following Miss Ohio, who wasn’t a spitfire, just a pretty girl with an operatic singing act that didn’t get her into the top 10. Miss A was still proudly clutching its modest pearls at the time, and getting 10 minutes with a random Miss was only slightly less difficult than scoring a nothing-off-limits, full-access week of immersion with Callista Gingrich. So we reporters spent a lot of time hanging around together, throwing stories back and forth. Zaslow had a lot of them. Miss Missouri, the youngest contestant at just 18, had fingernails so long her mother had to help her get her pantyhose on. Miss Florida’s talent, Jeff told us, was “an erotic dance,” which made us all laugh, but then her night of the prelims came and, well: Her 90-second routine featured a move where she put her hands on her butt, rolled a distinctly oh-mama move, threw her hair over her shoulder and gave the audience a look that suggested she was a Miss in the technical sense of the word only. I think we went to the boardwalk parade together, the early-week news event, featuring 50 classic convertibles, 50 Misses perched on the back deck, and thousands of howling Atlantic City gamblers bellowing, SHOW US YOUR SHOES. I think Miss Florida slipped hers off and waved it for the crowd. I don’t think Miss Ohio did.

Zaslow was a bundle of energy, curiosity and fun, the ideal mix for a reporter. Everybody loved him. His week was going great, mine less so — around about Wednesday, I learned that my stories were being cut by 30 percent and wedged inside the B section. “Too much Nancy Nall and not enough Miss America,” one copy editor reportedly sniffed in a meeting, and if she’s reading this, she is still invited to kiss my ass. I was sitting in the press room, sending my copy via Teleram or something, and I wondered aloud why I was bothering. Zaslow asked why. I told him. He became indignant on my behalf. “They should be putting this on Page One,” he said. I wondered what it was like to work in a functional newsroom, where everyone wasn’t fighting all the time and writers got the support they needed.

Another writer I hung with that week: Elsa Walsh, the future Mrs. Bob Woodward.

A real loss, Zaslow was. The one weekend we get some actual snow in Michigan, and this happens.

As for Whitney Houston, well. Never much of a fan, so I don’t feel the loss. I heard a segment on some NPR show a few weeks ago about vocal health, featuring doctors and a Broadway warbler whose name was unfamiliar to me; I was impressed by the work that goes into staying in good voice, and my takeaway was that the more extraordinary the voice, the more it must be treated with care. It’s probably safe to say inhaling crack cocaine year after year was not the best idea for either her career or her life, but that’s addiction for you. It reminded me of a piece by Mark Steyn — perhaps the only piece of his I think I ever liked — about the dangers of entourages for wealthy performers. The column was pegged to the 2001 death of R&B singer Aaliyah, whose overloaded small plane crashed on takeoff, weighed down by equipment and a couple of 300-pound bodyguards. If I recall correctly, Steyn describes an incident where he was asked to escort Houston across the street in New York one night. He was at some event with her, and she needed to go to her hotel across the avenue, and evidently the very idea that she could make such a trip by herself was unthinkable. Amazing. I mentioned this to Alan after reading it, and he said, “That must have been like leading a racehorse through a forest fire,” a pretty good quip for Alan. I tried to find the column, but it has disappeared from the internets, and isn’t available on Steyn’s website, either. Sorry about that. As we all know, nothing needs protection like decade-old newspaper columns.

So, bloggage?

Eric Zorn is collecting the various over-the-top things being said on the GOP campaign trail these days. Hey, Zorn: Here’s one for you, via Fort Wayne’s own Tim Goeglein, who is apparently now wearing bow ties (!!!!), perhaps because he heard they were extra-masculine or somethin’. Stripped of some of its adverbial filler:

In the history of the United States …we have never had a president who has more radically, but more intentionally, savaged and attacked man-woman marriage, the dignity and sanctity of every human life, and now… has begun to redefine and therefore attack our basic religious liberties and individual consciences.

That link takes you to a one-minute-and-change video. I urge you to check out this weekend’s iteration of the man our own Coozledad said made Fred Rogers look like Dick Butkus. I wonder if they realize how fucking obnoxious that sort of statement sounds to a person who isn’t quite as full-up with the Kool-Aid as they are. And now they’re the anti-birth control party. Good luck selling that line to the moderates, guys.

Maybe because I’ve written my share of pieces like this, I still read them, but can’t like them, not even a little bit. Novelist Walter Kirn on the Super Bowl:

A ball was tossed around and then Madonna sang. She’s the diva of super-prosperity, that woman. Her high-kicking legs and vast, pansexual dance-troupe conjured up glitzy memories of the boom years, back before our national descent into paranoid partisanship and pessimism. She ran through her hits and the years melted away, revealing a core of American contentment that suddenly seemed like our default condition, the one that the candidates labor to convince us will never return but has really never left us. I missed the Clint Eastwood commercial intoning that “It’s Halftime in America.” But I gazed at the faces around me. They had that look of people who who understand that they’re watching live, in person, what tens of millions of their countrymen are taking in electronically, on screens. One nation under Nike, is how it felt.

Oh, shut up, Mr. Pretentious Novelist Butthead.

Finally, a long video to sit through, but fascinating. Rachel Maddow on how the Ron Paul organization is gaming the GOP’s system to pile up delegates, contrary to the generally accepted idea that delegates belong to the winners of individual primaries and caucuses. This is a good story. I’d like to hear more about it.

And with that, I think IIIIII-eeee-yiiiiii-eeee-yiiiii have bored you enough. Happy Monday and good weeks to all.

Pix ‘n’ links starts today with this guy, taxidermy’d into eternity but relevant just the same:

A coyote was spotted in my neighborhood, so there was a stand-up on the news today and the usual blah-blah about not taking shots at them, and so on. I’ll be careful putting the bunny outside, but what else can you do? Detroit is a wild-ass place.

That photo’s from Flickr, taken by someone named…Kristymp, and all rights are? Reserved, yes.

Links? A few:

One week later, the brush fires continue to flare up at the Susan G. Komen Foundation, already going down in the history of screwups as one of the best EVAHR. Is Nancy Brinker the next to go? At this point it’s a little too-too for me, but hey — it’s still got legs.

You know what bugs me about these stories? They play the news media like a fiddle, that’s what.

The miracle of makeup: Some of you have seen this before, but it bears repeating — O’Brien from “Downton Abbey” is a babe. And quite a good actress, ’cause she sells dowdy.

Oh weekend, come to me. I promise I’ll be good.

One of the miracles of the age is this: I’m sitting in a bar, writing on my stupid blog. Do I look like a yuppie douche? Probably. But I’m having a nice Czech lager, the day is done, and there’s very likely a shwarma in my future. Which is to say: Who cares?

Wednesdays are becoming my second-favorite night of the week. I drop Kate off at the Max for three and a half hours of music instruction, and I claim the evening for myself. I could go home and catch up on “Top Chef,” wherever it is in its cycle, but I think I prefer the bar.

So, I read this today, about Patch, the hyperlocal AOL experiment that’s sweepin’ the nation, or swept it for a while. We have one here. GrossePointeToday.com competes with it, to the extent we can, with students and volunteers. Our local Patcher does a good job, which I tell anyone who will listen. Our brand is different, and I tell people that, too. But I really, really don’t want to see this:

Patch has implemented a new “One Team One Goal” strategy, with a budget that effectively eliminates anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of freelance dollars, depending on the Patch region and how the supervising editor and regional ad director choose to allocate dollars.

The editorial emphasis is now on “easy, quick-hitting, cookie-cutter copy,” including mandatory “Best Of” features (i.e., best coffeeshop, best burgers, etc.) that compel businesses and readers to visit and participate in the Patch directories. (Each Patch has a directory of local businesses, organizations, churches, etc.)

I’ve noticed that here — a few months back, the local Patch stopped working quite so hard to cover the news and instead started demanding we weigh in on who has the best pizza/hamburger/bar food in eastern Wayne/Macomb counties. Why is it so hard to sell people what they need, and so easy to give them what they want? And I’m not even sure they want it. Who would?

On a lighter note, Romenesko also had more of a give-’em-what-they-want feature — words only journalists use. Such as? “Fled on foot,” for one. I love that one. Everyone should flee on foot more often.

Have we already skipped to the bloggage? Perhaps. How about this, which is by far the most interesting angle on the Pete Hoekstra spot yet: The creator of that ad is the evil genius behind the infamous Carly Fiorina demon sheep spot. Well, that explains a lot.

Via Hank, the answer to the question: What would Thomas Kincaid paint if he were locked in Room 101 for a year and force-fed Glenn Beck recordings, “Clockwork Orange”-style? This.

ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS. BECAUSE.

A final note: Some of you who’ve been reading here for a while know I have a little cyber-friendship with Amy Welborn, formerly of Fort Wayne, now of Birmingham, Ala. You might also know that Amy had a tragedy three years ago, when her husband, Michael Dubruiel, died unexpectedly, a few months after they made their move.

Amy has published a book about the experience and its aftermath, a sort of “Year of Magical Thinking” with more religion and a trip to Sicily. I downloaded “Wish You Were Here” for my iPad, and have been reading in it over the past couple of days and enjoying it very much. Maybe you will, too, and if you do, you order it via the Kickback Lounge.

With that, let’s start the coast downhill to the weekend, shall we?

On a good day, I can travel between Grosse Pointe and Lansing in one hour, 40 minutes. Yesterday was a good day in the morning, less so in the afternoon. I spent what seemed like forever traveling just a couple of miles, while watching my very accurate miles-remaining gauge drop from 10 to zero. Which meant an early freeway exit for fuel, which meant Connor between Warren and Mack and the sort of fueling experience I don’t get in my neighborhood, i.e.:

I’ve never seen one of those locking frames before. It seems to be there to keep rampaging scrappers from, what? Stealing the innards of a gas pump? I’m mystified. Someone already got the face plate for the receipt printer. It was the kind of place you don’t let your guard down, although at 5 p.m. or so, it’s not that bad. Bought 13.85 gallons. My tank holds 14. Close call.

I’ve said it before: Detroit really resets your bad-neighborhood meter. This was near the soup kitchen where I volunteered in the after-school program a couple years ago, near this guy, near the corner where I saw a dead pit bull lie in the street literally for weeks, being run over and over and over, until it was little more than a leathery patch. Never was cleaned up. It snowed deep again, and I never saw it again. Probably the plow ground it into atomic particles, and that was that.

Sorry about no post yesterday. That will happen from time to time. The new job, and commuting, and teaching has me pretty strung out. Know, my little peaches, that you’re always on my mind, but there’s always something else to do. The Center for Michigan has a feature called Truth Squad, a Politifact-like feature, and yesterday I TS’d the Pete Hoekstra Debbie Spend-it-now spot — it’ll be here pretty soon, if not by the time you read this. There’s always something to do, somewhere.

That’s a good thing, I hasten to add.

So, some links?

I liked Dogs Against Romney on Facebook because I found them amusing, but they are filling up my feed with pitches to buy bumper stickers and T-shirts, and I may have to unlike. One joke can stretch pretty far, but you have to be decent about it. Still, credit where it’s due. It’s a good one.

One of those stories that makes you wish the internet would disappear.

And now I think I’ll watch “Southland.” Just…because.

For the record, I’ve never had an abortion, but my wedding was performed by a minister whose day job was executive director of our local Planned Parenthood office, and he asked that, in lieu of a fee-for-service, we make a comparable donation to the cause. I did so without hesitation, and I will in the future, because the first birth control prescription I ever filled was written by a PP doctor. And because I did that, and kept doing it, I never had to deal with the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy.

So I’m pro-Planned Parenthood.

I’ve always been suspicious of the Susan G. Komen people, on the other hand, for reasons many of you have thrashed out in comments in recent days — I always thought they were more about marketing their pinkness than anything else. I don’t like the phrase “for the cure,” as it should be pretty clear by now that cancer will likely never be “cured” in the strict sense of the word, although treatments continue to improve and we know so much more about the disease that we may well get pretty close to the ideal. And one of the things we know is that one key to surviving breast cancer is early detection, and the nominal money Planned Parenthood gets from the Komen organization (not enough to pay the Komen CEO’s salary for two years) goes for breast-cancer screening.

Being wealthy women, I wonder if the Komen folks have considered how many women use the services at Planned Parenthood as pretty much the beginning and end of their primary care. You may not be able to afford a doctor and a mammogram, but if you show up at PP, they’ll at least give you a pelvic and breast exam and pap smear, free or close to it. And yes, surely PP will get enough to make up the loss this year, but what about next year, and the year after that?

So much has been written about this in the past few days, and I know I’m late coming to it. But women’s health — and especially the right of women to make decisions about their lives and reproductive health free from meddling from state legislatures, federal-court judges and the pink-ribboned busybodies in Dallas — is very important to me. Not one more penny for the pink from me. Don’t show me your pledge sheet for your walk/run/whatever for the cure. I cut off United Way in Fort Wayne for precisely this reason some years ago. Planned Parenthood was there for me when I needed them, and I think I need to be there for them now. It’s really that simple.

So. Bloggage?

Another good Bridge yesterday, with another installment in an ongoing project, following a number of families who were cast adrift by welfare reform in Michigan last year. You can read the stories there, but this was the angle I found most interesting:

…In 27 of Michigan’s 83 counties, the number of welfare cases is the same or higher than before the time limit was instituted.

Meanwhile, welfare cases in the state’s most populous county – Wayne County – are down 27 percent. In that one county alone, 8,621 families fewer families are receiving cash assistance.

Here’s another way to look at it: Of all families who have stopped receiving welfare checks since September, 54 percent live in Wayne County.

Wayne County = Detroit, in case you haven’t figured that out yet.

A little D-centric, but funny just the same, “Our How-To Guide For Making A Hardscrabble, Gritty, Post-Industrial Documentary About Detroit,” by the folks at Changing Gears. Well, there are a lot of them out there, and they all follow a pretty predictable model.

I hesitate to post this, but what the hell: The homicide investigation in Grosse Pointe ran straight off the rails night before last, with reports the husband maintained an S&M dungeon in the basement of one of his buildings. I disapprove of this sort of reporting — I try to be Dan Savage-like in my tolerance of other people’s intimate lives, but I couldn’t stop laughing yesterday about the reporter’s ominous lead-in to this piece, in which he gravely revealed the husband asked his playmates to call him “Master Bob.” This guy needs a new master name. How can anyone say “Master Bob” with a straight face? Master Roberto, Master Heinrich, Master Rudolfo, yes. Master Bob, Master Jim, Master Wally, no.

Off to work.

Sorry nothing new on the ol’ blog yesterday. I was knackered Monday night, and woke up Tuesday to discover the local homicide investigation had reached a higher gear. Alas, I had a full day at Real Work planned, and had barely arrived in Lansing when Alan called.

“A producer from Nancy Grace wants to talk to you about being on the show,” he said. Oh, wonderful.

I put it up for a vote in the office. The consensus was I needed to find out what the appearance fee was. My thinking was that I hadn’t washed my hair in two days, and there was no way I was TV-ready. But I have a weak spot for producers, who have to do the hard work of dialing for guests, and figured she was at least due a return call. I wondered if the producer was doing oppo research and had perhaps noted that I’d called her boss a “blonde harpy” at some point in the past. Or, if she’d simply searched the name, might have find that a certain commenter who goes by the name “caliban” had disparaged the blonde harpy about 10 million times. N.G. is really not my cup of tea, but I thought it might do GrossePointeToday.com some good, and what the hell? I called.

Nancy wanted me to do a phoner for about an hour, on “fear in the commmunity” after the murder. Hmm. I could probably do that. I might be on for a minute, no one would see my hair, and I could write while I was sitting on hold. Like a fool, I said OK, I’d do that.

“Let me talk to my boss,” the producer said. “We might be changing direction.”

Five minutes later, the direction had changed and no one cared about the community’s fear, because now it’s looking like the hubs is maybe just a little dirty. I said I understood, hung up and thought: whew. Tonight I watched the show and thought: Double whew. What a bunch of barking jerkoffs. Also: That is one super-soft lens they reserve for the star. Not since Liz Taylor’s “White Diamonds” ad have I seen one quite that forgiving.

It was a long day. When I got home there was a message on my home machine from CNN. Screw it. They nabbed the Patcher instead. Just as well. My hair is still dirty.

Fortunately, many linkies and much bloggage today:

We had a good Bridge yesterday. I especially liked this piece on “amenity-driven growth,” or Why Companies Keep Relocating to Chicago, Even Though the Taxes are High, aka (for you Fort Wayners) the Navistar Conundrum.

There was also a good two-story package on the (tentative) return of Michigan manufacturing, the overview and the detail piece, on a domestic ski maker.

Via Hank, a look at an all-white production of “Hairspray” in Plano, Texas. Wait, you’re thinking; isn’t “Hairspray” about white and black kids? How would you do that? With great defensiveness, it turns out:

Didn’t any black kids audition? No, said Rodenbaugh, it’s hard to recruit black kids to PCT because there aren’t that many in Plano. (African-Americans make up less than 8 percent of the Plano, Texas, population of 259,841, according to the most recent census numbers.)

So why do a show with black characters in it if you know going in that you won’t have any black kids to play them? Rodenbaugh had several answers about how much the kids wanted to do Hairspray, how they weren’t going to bow to “political correctness” and how “the parents expect this.”

Oh.

This is depressing. Pythons in the Everglades:

…In the southernmost part of the Florida Everglades, things have taken a really wild turn. Pythons and anacondas are eating everything. The most common animals in Everglades National Park — rabbits, raccoons, opposums and bobcats — are almost gone, according to a study released Monday.

The snakes are literally fighting with alligators to sit atop the swamp’s food chain. In October, a 16-foot python was found resting after devouring a deer.

Almost all the rabbits and raccoons, gone? How is that even possible?

Where is cable news on that one, anyway?

Strange, how outside stimuli insinuate themselves into your dreams. I have an alarm clock that flashes before it buzzes, and it works well except when it doesn’t, i.e., when I’m facing the wrong way, or actually, you know, asleep.

Friday morning I had a vivid dream of being in a dark room, watching a slide show — the old-fashioned Kodak Carousel kind. Slide, brief moment of darkness, slide. I thought, freaky slide show. Then, this isn’t a slide show. The clock was blinking. For how long? Maybe 15 seconds.

Sometimes Kate says she wants a career that involves work with the human brain. Maybe she’ll be the one to figure it out.

Another too-short weekend. Last week’s homicide investigation looked like it was building toward an arrest (the husband), then didn’t. The police around here may work seven days a week, but they only answer phones on a M-F business-hours schedule, and when they do, rarely say anything. A lack of information is as bad as too much of it, and Facebook rushed into the vacuum, with the locals piling pig-ignorant comment upon half-wit observation, until I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve been waiting my whole life to get a John Cheever reference into a column about Grosse Pointe, and whaddaya know: That day has come.

Do we learn anything as we go through this life? I have a policy I adopted around the age of 30, when the first marriages among my peers were cracking up, and it is: No one is qualified to judge a marriage other than the people in it. A corollary: Every single person in the world has it in them. Which is? Something extraordinary, on either side of the darkness/light divide. I think this is what makes life interesting and unpredictable — every day, we can be Lenny Skutnik or Some Guy Who Kills His Wife. I don’t know if this guy here in Grosse Pointe killed his wife, but I know that I’m not fit to say he’s simply incapable of such an act, because he comes from a good family and was a Rotary Club president and raised money for the poor of Detroit. More facts needed. I hope we learn them eventually.

We seem to have skipped to the bloggage already. So, then:

From Coozledad, a rabbit that herds sheep. Great video, love the music and it’s a reminder of why the border collies in “Babe” called the sheep morons.

Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune has been bird-dogging the Emmanuel Goldstein Saul Alinsky disinformation campaign, and has a couple of posts with more linky goodness than you could read in a month. Here’s the biggest one. In another, Zorn wonders:

Is Gingrich the historian really frightened of the influence of a man who devoted his life to helping poor folks find their political voice?

I doubt it. To me, this looks like the ultimate cynical tribute to Alinsky — the dark, repetitive intonation of a name that sounds vaguely foreign and Jewish in order to rile folks up with yet another gaseous myth.

I think he’s right. “Saul Alinsky” is the Barack Hussein Obama of this campaign cycle. What I don’t understand is why Gingrich’s patron, Sheldon Adelson, is OK with it. My guess is, he floats above anti-Semitism at this station of his life.

Oh, and Roy covers the crazy Alinsky angle.

And with that, I must run. The week is front-loaded, but should ease a bit by Wednesday. Here’s hopin’. I hope yours is good.

Today was one of those days I was, as the kids say, so not looking forward to — breaking news happening in Grosse Pointe at a time when I can’t cover it, because I work for someone else now. However, when God gives you a job, he also opens a window, and through it can crawl a great student who, when you text him Breaking news. Call me, sets your phone a-jingling in about 60 seconds and then, when you explain that a local resident has been found dead in her car in Detroit, says, “I’ll brush my teeth, and then I’ll head down there.”

All of which makes me say: I am SO glad you’re here.

Seriously. It’s a tragedy, but when you have a competent person to help you carry the load, that’s all you can say. Journalists have to write a lot of stories we wish hadn’t happened. The good ones can get it down with minimal trauma to all.

Journo-peeps? If you have an internship to offer, you could do worse than Dustin Blitchok. He gets it.

Yeesh, what a day. Homicide, class and a full day for the Center. I don’t know about you, but when night fell, I dropped Kate at her Wednesday-night music lesson and went directly to the jazz club/restaurant a few blocks away, ordered steak and eggs and had a wonderful dinner all by my lonesome.

Eating alone with something to read: One of the great pleasures of my adult life. I’m such an eavesdropper.

So, a pic for today? How about Michigan, as seen from space?

Did you know Michigan has more coastline than California? It’s true.

The bad news: It’s frequently heaped with snow. Still.

Bloggage:

It’s sad when a famous person goes crazy, but when an obnoxious famous person goes crazy and refuses to shut up, that’s en-ter-tain-ment:

Victoria Jackson doesn’t want to meet at her house. “The Nation of Islam wants to kill me,” she explains apologetically in her inimitable shrill voice. Instead, she picks up a reporter at a Miami-area strip mall. Her weathered Honda Civic is adorned with “Nobama,” Marco Rubio, and Tea Party bumper stickers, and inside, it smells like it’s been fumigated with sweet incense.

She hurtles through intersections and down side streets, holding a Flip cam to her face with her left hand. Steering with elbows and the occasional pinkie, she opens a Bible inscribed with her name and quotes Scripture. Then she turns the camera on a reporter riding shotgun, whom she suspects is a socialist. “Don’t you think that some people are on welfare from cradle to grave,” she demands, ploddingly, “because the government is encouraging them never to work?”

Why did I ever take Lifehacker off my bookmarks? They know everything.

Farewell to the anonymous internet. Oh, Google. Why?

Happy Thursday to all.

Watchin’ the State o’ the Union, drinkin’ a second glass of wine, thinkin’ some thoughts. Among them:

Hey, there’s my congressman. Hansen Clarke. Big clapper. Well, it’s a big night for the D, on all fronts. We get major shoutouts in the SOTU, and the Tigers sign Prince Fielder. Here’s a rerun the Freep dug up from the vaults, about young Prince when he was a Little Leaguer in the Grosse Pointe Woods-Shores Little League. Note the photo. He has a great look in his eye, but clearly took that McDonald’s ad he did with his father to heart. On the other hand, one of the things to love about baseball is that some great players look like they enjoy an extra Pabst Blue Ribbon or three on the off days.

And it’s a good day for my darling daughter, entering the homestretch of midterms week. Today is history and gym. Yes, gym. They’ve been doing parts of it for the last week or so, and today is the 20-minute run, followed by the written test.

“A written test in gym?” her mother asked. “What sort of questions?”

“About stretching and stuff,” she said.

I hope she aces it. She doesn’t believe me when I tell her she’s getting off easy, gym-wise. Our system required .75 credits of gym to graduate, and every year was .25. You got senior year off, if you didn’t skip it chronically, which my friend Jeff did, to avoid getting his ass kicked for being an obvious homosexual. When they threatened to withhold his diploma, he signed up for six weeks of summer-school gym, which consisted of riding bikes and playing cards indoors on rainy days. No locker rooms, no ass-kicking, and the diploma arrived in August instead of June. I asked if he’d do it all again, knowing he missed “Pomp & Circumstance” at Vet’s Memorial and the all-night party.

“Absolutely,” he said.

Tells you everything you need to know about gym.

If she completes this year satisfactorily, Kate will never have to set foot in another high-school gym for anything but dances and pep rallies before graduation. So I hope she remembers how to stretch.

Bloggage? Oh, I’m sure we have some:

The SOTU featured warnings that “the middle class is under threat because of growing disparities between the rich and everyone else in America.” You don’t say. Did I link to that piece in last Sunday’s NYT, about Apple and its work at Foxconn, the Mordor-like Chinese factory where our favorite devices are born? No? You should read it, if you have the chance. It’s long, but like a horror movie, it’s hard to tear your eyes away. When Steve Jobs demanded an scratchproof glass screen for the iPhone, and demanded it be perfect in six weeks, they knew where to turn:

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

…When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

That’s why the middle class is in trouble — because we cannot compete with slave labor, essentially. What? You don’t want to live in a dorm attached to your workplace (eight to a room) and be roused at midnight to work a 12-hour shift in the factory that was built by the government? Lazy, lazy, lazy.

I missed Our Man Mitch’s rebuttal last night. Was it any good?

This makes me immediately seek detox with celebrity gossip. Here’s a photo of Demi Moore, and even though it is only head and shoulders, shows the outsize-head-on-tiny-body prototype so common in movie stars. Bonus: Patton Oswalt’s tweet stream after being robbed of an Academy Award nomination.

Time for work. Hump day!