I missed my weights class at the gym for going on three weeks now, so I absolutely must go. To fill the time until my triumphant and sweaty return, a rancid little bonbon for you to sniff and discuss the following: Racism is or is not a factor in this year’s campaign. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…Craig R. Smith:

If Barack Obama is to become our 44th president, it will be heralded as a moment of historic significance unlike any other. However, I think many are missing the real reason why.

It’s because Barack Obama will be our first hip-hop president.

I can only imagine how the world will embrace the leader of the free world when he introduces other foreign leaders with, “give it up for my man Vladimir.” Giving “props” for joining us in a treaty. Or the first lady Michelle talking about “my man” the “daddy of my babies” when referring to the president. That should go over well everywhere from 10 Downing Street right on down to the streets of the Middle East.

Does it get better? Oh yes it does:

I can see it now. Air Force One decked out with “22s” and spinners. Maybe even a set of hydraulics. Watching the hip-hop president in the Oval Office with his baseball cap on backward coping a gansta lean in the big chair. Should be really pimp, don’t you think? Cool man, real cool. Instead of giving away presidential cuff links to guests, as is the custom, he will offer “bling bling.”

It goes on from there. WorldNetDaily, tapping the id once again.

HT: Borden. Back in a few hours.

I was working last night and couldn’t give my full attention to Hillary’s speech, but I had it on in the background, and 30 percent of my attention found it impressive. Anything less than full graciousness would have been …ungracious. So now it’s time for her to exit stage right and the remainder of the convention to go into full attack mode. Eugene Robinson said on MSNBC, “Someone needs to say ‘torture’ from the podium” and oh yes they do. Plus, as The Editors say, “People, these rats ain’t going to fuck themselves.”

I’m generally not a fan of smear politics, but it’s time to win this one, and that Corsi book is sitting on top of the bestseller list like Jabba the Hutt, and so it’s time to take note: They started it.

I like Brad at Sadly No’s idea: A 527 called Values Voters Against McCain, quivering with moral indignation all over the swing states. And screw the evangelicals, who aren’t going to vote for Obama anyway; they’re just flirting with him to make their boyfriend jealous. And this needs to be flapping over the main stage in the Pepsi Center:

The captioned version:

And that would be a good start. As would other strategies.

A little bloggage? Just a little; I’m Costco-bound:

The NYT has been running recipes all summer on its Health pages, and they had me at the risotto with roasted beets and beet greens, which promises a magenta dish, and how often do you get to serve magenta food? But that one will have to be mine alone, as I live among beet haters. (“But the New York Times says they’re the new spinach!” I say. Like they care.) This is what I made for dinner Saturday — Pistou Manchego with Eggs, which is basically zucchini and tomatoes with a few eggs poached on top, plus a fancy name. Easy-peasy, good for yousy. Try it.

Thank God for Jezebel, because where else could we read a headline like this: Tyra Banks: High heels will give you a tighter vagina, better orgasms, I ask you?

Costco-bound. Tell me what you need a lot of, and I’ll pick it up for you.

Like many of you, our house has lost significant value in the last three years — maybe as much as 20 percent. Unlike many of you, we didn’t live through the run-up of the prior years, and may have actually bought at the top of the local market. Which, I regret to say, won’t be bouncing back the way it will in, say, Scottsdale. So, barring a piece of spectacularly good financial luck, we’re stuck here until the police find our mummified corpses at spring thaw at some date in the future.

What do you do with a house that’s not performing like a piggy bank? Pour more money into it, that’s what.

We’re in the first, early, just-looking-thanks stages of a kitchen remodel, the stage where I wonder if this can be done for a four-figure sum, occasionally say so aloud, and watch people laugh in my face. The first Kitchen Guy is coming this morning to give us a look-see, make some suggestions, and laugh in my face. He’s the very high-end guy, and yes, Ikea will be asked to weigh in at some point, too. (From them, I expect merely a discreet giggle.) We went to the high-end guy’s showroom yesterday, and wasn’t that something, touring all those showroom alcoves of dream kitchens, some of which the Shah of Iran would think himself unworthy to occupy. A friend of mine is a caterer, and from her, I’ve learned something important about kitchens: The fancier the kitchen, the less likely it is used by actual human beings. Or, as she puts it:

“The first thing you learn in catering is, if the kitchen is really fabulous, bring your own knives. Because you’ll be lucky to find a paring knife.”

Doesn’t that make you feel good about America? Tens of thousands spent on a room that only requires a fridge, microwave and a telephone for ordering takeout? There was a stove in the showroom, an oh-my-gaw stove, six burners and a grill and two ovens, with an instrument panel worthy of a 757, and all I could think is, “It’ll boil water and twice a year be fired up to reheat the pre-cooked turkey and ham, and someone else will own it and life isn’t fair.”

Nope, it sure ain’t.

So I have to go tidy up a bit. Let’s talk convention. I missed much of last night’s hoo-ha, but I caught the Michelle and Kennedy highlight reels, and thought they did great. How credible is the assassination plot, do you think? I’ll be back after I hand the kitchen guy a tissue to wipe away his tears of helpless laughter.

Whatever you do, please don’t send me an e-mail first thing on a Monday morning with this line:

Anyone up for the challenge of making a sophisticated Zombie short? Nancy, any new plots occur to you?

This is from the director of our 48-hour film-challenge short. And here I thought I’d get some work done today. Suggestions, anyone? So far I have a zombie “Mamma Mia!” and a zombie “Recount” (“McCaaaaain has no braaaaaain…”), but that’s it. I may need a bike ride for this one.

My sense of Biden as an underwhelming choice passed quickly. I only had to think: The man whom he will replace is Dick Cheney. That made it all better, somehow. Foreign policy expertise = a plus, particularly given the wreckage the current model is in. Remember, folks — look beyond the fence.

As you can see, folks, it’s Monday and I got nuthin’. Spent the weekend trying to put the house in order and mostly failing. The start of the school year — mandated by law to be after Labor Day — seems as though it will never arrive, and yet, I don’t really want it to. It’s been a good summer, and I’ve enjoyed having my little kitten around. Alan had a far more interesting weekend, having seen the following on his afternoon kayak trip yesterday: A 300-pound woman and “a guy who looked like Napoleon Dynamite” sharing a tiny inflatable boat, cruising slowly around the mouth of our marina, and she? Was topless. “She had a tube-top thing, pushed down below all the folds,” Alan reports. “I wonder if maybe they were putting on a show for me.” If so, he…well, “enjoyed” isn’t the word. “Noted the effort,” maybe.

See why I don’t want summer to end?

So let’s skip to some good ol’ bloggage, eh?

From Sunday’s NYT, a long read that’s worth your time, about the struggles of a Florida science teacher to not just teach evolution, but to really get his students engaged with it. It’s an endeavor that is nothing short of heroic — David Campbell seems to be one of those teachers people remember on their deathbed — and equally frustrating:

“Can anybody think of a question science can’t answer?”

“Is there a God?” shot back a boy near the window.

“Good,” said Mr. Campbell, an Anglican who attends church most Sundays. “Can’t test it. Can’t prove it, can’t disprove it. It’s not a question for science.”

Bryce raised his hand.

“But there is scientific proof that there is a God,” he said. “Over in Turkey there’s a piece of wood from Noah’s ark that came out of a glacier.”

Mr. Campbell chose his words carefully.

“If I could prove, tomorrow, that that chunk of wood is not from the ark, is not even 500 years old and not even from the right kind of tree — would that damage your religious faith at all?”

Bryce thought for a moment.

“No,” he said.

The room was unusually quiet.

“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks.”

“But I do,” he added, “expect you to understand it.”

Jon Carroll dissed rude cyclists a few weeks ago, and has been hearing about it since. Today, a cyclist puts into words what underlies my policy of judicious stop-sign running:

Another, somewhat calmer letter on the entire matter from Gene Eplett: “Think motivation. Think momentum. Cars and pedestrians pay nothing, or nearly nothing, for their momentum. For cars it is simply a matter of which pedal to push, brake or gas. For pedestrians, it is a matter of speed, or lack of it. A turtle doesn’t mind stopping frequently either, because momentum simply is not an issue.

“Bicyclists, on the other hand, expend a lot of effort getting up to speed. Cranking up the momentum every single block, and then giving it all up at every single stop sign, gets old really fast. So, whenever there is any question whether to stop or not, such as when there is little oppositional traffic at stop signs, or anywhere else for that matter, (s)he, understandably, doesn’t stop – doesn’t give up his or her hard-won momentum, that is to say. After a while, if one bikes all the time, a pattern (or habit?) gets established. That’s what you and the complainers are witnessing.”

Zombies on bicycles! It could work!

Back in a bit.

Discuss. Open weekend thread.

One more story to write today, and then I’m free to clean my house for two days. (Isn’t my life, just, super-glam?) So maybe something a few shorts today, as nothing is itching me but deadline:

* The infamous “Is Obama too skinny to be president?” story contained one factoid I took note of: When the candidate is too rushed to eat a proper meal, he will opt for something called a Met-Rx bar. It so happens I know a few people who do the same thing, and find the meal-in-a-puck solution preferable to the inevitable starvation-then-overeating. And the day after I read this, I saw Met-Rx bars in my local Kroger, on sale. It seemed like a sign. I bought two.

And all I have to say is, if Obama is eating these things, I hope he spends the next several hours in a well-ventilated room, if you catch my drift. And if you were in the same room with me, you would.

* I’m growing weary of Olympics coverage. I always do, in the second week. I become very very tired of her Olympic dream, whether it ends in golden glory or is crushed by defeat. I’ve had it up to here with hearing athletes not two decades old describe their experience as awesome, even if they lose, how glad they are just to be there. (I’m cheered by the number of fat parents in the stands, however. That is just endlessly amusing to me, how these tubbies produced such gods of athleticism.) I’m really, really sick of Bob Costas, sicker still of whoever’s color-commenting the gymnastics, with his “This…is…a disaster” every time someone wobbles out there. (Just once I want to hear “That’s gotta hurt!”) I hate beach volleyball; where is the modern pentathalon coverage? “Medal” should not be a verb. And where are the flag-desecration alarmists when some sweaty sprinter is taking a victory lap using Old Glory as a shawl? These are only a few of my long list of grievances.

* It’s nice to know J-Lo shares many of my complaints, too.

* Michigan: We’re number 10! Better luck next year, suckas.

OK, enough f-off time for now. Deadline in four hours. You folks are on your own.

I went to high school with this guy named…I’m going blank. Bill? Bob? Something like that. Bill/Bob was in the class ahead of me, 1974, but finished in 1975. In his senior year, he started playing euchre in the student lounge and smoking area. (Yes, smoking area. Hello, I am old.) And he started down a dangerous path, paved with 24 cards, the 9 through the ace. He couldn’t stop.

He started skipping class to play euchre. The players came and went, but he would deal and play with any and all comers. I played him many times, but I never skipped class to do so. When players left, others would take their place. To say he was single-minded about it was an understatement; he just dealt and played, dealt and played, until the final bell rang.

I don’t know why someone didn’t stage an intervention with him. Maybe someone did, but it didn’t take. When he showed up for class in the fall, months after he was supposed to graduate, I asked what happened.

“I got euchred on my last trick,” he said.

Those of you reading this outside the midwest may not understand the lure of euchre, but trust me, it is strong. It’s a simple game that anyone can play, but rewards experience and a certain amount of strategy; in other words, perfectly suited for a 17-year-old mind. You doubtless have something like it in your part of the country, but that’s not what I want to talk about today. I’m thinking about addiction, and the computer’s role in it.

Many years later, there was a woman at the News-Sentinel who couldn’t stop playing Windows solitaire. Two women, actually, and one of them was me, but I was limited by not having it on my primitive, DOS-based computer. I had to go to Leo Morris’ office to play, but play I did. Both of us did. When I quit smoking, it replaced cigarettes as my favorite tool of procrastination. In the old days, I’d write a few grafs, lean back and light a cigarette, regarding my prose through a few puffs, then stub it out and write some more. Replace the cigarette with getting up and sauntering down to Leo’s office, where I’d wave him aside — he’d usually go outside to smoke, having failed to conquer that addiction — and play until he came back, sometimes longer. We’d run up the wins/losses in dollar figures and pretend we were getting rich off our mad solitaire skilz. Eventually, though, he’d have to write an editorial, and I’d go back to my cubicle and feel grateful my computer didn’t have Windows, because that’s some dangerous shit, that solitaire.

The other woman had Windows, and lo, she was weak. She played for hours, and I know because I could recognize the telltale mouse movements, the way a junkie knows which guy in the park is the connect. She had an office, too, and could angle her screen slightly so no one could see just how many times she was dealing herself a new hand, except of course everyone knew. (Her output didn’t match the keyboard hours she was putting in.) When the time came for the newsroom to lose an FTE, the editor in chief chose her department to take the loss, and further decided the solitaire addict was a fine candidate for the copy desk, a plain and humiliating demotion. It did cure her solitaire problem, but it sort of wrecked her newspaper career, although she landed on her feet in local government, where for all I know she’s still playing.

Procrastination is one of the two great temptations for writers. (The other: Alcohol.) Go have a cigarette. Make a phone call. Take a walk around the block. Feign writer’s block. Anything but confronting that blank screen. I once read someone’s theory about why the O.J. Simpson trial got so big so fast, and it was refreshing, having nothing to do with brown skin or blonde hair. The writer speculated that the case built buzz because Los Angeles is full of screenwriters avoiding their work, who instead expended their energies watching the trial, e-mailing one another about the trial, spinning alternate theories about the culpability of the various players, etc. It made perfect sense to me.

But computer games may be the stickiest quicksand of all. Almost all writers work at a computer. Almost all computers come with some sort of game. It’s like holding AA meetings in a bar. When we had our first iMac, it came with a game called Bugdom, and Kate and I played it together. When I started it in the presence of John and Sam, our friends from Atlanta, both shuddered and turned away. “What’s wrong?” I asked, only to be told that the music had bad associations for both of them; it’s “the sound of Sammy not writing her dissertation,” John said.

(She got her dissertation written, but it went down to the wire. She’s Dr. Sam now.)

Anyway, I guess my point is, I’ve been thinking about how quickly any behavior can become compulsive, and why it does. I suppose Bill/Bob was using euchre as a way to avoid the rest of his senior year. I know I was using Windows solitaire to avoid writing. I’ve noticed that even when I have a deadline, I rarely miss a day of blogging, so blogging is obviously a replacement for solitaire — it’s writing that allows me to avoid other writing, and isn’t that quite the trick.

In getting to know the iPhone, I’ve downloaded two games from the App Store — Jawbreaker, a form of Bejeweled/Bubbles, where you pop contiguous circles; and Peg Jump, an electronic version of the golf-tee game in every Cracker Barrel on the interstate. Neither one is addictive. Yet. Jawbreaker is my favorite, but so far it’s no Windows solitaire. I limit myself to 10 games at a stretch, and so far have kept my vow. But you never know. There are times I think I should just start smoking again; maybe I’d get more work done.

A bit of bloggage:

Observers of the hackneyed prose style of Mitch Albom know one of his favorite tricks is the Dramatic Repetition, singling out one phrase and repeating it every five grafs, usually set off by itself. It’s an old trick and not a very effective one, but he’s very proud of it, and uses it in most of his columns. When I saw he was writing about Michael Phelps yesterday, I imagined, Carnack-like, what the phrase would be, and whaddaya know, I guessed it on the nose. See if you can, too. No fair peeking. I’ll post the answer later in the day. P.S. It’s an obvious one.

They say the days after Halloween are battle-stations, no-vacation-days-for-anyone times in orthodontists’ offices, when kids who promised not to endanger their braces with taffy and chewing gum come a cropper. In the UK, something called the Gadget Helpline is dealing with a number of calls (story’s unclear on how many, the sure sign of a b.s. trend story, but what the hell) from people wanting to adjust their stationary bikes and ergometers — rowing machines — to match the pace of Great Britain’s Olympians. Of course, the story winds up with the duh quote, from a physiologist from the English Institute of Sport:

“It’s great that people are being inspired by the Games and the performances taking place across different sports, but each individual needs to know their limits. To avoid injuring yourself by overstretching, setting smaller targets for performance improvements in your fitness regime would be the best start in improving your exercise rates, whether that’s on the rowing machine, bike or on the treadmill.”

And don’t forget the sunscreen. Come back later and see if you scored in the Write Like Mitch competition.

So much good bloggage today, let’s just get to it and let it guide the comment conversations today, eh? I’ll be housebound for much of it, anyway. I’m working on a story and apparently I’m afflicted by some odd aphasia, where I tell people “I’d like to talk to A and B about X and Z,” and they hear, “Blah blah blah and please don’t feel you need to call me back before October. I understand it’s vacation season, and besides, I am a mere freelancer.”

Also, I’m getting Comcast phone service today. I’m hoping this will halt the death of one acre of forest, slaughtered to send me mailings for the Comcast Triple Play, but who knows? I’m just hoping for a prompt technician.

OK, then. First we have a tale of the bargains to be found on the local real-estate market:

DETROIT — One dollar can get you a large soda at McDonald’s, a used VHS movie at 7-Eleven or a house in Detroit.

The fact that a home on the city’s east side was listed for $1 recently shows how depressed the real estate market has become in one of America’s poorest big cities.

And it still took 19 days to find a buyer.

(That’s another Ron French special, btw. A lesser writer would have overlooked the 19-days part. Always with the great detail, that Ron.) At first blush, this isn’t that surprising — I’ve written about $100 houses in Detroit before, so $1 isn’t that much of a stretch, and what’s more, I’d bet there are at least a few unloved parcels at bargain-basement prices here and there in most American cities. What makes this house so of-the-moment is that it sold not two years ago for $65,000. But the new owner couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the mortgage — fraud is always a strong possibility — and once it was empty, it was as attractive to the scrapping vultures as a fresh dead heifer is to the real kind. They started from the outside and worked their way in:

“The siding was the first to go. Then they took the fence. Then they broke in and took everything else,” [said a neighbor.]

The company hired to manage the home and sell it, the Bearing Group, boarded up the home only to find the boards stolen and used to board up another abandoned home nearby. Scrappers tore out the copper plumbing, the furnace and the light fixtures, taking everything of value, including the kitchen sink.

Click through and enlarge the picture and take note of the dying ash tree on the park strip, too. That’s the new arboreal symbol of southeast Michigan, and don’t get smug about it — sooner or later the emerald ash borer is coming to your town, too.

How bad is it in Detroit? Even the dead are leaving town:

CLINTON TOWNSHIP– At precisely 8:57 a.m., under an overcast sky, Francesco and Francesca Imbrunone were re-laid to rest. A man in a dark suit stood over their remains proclaiming that they “await the resurrection.”

If that promise holds true, then it would be, in a way, the Imbrunones’ second resurrection. As it happens, the couple was buried nearly 50 years ago in Detroit’s Mount Olivet Cemetery on the city’s east side. Then their grandchildren decided to disinter them, move them to the leafier suburbs and bury them again this particular morning.

Five grand, the grandchildren spent, so they won’t have to cross 8 Mile to visit their ancestors. This one is ridiculous, to be sure, and a look at the accompanying video only confirmed what I suspected — these are the thin-lipped suburbanites who say, in public, sorrowful words about “convenience” and “safety,” but as one poster on the DetroitYES forums pointed out, Just imagine what their private conversations were like when they came to the conclusion to move Grandma & Grandma. Yes, I can just imagine. The route between their new homes and the ancestral burying ground is hardly the road to the Baghdad airport. Of course they mention the inevitable car breakdown. Car breakdowns are like car backfires — spoken of often, but scarcer by the year. But you can’t tell that to someone willing to drop five grand to never have to see the city at less than freeway speeds again.

For the record, I have yet to “visit my parents” since their interment at Union Cemetery in Columbus. So part of my puzzlement is a cultural disconnect with the idea of primping graves forever; isn’t memory enough?

Finally, a clue to why, perhaps, the city is dying: German technology bent to the task of? Anyone? Engine performance? Hydrogen fuel cells? Rechargeable batteries to power green cars? No. Reproducing the sound of a V-8 engine (inevitably described as “throaty”). Why? Because people are stupid, that’s why:

Eberspacher GmbH and its Novi-based North American subsidiary have developed technology that replaces a muffler with a speaker inserted into the exhaust system. That speaker — a heat restraint version of a typical stereo speaker — emits sound waves that can either silence engine noise or tune it so that even a quiet hybrid sedan can roar like a classic muscle car.

Widespread use of such a system could solve two issues facing automakers as they strive to offer smaller, more fuel-efficient and hybrid vehicles: Consumer perception that quiet cars offer poor performance; and concerns that hybrids, which are silent at slow speeds, pose a safety hazard to the blind because they use engine noise to identify moving vehicles.

I’m amazed how often I hear this, anecdotally: “But I like a car with that deep rumbly sound.” Oh, bite me. When we were in Monterey, the peninsula filled with motorcyclists, there for a road race in nearby Salinas. Alan said it was a Formula I of bikes, and the idea of thousands of them in town was enough for one art gallery on Cannery Row to close pre-emptively, “due to excessive noise.” But guess what? There was hardly any noise. It turns out that aficionados of European road bikes — BMWs, Triumphs, Ducatis — don’t measure their manhoods in decibels. That’s for those tattooed lardasses on Harleys. (Apologies to any tattooed lardasses in the readership; I’m just venting.)

So, just to sum up: Speakers in your mufflers. It’s times like this I think of “Idiocracy,” the prelude, where the best minds of science are bent not to the problem of declining IQs, but hair loss and erections.

Are we done ranting? I guess.

A little more bloggage, HT Roy: The Guardian’s gallery of LOLBush, at the Olympics. Stupid, but mildly amusing.

A bit testy this morning? Why yes, yes I am. I’m taking Poynter.org off my bookmarks, or at least restricting myself to the RSS feed, which cuts out all the b.s. links surrounding Romenesko’s media news. If I see one more Jill Geisler essay on “newsroom leadership,” I may explode.

Off to make phone calls. Enjoy your day.

Thanks to Jim for sending along the NYT story about the escalating war — not in the northern Caucasus, but perhaps right outside your window. It’s the one between cyclists and motorists, and since it’s obviously only going to get worse, I might as well state my manifesto and start the shooting war.

The story starts with the customary oh-my-god anecdote:

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Save gas money, be environmentally correct, lose weight — just by biking to work. And so after two decades, Dan Cooley, 41, saddled up a silver 21-speed Raleigh in April to make the daily two-mile commute to his nursing job at a senior citizen center in Louisville, Ky. In four months, he lost 15 pounds. Way to go, Dan!

Friday morning, July 25, around 6:50 a.m., he was pedaling on a residential street, wearing his green hospital scrubs, when a Volkswagen roared out of a driveway in front of him. Swerving to avoid the car, Mr. Cooley cursed loudly and rode on.

The driver and his passenger cursed back. As Mr. Cooley pulled over to the sidewalk, the car turned onto a driveway, knocking him off his bike. In Mr. Cooley’s narrative, the passenger, swearing, jumped out and pummeled him. Then he got back into the car, which zoomed away. Mr. Cooley lay prostrate on the sidewalk, bloodied, with a concussion and a torn ligament.

It’s never gotten that far with me, knock wood, although I’ve had that exact same experience — the sudden swerve to avoid a car — approximately a thousand times. Usually I don’t swear. I say STOP STOP STOP LOOK OUT CAN’T YOU SEE ME and maybe that’s why no one has felt the need to pull over and kick my ass, but there’s always tomorrow.

Here are my baseline beliefs when I roll out of my driveway on two wheels:

1) I want to avoid cars in every way possible.
2) In nearly all car/bike collisions, the bike loses.
3) Bikes don’t need to follow every rule of the road that cars do, at least not all the time, especially if a little law-breaking accomplishes objective No. 1, above.

Let’s start with the first two, because they govern the rest of it. If you’re a motorist, I’m going to avoid all contact with you. That means I will choose a quiet residential street over a main artery. If a main artery is unavoidable, I’ll ride on the sidewalk. Of course I go slower when I do. Of course I’m mindful of pedestrians. And yes, I know it’s illegal, but I’ll take the risk of a ticket over an accident every day, because see No. 2, above. I don’t want to die, or spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, or even a few weeks in a cast. If I always ride in a way that puts self-preservation uppermost in mind.

I also run stop signs now and then. Some of them, anyway. I have my reasons. Rules of the road were overwhelmingly written with cars in mind. Cars are big, heavy and deadly. Cars can’t stop as fast as I can. Drivers can’t see what I can. Even with an iPod, I can hear more. On my residential street grid, I frequently roll up on four-way stops. If I can see deserted roadway in three directions, I run the stop. What is the point of stopping? The intersection is empty. There’s rarely even a pedestrian around. Who can I hurt? What’s the harm? If a car is closer than half a block, I slow down and look for a visual cue from the driver to go ahead, and I usually get it. But trust me on this: I am never going to put myself at serious risk of injury if I can help it. See #2.

Sometimes a motorist is behind me when I run those stop signs, and sometimes I get a glare when they catch up and pass. Damn bicycles! Sometimes the glare comes when the motorist is talking on the phone, which is sort of a hoot, speaking of safe driving hint hint. It’s times like this I recall that while nearly all cyclists are motorists, most motorists aren’t cyclists and just don’t get it. It is to the motorist’s advantage to have nimble, two-wheeled me moving on ahead, rather than stopping for nothing and then starting up, wobbly, right in front of their car. I’m at my most unstable when starting from a dead stop, and neither one of us benefits from my instability. I wish more drivers understood this.

(And yes, I know it’s wrong, but as I said, I only do it when I’m alone on the road. I think of myself as a libertarian whenever I do so.)

I always obey rules of the road in traffic, however. I signal my turns, even, which is more than I can say for most drivers. I don’t text or talk on the phone, either. Here’s something else I do: If I come up to a red light, sometimes I’ll swoop up on the sidewalk and cross at the crosswalk as though I were a pedestrian. Drivers bitch about this, too, but again: I never do this if there are actual bipedal beings on the sidewalk or in the crosswalk nor in anything heavier than light traffic. I only do it if it’s clear, and I only do it to keep myself moving and in better control around cars. I don’t do it to thumb my nose at motorists, who are all less sweaty, better dressed, more comfortable and getting to their destinations faster than I am. The last time this happened, I did it after stopping the way I am supposed to. The last vehicle in line was a garbage truck, with a side-emitting exhaust and a diesel engine. Thought I was going to die. It felt entirely justified.

Also: Sometimes, if there’s a Supremes song on the iPod, I’ll sit up straight and ride no-handed for a hundred yards or so, the better to do the hand motions to “I Hear a Symphony.”

Speaking of music, I’m mindful of the iPod. A comfortable volume still lets in most traffic noise, which is important. But I remember something my friend Borden pointed out about radios, about how often they survive the worst crashes and continue to play. “There’s something so awful about bombing along, grooving to your favorite song, then crashing and having it be the first thing you hear after the glass stops falling. Your favorite song, forever associated with this lousy memory. Mocking you.” So true. If I check out in a bicycle crash, I hope the last thing in my ear isn’t Cheap Trick. This encourages me to keep the volume low.

So that’s me. If you see me out there, you might call me a scofflaw or a problem cyclist, but just know that I have my reasons for everything I do, and I’m not being an asshole on purpose. For what it’s worth, I’ve never ridden up beside anyone and slapped them on the fanny, the way a motorist did with me once. I never drove a golf cart on a bike path, the way golfers constantly do when they play on adjacent courses (hello, Foster Park). And I never was such a crappy golfer that my drive off the tee went wildly awry and came thisclose to hitting a certain middle-aged female cyclist who shall remain nameless.

I wish there were more bike paths and lanes. In Ann Arbor (of course), most of the major arteries that can accommodate one have a designated bike lane, and oh my god is that a wonderful thing. Of course, it wouldn’t help these people:

Will the Hatfields and the McCoys ever be able to coexist? Ground zero for such tensions may be Woodside, Calif. (population 5,600, 14 square miles), on the San Francisco peninsula, tucked in forested mountains. Its famous switchbacks are so narrow they are often unmarked by white stripes.

Woodside is host to hundreds of recreational cyclists on weekends. And on many weekdays, a peloton known as “the noon riders” — as many as 100 cyclists from Silicon Valley businesses riding during lunch break — blasts through.

“Mention the noon riders to anyone in town and you’ll see the blood pressure go up,” said Susan George, Woodside’s town manager. One day, she said, she rounded a bend and came upon them: “I slammed on the brakes and they swarmed around me, screaming and yelling obscenities. My heart was pounding. It was very scary.”

See, that’s just stupid. And wrong. And probably way too fast for me.

So let’s start the battle, eh? Take your shots.

A little bloggage: Laura Lippman will have the Sunday serial in the New York Times Sunday magazine, starting September 7, and boy are we thrilled for her. Also, for fans of her series, because “The Girl in the Green Raincoat” is a Tess Monaghan story, and? And she’s pregnant, Laura reports. That should be fun. Congratulations.

Jon Carroll, with an amusing story about bean burritos and the Perseid meteor shower. A column about farting that never uses the word, but still satisfies. Like a good fart.

This is old, but it’s amusing and has pictures of a lovely actress, so what the hell: Anne Hathaway’s Chic Revenge. (I’ve been looking for some version of that black coatdress my whole life. I guess it helps to have a stylist and a bottomless bank account, not to mention a slender form, long legs and…never mind.

And, of course, what we’ve been putting off reading all weekend: The world edges closer to chaos by the minute. Do your duty.

Why this city is a great place to be a journalist, or just a newspaper reader:

The mayor of Detroit is in jail.

And boy, does he look pissed.