Everybody knows certain foods have gender. Quiche = female. Chili = male. I like both, so I guess that makes me bisexual, or maybe just fat. But if food gender falls on a spectrum, I’d put ribs way over on the male side, even more macho than chili.

I’m not a huge ribs fan. They’re too Fred Flintstone for me, and require more work than escargot — and that’s just in the eating, with the gnawing and copious napkins and all the rest of it. And the sauce overwhelms everything; it seems you could get the same effect by dipping white bread into Open Pit and dabbing a little around your face and clothing. It seemed like Chinese food — not worth the effort to make at home, and best left to restaurants.

In my weekly trips to the Eastern Market I usually make a stop at Gratiot Central, aka the Meat Mall, and there’s a pork place there that always has acres of ribs piled up for Saturday sales. They look good, and there’s never a shortage of portly black dudes standing in line to stock up. I always feel I’m passing up something I should be finding a way to enjoy. (Note: I never feel that way in front of the tripe, hog maws, tongue and other offal cuts.)

Alan, like most guys, likes ribs, and in my effort to spice up the dinner table during grilling season I went looking for a decent recipe for the things that we could make at home and would please both of us. Ladies and gentlemen, I found it. No boiling is required, no sauce is involved, and only middle-school-level grill skilz. There’s a spice rub, and a three-hour turn on indirect heat from a very cool fire (300 degrees, tops), a little action with the hickory chips and several cooking variations to make ’em Chinese-style, etc.

It’s in Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything,” but you can find the recipe here (scroll down — it’s toward the bottom), called Chris Schlesinger’s Slow-Grilled Ribs. In that linked story, Bittman writes, “These are ribs the way they should be, but you need a day off with an empty schedule to make them.” Not exactly. Three hours will do. I started mine at 4 and took them off the grill at 7, and they were fine. Gas grills make it easier, too.

I made them with the first potato salad of the season. And even I liked them.

Speaking of white bread and rib sauce: There are chains that cater to white suburban rib-eaters (Damon’s comes to mind), but I learned to enjoy sloppy ribs after closing time, at black-owned places in dodgy neighborhoods, dragged there by various rib-loving men in my life. They always served their ribs in styrofoam boxes, with a big stack of the whitest white bread available, the kind that makes Wonder look like a health food. That, the baked beans and the greens were always my favorite part of the meal. At least, as I remember those blurry late-night suppers.

(Obligatory boring story: I once attended a party where the barbecue cooks were “secret” lovers, in the sense that everyone knew, only we were supposed to pretend we didn’t. The night before the party someone said, “Where are Name Redacted and other Name Redacted?” and someone else said, “They went off to rub the meat,” because that was, indeed, where they said they were going. There was a pause, then uproarious laughter.)

Bloggage:

Roy Edroso’s clip-n-save guide to the right-wing blogosphere, in the Village Voice.

Can any of you observant Cat’licks out there tell me if there’s a particular reason the Bush women dressed like crows to meet the pope yesterday?

Black is fine and slimming and all, but you’d think Jenna might have chosen something a bit more suited to a lovely April afternoon. And where was NotJenna? Do only betrothed young presidential daughters get to greet the pope?

These guys accented with a hint of color:

Now that’s more like it.

Got your Passover Coke yet? You’re probably out of luck — it sells out fast, and to gentiles.

Me, I have to get to work enjoying another fabulous spring day.

So yesterday I was e-mailing back and forth with an old pal, and she wrote:

I keep waiting for a courageous blogger to point out that Obama has yet to repudiate his surrogate, speaking at an Obama fundraiser, who called Sen. Clinton a “fucking whore.”

Now, I ask you: If a Clinton supporter, at a Clinton fund-raising event, had uttered an insult toward Obama that was the racial equivalent of the sexist slam “fucking whore” — and I think we all know what that would be — I daresay that Clinton, by now, might have distanced herself from the remark. To say the least.

Oh — wait. I forgot. Racism is awful; sexism is OK.

I don’t know about you, but whomever one backs in this race, the sexism that is so acceptable, so widespread, has just sickened me.

Yeah, me too. I’m not emotionally engaged with Hillary, and I think she deserves a certain amount of what’s being dished out. But she has a point. A short and incomplete roundup, from New York magazine, in an essay that unfortunately goes downhill from here:

A greatest-hits selection provides a measure of the misogyny: There’s Republican axman Roger Stone’s anti-Hillary 527 organization, Citizens United Not Timid, or CUNT. And the Facebook group Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich, which has 44,000-plus members. And the “Hillary Nutcracker” with its “stainless-steel thighs.” And Clinton’s Wikipedia page, which, according to The New Republic, is regularly vandalized with bathroom-stall slurs like “slut” and “cuntbag.” And the truly horrible YouTube video of a KFC bucket that reads HILLARY MEAL DEAL: 2 FAT THIGHS, 2 SMALL BREASTS, AND A BUNCH OF LEFT WINGS. And Rush Limbaugh worrying whether the country is ready to watch a woman age in the White House (as though nearly every male politician has not emerged portly, wearied, and a grandfatherly shade of gray). And those two boors who shouted, “Iron my shirts!” from the sidelines in New Hampshire.

That’s the first I’d heard of Citizens United Not Timid, and I get around. It’s a 527 organization, “to educate the American public about what Hillary Clinton really is.” Charming. I grow a little weary of calls for A to denounce B — having the same general views as another does not make me my brother’s keeper — but it’s nice to have groups like this around. With Citizens United Not Timid in the world, I no longer have to listen to right-wing whining about Michael Moore.

But my friend is right. Can you imagine, even for a minute, a 527 called New Information Guaranteed Greatness Elucidating Reality, “to educate the American public about what Barack Obama really is”? If “cunt” is the female equivalent of “nigger,” how often do you hear Obama called the latter? Some dim bulb in Kentucky refers to him as “this boy” and has to apologize within hours. But insulting Hillary with sexist jokes gets you a high-paying job on the network news:

The frat boys at MSNBC portrayed Clinton as a castrating scold, with Tucker Carlson commenting, “Every time I hear Hillary Clinton speak, I involuntarily cross my legs,” and Chris Matthews calling her male endorsers “castratos in the eunuch chorus.” Matthews also dubbed Clinton “the grieving widow of absurdity,” saying, of her presidential candidacy and senatorial seat, “She didn’t win there on her merit. She won because everybody felt, ‘My God, this woman stood up under humiliation.’ ” While that may be partly true—Hillary’s approval ratings soared in the wake of l’affaire Lewinsky—Matthews’s take reduced her universally recognized political successes to rewards for public sympathy, as though Clinton’s intelligence and long record of public service count for nothing. Would a male candidate be viewed so reductively? Many have argued that the media don’t like Clinton simply because they don’t like Clinton—even her devotees will admit she arrives with a complete set of overstuffed baggage—much in the same way they made up their mind about Al Gore back in 2000 and ganged up on him as a prissy, uptight know-it-all. But whatever is behind the vitriol, it has taken crudely sexist forms.

Part of it is human nature. I used to work for a gay man, who could, on occasion, be a real jerk. (He, too, had a problem with strong women. One of the strong women in the newsroom once told me, in a private moment, “I want to grab him and say, ‘I’m not your MOTHER, asshole.'”) I admit, when I was angry with him, I’d sometimes refer to him as a “misogynist fag.” Someone called me on it, and I thought it over and decided I would now refer to him as a misogynist jerk. (Even though I was dancing in gay bars when he was still pretending to be straight.) But you get the idea: It’s easy to express an ugly emotion in ugly language. You’d hope this would only happen in private moments, but then, we can’t all be Chris Matthews.

So here’s my question for the floor today: How comfortable are you with the cracks about Hillary’s fat butt, lesbian vibe and stainless-steel thighs? Whether you support her or not, at what station do you get off the train? (We’ll assume, to all of our credit, that we don’t ride it all the way to Citizens United Not Timid.) Is there room for chivalry in a presidential race? And any other topics you want to bring up.

Me, I gotta go to the gym. I missed three weightlifting classes in the last 10 days, rationalizing that because I was on my bike most of those days, I wouldn’t pay for the skips. Au contraire; my hammies felt like splintery plywood, only less flexible. But before I go, some bloggage:

Inside baseball, but I found Ken Doctor’s suggestions for jazzing up newspaper-corporation boards to be pretty dead-on.

Tbogg got a new puppy. Now he has three basset hounds to walk. Tbogg is insane, but at least his house has extra cuteness.

Finally, a Metafilter post that rounds up pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube men, aka “airdancers.”

Off to stretch the hams.

How important are facts in fiction? I guess it depends on the reader. Since I moved here I’ve been working my way through the vast canon of Detroit-based crime fiction, with varying levels of satisfaction. Loren Estleman’s Amos Walker series is almost uniformly a pleasure to read, although I’ve learned not to try to solve the mystery as I go along, because he’s going to pull a big rabbit out of his hat in the penultimate chapter, and you might as well just go along for the ride. Elmore Leonard is, of course, sublime from beginning to end. Donald Goines, not so much. Everyone else falls within that spectrum.

I’m currently sampling “Detroit Noir,” one of the Noir series, collections of short stories based in and around specific cities. (Sorry, Hoosiers, “Fort Wayne Noir” is not in the pipeline, although there is a Twin Cities Noir, which I hope features lots of killers in earflap hats.) It’s not bad, but it could have used another layer of editing, the kind that changes “Manoogian Manor” to “Manoogian Mansion” and corrects what was, for me, a total momentum-stopper in the one story set in Grosse Pointe, a line where “the sun dropped behind the Yacht Club.” I tried to figure if there was any point at which two people could sit in a car and watch the sun set behind the landmark Moorish watchtower, and came up with, “Not until the earth reverses its orbit.” The Yacht Club sits on the western edge of Lake St. Clair and enjoys some fabulous sunrises, but for sunsets, you’d have to be out in the water somewhere.

That kind of stuff drives me crazy. In “The Sporting Club,” Thomas McGuane sets his story in 1968 and has two characters go to the dedication of the Mackinac Bridge, which happened a decade previous. I see this stuff all the time. I know many authors aren’t journalists, and I know some ironing of the truth is permissible, but I wish they’d respect certain ironclad truths, including the construction dates of major pieces of infrastructure and the direction of the earth’s travel around the sun.

That is all.

“Detroit Noir” is pretty good, however. I hope there’s another one.

So how was your weekend? Mine went like this: Taxes errands taxes dinner w/JohnC taxes and now, soon, IRA deposits. I hate doing my taxes, but I love TurboTax, the only financial software I use. Every year, it gets better. It now inhales much of my 1099-misc data directly from my bank while I sit there filing my nails. My sole complaint: It keeps a running total of your payment/refund. At one point I owed $14,000, an utterly meaningless figure — I had told it all of my income, and none of my payments — but having a figure like that hovering in the corner makes you want to put off doing your taxes another few days.

I know I pay too much. There are probably dozens of deductions I am entitled to and don’t take. I stay squarely on the right side of the law and probably pay more than Donald Rumsfeld, but there’s no valuing peace of mind. My receipts aren’t creatively embellished. I really do keep a mileage log. If I were audited I would surely spend a few sleepless nights, but at the end it’s entirely possible I’d walk out with a refund. (Not bloody likely, but you never know.) I don’t even hate the IRS, too much. Someone has to be the bad guy.

Early in my career I wrote a story on some tax protesters in Columbus. They were followers of Irwin Schiff, and two of the dumbest telephone installers I’ve ever met. One had a Filipino mail-order bride and the other bragged about how much he wanted a Corvette, so he quit paying taxes and bought one. The latter was en route to federal prison when I left town, the other the subject of keen interest by federal authorities. They both thought they had stumbled across the greatest loophole in the history of tax law — that the income tax is voluntary. P.S. Irwin Schiff is in jail. Wesley Snipes should be.

Not much bloggage today, but a fun one. Find the No. 1 song on the day of your birth. It’s like the rock ‘n’ roll zodiac. Mine was “Jailhouse Rock,” which I consider a good omen. Like being born in the Year of the Dragon. Imagine being born under “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” That would suck.

Off to the bank to “save for retirement.”

My parents were Catholic and we were raised that way, but we weren’t Pope People. Which is to say, we knew who the Pope was (one of the Johns. I think.), but we didn’t pay him enough respect, if by “respect,” you mean “attention.” Granted, John was not a rock-star Pope, but the idea of my own mother calling him “the Holy Father” and sighing over his personal appearances is incomprehensible to me, and needless to say, there were no Peggy Noonans in the house:

When I was writing a book about John Paul, I’d ask those who’d met him or saw him go by: What did you think, or say? And they’d be startled and say, “I don’t know, I was crying.”

Huh.

I remember Juan Pablo the Deuce’s first U.S. tour. The Columbus Dispatch send one of its star writer/editors to cover it. From her exhaustive reports, I learned that love beamed from the man’s face, and that everywhere he went, people felt the love. But Noonan is a serious Catholic intellectual, right? So, as we await Benedict XVI, what might we expect, Peggy?

Benedict… is the perfect pope for the Internet age. He is a man of the word. You download the text of what he said, print it, ponder it.

This is what I saw as his popemobile came close by in the square: tall man, white hair, shy eyes, deep-set. He is waving, trying to act out pleasure at being the focus of all eyes, center stage. He is not a showman but a scholar, an engaged philosopher nostalgic for the days – he has spoken of them – when he was a professor in a university classroom, surrounded by professors operating in a spirit of academic camaraderie and debate. But, his friends tell you, he enjoys being pope. He has become acclimated.

There is a sweetness about him – all in the Vatican who knew him in the old days speak of it – and a certain vagueness, as if he is preoccupied.

What is it about the Vicar of Christ that he brings out the swoon in middle-aged women? But what, Peggy, is Benedict likely to say?

Perhaps some variation on themes from his famous Regensburg address, in September 2006.

There he traced and limned some of the development of Christianity, but he turned first to Islam. Faith in God does not justify violence, he said. “The right use of reason” prompts us to understand that violence is incompatible with the nature of God, and the nature, therefore, of the soul. God, he quotes an ancient Byzantine ruler, “is not pleased by blood,” and “not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature.” More: “To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm.” This is a message for our time, and a courageous one, too. (The speech was followed by riots and by Osama bin Laden’s charge that the pope was starting a new “crusade.”)

There you have it. Folks, this is what we call a clip job. Plus a lot of swooning.

As for me, I’m going to follow the visit through the NYT’s Pope blog, to which Fort Wayne’s own Amy Welborn is contributing. Go, Amy.

Folks, I slept late today, and now I’m behind. Content yourself with some bloggage while I finish my taxes and drink the last of this morning’s coffee over ice:

No links in this one, but you get the gist. From the Will You Damn Kids Leave Me Alone file, via Brian:

Logansport woman reported missing by her son

A Logansport woman has been reported missing by her son and police are interested in talking to anyone who may have seen her.

Kim S. Steele, 41, was last seen on Thursday, just before meeting a man she had recently met through an Internet chat room. Repeated calls to her cell phone by friends, family and the Logansport police have gone unanswered.

…According to a police report, Steele left without extra clothing or personal items. The last contact she had with anyone was her son, who told police she was on her way to help move a trailer or camper with man from the Internet. Investigators have entered her name into a national database for missing person.

Later…

Woman reported missing had been camping

The Logansport woman reported missing by her son turned up late this morning.

Kim S. Steele, 41, had been camping out of town with her new boyfriend — the man she met through an Internet chat room. Steele told police her cell phone went dead and that’s why she had not returned the numerous calls made by her family, friends and Logansport police.

When she came into Logansport today, she saw the newspaper article and reported to police that she was all right.

Well, I guess it beats rotting in a ditch for two months until someone says, “Has anyone heard from Nance lately?”

Alan had to edit “MILF” out of a story a couple years ago — those sneaky reporters! — and at the time I think he was one of the very few who knew what a MILF was. Now it’s everywhere.

Hey, it’s J.C.’s birthday! Let’s steal some of his bandwidth:

No, I guess it’s Flickr’s bandwidth. Sign at the Buford Highway Farmers Market, Doraville, Ga., which you may know as “a touch of country in the city.”

Coffee’s done. Off to the bank.

One of Gene Weingarten’s chatters Tuesday says what I was thinking yesterday:

Billings, Mont.: Thought your Bell in the Metro story was good and all, but your Great Zucchini story from two years ago was the best thing you’ve ever written. Was that story submitted for a Pulitzer?

Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten: It was. And I was only recently reliably informed that it got real consideration, but was ultimately rejected because it was perceived as not serious enough.

I’m not surprised; the Pulitzers are like that. It strikes me that of the journalists I’ve known who’ve served on Pulitzer juries, they tended to be at either best-or-worst ends of the spectrum, so it figures they get a few wrong. The Great Zucchini story was a work of storytelling art. I urge you to read it; it’s that good. And while the Joshua Bell story that earned Weingarten the big P was great, it was something you could stand at the beginning of and see all the way to the end. When I told Alan what the story was, I said, “They got this virtuoso violinist, Joshua Bell, to be a subway busker in D.C. and watched how people reacted.” He replied, “And they ignored him, right?” He didn’t know anything about the story; he just guessed that if you put a virtuoso playing a Stradivarius in a busy Metro station at rush hour, he’s not going to draw a crowd. The telling of the story is wonderful, but there’s no real surprise.

But the Great Zucchini had a huge surprise halfway through. You thought it was about one thing (a story about a children’s party entertainer), and then it turned out to be another thing (the common roots of fear and humor). Let’s see, what did win that year?

Jim Sheeler of Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colo.
For his poignant story on a Marine major who helps the families of comrades killed in Iraq cope with their loss and honor their sacrifice.

See? Serious enough.

Oh, well. It may be like Paul Newman winning an Oscar for “The Color of Money” when he should have won for half a dozen better performances that preceded it, but it’s all good. (Bonus: I’ve linked to it before, but just in case you’re having a slow day at work and have some time to read it — Tears for Audrey, another Gene-sterpiece.)

Yesterday I mentioned writers who don’t get the web. I think Weingarten gets it. I don’t know another columnist who could pull off what he does every week with his live chat, and I think every single columnist should give it a try sometime. I’d love to know what the traffic is for that.

OK, then. Found this via Leo, and oh my, what was I saying about that word just a couple weeks ago?

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving (John) McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

Whoa! I know Mrs. McCain favors girly clothes and high heels. If that didn’t call for a shoe to be slipped off and applied, heel-first, to Mr. War Hero’s forehead, I don’t know what would.

You think this story is true? It’s getting a lot of blog attention, but then, we’re allowed to say “cunt” right out in the open, whereas a newspaper won’t even say “the c-word.” It’ll be “an insulting name related to her gender,” and most people will think, “Oh, well, once I told my wife to stop being such a little bitch during an argument; it could happen to anyone.”

I’m fortunate to live with a mellow soul. My dad was a grump, and he could curse, but he generally saved his profanity for inanimate objects, bad drivers, circumstances beyond his control and the like. I can’t imagine him using such a word on my mother, and to do so in front of witnesses? I like to think I’m as tolerant of human frailty as the next gal, but that one required an instant correction, as the dog trainers say. With a shoe.

This week has been seductively beautiful. I’ve been out and about on the bike every day; for once I’m caught up with my library accounts because hey, returning books is a good excuse to ride two miles. Next week, not so much, but oh well. I’m still looked on as something of an oddity around here, where driving half a block is not considered wasteful or slothful, only vigorous support of the local economy. One of my doctors is a cyclist, however, and at my last appointment we made small talk about the cost of being one in the Motor City. He’s been pulled over three times in the last year, he said; twice for running stop signs and once for resembling a person last seen stealing CDs from a car. While I teach Kate to obey stop signs on her bike, sooner or later she’s going to figure out that, for cyclists, a stop sign at a quiet intersection with no cars in sight can safely be ignored. You’re traveling slower, you have the advantage of eyes and ears, and you can’t hurt anyone but yourself. With all the piss-poor drivers I see on a daily basis, I guess it’s a credit to the low crime rate around here that police even bother to bug cyclists about such infractions. (And you should see my doctor, a white-haired soul in his late 50s who looks about as likely to break into cars as the Pope does. Please.)

OK, I’ve run dry. How about some bloggage making cruel fun of the pain of others? Here you go.

Ken Levine’s back with his “American Idol” recaps this season, and he correctly puts his finger on what was wrong with last night’s, which was nearly unwatchable:

While Syesha Mercado was screeching out some faux inspirational song that strung together every “I believe/Catch a shooting star/There’s time for every soul to fly/Reach within your heart/Strive to be the very best/Anything is Possible” bullshit cliché (and every one of those lyrics actually WAS in that song), Doug Davis, a young pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks took the mound and pitched the game of his life…knowing that in two days he will undergo surgery for thyroid cancer.

THAT’S inspirational. THAT’S real.

Disclaimer: I do not watch “American Idol” voluntarily. I watch it because my kid watches it, and while one day I will take her to see Iggy Pop, that day has not yet arrived.

This week’s theme was “songs of inspiration.” Every single one sucked, although the leadoff singer did have the advantage of menace:

Michael Johns sang “Dream On”. Most inspirational songs are not angrily shouted at you. Okay, okay, I’ll dream on. Don’t hurt me!

Three-day eventing isn’t for sissies. I watched an Olympic-caliber cross-country phase in Lexington a few years ago, and just being a spectator made my knees shake.

Someone actually makes a semi-amusing ad for special-event mass transit, and Catholics are outraged, so the ad is pulled. Someone make these pinheads direct traffic, then. The ad lives on, where else? On YouTube. Be subversive, and laugh at the Pope.

Me, I’m off for a bike ride.

Charlton Heston is dead, and all I can do is scroll through the IMDb “quotes” pages from his movies.

Nefretiri: Oh, Moses, Moses, why of all men did I fall in love with a prince of fools?

I always thought Heston’s life was self-parody enough, but I’ll leave the obits to others. Still, could this be true?

In what could have been Heston’s most audacious Jewish role, the FBI recruited the actor amid the 1993 Waco, Texas, standoff involving David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. Heston was to have played the Voice of God to facilitate negotiations with Koresh, however the plan was never used.

XM should have a separate channel called The Government’s Loudspeaker. It would have a short playlist, but a thought-provoking one, consisting entirely of stuff some law enforcement agency thought might get a holed-up desperado to come out with his hands up. The Manuel Noriega dance mix, I seem to recall, ran the gamut from extreme heavy metal to “Baby I’m-a Want You.” That would make for some interesting radio, but no one asked me.

So how was your weekend? I’m starting to dread my own. The basement drains backed up again, and Alan got two flat tires — one on his car, and one on mine. Since mine is due for four new ones, and his was in a sidewall, that’ll have to be replaced, too. Lately I feel as though I’m closing on a house, at that point where every time you turn around someone wants a check for $300. Only this weekend will be more like $600.

Oh, well, you know what they say: Pain means you’re still alive.

And even a few hundred bucks in un-budgeted expenses couldn’t entirely ruin the first nice weekend of the whole damn year. Gentle temperatures, sunshine, the whole works. We dragged our rosemary bushes outside to the deck and told them to fend for themselves, then raked out the detritus of winter, a basically pleasant task, considering the detritus didn’t include any dead birds or anything. Filled five lawn-and-leaf bags, then checked the forecast — freezing temperatures expected by next weekend. Well, screw it. Rosemary has a week to harden up for it, and forecasts change.

Of course I celebrated with a long bike ride. Rode down to Alter Road to scout locations for my upcoming video, imaginatively working-titled: Alter Road. I want more green before I get going on it, but I also wanted to see if there’s any way I could find a reasonably safe route to the newly opened bike paths of downtown. Google Maps’ street view has some gaps, but what I could see of Freud Street wasn’t good:

View Larger Map

(God. Google Maps street view. Signs and wonders and more signs, and more wonders.)

So I chickened out. For now.

But that made me think, well, maybe I could help complete the map, some real ground-level citizen journalism. Send Google some pictures taken on key street corners, eh? I asked my genius how I might do that. He replied:

They’re so precisely geolocated because a special vehicle with multiple cameras pointing in “all” directions moves slowly down a street and they suck up images with super-duper-precise geolocation, metadata aplenty…driven by some coffee sipping slacker (I’ve seen them in Atlanta.)

I want that job. I want it really, really bad.

OK, some sober bloggage: Funeral arrangements for Ashley are complete, and can be found here. Predictably, they contain a note of humor; mourners are encouraged to dress either traditionally or in Saints gear, or a combination of both. Memorials are to the family, left without a provider. You can Paypal ’em here.

With that, I’ve fiddled with Google Maps too long. Time to get to work. And wait for the plumber. Again.

Since we have New Orleans on our minds these last couple of days, a story that has its roots there:

Alan and I were driving through Mississippi, en route to New Orleans, late one night some years ago. We were appreciating one of the many pleasures of the Delta — gutbucket blues on the radio — when there was a pause for station identification and a word from our sponsor.

“Do you have a loved one incarcerated in a correctional institution you find it difficult to travel to?” asked a resonant African-American male voice, not unlike the ones who had been singing a moment before. But there was a note of optimism in the question, the unmistakable sound of someone who’s about to solve your problem, and sure enough, he had the answer: A bus service making “daily trips to Parchman, Angola and other Mississippi and Louisiana correctional institutions.” For a reasonable price, you could finally pay a visit to your son, grandson, nephew or other family member living behind bars. Leave the driving to us.

Alan and I looked at one another, stunned, two affluent white people who had just been listening to musical laments about Parchman, Angola and other Mississippi and Louisiana correctional institutions, and now we were confronting actual evidence that not only did these places exist, they were not merely colorful stops on the career-development paths of Bukka White and Son House. People really lived there, and had relatives on the outside who loved them and wanted to see them.

I exaggerate to make a point. But it was a glimpse into a world neither of us had paid much attention to, outside of the movies and occasional op-ed piece. Imprisonment is a fact of life in many communities, and it should surprise no one that the links between inside and outside have their own culture and economies.

Last year, a billboard went up on I-94 in Detroit, advertising a similar service to Michigan prisons. I encourage you to watch the linked video for a sense of the pitch — a little mournful (separation hurts) but positive (there’s a solution) and soothing (we’ll do the hard part). The shot of the woman getting off the bus, and the pan that captures the chainlink and razor wire of some anonymous Michigan big house under an appropriately gray sky is just…perfect. She doesn’t smile; hell, she’s not going to the casino. She’s paying a visit to a painful place. It’s really well-done.

This sent me Googling for other prison bus services. Not a lot of hits. There’s one in California, aimed mostly at keeping (inmate) mothers in touch with their children. You see mentions of companies and state-supported services here and there, mainly on sites like Prisontalk.com, which I highly recommend just because it’s more interesting than most. (I got lost in the “ever seen someone infamous while visiting” thread: My man was in the same prison with Jack Kevorkian! …I saw one of the Manson family!)

So I guess what I’m wondering today is, what is the ancillary prison economy? Corrections is one of the few growth areas in many states with depressed economies (cough, Michigan, cough), which can’t build them fast enough. Now that it’s common to ship prisoners across state lines to relieve overcrowding and staff shortages, and since so many are being built in remote locations desperate for jobs of any kind (cough, Upper Peninsula, cough), incarceration is truly a “buy” stock. I know we have at least one regular here, MichaelG, whose job takes him to California pens; maybe he can start the discussion. Inexpensive nearby hotels for loved ones traveling long distances to visit — that’s a no-brainer. Bus services, ditto. But there has to be something else, too.

Amazing fun fact, from the Freep via a secondary source: With nearly 50,000 people in state prisons, Michigan has one of the nation’s highest rates of incarceration and prison spending. Prisons eat up nearly 20% of the state’s general fund, or $1.8 billion.

That’s a lot of cheddar being grated. Certainly some must fall on the floor.

OK, a little brief bloggage and follow-up.

Via J.C., my genius, all of Ashley’s comments on NN.C on a single page. It makes for some odd reading, a little montage-y, since so many of the comments refer to other comments, or posts you can’t see (although there are links to those, too). But he had a way with words. I suggest just jumping around. I had to smile when I discovered, anew, Ashley’s Binary Hotness Scale:

Gina Gershon is still a 1 in my book. Oh, I have a binary weighting scale, 1: yes, you would; 0: no, you wouldn’t. Beer acts as bias.

Also, a commenter in the previous thread, Ann, says Depaul (Ashley’s employer) is now saying the cause of death was a car accident. Haven’t confirmed that anywhere, but FYI. Thanks, Ann. Now I’m told it wasn’t a car accident, that he was found in his hotel room. Sorry for the mistake.

Finally, because we need a smile today, a well-worn YouTube link to the Bulgarian Idol (real name: “Music Idol”) auditions. The hilarity is in a non-English-speaking contestant making her way through an English-language pop song, but having recently seen a woman barely out of her teens tackle the Beatles’ “In My Life,” I can’t say there’s much of a difference stateside. It was like watching Justin Timberlake play King Lear.

Have a good weekend.

EDIT: Minor glitches fixed. (I hope.) Comments open on this post, and the Ashley comments page has been un-404’d. We upgraded to WP 2.5 this week, and I’m still finding all the buttons.

Well this was a Monday morning fit for the weekend it followed. I was in a bad mood for about 48 hours, entirely media-induced. I wish there was a way to check one’s hormone levels from day to day — gauges installed in the forehead, perhaps — so I’d know when to stay away from the papers.

It started Saturday with “This American Life” on Saturday, a particularly pungent episode called “The Audacity of Government.” (From the promo: “We’ve decided to spend an hour admitting and talking about the fact that everyone knows is true: America’s become a jerk.”) Part I was about the Bush administration’s attempt to buffalo an independent treaty commissioner, in order to enforce the “property rights” of a couple who built an illegal wall in their back yard, which backs up to the Canadian border. Part II was about the government’s relentless efforts to deport the immigrant widows of American citizens who died before their spouses’ permanent residency could be established — a group that numbers barely over 100.

It continued when I got home and read the story about this poor schmo, a former kindergarten teacher in his second trial for sexually assaulting two boys. It’s his second trial because his first conviction was overturned. The boys claim he grabbed them out of a lunch line and into an empty classroom and raped them both. Unfortunately, the classroom was never empty in the course of the day, and the kids showed all the signs of having been coached, and their stories changed with the wind. What happened? No one knows, but it’s highly likely the teacher on trial, practically the definition of a pencil-neck geek, didn’t do what he’s accused of. The jury has been deadlocked for a week, 11-1 for acquittal, but the holdout seems determined to hold out forever.

The funk lifted when he had our long-delayed dinner with friends Saturday. Main course: lamb chops. Mmm, lamb chops in the spring. Yum. But the next day, more outrages in the daily papers:

Remember when “vulgar” was a word everyone understood, and a description no one wanted to attract? Ah, those were the days:

Like so many of the over-the-top birthday parties that typically appear on “My Super Sweet 16” on MTV, Ariel’s celebration took the fairy-tale-princess theme to new heights.

Horse-drawn carriages delivered teenage guests to a faux-castle tent where they were met with dancing jesters and disco lights. The birthday girl, wearing a white dress and tiara, flew in via helicopter. And the evening ended with fireworks and the arrival of Ariel’s gift from her father: a brand new BMW 325i.

As viewers learned, Ariel’s dad was a successful oilman. “I love oil. Oil means shoes and cars and purses,” Ariel exclaimed to the camera as she and her father stomped around oil drilling sites in the muddy hills near her home in Campbellsville, Ky. When her father pointed to one of the sites and told viewers that it produced 120 barrels a day, Ariel asked, “How many Louis Vuittons is that?” Her father’s answer was “a bunch.”

Now there’s a lede that’ll keep you reading, even though you know what comes next: Ariel’s daddy is a swindler and thief, not to mention a man whose sense of restraint and decorum makes Tony Montana look like Prince Charles. Say what you want about WASPs, with their buttoned-down nerdiness and toothpaste tube squeezers and 25-cent tips for the yard man, but at least they don’t go around hiring choppers for their kid’s birthday party.

When the Obama administration sweeps into office, I look foward to seeing Ariel’s father face a firing squad. Ariel herself will be sent to a forced-labor camp for youthful offenders. ¡Viva la revolucion!.

Grumble, grumble. On to the Free Press and there was Mitch Albom, ever the edgy opinionator, going waaaay out on a limb to stake his claim that religious fanatics who shun doctors and sit idly by praying while their kids die of treatable diseases are — hold on to your hats — bad parents. But where is the qualifier? Ah yes, here it is:

Now I know there are many of us who believe “God has a plan.” And I hope and pray that’s true.

But I’m betting His plan doesn’t include us sitting around doing nothing.

Well-said, brave boy! My brother thinks picking on Mitch Albom is a waste of time. I heartily agree. And yet, I cannot stop.

Finally, in despair, I thought a little celebrity gossip might do me some good. Uh, no:

Madonna wants to remake “Casablanca,” set it in Iraq, and play the Ingrid Bergman role. Dr. Kevorkian on speed-dial for that one, baby.

So how was your weekend?

Oh, I shouldn’t complain. It wasn’t that bad. We got our drain cleared, the dog got his annual shots and an “excellent” from the vet, and as they say, who has anything to complain about, really? Not me. But I do still have some work to do, so that’s it for now.

I slept in — as much as it’s possible to “sleep in” when one’s head is full of crusted snot — and pledged I wouldn’t miss the weight-training class at the gym this morning, so you folks only get 20 minutes of my time today. My Quickfire all-bloggage challenge starts…now!

Our fame spreads. I knew one day all that time I spent reading Ann Landers could pay off. Also, it’s interesting to note the credulousness of the American media was ever thus.

Just a warning: If tomorrow you see a photo posted with a long string of obscenities, I will be taking Friday off to gnash my teeth. Because guess what we’re promised overnight: Snow, and perhaps enough to photograph.

The idea of putting my house up as collateral for a new bathroom never appealed much to me. My parents were Depression babies, and never went in for the sorts of high-wire financial shenanigans so popular in recent years. (They were, however, the Trumps compared to Alan’s parents. One story I recalled at FuneralFest 2008 was the reaction of Alan’s grandparents when their daughter and her new husband took out a mortgage to buy a tiny house in Defiance, Ohio — “You will be paying on that for the rest of your life,” delivered in an accusatory, thou-shalt-be-damned tone. Amount of the loan: $8,000.) I really really really would like a new kitchen, but I really really really really don’t want a home-equity loan to worry about at 3 a.m. Finally, vindication! Ahem:

Americans owe a staggering $1.1 trillion on home equity loans — and banks are increasingly worried they may not get some of that money back.

To get it, many lenders are taking the extraordinary step of preventing some people from selling their homes or refinancing their mortgages unless they pay off all or part of their home equity loans first. In the past, when home prices were not falling, lenders did not resort to these measures.

I remember in the ’90s, I’d see ads touting home-equity lines of credit as a good way to finance a vacation. Whenever I am tempted to spend too much in a restaurant, I remind myself that no matter how good it tastes, it’s going to be headed to the waste-treatment plant in 24 hours one way or another. Imagine being kicked out of your home and staying warm with your memories of the beach in Bermuda. Nope, doesn’t do it for me, either.

Related: A total financial moron explains it all for you. Clip and save. Useful!

Twenty minutes is up. Tell me how my affinity for drug-culture trivia can be monetized in the future. I’m off to the gymnasium to swing some of those newfangled Indian clubs.

How do I get on the Talking Points of the Day mailing list? Because I’m obviously missing something.

Memeorandum notes that the indictment of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is national news. I was puzzled to notice all the blog reaction came from the right wing, and what do they rise as one to say?

HOW COME THE MEDIA ISN’T MENTIONING KILPATRICK’S PARTY AFFILIATION? BECAUSE HE’S A DEMOCRAT, YOU KNOW.

My guess would be this: Because it’s so obvious the black mayor of a black city would be a Democrat, it isn’t even worth noting? Because Republicans don’t even put candidates on the mayoral ballot in Detroit? (Help me out here, Del, JohnC — was there a Republican on the November ballot in 2005? I can’t remember, mainly because the primary is the final battle for that office.) Because anyone who knows anything about Detroit other than “it’s where the Supremes came from” and “they make cars there” would know this? Because if there was some distant, outside, ghost of a chance that a black Republican might be running this city, he would be a regular commenter on Fox News by now? Take your pick.

I know they read different newspapers out there in the rest of the country, but come on, people — some knowledge truly is general. And that black cities in the rust belt have Democratic mayors, usually black Democrats, is right down at the duh level.