Since everybody’s talking about NASA and sex (kinda), one more from YouTube. A journalist friend writes:

While researching the diaper issue, I stumbled across this NASA video showcasing a new type of robotic skin that can prompt a robot to move away from an astronaut during a spacewalk. NASA used a ballerina to show how sensitive the stuff was. It pulled the video from its website in 2005, however, when somebody pointed out the phallic nature of the device.

It’s like something you’d see in a taxpayer-funded conceptual art festival that’s got the GOP all het up:

The astronaut story is Page One all over the planet, as you had to figure it would be. The diaper detail clinched it, as did, well, the fact she’s an astronaut. Decades of careful indoctrination have led us to believe that if you are trained to drive a space shuttle, you have the presence of mind not to delaminate over a kinda-sorta love affair.

Ah, well. We may make it to Mars in my lifetime, but we will never come close to discovering the fathomless mysteries of the human heart. Talk about a final frontier.

The astronaut is out on bail at the moment. I hope she’s on suicide watch as well.

Speaking of fathomless mysteries, the book I finished this week, “The Return of the Player,” is hilarious, every bit as funny as “The Player,” but everyone who’s read Michael Tolkin knows to expect that. Near the end the protagonist, Griffin Mill, has a soul-searching conversation with Bill Clinton on Martha’s Vineyard, and the former president tells him:

Like it nor not, there are things learned in bed, and only in bed, that can move a man or woman to something great within themselves. Promiscuity can focus the senses, the faculties of mind and insight. Very few of the people who make a dent on history can get enough of such wisdom from only one bed. And that’s what the American people understand, and in a moment of panic and weakness I didn’t trust them. America has one heart. The American people said all of that to me with every poll that showed them enraged with my enemies. I let them down by not respecting their intelligence. Give them as much of the truth as the world can stand without needing more, get that out of the way, and you deflate your enemies because they’ll be screaming at the American people for not being shocked. And who really wants to be screamed at? I may be depraved, but I, William Jefferson Clinton, am the pure product of America, and the truth is, so is everyone else.

A liberal fantasia, sure, but as a statement of principles, I’ll take it over Ted Haggard’s I am 300 percent heterosexual claims anytime.

The great unreported story of the ex-gay movement: The wives. (At least the ones who aren’t lesbians themselves.)

OK, then. Back to normal, today. The temperature is expected to soar into the teens, school is back in session and I have precisely one day to enjoy the peace and quiet, because tomorrow we’re having some painters come in and rip our lives to shreds. For this, the last difficult painting job in the house, we’re splurging on a pro. It’s the foyer/upstairs hallway, which involves one of those tricky all-the-way-to-the-ceiling-of-the-staircase deals. The household control freak is allowing it, but I’m sure he’ll go around and get all those switchplate screws lined up to 12 o’clock afterward, because otherwise he couldn’t sleep at night. And he’s already done a minor reno ahead of them, removing the ’50s-style doorbell chimes from their alcove, so as to make an “art nook” instead.

“Are you sure you’re heterosexual?” I asked.

He didn’t reply, “300 percent!,” for which I am very grateful. He just kept spackling.

When all this is over, we will have finally driven out the color oatmeal, once the dominant shade of our little GP castle. I can tolerate it on the walls, but when people use it on ceilings I put my foot down. An oatmeal ceiling feels like a Michigan winter sky. Death to oatmeal.

Bloggage today? Not much. I’m a tapped-out soul today, but I will second Lance’s recommendation of Newcritics as a fine new culture blog worth a check-out by all.

Oh, OK, there’s this: I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC … in Japanese! And the best Mac/PC ad yet: Cancel or allow. Requires QuickTime, natch.

Jeez, what a bunch of wusses:

The South Lyon Community Schools and Brighton Area Schools were the only districts open in Metro Detroit today as winter keeps the region in its icy grip and students are not happy about it.

Parent Tina Rochowiak said she kept her son home Monday but sent the senior to class today at South Lyon High School. She said her son text messaged her and said students have gathered in a commons area and are refusing to go to class.

Melissa Meister, South Lyon Community Schools’ assistant superintendent of administrative services, confirmed that the students had gathered and said the matter was being addressed. Meister could not say how many students were protesting.

The school is heated. The buses were all running fine. I presume the commons area where the protest happened was heated, too.

Kids these days. But worse, of course, is the parental reaction:

Rochowiak said the district could have let students stay home today without impacting their studies.

“They are ridiculous,” she said. “I kept him home yesterday because I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. Winter is almost over. Give them a break. It is just dumb.”

Thank God my parents weren’t this silly.

A question for the rest of you suffering through this cold snap: Do you wear long underwear? I do. I’ll show it to anyone who asks, too. My January/February life got measurably better when I came to terms with winter and started wearing long underwear.

I used to own a red wool/flannel union suit from L.L. Bean (in fact, it could be this one), until I washed it wrong and it lost its shape. I liked it because you could throw it on with a pair of jeans on a Saturday and, theoretically at least, go out and run errands. If you got too hot, you could unbutton a few buttons at the top, for that Northern Exposure Vixen look. Yes, it was utterly unfashionable and fairly ridiculous, but man oh man, it did the job. I bought it after a winter trip to the Upper Peninsula, where everyone has one or two.

Of course, today we have miracle fabrics, and I have graduated to Patagonia Capilene separates, medium-weight. I wear them — bottoms mostly — anytime the temperature dips into the teens. Dog-walking is misery without them; going out in jeans alone exposes half your body to the elements with only a thin layer of denim between them. We top-load our winter dressing because, as we’re reminded by helpful newspaper tip boxes every year, you lose heat through your head. OK, so wear a hat. But don’t forget your butt, either.

I bought Kate a pair for last Christmas. To date, she has worn them only on her head, for laughs. She’d rather die that put such a thing on her body.

I should probably have waited another 20 years. That’s how long it took me to come around.

One more tip: Lands End, L.L. Bean and lots of other mail-order houses offer flannel- and fleece-lined jeans and chinos this time of year. They are…heavenly.

This concludes today’s edition of Too Much Information.

Day two of the no-school freeze-out. Hey, that’s OK — I have nothing important to do, just report a story and get into my essay-writing head for something that’s long overdue. And someone’s calling for a get-acquainted professional chat, so I have to sound wise and with-it and all the rest. That should be easy to do with squealing cabin-feverish children stampeding through the house.

Something else I’d really like to do this week, while conditions are right: Go for a walk on the lake. Nothing crazy or stupid, just a little shoreline amble to see the majesty of winter whipping through the Great Lakes. With subzero temperatures at night and nothing above the mid-20s forecast for the rest of the week, conditions should be ideal. If I fall through a soft spot and die, please don’t read this at my funeral.

Bloggage:

Of course it’s cold, but be strong: You could live in Washington D.C. Everything’s relative — nothing like a few subzero days to make 20 degrees feel positively Floridian — but man, getta loada this:

The National Weather Service said today could be the coldest day in Washington since Jan. 10, 2004, when the mercury dipped to 8, which was the chilliest reading in the past decade. Such conditions can cause frostbite and hypothermia, forecasters said.

Well, yes, I guess that’s true. But wearing clothing (see above) can be really effective against such threats. Read the story, anyway; the word “cold” or “coldest” appears 14 times, mostly in quotes where people express the idea that it is, indeed, cold outside. This is why reporters hate to write weather stories.

Zero-gravity catfight! What happens when two astronauts vie for the romantic attention of a third? Me-ow!

A screen capture of my current desktop widgets. Note the weather radar and the current temperature, bottom left. That cotton ball over western Michigan has been there for days (lake-effect snow, for you non-Midwesterners.) Don’t you wish you lived here?

And so it begins: After a solid week of nursing Kate’s flu, including a full-blown relapse beginning Friday evening that was pretty much a rerun of the first three days, I woke up today to:

1) No school. Temps at minus-2 now, with wind chills fierce enough to frighten even Michigan school superintendents.

2) A tiny, unscratchable tickle in the back of my own throat. It’s too early to say what it is, but it’s safe to say it’s nothing good.

Will I allow this to keep me down? Maybe. We’ll see.

Well, by kickoff time I had allowed my usual who-gives-a-fig attitude toward the Super Bowl to veer into full-blown Colts-hatin’ — and I only watched 45 minutes of the pre-game, but that was enough to tire of the “Peyton Manning: god-king or world-conquering titan?” hagiography. (Football coverage: Where if too much is too much, even more is even better.) Of course it was not to be, but the first quarter was enough to take a little wind out of the sails, so to speak. By then I had to get dinner on the table and was restored to agnosticism. Great halftime show. Love that Prince. Then I went to work, and the rest of the game passed unseen by me. Vince IM’d to say he thought the suicidal robot was in bad taste, considering the current state of the auto industry. Otherwise, that was the extent of my personal post-game.

There’s was this, though: During the pre-game CBS showed a split-screen image of Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith, to underline that one of them would be the first African-American head coach to win a Super Bowl championship. And then the announcer used a word. I always think of it as the flip side of “articulate,” which Joe Biden got caught applying to Barack Obama last week. The word?

“Dignified.” Really. “One of these two dignified men…” Good lord. Doesn’t anyone have an ear for language anymore?

For the record, I wrote the “articulate”-as-insult column at least a decade ago; apparently Joe Biden didn’t read it. But “dignified” is right up there, too. Do white head coaches get called dignified? No. They’re sober, serious, composed, leaders. Dignified is what we call black people who have already proven they’re articulate. Yuck.

On to the bloggage:

I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC… with British accents.

Dan Savage’s whopping fine screed about Mary Cheney. Profanity alert, probably needless profanity, but it needed to be said. I think we pay attention to the culture war because it’s a cartoony, easily understood alternative to the real one. Which grows ever more unbearable.

First, the good news: Our Body: the Universe Within isn’t particularly gruesome. Anyone who’s suffered through an R-rated horror movie has seen far worse. (Hell, I’ve taken grosser things out of a supermarket chicken.) Nor is it disturbing; if you’ve studied an anatomy textbook you’ve already seen it all, and besides, they ease you into it — your first body is a skeleton. Who hasn’t seen Mr. Bones a million times? True, this skeleton has a nose — odd, that — but still, he’s as much a Halloween decoration as a freak show.

The skeleton is posed sitting on a chair, contemplating a skull on a table in front of it. And so we have our theme.

The rude way to describe “Our Body” is to call it a freak show, and at its basest level, that’s what it is. There’s nothing really new here; like I said, it’s all in “Gray’s Anatomy,” and the cadavers could probably be recreated by Hollywood special-effects artists. What makes this a big-ticket exhibit is the fact these are real bodies, were real people. That’s the freak; that’s the hook.

I guessed I skipped the CCD classes where we got the Catholic take on the body, because I don’t have a shred of sentiment about human remains. Once life ends, all that seems necessary to me is that what’s left behind be treated with respect, and according to the wishes of the deceased, or the survivors. A Tibetan sky burial doesn’t seem any better or worse than the standard embalming/two days’ calling/funeral/burial/cement vault ritual of American death. Both my parents were cremated and I expect to be, too, but I understand it’s not for everyone. A woman once told me her grandmother lost a leg to diabetes some time before she died, and spent her final months fretting that she might spend eternity in Heaven with one leg.

I suppose the bodies in “Our Body” are treated respectfully. You’re not allowed to touch them, and the guides make a speech about no photos and so forth. The attitude of the attendees is pretty hushed and quiet, exacerbated by the darkness of the space — only the displays are lit.

But there were odd moments, too. The first woman you encounter is posed with her heels raised, as though in high-heeled shoes, and she’s holding a shopping bag in her hand (huh?). Enough small detail of the original corpses remain — ragged fingernails, eyelashes, pubic hair — to remind you that these are not special-effects dummies, but real people, and that raises more questions than it answers. We were told, going up in the elevator, that “all the bodies are from China,” and “all gave their permission, or their families did.” And that’s it, and sorry, that’s not enough for me. I wanted to know what this man did for a living, how tall this woman was. Did she have children? Did he smoke? Did she like to wear high heels? Did they know exactly what they were agreeing to when they donated their bodies to science? And the fact China has an atrocious human-rights record? This doesn’t bother anyone? James’ comment in the previous thread about “flayed political prisoners” could just as easily be true as not.

But I tried to put as much of this out of my mind, and just appreciate the miracle of our bodies (which, by the time you’re my age, have become somewhat less miraculous). The arrangements of muscles over bone, the elegant detail of a flayed hand, the traceries of nerves and ligaments — this all had the power of fine art, and it was easy to see it as such. There were poster-size cards telling us of the first physicians to use dissection to understand anatomy (the Egyptians) and who set the discovery on the back burner for a few hundred years (the Catholic church, ca-ching!). For all the warnings about “intensity,” I found it more interesting than anything else.

I lingered over two cases in particular — one showing the blood vessels, and only the blood vessels, of the lungs, and another showing the blood vessels, and only the blood vessels, of the entire body. The latter was particularly striking, a human-shaped cloud of red cotton wool; I looked at it for a long time, tracing major blood vessels as they branched into smaller and smaller ones, finally becoming a tangle of capillaries. And then I started thinking: How’d they do that? How do you dissect a body in such a way that you can extract only the circulatory system, seemingly without major damage?

I asked an attendant at the exit, who had the answer: First a polymer solution, dyed red, is pumped in at the carotid artery, until it permeates the entire body, at which point it is allowed to harden. The body is then dipped in an acid solution until all the flesh, all the bone, all the viscera, is eaten away and only the plastic-preserved blood vessels remain.

Now I really wonder who agreed to this.

There was a second part of the exhibit on another floor, which broke tissue down to its microscopic elements. This was also where two of the truly bothersome (for me) parts were displayed. One was a 15-foot long case in which an entire body had been cut horizontally into one-inch sections (like you’d chop a carrot for a salad) and spread out, so you could look at each layer, a human CAT scan. After all the slicing and dicing upstairs, it just seemed redundant. And in another case was an entire human skin, all in one piece (slit up the back), tanned and preserved.

“Hmm,” I said to the woman next to me. “‘Silence of the Lambs.'” “I was thinking ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ myself,” she replied.

By now it was time to rejoin my daughter’s field trip, which had been doing a hands-on activity in another room. They were into their free-time exploration, and were mostly planning what sort of gift-shop plunder they’d beg for. I looked at their twitchy little selves and was grateful there were no children’s bodies in the exhibit.

(Correction: There were fetuses and a few newborns said to have “genetic diseases” that presumably led to either stillbirth or early death. But no fourth-graders, thankfully.)

Boy, I am out of it. I never realized the Vietnam vet spitting story had been pretty much debunked. Although it doesn’t surprise me, as the whole narrative was a little too tidy for real life: Recently discharged Vietnam vet, in uniform, comes home not to a festive parade, but to a cold, sterile airport. While walking through the airport, not a hero, but just another shlub between planes, a contemptuous fellow traveler, usually a woman, spits on him. Baby-killer! Etc.

I don’t just say this because I’m not a spitter, myself. I know spitting on another person is a time-honored insult, but it never occurred to me to do it, ever. (I like the gypsy custom of spitting on a person’s shadow, though; that’s kind of chilling.) To spit well takes practice; otherwise you’re left with drool all over your chin. Women don’t do that spit-a-hocker thing men do. I’d think even Hanoi Jane Fonda would rather fling a verbal insult than saliva, and face it: Most people just wouldn’t do that.

As for male spitters, there isn’t a riper opportunity for a butt-whippin’ than a filthy civilian hippie expectorating on a uniformed soldier. Most people are smarter than to invite a butt-whippin’.

If you’re an urban-myth spotter, though, you look for the consistencies, or inconsistencies, that make a story too good to be true. Jack Shafer in Slate explains:

While Lembcke doesn’t prove that nobody ever expectorated on a serviceman–you can’t prove a negative, after all–he reduces the claim to an urban myth. In most urban myths, the details morph slightly from telling to telling, but at least one element survives unchanged. In the tale of the spitting protester, the signature element is the location: The protester almost always ambushes the serviceman at the airport–not in a park, or at a bar, or on Main Street.

(And yes, boys and girls, I’m aware Bob Greene swallowed this gob whole and got another tiresome book out of it.)

Anyway, it hardly matters now. The spitting story is now part of the landscape, contrary to the best efforts of Jack Shafer and Jerry Lembcke. And now we have a whole new generation of wounded vets coming home (or not coming home), and the spitting story is always the subtext of the new welcome-home movement: Never again! Support the troops! No problem. I support the troops. But when you press people on what that means, actually, you rarely get a straight answer other than: Don’t spit on them. Agreed. No spitting.

I know I have some military readers, so let me ask this question, something I’ve always wondered about: Those care packages that various groups are always fund-raising for, or collecting for, or sending out — are they worth it? I ask because they so often seem compiled for a troop of hardscrabble mercenaries, not soldiers in the most technologically advanced, well-trained and generously funded fighting force in world history. If I were putting together a soldier care package, I’d try to put myself in a soldier’s shoes and imagine what I’d miss most about home. I’d include… something like… DVDs and video games; meaty letters including photos of lovers/spouses/children; digital cameras; a pint of excellent bourbon in unlabeled, non-breakable flasks; Tabasco sauce for MREs; maybe some discreetly packaged porno. But the ones that I see people sending include things like baby wipes, toothpaste and Kool-Aid. I always think, can’t they get adequately supplied with toothpaste and baby wipes any other way? What kind of Army can’t get its troops adequate wiping supplies?

Probably the same one that can’t get decent body armor. Never mind.

One of my old neighbors, a Marine and Vietnam vet, said a bottle of Tabasco was as highly prized as a bottle of scotch whiskey. He carried his at all times, like his rifle: This is my hot sauce. There are many like it but this one is mine, and better stay mine, if my comrades know what’s good for them.

Day three at home with my poor sick bunny. I’m racing to get a story done so that if I’m felled next, my calendar will be clear. Downside of freelancing: No paid sick days.

One bit of bloggage: Have you driven a Ford lately? No? Well, you can still buy Bill Ford’s house. One error Autoblog makes: You can’t have a “view of Lake Huron” from Ann Arbor. You can have a view of the Huron River, however.

Remember the Michigan county treasurer who lost $200,000 in the Nigerian e-mail fraud? The story gets worse.

Nursing sick children is part of the job description for parenthood, and mercifully, Kate is pretty healthy. Most of the time. Not now. She was down yesterday with a 100-degree fever, chesty cough, sore throat and general ickiness; I knew she was really sick because she didn’t move off the couch all day, mainlining “Suite Life of Zach and Cody” episodes for hours. My rule is: Don’t call the doctor until a change. This morning her fever was up to 103, a personal best for this kid. Called the doc. We’ll be going in later this morning.

I’m taking action on the diagnosis. Her voice sounds like it hurts to even whisper, so I was thinking strep throat, but the cough is wrong for that. Bronchitis, 5-2. Strep, 7-1.

Of course, thinking of odds brings us to yesterday’s sad news, about Barbaro. Even with all that’s been written about the colt, there’s still a certain bafflement in some people — how can a horse die of a broken leg? Jane Smiley explains it elegantly in today’s WashPost:

A horse’s hoof is wondrous structure — the outside horn is lined with delicate membranes and blood vessels that feed and support the bones of the foot. The bones of the foot are analogous to a person’s fingertips, since a horse’s knee is analogous to a person’s wrist. The racehorse carries a thousand pounds at 35 to 40 miles per hour using a few slender bones supported by an apparatus of ligaments and tendons that have no analogues in human anatomy. Every part of the system depends on every other part. What happened to Barbaro was that the engineering couldn’t take it. When it was right, as in the Kentucky Derby, it was perfectly right, and when it became wrong, it became irredeemably wrong.

I knew Barbaro was doomed last weekend when I heard that 80 percent of one of his hooves had to be removed due to laminitis. That’s practically an amputation. The part that was removed is the part that grows back, but to do so would take more than a year, and this after 8 months in slings and casts and padded stalls. Even banking on the return a horse like this can bring at stud — and thoroughbreds breed live, no artificial insemination for them, so he’d have to be sound enough to cover the mare — it would be cruel to put him through that. He’s happier in horse heaven, where only people wear leather.

They had the Miss America pageant last night? In JANUARY? In VEGAS? For the SECOND year? (Man, I’m out of it.) Still, though, you have to laugh — what feminism couldn’t kill, reality TV slaughtered without a peep. The new action is in Miss USA, with its rehab-attending top Miss and MySpace-disgraced wannabe Miss. Now there’s a pageant for today’s world, ain’a? And to think, this used to be considered the contest for girls who were too dumb to say they advocated world peace. Huh.

So, the San Francisco Chronicle started this new podcast — “Correct Me if I’m Wrong,” reader voice mails shared with the world. The first one was genius. Not only do we have a reader who uses terms like “prolix” and “tautology,” he goes off on a rant that’s one for the ages (“Aren’t you there to ensure that the English language is not pissed on by your sub-editors?”), and the readers responded with remixes, mash-ups and ringtones made from it. I wish I’d saved some of my better reader VMs, but none of them are nearly as good as this one; I got grouchy bitching, mostly, including one from a man who lectured me for five minutes about why I wasn’t using my husband’s name. (Time stamp: 3:30 a.m., a nice way to ensure the writer won’t croon “chuck you, Farley” back atcha.) There was a guy who used to call the Columbus Dispatch city desk at night, utterly stone crazy, and rant about the Irish Republican Army (he was a fan) and dropping bombs down the Queen’s chimney (which he advocated). One night he called as we were leaving for dinner, so as an experiment, we laid the receiver down on the desk and went ahead and took our break. When we came back an hour later, he was still talking.

Pilotless aircraft! Pilotless aircraft! Don’t you check these things?!

Gary Kamiya weighs in on those pesky readers and all their opinions, here.

Off to the doc. Temp’s down to 99 and she’s feeling better, but we’re going anyway.

The New York Times has a story today that says female politicians are more likely, these days, to emphasize their maternity in selling themselves to the voting public, i.e., vote for me, I’m a mom. Hmm. The story goes into some detail about what a radical departure this is, as previously being a mommy was seen as a sign of weakness: For a long time women seeking high office, particularly executive office, were advised to play down their softer, domestic side, and play up their strength and qualifications. Focus groups often found voters questioning whether women were strong enough, tough enough, to lead. Huh. This just goes to show why I’m ill-suited for a career in politics, as it would be difficult to have one for very long before one developed an all-consuming contempt for voters.

Case in point: I once interviewed a woman at a rally for Dan Quayle. This was when he was briefly running for president, in 2000. “What do you like about him as a candidate?” I asked. “His marriage,” she said. “Go on,” I said. “Just…his marriage,” she said. Unspoken was her obvious contempt of the current occupant of the White House, who was also married, but who cheated on his wife. Quayle didn’t stay in the race long, and I assume this woman ended up voting for George Bush, who was also married. I wonder if she ever remembers this moment and feels like an idiot. My guess: No. One of the subsequent holders of Quayle’s foot-in-the-D.C.-door congressional seat is my old congressman, Mark Souder. He chickenhawked his way out of Vietnam as a conscientious objector and later was a strong booster of the Iraq war.

The archives of American newspapers are full of blustery quotes by male politicians who vowed to “protect” America, as though they were out there patrolling Fallujah in a Humvee, not sitting in Congress risking no injury more severe than accidental stabbing with a ballpoint pen. Remember when that crazy man came into the Capitol building with a gun and started shooting? It was a few years ago; he killed two Capitol police officers. Who was the testosterone-drenched congressman whose response was to lock the office door and crouch behind the desk? Tom DeLay? I think so. I remember thinking at the time, maybe this will be the incident that finally makes us confront the disgraceful state of care for the mentally ill in this country; perhaps it will be led by Congress, whose home was shot up by a man whose most recent treatment was “Greyhound therapy” — the inside-baseball jargon for buying a troublesome nutcase a ticket to another town, where he can be some other locality’s problem. No. Instead the talk was immediately about the far more useful tactic of arming everyone, so that the next attack could be answered by a hail of bullets by brave armed citizens.

If this is what passes for strength in Washington, bring on the mommies. At least I know they’ve been thrown up on and changed about two million diapers. That’s harder than flapping one’s gums.

The bloggage:

Glory hallelujah, I never thought it would happen, and it has happened, and so it must be shouted to the heavens: I finally found a post-“Close Encounters” movie directed by Steven Spielberg that I actually like. “Munich.” Those who know me know this is a true milestone; I’m probably the most reliable Spielberg-hater in five counties. I’m still so stunned that I think I’m going to have to digest it for a few days before I can write about it. I just thought the date should be noted somewhere.

I don’t know why this is amusing, but The Sun has found topless photos/screen captures of all the nominees for Best Actress. (Probably NSFW, depending on where you W.) No, I know why it’s amusing: Because they asked, in the lead-in, who has the best “jubblies” on this year’s red carpet. Surprise of the bunch: Judi Dench. Yes, I said Judi Dench.

There are very few reporters who could write a first-person account of this personal problem — trying to get one’s passport renewed in a matter of days, after one has noticed its expiration and one has a non-refundable flight to Paris coming up — without sounding like an overprivileged twit. The phrase boo-freakin’-hoo comes to mind. And yet, most reporters are not Jon Carroll:

It was still dark outside. I sat on the narrow steps of the passport building. I guess I must have been looming in the gloaming, because I alarmed passers-by who suddenly rounded the corner and encountered my slumping form. I dialed the number on the window. I was placed on hold. I was on hold for quite a while. I began to realize that I looked a lot like an indigent person, huddled in a darkened doorway with an old cell phone pressed to my ear. Were a police officer to come along, what would I say? “I’m on hold with the State Department?” Yeah, I bet that works.

Forty-five minutes are up. Go have yourself a Monday.

I’m disappointed by the stupid soundtrack, but there’s still something about this that cracks me up:

Man wonders why AT&T truck has been parked in the alley for three days. Man looks closer. Man realizes AT&T worker — in orange vest and hardhat — is actually using the bucket truck to pick oranges off a neighbor’s tree.

Now see, if he were doing this in Iraq, we’d celebrate his entrepreneurial spirit.

Having never lived with a fruit tree, I’m of two minds. My friends in Florida say that once you get over the thrill of having a mango tree in your yard, after you make the first mango ice cream and mango chutney and mango smoothie and mango grilled with fish and so forth, you look up at the tree and realize: I’ve got about a million more mangoes to go, don’t I? And then you start praying an AT&T truck rolls down the street and steals a few, before they start to fall on the lawn and rot. The next thing you learn about fruit trees is, they really require a great deal of care to give fruit worth picking — thoughtful pruning and spraying and so forth, and if you don’t, pretty soon the apples get wormy, the peaches shrink to the size of golf balls and you start perusing garden catalogs online, using the search term “maintenance-free.”

On the one hand, I could see that AT&T guy as a blessing. On the other, it’s always courteous to ask before you pick. On the third hand, maybe he did ask; what does the guy with the video camera know, really? On the fourth hand, this is what journalism will look like in the future; this is “citizen journalism,” comrades. Enjoy the future!

Speaking of future journalism, here’s something else you’ll have to get used to — major metropolitan newspaper columns about anal sex, including a bulleted list of tips for how to make it work for you. I can only chuckle wryly, recalling the approximately 70 million times I had something excised from a story on the grounds that it was too spicy for our readers. I once wrote a fashion story about the strategic removal of pubic hair that, by editorial fiat, never once used the term “pubic hair.” I was scolded for trying to pull a fast one on a less dirty-minded editor by including the name of the rock band the person I was writing about played in (Catherine’s Horse). I recall the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when hours were spent in meetings, trying to draw a shaky line between the sexual practices that were most often involved in the disease’s transmission and the sensibilities of our readers, whom the editors all assumed were 70-year-old nuns, apparently. And now here’s a column about how to do one of these very same dirty deeds! I never thought I’d live so long.

As recently as Jan. 3, 2005, I worked for a newspaper where, on orders from the corner office, the word “butt” was verboten. Not two years later, butt-f*cking. It is to laugh.

(A friend of mine tells me a story about how her syndicated column, which on this day discussed the merits of sucking fat about of one area of the body and injecting it in another, caused a stir with editors. Why? Because she wrote that fat was sucked from one’s “butt,” and oh my we can’t say that, can we? She was encouraged to substitute the word “hips” instead. I tell you this so the next time you see a story about “hips-f*cking,” you’ll know what it’s about.)

OK, bloggage: Here in southeast Michigan, I wake up every day and open my newspaper with a certain wreck-on-the-freeway fascination, because it appears that our free-fall to the bottom of the economic barrel is not over. Our unemployment rate is over 7 percent and the state is bleeding population in an arterial spray. The day before yesterday came the news that we lead the nation in home foreclosures. (Guess what our rate of increase between 2005 and 2006 was? Here’s a hint: Nationally, it was 42 percent. Give up? OK. In Michigan, it was…drumroll please…127 percent. Yes! Michigan is in the house! Or out of the house! Whatever.) Yesterday came the news that Ford Motor Co. could not have lost more money last year if they’d set fire to the building and used a dump truck to drop $100 bills into the flames for 12 months straight. And today comes the story I’ve learned to look for in the days immediately following these gloomy announcements. I reproduce the headline here because it didn’t disappoint:

Ford CEO says bonuses needed to retain talent

This happened after the Delphi bankruptcy filing last year, too. The company announced it was cutting the rank-and-file’s pay by 50 percent, but paying seven-figure bonuses to certain members of the management team so they wouldn’t leave. A reasonable person might say, “So? Let them leave. Don’t they share responsibility for this debacle?” Well. To read these stories, not only is this a stupid question, the sort of thing only a blue-collar numbskull would ask, it shows your utter lack of understanding of how business works. Said the CEO:

“Now we are in a tough situation right now, and we are in a turnaround situation, and we need the absolute best, skilled and motivated team in all of the positions. That is the way we are looking at it, is to make sure that we are paying for performance, even though it is really a turnaround situation. We need that performance … more than ever.”

It’s times like this I regret not going to business school.