You ever have one of those days when you say, “Gee, it seems I’m all caught up on my work, the day is ready to roll out before me and I have extra time. Where did it come from?” and then you realize it’s because you forgot to tend your blog?

I did, yesterday. It was accompanied by the pleasant realization that I had some extra money in my checking account and all my bills were paid, so how the hell did that happen, and then I realized I’d forgotten to make my car payment, which was due 10 days ago. Oops. I made November’s payment while I was at it. Just to smooth everything over with the Volkswagen people.

Better get back to the blogging routine. My life seems to fall apart without it.

I was telling someone night before last that I was glad Halloween was over. “Yes,” she replied. “Those pumpkins were really starting to look weird next to the Christmas decorations.”

Don’t laugh. Our “Christmas music” radio station here kicked off its all-carols-all-the-time at midnight Nov. 1.

But really, Halloween exhausts me. (Everything exhausts me, lately.) I blame the candy — one sugar buzz after another, followed by a crash. Maybe if I went dye-free and dairy-free, it would be better, but maybe not. Anyway, we now have more candy in the house than we did before, and such quality! Giant Hershey bars, full-size Snickers, licorice whips as long as my arm. I told Kate it can’t go to her room, ostensibly so the dog won’t discover it but really so I don’t have to drag my candy butt up a flight of steps to plunder it. Mommies are alone in the kitchen most of the time, and this is our reward.

Think I’ll go snag some Starburst. I promise to brush my teeth vigorously and thoroughly afterward.

OK, so. One reason I’ve been reluctant to drag myself to the keyboard is, it seems there’s only one topic to write about — the election — and there’s only one thing to say about it, which is: Can you believe this shit?

As for me, I think I’d rather live in the Twilight Zone. Much better nightlife, eh Beav?

The phone rang in the middle of this morning’s pumpkin-carving, and you know what that means — run to sink and rinse hands, quickly dry them, pick up the phone, and…

Good day. Did you know congressional Democrats have dangerously blah blah blah illegal immigration blah blah blah open the borders blah blah blah–

“Are you a real person?” I asked.

“Yes,” said a young man who seriously seemed to be cursing the day he answered an ad that promised good money working at home.

“So who are you working for?” I asked, as in the middle of the blah blah I hadn’t heard a candidate’s name.

“The National Republican Congressional Committee,” he said.

“My congresswoman is a Democrat, and is so confident of victory she hasn’t bought so much as a billboard in my neighborhood,” I said. “Why don’t you spend your time calling someone in a district where you have a chance?”

No reply.

“Thanks for calling,” I said, and hung up.

This election cannot be over fast enough for me.

OK, then. Halloween! Little Red Riding Hood is bouncing off the walls; we don’t leave for The Most Worthless Day of School for another 20 minutes. No school in the morning, a Halloween parade at noon, followed by a party and God knows what else in the afternoon. Then trick-or-treating tonight. Why don’t I just puree some Snickers and hang an IV drip? Tomorrow the squirrels are free to destroy our jack-o-lanterns and everyone will be full of junk food. Here’s another day I’m happy to see in the rear-view mirror.

Bloggage:

I love Ann Arbor, but sometimes I’m glad I don’t live there anymore. From the Ann Arbor News:

Many families love trick-or-treating, but agonize over what to with all the excess candy. The key is to set limits and stick to them. Decide, as parents or as a family, what your rules will be. Explain your reasons clearly, whether they are dietary, dental or philosophical. Each family has its own comfort level and needs. My family eats three pieces of candy apiece on Halloween, two pieces the next day and one piece the third day. We all brush our teeth promptly and vigorously afterward.

My friend’s family fills a large orange candy bowl communally with everyone’s choicest candies. They can all help themselves whenever they wish, but when it’s gone, it’s gone. A family with food allergies keeps only the dairy-free, dye-free candies. Another family boycotted all Nestle products to protest the company’s infant formula sales tactics in developing countries. We have all made different decisions based on our family values. If your children express a desire to have as much candy as their friends, “different families do things differently” is a fair response. Understanding this concept will help your children cope with peer pressure and cultural differences they encounter in all aspects of their lives.

(HT: AAiO)

Now here’s an evocative photo: Workers at a Georgia Ford plant cheering the approach of unemployment, symbolized by the completion of the last Ford Taurus, seen here. It seems to be a strange emotion, until you think about it a little: We don’t call it “whistling past the graveyard” for nothing. Once more unto the breach. Irish wakes. Who wants to go out like a sad sack? There’s plenty of time for crying later, when you’re standing in the unemployment office. For now, give a cheer to 20 years of Tauruses, and remember where you were when it all ended.

As usual, Micheline Maynard is the go-to source for the explainer.

Friends, I’m making a proactive decision. The weather is mild, the sun is shining, my workload is light (at least at this hour). I think I’m going to take myself outside in it and give you the short end of the shrift, or whatever. Take this opportunity to make the comments your playground. It’s not the end of my particular production line, but there are leaves to rake. TTFN.

I weary of John Mellencamp. Really. For 20 years, I had to live with that poet-laureate-of-the-heartland crap. I lived in the same state as Mr. Laureate, but you’d never know it; a wise man once noted that southern Indiana has more in common with southern Ohio and southern Illinois than northern Indiana, and he’s right. I never saw him once, although the radio stations loyally supported his increasingly dreary, mopey music. After all, he was a Hoosier, and Hoosiers look out for their own.

Based on the evidence of his music, Mr. Mellencamp spent most of the ’90s depressed. I certainly understand how rich and famous people can get depressed — their self-imposed isolation from the regular world takes its toll — but jeez, when they are? I wish they’d just shut up about it. It’s like complaining about how heavy your wallet is. As insufferable as people like David Lee Roth and Jimmy Buffett can be, at least you can say they seem to be enjoying the trip, while Mr. Sourpuss sits down in Brown County fretting over the fate of the family farm and the regular joe.

Well, now Mr. Sourpuss has a new record out, and rather than cut through the clutter of modern radio formats, he’s elected to do it the new-fashioned way — selling the first single as an extended jingle for Chevy trucks. If you’re watching the baseball postseason, and everyone in Detroit is, you cannot escape that “This is Our Country” spot, in which we are asked to connect Silverado trucks with Mellencamp’s jangly guitar, stillborn lyrics (“I can stand beside/Things I think are right/And I can stand beside/The idea of stand and fight”) and an arresting visual montage that links ’50s super-8 home movies, the war in Vietnam, Rosa Parks and images of flooded, destroyed New Orleans neighborhoods. Because, you know, this is our country.

For the reaction in New Orleans, let’s go to our correspondent on the ground, Prof. Ashley Morris:

Does that new Chevrolet commercial piss anyone else off as much as it does me? WTF are they doing showing flooded New Orleans to try to sell a fucking Chevy truck? And Johnny Cougar now gets to keep his name Johnny Cougar. Mellencamp is a name for people with a modicum of scruples. Fuckmook.

Feh.

Others are no kinder:

It’s not OK to use images of Rosa Parks, MLK, the Vietnam War, the Katrina disaster, and 9/11 to sell pickup trucks. It’s wrong. These images demand a little reverence and quiet contemplation. They are not meant to be backed with a crappy music track and then mushed together in a glib swirl of emotion tied to a product launch. Please, Chevy, have a modicum of shame next time.

Yes, please, Chevy. You too, Johnny Cougar. I’m taking Ash’s suggestion and calling you Johnny Cougar from now on. The jury is still out on “fuckmook,” but you’ve been warned. This is my country, too.

The Tigers are on deck to lose it all, so how about some angry, bitter bloggage:

The only people who can make ignorant-ass statements about Parkinson’s Disease are the ones who’ve never seen it up close and personal. TPM Cafe blogger Joseph Hughes states the obvious.

Because I’m an overbooked physical wreck today, it’s All-Bloggage Thursday:

For all my well-documented dislike of Mitch Albom’s “one-man sap factory,” (clever turn of phrase: Amy Alkon) there is one part of his multimedia, the-man-the-myth empire that fails to get on my last nerve: His radio show. I’m not a religious listener, but I’ll tune in every so often, and I hereby give him his props: In a radio world populated by shrieking right-wing lunatics, Albom brings a certain regular-guy decency to the airwaves.

Which is not to say I like him, only that he sounds good in comparison. (Talk radio: Where the Likability Bar is So Low, It’s Underground.) He does, however, do one thing that will get my fingers on the dial in a trice. He name-drops. As I was saying to Tony Bennett the other day.. I was talking to Jeff Daniels, and.. My good friend Warren Zevon… Etc. So I wasn’t surprised to read this in the NYT yesterday, about the Kenny Rogers was-it-pine-tar-or-wasn’t-it question:

In his radio broadcast Monday on the Detroit station WJR, the Detroit Free Press sports columnist Mitch Albom made light of suggestions that Tigers pitcher Kenny Rogers had a strange, dark substance on his hand early in Game 2 of the World Series.

He did not mention that the standard practice is to shake with the right hand.

Many other sportswriters talked to Kenny Rogers after the game, but Mitch? Mitch shook his hand, and found it unsullied. Then he raced back to his laptop to file a column, the first act for his next play, two more chapters in a novel about an angel who helps a blind girl run a marathon and notes for the cover letter for his Pulitzer entry. Mitch’s hand never has too much time on it. Mitch’s hand offers the Shake of Truth.

OK, I’ll stop. Although I bet if you asked him, he’d stand by his story and say he knows Rogers’ hand was clean because of course the pitcher took the writer’s hard-working paw in both of his hands, and the left one wasn’t sticky, no sir.

As long as we’ve hopped right to the bloggage today, another delayed entry from yesterday, this one on the ex-White House chef and his new book He’s the ex-chef because he couldn’t get along with the Bush team’s social secretary, who sniffed at his “country-club food” and wanted the food to look “just like the pictures” she sent him, clipped from Martha Stewart Living. Most unsurprising news of the week: President and Mrs. Bush are “not adventurous eaters.” You don’t say.

And if you’re a fan of Roz Chast, and who isn’t, you’ll like this NYT feature on Halloween at Chez Roz, where her husband, Bill Franzen, turns the place into a tourist attraction:

He has a calendar inked with important dates: when to sort the extension cords, when to lay out the electricals, move the skeletons, dummies, headstones, mummies, etc. (there are a lot of props) from a storage area in town to a tent set up in the backyard, when to make repairs, tweak past ideas.

When he’s finished, there might be 15 or 20 tableaux — they have titles, like Alien Crash or Death in the Desert or Lunatic Asylum — each marked by an impish, deadpan humor. It’s the Mad Magazine version of Halloween, said Mr. Franzen, who writes fiction the rest of the year and who was spending the day in his tent behind the house, sorting through his props with quiet urgency.

All the fun people are a little crazy. Around here, the peak of Halloween decoration is a few of those giant inflatables, some orange twinkie lights and a fake pumpkin.

I’m not going to say anything about Rush Limbaugh and Michael J. Fox, except to note that judging from the physical evidence, the fat man is back — he was a thinner man for a while, but no more. Which means, I suppose, that he’s giving free rein to at least one of his impulses. Lock up your oxycontin, because it won’t be long now.

I know what I’m doing this weekend: Making Kate Lawson’s Chocolate-Pumpkin Brownies with Apricot Surprise. Why? Because any dish with “surprise” in the name, I’m all for. (Fave National Lampoon cartoon: A waiter pulling the dome off a smoking dish in front of a solitary diner, saying, “It’s a fried telephone book! We gave it a fancy French name, and you ordered it!”)

That’s it. Y’all play in the comments, but I’m off to work. Er, “work.”

According to John Ritter, occasional commenter here and designated Nall Family Genealogist, Loretta Nall and I are only related by marriage, and not closely. However, we have exchanged e-mail from time to time, and any Nall who introduces herself by saying, “I don’t like your congressman, Mark Souder,” well, we might as well be sisters.

Loretta is running for governor of Alabama as a Libertarian, on a drug-reform platform.

Although, as you can see from her T-shirt, she has other planks in her platform, ba dum bum. I’m telling you: The next family reunion, I want to be seated at Loretta’s table. Maybe our other cousin, Doug Nalle, will bring the wine.

(Thanks to Mitch Harper for forwarding the T-shirt pic.)

Sports aren’t my thing, but hey — it’s fun to live in a World Series town, especially when the first game hasn’t started yet and you haven’t lost.

Kate and I went down to the ballpark on a mission. We weren’t there to soak in the atmosphere, but to buy a birthday gift for Nikki, whose stomach virus flew in and out the window within 24 hours. The birthday sleepover party was back on for Saturday and, for once, I didn’t need to think about what to buy for a present. Nikki’s a big Tigers fan, plays Little League herself.

“I want to get her a T-shirt and a big foam paw,” Kate said. And so we did. We probably could have found both in the Pointes, but we couldn’t have seen the park on the day of Game One, and we probably couldn’t have gotten the bonus free XL T-shirt being given away on the street by the Ball Park Franks people. It declares BP as the official hot dog of the Detroit Tigers.

(I wonder if Hebrew National has the Yankees account sewn up. If so, that’s a good reason to go to a game there. Love those Hebrew Nationals. I distrust a frankfurter that, like Ball Park, “plumps” when you cook ’em. Never mind the adolescent humor of watching a tubesteak grow tumescent on the grill. I want to know what, precisely, does the plumping? Cellulose foam? Oh, well. It’s not like I have tickets anyway.)

On the way home, Kate asked many questions about baseball, and I answered them to the best of my ability, which should be understood to mean: Not very well. She asked about the Fort Wayne Wizards and I explained the minor leagues. Then she asked about the Columbus Clippers and I explained about the difference between single-A and triple-A minor-league ball. Then she got off on a tangent about the Clippers, thinking the team was named for a manicure accessory, and I tried to explain about fast-moving ships and the Yankee affiliation. We discussed the World Series, and why the teams play two games in one city, then three in the next, and two more in the first city. Then I ran out of information, and tried to remember as much of the stupid Clippers song as I could — something about hometown heroes and ringing your bell. Thank God for the internet, so we can all sing along.

With the birthday sleepover back on, we were free to see “The Departed” after all. We chose to see it at the RenCen, the better to bask in the Saturday-night World Series glory. Alas, however, the projectionist was doing that thing I’ve read about — showing the picture with a dimmer bulb than is called for, resulting in a muddy stew of murk. It was really annoying, and how ironic that this was a Scorsese picture; Marty Himself is said to travel with a light meter and calls projectionists on this bit of miserly penny-pinching. (The low-light projection is believed by some theater managers to save wear and tear on the expensive bulbs.)

It was distracting, and almost, but not quite, enough to affect my enjoyment of the movie. I had to make a conscious decision, 15 minutes in, to will my pupils to open just a tetch wider and try to forget about the murk. It helped that this scene was in progress:

(Leonardo DiCaprio sits down at the bar in a tough Southie dive and orders a cranberry juice.)

BARTENDER: Cranberry juice?!

GUY ON THE NEXT STOOL: Cranberry juice is a natural diuretic. My girlfriend drinks it when she’s havin’ her period. How about you? You havin’ your period?

(DiCaprio smashes a glass on the guy’s head.)

Every woman who’s ever been asked, by anyone other than a medical professional, if she’s havin’ her period can relate to that.

It was a great movie.

I look forward to seeing it again on DVD, when I can control the brightness. If the theater industry is losing money, it’s their own damn fault.

Almost as good was the stroll, afterward, over the Greektown, where Tiger fans thronged the sidewalk. From the cheers I thought we were winning, then checked the score through a bar window: 5-1. Ouch. The cheers were for such heroics as base hits; no one was letting a little lopsided runaway get anyone down, and good for them. How depressed can you get when waiters are lighting cheese on fire in restaurants up and down the street? I ask you.

Bloggage:

If you read one really long story today, I recommend this one: Doonesbury’s War, maybe the first profile of Garry Trudeau done with his cooperation in, like, ever. It’s by our beloved Gene Weingarten, so you know it’s worth your time.

Last week’s mention of “Meerkat Manor” revealed the little critters have fans, and then they have Fans. Here’s one, liveblogging MM every week.

Nikki’s mother called a while ago with bad news: The sleepover birthday party set for tonight is cancelled. Which means two things.

1) I will probably have to wait for “The Departed” to appear on DVD, like all the other parents in the world, and

2) I can find out what happened to the Whiskers as soon as everyone else does.

Yes, we’re watching “Meerkat Manor.” If you’re not watching this Friday-night Animal Planet serial, you don’t know what you’re missing. One 30-minute episode tracking the antics of extended meerkat clans in the Kalahari Desert routinely features family, fellowship, squabbling, grooming, sex and fleas. “Desperate Housewives” does not have fleas. Added value.

I’ve loved meerkats since I saw a mob of them at the Toledo Zoo, and they seemed to be the only animals there that didn’t know they were in captivity and didn’t care anyway. They live in extended families in complex relationships with one another, which is why their lives make such interesting television. The narration comes close to, but does not cross, the line of anthropomorphism, which makes it feel like science. But it’s as gripping as any old soap opera.

The Whiskers are the central family group. They’re led by a tough female, Flower, who reserves all breeding privileges for herself and doesn’t hesitate to kick the crap out of any female who defies her, including her own daughters. The Lazuli are their close-by rivals, and a third group appeared this season — the Commandos. Their leader is Hannibal, a male who appears to be missing an eye. Every week we are reminded that meerkats are adorable little weasels of menace, no matter how much time they spend grooming one another and looking out for the clan’s babies. Last week a Commando war party found a lightly protected Lazuli den holding two pups, Bubble and Squeak. The Commandos streamed down the hole and killed Bubble. On camera! It was tough to watch.

Last week, the episode ended with Flower and a small band of adults desperately trying to hold off another Commando raiding party. The Whiskers were outnumbered by the Commandos, and had pups with them, too. I know enough about television to know the chances of the producers allowing the central band to be taken apart midseason are pretty slim, but you never know. I keep thinking of Flower, whom I have loved and hated throughout the summer — yes, I willingly allow myself to be manipulated by producers and editors — trying to do her duty, and I just…I just…

Well, I just would have happily DVR’d it if I’d been able to see “The Departed” tonight, but now I’m sort of glad I don’t have to.

And if you hear me making references to war dancing and scent-marking, this is where they come from.

Bloggage:

There’s shameless, and then there’s shameless. Vote GOP or share responsibility for the next terror attack. I spit on these people.

I’m pretty plugged in to the daily news cycle, but missed the Great Stadium Threat yesterday. Dirty bombs in trucks? Huh. A few years ago, in a private conversation, a police official sketched out a scenario for attacking stadiums that was far easier, more plausible and likely deadlier than the hoax under investigation yesterday. I have a friend, a sportswriter, who believes that if al-Qaeda knew us better, they would have attacked us not on September 11 but on September 9, flying their planes into four NFL football stadiums scattered around the country. The casualties would have been higher, the shock more profound, the blow to the economy graver, he believes. “If you want to rattle Americans, get them at play,” he said. So it’s not a stupid idea. But I wish dumbass armchair warriors conducting “writing duels” would do it in private e-mails, not on websites.

My local weekly wins the headline of the month award. No link (paid subscribers only), but it’s short, and so:

Arrested with meat in pants

Oh, baby. Have a great weekend.

My current congresswoman is so cemented in office that if I didn’t go looking for her, I wouldn’t know who she is. It’s not like she has to break a nail to keep her seat. It took a threat to her son’s elected office — mayor of Detroit — for me to even see what she looks like; she got up at a rally and had a screechy meltdown that was a high/low moment in the last city election.

My previous congressman was/is similarly cemented in office, thanks to the usual redistricting shenanigans. But he usually has an opponent, and in election years Mark Souder can be counted on to run his usual campaign. A large component is radio ads on right-wing talk stations, with some homey instrumental track and Souder, in his Porky Pig voice, talking about his hometown of Grabill. It’s a farm town in northern Allen County that long ago reached “ruburban” status in its relationship to Fort Wayne. Lots of Amish there, lots of antique stores. Souder’s family business was and is still called a “general store.”

Of course, Souder hasn’t lived in Grabill for decades. He moved away to Washington to be an aide to Sen. Dan Coats, and when he moved back to establish residency for a congressional run, chose to live in Aboite Township, a far less quaint but more affluent bedroom community on the other side of the county, with the singular advantage of having a college-prep curriculum at the local high school, suitable for the upwardly mobile children of a congressman. (It’s also closer to the airport, essential for a commuting dad.) Still, Souder relentlessly trumpets Grabill in his ads, and never mentions Aboite. The ads are the usual values-voter crapola, in the sense values that they talk values endlessly values about values. Values values values. And sometimes the Amish, and of course their fine rural values.

This year, though, Souder has an opponent who, in a different time and with a less shamelessly gerrymandered district, might make him break a sweat. Of course he will win handily, but he’s taking no chances. He started his campaign after the May primary the olde-timey way — by sliming his opponent at every opportunity.

The campaign has been relentlessly ugly, made even more so by the nature of Souder’s opponent. He’s Dr. Tom Hayhurst, a Fort Wayne city councilman and the sort of medical professional who makes Marcus Welby look like Dr. House. My friend Frank Byrne was a partner with Hayhurst when they both practiced pulmonology in town. I remember one day, when we’d had one of our every-six-weeks-or-so lunches, and were getting ready to go back to work. Frank was stalling, which was odd, because he not only liked his work, he always had too much of it. What gives, I asked.

“Oh, I have a get-acquainted visit with a new patient. She couldn’t get along with Hayhurst and asked for a new doc. How the hell am I going to make her happy when she can’t find anything to like about Dimples?” The point of the story being, it’s a rare patient who can’t get along with Dr. Hayhurst. And yes, he has dimples.

He also has deep roots in the community (born and raised in the district where he lives), a middle-class background, a record of military service (Souder, Iraq war hawk, was a conscientious objector) and a modest lifestyle. He and his wife successfully raised two brilliant daughters, one a doctor herself. Along with Dr. Byrne, he started a pulmonology clinic at the local free clinic, so that the poor people hacking up a lung on a frigid January night can see a specialist.

With a decade on city council, he’s not a Washington expert, but not a total greenhorn, either.

So what has Souder found to smear on this sterling character? He’s “rich,” for one, and because he’s retired from practicing medicine, that can only mean the doc is looking for some yuppie hobby in his twilight years and settled on Congress, the way a CEO might decide to take up mountain-climbing in his 40s, doncha know. The ads are pathetic, mean-spirited and desperate, and are revealing Souder for the pathetic, mean-spirited and desperate soul he is. Adding to the nastiness, the National Republican Congressional Committee recently parachuted in and did a “push poll” in the district. Push polling is the when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife campaign tactic beloved by Karl Rove; no one will release the wording of the latest one, but a Hayhurst campaign worker received a call, and said it asked “whether the person would be more or less likely to vote for Hayhurst if the person knew he supported abortion and amnesty for all illegal immigrants.”

But do they work? Is Souder going to win? Of course he is. A Soviet factory worker couldn’t have a more secure job.

However, if nothing else, it’s making for a more interesting race than usual. I was stunned to see my old boss come creaking out of retirement to write a guest column for both dailies, condemning Souder. While this was hardly the voice of the oracle, it stands in rather glaring contrast to the usual amen-corner newspaper endorsements Souder has collected over the last 12 years. The letters to the editor have been relentlessly anti-Souder. And, mirabile dictu, Hayhurst has raised more money.

I’m not getting my hopes up. But I am paying attention.

Update: Mitch Harper thinks the RNCC poll doesn’t qualify as a push poll, but sounds like more of a fishing expedition to gauge hot-button issues for a late campaign rush. A push poll question would be much nastier than the question above, he believes. How comforting.

…Deadline! However, I’ll leave you with a bonbon, turned up in my searching the other night. (One of my search terms is “drug.”) It falls under the heading of Our Wonderful Democracy. Ahem:

A candidate against longtime Aspen-area Sheriff Bob Braudis, a drinking buddy of the late author Hunter S. Thompson, says a film he made of himself masturbating should not disqualify him from being sheriff.

He said it is a healthy example of performance art.

He goes on to call it “G-rated” and “less explicit than a beer commercial.”

I watched the last gubernatorial debate for my own civic duty last night. Performance art it wasn’t, and my agony was compounded by the B-movie weirdness of it all. Jennifer Granholm looked like a graduate of the Toastmasters Community College, where she earned a Certificate of Attendance and majored in Hand Gestures. Dick DeVos required me to explain to Kate just what “smarmy” means. At one point, he told a woman in the audience that “I grew up in a family business, too,” as though Amway = a plumbing supplier. Both came across as cheap, insincere hustlers, and I have to pull the lever for one of them in just a few weeks.

Then it rained all night and now it’s gray and gloomy. Matches the mood of pretty much everything.