Here’s a novel res­o­lu­tion some of you might be inter­ested in. I know I am. And it is:

Use fewer words.

Ha ha, said Lit­tle Miss Log­or­rhea, know­ing this would be one of those res­o­lu­tions that would fall to the way­side by noon on New Year’s Day. Still, I think it’s impor­tant to take a stand. What made me think of it was this quote from Kwame Kil­patrick in the Freep today, a recon­struc­tion of how their own report­ing rever­ber­ated in the mayor’s inner cir­cle last year:

“I’m going to need you to step up,” Kil­patrick said.

A gen­er­a­tion ago, he’d have said, “I need you to step up,” or “I need your help,” but the “I’m going to” is the mark of our age of blah blah. It so hap­pens I watched “Office Space” over the week­end, and this is how the evil boss talks: “Yeah, Peter, I’m going to need you to go ahead and come in on Sat­ur­day…” All those filler words thrown in there, like pack­ing peanuts, the mark of the passive-aggressive per­son­al­ity. Not: “You have to work Sat­ur­day,” but “I’m going to need you” and “go ahead” and “come in,” etc.

The other day I saw a sign in the salon where I was fight­ing another skir­mish against the gray:

“Start the new year right! Swap out your old cos­met­ics and get a 20 per­cent dis­count.” When did “out” hook up with “swap,” any­way? No one just says “swap” by itself any­more, and now we have two words doing the work that used to be done by one: “Exchange.”

“Change up” — that’s another one. I first noticed it on “The Wire,” and I always assumed it was ghetto usage, until it started spread­ing like an ink stain: “And then he changed up, and it was all over.” Or else he changed up and swapped out, which I swear I saw some­where liv­ing in the same sen­tence, but I for­got to clip it.

Every­body talks and writes these days like they’re being inter­viewed by Char­lie Rose, and no one wants to sound stu­pid by not giv­ing a full answer. And so we change up and swap out, and we’re going to need you to go ahead and come in this Sat­ur­day, mmm-kay?

Use fewer words. Cul­ti­vate that tight-lipped air of mystery.

That doesn’t mean fewer let­ters, how­ever. Some­how I got on a Star-Tribune mail­ing list and thought I’d imme­di­ately unsub­scribe, until I was sucked in by this amus­ing urban-trend story, about a man who shot a 15-point buck — and friends, that’s a tro­phy any­where in the world — with a cross­bow on the shoul­der of a busy Min­neapo­lis free­way. How often do you get to read a sen­tence like this?

The buck jumped back over the fence and died in a nearby park­ing lot.

“Bed, Bath & Beyond, I bet,” said Alan. Dis­cussing what con­sti­tutes a “point,” how­ever, reminded us of a story last month in the Free Press, about a teenage girl who hunts with her dad, and bagged a “three-oint buck” her first time out. We thought it was a typo, but it was repeated later in the story: a three-oint buck. Cut­backs on the copy desk, I guess, or maybe a novel way to save ink.

Today’s hol­i­day photo wasn’t sub­mit­ted as such, but I like it and I’m steal­ing it. Read­ers, our own Coo­zledad, tak­ing his new toys out for a spin down on Veg­e­tar­ian Farm, or what­ever he calls his acreage:

I’ve said before that lit­tle makes me hap­pier than see­ing ani­mals doing the work they were bred to do, and some­thing about the expres­sion on Andy and Barney’s faces as they bend to the task at hand — haul­ing fire­wood — makes me smile. Plus, I like equines in furry win­ter coats (until they roll in the mud, and you have to spend an hour cur­ry­ing it off of them).

See you in the new year, then. Safe cel­e­bra­tions, all.

Lots of talk in Blog­land of late about this Wall Street Jour­nal col­umn, much of it stu­pid (the talk, that is), almost all of it pre­dictable. So pre­dictable, in fact, that I wish jour­nal­ists who throw pitches like this — it’s about the impend­ing death of ink-on-paper news — would learn a few sinkers and slid­ers and stop send­ing big fat slow ones over the plate. The writer, Paul Mul­shine, takes a few unnec­es­sary cheap shots at blog­gers, which elic­its the usual response: Wah wah wah some­one said some­thing mean about Glenn Reynolds how arro­gant how MSM I can’t wait until they’re all dead wah wah wah, fol­lowed a few hours later by wel­come Instapun­dit readers…

These side squab­bles, which all seem to boil down to “he didn’t write it the way I would have, so I’m going to get on my new-media blog and whine about it,” dis­tract from Mulshine’s mes­sage, which comes low in the piece, and isn’t talked about enough, i.e., who is going to do the bor­ing work news­pa­pers do when they’re gone?

…The writer in ques­tion (who cov­ers mun­dane gov­ern­ment meet­ings) is per­form­ing a valu­able task for the reader — one that no sane man would per­form for free. He is assem­bling what in the busi­ness world is termed the “exec­u­tive sum­mary.” Any­one can dupli­cate a long and tedious report. And any­one can high­light one pas­sage from that report and either praise or denounce it. But it takes both tal­ent and willpower to ana­lyze the report in its entirety and put it in a con­text com­pre­hen­si­ble to the casual reader.

This high­lights the real flaw in the think­ing of those who her­ald the era of cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism. They assume news­pa­pers are going out of busi­ness because we aren’t doing what we in fact do amaz­ingly well, which is to quickly ana­lyze and report on com­plex pub­lic issues. The real rea­son they’re under pres­sure is much more mun­dane. The Inter­net can carry ads more cheaply, par­tic­u­larly help-wanted and auto­mo­tive ads.

So if you want a car or a job, go to the Inter­net. But don’t expect that Web site to hire some­body to sit through town-council meet­ings and explain to you why your taxes will be going up. Soon, news­pa­pers won’t be able to do it either.

We touched on this last week in the com­ments, when our BFF Deb put it in much more pun­gent language:

there is some­thing truly ter­ri­fy­ing about these peo­ple who seem to think jour­nal­ism is such a simple-minded enter­prise that any fool with a note­book can do it. and how do i know this blog­ger in bum­faulk isn’t sleep­ing with the school super­in­ten­dent, a dis­grun­tled for­mer employee with a pen­chant for firearms, a garden-variety whack job, a par­ent with a beef against the prin­ci­pal, or… and what will these folks do when the board decides to con­vene an ille­gal closed ses­sion? do they have a lawyer they can call? go right ahead, round up all these reporter wannabes. but when they don’t make it to the next board meet­ing because the streets were icy, or left early because the whole damn thing was just TAKING too long, don’t come bitch­ing to me.

The other day Lawrence Lessig was on “Fresh Air,” talk­ing about dig­i­tal copy­right ideas and related top­ics, and Terry Gross asked him about the future of news­pa­pers. He skipped right over the news­pa­pers part — he gets all his news from Google News, he said — and said that what wor­ries him far more is the future of inves­tiga­tive report­ing. This is a com­mon lamen­ta­tion among the intel­li­gentsia: screw Dear Abby, what about inves­tiga­tive report­ing? It dri­ves me right up the wall, because it tells me the intel­li­gentsia knows lit­tle about report­ing. Maybe HBO could put “All the President’s Men” back into the rota­tion, so we could all refresh our mem­o­ries of Water­gate and take a les­son about the most famous jour­nal­is­tic inves­ti­ga­tion in mod­ern history:

It started as a rou­tine story on the police beat.

We for­get that Bob Wood­ward wasn’t Bob Wood­ward back then. He was just some guy in the metro desk bullpen who had to work Sat­ur­days. He got a tip and caught a break. The rest was just fol­low­ing leads, shoe-leather reporting.

Many larger news­pa­pers main­tain so-called I-teams, but the fact is, the best inves­tiga­tive report­ing is like that — bottom-up. (If you know your local report­ing staff, you’ll fre­quently find the beat reporter’s byline, along with one of the I-teamers, on big projects. The for­mer knows the ter­ri­tory, and the lat­ter knows how to work data­bases and other spe­cial­ized report­ing tools.) So when Lessig says he wor­ries about who will sup­port inves­tiga­tive work, I have to say I don’t. Some Gates-type foun­da­tion will arise to fund wor­thy projects, ones that will make all con­cerned feel vir­tu­ous at the annual ban­quet. There will be inves­ti­ga­tions on crime rates and welfare-to-work pro­grams and the fate of the Pacific salmon. There won’t be too many projects about public-servant thieves like Kwame Kil­patrick, because those come from beat reporters keep­ing their eyes and ears open as they do the scut­work of the job — going to meet­ings so bor­ing they peel paint from the walls, check­ing police blot­ters and court dock­ets, schmooz­ing sec­re­taries and clerks.

That’s what will be lost when news­pa­pers go away. Get to work, cit­i­zen journalists.

Not much blog­gage today. The news seems to be tak­ing the week off, too. Well, there’s this, an NYT story about the dif­fi­culty of end­ing your mar­riage in a col­lapsed real estate mar­ket. I don’t know why the straw­berry blonde in the sec­ond photo made me think of “Lyin’ Eyes,” the old Eagles song. Just some­thing about her. I bet she opened lots of doors with just a smile, back in the day. And the fact she says money from their mul­ti­ple homes would be her only income. Time to get a job, hon.

More cof­fee for me.

Oh, wait! We have a hol­i­day photo. It’s Beb, all tired out from read­ing his Fun Cal­en­dar, col­o­nized by cats:

Now more cof­fee for me.

It all started with a con­ver­sa­tion with my sis­ter, who used to sell tele­phone sys­tems to big cor­po­ra­tions and now sells antiques, in an antique mall and on eBay. She spe­cial­izes in Amer­i­can glass — depres­sion, car­ni­val, that sort of thing. Mostly util­i­tar­ian items prized by col­lec­tors. Pretty things. Hostessy stuff.

One day I was watch­ing her pack stuff for eBay ship­ping, and she said, “If you ever see a square cake stand at a garage sale or some­thing, buy it. You can name your price.” The les­son sunk in, and a cou­ple years later, I saw a square cake stand. This one, in fact:

This was at a Grosse Pointe estate sale, noto­ri­ous for over­charg­ing. It seemed some­one had already named their price, and it was ridicu­lous: $90. But the thing was in mint con­di­tion, so I called my sis­ter and described it. “That sounds like Fos­to­ria Amer­i­can, and if it’s per­fect, it’s worth a lot more than $90.” So I bought it. Checked eBay, and she was right: Fos­to­ria Amer­i­can square cake stands with the rum well and in mint con­di­tion were sell­ing for about $300 at the time. (Less now — reces­sion — but still well over $200.) I con­sid­ered giv­ing it to her to sell, but thought eh, it’s pretty, and added it to my china cab­i­net, to stand as a memo­r­ial to the day a sim­ple peas­ant woman got a bar­gain at a Grosse Pointe estate sale.

So this Christ­mas, we went to my sister’s, and guess what one of my presents was? Ten cake plates, in the Fos­to­ria Amer­i­can pattern:

But wait, there’s more! Also, a Fos­to­ria Amer­i­can cake knife:

I men­tion all this to under­line some­thing we all learn about our­selves sooner or later: One minute we’re the sort of girl whose most prized pos­ses­sions are a hand-written let­ter from War­ren Zevon, a signed copy of “Freaky Deaky” and a “Kind of Blue” CD, and the next you own a Fos­to­ria Amer­i­can cake stand, match­ing plates and a knife. As David Byrne says, “And you may ask your­self, ‘how did I get here?’”

That’s how.

The thing most peo­ple don’t real­ize about cer­tain cake stands is that you can invert them — the base is almost always hol­low — and use them as a snack plate. The dip goes in the hol­low base:

OK, then. Some bloggage:

Resolved:

Sit through inter­net ads that appear on real, need-the-money web­sites (which is to say, news­pa­pers). No more “click here to skip.” Endure the stu­pid thing. On favorite blogs, click one or two of the ads every day. (Boy, are they stu­pid, too.)

So you may have to sit through an ad for the Econ­o­mist to read this NYT story about a new wrin­kle in fore­clo­sure cul­ture: Rov­ing bands of skaters chas­ing the ulti­mate skater perk — a nice dry pool:

Across the nation, the ulti­mate sym­bol of sub­ur­ban suc­cess has become one more reminder of the eco­nomic melt­down, with builders going under, pools going to seed and skaters find­ing a sur­plus of deserted pools in which to per­fect their acro­batic aerials.

In these boom times for skaters, Mr. Pea­cock trav­els with a gas-powered pump, five-gallon buck­ets, shov­els and a push broom, risk­ing tres­pass­ing charges in the pur­suit of emp­ty­ing for­lorn pools and turn­ing them into de facto skate parks.

Hey, I saw “Dog­town and Z-Boys,” so I know this could well have some legs. But this smells like one of those bogus-trend sto­ries to me. In fact, a large chunk of the story is about pool builders and real-estate devel­op­ers who are look­ing at a frac­tion of the orders they had a year ago. The fact teased in the photo cap­tion — that skaters are com­ing from as far away as Europe and Aus­tralia to skate Amer­i­can pools — is entirely hearsay, too. Still, not a bad read.

Also, not for the faint of heart: Another excel­lent dis­sec­tion of the col­lapse of yet another crim­i­nally man­aged bank — WaMu. Sooner or later we’re going to get wise and put some­one like Kerry Killinger before a fir­ing squad. Until then, he has his mil­lions. Un-fucking-believable.

So have a good week. Today’s Hol­i­day Photo is from Bill, who com­ments here as Bill, taken last sum­mer in Alaska when he was stalk­ing Sarah Palin on vacation:

I think I’ll go make a cake. Later.

Hope you all had a great Christ­mas. I got a new camera:

Doesn’t mommy set a bour­geois table? Those cran­berry can­dle things are embar­rass­ing, but what the hell, how often do you get to use your late Aunt Edwina’s sil­ver com­potes, any­way? Note to lifestyle edi­tors in the read­er­ship: How about a story on how to repur­pose all those lit­tle maiden aunt hand-me-downs for the mod­ern host­ess? I have a cut-glass knife rest that will never sup­port a knife again, but it seems you ought to be able to do some­thing with it.

Any­way, Santa must have heard my plea the other day, because whad­daya know, the new cam­era shoots Tri-X:

That’s a set­ting called “dynamic B&W” (yes, as opposed to “smooth B&W”), i.e., Tri-X. I have to plow through a sub­stan­tial owner’s man­ual to fig­ure out just how many of the bells and whis­tles I’ll be using, and I’m hope­ful I can fig­ure out how to make run-of-the-mill crap­shots like the ones above not throw 3.5 megabytes of shade on my hard drive. I think it has some­thing to do with the delete key.

Also, I’ve heard you can get far bet­ter shots if you actu­ally leave the house once in a while, but at the moment freez­ing rain is falling, and you know how that stuff is. I may be here until the thaw, at this rate.

It was a good Christ­mas. It con­tin­ues through the week­end, after which the Great House­clean­ing begins. I fig­ure, I might not be able to sell my house at the moment, but at least I can make it gleam like a new penny. Of spe­cial con­cern this year: Clos­ets. Beware, clos­ets. I am com­ing for you.

From the com­ments, it sounds like every­one had a pretty good hol­i­day, too. Some­time around 3 p.m. on the Eve, all my ani­mos­ity about the hol­i­day falls away and I find myself, usu­ally unex­pect­edly, in the Christ­mas spirit. I think it’s because when the stores close, the jig is well and truly up, and you have to live or die with the prepa­ra­tions you’ve made, and per­haps by default, they’re almost always Good Enough. My final act was to throw a dou­ble saw­buck in the mail to my news­pa­per car­rier, who along with many of us is going to be hav­ing a lousy 2009. (Unless that’s the year he fin­ishes med school and starts his general-surgery intern­ship, in which case he’ll be get­ting even less sleep.) I’ve never laid eyes on this man and wouldn’t know his name if he didn’t send me a please-tip Christ­mas card every year, but his out­stretched hand doesn’t bother me. He does a thank­less job well, and that’s the very def­i­n­i­tion of some­one who deserves a lit­tle some­thing extra this time of year. The day of our big bliz­zard last week, I went out to shovel the front step, which by the time I got up had already piled up to the bot­tom of the storm door. There were no foot­steps on the walk and I’d assumed the car­ri­ers had been snowed in, too. And what did I find as I reached con­crete? A New York Times, a Wall Street Jour­nal and a Detroit News, all wrapped in plas­tic and per­fectly dry. So he deserves it.

By the way, I think I’ve found the worst Christ­mas song ever, a new one to me. The local all-Christmas sta­tion played it on the Eve: A Soldier’s Christ­mas. Excru­ci­at­ing.

And now, the hol­i­day in our rear-view mir­ror, we can turn our thoughts to other things, like con­tem­plat­ing the fate of the Lions. I’ll say one thing for this sea­son: Sports­writ­ers who had already turned it up to 11 after the fifth or sixth loss of the year have had to find new fre­quen­cies to wail at, some audi­ble only to dogs. Drew Sharp in the Freep:

If you assessed the pub­lic mood eight months ago on the greater impos­si­bil­ity — the coun­try shed­ding its shack­les of racial intol­er­ance and elect­ing America’s first black pres­i­dent, or an NFL team going win­less through a 16-game parity-driven sched­ule, the con­cept of per­fect foot­ball imper­fec­tion would’ve com­fort­ably won the argument.

The Lions have one-upped Barack Obama.

Pas­sages like that make me miss the sports copy desk.

Let’s kick off Hol­i­day Pho­tos week, then. I actu­ally have fairly slim pickin’s this year, mainly because you all made merry swap­ping links to Flickr pages in the com­ments last week, but no mind. This is a good one, Deb­o­rah from Chicago with her hus­band Steve, in hap­pier mete­o­ro­log­i­cal times:

Light jack­ets! Short sleeves! Open water! The sky­line of a thriv­ing city! Amer­ica, be opti­mistic — happy days will be here again. In the mean­time, have a good weekend.

Well, you could have this week­end and return it to the man­u­fac­turer, eh? The giant snow­storm was fol­lowed by a big freeze — this is not news to a large num­ber of you, I know — and every­where was suf­fer­ing. The dog is irri­ta­ble, torn between his instinc­tual need to visit the out­doors reg­u­larly and its utter suck­i­tude. My poor car looks like it has lep­rosy, but it’s too cold to wash it and besides, it’s only going to snow again tomor­row and prob­a­bly the next day, too. I deprived a local mall of my busi­ness and went to one far­ther away, because the for­mer is one of those Potemkin Vil­lage lifestyle-center malls, and if there’s one thing I don’t want to do on a day with single-digit tem­per­a­tures and a howl­ing wind, it’s walk out­doors between stores.

I went to Som­er­set instead. Every lux­ury store under the sun, plus a few you haven’t heard of. None had any­thing I wanted. Every­thing seemed cheap and stu­pid. The upside: Cheap and stu­pid is now 30 per­cent off. Even Barney’s was hav­ing a sale. You could buy a pair of ugly shoes for $325, marked down from $545. I really can’t wait for Christ­mas to be over. Noth­ing like double-digit unem­ploy­ment (barely; Michigan’s now at 9.4 per­cent, but expected to go much higher, and I sus­pect that makes us No. 1) and the promise of an even worse future to extract all the fun out of spend­ing your money.

But enough about me.

Some good blog­gage today: Every so often I go Googling for Tim Goe­glein (who really should work for Google, don’t you think? He could answer his phone, “Google, Goe­glein.”), to see if he’s left a bread­crumb trail. The new Wash­ing­ton will be a hos­tile place for con­ser­v­a­tives other than Rick War­ren, but you should never under­es­ti­mate the abil­ity of peo­ple to land on their feet, change and/or find a seat some­where on the Wingnut Wel­fare gravy train. So far, nothing’s turned up, until this, a Wash­Post story from ear­lier this month, about a lunchtime gath­er­ing at a D.C. Buca di Beppo. Deal Hud­son, founder and for­mer pub­lisher of Cri­sis mag­a­zine, was host of a big table in the Pope Room, and the idea was to read Christ­mas poetry aloud to the group. That’s it. Sort of charm­ing when you think about it.

Tim’s not in the story, only in the photo (and only the top of his head, at that). But just to show you what a big tent the right wing is and remains, note that lineup in the pic­ture: born-again vir­gin Dawn Eden; nice Lutheran Tim (hands folded prayer­fully?); and Hud­son, the host. (The other two guys are Googleable, but ciphers — to me, any­way.) Eden is known for hav­ing rejected what she calls a “‘Sex and the City’ lifestyle” for ortho­dox Catholi­cism, celibacy, anti-abortion activism and a book con­tract (“The Thrill of the Chaste”). Hud­son became ex-publisher of Cri­sis after a story sur­faced about a drunken sex­ual encounter with a teenage col­lege stu­dent that led to harass­ment charges against him, i.e., unchaste behav­ior. And among the mag­a­zines Goe­glein plun­dered in his strange career as a writer was Crisis.

We are all sin­ners, and the balm of lit­er­a­ture is sooth­ing to all. Remem­ber that.

Think­ing of the Wingnut pro­pa­ganda cho­rus reminds me that Alicublog is still on the job keep­ing tabs on them all, and has a fine roundup post on Christ­mas Week at the National Review. Sample:

“Why does an obses­sive Nazi-hunter like Simon Wiesen­thal get pos­i­tive press,” (Mark Gold­blatt) asks, “while an obsses­sive Communist-hunter like Joe McCarthy is vil­i­fied?” Maybe because Wiesen­thal hunted actual Nazis, while McCarthy was happy to tar cit­i­zens rang­ing from Owen Lat­ti­more to Adlai Stevenson.

Finally, although it isn’t tech­ni­cally Hol­i­day Pho­tos Week yet, I’m kick­ing things off with a cou­ple of con­tri­bu­tions from our web­mas­ter, J.C. Burns, who is way ahead of me on the digitizing-old-photos chore. He sent two along, pegged to my com­ment about Tri-X film, but since one includes me and another fea­tures a famous mys­tery guest, let’s get it started. First, here are three of J.C.‘s women friends, c. 1979-80ish, in the court­yard of his salad-days gar­den apart­ment in Atlanta. The woman on the left is Verneda I-forget-her-last-name, the one on the right is Deb Warlaumont-now-Mulvey, my BFF then and now (posts here as deb, always lower-case), and in the mid­dle is a woman who really should have rethought that scarf. And her hair. And the shoes (Dr. Scholl’s!). And cer­tainly the glasses, although that was the fash­ion at the time.

It looks like I was con­sult­ing my check­book while about to descend con­crete stairs in wooden san­dals. Which explains why I fre­quently sported bruises in those days.

The other is today’s Com­ment Thread Mys­tery, and if I had some­thing to give as a prize I would, but alas. Below is another pic­ture of Deb, along with a col­lege class­mate of ours. Same gen­eral era. He is, today, a jour­nal­ist of national rep­u­ta­tion (his offi­cial bio calls him “renowned,” but I think that’s push­ing it), who makes fre­quent appear­ances on TV. This puz­zle may favor the men in our audi­ence, but that’s the only clue I’m giv­ing you. Once his iden­tity is cor­rectly iden­ti­fied, I’ll post a con­tem­po­rary photo in an update, so we can all laugh over the dif­fer­ence. Who is our mys­tery man? (And please: Those who knew him then, or know because they read all the com­ments here, sit this one out, please? This means you, MarkH. The under­ly­ing joke of this photo is the phys­i­cal change.)

Every­one have a great start to a short week. And try to stay warm.

UPDATE: Jeff TMMO wins, but I think he had help. I just don’t see how you could rec­og­nize “renowned NFL reporter Peter King” based on the jaw alone. Not when the hair is such a dis­trac­tion, any­way. (It looks like a wig, doesn’t it?) I guess it’s all that prac­tice at look­ing at the soul within, because this is what he extrap­o­lated from:

Whew. Con­grat­u­la­tions.

Sorry so late updat­ing today. As oth­ers have noted, we’ve had a com­pli­ca­tion here­abouts. The school can­cel­la­tion came by robo-call at 5:45 a.m., which rather ticked off the house’s phone-answerer, because we’ve known this storm was com­ing for days, you could see its vast pink-and-white mass bear­ing down on us from the west, and most schools can­celled last night. At least there wasn’t the 6 a.m. answer­ing cho­rus of snow­blow­ers, mainly because it was still com­ing down so hard we were in what’s-the-point ter­ri­tory. I was able to go back to sleep and make it clear until 8:30 a.m. — pure luxury.

Any­way, I’m going out in a bit with the video cam­era. So maybe we’ll have some­thing to add for the weekend.

In the spirit of the already wack-a-doo sched­ule, then, let’s make this a left­over stew today. First, an announcement:

Last year’s NN.C com­menters’ hol­i­day photo sub­mis­sions were so nice, let’s us all do it again, shall we? For the week between Christ­mas and New Year’s, let’s see if we can assign a face to some of the names in our com­mu­nity. I know a lot of you have blogs and already put up pic­tures there; if so, give us a link. It’s just that this is such a close-knit lit­tle group already, it’d be nice to put a face with a name. You know where to send things — my first name at nan​cy​nall​.com. If you’re shy, send a pic­ture of Christ­mas out your way. Because God knows, there’s not a lot to talk about that week. His­tor­i­cally, any­way. Knock wood.

A lit­tle bloggage:

Maybe we are reach­ing the blogging/fair use/who’s-zooming-who tip­ping point sooner rather than later. The Chicago Reader has prob­lems with the Huff­in­g­ton Post’s sticky-fingered blog­ging style. Good posts on it here and here. The lat­ter post sums it up nicely:

I’m sure that some­one is think­ing, “hey, you get lots of inbound links from a pop­u­lar site, and they link to you directly from their local home­page, which helps your SEO.” What­ever – they’re still tak­ing other people’s con­tent, in my non-expert but rea­son­ably well-informed opin­ion well out­side the bounds of fair use – so that they can get more pageviews and SEO advan­tages for them­selves by tak­ing the entirety of other people’s work. They’re tak­ing all of it. Real peo­ple – my col­leagues – wrote those. You can give us the inbound links, which helps you, us, and every­one, with­out tak­ing entire pieces of work.

Preach, my bruthuh.

Maybe I’m show­ing my age here, but I came of age in news­pa­pers when the prime visual ele­ment in them wasn’t the USA Today dum­b­ass graphic, the “char­ti­cle” or any of the other graph­ics so com­mon today, but a big-ass, black-and-white photo. Tri-X Kodak film, ASA 400 pushed to 1600, baseball-size grain heav­ily burned and dodged in the dark­room. Pic­tures like this. And this. I like video fine, but there’s noth­ing like a still to say “news” — at least to me. All this by way of set­ting up a link to this 2008 Year in Pho­tos col­lec­tion, with many jaw-dropping images. (All in color, how­ever. RIP, Tri-X.) Warn­ing to dial-up users: These are big, high-res images that will take a while to load even on fast con­nec­tions. Be patient.

Finally, an idea so silly it could only come out of Detroit, but at the same time crazy enough that it just might work. I’d drive one, any­way: A Cadil­lac Volt. Shut UP. Too expen­sive for me, but I’d love to drive one to, say, a Whole Foods park­ing lot in Santa Mon­ica. I’d be Chili Palmer, only greener.

The prob­lem with cold-weather out­door art is, some peo­ple always have to over­achieve. Note the fish.

With that, I think the bat­tery is charged and I’m ready to go out again. Bon voy­age, Danny, you bas­tard, head­ing off to Hawaii. The rest of us will be down here, reek­ing of two-stroke engine enhaust (from the snow­blow­ers). Spare a kind thought.

There’s a church here. You prob­a­bly have a church. If you’re like most Amer­i­cans, some­where in your church you hear the phrase “Father, son and Holy Spirit.” In church here, they say, “Organic, humane and sustainable.”

It’s sort of annoy­ing; I think food should nour­ish, not pol­ish your ego. But it makes for some tasty lunches. Yes­ter­day: Cheese from Cow­girl Cream­ery, bread from the Acme Bread Com­pany, sausage from some place next door, wine ditto, choco­late ditto. We ate it on the obser­va­tion deck over­look­ing the bay, out­side the Ferry Building:

(There was sup­posed to be a photo here, but like I said: Our inter­net con­nec­tion is spotty and imper­fect. Couldn’t upload to Flickr.)

I don’t mean to clog up your time with these updates, which aren’t that inter­est­ing. But I needed an entry to hang this bit of blog­gage on, which is worth click­ing through just to see the pic­ture: Inter­net sting nets ‘World’s Great­est Dad’.

Off to Mon­terey today.

Just a quick pop-in to say hi. We’re hav­ing our­selves a fine time. We have (spotty, imper­fect) inter­net access. We have not gone native. We are tourists, out ‘n’ proud:

This trip — rent a bike, cross the bridge, lunch in Sausal­ito, ferry home — is highly, highly rec­om­mended, espe­cially on a day that starts cloudy and ends in blaz­ing sun. Even though I was faked out by the heavy morn­ing over­cast, failed to apply sun­screen and got my first burn in years. Even though rid­ing the bridge means nav­i­gat­ing with the squadrons of hard-charging native cyclists, none of whom are amused by our slow-moving, head-swiveling, camera-toting pres­ence. I call all these peo­ple, male or female, “Danny.” I never got an open sneer from a Danny, but I did cross against the light in front of one, forc­ing him to slow and prob­a­bly mak­ing the micro­scopic dif­fer­ence in his lung capac­ity that will tank his time in his upcom­ing triathalon.

Sorry, Danny. Shit happens.

Yes­ter­day was Golden Gate Park, the seashore, a lit­tle shop­ping. Today, lunch at Ferry Marketplace:

Ah, I have found my people.

(Actu­ally, that’s a com­pli­cated ques­tion. For every happy sur­prise — walk into an ordinary-looking pizza joint and find it stocked with trades­men enjoy­ing pizza with [angel choirs] fresh toma­toes and diced fresh basil on top — there’s more than a hint of foodier-than-thou, which can get real tired, real fast. How­ever, it still tastes very very good, and my palate is enjoy­ing this trip very, very much.)

Break­fast, then lunch awaits. Gotta run.

I once wrote a story about a man who’d stag­gered, drunk, out of a bar one night and appar­ently van­ished. No one had heard from him, no one had seen his car in any ditches between the bar and his house, he just, poof, disappeared.

Well, of course he only dis­ap­peared in the sense that no one could see him. A week or so after my story ran, the police fished his car, and his body, out of a farm pond on his route home. He’d dri­ven off the road and into eter­nity, another of the less-celebrated res­i­dents of Davy Jones’ locker. (Maybe, in this case, it should be Farmer Jones’ locker.)

His was an easy case for the crack missing-persons team in that juris­dic­tion, and it’s what I thought of when I read (HT: FWOb) about how divers went into some reten­tion ponds on Indi­anapo­lis’ north side after a report that a car had been dumped there, and found…five. Most had been there “for a long time,” the Indy Star reported.

I don’t get it. When our plane passed over Pearl Har­bor en route to land­ing in Hawaii a few years back, the pilot told us to look down at the wreck of the USS Ari­zona, still leak­ing a streak of diesel fuel half a cen­tury after Dec. 7, 1941. Granted a car isn’t a bat­tle­ship, but wouldn’t you expect there’d be some sur­face evi­dence of a dumped car in a reten­tion pond? And if not, if they keep their secrets that well, I won­der why Hol­ly­wood always shows us the killer dig­ging the shal­low grave by lantern light, when it would be so much eas­ier to wire a cou­ple cement blocks to the corpse and roll it out past the drop-off? Note to self: Never won­der again what the bluegill might be feed­ing on in those things.

Friends, that should give you an idea of the sort of conversation-starters I have today. Maybe you guys can carry the weight. Here’s a pic­ture by Brian Stouder, snapped in the wild night before last:

And here’s lit­tle Bri­anette Jr., which only serves to remind me that in Michi­gan, the Easter egg hunt is likely to be can­celled for snow:

And here’s some bloggage:

There sim­ply has to be more to this story than we’re getting:

It was incor­rectly reported in Tuesday’s Tri­bune Chron­i­cle that Sen. Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton answered ques­tions from vot­ers in a local congressman’s office.

Reporter John Goodall, who was assigned to the story, spoke by tele­phone with Hillary Wicai Viers, who is a com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor in U.S. Rep. Char­lie Wilson’s staff. Accord­ing to the reporter, when Viers answered the phone with ‘‘This is Hillary,’’ he believed he was speak­ing with the Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date, who had made sev­eral pre­vi­ous vis­its to the Mahon­ing Valley.

Goodall’s next assign­ment: Inter­view Santa Claus.

A new Mac­Book Air costs $1,800. It’s nice to know Char­lie Rose can think fast. And has his pri­or­i­ties straight.

What if they gave hair­cuts at Hoot­ers? Why, then it would be Lady Jane’s Hair­cuts for Men. They adver­tise heav­ily on local TV, and I gotta admit — the ads are pretty funny.

Finally, I try to keep the aw-isn’t-my-kid-cute sto­ries to a bare min­i­mum here, but indulge me this one: Last night at din­ner, Kate plucked an onion ring out of the pile, a very small one. She slipped it over her index fin­ger, held it up and said, “Look, a lit­eral onion ring.” Then she ate it. Please remem­ber this 11-year-old the next time you’re watch­ing your local news and a highly paid, college-educated TV reporter says, “The work is lit­er­ally back-breaking.” If my 11-year-old can grasp the mean­ing of the word, so can, and should, he.

Now I’m think­ing about onion rings, with the start of spring already upon us. Ah, well, it won’t be bathing-suit sea­son for a good long time here, will it?

Off for my 60,000-mile ser­vice. The car, not me. I have way more miles.

Because the true les­son of mid­dle age is to never say, “Things couldn’t get any worse” — because there’s always a way for any­thing to get worse — a warn­ing that my pres­ence may be scarce around here the next cou­ple days. We’re pre­oc­cu­pied with a fam­ily sit­u­a­tion. Noth­ing for you folks to worry about; we’re all healthy and safe. But oth­ers aren’t, and we’ll be trav­el­ing today, and out of touch.

But that’s OK, because we have a truly fab­u­lous photo from Julie Robin­son, who writes: For the holdiays at the Robin­son house­hold, we like to encour­age our chil­dren to engage in cross-dressing. This is our son in his Madri­gals tunic and tights. He doesn’t under­stand how girls can wear such short skirts. Care­fully, said Mom, very carefully.

She doesn’t tell us the young man’s name. Let’s call him…Ashley.

On day one of Kwan­zaa, I wish you all umoja. Let’s try this again tomorrow.