Thanks to Har­ri­son for point­ing out the day’s — and prob­a­bly the week’s, month’s and per­haps the year’s — OID (only in Detroit) story:

Corpse found frozen in pool of water in aban­doned Detroit build­ing. Call to 911 gets results in…24 hours, give or take.

(Sorry I missed this, guys. My newsprint wasn’t deliv­ered until late this morn­ing.)

UPDATE: Gawker says snarky things about the story.

The other day I was lis­ten­ing to a story on NPR, about peo­ple stuck dri­ving the guz­zli­est gas guz­zlers, and what they were doing about it. I was struck by one man’s inter­view. He drove a Ford Excur­sion, the biggest SUV evahr, the station-wagon equiv­a­lent of an F-350 Super­Duty pickup truck. The man explained that he needed an extra-large vehi­cle; he and his wife had five chil­dren between them, “so we had no choice” but to buy the Excur­sion.

Five plus two is seven. That’s how many seats he needed. By my reck­on­ing, that means he could have cho­sen just about any mini­van, and a large num­ber of other SUVs with third-row seat­ing, nearly all of which get bet­ter gas mileage than the Excur­sion. But he had no choice.

Of course, as all adults know, there’s always a choice. It’s just dif­fi­cult to make some­times. For instance, yes­ter­day I could have cho­sen to have some­thing lean and protein-y and vegetable-heavy for lunch, but instead I had a cheese que­sadilla. Then I had two Pep­peridge Farm Bor­deaux cook­ies for dessert. If only it had been manda­tory, but it was a choice. Some of you are feel­ing smug and supe­rior, the same way I felt about Mr. Excur­sion. If it makes you feel any bet­ter, I went fiber-heavy for din­ner (black beans) and took a long bike ride in penance. That was a choice, too.

I hate choices. I espe­cially hate the way they’ve become the behav­ioral equip­ment of fiber. Been in an ele­men­tary school lately? “Make good choices” is the new “eat from all four food groups.” Ear­lier this year Kate was scolded by a teacher for the fol­low­ing: A boy threw down a book, and it took a funny bounce and hit a girl in the leg. She gave out a loud, cartoon-y howl of pain, hop­ping around on one foot, and Kate laughed. Laugh­ing, the teacher said, was “a poor choice.” I won­der what George Car­lin would do with that one.

We rail about want­ing more con­trol over our world, which means more choices. And then the vac­uum cleaner dies, and we go to Sears. First we choose a price range, then we choose a brand, then we choose bag­less or not, onboard tools or not, upright or can­is­ter, until our heads spin and we howl with pain and go eeny-meeny-miney-moe. There have been times, while buy­ing a house­hold appli­ance, that I wished I lived in the old Soviet Union. I would have hap­pily got­ten on a list and stood in line for five hours if, at the other end of the line, there was one vac­uum cleaner, and the choice was: Take it or leave it.

Grum­ble, grum­ble.

OK, blog­gage:

A par­tic­u­larly smelly Metro May­hem today: Boy, 1, shot dur­ing fight over glasses. Eye­glasses, that is. (Huge, heavy sigh.) And they were prob­a­bly knock­offs.

Christo­pher Hitchens speaks ill of the dead, and boy did they deserve it. Jesse Helms, of course.

Oh, and if you have time, pre­pare to waste it now: Look at what everyone’s upload­ing to Flickr, in real time, on a rotat­ing globe. Don’t blame me when noth­ing gets done. (HT: Vince.)

Now, I choose to go to work and write more mediocre prose. Leave a bet­ter com­ment. (It shouldn’t be hard.)

A few short items this morn­ing before I start pack­ing for the Chris­t­ian Burn­ing Man:

We’ve been vis­it­ing our lake cot­tage in Branch County less and less over the years, and per­haps you’d like to know why. OK.

Our next-door neigh­bor there, who bought the cot­tage built by Alan’s uncle, tore it down this year. No harm in that — it’s small and had a powder-post bee­tle infes­ta­tion at one point. It prob­a­bly needed doing. Of course we knew they’d put up some­thing much big­ger, but we were hope­ful it would be, er, in char­ac­ter with the neigh­bor­hood. They decided on a pre­fab Swiss chalet. Other houses on the strip had been brought there in pieces, so there was a prece­dent. Can they get the truck to the lot with­out major dam­age? Oh sure, no prob­lem.

The chalet went in this week. Their truck dri­ver backed his semi across our front lawn and with­out so much as an oops, flat­tened two 10-year-old river birches Alan planted when Kate was a baby. Num­ber of pro­fuse apolo­gies that have arrived at this address, or that of my sister-in-law, in the interim: Zero. Sim­ple acknowl­edg­ment? None.

That’s it, in a nut­shell.

We’ve told Spriggy that if he’d care to entrust us with his share of Leona Helmsley’s $8 bil­lion, we’ll take very good care of it. Jeez, what a bit­ter old crone — $12 mil­lion for her own Mal­tese wasn’t enough, I sup­pose. I love dogs as much as you do, maybe more, and let me tell you: $12 mil­lion for a sin­gle dog deeply mis­un­der­stands the nature and needs of all dogs. You can argue with the foun­da­tion setup — I sup­pose there’s always some­one who needs to hear the spay/neuter argu­ment again — but at its heart it’s the work of a true mis­an­thrope, in love with the poochies but not a dime for human­ity. You know what I think? I think it’s because LA Mary couldn’t get her the straw­berry pre­serves she wanted for her hotels. It queered her on two-legged crea­tures once and for all.

Inside base­ball: Hank Stuever on why Clay Felker mat­tered:

Appre­ci­ate Clay Felker? It’s all any­one ever did, who wanted any­thing to do with mag­a­zines. Was it emu­la­tion, or was it envy, or was it a fan­tasy — work­ing for the per­fect place, the per­fect edi­tor, at the per­fect time?

When I started free­lanc­ing, I had a sim­ple goal: To do as much work as pos­si­ble for edi­tors who could help me improve. Need­less to say, I never met Clay Felker.

Metro may­hem: Some­one stole the cop­per plumb­ing from one of the city’s most vis­i­ble land­marks. A six-figure repair bill for a few bucks in scrap metal.

John Scalzi printed one of his famous sun­set pic­tures and included his cat, so I LOL’d it. No one will get it:

Bonus: Stay at Scalzi’s for a lit­tle per­spec­tive on the mil­i­tary service/electability track record.

That should keep you. I’ll be in and out until I leave for the air­port, so, y’know, what­ever. Oh, and thanks for all the SF rec­om­men­da­tions, folks. I neglected to men­tion, this trip is basi­cally a rerun of our hon­ey­moon lo those many years ago. (Alan: “You sure you don’t want a dia­mond ring?” Me: “I want a two-week hon­ey­moon more.”) You brought back mem­o­ries and gave me some new ideas. You guys are the best.

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

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

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

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

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

If awards were given for press releases — and surely, there must be some — the one announc­ing the clos­ing of the Lin­coln Museum in Fort Wayne has to be a nom­i­nee for some­thing. Best Weasel­ing, maybe. For starters, there’s the head­line:

Lin­coln Finan­cial Foun­da­tion to Make Its Lin­coln Museum Col­lec­tion More Acces­si­ble and Vis­i­ble

Then there’s the lead:

Lin­coln Finan­cial Foun­da­tion, the char­i­ta­ble giv­ing arm of Lin­coln Finan­cial Group, announced today it will take a two-pronged approach to make its Lin­coln Museum col­lec­tion more acces­si­ble and vis­i­ble in cel­e­bra­tion of the Abra­ham Lin­coln bicen­ten­nial in 2009. The Lin­coln Foun­da­tion cur­rently owns one of the most exten­sive col­lec­tions of Abra­ham Lincoln-related items includ­ing a copy of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion and a Thir­teenth Amend­ment signed by Abra­ham Lin­coln (see attached inven­tory overview list for more details). Specif­i­cally, Lin­coln Foun­da­tion will: one, seek pub­lic part­ners with whom the Museum can explore exhi­bi­tion options for its three-dimensional items and, two, dig­i­tize its doc­u­ments in order to make the entire col­lec­tion more vis­i­ble and acces­si­ble to a greater num­ber of peo­ple.

Wow, you’re think­ing. They’re mak­ing the museum big­ger? Find­ing a part­ner to increase the col­lec­tion? What? Para­graph two:

The Lin­coln Foun­da­tion embod­ies the prin­ci­ples of Abra­ham Lin­coln who once said, “I am for those means which will give the great­est good to the great­est num­ber.” “By col­lab­o­rat­ing with other muse­ums, the Lin­coln Foun­da­tion hopes to make these items avail­able to a greater num­ber of peo­ple using Abra­ham Lincoln’s bicen­ten­nial as a cat­a­lyst,” said Priscilla Brown, Vice Pres­i­dent, Lin­coln National Cor­po­ra­tion.

OK, so it’s a press release. There’s always some fluff­ing.

Para­graph three:

The Lin­coln Foun­da­tion is proac­tively pur­su­ing a solu­tion that ben­e­fits his­tor­i­cal edu­ca­tion and schol­ar­ship and exposes the col­lec­tion to the largest pos­si­ble audi­ence. Through invi­ta­tion, the Lin­coln Foun­da­tion will host a national infor­ma­tional ses­sion with poten­tial pub­lic part­ners in late March to pro­vide an under­stand­ing of the col­lec­tion items and, in turn, dis­cuss options for increas­ing vis­i­bil­ity.

A national infor­ma­tional ses­sion? Cool. Is the media invited to cover it? Not exactly. Para­graph four:

The Lin­coln Museum has oper­ated in Fort Wayne, Ind., for many years, first as a library and then as a museum. As a result of this new strate­gic direc­tion, The Lin­coln Museum will close to the pub­lic effec­tive June 30.

Talk about bury­ing the lead.

The next para­graph is the stan­dard boil­er­plate about the com­pany, its assets and ser­vices. They actu­ally put the news in the final para­graph.

What a fine bunch of bas­tards these peo­ple turned out to be. For those of you unfa­mil­iar with the com­pany, for decades it was based in the Fort and was one of the proud­est mem­bers of the cor­po­rate com­mu­nity. It treated both its employ­ees and its city gen­er­ously; the work week ended at noon on Fri­day, and Fort Wayne is dot­ted with pub­lic assets that would never have found or sus­tained life with­out its largesse. If they could be a lit­tle pushy some­times — as a reporter, you really didn’t know rigidly enforced rules of media rela­tions until you’d expe­ri­enced it at Lin­coln — at least it was in the ser­vice of a greater good.

Then the beloved, long­time CEO retired, and his replace­ment let lit­tle time pass before announc­ing the exec­u­tive offices would move closer to a major finan­cial cen­ter — Philadel­phia. Oh, but don’t panic! they said as they backed out the door. Every­thing else is stay­ing here! Don’t be alarmed! Well, you know what hap­pened next. Bit by bit, Lin­coln Finan­cial Group is leav­ing the city.

Dis­man­tling the museum, how­ever, is truly vile. The Lin­coln Museum is — was — a lit­tle jewel. A major refur­bish­ment in the 1990s trans­formed it into a facil­ity that walked a very del­i­cate line between flashy-enough-for-the-interactive-age but still-a-serious-place. What could it cost to keep the doors open on a place that was largely staffed by vol­un­teers, that didn’t require huge upkeep, that gave the city a unique, pres­ti­gious attrac­tion? Espe­cially when you con­sider LFG paid mil­lions to get its name on a god­damn foot­ball sta­dium, this is just plain old, low­down shit­ti­ness.

Priscilla Brown’s late mother-in-law has her name on a beloved insti­tu­tion in the Fort, inci­den­tally — a fine high-school nata­to­rium. I won­der how she’d feel if that was closed, and the water dis­trib­uted to the “largest pos­si­ble audi­ence.”

Ger­ald Prokopow­icz, pal of NN.C and occa­sional vis­i­tor to the GP, had his own thoughts in yesterday’s News-Sentinel. (Aside: Another fine effort by my alma mater. They really kicked the Journal’s butt on this one.) As the for­mer scholar-in-residence at the museum, he was the log­i­cal source to call. It was even more depress­ing to note that one rea­son atten­dance is down is, fewer school­child­ren are being brought through on field trips. And why is that?

Prokopow­icz said fewer stu­dents are going on field trips to muse­ums, and it’s a trend that’s occur­ring in places other than Fort Wayne. He blames it on two fac­tors: stan­dard­ized test­ing, which forces teach­ers to spend more time in the class­room, and higher gas prices.

Even in our fancy sub­ur­ban dis­trict, it’s mad­den­ing to see how much class­room time is taken up with prep­ping for our state assess­ment tests. Now you see the chain reac­tion of keep­ing kids in the class­room when they could be in the Lin­coln Museum.

Grr.

So let’s change the tone with some upbeat blog­gage, eh? Via Ash­ley, some news on Jill Sob­ule, best known for writ­ing and per­form­ing that les­bian theme song. I saw her open for War­ren Zevon in 1996, and she was fab­u­lous — funny and ironic and all that. She won my heart with “Kathie Lee,” her song about her secret affair with Frank Gifford’s wife. Like lots of hard­scrab­ble artists, she came out dur­ing the break to sell CDs. We had a lit­tle chat, and she was as charm­ing one-on-one as she was onstage. (In case any of you filthy pervs are think­ing there was some sort of zing! there, let me put your minds at rest: I was 8.5 months preg­nant at the time, and unless she’s into fat girls in jumpers and clogs and wed­ding rings embed­ded in their swollen fin­gers, you are wrong.)

Any­way, it appears Jill is no longer under con­tract with a record com­pany, and has gone uni­lat­eral to raise money for her next one. She’s set up a web­site where you can give, with some cre­ative fundrais­ing steps. It starts at $10, which gets you a free dig­i­tal down­load, and ends….

$10,000 – Weapons-Grade Plu­to­nium Level: You get to come and sing on my CD. Don’t worry if you can’t sing – we can fix that on our end. Also, you can always play the cow­bell.

I’m think­ing I may go in at the get-your-name-in-the-liner-notes level. I want to leave cryp­tic foot­prints for my ances­tors, so they can fight over the Thanks­giv­ing table about whether I swung both ways.

Today’s only-in-Detroit story: Man comes home after alarm ser­vice tells him there’s been a break-in. Enters the house, looks around, real­izes the bur­glars are still in the house. So he slips into a bed­room and calls 911 in a whis­per. The police arrived…three hours later. He finally had to call his coun­cil­woman, who called the police chief, who was able to rus­tle up a prowler. Best sin­gle detail:

He even tried the North­west­ern Dis­trict police sta­tion directly, but said he was told offi­cers weren’t avail­able because they were in the mid­dle of a shift change.

In the New York mag­a­zine story about heroin tycoon Frank Lucas, which was the basis for the “Amer­i­can Gang­ster” screen­play, Lucas talks about the won­ders of the shift change:

We put (the dope) out there at four in the after­noon, when the cops changed shifts. That gave you a cou­ple of hours before those lazy bas­tards got down there. My buy­ers, though, you could set your watch by them. By four o’clock, we had enough nig­gers in the street to make a Tarzan movie. They had to reroute the bus on Eighth Avenue. Call the Tran­sit Depart­ment if it’s not so. By nine o’clock, I ain’t got a fuck­ing gram. Every­thing is gone. Sold . . . and I got myself a mil­lion dol­lars.

If only we could har­ness those pow­ers for good.

OK, that’s enough for today. Have a good one. I’m off to enjoy what appears to be Steam­boat Springs out­side my win­dow. Minus the moun­tains.

This is why I shut down my damn browser when I have work to do:

Because the news is always try­ing to dis­tract me. Ahem:

A mem­ber of the City of Detroit’s pen­sion board filed a police report Thurs­day against City Coun­cil Pres­i­dent Pro Tem Mon­ica Cony­ers, claim­ing she threat­ened him with a gun at a board meet­ing ear­lier in the week.

That’s the wife of U.S. Rep John Cony­ers, btw. And, in fair­ness, she said it was only a metaphor­i­cal gun:

“What she said was: ‘I’ve got a big­ger gun than your gun, my hus­band,’ ” Rid­dle said. “She was talk­ing about a polit­i­cal gun.”

And peo­ple won­der why I like it here. It’s Miami with snow!

Noth­ing like a death in the fam­ily to make you wish you were born a fish. The morning’s activ­i­ties here at Chez NN.C include a whole-house search for Alan’s Social Secu­rity card. It’s for a bank thing. Of course he knows his num­ber, but they want to see the actual card. Let me see the hands of those of you who can lay hands on your Social Secu­rity card within 15 min­utes. Yeah, thought so. After a while, I thought screw it, let’s get the replace­ment. There’s an SSA office two blocks from here; he can bring in his pass­port (which we can find) and get it while he waits.

But can you get it while you wait? Good luck get­ting an answer. The web­site offers exhaus­tive instruc­tions on how to request a card, but is vague on the while-you-wait part, which is impor­tant, because this all has to hap­pen today. A call to the office was in order. The local num­ber was dis­con­nected, and all inquiries now go through an 800 num­ber, which employs one of those auto­mated voice recog­ni­tion pro­grams but NO ACTUAL HUMAN BEING, and…and…

Alan reached some­one at the bank. Turns out they don’t need the card if they can see your W-2. Cri­sis averted. But a new res­o­lu­tion: This year, once and for all, assem­ble a “grab box” of key fam­ily doc­u­ments so we can avoid this non­sense in the future. I’m not the best record-keeper, but I’m good enough, but life is sim­ply grow­ing too com­pli­cated.

Per Kirk’s com­ments yes­ter­day, I’ve decided to stop feel­ing bad about enjoy­ing the may­oral scan­dal. It’s the story that keeps on giv­ing, and it would be…dare I say?…wrong not to smile once in a while. Last night’s big event was the mayor’s pub­lic apol­ogy, made at his church, but in an empty room, to one pool cam­era, no media allowed, no ques­tions, in and out in 12 min­utes. It was pretty much total crap­ola, as you might expect, all “I’m sorry” but no men­tion of what he was sorry for. He has to be very care­ful what he says now, because he’s fac­ing a per­jury inves­ti­ga­tion, and that’s not a charge to be tri­fled with. Once again, he showed his beguil­ing com­bi­na­tion of Street and Suit, in his dec­la­ra­tion “I would never quit on you.”

(Oh, why even men­tion it? I hear more man­gled Eng­lish on the evening news than any­where else in my world. Last night’s neol­o­gism: “fic­ti­tion­ally,” which seems to mean “fic­tional,” but has some extra syl­la­bles, mak­ing the speaker sound extra-smart. There was also “tenor” used incor­rectly, i.e. “The mayor struck the right tenor in his state­ment,” and this by an anchor.)

But the cherry on top was yet another per­for­mance by Steve Wil­son, WXYZ’s des­ig­nated Kwame-botherer. The sta­tion deployed its chop­per for over­head sur­veil­lance of the church, not just to get video but to let Steve know which door he was sneak­ing into. So Steve was right there to yell, “Who is Car­men Slowski?” as his honor stepped out of his SUV. The mayor Heisman’d him nicely. I’d say it was like a bear swat­ting away a smaller ani­mal want­ing a bite from the car­cass, but Wil­son is eas­ily as big as Kil­patrick. He’s truly a won­der­ful fig­ure, because his dis­tin­guish­ing fat-man fea­ture is a wat­tle that lends a com­i­cal note to the blowhard self-importance. Fol­low that last link, a tran­script of his 11 p.m. report, to get a sense of how he rolls:

I’ve faced the mayor many times in the last few years, usu­ally with ques­tions he hasn’t wanted to answer…and tonight proved to be no excep­tion. While most reporters and cam­eras waited at the side door…our Chop­per 7 “eyes in the sky” pointed me to where the mayor was heading—the front door, so when he pulled up and finally stepped out the car, I asked him one of the ques­tions so many of you have been asking—and got a shove in return…As I first revealed last Fri­day and the Detroit Free Press con­firmed today, only days before the text mes­sage scan­dal broke a week ago, the mayor was here at a North Car­olina moun­tain resort eat­ing chocolate-covered straw­ber­ries, drink­ing fine French wine, and soak­ing in an aro­matic bub­ble bath with a woman using the name Car­men Slowski. Mrs. Kil­patrick and the couple’s three boys were back home in Detroit at the time…and the mayor has never explained why records show there were two peo­ple in his room, or just who was the mys­tery woman shar­ing his bub­ble bath.

“Soak­ing in an aro­matic bub­ble bath.” If you can’t laugh at that, you’re dead.

If the mayor’s lucky, the approach­ing win­ter storm everybody’s fret­ting about today will turn out to be a rip-roarer. Noth­ing like a foot of wet snow to get peo­ple talk­ing about some­thing other than bub­ble baths, not to men­tion “fine French wine.”

Note to self: Go shop­ping today, lay in a sup­ply of fine French wine. If we’re going to be snowed in, might as well do it right.

Do we have blog­gage? We have blog­gage:

Steve Novick, can­di­date for U.S. Sen­ate in Ore­gon, really is a guy you’d want to have a beer with. Here’s why. (YouTube link, for those of you who avoid them.)

Don’t waste your time on “Meet the Spar­tans.” Slate says why:

Var­i­ous news sources have declared that Meet the Spar­tans has a run­ning time of 84 min­utes. Some online reviews peg the actual run­ning time at 68 min­utes. I went to a 5:30 p.m. screen­ing. After pre­views, the movie began some time between 5:44 and 5:47. The clos­ing cred­its started at 6:47. After a cast-performed ren­di­tion of “I Will Sur­vive” (note: this was a reprise of an ear­lier per­for­mance) staged on the Amer­i­can Idol set (note: not the real Amer­i­can Idol set), the cred­its ran over a black screen. Per­haps two min­utes later, the cred­its gave way to scenes that weren’t strong enough to make the first 60 min­utes, includ­ing Spider-Man remov­ing Don­ald Trump’s toupee. After about five min­utes of these deleted scenes, the cred­its started again. They moved at about 10 lines per minute. And, con­sid­er­ing the movie is about an hour long and prob­a­bly took about six hours to make, they included a sur­pris­ing amount of names; I’m guess­ing 8,000. By the time the cred­its had been slow-rolling for sev­eral min­utes, the other 15 peo­ple in the the­ater had gone home. As the cred­its con­tin­ued, I put on my head­phones and lis­tened to some music. At 7:09, more than 20 min­utes after the cred­its began, I was rewarded by the afore­men­tioned five-second, fake-Stallone-as-Britney bit. The lights went up and I left, shaken and depressed.

Not sur­pris­ingly:

This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

Thank God for the New York Times Thurs­day Styles, because who else is cov­er­ing the Slow Design move­ment? Ahem:

Katrin Svana Eythors­dot­tir, another designer from Ice­land, made a “chan­de­lier” from beads of glu­cose that clung to twine and caught the nat­ural light. After five months, the chan­de­lier dis­in­te­grated (as Ms. Eythors­dot­tir, who wanted to cre­ate a tem­po­rary, biodegrad­able object, had intended). It is true that a decom­pos­ing chan­de­lier seems sort of fast, but as it turns out a domes­tic object with a built-in expi­ra­tion date is a slow notion, said Car­olyn Strauss, a designer, cura­tor and the founder of SlowLab, a three-year-old design think tank with offices in Man­hat­tan and Ams­ter­dam that’s devoted to search­ing out the slow in cutting-edge design. “You wouldn’t buy that chan­de­lier and go away on a two-week vaca­tion,” Ms. Strauss said. “It’s an object you’d really cher­ish because of its tem­po­rary and there­fore pre­cious nature.”

No word on the cost. What­ever it is: Not enough.

OK, friends, I’ve wasted too much of the day already. Hang in there and enjoy yours. I’m after some fine French wine.

God, I love this town. Cor­rup­tion has such a happy shame­less­ness here. As what the Freep has branded “Text Mes­sage Scan­dal” unfolds, the new details keep get­ting weirder. The mayor has yet to emerge “from seclu­sion,” but Mon­day his ex-paramour, the chief of staff, quit her job. The bat­tle­field pro­mo­tion went to one Kan­dia Mil­ton, who announced his first order of busi­ness would be…anyone?

Yes, pay­ing $10,000 in back prop­erty taxes. It gets bet­ter:

Other prob­lems uncov­ered:

• In the fall, Mil­ton and his wife, Lisa, emerged from Chap­ter 13 bank­ruptcy. Accord­ing to the bank­ruptcy records that the cou­ple filed in August 2006, they owed $389,207 to a vari­ety of cred­i­tors, includ­ing mort­gages, credit cards, taxes and util­ity bills.

• They lost two Detroit prop­er­ties at sheriff’s sales in April and May 2006.

• At one point, Mil­ton had amassed $1,080 in park­ing ticket fines owed to the city.

• In April 2006, he was cited by Detroit police for fail­ing to prop­erly secure a child pas­sen­ger. He paid a $235 fine, accord­ing to 36th Dis­trict Court records.

I remem­ber one morn­ing back in my talk-radio days, when my co-host, a city coun­cil­man, casu­ally men­tioned that he’d paid a bunch of park­ing tick­ets the day before. His m.o. was to let them pile up in the glove com­part­ment until his busi­ness took him to the city clerk’s office, then find out what his out­stand­ing bal­ance was and pay it all at once. He found this process far more effi­cient than wor­ry­ing about hav­ing change for the meter and pay­ing them one by one. Some­one stopped me later and railed for a while about the “dis­re­spect for the law” shown by this alleged pub­lic role model, and his shame­less­ness! In talk­ing about it right out in the open! As though park­ing tick­ets were post­cards from your doc­tor remind­ing you to get your cho­les­terol checked! The nerve!

Well, that was Fort Wayne, and this is Detroit. Meet the mayor’s new chief of staff. Model cit­i­zen.

While the News had that story, the Freep had another, a con­fir­ma­tion from a “fancy North Car­olina resort” that the mayor, while pass­ing the MLK hol­i­day week­end there, offi­cially alone and on offi­cial busi­ness — he was speak­ing at a King memo­r­ial break­fast — received a $504 “mas­sage for two.”

Resort lit­er­a­ture says, “The deluxe cou­ples room is sprin­kled with rose petals, then you and your sig­nif­i­cant other will receive a tan­dem can­dlelit Grove Park Inn Spa Mas­sage, fol­lowed by an aro­matic whirlpool bath. Sip chilled cham­pagne while feed­ing each other chocolate-covered straw­ber­ries.”

The mayor’s com­pan­ion is described as one “Car­men Slowski.” And yes, another media out­let noted the resem­blance of the name to that of a fic­tional amphib­ian rep­til­ian pitch­woman.

Jack Lessen­berry chides us all:

You have to be a pretty stu­pid racist to take any delight or plea­sure in this lat­est scan­dal.

OK, I’m chas­tened. He’s right that, beyond the cheap tit­il­la­tion, there’s absolutely noth­ing good to come out of this mess. But it does make the morn­ing papers a lot more inter­est­ing. Let’s leave it at that.

Speak­ing of Detroit and its prob­lems: I heard yet another stolen-car story the other day. I used to know hardly any­one who’d had a car stolen in cir­cum­stances short of extreme stu­pid­ity, i.e. leav­ing the keys in the igni­tion. Now I know half a dozen at least, and most around here. Hell, a cou­ple of our local com­menter JohnC’s friends had their car stolen, and it turned up on Belle Isle with a dead body in it. The story I heard the other day was typ­i­cal, and had the effect of mak­ing me see cer­tain things through a thief’s eyes. This lady was pump­ing her gas at one of those con­ve­niently located sta­tions on the ser­vice drive to a major free­way, and dis­cov­ered the bad guys find it con­ve­nient, too. She unhooked the hose, turned to hang it up, and some dude jumped into the driver’s seat and was fly­ing down the on-ramp to I-94 before she could say, “What the-?”

What’s per­haps mirac­u­lous is that they actu­ally found the car, a month later. It was down in the D with a tem­po­rary tag, 3,000 more miles than it had when it was stolen, sig­nif­i­cant body dam­age and a nicely banged-up under­car­riage. They snipped the OnStar wiring first thing, of course.

I used to won­der if all these new secu­rity devices on cars — the RFID fobs, GPS track­ing, etc. — were absolutely nec­es­sary. No more.

Ah, well. As long as I drive an unsexy model with a stick shift, I feel a cer­tain mea­sure of safety. Fool­ish, per­haps, but let me cling to my illu­sions.

Time to fas­ten eyes on the day ahead. We had a day or two of mild tem­per­a­tures, and then around night­fall yes­ter­day the wind began to howl, and the ther­mome­ter dropped 40 degrees overnight. Yes­ter­day: mid-40s. At this moment…checking widget…9 above. Yikes. I retrieved my garbage-can lid from the neighbor’s yard this morn­ing, and reflected I never used to notice the weather beyond the obvi­ous sweater/umbrella/boots wardrobe deci­sions. Prob­a­bly because, as a younger woman, I was pre­oc­cu­pied with my inter­nal weather report. It was like the Dutch Antilles, where the media doesn’t report daily con­di­tions in any­thing other than a hur­ri­cane, because they’re always the same: High 70s with west­erly winds of 10-15 miles per hour, chance of after­noon show­ers. Mine was: Steamy, with a 70 per­cent chance of bad deci­sions. Around my mid-30s I noticed I no longer wor­ried that my palms were sweaty when I shook someone’s hand. The great cool­ing had begun. Some­day I will reach room tem­per­a­ture, but until then, I have an on-spec essay to pol­ish and throw out there for the usual rejec­tions. Have a great day.

As should be obvi­ous from my remarks here and there, my video-camera prob­lem has been solved. My dear friend J.C. Burns sent me his Canon GL1 on extended loan-with-option-to-buy, and my new Flip, aka “the sec­ond unit,” can go places the Canon can’t. So I’m hop­ing to have some video up here within a few weeks, as soon as I can suss out the com­plex­i­ties of get­ting every­one talk­ing to every­one else, as well as the new ver­sion of iMovie, which is a pain in the ass.

How­ever, it appears the real genius piece of gear in all of this is my new Goril­la­pod, which I strongly rec­om­mend to any­one who likes to fool around with cam­eras. Yes­ter­day I used a long drive to Northville (a dis­tant sub­urb that was, frankly, not worth the tire rub­ber) to do some video note-taking for an upcom­ing fea­ture, work­ing title “Let’s Go Dri­vin’ in the D with Nance.” I splayed the Goril­la­pod on the dash­board, affixed the Flip, and pre­pared for the usual free­way may­hem. The dis­ap­point­ment was that motorists were unusu­ally well-behaved; I was only passed on the right at 85 mph by one or two cell-phone yakkers. But the G’pod was a rev­e­la­tion. It shifted not a mil­lime­ter, stayed steady on cor­ners and exit ramps, and together with the Flip took up no more space than a dash-mounted GPS sys­tem, which is what it looked like.

Trust me: It’s the best $20 you’ll spend for good pic­tures. There’s even a Flickr group ded­i­cated to its won­ders.

After the Vir­ginia Tech shoot­ing, in which a few bold con­ser­v­a­tives took a new step down the yea-guns road by blam­ing the vic­tims for their own death (because they failed to “rush the guy” while he was reload­ing), I could hardly wait to see what would be said in the bull­shi­tos­phere after the next mass shoot­ing — the brush had been cleared, after all. It didn’t take long: now Instapun­dit, who declares him­self a lib­er­tar­ian, is sug­gest­ing that prop­er­ties that declare them­selves gun-free should be held per­son­ally liable for vio­lence that occurs there: Per­haps we need leg­is­la­tion. If it saves just one life, it’s worth it.

Roy Edroso points out what you might sus­pect: That the rootin’, tootin’ west­ern state of Nebraska has no effec­tive restraints on long-barreled firearms, although it does restrict car­ry­ing con­cealed weapons. You need a per­mit to pur­chase a hand­gun, but not to own one. The “gun-free zone” that the right-wingers are all up in arms about is likely the legal opt-out that private-property own­ers employ these days. When I was in Min­nesota a few years back, you saw signs every­where declar­ing this or that build­ing gun-free. It wasn’t enforced with metal detec­tors or any­thing; I sus­pect it was a lia­bil­ity dodge, or maybe a cor­po­rate bumper sticker, or some­thing. So the mall in Omaha had these signs, and now a lead­ing lib­er­tar­ian is sug­gest­ing some leg­is­la­tion to, what? Out­law gun-free zones? Allow vic­tims to sue?

I have a lib­er­tar­ian propo­si­tion for you: Let some savvy, pistol-packin’ real-estate devel­oper open the OK Cor­ral Mall down the street from this one. Go ahead and scratch up some ten­ants, and proudly dis­play a sign: Everyone’s packin’ a peace­maker. Enter at your own risk. Let’s let the mar­ket sort it out!

Just speak­ing for myself, hav­ing a heav­ily armed pop­u­lace just next door in Detroit makes me feel extra-safe there.

It occurs to me from my recent link­age there, some might think Roy’s is the only blog I read. If only. But I am try­ing to cut down, at least on the polit­i­cal stuff. Roy’s niche is arts, cul­ture and call­ing out wingnuts. Works for me. But if you’re won­der­ing, I also read TBogg; Lawyers, Guns and Money and a few oth­ers. Lately I’ve been read­ing more non-politics sites, like Bossy and, of course, the Fug Girls, even though they were way too tough on Bey­oncé this week, if you ask me. That green dress does make her look a lit­tle like one of the gup­pies in my fish tank, but a very sexy one.

I’m adding a new tag here: Metro may­hem, for sto­ries like this. Why do men beat their wives? (Answer, at least in this case: Because he was drunk.) Bonus: Two 911 record­ings that demon­strate just how hor­ri­ble 911 oper­a­tors are around here.

OK, pay­ing work awaits. Have a great day.