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.