Forget that stuff I said last week about foreseeing my death on a bicycle. I saw it for real today — the Grim Reaper will be at the wheel of a late-model SUV, talking on a cell phone.

Two close-ish calls yesterday — at freeway speeds! aiiieeeee!!! — and another today, although today’s would have been merely a fender-bender, caused by a guy coming up in my rear-view mirror who was both talking on the phone and READING SOMETHING he had spread across the steering wheel. He looked up just in time, chirped his tires a little in stopping, then cut across three lanes of traffic to make a U-turn.

So much for evolution.

And just for a jarring transition, how’s this: Yesterday we went rug-shopping. Didn’t buy anything — it was strictly reconnaissance for a down-the-road purchase. But we wandered into one place, and I immediately saw the rug of my dreams. One look told me I couldn’t afford it, but I could certainly appreciate it in the store. Its lines were so delicate they seemed to have been drawn with a Rapidograph, and one pass of the hand over its surface gave the telltale feel of ahhh, silk.

That is one beautiful rug, I thought, drinking in its detail and explaining its excellence to Kate (who couldn’t have been more bored). Time to check the price tag. I was guessing somewhere in the $12,000 range.

No. Thirty-nine thousand dollars.

Now, I know there are many rich people in the world, for whom $39,000 is the equivalent, in our household, of maybe $500. And I know that a $39,000 silk Persian rug costs that much in part because it’s durable, and woven to be an heirloom for generations. But even if I had their money, I still would spend my days fretting. “I hope the dog isn’t throwing up on my $39,000 rug,” I’d think. (Hell, he’d better not even walk on it.) I’d ban shoes and offer foot-washing supplies at my front door. I’d stop serving red wine. I’d put down those little plastic runners beloved by ethnic grandmas all over the U.S. This magnificent piece of art could actually make my house look worse. It would call attention to itself in all the worst ways.

That’s the test, then — not whether you can afford it, but whether you can afford to use it. I happily — relievedly — fall short.

Bloggage:

It’s a tough town: DETROIT — School safety worries resurfaced dramatically Thursday when two students were stabbed in the chest during a fight with another student’s mother outside one of the district’s most prestigious schools, school officials said. I’m sure she had her reasons.

Shelley Winters, a woman after my own heart:

Tough-talking and oozing sex appeal, Ms. Winters was blowzy, vulgar and often pathetically vulnerable in her early films. … Even when she became the dominating force in many of her later movies, Ms. Winters often played vulnerable monsters. …Shrieking, shrewish, slutty or silly, Ms. Winters always seemed larger than life on screen. …Off screen Ms. Winters lived with an equal gusto… With a hearty appetite for food and men, she was not hesitant about naming the actors with whom she had shared a bed…

All the good ones are dying, eh?

“Million Dollar Baby” made it to HBO over the weekend, so we watched. (Our motto: “Seeing the movies everyone’s talking about — six to 12 months later.”) I don’t know if it was the best film of 2004, as Roger Ebert said; I didn’t see all of them, and he probably did. But it was an excellent movie, and after it was over, I was left with one overwhelmind conclusion:

Michael Medved is a very bad man.

He’s certainly no film critic. A film critic has to understand, first and foremost, that he’s judging a work of art. Commercial art, sure; art by committee, no question. Compromised, but always with the possibility of art, and the things art has to teach us about ourselves, our lives, and other people. The campaign he led against this movie, which he seemed to justify on the grounds that the movie was falsely advertised, shows that he’s little more than a yapping little pipsqueak pissant piece of it, and ought to stick to something he knows more about. Mustache grooming, perhaps.

“Million Dollar Baby” has its problems, but in the end — pay attention — it’s not an argument for euthanasia, or a commercial for the “culture of death,” whatever that is. (Jeez, people, get some new catch phrases, will you?) It’s a story about pain and redemption and forgiveness and a few other things. An eighth-grader could see this; how were so many otherwise intelligent people fooled enough to express opinions on its cultural influence? It’s a puzzle.

(Here’s where I need to say that spoilers are coming up. If you’re among the four people left in the world who doesn’t know the big plot twist, click away now.)

Although the story is set in the present day, it has the quality of a fable about it. It’s Los Angeles, but it’s really Anytown, USA. The characters live on Lonely Street, move about in a place where women can reach boxing’s highest levels and still end up in a nursing home where they get bedsores and there’s lousy security. Honestly? It reminded me of an old “Twilight Zone” episode more than anything, a place where things look normal, but aren’t. Which is why I could forgive the liberties taken with reality, because — again, pay attention — it’s not a goddamn documentary. How anyone would half a brain could watch this movie and come away with the message that it’s some sort of propaganda film simply astonishes me. I found it moving and honest to its last moment. This must be what you miss when you’re a faithful follower of the religious right’s “leaders.” No wonder those folks are crabby.

I thought it was, like many of Clint Eastwood’s later films, a visual expression of jazz — mournful, distinctive, dark, singular, ultimately uplifting. I really, really liked it. Go to hell, Medved, and the horse you rode in on.

The car show ended today, a decrescendo after Monday’s frenzy. Chrysler topped itself, at least as far as the jam-kicking part of the job went. I can’t tell you what it was like to sit in the audience during that “snowstorm.” I opened my mouth to say something to the guy next to me, and it filled with tissue-paper snowflakes. Finally, all you could do was hunker down and wait for the snow to clear, at which point you looked up and there was an SUV.

Here’s a much better story than anything I wrote. Final price tag for the glass-breaking stunt show — $500,000.

The press preview for the show ended today, as GM’s saddle burr laid the smack down at the RenCen down the street. I was there, and filed the blog version. When shareholders advise management on how to deal with a $24 million daily burn rate, we are in a whole new ballgame.

But my job is done. Dammit! Back to lackadaisical working at home for me, tomorrow.