(Tried to write something last night, found myself plumb out of gas after a day of bothering people on the phone, researching tax policy and exchanging emails about the election. Wouldn’t you? Now 6:47 a.m. Let’s see how this goes.)

Early morning, hoping for rain. The radar is encouraging, but it’s been a lying bitch for weeks now. The lawn is still green(ish), but that’s due to the sheltering effects of the front-yard oak, not sprinkling. Honey Boo Boo chile don’t sprinkle, and look, look! It’s taken only hours for me to internalize Honey Boo Boo and, in essence, justify whatever dollars were spent on producing that carnival of American entertainment. And I didn’t even watch much of it. Alan vetoed it after a few minutes, but I caught a bit here and there — the family ultrasound of HBB’s older sister, who is pregnant. HBB’s mother, June, revealed she’d been 15 when she’d first become a mother, which was presumably before she married her husband, Sugar Bear, and certainly before she started attending auctions to buy outdated or fell-off-the-truck packages of Chips Ahoy, another little snippet I caught. After the ultrasound, we learned that the family refers to a woman’s genitals as her biscuit.

“Because when you get a biscuit — a good biscuit, like at Hardee’s — you can kind of pull ’em apart…” — June throws her head back and laughs, and thanks! Thanks, June and Honey Boo Boo! Now I can never eat a biscuit again. Although I had a neighbor once who called that same thing a muffin, and I still eat those.

In time, it will pass. The American freak show. I bet they don’t so anything like this in Turkey.

I desperately need coffee. I should have exercised this morning. Maybe a bike ride later? I’m hungry. This is my brain in the early morning — Travis Bickle without the guns: I tried several times to call her, but after the first call, she wouldn’t come to the phone any longer. I also sent flowers but with no luck. The smell of the flowers only made me sicker. The headaches got worse. I think I got stomach cancer. I shouldn’t complain though. You’re only as healthy, you’re only as healthy as you feel. You’re only as…healthy…as…you…feel.

It takes three to make a trend, but I think we have a good start on making naked DUI into a Thing.

First, the Rev. Peter Petroske, Catholic priest, arrested and suspended for driving through Dearborn naked and drunk, and I really wish I knew more, but I don’t. There’s a lot about Fr. Petroske’s background in the story. Commenters who say they knew him say he’s a great guy. The priesthood is stressful. I hope he gets the help he needs.

And then, today, Randy Travis, upon whom I once had a 10-minute crush, before the gaydar kicked in, now reduced to raving in the back seat of the squad car, naked and drunk and threatening to kill the cops.

I do not mean to make light of what is obviously a couple of miserable human beings, but it’s odd how these things come in clusters. I’ve been naked and I’ve been drunk, sometimes at the same time, but I’ve never considered going for a drive while in that condition. And for that, the world can be grateful.

I sense we’re already lowering the tone.

So here’s this: Gawker had a little exchange with Henrik Rummel, aka Boner Rower. He is one hell of a good sport:

What was your initial reaction when the story of your boner hit the internet? Have you gotten a lot of feedback? New fans?

I laughed very hard! I woke up my girlfriend and told her the story. Then I told everyone else I knew, except my parents.

Wise choice, kiddo. Now your mom will never find out.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that gymnastics is over. I don’t know how many more plucky brats I can handle. These track athletes are much more my speed, although I don’t really get the obsession with makeup some of these women have. When I’m sweating, false eyelashes are the last things I want to worry about, but then, it is worldwide television and there’s a lot of money lying on the ground for a fetching athlete to pick up, whether or not she’s a winner. So: Plucky brats bad, lanky brats with false eyelashes good.

Failing that, you can always go for a reality-TV show. What do you call a vagina?

Coffee. Cooooffffeeeee…..

First things first. Let’s have a kiki:

Some of the language in that video is NSFW, but hey, it’s the Scissor Sisters. I need to get in a gay frame of mind, because “Project Runway” is starting, and I’m giving it a try this season. I got a little pissed when the girl with the Skrillex hair won, she and her series of flowy, drapey, dress-like outfits. They were very wearable, if you were a six-foot-tall skeleton with no tits whatsoever.

I’ll tell you, the first flowy-drapey thing that wins, I’m totally outta there. Although I can see the crowd includes an insane Japanese guy with an afro, so I have high hopes.

[Long pause.]

And with that, I must confess: I fell asleep on the couch in the second half hour of “Project Runway,” it’s now Friday morning, and I just learned that your generic crazed American madman in Aurora, Colo., killed 14 people at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie.

I thought we were done with that in this country. Guess not.

Now CNN is reporting the casualties include children as young as 6. Because that’s where you take a 6-year-old these days — to a midnight screening of a dark, violent comic-book movie. Which is not to say any parent shares the blame for this. Only, as they say on the internet, smh.

(Shaking my head, for you geezers.)

Watching CNN, the choppers are circling what looks like an apartment building. Presumably, that’s the killer’s house. It looks like the kind of place you see in every city in the land. If I were looking to hide in plain sight, I’d move into one of those — maybe a dozen units, every one the same, window air conditioners, neighbors only known as a collection of thumps and noises on the other side of a wall. Maybe that’s what he was after.

Not much bloggage now, but maybe one fitting piece — Alex Pareene on “The Newsroom,” Aaron Sorkin’s hugely disappointing HBO show. I’ve given it four chances, but I have to agree with Pareene:

Even his sparkling banter is one-note. His characters always say exactly, precisely what they mean, at all times. There’s no subtext, no irony, nothing ever left unspoken in his dialogue. His characters don’t even get to be sarcastic without someone asking them if they’re being sarcastic. Everyone alternates between speechifying, quipping and dumbly setting up other people’s quips. It’s exhausting.

I’m imagining how the crew from “The Newsroom” would cover this tragedy. Probably with much rushing around, and a dramatic moment where someone has to decide whether there’s a 15th victim, based on sketchy reports. Then the plucky intern would slam down the phone and say, “I just talked to the anesthesiologist! She’s out of surgery, and she’s alive!” That actually happened in the last episode, which dealt with the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords. I actually guffawed. Because, as a journalist who’s tried to contact many doctors in the course of my work, I can tell you with absolute confidence that you don’t just ring up the anesthesiologist after trauma surgery. Unless, of course, the anesthesiologist is the caller’s college roommate’s father, and she just happens to have the number of his cell phone, and he answers it, and he decides talking to the media is a great idea. (And yes, that connection has been used a time or two so far, in only four episodes. What a well-connected group of journalists.)

The Today show just went to a commercial. I guess what that means is, it’s not that important a story.

Have a good weekend, all.

Oh, and for those who watched: Was “Project Runway” any good?

Really interesting little story playing out up NPR way — an intern wrote a blog about her music-acquisition habits. You’d say music-buying, but she doesn’t do that. She just…has it, and she hasn’t paid for very much:

I am an avid music listener, concertgoer, and college radio DJ. My world is music-centric. I’ve only bought 15 CDs in my lifetime. Yet, my entire iTunes library exceeds 11,000 songs.

You can read a lot more at the two links above, but I think the best of it was this thoughtful response from David Lowery at the Trichordist, “a community blog for those interested in contributing to the advancement of an Ethical Internet, and the protection of Artists Rights in the Digital Age.” (Capitalization obviously not mine.) It’s long, but it’s worth the read, because he takes apart the intern’s argument pretty effectively:

The existential questions that your generation gets to answer are these:

Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself? Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?

This is a bit of hyperbole to emphasize the point. But it’s as if:

Networks: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!

Hardware: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!

Artists: 99.9 % lower middle class. Screw you, you greedy bastards!

Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!

I don’t think Emily, the NPR blogger, will know what hit her, but she — and a lot of other people — need to hear this. I gave my students last term a reading assignment about Kim Dotcom, an obscenely rich jerkoff who’s made his dough on sites that hold huge files, no questions asked. I’d never heard of the guy; they all had, and many had accounts on his site. I just don’t get it. Or maybe I do — they don’t have a lot of spending money, but somehow they’ve gotten their priorities screwed up. Lowery nails it: Spending for the hardware isn’t a problem, but the rest of it should be free.

Ergh.

While we’re on the subject of digital matters and stealing, I was surprised to see myself turn up in this piece about Jonah Lehrer, someone I hadn’t even heard of until this week, when he was accused of self-plagiarizing, i.e. rerunning his own work for multiple paying clients. And why would he do this? I think this Slate piece gets to the point: He’s not really a journalist, but an “idea man.” Some people look at a mop and see a high-paying corporate lecture; I look at a mop and say, time to clean the floor.

Let’s wrap up with a T-Lo post, what they might call your daily pretty: Mrs. FLOTUS looking like a million bucks.

I can see this Sandusky trial is going to be…a trial. I think I’m going to have to read the weekly summaries, because I can’t take too much more of this daily stuff. Especially stuff like this:

“Sandusky was standing right up against the back of the young boy with his arms wrapped around (the boy’s) midsection in the closest proximity I think you can be,” McQueary said. “I was extremely alarmed, flustered and shocked.”

At one point, McQueary said, he returned to his locker and slammed the locker door “in an attempt to say someone’s here, ‘break it up.'”

I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again: None of us knows how we would react in such a situation. But my god, I’m growing tired of all the harrumphing and locker-slamming and eye-averting that went on in this case. I think, every time, of the women I know, the mothers. I could tick off a dozen 110-pounders who, if they saw such a thing, would have rushed in like those little birds you see in the spring driving crows away from their nests. They would have Heisman’d that old perv and taken the boy out under their fierce little wings, and if anyone tried to stop them, well, then you’d see the fingernails.

But again, we don’t know what we’d do. We only hope we’d do better.

For Detroiters and visitors: The owner/chef at Supino’s Pizza gives you a few options for local dining, in GQ. Did I mention Hank Stuever is coming to visit in a couple of weeks? Hank, what looks good to you?

I hope I’m recovered by then. Went to the doctor today, for the second time in a week. I told her my head felt like I was wearing a diving bell at all times, that Alan was complaining about how loud I was setting the TV volume, that I drove an unknown number of miles yesterday with my turn signal on, because I couldn’t hear the thing clicking at me.

“Ear infections take their time to resolve,” she said.

“I don’t say this often, seriously,” I replied. “But I want a more powerful antibiotic. Not the carpet bomb. Just something with a little higher octane.”

So, a Z-pack. Fingers crossed.

And so, bloggage:

Worst songs of all time: Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey.” Worse than “Dreams of the Everyday Housewife?” Worse than “Watchin’ Scotty Grow?” Yeah, I think so.

Farewell from inside the diving bell.

I wasn’t going to write about the new restrictions on extra-large sugary soft drink sales in New York City, and then MMJeff brought it up elsewhere, and so let’s thrash, shall we?

I don’t have strong feelings on it one way or another. The subject of obesity comes up from time to time here, and we’ve run through the usual reasons. The more I think about it, the more I look at photos from my youth and marvel at how few people, even among my parents’ friends, were seriously overweight — well, I don’t have any answers, just a few hunches. And I think portion size is a big part of it.

I think portion size is one of those insidious things. It creeps up a little at a time. We’re told to fill our plates, and we do — even though the plate is two inches bigger than the ones we grew up eating from. It’s bigger because kitchens are bigger, and kitchen tables are bigger, and everything is bigger because otherwise, what will motivate you to buy a new set of dishes? You need that stuff.

Anyway, as I’ve probably stated here a million times, I grew up drinking those little 6.5-ounce Cokes. Sometimes my mom would buy the 12-ounce six-packs, or the 16-ounce Pepsi six-packs. Returnable bottles. We had little plastic caps to reseal them. You never drank a whole bottle by yourself. A six-pack kept four of us happy for a week.

New York City is a small place, and even the millions who live there comprise only a fraction of the country’s population. But it’s the Temple Mount of our culture — almost everything starts there. I think Mayor Bloomberg knows this. I don’t think he’s doing this with any serious policy effect in mind; I think he’s just trying to start a conversation.

In 1979, I started my first newspaper job. I was in an seven-person department, and four of us smoked. A guy I walked by several times a day had an ashtray the size of a hubcap on his desk, and he filled that sucker up, every day. Alan and I went to New York 22 years later, when the city was the largest one in the country with a city-wide smoking ban. We saw the Mingus Big Band in a low-ceilinged, basement club, and left two hours later remarking on how nice it was to not be reeking of cigarettes. Michigan now bans smoking in nearly all public places. Who thinks this is a crazy intrusion of the nanny state now?

In my lifetime, we’ve vanquished cigarettes, or at least put them in full retreat. Bad food may be the next front in the war, and should be, given how disproportionately it effects affects the poor, the young and the powerless.

Does banning gigantic sody-pops look like a solution? No. But it’s a conversation-starter. I’m willing to have it.

Good lord, this plague is persistent. Every time I think I’m out of it? IT PULLS ME BACK IN. So I have no bloggage today. Do you?

Watching the National Geographic Geography Bee, hosted by Alex Trebek. Of the 10 finalists, only one is a white male and one is female; all the rest are Americans of Asian (or south Asian) descent. The first ones eliminated were? The white boy and the girl (who is Indian). Hello, future masters! Enjoy this crazy country.

This is ridiculously hard. I’m getting about one question in eight. I really need to brush up on my Asian peninsulas.

It’s killer when they get eliminated, too. I imagine a Tiger Mom screeching backstage about how they’re going to get into Harvard NOW, eh, Mr. Smart Guy?

And with that, I will dispense with the ethnic stereotypes.

The four finalists left were asked the capital of Uzbekistan. Or, as we know it, Uz-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan.

The answer is Tashkent.

I’m already feeling weekend-y; are you? What I mean by that is, I’m just thinking about reading, doing a little biking, hoping the air-conditioning doesn’t break down and stopping in at Movement, aka the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, for a little dubstep.

Or, as my boss says: It’s potato-salad season! And I’ll be making some.

A note about next week: Light posting, maybe non-existent posting, maybe some pix. I’ll be on Mackinac Island, attending the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual public-policy conference. It’s Tuesday through Thursday, so with travel and all the rest of it thrown in, I’ll be lucky to crank out a few shots of the Grant Hotel and blue coastlines. But you never know.

Until then, some bloggage:

The peculiar smarminess of online mourning, by the great Monica Hesse at the WashPost.

The best of prom 2012, compiled by Buzzfeed.

Have a great long weekend, all.

Joumana Kayrouz is the T.J. Eckleberg of Detroit. For a couple of years now, her face has dominated every third billboard across the metro area, advertising her services as a personal-injury lawyer. This seems to be what she looks like more or less au naturel:

She has an arresting appearance, with white-blonde hair, lashes and brows. This was her first billboard image:

Lately a new billboard is replacing it. Through the miracle of technology, she’s grown a giant pair of lips:

I crossed the street behind this bus yesterday, and up close, you can see how crappy the Photoshopping was; they didn’t even try to match her actual lips:

I hope she’s a better lawyer than her art director was a Photoshop artist.

And that is your Friday eye candy (if you like wax lips). But it starts us off on a thematic foot, as our first bit of bloggage today involves the subject of how women look. I realize calling Rush Limbaugh a vile sack of pus is like calling the ocean wet, but Laura Lippman posted this today, and it left me wondering, for the thousandth time, where the bottom of this man’s loathsomeness really is. By WashPost blogger Melinda Henneberger, she notes her (extremely mild) reaction to the Time magazine breastfeeding cover, and Limbaugh’s reaction to it. Ahem:

First, Limbaugh pronounced me “a classic inside-the-Beltway feminist, classic professional feminist. You know what that means.” I do?

“See, TIME Magazine blew it,’’ Limbaugh explained. “You know why it’s not working with the feminist women? Because the woman on the cover of TIME Magazine was too pretty. I call your attention once again to Undeniable Truth of Life Number 24. Dare I speak it again? Brian’s nodding his head yes. Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream. Here is Melinda Henneberger, who’s somewhat trying to be funny here, but in all comedy, there is a grain of truth, and she’s quite upset.

This is what Melinda Henneberger looks like. Just, y’know, for reference.

Finally, Donna Summer is dead, and I won’t apologize for enjoying her music. Disco had its day, it came and went, and sorry, but the Bee Gees were only the worst part of it. Summer wasn’t the best, but she was pretty good. I could never bring myself to hate disco. It was pop dance music, and a huge relief from the self-important blowhard rock’n’roll of the time. (All we are is dust in the wind, right?) And then punk came along and was a huge relief from disco. It all passes away, eventually. Right, D?

Have a great weekend, all.

Do you and your partner squabble over what to watch on TV in the evenings (assuming you’re so inclined; of course I spend my evenings reading great literature, and thinking deep thoughts)? I ask because I’m trying to sample the first few minutes of “My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding” and my husband just referred to TLC as “the hillbilly channel.”

I take offense! The L clearly stands for “learning.” And I am learning about American gypsies.

And these people are some serious hillbilly gypsies.

As a reporter, your only connection with gypsies is the semi-annual press releases issued by the police department, about traveling home-improvement scams — old women who get only half their house painted (or painted with watery paint that disappears after a single rain), people who get their wallets lifted when someone comes inside for “interior measurements,” the usual. So it’s a little odd to see a show about people who make their living by buying a load of asphalt in the morning, and go door to door throughout the day, trying to sell it. Somewhere this must work, but man, these aren’t my people. I keep yelling at the screen to slam the door and call the Better Business Bureau.

They certainly do favor a ridiculous style of wedding dress. Tonight they’re making some poor pregnant teenager drag 75 pounds of satin, tulle and Swarovski crystals around Nowhere, W.Va., and all to be married in a tiny church, followed by a reception at what looks like a VFW hall.

And that will be our dose of reality TV for the night, the week, and most likely the month, if not the rest of the year. America is such a freak show; no wonder we’re on top of the world.

Another work-at-home day, but not so much bloggage today. But a little, both rants of a sort:

First, Gin and Tacos on that magical threshold beyond which an American plutocrat cannot fail. In this case, it’s Jamie Dimon:

I guess that whole “maximizing shareholder value” thing, the Commandment that has done more to turn this country into Dogpatch than anything else in the last three decades, doesn’t apply when it comes to doling out money at the top.

We might expect that the shareholders would be inclined to save money rather than spend it, and certainly to avoid rewarding people who perform so poorly. But a stockholders’ meeting is little more than a boys’ club operating under the pretext of a transparent process of corporate governance. The kind of heavy-hitting institutional shareholders who decide these votes – mutual fund managers, fellow banking executives, and so on – are either in Dimon’s position or expect to be there someday if they can make it to the other side of the shark tank. Perhaps getting to the top, into a position like Dimon’s, is so difficult and unpleasant that the people who manage to do it feel entitled to endless compensation to make it all seem worth it.

And here’s Angry Black Bitch on just another day in the Missouri legislature, which this week honored native son Rush Limbaugh:

Limbaugh arrived with 40 state troopers (did my tax dollars pay for that?) and was smuggled into the Capitol where Republican lawmakers and their staff greeted him much like North Koreans used to greet Kim Jung Il…and then Limbaugh was honored at an invitation only ceremony on the House floor that was closed to the public.

The other day at work we were looking at the current electoral-vote breakdown for the November election, and someone remarked that calling Missouri a toss-up is wishful thinking in the extreme. It’s as much a part of the modern confederacy as Mississippi. Looks like it.

With that, the hour grows late and bed beckons me. I hope I dream of anything but gypsies, Jamie Dimon or the sex tourist from Cape Girardeau. A good Thursday to all.

Folks, I went to a city council meeting tonight and now would happily drive spikes in my eyes rather than stare at my laptop another minute. I’d like to get up early-early and get a bike ride in. So let’s do an all-bloggage Tuesday, eh?

Via 4dbirds, Germans express puzzlement that such a religious country as ours opposes health care for all. They don’t know us very well, do they?

How John just-an-umpire-callin’-them-strikes-and-balls Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United case. Foul!

T-Lo look at Cathy Cambridge. And look and look and look, because she looks fabulous. Off to bed.

Was it just yesterday I went off on Rant 13B at lunch? That is, Why The Hell Is Facebook Worth $96 Billion? Probably. I deliver it roughly every other week. I don’t get it — a few ads on the sidebar for weight loss? How does it add up?

The only thing I can figure is, the data and privacy and all the rest of it we share with them, so willingly and unthinkingly, is worth a lot. A LOT.

Over time, I’ve been trimming my Facebook apps to the bare minimum I need to interact with people I want to interact with. I’ve had to resist stuff like Words With Friends, but given my problems resisting crap like Angry Birds, that’s probably a pretty good thing. But by doing so, I’ve been spared the mortifying — to me, anyway — updates I get on what everybody’s reading, delivered via “social reader” apps. Did I need to know my friend’s wife has a fondness for Kardashian news? No. Did Famous Journalist really check out a story about Kate Upton’s breasts? Shudder.

Still, there’s a sense, every time I run through my news feed, that I’m selling all my information short.

So it’s with joy, real joy, that I read that social readers are collapsing — the Washington Post’s, but also the Guardian’s and others. There’s a nominal explanation from the WashPost, something about Facebook modules, whatever they are, and I guess it’s plausible. But I can’t help but hope there’s something to it. I love the WashPost like few other newspapers– er, “content providers,” but there has to be a limit. I’ll register at their site, and they can presumably track what I’m reading there, but Mark Zuckerberg can kiss my bum. From casual observation, my opinion isn’t a minority view.

Sharing is one thing. Window-peeping is quite another.

Social media is essential for journalists, but man, I wish it weren’t.

Any “Mad Men” fans in da house? Of course there are. Any guesses as to what it cost to land the rights to “Tomorrow Never Knows” for last night’s episode? (And may I just say, what a great choice. My favorite on “Revolver,” and I didn’t know until today that the things that sound like seagulls in the first few seconds are actually tape squeals. Learn something new every day, etc.) A quarter-mil. Yikes.

We have a local story unfolding here, yet more of the endless corruption shenanigans in local government. Long story short: An overpaid county development officer left her job last fall, willingly, pocketing a year’s salary as severance, which would merely be wrong and appalling, except that the county is bankrupt and laying off less fortunate employees. A few raised a stink, which became a big stink, and throughout it all, this particular development officer has stuck her elegant nose in the air and refused to apologize for any of it, other than to say she deserved every penny because she worked so hard.

Over the weekend the Freep broke a story about some of the outside jobs she held, for alleged nonprofits that existed mainly to guide even more dollars into her overflowing pockets:

Turkia Awada Mullin had only one Cadillac, but she had two monthly car allowances to pay for it.

One was for $500 from her $200,000-a-year job as chief development officer of Wayne County. The other was for $500 or $600 — she couldn’t quite remember — paid by the Wayne County Regional Jobs and Economic Growth Foundation, one of several nonprofit groups Mullin headed in addition to her county job.

Did she really need $1,000 a month to run her car? Mullin was asked last month.

“I think it’s more than that with the mileage I put on it,” she said.

Poor, poor, greedy, greedy baby.

The tower of Monday has been scaled. Let’s hope the rest of the week goes more smoothly.