One of Gene Weingarten’s chatters Tuesday says what I was thinking yesterday:

Billings, Mont.: Thought your Bell in the Metro story was good and all, but your Great Zucchini story from two years ago was the best thing you’ve ever written. Was that story submitted for a Pulitzer?

Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten: It was. And I was only recently reliably informed that it got real consideration, but was ultimately rejected because it was perceived as not serious enough.

I’m not surprised; the Pulitzers are like that. It strikes me that of the journalists I’ve known who’ve served on Pulitzer juries, they tended to be at either best-or-worst ends of the spectrum, so it figures they get a few wrong. The Great Zucchini story was a work of storytelling art. I urge you to read it; it’s that good. And while the Joshua Bell story that earned Weingarten the big P was great, it was something you could stand at the beginning of and see all the way to the end. When I told Alan what the story was, I said, “They got this virtuoso violinist, Joshua Bell, to be a subway busker in D.C. and watched how people reacted.” He replied, “And they ignored him, right?” He didn’t know anything about the story; he just guessed that if you put a virtuoso playing a Stradivarius in a busy Metro station at rush hour, he’s not going to draw a crowd. The telling of the story is wonderful, but there’s no real surprise.

But the Great Zucchini had a huge surprise halfway through. You thought it was about one thing (a story about a children’s party entertainer), and then it turned out to be another thing (the common roots of fear and humor). Let’s see, what did win that year?

Jim Sheeler of Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colo.
For his poignant story on a Marine major who helps the families of comrades killed in Iraq cope with their loss and honor their sacrifice.

See? Serious enough.

Oh, well. It may be like Paul Newman winning an Oscar for “The Color of Money” when he should have won for half a dozen better performances that preceded it, but it’s all good. (Bonus: I’ve linked to it before, but just in case you’re having a slow day at work and have some time to read it — Tears for Audrey, another Gene-sterpiece.)

Yesterday I mentioned writers who don’t get the web. I think Weingarten gets it. I don’t know another columnist who could pull off what he does every week with his live chat, and I think every single columnist should give it a try sometime. I’d love to know what the traffic is for that.

OK, then. Found this via Leo, and oh my, what was I saying about that word just a couple weeks ago?

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving (John) McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

Whoa! I know Mrs. McCain favors girly clothes and high heels. If that didn’t call for a shoe to be slipped off and applied, heel-first, to Mr. War Hero’s forehead, I don’t know what would.

You think this story is true? It’s getting a lot of blog attention, but then, we’re allowed to say “cunt” right out in the open, whereas a newspaper won’t even say “the c-word.” It’ll be “an insulting name related to her gender,” and most people will think, “Oh, well, once I told my wife to stop being such a little bitch during an argument; it could happen to anyone.”

I’m fortunate to live with a mellow soul. My dad was a grump, and he could curse, but he generally saved his profanity for inanimate objects, bad drivers, circumstances beyond his control and the like. I can’t imagine him using such a word on my mother, and to do so in front of witnesses? I like to think I’m as tolerant of human frailty as the next gal, but that one required an instant correction, as the dog trainers say. With a shoe.

This week has been seductively beautiful. I’ve been out and about on the bike every day; for once I’m caught up with my library accounts because hey, returning books is a good excuse to ride two miles. Next week, not so much, but oh well. I’m still looked on as something of an oddity around here, where driving half a block is not considered wasteful or slothful, only vigorous support of the local economy. One of my doctors is a cyclist, however, and at my last appointment we made small talk about the cost of being one in the Motor City. He’s been pulled over three times in the last year, he said; twice for running stop signs and once for resembling a person last seen stealing CDs from a car. While I teach Kate to obey stop signs on her bike, sooner or later she’s going to figure out that, for cyclists, a stop sign at a quiet intersection with no cars in sight can safely be ignored. You’re traveling slower, you have the advantage of eyes and ears, and you can’t hurt anyone but yourself. With all the piss-poor drivers I see on a daily basis, I guess it’s a credit to the low crime rate around here that police even bother to bug cyclists about such infractions. (And you should see my doctor, a white-haired soul in his late 50s who looks about as likely to break into cars as the Pope does. Please.)

OK, I’ve run dry. How about some bloggage making cruel fun of the pain of others? Here you go.

Ken Levine’s back with his “American Idol” recaps this season, and he correctly puts his finger on what was wrong with last night’s, which was nearly unwatchable:

While Syesha Mercado was screeching out some faux inspirational song that strung together every “I believe/Catch a shooting star/There’s time for every soul to fly/Reach within your heart/Strive to be the very best/Anything is Possible” bullshit cliché (and every one of those lyrics actually WAS in that song), Doug Davis, a young pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks took the mound and pitched the game of his life…knowing that in two days he will undergo surgery for thyroid cancer.

THAT’S inspirational. THAT’S real.

Disclaimer: I do not watch “American Idol” voluntarily. I watch it because my kid watches it, and while one day I will take her to see Iggy Pop, that day has not yet arrived.

This week’s theme was “songs of inspiration.” Every single one sucked, although the leadoff singer did have the advantage of menace:

Michael Johns sang “Dream On”. Most inspirational songs are not angrily shouted at you. Okay, okay, I’ll dream on. Don’t hurt me!

Three-day eventing isn’t for sissies. I watched an Olympic-caliber cross-country phase in Lexington a few years ago, and just being a spectator made my knees shake.

Someone actually makes a semi-amusing ad for special-event mass transit, and Catholics are outraged, so the ad is pulled. Someone make these pinheads direct traffic, then. The ad lives on, where else? On YouTube. Be subversive, and laugh at the Pope.

Me, I’m off for a bike ride.

Sorry for the unexpected day off yesterday. I’d written and crumpled about four posts when the phone rang. It was the school, telling me my daughter has officially inherited her father’s tendency toward headaches. They’d been creeping up for a while, but yesterday was the first appearance of the big-M variety, if my amateur diagnosis is correct. Severe headaches accompanied by vision changes and nausea automatically = migraine, don’t they? (Unless, Dr. Google tells me, it’s multiple sclerosis. Or, you know, a brain tumor.) Anyway, the big purge went a long way toward making things better, but she spent the rest of the day on the couch, and my own was pretty much off the rails.

So thanks to all of you who took the ball and ran with it. Nothing like discussing that old-time cussin’, is there?

One of my old neighbors had a theory that sounds a little New Age-y, but nevertheless has a ring of truth to it. He said every person has a consistent weak spot in their body’s defenses, a door the germs will find unlocked more often than not. His son’s was his nose, Kate’s was her throat, his own was his head, mine was…I guess it was my big mouth, which has no discernment whatsoever, and will say and eat pretty much anything. Although I’ve never had trench mouth, gum disease, or even many cavities. So I guess that theory falls apart.

Anyway, all is well today, if 30 degrees colder than yesterday. Ah, spring.

Between making therapeutic Jell-O and buying Tylenol, I finally got around to reading the Harvard virgin story from the NYT magazine over the weekend. I was looking for some indication that this no-sex club was different from other no-sex clubs, and it seems to boil down to: But this is Harvard. I guess they have Veritas stamped on their chastity belts, or something. And people wonder why the Ivy League still matters. (If nothing else, it’s given us women who’ll be quoted in the paper of record calling oral sex “disrespectful and disgusting.” For you, maybe.)

This meme is making its way around, I notice:

She began talking about oxytocin, the hormone released at birth, in breast-feeding and also during sex. True Love Revolution gives it the utmost significance, claiming on its Web site that the hormone’s “powerful bonding” effect can be “a cause of joy and marital harmony” but that outside of marriage it can create “serious problems.” Released arbitrarily, it can blur “the distinction between infatuation and lasting love,” the Web site cautions, making rational mating decisions difficult. Fredell said oxytocin could also bond people who didn’t necessarily want to be bound, and “you can bond yourself to the wrong guy in the wrong situation.”

This is, I believe, the “science” behind the tape exercise performed in some abstinence classes, where the teacher goes around pressing tape to students’ arms, then ripping it off and repasting it on other arms. This underlines the important lesson that you can get all kinds of diseases from others — because the tape gets kind of gross as it goes around sticking to arms — and also…well, something, I’m sure. If you stick your tape to someone else, not only does it hurt when you rip it off, you’re less sticky the next time around. And this is backed by science! You could look it up!

No wonder these folks can’t get any traction in the real world. Not only are they up against the unstoppable force of humanity, they use bad science and stupid teaching techniques. If people wonder why I pay taxes through the nose to send my kid to a halfway-decent public school, here’s one reason: Because the last time I looked at the health curriculum, it didn’t call for duct tape.

OK, a little lite nosh of bloggage, shall we?

Most people outside the city don’t know that the Detroit mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, rolls with a security posse to rival Suge Knight’s. Brian Dickerson pulls it apart, a little bit. He offers the priceless detail that the entourage, already preposterously large to begin with, has been increased in response to “threats” against Special KK, and then notes:

In 2003, after a diamond-studded L. Brooks Patterson memorably lampooned Kilpatrick’s gangsta style by striding into the Mackinac Policy Conference surrounded by aides sporting dark glasses and earpieces, the mayor’s security footprint grew noticeably smaller.

L. Brooks Patterson is the county executive in adjacent Oakland County, and has spent his entire career goading Detroit in one way or another. Guy has a sense of humor, too.

Baseball’s Opening Day is problematic in places other than Detroit. A cool time-lapse video from Cleveland shows how hard a grounds crew can work when snow is in the forecast.

OK, enough. It’s good to be back. Now I’m up to Kate’s room, which is getting a small makeover, to blow dust off the stuffed animals and make way for some storage pieces (or “solutions,” as they’re inevitably called). Back later.

On edit: Does the type size on this site these days look just enormous? It does to me — more so than usual. I have a call in to J.C., but as long as we’re here, let me know if you like it this big. Does it mark us as a nest of baby boomers too lazy to put on a pair of readers, or is it just easy on the eyes?)

Look, Madonna’s on the cover of Vanity Fair this month. Doesn’t she look pretty and dewy and unretouched and like the sort of woman who could act so well — once she figures out how to move her eyebrows and mouth again — that she could make you forget you ever heard the name Ingrid Bergman?

Has anyone ever told her the truth? Even her poor husband, who had a bit of promise when they married but whose talent appears to have been drained by his succubus of a wife? Someone should, so Madonna, listen to me: The reason you can’t act isn’t because you haven’t had the right training, or the right script, or the right director. The reason you can’t act is because in order to pretend to be another person, you have to become aware that other people exist, and they have lives and private thoughts and emotions that have nothing to do with whether they think you look fabulous at 49. Only a narcissist could say something like this with a straight face:

Madonna spoke of New York, how it’s changed: “It’s not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn’t feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died.”

Because of course you’d know. You get out so much these days.

Another thing a non-narcissist wouldn’t say:

madonna: Do you have a daughter?
me: No, three sons.
[Madonna looks at me accusingly.]
me: I didn’t choose it—it just happened.
madonna: Do you believe that? You think things just happen?
me: I think that just happened.
madonna: Mm-hmm.
me: So who’s making the decision?
madonna: You are, you and your missus.
me: About what kind of kids we want?
madonna: You chose it. Your soul chose it.
me: No. Do you believe that? That my insides wanted boys?
madonna: Unconsciously. Yes.

Now that you’re pushing 50, you’re going to learn something unpleasant: One by one, your friends are going to start getting sick. Just you wait. One day you’ll get a phone call, and it’ll be someone you’ve known for years, and she’ll say she found a lump in her breast, and she’s going to be starting chemo soon, and she just thought you’d want to know. When this happens, be sure to tell her her soul chose cancer. Unconsciously, of course.

Also, because I am still feeling very, very mean, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States:

I believe I just unconsciously chose this headache I’ve had all day.

As astute trackers of the Nightstand can see, I started on Ms. Lippman’s latest over the weekend. Mystery novels go too fast; I’m restricting myself to a chapter or two a day. “Another Thing to Fall” is part of her Tess Monaghan series, and features the broad-shouldered P.I. on the set of a television show shot in Baltimore.

Huh, you’re thinking.

“Mann of Steel,” the fictional show, isn’t “The Wire,” which we all know was exec-produced by Mr. Laura Lippman, but it started me thinking about how writers work, especially creative writers. Her last book, which we are contractually obligated to refer to as “the New York Times bestseller, ‘What the Dead Know,'” had its roots in a remembered event from Lippman’s adolescence, about the disappearance of two sisters from a local shopping mall in the ’70s. During that book tour, I heard an interview with her where the questioner wanted to know about that story and its relationship to the finished novel.

I can’t quote Laura directly, but she made a distinction between “based on” and “inspired by,” and whether the interviewer swallowed it or not, I can’t recall, but anyone who writes knows exactly what she was talking about. The roman a clef is a time-honored literary form, and is excellent as a tool of revenge. (“Heartburn,” besides having good recipes, is responsible for my twin labels on Carl Bernstein. That is, “partly responsible for ridding Washington of Richard Nixon” and “capable of having sex with a Venetian blind.” And then there’s “The Wire,” season five.) But only a writer utterly lacking in imagination can get away with straight fact-to-fiction, for a lot of reasons. You can never get your endings to fit, for one, as in real life the bad guys tend to prosper and not fall in a hail of bullets in the last five pages. Dammit. My experience with fiction is very limited — one screenplay, some abortive stories here and there — but the wonderful thing about it is, it’s a conjurer’s trick. You create your characters out of clay, breathe over them and make them live, and then they turn around, kick you in the kneecap, and start doing what they want. You can try to stop them, but doing so will retard your story. Your responsibility, as a writer, is to tell their story, and they will tell you what it is. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it; it’s the closest your average modern person will ever get to voodoo possession.

I recognize a lot of the details of “Mann of Steel,” Lippman’s fictional TV show, from journalism I’ve read about “The Wire” — the sets in the unglamorous building in the unglamorous neighborhood, the producer who keeps the ship afloat by making sure no one spends like it’s Hollywood, a few other things. But it’s her own creation. It’s inspired by, not based on.

When I was at the University of Michigan on sabbatical, I briefly took a TV-writing class before dropping it out of boredom. Whereas, in screenwriting class the semester before, we’d been encouraged to dream big, to wrestle with big themes and tell big stories, the TV-writing teacher suggested we all get a newspaper subscription and scan the police news for stories we could rip off. Meh. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn the professor was a veteran of the “Law & Order” writers’ room.

I mention this just as a reminder, should any of my abortive stories ever find new life. Except for the dog. Every dog I will ever write will always be the Sprigman. His personality is too strong to change.

(What happened to “Law & Order” besides too much success? Sometimes I catch some of those early-season episodes like “The Troubles” and just shake my head. This was great TV, once. But not for a long time.)

So, bloggage on a dreary, rainy day that will nevertheless rise above 40 degrees, qualifying it as “beautiful” for this time of year:

I don’t always follow the Fug Girls’ thinking on some of their targets, but they are so, so right about Heather Mills no-longer-McCartney’s divorce-court ensemble. If I had that body, and that bank account, and needed to wear pants most days, you’d never catch me in anything but Armani. In fact, I even know which Armani — a duplicate of the pantsuit Darryl Hannah wore in her final scene in “Kill Bill, Vol. 2,” right down to the blouse. I’d have about a dozen in three or four basic neutrals, and I’d wear one every day and I’d always look awesome.

If John McCain can keep a lunatic like Rod Parsley in his pocket, I’d call Barack Obama’s crazy minister even-Steven.

Calling fellow Bobcats: All remains mellow at our alma mater. Thanks to Basset for sending the story of two kids whose heat lamp started a dorm fire:

Though the two students responsible for fire and widespread flooding in Bromley Hall last week had marijuana and drug paraphernalia in their room, they will not be charged said Lt. Steve Noftz of the Ohio University Police Department. “It was a pretty overwhelming day, five floors of people concerned with property loss, and they’re concerned with liability,” Noftz said. “I think someone would say ‘good lord, is all you can think of to throw a criminal charge on top of that?’”

Totally.

OK. Morning phone conference, followed by the gym, followed by another afternoon off for our fifth-grader-in-residence. Which means short shrift for you guys today.

You know what you guys need? A movie.

As for me, I need another 90 minutes of sleep.

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.

I have hope for Detroit yet. Bossy’s Excellent Road Trip — one blogging woman’s lap of America to meet her blog readers — has a corporate sponsor, and it’s a GM brand:

JohnC, if your wife had anything to do with this, excellent viral product placement, which I am happy to amplify. At least now we know why she’s stopping in Detroit, eh?

When Kate was wee and I was an energetic mum who believed in early-childhood education, my plan to make her a lifelong reader* involved going to storytime every week at the Allen County Public Library. It was always led by one of the several excellent children’s librarians there, but my fave was Miss Beth. Miss Beth had a knack with kids and many piercings. She was also funny, and said things like “right on” when she agreed with you.

Anyway, Miss Beth is in Indy now, but she still reads NN.C, and checked in the other day when we briefly discussed the problem of library perverts — the men too cheap to get their own computer and broadband, and come to the library to surf for porn. It turns out Miss Beth also has mad skilz with the pervz:

There’s a system to catching a perv that I feel I’ve perfected lo these ten years. The rumor at my library is that I can smell a perv at 20 paces because of my success rate. The real tip-off? The subtle tilting of a computer monitor. No innocent person cares if you see their game of hearts or online dating profile. I give it about 20-30 minutes after I see the tilt and then do a fly-by. At this point, the patron is so engrossed (emphasis on “gross”) that he never even hears me approaching. It’s the heart-stopping jump and scramble that I love the most. The best line I ever heard? “I wasn’t looking at porn; those ladies were just missing clothes.” Hand to God.

It also reminds me of the summer I spent about a week (with the help of a few other librarians) combing and interpreting Indiana Code to aid in reprimanding a patron. This particular gent never actually whipped it out. Oh, no, nothing that crass. He would rub himself through his shorts. And when he would come up to ask for more time at his terminal, the evidence of his electronic love was front and center. I usually sat in a low chair and was confronted with his spreading stain enough to ask for help in getting him out. And wouldn’t you know? We found something (and since none of us are law librarians, we took great liberty with it) that suggested one could not self-pleasure through one’s clothes in public in this great state.

Just so’s you know.

How did librarians ever get tagged as shushing, severe, boring old maids? I’ve yet to meet one you wouldn’t want to have a beer with, just so you could hear their stories. On the other hand, maybe there’s a reason they turn into old maids. You can hardly blame a girl for swearing off men forever, after meeting a few like this.

*Obviously this plan has been a miserable failure. I just came downstairs to find her watching a Disney Channel show featuring a talking zit. Yes way.

I feel so much better today, I’m a new person. Still stiff, but no longer fatigued and miserable about it. Some things you just have to wait out. Even…the bloggage!

For Better or For Worse used to be one of my favorite comic strips, until Lynn Johnston embraced her inner conservative, the one that believes that while young ladies may dabble in these things called “careers,” there comes a time when they all have to come home, marry someone parentally approved and open the baby factory. The drawn-out final storyline leading to Johnston’s retirement — the marriage of Elizabeth and her unbelievably boring childhood friend, Andrew — has finally begun. The Comics Curmudgeon finds the turning point.

The reaction to Mr. F’Buckley’s death — I prefer Ernestine the Telephone Lady’s pronunciation — has been more tolerable than I expected, but then again, I’ve been avoiding the National Review. (Although Jeff forced me to read Tim Goeglein’s initial tribute, which was amusing. I’m keeping the bookmark close, to compare it with his inevitable News-Sentinel column.) A few lefty sources dug up this chestnut, which reads like it came out of a brandy-and-cigars conversation in the parlor at Twelve Oaks. Granted, the quote is old — older than me; that’s old — so I did the math and figured Buckley would have been 31 when he said it. Old enough to know better, certainly, but 1957 America was a different place, too. As a writer who’s produced millions of hastily churned words in thousands of forgettable pieces, my natural sympathy lies with the writer. What someone wrote then isn’t as important as what they’d write today. Writing has always been a form of thinking for me (and, I suspect, for Buckley), and part of the reason I do it all day is because it helps me clarify my own thoughts. Someone once asked, “What do you think of X?” and I replied, “Dunno. Haven’t written about it yet.” A sloppy thinker/writer like me might ramble all over the place before arriving at a destination, and if they did the same thing 24 hours later, arrive at an entirely different place.

From this NYT roundup of readers’ questions to Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, who’s writing a bio on the man (thanks, Jeff), we get this:

I never heard him make a personally disparaging remark about anyone, even adversaries like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Gore Vidal. He might describe something they did or the style in which they did it, but never in an insulting or even critical way. He had a large sense of the human comedy.

Also:

He said it was a mistake for National Review not to have supported the civil rights legislation of 1964-65, and later supported a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he grew to admire a good deal, above all for combining spiritual and political values.

So, see, Darwin was right. We do evolve.

Rereading that first quote, I see the trap. “Having a large sense of the human comedy” can be another way of saying, “He was a bullshit artist who would say anything for a paying audience.” Someday, Ann Coulter is going to die of lung cancer, and someone will say that about her. I know people who’ve met her, and say she’s funny and charming and nothing at all like she appears in print, that it’s all a schtick to make a living, etc. Or it might just be that Buckley really did have a large sense of the human comedy. This no longer matters. There’s a reason we say “rest in peace.”

Something I never knew: John McCain was born in the Canal Zone.

And with that, I’m dragging my stiff ass (literally; Tuesday’s workout included a set of two-at-a-time stair climbs, and now my ass hurts) off to the gym in hopes of limbering things up a bit. Later.

We’re having a snowstorm. Very pretty. Every twig is outlined, all the dog poop is covered with a fresh blanket. I ran the blower around for a while and felt the strong need for another cup of coffee. Alan can finish it if he wants it done. Sometimes it’s fun to be the man of the house, but mostly it’s the same drudgery, only outside.

For the record, I am not yet tired of winter. I like this part of winter, the covering-up-of-dog-poop part. It’s the demi-winter that depresses me, when the world outside is brown, not white. But give me two weeks, and I’ll be ready for it all to be over.

[Sits for five minutes, stares at screen, wonders if it’s possible to be even more boring.]

For what it’s worth (noted: not bloody much), the Rolling Stone story on Britney Spears is up, in its entirety. It’s more interesting than I thought it would be, in that scab-picking kind of way. Fun fact: Paparazzi call themselves “paps” for short, which until now I’d always known as an archaic word for a breast, mostly used to apply to animals, in the Wild Kingdom sense: “[hushed voice] Let’s watch while the grizzly sow exposes her paps to her cubs, allowing them to suckle on this fine spring morning.”

Also, showbiz sucks:

There was a wig waiting for her by master coiffeur Ken Pavés, who created Jessica Simpson’s cascading fake tresses — it had been seven months since Britney shaved her head, and her real hair was less than six inches long. All she had to do was sit for the afternoon so the wig could be glued to her head, piece by piece, then remain very still for an hour so it could set, and she would be the old Britney again.

They say Madonna is using testosterone cream on her face as an anti-aging ploy, but it’s making her grow chest fuzz. I’m sure that goes really well with her dick, and makes her irresistible to her husband, but it’s times like this I’m glad a few wrinkles don’t make me want to stick my head in the oven.

Perhaps you’re wondering if I really spend time looking at this stuff all day. I don’t, but it’s inescapable. Just the other day someone told me Jennifer Lopez buys $2,000 jars of Créme de la Mer and rubs it on her ass. Some people consider politics inappropriate for polite conversation.

[Sits for five more minutes, stares at screen, wonders if it’s possible to be even more boring.]

OK, here’s something funny: “American Gladiators” wants you! The first time AG was on TV, the crew came through the Fort to recruit challengers. It was a festival of whining. Ninety percent of the applicants were eliminated at the pushups test, which they were astonished to discover had to be done on fingertips, not flat hands. (This makes pushups more difficult by a factor of a jillion.) “I’m a Marine, I can do pushups all day,” groused on rejectee. “This is ridiculous.” But that was nothing compared to the Gladiators themselves, who came in to sign autographs and pump up the crowd. Sit them down for an interview, and all they did was complain — their back hurts, they need knee surgery, their fingers are always getting broken, ow ow ow. For a celebration of physical toughness, it was like listening to the bingo players at a nursing home.

I notice the application asks for “a Poem or rap.” Good luck with that, glads.

OK, I’m going to go pump some iron. Never know when they’ll add a seniors edition. Later.

So you sit down to write and look what happens: Shh. “The Godfather” baptism scene is coming on AMC. I need to watch it for the seven millionth time.

Look at baby Sofia, playing the infant. So beautiful, hands like little starfish. Let’s see if I can spot a detail I missed the first 6.99 million times. …OK, here’s one: All the anointing, all the hands laid on other bodies — this I never noticed before. Cicci gets a barber’s shave with hot cream, the baby gets the holy oils, Moe Greene’s masseur rubs him down with…probably witch hazel, back then. No faggy essential oils in the ’50s.

Michael Rizzi, will you be baptized? I will. I still get a chill.

The good-vs-evil Mafia montage is a cliché now. Done well, as David Chase did with the season-ending “Sopranos” episodes, it’s an homage, but mostly it’s just a cliché. But like the song says: The original is still the greatest.

As always, when I watch a little Godfather, I wonder what happened to Al Pacino. How did Francis Ford Coppola rein him in? His whole performance is delivered via the eyes, and look what happened when you took those away, made him a blind man — “Scent of a Woman,” that’s what.

It’s just as well cable TV delivered, because I have little for you today. The steady lengthening of the days is no longer a rumor — “be home by dark” gets Kate 45 minutes more freedom than it got in December, but, perversely, spring seems further away than ever. Fourteen degrees at the moment, bright sun, a glacier-glasses sort of day. I’m working on a piece that’s a real bolus, and every find-new-motivation strategy I deploy just feels like procrastination. Time to put the modem in the freezer.

But there’s plenty going on in the world, just the same. Out for discussion: Is Hillary finished? I’m especially interested in hearing from you Buckeyes, as that’s the next battle, and it’s make-or-break for her. Here in Michigan, the dumb-ass Democratic party is trying their best to start an insurrection; the power players are trying to figure out a way to deliver the now-you-see-’em-now-you-don’t — all of Michigan’s perhaps-mythical delegates — to Hillary. The very hint of such a coup makes Alan kick the baseboards and vow to vote for McCain if they even dare to think such a thing, but then, he voted for “uncommitted” in January. I guess I don’t have a leg to stand on, having chosen a strategic Romney vote last month.

What is rickrolling? (This baby is not played by Sofia Coppola.) The Church of Scientology, rickrolled. A more clinical explanation. I used to dance to that song in aerobics class. Not as bitchin’ly as the original Rick, however. Ha.

John reveals his inner Hawaii Five-O fan. Also, a tribute to Adobe After Effects, with which, on his last visit, he demonstrated how they got “300” to look like that.

I don’t care how Barack Obama talks, as long as he can pronounce “nuclear.”

Time to return to my bolus. Sigh.