Once upon a time, on a vacation …26 years ago? Sounds about right… I took a pedicab. It was in Key West, in September. Note to all: Never visit Key West in September. Not only is it hurricane season, it is hot like you wouldn’t believe. I mean: LIKE YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE. It was a strange vacation in lots of ways, but the keyword most firmly attached to that week is: Hot.

I was visiting my friend Jeff, who with his friend Dennis, a Japanese/Hawaiian drag queen, had set off from San Francisco to live in America’s other gay Mecca and see what they could see. It was a disappointing experience; they could only afford a crappy shotgun-shack rental without air conditioning. Really. The front half of the duplex was occupied by the Stop Domestic Violence poster couple; he bounced her off the walls whenever his blood-alcohol level reached .10, which was around 1 in the afternoon. Next door was a large extended family that, I am not exaggerating, fought with one another at top volume from sunup until the wee hours, stopping for about four hours between 3 a.m. and 7. In between were Jeff and Dennis and their single fan, which ran all the time. The rule was: Never turn the fan off for any reason, because the last time anyone did that, it almost didn’t start again. Periodically it would sloooooww down and all conversation would cease — we’d stare at the fan, willing it to start back up, please please please don’t die don’t die — and the force of our collected thoughts would somehow give it the strength to start whirring again.

For this reason, we spent most of the week going out. We started at this place on Duval where a friend of Jeff’s was bartender (if you don’t know what it means to know the bartender, particularly back in the days when inventory wasn’t tracked quite so closely, you don’t know what you were missing — hic), and then we moved somewhere else for the Tea Dance, and then to the Monster, and finally to another place called, I think, Delmonico’s. Something like that. It was the same people in every place, and I wonder now why we bothered moving. We drank Myers’s gimlets — dark rum over ice with lime juice. We drank them like water, they were so delicious, and I’ve only had a few since then. When I do, it catapults me back to that week in Key West so thoroughly that I have a conditioned response: I start to sweat.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the pedicab. On my last night in town, it seemed to be even hotter than usual. On our way from the Tea Dance to the Monster I said, “Let’s take this pedicab. My treat. It’ll be nice not to have to walk.” And so I hailed the first one I saw, operated by some dreamy-looking hippie woman. We climbed in, and she set off.

The first thing we noticed is, we seemed to be moving really, really slowly. The other people from the tea dance were passing us, and they were walking. And it’s not like anyone was walking fast; it was still about 89 degrees, with 2,000 percent humidity. I had hoped for a breeze in my face, but the closest thing we got to that was the air stirring from people passing us on foot.

“Um,” I said to the woman. “We’re moving kind of slow.” She turned and gave me a stoned smile. “Yes,” she said. “Isn’t it nice? It’s sooo hot.”

We sat there and sweated. What the hell? You pay for a service and this seemed to be pretty bare minimum. She didn’t seem to be exerting herself; her legs pumped with the lazy cadence of someone out for a Sunday meander through the neighborhood — no, slower. Pump. (Pause.) Pump. (Pause.)

There’s no real punchline to this story, although I thought we’d arrive at the Monster in just enough time to make the en masse move to Delmonico’s. But as we got out I swore off pedicabs. I mean, if I’m going to be dragged through the world by another human, I want to see some goddamn effort. Not to be a Brit in pre-revolutionary China, but chop chop, my good man.

Now I see Detroit is getting its first pedicab service. Guy’s going to run it with his son, at a price of $1 a block. With my recent interest in cycling, I think this might end up being my retirement business. Today I make one promise to my someday-clientele: I will go faster.

Mitch Harper over at Fort Wayne Observed has been hosting some light patter about Vera Bradley bags, one of the Fort’s cottage-industries-made-good. They’re not my cuppa — I’m a Coach girl, and probably always will be — but you have to give them the Knuckle Punch of Respect for their success.

Anyway, Mitch found a column in some Arkansas weekly making fun of the grannyish bags, and replied with a wire photo of the very fashion-foward Kirsten Dunst carrying one, albeit on a dress-down day.

As a professional journalist, however, I need to point out that he chose the wrong picture. This is the one he wanted:

There’s ma girl Kirsten, showin’ the Vera luv. And you thought they were just for your grandma.

Look! It’s Chris!

Let’s run down the list, shall we? I saw Springsteen in Chicago, Albert King in Columbus, the Rolling Stones in Cleveland, Warren Zevon in…umm, Columbus, Chicago, Indianapolis, Atlanta and finally Fort Wayne. Saw the Grateful Dead here and there. Saw Jethro Tull, Yes, Todd Rundgren, Steely Dan, Talking Heads and Elton John when he could still blow the roof off the joint. Um, who else? Too many to recall them all. Saw Linda Ronstadt in Los Angeles, Jimmy Cliff in New York. My very first concert: Grand Funk Railroad, in Columbus, c. 1970 or so, on their “Closer to Home” tour. Alan’s was the James Gang and Brownsville Station, somewhere up in northwest Ohio. My friend Terry tells an I’m-so-old story, about going to Ohio University to see somebody like Sergio Mendez and Brazil ’66 and instead being told there was a last-minute substitution: “A new band we hope you’ll like — Led Zeppelin.”

Best ever: James Brown in Columbus, at a low point in his career in the early ’80s, before “Living in America” and the royalties from all those “I Feel Good” Huggies commercials. He played two shows, rocked the house off its foundations and lived up to his nickname.

Over all those shows and all those years, there’s one place that I would have sworn you’d never, ever see me: Standing in the midst of a bunch of 8-year-old girls and their chubby mothers, all wearing identical “soul patrol” T-shirts, waiting to see the luckiest prematurely gray man in America massacre “Jailhouse Rock.”

Yes, it was “Idols on Tour.” The things we do for our children.

Actually, it wasn’t a wasted evening. I was happy to accompany Kate to her first concert. My parents didn’t take me to mine. My friend’s dad dropped us off and picked us up at St. John Arena. That was when the concept of a parent attending a young person’s entertainment was considered an insult to adulthood. Adulthood was more fun then, as was adolescence. (As were concerts.) Now it’s all packaged and sold to the widest possible demographic slice. Kate likes to listen to Radio Disney in the car, and I’m constantly pointing out how many of the top hits are old songs covered by Disneyfied pop singers — ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Cheetah Girls’ version of “Shake a Tailfeather.” Backbeat provided by the muffled thumping of Ray Charles, spinning in his grave.

Same with “American Idol,” the repackaging of once-great hits by instantly forgettable artists that somehow, perversely, makes great entertainment. The show last night opened with the TV show’s opening theme and graphics on the Jumbotrons, which set the little girls to screaming. It’s their favorite show, only it’s happening right in front of them! It’s like they’re in the Kodak Theater in Hollywood with all the lucky stars’ daughters who get on TV!

Well, not exactly. The first person you miss is Simon Cowell. The next one you miss is Ryan Seacrest. The show desperately needs a unifying force, an M.C., someone to guide these innocent lambikins through the jungle of an arena-size rock show, because the biggest thing these folks lack is not talent but scale. They really are just like us, in all senses of the word. Standing on that big stage in the cavernous Joe Louis Arena, they were the opposite of Lawrence Olivier. You’ve probably heard how Sir Larry had trouble dialing down his stage technique for the movies, where the big expressions and gestures you need in the theater just translate as hamminess. Katharine McPhee is a beautiful girl, but she needs TV to tell us so. Stripped of multiple camera angles, she’s just a wan little figure in black, sitting — always sitting, with this girl! — on top of the walkway, singing that black-horse-in-a-cherry-tree song.

You know who has a clue? Kellie Pickler, of all people. She made jokes about how much her life has changed from a year ago, when she was “rollerskatin’ burgers around Sonic” and now look at her — a new haircut and a red bustier. But even she needed help, and I offer it now: Kellie, just because the song has “walking” in the title doesn’t mean the best way to illustrate it is to walk around the stage. Patsy Cline is not amused.

Some were revealed as empty balloons. Yes, Bucky Covington, I’m talking about you, or at least the near-inaudible version of “singing” you’re collecting a paycheck for. Others got the strange-new-respect award. Chris Daughtry, for all his pouting over not winning, will be the only one with a career in five years, except maybe Elliott Yamin, who will earn a living the rest of his life as a lounge-type wedding singer, or singing jingles or doing that sort of mid-level, out-of-the-spotlight work that fills Nashville subdivisions with respectable working musicians. Ace is ready to go back to lifeguarding, or whatever it is he does. Paris will be singing contemporary Christian music in megachurches. Lisa Tucker can continue in the road company of “The Lion King,” or wherever they found her.

By the time Taylor Hicks made his entrance, through the middle of the house — I shit you not — so we could watch him fight off the clawing hands of the Soul Patrol, I was ready to be rocked. I wasn’t. He, too, was well-nigh inaudible, although it’s hard to sing when you’re doing all that spaz-dancing he’s so famous for. I only hated him briefly, when he dedicated that ghastly “Do I Make You Proud” song to “all the troops.” Well that’s pretty damn cheeky, don’t you think? Asking soldiers getting their butts shot off for affirmation? “Do I make you proud, sergeant?” Yes, that’s why we’re fighting: Truth, justice, Big Oil and American Idol. Give me a break.

But the show had many moments. Paris and Lisa did a nice duet on “Waterfalls,” the TLC song with the nonsensical chorus. Chris did “Whole Lotta Love” and managed to not disgrace himself. The evening passed in a pleasant blur of singalongs and exhortations to scream.

But there was this: I lost count of all the Motown songs we heard, and no one even mentioned their birthplace. It was up to Taylor to finally make the connection, and it came, God help me, when he was introducing “Hollywood Nights,” “by a guy who’s from here, Bob Seger.” Good lord. Would it have killed the showrunner to jot it down on an index card for Paris or Lisa to memorize? “It’s my pleasure to sing this Stevie Wonder song in the city that gave him to us?” Huh? Maybe I’m too sensitive. By the time the finale came — “Living in America,” what else? — I’d forgotten the slight and was just thinking about beating the traffic home.

Alan and I are not bottled-water people. In fact, in general, I disapprove of the product. I think it’s a perfect example of an American willingness to buy anything, really, that comes with smart marketing.

A glass of water — Mom’s hard-hearted counter-suggestion for when you begged for a Coke, lest you die of thirst — is one of the America’s great nickel bargains. No, penny bargains, and maybe not even that much. You get a glass and open the tap. If you want it colder, add ice cubes. If you need to take water somewhere, fill a bottle. Technology has given us Lexan, a true miracle plastic that’s glass, but better — doesn’t break, doesn’t transfer plastic taste. A glance at the selection at Target reveals you get your choice of color, size and mouth styles.

I will stipulate a few things that may affect your desire for bottled water: One, that municipal water supplies vary widely in quality. My sister’s house in the suburbs of Columbus dispenses the worst water ever, reeking of sulfur and general ickiness. They got into the Brita thing for a while, which requires special equipment and diligence in terms of monitoring the filter quality and buying more. Two, that the world is a hotter place these days, especially in summer, and people may be thirstier as a result. But. I also want you to stipulate something for me.

That is, that bottled-water plants are a real environmental issue here in Michigan. Ice Mountain set up a plant in a depressed area up north to tap and bottle the groundwater. Local politicians love them because they bring their favorite campaign issue (jobs, even at crappy wages). Of course northern Michigan has abundant groundwater close to the surface why? Because it’s frequently swampy, which means that when you start taking a lot out you lower the level of the aquifer, which affects everything from stream quality to, ultimately, the Great Lakes. We’re all connected after all. But there I go, sounding like a wooly-headed environmentalist again.

We can all agree that hydration is important, can’t we? Sure we can. Stipulated. And one more thing: I buy about a case of the stuff a year. It comes in handy when we have people out on the boat, and we get thirsty. Guests don’t want to share our Lexan bottles. We always offer beer first, but some fuddy-duddies don’t like to start drinking at noon. And Alan insists we buy Dasani or Aquafina, which are bottled by Coke and Pepsi, and generally come from municipal supplies.

But all that said, I still think that bottled water is a big fat shuck. Of course it’s important to stay hydrated, at which point I’ll point you toward the kitchen tap. But really, do we all need to carry water with us at all times? Did our parents do that? Were they dropping like flies of dehydration? No. Reread the scene in “Gone With the Wind” where Melanie has her baby during the siege of Atlanta, on a blistering hot Georgia summer day. You can learn so much about how people coped before air conditioning. The room is kept shaded and Scarlett spends lots of time fanning Melly as she labors. She also wrings out a cloth and places it on her forehead, occasionally sending a slave out to the pump for more water. I’m sure she drank some, too, but at no point did she say, “Melly, you have to drink something. It’s important to stay hydrated.”

Here’s sometimes Alan says, usually when he’s reading a “helpful” newspaper article that, like so many of them these days, assumes its readers are total morons:

“Where would we be without newspapers to remind people to wear sunscreen?”

I ask you: Where would we be without newspapers to remind people to drink water?

Today’s Freep lets us know that school sports practices are starting up, and yes, it’s important to stay hydrated:

But how do you tell if you’re drinking enough? What should you drink? What are the signs of a heat-related illness? We asked local experts. Here’s what they had to say.

Can you guess what they had to say? Of course you can. Drink lots of water. Don’t overdo. Listen to your body. And stay away from salt tablets.

The stories always say this; apparently gobbling salt tablets was considered a remedy for thirst and dehydration back in the Gilded Age. I guess the idea was that sweat was salty and a person needed to replace lost salts. An old reporter at the Journal Gazette once said the newsroom air conditioning system consisted of a drinking fountain and a bottle of salt tablets. But I will confess, I have never seen a bottle of salt tablets in my life. Have you? Where do you buy them? What are the brand names? In what section of the local CVS do they reside? Now there’s a story: Hang out next to the salt tablets for a day and see who buys them. Then warn customers of their dangers!

(I should ask Professor Google before I write this stuff. I guess you can find them somewhere.)

Today it’s supposed to be beautiful, a break from the heat and humidity, a rare day below 80. A glance outside informs me the weatherman did not lie. I plan to go out and enjoy it. I will carry a bottle of water. Because it’s important to stay hydrated.

I’m on record calling the Cadillac Escalade EXT “the world’s most baroque and preposterous vehicle.” Ah, well — I guess I was overheated. I’d like to retract that statement, and propose another model for the honor, the Lincoln Mark LT pickup truck, seen above.

Sorry for the crummy picture, shot at the mall today; here’s a photo gallery. Drink in the utter absurdity of this miracle that only Detroit could offer the world — a high-end luxury pickup truck. The first time I saw one on the freeways here — and here, Detroit, is the only place I’ve ever seen one — I nearly ran off the road. But lo, I had my digital camera with me! I attempted to take a photo at 60 miles per hour, forgetting to turn off the flash and getting instead a very bad picture of the inside of my windshield. (Not to mention the obvious inattention to driving. Guilty as charged.)

Since then the shock has worn off. I probably see one…not every day, certainly, but often enough. Maybe one or two a month? That’s about right.

After a year and a half, I’ve think I’ve gotten a handle on the auto industry’s cultural influence here. I’m accustomed to the lopsided domestic/import ratio you see on the roads. I know about the employee discounts that cement hometown loyalty, which some companies seem to extend to the furthest reaches of “family” — if your fifth cousin once removed works for a Big Three automaker, you qualify. (I exaggerate, yes.) I think I’ve even grasped the just-love-cars attitude that keeps Detroiters trading up every two years simply because man, it’s nice to have new metal in the driveway, isn’t it? My friend John showed me his OnStar system one day driving back from a shopping mall, and I was impressed. (“OnStar, can I help you?” “Yes, where am I?” “You’re on Big Beaver Road, just getting on I-75, southbound. What can I do to help?”)

But I don’t understand a Lincoln pickup. I just don’t. Even in Texas. Even the boots-and-tuxedos crowd would laugh at this thing, wouldn’t they?

I mean: Wouldn’t they?

The WashPost linked to this, the results of a Q magazine poll of Uncool Songs It’s OK to Like. No. 1 on the list: “Livin’ Thing,” by Electric Light Orchestra.

No one asked me, but if they had, I’d say that’s definitely uncool, top to bottom, and not OK to like.

But of course I started thinking about my own list. It’s all on my iPod, and I share it with you now:

Very Uncool Songs I Secretly Adore

“Midnight Blue,” Lou Graham He’s the lead singer of Foreigner, and this sounds like Foreigner, but it’s somehow even worse. I treasure it for the lyrics: I remember what my father said/He said, “Son, life is simple. It’s either cherry red or midnight blue.” Dude, quit bogarting that roach.

“Magnet and Steel,” Walter Egan I guess if you’re looking for a metaphor for attraction, this is as simple as it gets, eh? I like the chick singers oooooing in the background, the memories of my life when this was on the radio, all of it. Uncoolness factor somewhat mitigated by its inclusion on the “Boogie Nights” soundtrack, later restored by the claims of WalterEgan.net, which identifies him as “renowned and enduring singer and songwriter of the million-seller rock classic ‘Magnet and Steel’.”

“Float On,” the Floaters A guy I used to work with remarked, “That’s pretty much says one-hit wonder, doesn’t it? When the name of the band is incorporated in the name of the first single?” Ayup. And never mind the many unpleasant images associated with the word “floater,” from police slang for corpses discovered in water to what we deposit in the toilet every day. Still, how can you not love a song in which the members of the band each take a verse, identifying themselves by name and zodiac sign, and then tell us what kind of woman they love? Libra, and my name is Charles/Now I like a woman that’s quiet/A woman who carries herself/Like Miss Universe Bonus uncoolness points: They may have been the only soul group from Detroit that couldn’t make a second hit record.

“30 Days in the Hole,” Humble Pie A fine example of false-start recording, where before the music actually begins we get 30 seconds or so of studio dreck — coughing, chairs scraping, or, in this case, the band’s singers trying to harmonize, a capella, on the title phrase. It’s so Spinal Tap. You know, like they’re really Robert Johnson, and someday music scholars will want to hear every peep they ever made in an attempt to divine their true greatness.

“Indian Giver,” 1910 Fruitgum Company Bubblegum was teenybopper music, something for 12-year-olds to squeal over while their older sisters sneered and went back to the liner notes on their Doors records. But a lot of it was plenty catchy, and this one is my favorite with its tom-toms-around-the-signal-fire chorus, and– Oh, hell, it’s simpler than that: When I hear it, I think of the pool and summer. I can practically smell the chlorine.

“The Yellow Rose of Texas,” Mitch Miller Yes, I said Mitch Miller. Follow the bouncing ball, and all that. On the uncoolness scale, he’s in league with Lawrence Welk. And yet. This song always comes on the iPod when I’m laboring up a hill on my bike, and it gives me the strength to go on. It’s a march — how can you not fall in step? The last time I heard it, I finally noticed the “yellow rose” part, which I only recently learned was southern slang for a pretty mulatto girl. I went a-Googling, and became perhaps the last American to learn the story of Emily West, the original yellow rose. I noted with pleasure that Miller utterly bowdlerized the lyrics — how uncool!

“Gimme Dat Ding,” The Pipkins A source and I once bonded over our shared secret love for this silly novelty hit, a ragtime piano number with what sounds like Tiny Tim at the mic with Wolfman Jack singing descant. And they knew exactly how much a person could tolerate of this: It clocks in at 2:14 seconds.

“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Diana Ross Sure, it was a No. 1 hit, but I think it rates major uncoolness points because it captured Diana Ross at her most awful — in her Miss Ross/Miss Thing diva-be-too-cool-for-the-room period (which, yes, she never left). And yet, I love it for one reason: I saw Miss Ross sing this in concert, in Dayton, Ohio. She spent most of the show swanning around the stage, talking to the audience and only intermittently bothering to break into song. When she sensed interest flagging, she’d fling her arms upward and her hair back, and everyone would scream. It was ghastly. Some years later, I saw a drag queen do the same song, in a crummy gay bar, and she put so much goddamn mustard on it that I was nearly in tears — that was a performance. Every time I hear the song now, I think of the night a man named Eric outworked a woman named Diana.

“Dreams of the Everyday Housewife,” Glen Campbell OK, this one I don’t have on my iPod; it really is wreck-on-the-freeway awful, and my fondness for it is rooted in the numb horror it inspires. People forget not everyone was young and getting laid in the ’60s, and lots of them listened to top-40 radio, too. I’d put this on a CD called Traditional Womanhood, along with Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” “Wives and Lovers” by Jack Jones and the collected works of Bobby Goldsboro.

“Real Live Girl,” Robert Goulet I link this one with the Campbell tune. It really hasn’t aged well, has it? Not in a world with $6,000 sex toys and “Silence of the Lambs.” What lyrics: Pardon me miss, but I’ve never done this with a real live girl/Dreams in your bunk don’t compare with a hunk of a real live girl… Ewwwww. And yet, it’s Robert Goulet — how can you not love it?

“She’s Gone,” Hall and Oates This blue-eyed soul duo had many, many hits; someone must have liked them. But I always thought of them as the Taylor Hicks of the ’70s; totally uncool. Except for this number, which I turn up when it comes on the radio, but only if the windows are up. Oh, and “Sara Smile,” too. Um, and “Out of Touch,” but that’s IT. And I still hate Hall and Oates, but especially Daryl Hall; I once read the particulars of a paternity suit against him, filed by a girl who was recruited from the crowd at a show by one of his pimps. Cattle in the auction ring are treated with more dignity. Ewwww.

“I Love,” Tom T. Hall I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy pups, bourbon in a glass, and grass. I can’t believe it! SO DO I!

Oh, God, stop me before I spend all day on this. Any additions? You know where to leave ’em.

Maureen Dowd used the phrase “came a cropper” in her column today (TimesSelect link; don’t bother), and she used it correctly. It was almost punctuated correctly, too, but we should maybe not ask too much. I’ll settle for proper usage, particularly of phrases you see used incorrectly all the time.

A nit-picker who wanted to be absolutely correct would write “‘came a cropper,” if you’re interested. The phrase comes from foxhunting and means, literally, to fall off your horse and hit the dirt. You need the apostrophe to indicate the first word is abbreviated; it’s “became a cropper,” i.e. a farmer, by embracing the farmer’s workplace head-first. I never understood the phrase until I saw it, punctuated correctly, in a photo caption for a book about foxhunting. (I think it was the famous picture of Jackie Kennedy going off, headfirst, wearing white string gloves, looking fab as usual.) Anyway, that explained it for me, and ever since, I’ve been noticing how many people get it wrong. “Came a-cropper” is the usual screwup, which suggests bonny lasses walking through fields of rye, croppering or whatever.

“Hear, hear” — that’s another one. It means, “listen to what this person is saying, because it’s the truth” or, simpler yet, “I agree.” And yet, at least 50 percent of the time it’s used, it’s written “here, here,” and I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, unless you’re summoning a waiter. I found it in a novel written by an author whose work I respect, and I sent him an e-mail pointing it out. No reply.

As usual, The Straight Dope gets it right.

Tack/tact — I sprout more gray hairs every time I see this one. It’s a sailing term, and refers to the zigzag course boats must make as they sail into the wind. If you’re approaching a port that lies directly in the eye of the wind, you have to get there via a series of 45-degree course adjustments. “Let’s take another tack,” means, “Let’s approach this from a different angle.” And yet, I always, always see it written “tact,” and who the hell knows what that means, because I sure don’t.

Please don’t get me started on the anxious/eager difference, which isn’t difficult to understand, and yet even editors can’t get it right, many days.

And people! The principles of one’s faith? Are TENETS! Not TENANTS!

Bookmark this site. It’s a good reference to keep handy.

UPDATE: A commenter in the Ruins thread points out that a “copse” is, by definition, a small group of trees, and so you don’t need to say “copse of trees,” as I did in that post. Hmm. Good point, but I’m calling poetic license on that one. I’ve never heard the word used alone before. My online dictionary tells me its roots are in the 16th century word “coppice.” I guess if you said, “Henry, amble over to that copse and fetch me a fern,” probably people wouldn’t know what you were talking about. As when you use the phrase “‘come a cropper,” perhaps. As my daughter says these days: what-evuh.

Couple bits of bloggage:

The Poor Man answers all your Mel Gibson questions. Including the one that most interested me: Q: Gibson apparently blew a 0.12 on a breathalizer, which is only 150% the legal limit. What is that, like 3 beers? I barely even mention the Jews until I’ve put away a 20-pack. Is Gibson a wuss?

This is perhaps of local interest only, but perhaps not: Jack Lessenberry appreciates Maryann Mahaffey, longtime Detroit City Council president, who died last week. A fine portrait of what old-school liberals are, in their Platonic ideal. Bonus, a four-paragraph summation of what’s wrong with newspapers these days, at the very end.

Amy Welborn linked to this interview on Mercatornet.com the other day, about the Gardasil HPV vaccine. Pay special attention to the questions. For the sort of smug tut-tutting we’ve come to expect from religious conservatives, it really can’t be beat: …not everyone who contracts cervical cancer does so through her own fault, so to speak. So to speak. Through her own fault. What a fine Christian. Most days I’m not for bomb-throwing, but I think this commenter on the issue over at Alicublog cuts right to the heart of things: The argument comes down to this. Both sides know that people are going to have sex before marriage, the difference is the so-called liberals believe that they shouldn’t suffer and die for it, whereas conservatives think suffering and death is exactly what the f*ckers deserve.

Yup.

Another busy day today. Have at it in the comments.

I read Scott Smith’s “A Simple Plan,” loved it, finished it and never picked it up again. For me, that’s sayin’ something; I’m a big rereader. Honestly, though, I couldn’t bear to experience the story again — that’s how much it creeped me out.

The story took place in and around northwest Ohio, for one thing, Alan’s ancestral homeland. I’ve told him more than once that I have no intention of living there, ever, so he can forget the whither-thou-goest stuff if he ever gets a hankering for a Defiance zip code again. Smith’s portrait of a certain sort of semi-rural, tank-town hopelessness was so on the mark that it made my chest grow tight. He absolutely knows what it’s like to live in a place like that, especially when you haven’t exactly chosen it. As I recall, the main character, Hank, is a bookkeeper for a farm-implement business, which puts him in the white-collar class but just barely, with a salary that allows for little more than a version of paycheck-to-paycheck life, and with no future. Plus he has a brother with the IQ of Forrest Gump to look after, and a pregnant wife. Seldom has the tightening noose of a disappointing life been rendered quite so well.

So in the midst of this falls, literally, the solution to all his problems: A whole lot of money. While chasing a dog one wintry day, Hank, his brother and his brother’s drunk friend find a small plane crashed in a copse of trees. It’s been there for some time, to judge from the condition of the pilot’s body. Next to him is a large duffel bag, filled with $4.4 million in cash.

They start speculating on the source of the money. Clearly it’s ill-gotten gains; otherwise someone would have come looking for it, reported the missing plane. So why shouldn’t they take it? But they need more information, and so they — or rather, Hank — comes up with the plan: They’ll take the money, and sit on it, until spring, until the plane is found, the pilot identified and they have an idea who’s missing $4.4 million. Then they’ll wait another decent interval, and one by one, not all at once, they’ll leave town for plausible reasons and go start new lives in better places, each a millionaire. All they need to be is patient, and wise.

It’s a simple plan, really. Of course it falls apart almost immediately.

The story requires a reader to believe Hank is a good person who makes one bad decision on impulse — and it’s not to keep the money — and finds himself sliding headfirst to moral ruination. It’s not such a hard one to swallow; I’ve skated on far thinner ice while suspending disbelief. And I have no illusions about the depths to which good people can sink under the right circumstances. One benefit of giving up God is, it frees you to see that evil exists in every one of us, and it’s our struggle to contain it that gives life its crazy tension.

So now it’s 12 years later, and Smith is just now getting around to publishing a second novel, “The Ruins.” I can’t tell you much about the plot without spoiling it, but here’s why Alan put it down halfway through: Smith no longer finds his greatest villain in the murky forests of the human heart, but in the jungles of Mexico. The rave by Stephen King on the back cover should give you a clue: We’re in the Land of the Supernatural, and while I don’t think Smith has exactly performed a bait and switch — it’s his second book, after all — I see why the Amazon reader reviews are decidedly mixed. “I wanted to see stupid people do stupid things and suffer for it,” Alan said. “But not like this.”

The people aren’t stupid, just young. And American. And on vacation. A potentially fatal combination, as anyone who’s ever held those three cards can testify. Two couples go on vacation to Cancun, hook up with a German and a trio of Greeks in that sort of sign-language, we-speak-only-a-few-words-in-common way that’s fueled so well by alcohol. The German is sad because his brother is missing; he fell in love with a pretty archaeologist headed for some ruins inland, and went off to find her. He hasn’t been heard from since. But he left this map…

When the four make a series of dumb calls, each one complicating their situation a little more, we’re still rooted in familiar territory. But then the story steps off the path, literally, and we’re in King Kountry, and well, I finished the story, and it was as horrifying as I thought it would be. But it didn’t freak me out the way “A Simple Plan” did, because I’d have to believe that what did happen could happen, and I never believed that.

And if the whole thing was metaphor, well, 12 years was a long time to wait for a poorer retelling of “A Simple Plan.”

Still, it has a very flashy website.

Curse you, Lance Mannion. So I followed a link from his joint, and tried out this facial-recognition gimcrackery over at MyHeritage.com, in which you upload a photo of yourself and they compare it to the celebrity database to determine which one you most resemble. I’m not going to show you the photo I used, because I think it makes the punchline more amusing. Are you ready? My celebrity twin?

Kelly Clarkson:

Yes, the woman whom Slate summed up in a phrase: “despite the best efforts of a battery of stylists (she) still looks more like a Dutch mastiff than Jessica Simpson.” Well, I never claimed to be a beauty, either. (And if that’s a Dutch mastiff, I’m…never mind.)

Funnier still was No. 2:

We do have similar senses of humor. So there’s that.

Alan is installing the new switchplates today, and I have laundry, errands, bill-paying and about nine million other things to do this morning. See you back here this afternoon. In the meantime, feel free to find your long-lost famous relatives.

Good morning, welcome to July 2006. We’re having a heat wave, the Middle East is in yet another spasm of hatred and death and explosions and blood and guess what? If you choose a doctor or drug store or ambulance driver, now you have another question to ask them. After you go through the usual — proximity to your home or office, staff privileges at a local hospital, willingness to accept new patients, board certification, office hours on weekends/holidays — after all that, now you get to ask them this:

“Do you have any religious convictions that might preclude your delivery of care? Might you balk at a particular vaccine, a circumstance of my lifestyle, a shadow that passes over the world not to your liking? At some point in our relationship, might your fears over the fate of your immortal soul get in the way of my health care? Yes? Well, I guess my search continues.”

WashPost has the story:

Around the United States, health workers and patients are clashing when providers balk at giving care that they feel violates their beliefs, sparking an intense, complex and often bitter debate over religious freedom vs. patients’ rights. …For Debra Shipley, her duties as a nurse began to conflict with her Christian faith when the county health clinic where she worked near Memphis required she dispense the morning-after pill. “I felt like my religious liberties were being violated,” said Shipley, 49, of Atoka, Tenn. “I could not live with myself if it did it. I answer to God first and foremost.”

And so on and on and on. Some anesthesiologists refuse to assist in sterilization procedures. Respiratory therapists sometimes object to removing ventilators from terminally ill patients. Gynecologists around the country may decline to prescribe birth control pills. Some doctors reject requests for Viagra from unmarried men.

I like that last one. They don’t like your sex life. So you don’t get your ED meds. Tough luck, buddy.

Here’s my single favorite anecdote, from a sidebar:

Cynthia Copeland also had a run-in with a pharmacist in 2004. He wrongly assumed she was planning an abortion because she had a prescription for a drug that can be used for that purpose. In fact, Copeland had already had undergone a procedure to remove a fetus that had no pulse, and she needed the drug to complete the process.

“I was sitting there in the drugstore waiting and heard the pharmacist say really loudly, ‘I refuse to participate in an abortion,’ ” said Copeland, 39, who lives near Los Angeles. “I felt so violated. The miscarriage was about grief, and that was made public in a way that really compounded my grief.”

Notice how loud he said it. He wanted to make sure she heard it. Also, God.

Of course, most people who live in large cities will easily be able to find another doctor. It’s the folks stuck in Fargo or Casper or some other remote outpost of civilization who will be stuck driving 120 miles to find a pharmacist who will give them a pack of Plan B after a rape.

OK, I’ll stop now. It’s hot and the world’s at war, and it somehow makes more sense to be bugged by religious hysterics than Hezbollah.

Man, what about this weather we’re having? I spent all of Sunday indoors, my usual policy when the temperature rises much above 90. Frolicking in heat waves is for children and crazy people. The rest of us stay in the shade and try not to exert ourselves.

So I have two stories to write before noon. It’s a different kind of exertion. Back later.