God, what a week. I guess we could sit down and talk about…so much. So, so much. But I’m tired, and today I’m taking the easy way out. I mean, it’s Friday. We’re still allowed to enjoy Fridays, right? So here, below, is the flash-fiction story I wrote in my friend Jimmy’s monthly Sunday-afternoon writing class a couple weeks back. If you remember the last one, here are the rules: You draw a face-down index card from each of four piles — a place, an animal, and I forget what the others are. Then you take about an hour to write anything you want incorporating the four words. Mine, this month, were Mumbai, monkey, yacht, zucchini. I’m not sure whether I like this one; I certainly took the easy way out with the ending, but the clock was ticking and I’d written myself into a corner.

What I find most interesting about writing fiction, more or less from scratch, is how it’s kinda like psychoanalysis, in that it often sinks a probe into your unconscious and pulls out something you might or might not want to see. Which is to say, I don’t think it’s an accident that I’d just concluded lifeguard training and my first image is a distressed swimmer.

So, no title, just stream-of-consciousness. Happy Friday, happy weekend and happy birthday, J.C. Burns, without whom this blog wouldn’t exist.

The helmsman spotted the swimmer first, far offshore and with no obvious signs of wreckage nearby. He sounded an alarm and immediately swung the wheel, putting the boat into a wide U-turn.

On the afterdeck, four women watched the champagne bucket rattle and slide a few inches before a crew member standing nearby stopped its progress and resettled it on a towel he produced from somewhere on his person. A graceful move to shame the smoothest magician, but at these prices what else do you expect.

“What’s going on?” the oldest one said, confused to be experiencing something she hadn’t pre-approved. “The captain assured me it was a straight shot to the next island.”

A mate, maybe the second or third or who knows, the twelfth, whatever, one of those guys with braid on his epaulets, materialized at her elbow, another magician move. It occurred to me I was drunk.

“We’ve spotted a man in distress,” the mate crooned in a British accent. “It’s maritime law and custom that we assist.”

“I suppose so,” the crone said. She supposed it was OK we wouldn’t let a man drown, as long as she wasn’t delayed arriving at whatever shopping destination we were visiting next. Crew members dropped a dinghy into the water and its little outboard coughed to life. We gathered at the rail to watch the rescue, the crewman throwing a line to the swimmer and pulling him aboard the dinghy.

Just a few minutes later, he was deposited on the afterdeck, shirtless in a pair of ratty-looking shorts. He shivered in wracking waves as more crew wrapped him in blankets and the first mate, who was the medical officer, tried to ask what had happened.

“Where did you come from?” the mate asked the man.

“M–m-m-m-m-m,” he said.

“Captain, I believe he’s trying to say ‘Mumbai,’” the old woman said, smiling. Her drinking companions, daughters or granddaughters – they had the same nose – snickered a little.

“Or maybe it’s ‘monkey,’” one offered, getting into the spirit. Ten minutes ago, they were four women on a chartered yacht. Now they had a story to tell back home, at the club.

The mate paid them no attention. He’d opened his bag and was taking out a blood pressure cuff. “Bring water,” he told another crew member. “And tell the galley we need a pot of hot tea, a.s.a.p.”

“What happened to your boat?” the mate asked as he wrapped the cuff around an arm as skinny as a zucchini. “Were you fishing? Did anyone else go in the water?” The swimmer still couldn’t answer, and seemed almost ready to fall asleep, his head lolling. How long had he been fighting to stay afloat?

I figured the best thing for me to do was keep my mouth shut, although I opened it wide enough to pour in a few swallows of Red Stripe. Unlimited alcohol was included in this charter and I meant to get my money’s worth.

The crew arrived with the water, and the mate gently propped the man up and got him to sip a little. The tea came in a Thermos, and he did the same. In a few more minutes, the man seemed to be more alert, and focused on the semicircle of people standing around him. What a sight we must have been, an assortment of clean-cut crew in crisp polo shirts, the mate in his gold braid, four women with matching noses – and it was only then it occurred to me they all had the same plastic surgeon, like the Jacksons – and me, with my three-day beard and flip-flops and Red Stripe. Hey, I’m no tech tycoon. I only had a share of this charter.

“M-m-m-my boat,” he finally was able to get out. “There was a whale. A few of them. Orcas!” He seemed to be coming back to himself.

“They…they…attacked my boat,” he gasped. “Capsized it. Like a toy in a bathtub.” We gaped in astonishment, and then, from below, came the sound of a muffled but significant collision. We all looked up, first at one another, and then, just off the starboard beam, at the black and white form surfacing, its blowhole exhaling a fine mist, and just before it dove again, it rolled to the side and showed the line of its mouth. I swear it was smiling.

Happy Liberation Day, fellow Americans. Elon Musk spent more than $20 million for his candidate to lose a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and all he got was this stupid hat:

On, Wisconsin!

So that was nice to wake up to today, as was the lack of physical misery. I finally got around to getting my second shingles vaccine Monday, and it kicked my ass hard. (Keep in mind this description comes from a total wimp where physical discomfort is concerned, which doesn’t bode well for a cheery old age.) It was roughly 24 hours of low-fever no-fun, and as I lay in bed, whimpering, I wondered what it would be like if I was a Wisconsin voter in the election-security era Republicans want to return to — i.e. only in-person voting, only on Election Day. I might have chosen to sleep through the day. Or what if the weather had been like it is today, a driving, cold rain that’s threatening to flood roads and make even a quick scuttle to the garage miserable? Ditto. This is but one reason I’ve come to loathe Republicans.

But we have at least some limited good news to enjoy today – the narrowing of the margins in the Florida races, the blowout in Wisconsin. Maybe it’ll light a little flame in the national party. Maybe they’ll decide it’s better to fight than to roll over and play dead. We can hope, anyway.

So, Wednesday. The rain pushed me to look at Saturday’s march weather, and it’s not good, but I don’t want to be dissuaded. Somehow, walking in a cold rain means more than coming out on a perfect spring day. And as we say at this latitude, there’s no bad weather, just the wrong clothing.

As I’m still a little tapped, here’s some bloggage to consider:

Another banger by Roy, this one on JD Vance, as he considers what, exactly, about Vance attracted Trump’s eye:

I know Tubby likes to have stone bastards around him, but he also likes to keep people close that he can smack around. Fortunately for him, some of his freakshow inner circle can fulfill both functions — like I’ve said, this is the last respectable job any of them will ever have, and they know it. And he’s also got a couple of fuckfaces he can definitely treat like shit whenever he wants: one’s “Little Marco” Rubio and the other is Vance. Trump sends them out specifically to step on their own dicks, which they always do, and he not only gets the pure joy of that spectacle but also a chance to send the world a message: That he’s the kind of guy that can and will do that to people, so everybody better watch out. He can’t really do that to Miller or Musk, but he sure as hell can do it to these clowns whenever he likes.

Exactly right. The Greenland trip was a fiasco, concluding with VP ChubbyCheeks essentially threatening military action to a (for now) ally, while standing on its soil, the sort of diplomatic…you can’t even call it a “misstep” or “faux pas,” it’s such a dick move. Tubby isn’t going to live forever, and none of these guys have what it takes to keep the movement together. Vance will end up going back to blood, I suspect — drinking from a shoulder-supported jug with “XXX” on the front and yelling at his TV.

I can hear sounds from the back yard even through this downpour, and sure enough, it’s what I’m calling the motorcycle gang — the flocks of starlings, grackles and red-winged blackbirds that come through every spring. The latter are notorious for defending their nests, to the point that some local parks have to restrict movement near where they’ve chosen to do so. It’s pretty funny; every year some runner or child gets dive-bombed, leading to an outcry on social media, where stupid causes go to nest. I just watched one perambulate through the yard, making his shrieky call and flexing his epaulets with every one. Must be mating season.

OK, then. Enjoy the day, no matter what it’s doing outdoors, and remember: Wisconsin is lighting our path.

I’m thinking of going to a Hands Off demonstration this coming weekend — there are several in the metro area. But I need some ideas for a sign. Bottom line: I want it to be mean, because fuck those guys. So far I’ve got:

HEY ELON
YOUR SON
is NOT a
HUMAN SHIELD

Too obscure?

Or

ELON MUSK:
GENEROUS WITH HIS SEMEN
STINGY WITH YOUR MONEY

Too wordy.

Or

VANCE & TRUMP:
FATMAN & ROBIN

This only works if you know the Burt Ward Robin.

Something along those lines. If you have any brainstorms, drop ’em in the comments.

An amusing story in the WashPost today (gift link) about the disappearance of the Oval Office ivy.:

The ivy sat atop the fireplace mantel for most of the past 50 years, providing a backdrop for meetings with countless leaders and foreign dignitaries at the White House. It has filtered the air breathed by Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Whitney Houston.

Cuttings were given to exiting staff members, to propagate their own plants. “Countless” people have Oval Office ivy descendants in their own offices and homes now. A sharp-eyed trustee of his own ivy plant noticed something different on the mantel now:

In its place, conspicuously, are seven gleaming decorative objects, seemingly made of gold. A Maryland writer named Jamie Kirkpatrick noticed them earlier this month, around the time of the contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when the mantel was visible in nearly every photograph of Trump and Vice President JD Vance arguing with Zelensky.

What were those? Kirkpatrick wondered. Golf trophies?

No. And they’re not trash, but they are golden objects for a president who loves golden objects:

They’re artifacts from the White House’s own collection. The central gilded bronze basket, called a compotier, was made in France around 1815 and gifted to the Nixon administration in 1973. To its left and right are a pair of urns from the Monroe Plateau, a set of gilded tableware acquired by President James Monroe in 1817, shortly after the British burned the White House. The outer two sets are from a collection acquired during the Eisenhower administration that are usually displayed in the Vermeil Room, which is named after its contents. (Vermeil is gilded silver.)

Click through for some shots of the ivy before and after the gold-plated president sent it back to the greenhouse. God, what a jerk.

Another gift link, to a story in the NYT, about a woman who rode her “medical freedom” to an early grave:

In 2007, more than 1,440,000 Americans were diagnosed with cancer. Dawn Kali was one of them. Then in her mid-30s and raising three kids, Ms. Kali’s natural warmth and openness made her a popular waitress at the raw-food restaurant where she worked in San Francisco. When her doctor told her she had Stage 1 breast cancer, the fact that survival rates for her cancer type were in excess of 90 percent (and rising) did little to soften the emotional blow. Ms. Kali knew what cancer entailed: a barrage of medical treatments that seemed to sap people of their quality of life. And then they’d die anyway. “That’s not going to be me,” she swore.

Nope! Instead, Kali fell in with a quack:

She discovered “The pH Miracle,” a 2002 book written by a charming self-proclaimed naturopath named Robert Oldham Young. Mr. Young asserted that deacidifying the body through diet, exercise and his pH Miracle-branded pills and creams could cure virtually any sickness. Cancer, Mr. Young taught, was merely a symptom of an acidic internal environment. His credibility was bolstered by his appearances on national talk shows that featured him as a diet guru.

Ms. Kali adopted Young’s “alkalarian” program: an all-liquid, low-acid diet of vegetable smoothies supplemented by Mr. Young’s proprietary pHour Salts, purified water drops and green powders. Soon she was drinking a gallon of juice each day. Now, she controlled her treatment. The prescribed combination of a strict diet, meditation and exercise left her feeling empowered.

It also left her cancer free to spread. You can guess how her story ends. I will say that Kali did finally wise up, but too late. The story is about much more than Dawn Kali, and I’ll bet you can guess whose name pops up.

OK, then. A nice weekend. Kate closed on her house! She moves soon.

We celebrated with champagne, and took some of it at the kitschy basement bar, likely to be a rehearsal space:

I did my friend Jimmy’s fun-fiction class again. The class is in Hamtramck. Followed this deep thinker through a few stop signs:

Sigh. As my friend Deb texted me last week, just once I want to wake up, look at my phone and not say, “Jesus Fucking Christ.” Let’s all have a good week, eh?

I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing at this:

President Trump is demanding that Colorado take down its “purposefully distorted” painting of him hanging in the State Capitol.

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump said in a post Sunday on Truth Social. “The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one [of] me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older.”

…“I am speaking …to the Radical Left Governor, Jared Polis, who is extremely weak on Crime, in particular with respect to Tren de Aragua, which practically took over Aurora (Don’t worry, we saved it!), to take it down,” Trump said. “Jared should be ashamed of himself.”

The portrait:

Now this is Monday content I can get behind. The president, who considers himself a next-level handsome specimen of mature masculinity, with a year-round tan due to his many masculine outdoor pursuits, and he leans forward like he does because he’s making a masculine point, dammit, not because he wears lifts in his shoes — doesn’t like his portrait, which makes him look like a chubby-cheeked demon. And Barack Obama looks wonderful! HOW DARE THEY?

A few more fat portraits, a few more Tesla demonstrations, and we might have the beginnings of a foothold. As Democrats, with very few exceptions, are proving themselves worthless in this struggle, then we’ll just have to keep on strugglin’ on our own.

A busy weekend. The Derringers took a proactive stance toward dealing with our anger by? Taking a gun class, the one Michigan requires before you can get your CPL, or concealed pistol license. I have no intention of packing, I hasten to add. But it was interesting to see the law detailed (such as it was, kinda — more on that in a couple sentences). And the course included an hour of range time, so I got to see what all the excitement is about, and honestly, I don’t get it. The vibe on pistol ranges is so unpleasant to me, the bro-y bullshit of it all. The guy shooting next to me was wearing earmuffs emblazoned FJB, and in case you were too stupid to get it, LET’S GO BRANDON as well. For a rank novice, I shot pretty well.

The teacher was a piece of work. He chuckled through the entire 8-hour class, and swore like the Marine he once was. Having worked in newsrooms, nothing about the language offended me, and maybe when you’re teaching in a super-macho gun store, you think no one will be bothered by the ass-rape jokes you make after every! Single! Mention! of Jail! But I know a few gay people who are arming themselves for the unpleasantness they have every reason to believe is coming, and some of them certainly would be. But we graduated, and got our certificates, and now I have to consider whether it’s worth $100 to be legal, so to speak. I just don’t see the point. I don’t live in the world gun-toters do, with their constant vigilance against the violence they are sure is stalking them, personally, every minute of the day.

I used to work with a man — Leo Morris, for those of you who remember him — whose brother, a Texas resident, was radicalized by the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre of 1991. He started packing, and swiftly got to the point he “felt naked” without his holster and sidearm. He was always trying to get Leo to do the same, taking him shooting when they got together, etc. I lost touch with Leo in his later years, but a few things he wrote made me think that maybe his brother’s paranoia had taken hold in Leo. (He began using the phrase “constitutional carry,” for instance.) But one thing gun school did for me is make me realize: There is virtually nothing I could shoot someone over. A physical attack with serious intent to kill or maim me or my family is the only thing I can think of, and that would require so much advance planning — I’d have to have the gun, the gun would have to be loaded, I’d have to be able to get to it, etc. — that it strikes me as intensely impractical. So I guess I’ll just have to trust that a lifetime of prudent behavior will save me from losing my life to gun violence, as it does millions and millions of Americans.

The guy teaching the class, the chuckling Leatherneck, sketched out so many scenarios where violence is right there waiting to strike you down that I had to think: What a way to live. He was carrying, I am not kidding, THREE weapons — two on each hip and one down the back of his pants. Talk about paranoia. And he was responsible, if you take him at his word. He doesn’t carry when he’s going to be drinking, he said. He practices often. And so on. But if you’re armed, then it almost requires you to be hyper-vigilant at all times, and that? Is exhausting. I have enough shit to worry about.

I keep thinking about the FJB-earmuffs guy. Alan, who shoots skeet, reported that there was a chronic ammunition shortage during the Obama administration, due to persistent rumors that the president was coming for the guns AND the ammo. He did neither, but we’re not talking about the smartest, savviest, best-informed people, either. And neither did Biden, but oh my those Macomb County Republicans aren’t going to let that stop them from putting him on their stupid gun earmuffs. The way people talk on social media when, for instance, someone’s TV gets stolen or car is broken into, makes me think they…don’t think. You can’t shoot someone over a TV, or your car stereo, or any other property crime. People imagine they’d be able to drop to the floor, find a cover position, calmly draw their weapon and return fire with deadly accuracy? In a movie theater. In a grocery store. In any mass-panic situation. You are not John Wick, and John Wick doesn’t exist. And even if you did act within the law — the guy was coming through your window, knife in his teeth, etc. — imagine the aftermath. The cops. The cleanup. Having to walk past the spot where you shot and killed a man, every day. You’d have to move! I would, anyway. Totally not worth it to me. I’d just run out the back door.

OK, I’ve gone on enough, and it’s time to finish editing this video. The week ahead promises temperatures in the 40s, ugh. Might as well do some spring cleaning and file the taxes. Later.

Had to do a Costco run today. We were running low on paper towels, and needed trash bags, laundry detergent, that stuff I only want to buy twice a year. I had a little extra time, it was lunchtime, and I thought, by golly, I’m going to try one of those giant hot dogs this place is so famous for. I got the combo — hot dog plus drink — for $1.50 and sat down at a shared table to eat. The couple next to me had come in from Canada to shop, but were disappointed they couldn’t find Bugles. Yes, the horn-shaped snack food. Another couple sitting nearby suggested they try Aldi, just three miles away.

“But there’ll be a 25 percent tariff on those levied at the bridge, so I hope that doesn’t eat up the anticipated bulk savings,” I said, and we all shared a grim chuckle. This Costco is in red Macomb County, and the fact we could laugh about it struck me as a slim slice of dim sunshine in a dark time. Then I came home to learn the on-again, off-again tariffs are kinda off, then kinda on, and we’re supporting Ukraine militarily again? But the market is still down 600 points, just today. Capitalists these days must feel like a frat boy who brought a hot girl home from the bar at closing time, and learned too late that she was crazy as a shithouse rat, and also pregnant.

We tried to warn them! Now they’ve fucked around and are finding out. A friend was drinking on a bar patio last night — we’re deep in Fool’s Spring this week — and a Cybertruck pulled up to the stop sign at the corner. Everyone on the patio began yelling abuse at the driver. This is good news.

Oh well. Concentrate on the good! Kate’s house passed inspection with flying colors, and closing is set for the end of the month. Don’t tell her, but her father is giving her a [deleted] for a housewarming present. Me, I’m still thinking. The problem is complicated by her boyfriend’s two cats, so any decent furniture is probably not a good idea. I saw a few pieces of furniture at Costco, but the style now is this nubby upholstery that makes everything look like a giant scratching post. Think I’ll wait until she’s moved and see what gaps need to be filled.

Meanwhile, I tackled the taxes. What should have been a two-hour chore stretched out to the full day, because That Tax Program Everyone Uses was glitchy as hell. I laid down for a nap after four hours, and a potential solution came to me in a doze. Didn’t work, although now, even though I changed nothing, it claims our forms are error-free and ready to file. Then I wondered if the problem was Safari, the Mac browser I’ve been using forever. More and more sites are dropping subtle hints that they’re “optimized for Chrome,” and the thought of migrating all my bookmarks and passwords gives me a headache.

Finally, I assume you’ve been paying attention to the Mahmoud Khalil case. It makes me think of Larry Flynt, and why a bigshot Harvard lawyer like Alan Isaacman took his case to the Supreme Court. As Isaacman and Flynt both pointed out, when the government wants to crack down on free speech, they don’t go after the Girl Scouts first. They target the pornographers, people others are afraid to stand up for. And when they want to break all the laws around immigration, they go after a troublesome Palestinian activist. But they won’t stop there. And I think that’s evident.

Midweek is here. Hope no more glitches.

We didn’t see this in New Orleans, but I endorse it heartily:

Swastikar gets bombarded at Mardi Gras
byu/funksonme inPublicFreakout

I also find this account from inside one of the Swasticars amusing:

New Orleans is a blue city in a bloody-red state, but still: Resistance. And resistance that means more than wearing a pink suit and holding up a little paddle. I mean, we’ve seen what a piece of crap a Cybertruck is — one of those beads might have shattered the windshield.

And this, Reddit informs me, is now a regular event at the Easton Tesla dealership in Columbus:

I guess if we’re going to save what’s left of this country, we’ll have to do it ourselves. Surely we can’t rely on anyone in Washington to do it:

Republicans on Capitol Hill are shying away from criticizing Donald Trump’s policies over fears for their physical safety and that of their families, a Democratic member of Congress has said.

Eric Swalwell, a Democratic representative from California, said his Republican colleagues were “terrified” of crossing Trump not only because of the negative impact on their political careers, but also from anxiety that it might provoke physical threats that could cause personal upheaval and require them to hire round-the-clock security as protection.

…“It’s their personal safety that they’re afraid of, and they have spouses and family members saying, ‘Do not do this, it’s not worth it, it will change our lives forever. We will have to hire around-the-clock security.’ Life can be very uncomfortable for your children.

“That is real, because when [Elon] Musk [Trump’s most powerful ally] tweets at somebody, or Trump tweets at somebody, or calls somebody out, their lives are turned upside down.

“When he tweets at you, people make threats, and you have to take people at their word. And so that is a real thing that my colleagues struggle with.”

Here’s my advice: Don’t take them at their word. Assume the people who make these threats are what they seem to be: Cowards. Live your life in the open. If someone yells at you in a restaurant, yell back, or spill your ice water on their shoes, or just look bored and snap your fingers for security to throw them out. Don’t hire around-the-clock security. Be brave. Public service isn’t all receptions at the French embassy. There are women all over the world who open their inboxes every day and find death threats, rape threats, threats most congress members haven’t even considered. Teach your children what bravery looks like.

(Noted: This didn’t work out for Salman Rushdie, true. But most of these people are indeed cowards. The odds are in your favor.)

But if you can’t find the strength to do this, please dispense with the pink and the paddles and the other empty gestures, which sound like something you’d hear discussed in the background chatter in a Woody Allen movie party scene. It just doesn’t pack the punch you think it does. Boycott the speech. A pink pantsuit is not bravery.

And now we’re back home. The shiner has progressed from Mardi Gras magenta to southwestern-sunset shades of muted purple and yellow. Most of the swelling is gone, but the browbone is still a little tender. I forget what I look like, and every time I pass a mirror I start a little, but oh well.

And Kate found a house! A cute, very nicely remodeled bungalow on the east side of Detroit. Still has to pass inspection, but I’m thinking it’ll work out.

The week begins, and already my to-do list is a mile long. First: Lunch. Then a workout. Hope your goes well.

Honestly, it’s a miracle there aren’t more black eyes around this place, when you look at what the live oak roots do to sidewalks.

Cemeteries are closed for Mardi Gras weekend. Not sure why, but I bet influencers and other idiots are a big reason. Still, they’re beautiful even through the gates:

Little design details tell you where you are:

Now this is a church fundraiser:

Yesterday was kind of a mess. Strong thunderstorms were forecast, and the parades were first shortened, stripped of bands and double-decker floats. Then the bands and the floats were restored, but the routes kept short. There was no way we’d get a decent spot to watch Zulu, so we watched it on the hotel TV. Afterward, through a series of miscalculations, we ended up outside the Zulu HQ post-parade, where lots of participants were still wearing their blackface and looked like they hadn’t slept, or had a non-alcoholic drink, in 12-14 hours. We ended up wandering down Broad Street to a place called Crescent City Steaks. A conversation in the waiting area with a local indicated we found a non-touristy spot, although everyone was wearing sequins, silly hats, tulle or some other costume-y outfit. The food was 1960s-era steakhouse right down to the creamed spinach.

And now it’s Ash Wednesday, and we leave later today. We’ll be making a third try to visit NOMA and deal with whatever else the universe throws our way.

The shiner is very vivid. It looks mostly magenta today — Mardi Gras colors! It’s been a good trip.

Before we left for New Orleans, I told some people I work out with that I wasn’t going to do the thing everyone does at Mardi Gras, i.e. get wasted and stumble around town like a roaring idiot.

And I didn’t. We stopped into the Hermes Bar yesterday, aka the Antoine’s Annex. because I thought a snack would be nice before our late brunch reservation, and also I needed to use the bathroom, and it was one place that wasn’t blaring hip-hop at a bazillion decibels. I ordered a Bloody Mary, and struck up a conversation with a nice gentleman, a local. He was there with his gang of fiftysomething friends, also locals, because it’s what you do, and he was a great ambassador for his city, introducing us around as “my aunt and uncle, up from Dee-troit.” He told us they were leaving shortly, and we should claim their table, as we’d been standing at the bar.

They left, with many good wishes to have a good time and tell the folks back in Dee-troit how great the city was, and we took the table. We ordered truffle fries and what the hell, by now it was noon, let’s have the signature cocktail, a sazerac.

The sazerac made the world a little sparkly and magical, and we left after a while, buying and drinking a bottle of water to be responsible. Everyone is always telling us how important it is to stay hydrated. Wandered the Quarter, saw this, saw that. Got to our brunch, which featured bottomless mimosas, but all I did was sip, honest. We left after the crab cakes Benedict (me) and the chicken and waffles (Alan). I’d describe my state of inebriation as gently tipsy, like my mother when she’d tell what she considered to be a dirty joke. And we were wandering back home when I tripped over a pipe or some fucking thing sticking up from the tree cutout that I’d stepped into to avoid some other bad thing on the sidewalk, and I fell, hard, whacking my eye, but not, amazingly, breaking my glasses.

And now I have a shiner. A very big one, like Rocky when he’s moaning CUT ME to Burgess Meredith. And I will not have more than two drinks at a time until the day I die. As I told my friend when I said I wasn’t going to get drunk, moderation tends to impose itself when your hangovers progress from feeling blah to feeling nauseous to throwing up to requiring a good 48 hours to recover and now, apparently, to falling down and getting a black eye. I’ve always been clumsy; I don’t need this shit. Next time it’ll be a tooth, or my hip. This was last night:

It’s worse this morning. I’ll spare you.

But! It’s been a great trip so far, other than the injury. We arrived Saturday night and found, to our delight, that the Endymion parade was passing right in front of our hotel. Endymion is a so-called “super krewe,” and what that means is, the parade is insanely big and insanely long — band after band after band, float after float after float. So many throws. I got some beads, and we decided to go into the hotel and have a drink at the lobby bar, which we did. You had to have a wristband to even get into our hotel because of the crowds outside. The parade kept going by, and suddenly about 30 or 40 people from outside came rushing in, with the facial expressions that say “some shit is going down outside,” and not “we all need to use the bathroom.”

Alan immediately ducked down. I did not. And then I heard him call out, “Nancy! Only the white people are standing up!” Which is kind of our family joke about how black and white people process violence in our violent world, and so I ducked down, too. After a few minutes, the front desk clerk began checking wristbands and the crisis was over. Apparently there was a scuffle across the street, and one of the scufflers yelled, “I have a gun,” and that’s what started the panic. No gun was ever brandished, and the bartenders all thought Alan’s warning about not being the dumb white person who doesn’t have the sense to get down was very funny. There was a Scottish couple sitting next to us, and this was quite a welcome-to-America kind of initiation. “We’ve only been here an hour,” the man marveled in his thick accent. Well, now you know: Don’t stand up.

Anyway, Endymion:

In the Quarter, Louisiana National Guard and hard barriers everywhere:

This is what terrorism gets you: A police state.

Finally, my sazerac:

Today we have a quieter day planned — the New Orleans Museum of Art, etc. I will step very carefully, wherever I go.

Another weekend, another chamber of news horrors. The sister-in-law of a woman I work with received one of Elon’s justify-your-job emails. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was fired, and replaced by a retiree who once told Trump he could whip ISIS in a week. fElon gets his stupid mug in the news more often than the boss, who every day looks more tired and orange.

Meanwhile, the town-hall pushback has begun.

I have very little news to report, other than this: Kate got outbid on a house she wanted, but! She won a spelling bee at a party on Sunday. I’m so proud. I texted her congratulations, and she said it was no biggie, that she’d won in the third round when she was the only one who could spell “preposterous.” I told her that was the advantage of being a reader in a generation raised with autocorrect and texting. I mean, I’m enough of a tightass on this subject that I winced when Prince did all that “2 U” and “4 U” shit in his song titles. I’m glad some of it got passed down to my offspring.

It reminded me of the time a News-Sentinel copy editor in Fort Wayne entered a spelling bee at Grabill Days or one of those olde tyme country fairs out in the region. Everyone was given an olde tyme slate and a piece of chalk, and the bee commenced. The pronouncer said, “diphtheria,” and every single person spelled it without the first H, except the editor. They bounced him. He protested. I can’t remember how it ended, whether anyone had thought to toss a dictionary into the judge’s kit or what, but I gather the organizers wanted Scott to vamoose and for the alternative-spelling olde tyme fun to continue. Chaos at Grabill Days! BURN DOWN THE SPELLING BEE.

Next we’ll do ophthalmologist and jodhpurs.

I used to have a great memory for phone numbers; I could recall numbers that friends had in 1969. No more. I can’t even remember area codes. I hope I retain my spelling prowess, however. Almost all of my spelling errors nowadays are due to autocorrect.

The last week of February is here, and I feel like a person climbing a mountain with spikes in my hands. We have a mini-break coming up at the end of the week, and it cannot get here soon enough.

My old neighbor in Fort Wayne — a saint, and Kate’s second mother — has a business cleaning offices and sometimes houses. Houses were more of a sideline, but once when we lived here she told me a terrible story about one. It was a nice house, in a good suburban subdivision, maybe set back a bit from its neighbors. On her way out, she complimented the owner on how nice it was.

“Yes,” the owner said. “I’m glad we were able to save it.”

The story unfolded like this: For three years or so, it had been occupied by two teenagers, who’d been abandoned by their parents. The mother left first, perhaps due to some sort of mental crisis, and then the father was offered a job in another state. The teens objected to being uprooted, so the father said, fine, you guys can stay here on your own. He said he’d send them money, and they were told to behave themselves.

In perhaps the least surprising news possible, they did not do this.

Soon the house became known as a teen party venue, and over the course of the next couple of years, the place was trashed. One detail I remember was about the night some kid brought over several gallon cans of paint, which were enthusiastically flung out the windows, lids off. Paint streamed down the sides of the house, and onto the roof and driveway. By the time the teens finished high school, the house was nearly unsalvageable.

I wondered at the time what it would be like to have both your parents abandon you, and at such a time of your life. I wondered what happened to those young people, how they grew up. I wonder where they are now. I wonder what the cops knew.

This week a far worse case of child abandonment was revealed here in Detroit. Three children — a boy, 15, and two girls, 12 and 13 — were found living on their own in a condo where garbage, mold and feces had piled up over the course of four years. This is in Pontiac. The neighbors were stunned. Everyone else was stunned, too, stunned and amazed that this could go on so long. The kids said food was left on the front porch, usually by delivery services. The mother lived nearby, with another child. That child’s father said he had no idea about the other three.

And how was this discovered? The landlord hadn’t been paid rent for a few months, and requested a welfare check.

There are a lot of unanswered questions. Today the county prosecutor filed first-degree child abuse charges. But it’s pretty clear that when we say sometimes children “fall through the cracks,” those aren’t cracks, they’re chasms.

More will be revealed.

How can anyone do this to children. I just don’t understand.

OK! Let’s move on. My friends whose house I’m staying in this week have the same coffeemaker we do. We have a different configuration — thermal carafe with no burner FTW — but we both have Moccamasters. These are pricey machines, but make excellent coffee. Alan has us on a strict maintenance schedule for ours. My friends do not. However, I am here and this is one of the week’s services I provide: Cleaning the Moccamaster. I just finished it, and I’ll explain the process to you, if you too have a teensy bit of OCD about getting stuff sparkling.

Here are the miracle solutions, purchased from Amazon. The gray box is for the innards, the blue for the pot itself:

They’re just powders, and speaking of OCD, I’d like to have a word with Urnex about why one box contains three packets of powder and the other four, because you use them together and that is annoying to always have to be ordering one or the other. But whatever. The gray descaler goes first. You dissolve it in water and let it run through. Here’s the Before picture:

Yuck, I know. I usually let the descaler run halfway through, turn the pot off and let it sit and do its work. Turn it back on after 10 minutes or so and run it all through. Then three water run-throughs, and you’re ready for the pot cleaner. This is where it gets sexy.

The pot cleaner is the same process — dissolve it in water and pour it through. You would not believe how much oil and gunk it takes off. This is the first pass through:

That looks like coffee, but it’s just gunk. Dump it out, and send three pots of plain water through, maybe tidy up with a paper towel here and there, and here is the After:

This may be one reason a skills assessment and interest inventory I took in high school said I should maybe run a commercial fishery. There’s just something about a project like this that is so much more satisfying than, say, writing.

The weekend is appearing on the horizon, and I’ll be going home to Wendy. You all have a good one, and if you like good coffee, enjoy a cup. I think I’ll have two.