Our cen­sus form arrived yes­ter­day. Look­ing at the bar code made me feel all tingly. I said, “Ray­mond Shaw is the kind­est, bravest, warmest, most won­der­ful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” And then I filled it out. The gov­ern­ment esti­mate was that it would take me 10 min­utes. Took me about two, but then, I’m the des­ig­nated filler-out-of-forms in the fam­ily, with everyone’s SSN mem­o­rized and all the birth­days, so I’m good at this. It’ll go back today.

Just for grins, though, I went out look­ing for the right-wing crazy cen­sus crowd. I stum­bled, instead, on an eHow arti­cle, which the smart set says is my future as a free­lance writer. eHow is fed by Demand Media, the free­lance sweat­shop that pays in the neigh­bor­hood of 3 cents a word for “arti­cles.” Here’s one:

Every ten years, the United States Cen­sus Bureau con­ducts the U.S. Cen­sus. This cen­sus is impor­tant to the gov­ern­ment because they are attempt­ing to get an accu­rate count of the entire pop­u­la­tion. This includes every man, woman, and child resid­ing in the United States — cit­i­zens, ille­gal immi­grants, those here on visas, and non-citizen legal residents.

The cen­sus is con­sid­ered by some cit­i­zens and ille­gal immi­grants alike to be intru­sive. There­fore, you may be ask­ing if it is required that you participate.

“Therefore” — a word beloved by seventh-graders and word count-padders every­where. In fact, it wasn’t until I stum­bled across it that I could say, pre­cisely, why eHow dri­ves me insane. It’s not that the “arti­cles” are use­less, or that the pay would shame a sweat­shop oper­a­tor. It’s that it reminds me of how I wrote in junior-high school:

Some cit­i­zens and oth­ers resid­ing in the United States find the Cen­sus to be intru­sive. For exam­ple, in an inter­view done by National Pub­lic Radio in 2009, one U.S. cit­i­zen com­plained that the cen­sus required him to answer ques­tions such as how many guns he kept in his home, and where they were kept. Obvi­ously, to him, this infor­ma­tion did not seem to be nec­es­sary for the gov­ern­ment to know.

The only thing miss­ing are lit­tle blue dots over each word, from my Bic labo­ri­ously count­ing each one. She missed an oppor­tu­nity to add two: “United States” inserted before “gov­ern­ment” in the last sen­tence would fit nicely.

But moronic as it is, it isn’t the dumb­est thing I found. That would be this spicy right-wing para­noia roundup in Wired, focus­ing on the news that some cen­sus col­lec­tion would include GPS coordinates:

A post on the widely read Infowars​.com in June warned: “I will tell you plainly, the NWO [New World Order] con­trolled Amer­i­can mil­i­tary wants these GPS mark­ers so they can launch Preda­tor Drone mis­sile attacks, the aptly named HELLFIRE mis­sile I might add, against a long list of unde­sir­ables here in CONUS, con­ti­nen­tal United States.”

So when I drop that form in the mail, I’ve as much as called in a mis­sile strike on my own house. MAY GOD FORGIVE ME FOR WHAT I’VE DONE.

He won’t for­give me if I don’t get to work, how­ever. Off to the library — I have micro­film to examine.

A few weeks ago, we bun­nyproofed Kate’s room and started let­ting Ruby in. She imme­di­ately estab­lished the spare bed as her favorite chillin’ spot. At first I thought it was for the view from the win­dow, but then it occurred to me: Cam­ou­flage.

She spent the first week or so beat­ing the crap out of all the stuffies, butting and nib­bling and doing her bunny-punch (a sur­pris­ingly effec­tive move, not to be con­fused with the rab­bit punch). Now that she’s estab­lished her­self as the dom­i­nant doe of the war­ren, she can rest in regal peace, which is what she does up there for hours on end. She will accept your trib­utes now. Make them leafy and green.

Overnight, my ill­ness has taken a turn, and I’m off to find some­thing called Buckley’s. It’s on the rec­om­men­da­tion of one of our stu­dent jour­nal­ists, who says, “You will curse me when you take it and bless me later.” Hmm. Well, I’m out of Nyquil and Dayquil now, any­way. I’ll try anything.

If I don’t find it in the first three U.S. phar­ma­cies I try, I’ll head down­town and cross the bor­der. (It’s Cana­dian, and you will not be sur­prised to learn that one of the first busi­nesses you see when you emerge from the tun­nel is a phar­macy. Gee, I won­der why?) If noth­ing else, adding eight bucks in tolls and an inter­na­tional excur­sion will guar­an­tee that I feel bet­ter tomor­row, on the same the­ory that says the food comes right after you light a cig­a­rette, the funny sound dis­ap­pears when the mechanic is lis­ten­ing, etc.

A lit­tle blog­gage to start the discussion:

The double-chinned dough­boy behind this story — Marc Thiessen — was on the Daily Show last night. You know some­one is a bas­tard when even my mild-mannered hus­band starts jeer­ing at the TV.

While we’re on the sub­ject, no doubt Jihad Jane will be today’s talk­ing point at Fox News. She is said to have made her al-Q con­nec­tions through that covert web­site, YouTube. I haven’t seen a mugshot that screams CRAZY this loud since, um, Amy Bishop.

(By the way, has “I am Dr. Amy Bishop!” become a catch phrase in your house­hold, too? It just seems to work for so many domes­tic situations.)

OK, then. Exit, cough­ing weakly.

Ever since we lost our best buddy last sum­mer, my sister-in-law has been send­ing us what­ever shots of the dog she turns up in her vast files. (She’s a pho­tog­ra­pher.) This one came to Kate in her Valentine’s Day card. I think she’s try­ing to kill me:

Nine­teen ninety-nine. What a year. Our girl was out of dia­pers, the econ­omy was strong, a Demo­c­rat was pres­i­dent and hardly any­one had heard of al-Qaeda.

And look at that face. (Whichever face you like.)

Not much this morn­ing, but maybe later. Talk amongst your­selves, eh?

I defy you to read the first three para­graphs of this Laura Berman col­umn from the Detroit News and not read the rest:

The pres­i­dent of the Detroit school board, Otis Mathis, is wag­ing a legal bat­tle to steer the aca­d­e­mic future of 90,000 chil­dren, in the nation’s lowest-achieving big city district.

He also acknowl­edges he has dif­fi­culty com­pos­ing a coher­ent Eng­lish sen­tence. Here’s a sam­ple from an e-mail he sent to friends and sup­port­ers on Sun­day night, uncor­rected for errors of spelling, gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion and usage. It begins:

If you saw Sunday’s Free Press that shown Robert Bobb the emer­gency finan­cial man­ager for Detroit Pub­lic Schools, move Mark Twain to Boyn­ton which have three times the num­ber seats then stu­dents and was one of the reason’s he gave for clos­ing school to many empty seats.

The col­umn goes on to describe Mathis’ epic bat­tles with the writ­ten word, ask­ing whether his abil­ity to suc­ceed in spite of it (he has a bachelor’s degree from Wayne State, but it took more than a decade to get, because he couldn’t pass the Eng­lish pro­fi­ciency exam) is good news or bad. There’s no clear answer, but it made me think about writ­ing and what it takes to do it a) well and/or b) com­pe­tently. You can imag­ine my feel­ings about it; look­ing back on my roman­tic his­tory, I don’t think I ever had a seri­ous rela­tion­ship with a man who couldn’t turn a phrase. They var­ied widely in for­mal edu­ca­tion, but they could all write a decent let­ter or inscribe a book with style. It’s not like I went look­ing for them; it just worked out that way. I doubt a math PhD would marry some­one who couldn’t bal­ance the fam­ily checkbook.

Over many years, I’ve man­aged to over­come my belief that bad spelling is a char­ac­ter flaw, and friends, that has taken some doing. I’ve known enough very smart peo­ple who could barely spell cat and dog that I’ve grown into the belief it’s a form of learn­ing dis­or­der. (First, I have to believe you actu­ally tried to learn, how­ever.) One of my col­lege boyfriends handed me a gro­cery list once: chese, pasto (penny), letus. I still get an occa­sional e-mail from him — funny but atro­ciously spelled. I don’t think he even sees the mis­takes, and has the sense to rely on proof­read­ers for his busi­ness correspondence.

Oth­ers would feel the same way about me, and my math­e­matic illit­er­acy. I can do the big four — add, sub­tract, mul­ti­ply and divide — but Kate, in sev­enth grade, knows bet­ter than to ask me for help on her math home­work; she out­ran me with num­bers a year or two ago.

But at least I’m not in charge of any­one else’s money, or doing cal­cu­la­tions of load-bearing pil­lars. Mathis is on a school board, its pres­i­dent. And he’s a liv­ing embod­i­ment of that con­tem­po­rary night­mare — the diploma-holding (degree-holding!) grad­u­ate who’s func­tion­ally illiterate.

Of course, Detroit is a spe­cial case:

“We picked him (to be pres­i­dent) because we thought he has the intel­li­gence for it and the tol­er­ance for dis­rup­tive behav­ior,” says Rev­erend David Mur­ray. “He has that type of calm.”

This is a dis­trict where board meet­ings often fea­ture “dis­rup­tive behavior” — a citizen’s group orga­nized a grape-throwing inci­dent on one mem­o­rable occa­sion — so maybe this is a spe­cial case. But I doubt it. Grosse Pointe’s most recent board pres­i­dent has a blog that he not only writes him­self, it con­tains his own com­plex but under­stand­able analy­ses of finan­cial doc­u­ments. You could hardly pick a bet­ter exam­ple of how far apart two adja­cent dis­tricts can be in this strange land of south­east Michigan.

OK, folks. Back to the grind. I’m a word-churning machine for the next fort­night, and the warmup has lasted long enough.

I saw this story yes­ter­day on the Free Press’ most-popular list and — teach­able moment! — asked Kate if she could tell my why it hap­pened, how a man who had just hit a util­ity pole with no injury to him­self could be found dead just moments later, with evi­dence sug­gest­ing he’d decided to pass the time by uri­nat­ing into the ditch near where his car had crashed. She needed more infor­ma­tion than that, so I told her there was a live elec­tri­cal wire in the ditch. That closed the cir­cuit, to to speak:

“Because of the water?” Ding ding ding ding ding. It’s not exactly an SAT essay-question answer, but she’s only in sev­enth grade. We’ll leave the appre­ci­a­tion of life’s cruel ironies and the ques­tion of the universe’s per­verse sense of humor for senior year.

I needed that story yes­ter­day, which was not a very good one. Noth­ing cat­a­strophic hap­pened, just one of those comedy-of-errors 24-hour peri­ods you’re issued every so often. I’m work­ing on a book project, a custom-publishing job, i.e., writer-for-hire work. It requires his­tor­i­cal research down­town, at the Detroit Pub­lic Library. I found a park­ing place on Wood­ward Avenue, right in front of the place, which I chalked up to my prompt arrival in the first hour after open­ing. Win! Got out, paid in advance for two hours, went to the door — locked. Wouldn’t open for 90 more min­utes. No cat­a­stro­phe; I’d find a quiet place nearby to spread out my mate­ri­als and get orga­nized. That turned out to be an Einstein’s bagels on the Wayne State cam­pus, which was not quiet, but did have a big over­stuffed arm­chair free. Win! The arm­chair was free because it was right next to a mal­func­tion­ing door, which stayed wide open to the 35-degree ele­ments if not pulled shut, some­thing only every 10th cus­tomer realized.

After a few min­utes of this, I moved to another over­stuffed arm­chair, far enough from the draft that it wouldn’t bother me. Win! The one next to me was soon taken by a guy who was enjoy­ing a hot sand­wich and a con­ver­sa­tion with his friend on the other side of me, which I nor­mally don’t mind; I love to eaves­drop. Unfor­tu­nately, all they could talk about was how good their sand­wiches were.

But I got a lit­tle done, and headed back to the library at 10 ’til noon. My paid-for park­ing place was full; at least some­one was hav­ing a lucky day. I got another, paid for two hours. I had an OMG moment when I found a let­ter from 1938, the writer announc­ing he was com­ing to Detroit with “a moving-picture news­reel from the Ger­man For­eign Office…showing the cer­e­monies, indoors and out­side, in con­nec­tion with the National Social­ist rally at Nurem­berg last Sep­tem­ber. I do not believe any­thing of this kind has ever been shown in America.”

My heart soared, think­ing I had found a con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous descrip­tion of what were per­haps “Tri­umph of the Will” out­takes when I thought to check the dates. Um, no. Leni Riefen­stahl shot the 1934 Nazi party con­fer­ence, not 1937.

Trudged out to the car and found a $20 park­ing ticket. It was that kind of day.

I won­der if I can deduct it.

Came home, and heard about the guy who died with his wee­nie out, which was a use­ful reminder that one’s own bad day is almost never the worst bad day any­one ever had.

I wish I could have seen that news­reel. I wish more I could have heard what peo­ple said about it.

This project has been a use­ful reminder that there are two kinds of his­tory — the kind you live through day-by-day, and the kind you didn’t. Go through old news­pa­pers on micro­film for a while, and before long I guar­an­tee you’ll find some­one is being accused of lead­ing the youth of Amer­ica down the path to ruin and social­ism. Yes­ter­day I saw a col­umn from the last week of Octo­ber 1963, by Max Freed­man. Date­line Houston:

One of the most sur­pris­ing dis­cov­er­ies of this visit to Texas is the depth of feel­ing against the so-called Kennedy dynasty.

In Wash­ing­ton this com­plaint has dwin­dled to a pleas­ant lit­tle joke. Out here men swear angrily and women edge their speech with hard­ness as they denounce “the Kennedys.”

Don’t worry, Mr. Pres­i­dent. I hear Dal­las loves you.

OK, back to work. Lord knows what will turn up today. And I’ll remem­ber to feed the meter.

Oh! Another great Detroit­blog.

I won’t have any time to blog later in the morn­ing, nor prob­a­bly all day Fri­day. But that’s OK, because you can amuse your­selves mak­ing Hitler videos for the amuse­ment of us all.

Back later.

The tem­per­a­ture rose yes­ter­day to a notch or two above freez­ing, then fell. A dust­ing of new snow arrived around night­fall. Fog cov­ered every­thing until it froze, and that’s where it stands now — silver-plated world. Every­thing is white, not too cold, and the air is so heavy with mois­ture it can mean only one thing. One or two more inches com­ing up from the south; should be here momen­tar­ily. I’d like to take a walk in it. Maybe I will.

From Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writ­ing, No. 1: Never open a book with weather. Well, this isn’t a book. It’s the first draft of per­sonal his­tory. And I’m allowed to talk about the weather.

A job I wish I had: Smash­ing up the ice on the St. Clair River. Seri­ously. My favorite thing is when the spring rains come in cloud­bursts, and the storm drain in front of my neighbor’s house clogs with spring tree-gunk, and I get to wade through the warm pud­dles with my rake and clear it. Actu­ally pilot­ing an ice­breaker through a trou­ble­some jam to send the backed-up water on its way? Bliss. It would be storm-drain clear­ance on steroids.

Nance’s Rules of Writ­ing: Don’t use stu­pid, dated, not-very-creative-when-they-were-coined, let-alone-now catch phrases like “on steroids.”

OK, then. I don’t want to con­tinue yesterday’s depress­ing dis­cus­sion for too much longer — I mean, in a sil­ver world, you want to be opti­mistic — but I caught part of “Fresh Air” yes­ter­day, and it seemed to per­tain, a lit­tle. Jour­nal­ist David Weigel of the Wash­ing­ton Inde­pen­dent was speak­ing on the new right, the right on steroids, the super-righty right rep­re­sented by the teabag­gers and CPAC. You know CPAC — these are the folks who were mak­ing jokes about fly­ing a plane into an IRS build­ing and killing a 68-year-old vet­eran (two tours, Viet­nam). And of course you know the Tea Party.

I was struck by the por­tion of the inter­view where Terry Gross asked Weigel about what the teabag­gers believe about the finan­cial melt­down that started the cas­cad­ing eco­nomic cat­a­stro­phes of the past two years. He said they blame the whole thing on Bar­ney Frank, Chris Dodd and the Com­mu­nity Rein­vest­ment Act, which is both not sur­pris­ing and pretty depress­ing. I’ve said this before and it didn’t orig­i­nate with me, but this is what we’re mov­ing toward — a media land­scape where not only spin varies from out­let to out­let, but the very facts them­selves. Wall Street is not under­reg­u­lated; Bar­ney Frank is the prob­lem. And vac­cines cause autism, of course they do.

Here’s the other thing that struck me: How the sorts of wackos I used to hear on my radio show(s) back in the day — the freaka­zoids who stayed up all night at the card table under the bare light bulb, writ­ing their single-spaced man­i­festos or let­ters to the edi­tor or what­ever, who would call and rant about the Bilder­berg­ers and the Fed­eral Reserve and the loss of the gold stan­dard and (my per­sonal favorite) Ezra Pound, that genius — these folks are now being wel­comed into the main­stream con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. And they have some new enter­tain­ing ideas, about the president’s birth cer­tifi­cate and death pan­els and so on. And a new spokes­gal, who is much pret­tier than they are.

How com­fort­ing.

I ran into one of these guys one day, at Best Buy. I thought it was brave of him to intro­duce him­self, although I prob­a­bly should have rec­og­nized him from his public-access TV show. We chat­ted a bit. He was pric­ing cam­corders, but dammit, none of them had the fea­ture he needed. Which was?

“Night vision,” he said.

His public-access show was enter­tain­ing. This is how he gave web addresses: “H, T, T, P. Colon. Back­slash, back­slash. T-R-I-P-O-D. Dot — this is a period — C-O-M. Back­slash. Tilde. This is the key to the left of the numeral 1, but you have to shift…”

Any­way, they were jok­ing from the CPAC podium about Joseph Stack, the IRS bomber. Had to check to make sure it wasn’t Grover Norquist at the con­trols, ha ha. Imag­ine the reac­tion if– oh, why bother even bring­ing it up? The lib­eral media, etc. etc.

I’ll say this: I’m really glad I don’t live in Indi­ana any­more. I’m sure these folks are all over the place. I see two Don’t Tread on Me flags wav­ing in the neigh­bor­hood here, but it’s not a friendly place for the most part, so I don’t feel like I have to smile at them or anything.

Ach. We need to go out with some lev­ity. How about this essay on Rielle Hunter’s “quiet dig­nity.” Not talk­ing to the media about your stu­pid life choices qual­i­fies as quiet dig­nity now? Evidently:

In the early days, Amer­i­cans came to think of her in the sleazi­est terms: the for­mer party girl who used sex­ual wiles and New Age mumbo jumbo to steal Elizabeth’s hus­band. Most self-respecting women would feel com­pelled to say some­thing, any­thing, in their own defense. And most mod­ern mis­tresses would do much more than that. A fame-chasing Rielle would have come for­ward in the first days of her sex scan­dal, even if it meant defy­ing John’s wishes. She would have talked and talked as the inter­views declined in influ­ence, the sad jour­ney from Bar­bara Wal­ters to Billy Bush. By now she’d have fin­ished her book tour. We’d see her hawk­ing an Inter­net sex col­umn or shar­ing Twit­pics of Quinn to thou­sands of followers.

Or maybe, just mayyy­beee, she’s hold­ing out for the big pay­day. Just a thought. Maybe the quiet-dignity meter was recal­i­brated while I was wor­ry­ing about the Tea Party, but in my expe­ri­ence, a per­son who has it doesn’t say things like this:

That same spring, Rielle came to din­ner at my home in New York. The Edward­ses had just announced that Elizabeth’s can­cer was back and was incur­able, engen­der­ing a national out­pour­ing of sup­port. That didn’t stop Rielle from explain­ing to the group at din­ner, which included jour­nal­ists from other national pub­li­ca­tions, that Eliz­a­beth had got­ten can­cer because she was filled with “bad energy.”

OK, then. Back to the sweat­shop! Copy due in two hours!

Since we’ve all decided this reces­sion, the Great Reces­sion, will leave a wide and deep foot­print in our national soul, jour­nal­ists have begun sketch­ing it out. Yes­ter­day on “Talk of the Nation” they were dis­cussing this story in the Atlantic, which I haven’t read and don’t intend to, because it’s Feb­ru­ary and I’m cop­ing with my usual win­ter sub­clin­i­cal grumps, and who needs more?

This one, from Sunday’s NYT, sort of snuck up on me, hid­ing as it was in the Styles sec­tion; I thought Sun­day Styles was the place you went to avoid read­ing about strife and mis­ery, but maybe this doesn’t count, although it does to me:

In 18 months, Ms. Lentini went from edit­ing one daily newslet­ter to still edit­ing that one, as well as the 10 week­lies that gen­er­ated new ad rev­enue at no extra cost to her com­pany. Of course, there was a cost: her free time. “It’s, ‘How many plates can I keep going?’ ” she said. “You’re giddy with hysteria.”

She now starts at 7:30 a.m. instead of 9, and works Sat­ur­day and Sun­day morn­ings. The night of the Super Bowl, she fin­ished at 11. When she was first hired, she had money to pay some­one to fill in dur­ing her two vaca­tion weeks. That ended with the reces­sion, so now she dou­bles her work­load the week before vaca­tion. Hol­i­days? “I work most hol­i­days,” she said.

Even while dri­ving one of her daugh­ters to an after-school job as a hair salon recep­tion­ist, Ms. Lentini works. “Brid­get holds the lap­top,” she said. “She’ll say, ‘Mom, you got an I.M. from the photo edi­tor.’ She’ll read it to me, I’ll say, ‘Just put ‘O.K.,’ and write ‘tx’ for thanks. So I can work and drive.”

The story was about the new way we do more with less, and then some more, and some more on top of that, and won­dered what might hap­pen when the reces­sion ends, if it ever really does — will we still work this way? My own expe­ri­ence says yes, of course we will; that’s cer­tainly the way it was in news­pa­pers dur­ing our long slide, which pre­saged the gen­eral eco­nomic col­lapse. I used to liken it to starv­ing to fit into a two-sizes-smaller dress by prom night or your wed­ding day or what­ever. Diet-diet-diet-celery-water-diet, keep pulling every­thing in and then comes weigh-in day (quar­terly num­bers) and whew, you just made it to your goal! Yahoo! [Pause.] Now lose 10 more pounds.

I won­der because I heard from an edi­tor yes­ter­day, point­ing out sev­eral sloppy goofs in a story I’d han­dled, and not only was he right, I knew why I made the mis­takes: Because I’d edited that story at 1:30 a.m., after a seven-hour shift on my other job. I was still work­ing because I knew I’d have trou­ble sleep­ing that night (even though I was exhausted). Why? Because I’m stressed out at how much I have to do. It’s a loop.

I’m not com­plain­ing. I’m just won­der­ing. I won­der why we tell our friends story after story about work, its mis­eries and occa­sional joys, and yet, so few of our enter­tain­ments are about work. (Except for the usual venues — police sta­tions, hos­pi­tals and foren­sics units.) The answer is obvi­ous, I guess: Why pay for a novel or movie about some­thing I live every day? A few years I noticed some­thing: How often the peo­ple I met in the pages of a book were inde­pen­dently wealthy, either through fam­ily for­tunes or early-career wind­falls that left them with the means to have novel-worthy midlife crises unclut­tered by hav­ing to show up at work every day.

One of the many things to admire about “Office Space” is how well it cap­tures the exis­ten­tial mis­ery of life in a cubi­cle farm, from the chirpy recep­tion­ist to the passive-aggressive boss to the rit­ual of the office birth­day cake. You can almost taste the cheap frost­ing. My favorite sequence in “Up in the Air” is when the three main char­ac­ters sneak into another company’s Miami team-building party; there’s some­thing about the way the m.c. greets all the mem­bers of the best! sales staff! in the south­east region! that sent chills down my spine. (Not that I’ve ever been to such an event. In jour­nal­ism they just bark, “Back to your oar, 42.” The Miami sojourns for Knight-Ridder were known as Prick School.)

And yet, exis­ten­tial mis­ery is prefer­able to unem­ploy­ment, isn’t it? The new nor­mal will be no Miami at all. And no health insur­ance. The new model for free­lanc­ing is Crowd­spring, which puts a high gloss on the feed­ing frenzy. It works like this: You post a project, say­ing, “I will pay $300 for a logo for our start-up busi­ness. It should con­vey the idea of “book­ish­ness,” but be really smart and sorta techno and have blue in it. Show me what you got.” And then dozens of starv­ing design­ers (or writ­ers, if that’s the project) do the work and sub­mit it. You pick your favorite and pay your pit­tance, and every­one else goes home hun­gry. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

If you have a job, you’re grate­ful. If you have a job you like, you have rubies and dia­monds. Pause a moment to appre­ci­ate it.

The Daily Tele­graph asks a num­ber of writ­ers to list their Top 10 rules for writ­ing. Part one here, link to part two in part one. Will Self made me laugh:

Regard your­self as a small cor­po­ra­tion of one. Take your­self off on team-building exer­cises (long walks). Hold a Christ­mas party every year at which you stand in the cor­ner of your writ­ing room, shout­ing very loudly to your­self while drink­ing a bot­tle of white wine. Then mas­tur­bate under the desk. The fol­low­ing day you will feel a deep and coher­ing sense of embar­rass­ment.

Now, I must go to work. (Which I like very much. I only wish it paid bet­ter, espe­cially when there’s eight inches of snow atop my aging roof.)

I think I weigh 300 pounds today. Our week­end was a mad dash to Chicago to see friends, and so it con­sisted of five hours in the car, one hour in hotel, two or three hours of din­ner, sleep, two or three hours of break­fast, five more hours in the car. There wasn’t time for any­thing else, but it was good, if you like eat­ing and dri­ving, and I always like the first and usu­ally like the sec­ond. If noth­ing else, it’s good to see a beau­ti­ful, thriv­ing city from time to time.

We crossed the Mit­ten on a win­ter week­end because our friends from Turkey are back in the States for a while. Fatih was a Knight-Wallace Fel­low and his wife, Idil, was the smartest of the spouses. She learned Russ­ian in eight months while we were there, yes, zero to flu­ency in eight months. She thought she should learn because of all the Rus­sians in Istan­bul these days, and also they were plan­ning on hav­ing a baby soon, and Rus­sians are the go-to nan­nies, the way West Indies natives are in New York City. She did indeed get preg­nant in Ann Arbor, had some minor com­pli­ca­tions that made her doc­tor for­bid her from long plane trips in the third trimester, so they stayed an extra cou­ple months and had the baby in Michi­gan. When they returned, Idil inter­viewed nan­nies in Russian.

Fatih told me that for some­thing like $300 a month, you can hire a college-educated Russ­ian woman — if you’re lucky, even one with an M.D. — to be your nanny. “Wouldn’t a woman with a med­ical degree feel a bit overqual­i­fied for child care, and per­haps resent­ful?” I wondered.

“No, you want one with an advanced degree so you know she’s not a pros­ti­tute,” he said. Oh.

So now Idil is preg­nant again, and they’ve elected to give birth in the States again. To take advan­tage of the Great­est Health-Care Sys­tem in the World? No. So that their daugh­ters will have match­ing pass­ports. Good think­ing. We always knew Idil was smart. Between learn­ing Russ­ian and oth­er­wise explor­ing Ann Arbor, she took some grad-school entrance exams, too, just for the hell of it. She got a per­fect score on the math sec­tions, and close to per­fect on the writ­ing. That really bugged her. “What is a nine-letter Eng­lish word that means ‘talk­a­tive’?” she asked.

I thought for a minute. “Gar­ru­lous,” I said. She smacked her fore­head as though she’d for­got­ten who George Wash­ing­ton was. Their 5-year-old speaks four lan­guages flu­ently. She’s going to need dual cit­i­zen­ship, once she grows up to take over the world.

You’ll want to watch out for her. She’s blonde like her mother, a Tatar.

There’s noth­ing like spend­ing time with ambi­tious inter­na­tional cos­mopo­lites to make you feel dumb. We went to break­fast with the Bor­dens and Car­pen­ters, and mostly talked sports and music, but it was smart sports-and-music talk. I learned about Bill Wirtz from Bor­den, and more from Wikipedia:

Wirtz died at Evanston Hos­pi­tal on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2007, fol­low­ing a brief bat­tle with can­cer. …Dur­ing a trib­ute and moment of silence for him dur­ing the Black­hawks home opener on Octo­ber 8, 2007, the Chicago crowd dis­played their dis­plea­sure with Wirtz’s oper­a­tion of the orga­ni­za­tion by boo­ing the proceedings.

Man, hockey fans can be tough.

And of course this week­end we watched a bit of the Olympics. I have very few strong feel­ings about the win­ter games, except that all that trick ski­ing is silly, but then, luge is pretty silly, too. Speed skat­ing is my life’s great missed oppor­tu­nity; it’s the one sport I’m truly fas­ci­nated by. (I fol­lowed the clap-skate dis­cus­sion closely, a few years back.) Very Hans Brinker.

And, of course, the speed skaters have Stephen Col­bert on their side.

In some ways I hate Feb­ru­ary in Olympic years; there’s too much on TV. This week, I’m going to have to choose between West­min­ster and the games. I hope noth­ing good in Van­cou­ver is oppo­site the ter­rier group.

So how was your week­end? Blog­gage? Not much:

The Alabama shoot­ing case gets ever-weirder. Hello, Pro­fes­sor Crazypants.

With that, I’m off.

Jan­u­ary is National Soup Month. Before it slips into the books, let’s recall a few of the month’s steam­ing pots here at the Nall-Derringer Co-Prosperity Sphere:

Sweet potato bisque: I hap­pened to be at the Rus­sell Street Deli, an East­ern Mar­ket insti­tu­tion known for its spec­tac­u­lar soups, the week before Christ­mas, when this was on the menu. It was…mouth-gasmic. It fogged my glasses and my mind. I tried to con­sider what the “Top Chef” judges call its “fla­vor pro­file,” but my taste­buds were happy-dancing so, it was hard to get them to set­tle down and give some sober feed­back. It had many of the notes of a sweet potato pie — cin­na­mon, nut­meg, gin­ger — but was savory over­all. I found a recipe online that seemed to come close, using but­ter­milk for the tang, and whipped up a batch. It was very good, but not as good as Russell’s. Three stars (out of four).

Cur­ried but­ter­nut squash: An early impro­vi­sa­tion, inspired by Mark Bittman. I make a ver­sion of this every fall, basi­cally squash soup with curry and a tart apple thrown in the mix. For this, I left out the apple and added a can of coconut milk, and my friends? It was fab­u­lous. I’m buy­ing coconut milk every other week now. Four stars.

Cream of cau­li­flower: Another Bittman inspi­ra­tion, brought on by the peren­nial Jan­u­ary real­iza­tion that I could eat a lot more veg­eta­bles if I tried. Sauté onion and gar­lic, throw in a whacked-up head of cau­li­flower, cover with broth, sim­mer to soft­ness, puree and swirl in a half-cup or so of cream. Yum. Three-and-a-half stars.

Roasted gar­lic with white ched­dar: I make this in the win­ter most years, but not for the last few. It’s an old Betty Ros­bot­tom recipe, sim­plic­ity itself: Break up and peel two heads of gar­lic, cover with olive oil and roast in the oven for 40 min­utes or so. Mean­while, soften some leeks or onions or both, add a few pota­toes, cover with broth, sim­mer sim­mer sim­mer, etc. When it’s soft, throw in the roasted gar­lic [EDIT: Remove the gar­lic from the oil first] and puree. Fin­ish by stir­ring in a hand­ful of grated white ched­dar cheese. Serve with a green salad and crusty bread you can sop in the oil from the gar­lic roast­ing. Refrain from kiss­ing for the rest of the night. Four stars.

Chili: Because if it’s win­ter in the Mid­west, there will be chili. Every­one has their own favorite recipe. You don’t need to hear mine. Three stars.

No-cream of cau­li­flower and car­rot: This was last night. I had a head of golden cau­li­flower tee­ter­ing on the edge, so I made it the same way I did the other cau­li­flower soup, only I added a dou­ble hand­ful of car­rots and left out the cream and curry. Topped with some grated ched­dar, cocked my shot­gun, held it to the head of my daugh­ter and forced her to choke down 10 spoon­fuls or so, which she advised me were “gross.” Reader, it was not. It was deli­cious. Three and a half stars.

Note all the puree­ing. You can do it in batches in the blender, but that’s a pain in the ass. Far bet­ter to spend $30 on what Emeril calls a “boat motor” and most cook­books call an immer­sion blender. Mine broke last night, which seemed to be a fit­ting marker for the end of National Soup Month.

Although I will buy a new one this week­end. Because you really need an immer­sion blender. At least in our house.

Which takes us to the blog­gage at the end of a cold but sunny week here in the Mitten:

You want to know why peo­ple hate lawyers? Try the NFL’s jerk­ish­ness in try­ing to stop New Orleans retail­ers from sell­ing T-shirts and other mer­chan­dise fea­tur­ing the fleur de lis and/or the phrase “Who dat?” One of my Face­book friends, Ray Shea, said it best:

The fleur de lis pre­dates the exis­tence of the NFL by more than two mil­lenia. The fleur de lis has flown on flags over Lou­siana for more than four cen­turies. Black and gold has been asso­ci­ated with the Zulu Social Aid and Plea­sure Club for almos a cen­tury. The phrase “Who Dat” is more than a cen­tury old and exists in recorded New Orleans music since the 1930s.

The NFL is granted a tem­po­rary non-exclusive license to suck my balls.

Ray is an old friend of Ashley’s, and won my alle­giance to the Saints the night the team beat Indi­anapo­lis, and he posted, “Who dat push­ing Manning’s face in the turf? WHO DAT?” Indeed. Pey­ton Man­ning is a guy whose face can never be pushed into the turf too often.

I just surfed through Mem­o­ran­dum to see what’s going on in the world of pol­i­tics, and found this head­line: Palin to Obama: Stop the fin­ger­point­ing. And with that, irony died once again and I offi­cially declared the week­end under way.

So enjoy yours.