I don’t travel often, but I fly at least once or twice a year, and in all that time, I’ve been seated in first class only once. It was when the puddle jumper from Key West to Miami broke down on the runway. (Add “do you smell jet fuel?” to the list of things you don’t want to hear two stewardesses murmuring to one another back by the galley.) I missed my connection, and I was rebooked back to Columbus in first. Without going into too much detail about what happened on my last night in Key West, let me just say that a first-class seat going home felt like a gift from… well, not from God. God would never have rewarded bad behavior that way.

But it was wonderful. The wide seat, the halfway-decent food, and especially the Bloody Marys, which started on the ground and continued without so much as a raised eyebrow until I drifted off into a lovely nap somewhere over Tennessee — it all felt positively luxurious, at least as compared to the conditions in steerage. (And this was 1980. Conditions in steerage weren’t all that bad.)

I had a friend at the time who traveled often for business, and always flew first-class. It was company policy that the consulting work they did had to include the expensive ticket, and she always said that if I ever needed to travel as much as she did, I’d understand why. Oh, I understand.

Over the years, I’ve known many people who brag of their ability to get upgraded to first, either through strategic deployment of frequent-flier miles, shameless flattery of gate agents, or equally shameless lying about bad knees and hips and pounding migraines. One guy just had the gift, he said; he had mastered the combination of grovel and assertive confidence that made the person with the power helpless before the request, and would unhook the velvet rope to the front of the aircraft.

I ask because there’s always a pause during boarding when you have to stand in the aisle right inside the door, and you can examine the lucky 16 or 20 or however many who have the good ticket, and while there are always the obvious candidates — the women with expensive jewelry, the guys whose innate imperiousness screams CEO, Sarah Palin — there are always a few wild cards, too. The ratty-looking guy with the enormous stomach — does he absorb the extra cost as a comfort measure? Because I wouldn’t want to pack that basketball into coach, either. The kid staring out the window with no evident parent — an unaccompanied minor? Someone tell her it’s not like this, and not to get used to it, she’s just getting the parental-guilt upgrade.

David Sedaris once wrote amusingly about flying first-class transatlantic on Air France — I guess when you sell books like that guy, your publisher doesn’t mind paying — and being asked if he’d mind if the crew seated someone next to him, someone who spent the entire flight sobbing. Having flown transatlantic in coach, I can say that if that kind of midflight upgrade doesn’t cheer you up, you’re probably suicidal. My transatlantic flight nearly featured a mutiny; a bigger seat would have made it that much easier to bear. (Confidentially, I’ve always wanted to make that crossing on a no-name freighter, maybe in an unused crew cabin. I could get some reading done and stroll on the deck twice a day.)

But the best comment on the subject was, of course, “The Airport,” one of the best “Seinfeld” episodes ever. I’d like one of those ice cream sundaes.

Bleh day, bleh me, bleh bloggage:

Said it before, saying it again: You should add Planet Money to your bookmarks. Especially if you’re not much of a money person.

“Deliverance,” the novel, reconsidered. I missed this last week, but the novel’s been out for decades — the reconsideration didn’t get stale in seven days.

Tonight marks the official announcement of the end of the war in Iraq. Years ago, when my crappy newspaper planned a special Victory in Iraq issue, my husband spoke up at the meeting and said it was a ridiculous idea, and that we’d be there for years. It got him scowled at, but it’s good to know he was right.

And here comes another hurricane. Time to get to work.

The souvenir of the weekend — besides a mild hangover — was one of these, a Himalayan salt plate. I didn’t spend $60 for the big chunk, but I figured for $18, I could take a chance that my disk of pink rock salt might be an interesting addition to my batterie de cuisine. It certainly was an interesting addition to the TSA workers’ Sunday, as it got my bag yanked and hand-searched:

“Do you have ashes in here?” the guard asked.

“No, but I have a disk of Himalayan rock salt,” I said. “It probably has lots of minerals in there, too. Should I unwrap it?” He said I didn’t have to go that far, but he got a chuckle that anyone would buy a chunk of salt to serve food on. Obviously someone who doesn’t watch the Food Network.

Here it is, in case you’re wondering:

Impulse purchases — they’re what make our economy strong.

I’ll be getting away a little later this week, too, taking Kate and three friends for a two-day Cedar Point adventure. We chose this late date on the advice of fellow Michiganders, who swear by the secret week before Labor Day, when Ohio and Indiana kids are back in school and the Mitten rules the peninsula. Short lines for roller coasters, etc. We shall see. I think the only thing we can reasonably hope for is good weather. Fingers crossed.

For the moment, however, it remains stifling. The last few days started wonderfully, with bright blue skies, low humidity and reasonable temperatures, but once again, something happened and the heat settled in on Saturday. I am ready to wear something that doesn’t need to be white and absorbent. I guess I’ll have to wait a while for that.

Can’t have too much summer, I guess. So let’s skip to bloggage:

Because I don’t expect the relatives of exceptional people to be exceptional as a default, I am not surprised to learn that Martin Luther King’s extended family is a little, how you say, daft. But I found this story on Alveda King, Glenn Beck’s new BFF, to be instructive:

Alveda is dismissive of (Coretta Scott King), who died in 2006, saying, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t, she didn’t … Therefore I know something about him. I’m made out of the same stuff.”

Oh.

(And may I just say, it was wonderful to be [mostly] away from the internet for two days, and thus be spared Beckapalooza? I may throw my laptop away.)

Things you shouldn’t do when you’ve been drinking: Try to climb out on a window ledge on the 22nd floor to take a picture.

Finally, something that frosted my cookies last night and continues to do so: The egg industry says it’s time to say farewell to poached and sunny side up. Because how can they possibly keep 50 million damn chickens healthy? I’m now paying $2.50 a dozen at the farmer’s market I guess, what? Permanently.

Must run — manic Monday.

I’ll be late tomorrow, too. Actually, I’ll be gone tomorrow. Doing a little traveling this weekend, off to see the Trowel Tart in Wisconsin. I’m flying. In case you were wondering what it costs for a 75-minute flight from Detroit to Milwaukee, the answer is: Too damn much. Northwest’s heretofore reasonable fares between its Midwestern cities went pfft when it was swallowed by Delta. Still, it offers multiple flights daily and the only non-stops, although I love to see what Travelocity’s bots can cobble together for me — sure, I’d love to go from Detroit to Milwaukee via Atlanta and Houston with a flying time of 11 hours; and I’d save $20? Sign me up.

But never mind the cost — how often do you get to visit your best friend? Never often enough. Plus, a side trip to Madison is on tap, and that includes our other great pal, Dr. Frank. Who is now, a quick Google tells us, is on YouTube. Look at that mop of Irish hair. You’d never know his mother was Eye-talian.

So, with that, I make this a lame-ass fly-by. Let’s go right to some bloggage:

Stories you can’t make up, from the pharma beat: There’s a new drug to treat impotence. It’s made by a South Korean firm called Dong-A Pharmaceuticals.

As of late yesterday afternoon, this guy was on track to be the next Susan Boyle, but what the hell, maybe you haven’t seen it yet. Most excruciating candidate interview ever.

While we’re on the topic of amusing videos, via Hank and Kim Severson, a fine collection of Wendy’s training videos from the ’80s. Go ahead and make fun, but remember — that’s when Wendy’s had its mojo working. Now? Well, Dave is surely spinning like a lathe.

Did you know the case that led to this week’s stem-cell ruling started with a complaint filed by the people behind the “snowflake babies” publicity stunt? I’m sure that had nothing at all to do with it landing on the docket of a right-wing judge. No, not at all.

OK, I’m off to pack and groom. Have a great weekend, all.

For the record, I have never seen a bedbug, or felt one’s bite. I know they’re a problem in New York (No. 7), but until I read this, I never dreamed they were moving west. I blame washed-out Brooklyn hipsters leaving Williamsburg to move back in with mom and dad in Worthington. Along with all their little friends!!!!!

The first person I knew who picked up scabies was gay. It was the ’70s, and we all know what that meant. He got scabies, then crabs, then hepatitis, then AIDS, and that was that. But it was the scabies that freaked me out. I knew the chances of me ever having unprotected anal sex with a stranger were pretty damn slim, but you could get scabies — he told me, scratching his arm — from sitting on the wrong couch. Yikes.

Alan had a friend who got the same thing in a Motel 6 (he swears), and for years on our many travels by car, he refused to even consider stopping there. (The prices for more respectable lodgings in Santa Fe changed his mind, and we found the Motel 6 there to be nicer than many Holiday Inns.)

Every night I troll the nation’s newspapers and wire services for health news, and I am here to tell you: From microscopic to smashable-with-one’s-foot, them bugs is gonna get us all. What doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger, and you can never kill them all. That said, I am never buying another piece of upholstered furniture used, and anyone who comes into my house is going to have to stand on the back steps for skin inspection and fumigation.

Which just dislodged a memory from “Gone With the Wind” (the novel): As the soldiers begin walking home after the war’s end, Mammy polices hygiene at Tara, requiring all to strip naked and submit to having their clothes go into “the b’iling pot,” while simultaneously scrubbing down with lye soap, followed by a home-brewed dysentery remedy: “…one and all, they drank her doses meekly and with wry faces, remembering, perhaps, other stern black faces in far-off places and other inexorable black hands holding medicine spoons.” Such happy slaves. Such a fascinating book.

Whenever I mention it, I teeter on the brink of a doctoral dissertation. I’ll spare you and skip right to the bloggage:

Why does everyone assume Mrs. Tiger Woods learned about his cattin’ ways via a supermarket tabloid? I’ve suspected from the beginning the revelation came at her gynecologist’s office, delivered with averted eyes and maybe involving, yes, crabs. Not that she will tell you.

Rich people of means, please learn to grow old gracefully. Plastic surgery might fool some people in your 40s, but down the road, it will only make you look like a monster. Your wife, too.

With the retirement of the Crown Vic Police Interceptor, competitors are rushing to fill the market for police cars. The Freep showcases the contenders, including one from an Indiana startup called Carbon Motors. One of the police stations around here has a tricked-out Mustang, and no, I don’t know why, either, except that they had the money and felt like spending it.

Meanwhile, the News looks at 75 years of the Chevy Suburban. You have to really love cars to live in this town. Tolerate ‘em, at least.

Thank God I have Tom and Lorenzo to tell me Isabel Toledo now has a line of shoes at Payless. And they include a fetching fake-fur boot, just in case I need to make some extra coin on Woodward some grim winter.

Have a great hump day. I’ll be humpin’ copy, as usual.

This is new for me. In the past, I had pride of ownership in almost every repair we made, to this house and to our last house. There’s something about caring well for one’s house that’s always resonated with me, but not so much anymore. It’s true that a new roof doesn’t satisfy like a new kitchen, but it still felt virtuous, because you were adding to your home’s resale value and maintaining the property, which reflected on the neighborhood and made everyone rest a little easier at night.

But our real estate market can be explained in a headline which I swear I’ve read 400 times in the last five years in the local weekly: Has the market hit bottom? The answer is always the same: Maybe. The answer is always wrong, because the correct answer is: No. So putting a roof on my house, which used to feel like forgoing a new dress to put the money in the bank, now feels more like tearing up hundred-dollar bills and throwing them into a flushing toilet. And as long as we’re reading the Obvious News, it seems I have lots of company.

When this recession is over — if it ever is — and the historians start to sort it out, I don’t think anything will be as important, in the long run, as what it did to real estate. It’s still my main disappointment with Barack Obama, that he didn’t launch a big show trial on Jan. 21, 2009 that would have marched the Wall Street shitheads who wrecked the housing market before a tribunal of foreclosed and washed-out homeowners and a judge that was a combination of, ohhhh, Al Sharpton and Judge Judy, say. His gavel would be oversized, and he’d be welcome to use it on both his bench and the defendants’ heads. A guillotine would be right outside the courtroom, and we’d use it until the rope broke and the blade dulled.

That, at least, would show we take the damage these people did seriously. People who don’t own houses or apartments get a little impatient with this, and I guess I don’t blame them, but trust me: This crash hurts everyone, owner or not. For those of us who don’t live in the places where the middle class are shut out of owning real estate — which is to say, most of the country outside of New York City, San Francisco and much (but not all) of Los Angeles — our houses are the most expensive thing we own, and are far more than a place to lay our weary heads and store our record collections. The sale of my parents’ house provided half their retirement stake. They were of the generation that saved up for a down payment, shopped carefully, bought and stayed put. No flipping or trading up for them. Three bedrooms, 1.5 baths, bought in 1962 and sold in 1995, paid off and worth seven times what they paid for it.

My generation was different, but not Alan and me, so much. This is our second house, in our second city. I pay extra principal on our house every month, although God knows why. Optimistically, it’s worth half what we paid for it. Recovery of our purchase price might be 20 years off. The Detroit Metro has special problems, to be sure, but the whole country is sweeping up this wreckage, and I will never forget who caused it. (Hint: It wasn’t Barney Frank.)

For years, for practically ever, real estate was the safest investment you could make. My mom started bugging me to buy a condo as soon as I had a full-time job. You couldn’t lose. Everybody pays something for housing, after all, and you might as well pay yourself, plus the mortgage interest is tax-deductible. And housing always went up. It didn’t rise at the redonkulous rates of recent years, but a steady 1 to 3 percent was a given.

And while I may be overstating the virtues of ownership, I still firmly believe that a neighborhood of owners is, in the broadest terms, better than one of renters. When you have a financial stake in something, you pay more attention to it. You care if the local schools are good, even if you don’t have children in them. You don’t like it when your neighbors let their lawn go to prairie (unless everyone else’s is prairie, too). You keep the walks swept. It’s the broken-window theory on a less dramatic scale, and for generations, it worked.

But that’s only part of it. Local governments rely on property-tax revenues to provide services. When property values slide, so do tax receipts. We’re only beginning to see these problems, cities letting streets go or not replacing lighting or laying off firefighters. And how long did I say it might be before recovery?

When you think about it, pretty much everything in our economy is predicated on the idea that we’ll always be growing. (Certainly our health-care costs have done that.) A few flat years we can handle. But a full-on retreat, a crash? This is new for me. Last week our boring old city council got a little testy over some penny-ante travel for the city clerk, nothing big, but one of the members grumped that they were looking at another enormous shortfall the following year, and nickels and dimes add up. I can’t imagine what they’ll be fighting over in three years. Probably which one gets to quit first.

My house, my millstone. But with a nice new roof.

So, a little bloggage? Sure. Scott Rosenberg at Salon looks at a phenomenon I’ve been seeing in my news searching for a while now: The content farms have gamed Google. Don’t be evil!

“I think his dad’s bought them off, sometimes. He’s practically selling dope out of the trunk of his car. I have to give him one thing, though. Watching his personality disintegrate made me give up pot for good. Well, that and the fact the shit makes you so fucking retarded these days. The last time I smoked was spring last year. I was so paranoid I walked out of the house and hid in that big wall of shrubs by the sorority house. And the girls started that goddamn singing. ‘Together forever. Together forever.’ Do you have any idea how much that sounds like you’re eavesdropping on some kind of blood sacrifice?” — why I added Coozledad’s blog to my RSS feed. I was missing too many of these, or discovering them days later.

Another great Tom-and-Lorenzo Mad Style entry, this one on Francine Hanson, played by the sublime Anne Dudek.

I’ve taken a casual interest in Stephanie Seymour ever since Alan and I discovered the “November Rain” video on MTV. One of us would always say to the other, “She dies in the end.” Today, the NYT did a silly-season Sunday Styles front on the disintegration of her marriage to Peter Brant, described as “a taller, more dashing version of Buddy Hackett.” Her “November Rain” role was described thusly: “she portrayed a bride who dies.” Everyone remembers her!

So have a great Monday, all. Mine will, as usual, be busy.

Well, I hope she’s enjoying herself. The Free Press had a story that said she asked some fans at the local CVS to back off and let her buy her chips in peace. I don’t believe this story for a minute. Nobody that thin and pretty eats chips of any sort, and if they do, they have lackeys buy them.

Of course I didn’t see her. I never see the famous person. I have written about this before. I’d link, but I couldn’t find it in two Googles, so pfft. I am the anti-LA Mary. By the time I arrive at the party, it’s over. After I leave, it starts. My friends were wandering through the Ohio State Fair one afternoon and ducked into the Warner Cable tent. Guess who else had ducked in to play an impromptu set, just because he liked the interactive QUBE system? Todd Rundgren! I was not there. I sat in the bar when Elvis Costello traded blows, physical ones, with Bonnie Bramlett in the bar across the street. Where I wasn’t. Another night, at another bar, I left early because I had to work the next day. An hour after I went home, Prince showed up. Played a few numbers. Argh.

Once I was at the video post-production house waiting on my friend Mark to get off work. While I stood reading a bulletin board, David Lee Roth squeezed past, behind me. Brushed up against me and everything. Didn’t feel it, didn’t know about it until someone pointed it out later. That must have been some bulletin board.

Last summer, the local papers contained a funny story, about a Grosse Pointe woman who was sitting in a restaurant, looking at the man across the way. She’s one of those women who knows everyone, and she knew she knew this man, but she couldn’t think of his name. Oh, well, time to get reacquainted. She walked across the room, stuck out her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Muffy McPrepster.” He shook her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Robert DeNiro.”

Needless to say, I was not there. (DeNiro was shooting “Stone,” coming soon to a theater near you.)

I won’t ride my bike down that way today. I expect Miley and Demi will be working the rope line.

We’ve been a shallow puddle of late, eh? Sorry, but it’s been hot and miserable, and I’ve been catching up on this and that. I’m teaching again this fall, for reals and for money and everything, and I need to get my affairs in order, which means learning Blackboard, the system everybody uses and expects me to use, too. I’m baffled by little on the internet, and I thought Blackboard was clipping right along the last time I tried to use it, but nobody could see my posts and my e-mail wasn’t getting through, and grr. One of my colleagues suggested that I may well have been doing everything right, and that “it wasn’t appearing on Blackboard” is the “dog ate my homework” of the 21st century. Well, this time I will attain mastery. This time that one won’t work with me.

So let’s skip to the bloggage:

In the Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Dumb Tree Department, meet Ben Quayle. He is not Brock Landers, dammit, but you know what? I think the dog ate that man’s homework.

Dear Ms. Schlessinger (sorry, AP style forbids me from using the “Dr.” honorific for a PhD), perhaps you are baffled this morning (although I doubt it), withering under the angry glare of those who would call you racist just because you used the word “nigger” 11 times on your stupid radio show the other day, all while in the course of telling a black woman she was overly sensitive for objecting to the use of the word by her husband’s white friends, because some comedians on HBO use it all the time, and so obviously that lady just lacks the sense of humor required for an interracial relationship. Or perhaps you aren’t. I suspect you’re reading your heaps of fan mail, and are simply grateful that someone, anyone is paying attention to you, however briefly. (Here in Detroit, your show plays in the coveted middle-of-the-night time slot.) Watching this brief video clip may help explain things to you. Although I doubt it.

Ayn Rand on the playground. Funny.

And I’m off to take the last, seriously-this-is-it, really-I-mean-it bite of my horse-eating project. Seriously. LAST BITE. Here comes the airplane, open the hangar doors.

Just another day at the Comcast service center. We were picking up some boxes that would enable our secondary TVs can get more than four channels. Or something. On the Indiana BMV Scale of Existential Misery, it didn’t rate very high — there was a Tigers game on for the line’s viewing pleasure, and I had my phone. And even without it, I’m not a terrible waiter. Those who cannot spend an idle 30 minutes without climbing the walls lack inner resources. I have inner resources in spades (it’s why my butt is so big).

I felt worse for the workers, who toiled inside a bulletproof fortress worthy of a Detroit liquor store. I understand people hate their cable company, and I understand the equipment has some value, but it seemed like overkill for Warren. Note, also, the chartreuse walls of the inner sanctum. Multiply by 40 hours a week. I’d be deploying the escape chute by Tuesday.

Afterward, it seemed time for lunch, and Alan had a suggestion: Lazybones Smokehouse, the best barbecue shack you never heard of. Plunked in a depressing stretch of an ugly road in Roseville, surrounded by machine shops and other places filled with men who think “cilantro” is the dance that took Pam Anderson out of “Dancing With the Stars,” it has the distinction, Alan says, of being “a restaurant where I’ve never seen a woman customer.” OK, happy to be a rarity, then. The building stands out from the gray landscape with a mural featuring pigs pitching horseshoes while cows and chickens watch. It features…where do I start? Every meat you can think of, seven kinds of sauce, combos that either make you smile (“The Hog Trough,” your choice of four meats atop a mountain of fries) or wince (“The Smokestack Lighting,” chopped burnt ends, applewood bacon, cajun sausage, caramelized onions and cheddar on a hoagie bun), but essentially everything that’s worth barbecuing.

We both ordered pulled-pork sammiches with slaw served Memphis-style, Texas spitfire sauce, then sat down to wait. There are two large tables, where you eat family-style. True to form, the only other eat-in customers were men. Young men. Two were discussing dating. One had a night out planned with a young woman, but he wasn’t hopeful, because she didn’t give good text. I think this was an internet or some other sort of blind fixup, and he was, to my mind, unreasonably fixated on the fact she couldn’t summon up witty repartee in 140 characters or so. I weep to think I brought a young woman into this world, who will have to shop for a husband among these scratch-and-dent specials. One arm was heavily tattooed, although the rest of his outfit suggested an office job, one that requires a plastic ID tag in plain sight (i.e., all of them, these days). Again: I weep.

And that’s the sort of day you have when it’s a million degrees outside and even more humid.

I looked at the Rush Limbaugh wedding album y’all were discussing yesterday. Two takeaways: Mrs. Limbaugh the Fourth has an excellent hairdresser, and an even better plastic surgeon. We see so many bad boob jobs, we forget what a good one looks like, and unless I miss my guess, when that lady goes back to the earth she will leave a pair of silicon bags behind. (See no. 16 in this Gawker photo array). Also, ex-squeeze me? He got a military color guard? Does every 4-F Vietnam-era pussy get that? I guess if the check you write is big enough, but I am appalled. I know, I know: Appalling man is appalling. Still.

Speaking of bad boob jobs, Renee, what were you thinking?

I’ve never been a fan of the Huffington Post. Their steadfast advancement of quackery is a big reason.

Writers have elevated procrastination to a high art. As seen here.

Ha ha ha.

And now I’m gone. Gonna go for a bike ride, damn the humidity. The Miley Cyrus tweeting around here has become deafening, and I want to see if she’s drawn a crowd to her set down in the Farms. Wish me luck. I’m taking a camera.

Nothing special: White layers, whipped-cream frosting, fruit atop, fruit between. As I told Alan last week, you really don’t have to be much of a cook at this time of year. You just have to be a good shopper and assembler.

When I finished I boxed up the cake and arrived at the party an hour early. No one was there yet, including the host, although he had thoughtfully left a cooler of beer on ice in the back yard. So I opened one and got in the pool. Weekends are brief enough around here.

When I bought the whipping cream, the bagger at the grocery held up the carton and said, “Is this whipped cream?” I said, “Not yet. But when you pour it into a bowl and get your mixer involved, it will be.” He looked astounded. Poor kid; no doubt the product of a Cool-Whip household. I’m not one of those foodies who sneers at Cool-Whip. It has its place in many delicious things, including my Thanksgiving Waldorf salad. But I’ve had many such encounters in grocery lines, and I always feel sad for kids who can’t tell onions from garlic, let alone the tricky stuff like shallots or fennel. (I once wrote about this in my column, and got a hell-yeah phone call from a man who raved that he’d asked a grocery clerk for a No. 5 can of something, and the clerk didn’t know what he was talking about! Can you believe?! I confessed that actually, I didn’t know the can numbering system, either, and he hung up in disgust, his what-is-the-world-coming-to quota filled for the day. It’s always something, but nowadays we have Google, which explains all.)

It occurred to me on the way to the car — esprit d’escalier, grocery store-style — that I’d missed the opportunity to really blow the kid’s mind by telling him that if you left the mixer running for a while and skipped the sugar, you’d end up with butter. Oh, amazing heavy cream. A sauce base, a cake frosting, a corn-on-the-cob dressing, ass fat — is there anything you cannot be?

Since my weekend’s experiences amounted to so little, let’s skip right to the bloggage, eh?

Reason to be glad you’re not Muslim: Ramadan starts amid yet another week of brutal heat and humidity.

The president shoots hoops with NBA stars, prompting the usual right-wing skrees. I can’t believe he’d step on a court with LeBron James. I wonder if the pros let him win.

Speaking of which, Glenn Beck is now comparing the Obama administration with “Planet of the Apes.” How…innnnteresting.

And one bit of seriousness — how the recession is filtering down to the local-government level. We’ve been very lucky so far in Suburb-land, although I know the last few budget years have been hair-pullers for city managers and councils. At this point the discussions of consolidation of services among the Pointes is just getting started, baby stuff compared to the drastic measures in the article, about shut-off streetlights and shut-down budgets. Anything happening in your town?

As for me, I have 10 million things to do before 3 p.m. See ya.

* Another inside Columbus joke.

Fantasy closet is like fantasy football, in which women start with the blank slate of a well-designed empty closet — with lots of attractive, Container Store storage options — and fill it with non-existent clothes we can’t afford but pretend we can. Then we wear them in fantasy-closet dress-up games, perhaps while watching “Project Runway,” in which we are presented with fun outfit ideas like this. (I’m thinking of the topmost one.) “Project Runway” is a genius show, enticing millions of normal-size women to watch novice designers of wildly uneven talent turn out one outfit after another that barely covers one’s ass and, in this case, completely uncovers one’s back. It’s a great fantasy-closet shopping spot, “Project Runway,” because only in fantasies are most women freed of such constrictions as bras and the need to sit down from time to time.

I had about three minutes in my entire life when I could have worn a top like that, which threatens with every step to slip and reveal one’s breasts from either a front or side angle. I was 11 years old.

But, as we’re frequently reminded, runways looks are like concept cars — just an idea. By the time that look finds its way to a store rack, the skirt will be nine inches longer and the top closed on the sides and back, and… it’ll pretty much be an entirely different dress. But that’s OK! Because my fantasy-closet body can totally wear anything at all.

In recent years, I’ve done a lot of my fantasy-closet shopping online or in catalogs. Which is why I’m so thoroughly amused by the website Jezebel, which deserves some sort of fashion Pulitzer for the work they’ve done bringing preposterous photo retouching by fashion retailers to the public’s attention. They made a big splash a few years back with their Redbook cover revelation, but have stayed on the job — along with many others, including the always-amusing Photoshop Disasters.

The current Ann Taylor business is particularly wounding, as Ann is one place that, in general, sells affordable, wearable clothes for a wide range of age and body types. I wore a lot more Ann Taylor when I worked in offices, but I remember it fondly, so knowing they’re playing silly games with extreme photo retouching — removing models’ ribcages seems to be a favorite — really chaps my ass. This isn’t “Project Runway.” I pay real, non-fantasy money for clothes from places like that, and I’d appreciate it if they’d cut that shit out.

I once watched Alan get fitted for a suit, and I was struck by the contrast with shopping for my own clothes. Like nearly everyone, Alan’s body differs from the ideal, and this was treated by the tailor as a simple and utterly unremarkable fact. Take it in here, let it out there, hem it thus, adjust, nip, change, presto, a suit. Whereas women are taught from an early age that their bodies are a collection of “flaws” that must be covered, camouflaged, squeezed in and shaped to fit whatever someone else has decided is this year’s model.

Sooner or later you grow out of this shit, to be sure, but I can’t help but think they’d sell more clothes if they cut it out.

My fantasy closet is shaping up nicely. I bought some fantasy boots, and I’m experimenting with cargo pants and jackets to wear with my non-fantasy scarves. I now own five Hermes scarves; how did that happen? Time to roll out the Joan Holloway all-stars, I think.

So, a lovely weekend awaits. Any bloggage? Not much:

Contrary to popular belief, I cannot read the entire internet every day, and in general I avoid its small stories, for two reasons: a) they’re small; and b) the people who write them have a way of making them seem like Watergate crossed with the Hindenburg explosion (“we can now exclusively reveal…”). But this one, about some clown who’s been writing for Andrew Breitbart on the Shirley Sherrod story, caught my eye, mainly because the clown in question is a Wayne State graduate, although who knows? That could be another part of his inflated resume, along with this amuse-bouche:

A government official once claimed that Dr. Pezzi achieved the highest score ever attained on an IQ test administered nationwide, although Pezzi dismisses this as disingenuous pandering.

Anyway, it appears this genius is practicing medicine somewhere in northern Michigan. Beware, tourists!

Anything else? I got nothin’. Weekend, sweep me into your arms. I’m ready.

Reader, you could. You want a shot at guest-blogging here? Maybe leading to a permanent spot? It could be arranged. God knows I could use a longer weekend.

Seriously, though, it’s one of those mornings where I wonder if J.C. will write me a program that keeps track…not just of posts, but maybe of total words published here. I’m thinking it has to average out to 3,000 a week, times 52… 156,000 words, or roughly two books’ worth a year. All over my morning coffee. This is either madness or graphomania, and maybe the same thing.

Last summer one of my blog fans said, “Surely there’s a book in this.” I said, “Yes, I’m sure people will buy a highly perishable product between hard covers that was previously — and still is — available free in 700-word chunks online.” But columnists still publish anthologies, don’t they? True, but I never buy those. Or rather, I buy them when they’re published by friends. And my favorites have been the ones vanity-published by friends, or on presses so small they might as well have been. Occasionally I still pick up those produced by Mike Harden, for my money still the best newspaper columnist you never heard of, a generalist out of the Jim Bishop mold, still writing in the Columbus Dispatch from retirement. I used to read his collected works when I was out of ideas myself, and over time got to where I can even recite chunks from memory. He once wondered what would happen if the great poets had labored on Madison Avenue. Like, for instance, James Whitcomb Riley:

When de frost is in de fuel line
And de DieHard’s kind o’ dead
And you 50 miles from nowhere
With icicles on yo’ head
You’ll be wishin’ an’a hopin’
As yo’ shoes fill up with snow
Dat you’d bought it at Sohio,
And let dem pay de tow.

That’s a joke only middle-aged Buckeyes would get. Sohio’s gasoline offered Ice-Guard ™ protection. No fuel-line freeze-up, or Sohio pays your tow. They sponsored the weather report on every radio station in town, always with that promise. Only once in my life did my car stop running in a cold snap, and I wondered, briefly, if I might have fuel-line freeze-up. How, exactly, would I go about collecting my reimbursement from Sohio? Would I have to prove that was Sohio gas in the tank? I paid cash for gas; surely they’d fight me. And then I’d have to provide testimony by a certified mechanic that yes, it was fuel-line freeze-up that had caused my car to stop on U.S. 33 between Lancaster and Athens, probably in some sort of legal deposition, and by the time it was all over, I’d get a few lousy bucks to cover just the towing charge. What a ripoff, and…

I twisted the key again. Car started right up. Reverie over.

No, one footnote: Sohio became Amoco. Amoco became? Yes: BP. Sohio was swallowed by BP. I will always miss their logo:

That cup was given to me by a fellow Buckeye, and I gave it to J.C., another fellow Buckeye.

And now I have bored the pants clean off you, and it’s time to get to the bloggage:

Jack Russell Terriers — little bastards. That story is equal parts hilarious and tragic, but at the end it’s about how a Jack Russell can chew off his owner’s goddamn toe, and still end up the hero.

Wife suspects something’s going on, finds out her husband has another wife and family. How? How else? Via Facebook.

Speaking of which, if you’re not reading the Wall Street Journal’s series on internet privacy — rather, the lack thereof — you’re missing a chance to get simultaneously terrified and infuriated. Particularly today.

And now, I should go do some real work. Maybe write a book.