I hope your holiday was pleasant. Mine was, although at some point I shifted into hibernation mode — all I want to do is sleep, a condition that will likely last until we change the clocks again. Sleep and eat. You ask me, the bears have the right idea.

Maybe cutting back on carbs will help. She said as she finished the last slice of birthday cake.

If any of you doubt that I basically pull every entry on this blog from my nether regions on a daily basis, I offer as evidence the preceding two paragraphs.

I’m a little rusty this morning. Lots went on over the weekend, lots coming up. We had a production meeting/casting session for the upcoming 48-hour film challenge, and I took a moment to look around the table at all the smart faces there and reflect on what these Michigan tax incentives for filmmakers have wrought. The difference between what we brought to the party in June 2008 and what we have just over a year later is pretty remarkable. Not that the 2008 team was bush league, but most of the people we have now, from actors to crew, have serious professional filmmaking experience, and it shows. A year ago, casting the zombie movie, some of the people auditioning had trouble reading. Saturday, we had a 13-year-old girl who most recently worked with Rob Reiner. In fact, as I looked around the table and asked myself who’s the weak link in the chain? It’s me. Time to bring it, I guess.

We also had house guests, John and Sam, for Saturday night, when we finally celebrated my birthday. Lovely cake and presents. Pork tenderloin with an Indian spice rub on the grill, yum yum. We discovered that even though both John and Sam are plugged in net people, being childless they’ve missed many YouTube classics — Charlie Bit Me, the Panda Sneeze, and of course, the Dramatic Prairie Dog. John learns fast, however, and quickly threw together this video homage with his iPhone and one of my birthday presents, which we’re calling…

…Dramatic Horse Pen.

That’s a pen from some cowboy museum on John and Sammy’s recent trip out west. Punchline: It doesn’t work. Glad it’s good for something.

And now my attention is drawn by the events of the day — the president’s speech on Afghanistan tomorrow, the next phase in heath insurance reform, and, of course, Tiger Woods’ marriage, about which I could not care less. I am interested in human behavior, however, so before we go on, let’s stipulate something that is, to me, as plain as that Escalade wrapped around the tree, yonder:

Woods is lying. He’s lying about the accident, he’s lying about whatever preceded it, and he’s lying about the role his wife played in it. He probably started the whole chain of events by lying to her, too, the classic, “Who, me? I wasn’t with her! The National Enquirer is lying!” That’s OK — everyone lies sometimes, and none of us would want to live with a 100 percent truth-teller. Sometimes the greatest honesty comes out of gentle deception, etc. I’m thinking today of his wife, who I’m going to speculate was wielding that golf club not to rescue her husband, but to threaten him and perhaps knock his block off. Eric Zorn and I have been exchanging e-mail on the subject, and he contends her target was the car all along — nothing like a smashed window to punctuate your peril when you’re trying to escape the fury of a Swedish giantess. I think maybe she was aiming for the man himself, which would be pretty damn stupid on her part — any physical injury to the ATM machine she shares her life with would imperil its future smooth operation. But then, I doubt Woods married his wife for her brains. Maybe that’s what he found in the New York “social director” he was allegedly dallying with, an intellectual equal to his Stanford-educated brain.

Let’s take a look at this TMZ item, though, one that says Tiger was shopping Zales (Zales? Yeah, that sent up a flag for me, too) for a “Kobe Special,” i.e., a big flashy rock to appease her feminine furies. I’m reminded of the female comedian who, after the original Kobe special was delivered, remarked, “Just what every woman wants — a big shiny reminder of her husband’s infidelity.”

Let me just go on the record here, and say I hope my child will grow to adulthood knowing that her mother never went after her father with a golf club. Good lord, Elin, one misjudged swing and you’re talking closed-head injury and the rest of your life being the next Dana Reeve. Suck it up.

Ten a.m. looms, dragging behind it a busy day. We’re back to the mangle, folks, and starting the long slog to Christmas.

Huh. I just realized I have to clean my whole house in the next two days, including two bathrooms, and that will, well, sort of suck. I’m editing copy for GrossePointeToday.com at the moment, I have a gym session that cannot be skipped in the Week of 10 Million Calories, and after that, I’m scheduled for a root touch-up. That can’t be skipped either. My daughter: “Make sure you get your roots done. I don’t want anyone to think you’re my grandmother.” Oh, excuse me, Miss Teenage Poopypants.

So what does that leave you folks? Photographic evidence of how balmy our fall has been:

That’s the neighbor’s forsythia, apparently fooled into believing November is actually March. How’s the weather where you are? That’s what grandparents talk about, right?

Back later this afternoon, no doubt. But not now.

It’s time for another edition of Short Attention Span Theater:

In honor of “unfriend” being christened a word by the New Oxford Dictionary, I decided to do some. My Facebook is becoming ridiculous, not only a time suck but a ceaseless update on the lives of people I wouldn’t recognize with a gun to my head. In a few cases, they’re people I’d recognize, but cross the street to avoid.

And so (cracking knuckles): The guy who posted video of Red Skelton doing his pledge of allegiance routine? Buh-bye. The alter ego of one of my old writing-group buddies? Probably outta there, although her regular self stays; she’s doing some anonymous-blogging thing, but jeez, do I have to keep up with non-existent Facebookers, too? Probably gone. Dunno this person, but her status updates are funny, so she stays. And then my mind wandered, and I gave up that project. Net friend reduction: Two, one a non-existent person in the first place. The internet has destroyed my attention span.

I’ll do anything to avoid reading one more thing about S- – – – P- – – -, but every so often something squeaks past my P- – – -Filter that I’m not sorry about. This brief passage quoted by the guys at LGM, for instance:

When Gerald Ford took over, I knew who he was because I remembered reading about him and seeing him a picture in a scholastic magazine. He’d been America’s vice president then, sitting parade-style atop the backseat of a convertible, waving at the crowd. Now he was our president!

Note the exclamation point. (I’m assuming that “him a picture” part is the blogger’s transcription error.) When I’m editing our student reporters, I sometimes find myself on a search-and-destroy mission for exclamation points, and my stock line is to save them for the next time you are eyewitness to a Hindenburg explosion, and even then, hold your fire and let the facts speak for themselves. You hardly ever need exclamation points in mundane copy, and to use one to punch home the fact that a man who was once vice president is now president…well, let’s just say that’s a punctuation tool the rest of us get to use about you, Mrs. P:

I can’t believe a three-time cancer survivor in his 70s would choose this nitwit for a running mate; it’s not hard to imagine a scenario that could make her president!

Sometimes, even facts that speak for themselves need a certain boost. Sometimes they need a boost and afterburners:

…it’s not hard to imagine a scenario that could make HER president!!!!!

If a student turned in a story with that passage in it, I’d underline it and scrawl “word, dude” in the margin.

It is, of course, pathetic when a person older than 30 uses the word dude. Far from fading away, dude is now unisex; Kate and her friends call one another dude. When I was at the University of Michigan in 2003, I nearly blanched when a girl in my screenwriting class, a sweet-faced cherub with the sort of complexion S- – – – P- – – – would call peaches and cream, casually discussed what a pain her film-history professor was. Direct quote: “So I’m all like, ‘dude, quit jumping on my nuts. I’ll finish the paper.'” She was headed for Hollywood after graduation; I’m sure she fit right in.

Speaking of yawning gaps between the generations, the other day I was using a yardstick. Kate said, “Hand me the meter stick.” What are they teaching you at that communist school, I wondered. “It’s a yardstick,” I protested. “What’s the difference?” Kate replied. What’s the difference? I can’t believe this girl is the daughter of Mr. Measure 10,000 Times, Cut Once.

Roughly three inches, if you’re taking notes.

Jeez, what a train wreck. Next time, people. Until then, tip your waitresses, but feel free to stiff me.

The Los Angeles Times online crossword is easier than the New York Times’. It also has a faultless interface that never falters, making speed part of the experience and leading to my daily back-and-forth e-mail with Eric Zorn; if you can beat 7:23, you can beat me today. (Late-breaking reply from Eric: You’ll have to squeak in under 6:38 to beat him.) I’ll give you a 20-second head start if you’ve never done the LAT puzzle; puzzles have their own underlying logic and favorite wores, and it takes a few run-throughs to get the hang of a new editor. I frequently think that Uma Thurman will live forever, along with Nick and Nora’s dog Asta, for having a short first name that’s mostly vowels: 42 across: She killed Bill.

The NYT crossword is more difficult and has a suckworthy online interface. I figure if paying the outrageous monthly home-delivery price for the Times (59 tax-deductible dollars per, but still) qualifies me for anything, it should be a crossword experience to match that of its Tribune Media services competitor, but no — I had to download a craptastic Java applet, which was slow and stupid and didn’t work well. I tried the iPhone app for $1.99, but it’s also clunky, features only a few puzzles free and has the worst background music imaginable, yes, worse than Scrabble.

Also, maybe someone could enlighten me: We all know Will Shortz is editor of the NYT crossword, but what’s involved with “editing” a crossword puzzle? It either works or it doesn’t, right? Is he the one who tells the originator, “I think what you need here is an Uma Thurman clue,” or do people who sprinkle their puzzles with Uma, Asta and Oona just know he’s the one to sell them to?

Bonus fun fact for Hoosiers: Shortz is an IU grad. Degree is in “enigmatology,” the only known possessor of such a sheepskin, in a course of study he designed himself. Fun fact for all, via Wiki:

He says that his favorite crossword of all time is the Election Day crossword of November 5, 1996, designed by Jeremiah Farrell. It had two correct solutions with the same set of clues, one saying that the “Lead story in tomorrow’s newspaper (!)” would be “BOB DOLE ELECTED”, and the other correct solution saying “CLINTON ELECTED”.

I’ve had my problems with computer games in the past, but with the LAT crossword, I think they’re solved. It has a beginning, a middle, an end, and a crowing or cowering e-mail to mop up, and then I’m done. All my bad habits are now on the iPhone, encapsulated in one game (Wurdle, an electronic form of Boggle), and lo, it appears I am not alone. Fortunately, I can leave my phone on another floor and get some work done.

Which I should go and do now. I was out and about all day yesterday and short on the bloggage, but you shouldn’t have to do bloggage on the day Sarah Palin appears on Oprah. Sounds like she did her usual. Let’s all say it together: Poor, poor bunny rabbit. Everyone is so mean to you! You thought Katie Couric would be just another mom, talkin’ teenagers and the gray hairs they give ya. But no.

You should have plenty to bat around today. Thanks for that sweet potato recipe, Mary — I think I’m going to be making that one this year. The week should ease up considerably by tomorrow. I’ll have more of my head in this game then.

Today is Alan and Kate’s birthday, and if birthdays aren’t a reason to get out your Fostoria square cake stand, I don’t know what is. Square cake stands require square cakes, however, and I didn’t have any square cake pans. We were at a mall on Saturday, so I stopped at Sur la Table.

There were millions of cake pans in all sizes. Every single one was flared at the top, just a little bit. For a layer cake, you need straight sides. I told the floor guy I needed straight-sided pans, and he ushered me into the “professional” area. The cost differential between an ever-so-slightly flared 8×8 amateur cake pan and a plumb-line straight professional pan? Two-point-six-to-one. Sometimes I hate cooking. The clerk suggested I make it in a 9-by-13 pan and cut it in half. This would yield two layers measuring 9-by-6.5 inches. This is not square. Sometimes I hate myself.

But the cake turned out OK:

That’s devil’s food with vanilla cream cheese frosting, by the way. I’m writing this before it’s cut, but I suspect it will be a little dry, based on its texture coming out of the pan. My cooking’s in a long slump these days; there are times when I just knock around the grocery store waiting for inspiration to strike, and it never does. The farmer’s markets are dwindling and I don’t have the effortless summer bounty, all of which tastes good with a little grilling, a little olive oil and a little salt. I cook for two people besides myself, one of whom doesn’t get home until 9:30 p.m. or later, the other essentially indifferent to everything that’s not an Oreo, pasta or bowl of cereal. I’m looking at another winter of soups, and I’m already dispirited.

Poor me.

(UPDATE: The cake was fine. As was dinner: Pork tenderloin with cranberry-rosemary sauce, au gratin potatoes and sauteed spinach with garlic. Perhaps my mojo is returning. And happy birthday to Mrs. Blonde Mannion, who also had pork tenderloin with cranberry-rosemary sauce for her birthday dinner.)

I guess we should run with the food theme, then. I ordered my Thanksgiving entree Saturday — a cruelty-free, pasture-raised, no-bad stuff, all good-stuff turkey from a CSA provider. They had pictures of the turkeys milling around their pasture pen. I expect I’ll be presented with the bird’s autobiography, attesting that its life was long and good out there in the pasture, and that it was ready to sacrifice its life for our harvest banquet. At these prices (don’t ask), it better. All I ask for is a little fat; the last chicken I bought from the “Amish” place at the market was so skinny it looked like it ran marathons.

I have my problems with the Amish, but the chicken place at the Eastern Market proudly advertises its Amish sourcing, so (shrug). I only object when I hear anyone claiming Amish poultry are somehow purer than that of your basic nightmare operation; my very own husband wrote about Amish chicken operations, and the only differences between them and Tyson’s are a) size; and b) the kid dumping the pharmaceuticals into the feed bin has a bowl haircut. If that makes you feel better, fine, but don’t delude yourself.

The rest of the menu is unplanned, but for the staples — potatoes, dressing, gallons of gravy. For four people I’m not going overboard, but hey, it’s Thanksgiving. Suggestions invited.

Bloggage: There’s no nerd like a typography nerd.

If you don’t like what they’re saying, just claim they’re lying. Repeat. Fact-checking the fact-checker of the fact-checker of “Going Rogue.”

Why I will never understand corporate finance:

In a positive sign that General Motors Co.’s restructuring is off to a good start, the company today said it would begin repaying U.S. government loans later this year, ahead of what is required, and that it lost $1.2 billion in the third quarter after emerging from bankruptcy.

No wonder this company got so screwed up.

Looks like Michigan is out of the race to house Gitmo detainees. Damn. One typical winter should have been enough to extract signed confessions from the lot of ’em.

Off to do what I do on Mondays. Whatever that is.

Sarah Palin names George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” as one of her favorite books back in the day, when she was a voracious reader. Hey! We have something in common. I liked it, too. I think I was around Kate’s age when I first picked it up. It’s the perfect starter novel for a kid transitioning to adult material, just serious enough to let you know you’re reading something Important, but at its most basic level, simple and easy to follow.

Or as my old colleague Bob once noted, it’s so sad when Boxer dies.

In honor of the five hours of sleep I got last night, in anticipation of a weekend spent lolling and cooking and making birthday cakes and studying Russian vocabulary, just for the hell of it — let’s make today a short one.

Go ahead, laugh, I did: Irish priest kidnapped in Philippines released by MILF. Don’t they have dirty-minded copy editors at the Christian Science Monitor? Or are they just having a laff? You could spend all day writing subheds for that one: Pleads for recapture, say, or Announces engagement, plans to leave priesthood. If you must know without clicking, it’s Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Worth your while: A 3-D recreation of Capt. Sully’s genius flight, and thanks to crinoidgirl for finding it.

Even cooler: Starlings in flight. About the only time you’re going to see starlings appreciated in this space.

Now I must shop. See you Monday.

The longer we keep a rabbit in the house, the longer I think it belongs out of the house. Not to live out there — it is a pet, little miss I will be petted oh yes I will — but for a stretch of outside time every day. I’ve been carrying the cage outside, removing the bottom, and sitting her in a sunny patch of grass for a few hours, and she always comes back in feeling better. She likes the sun on her face and the wind in her fur.

But the cage is too small. Of late I’ve been scanning Craigslist for a secondhand puppy exercise pen, one of those things that comes in panels and is about knee-high. There are several places in the yard we could set it up, and put ol’ Ruby out there for a daily sniff ‘n’ hop.

Then I look at the picture on the wall, an octavo print of Audubon’s Red-Tailed Hawk, two of them fighting for the rabbit in one’s talons. In some prints, the rabbit is having its final bowel movement; Kate called it “the rabbit pooping” when she was a toddler. I’m wondering what the chances are of looking out the kitchen window some fine spring day to see Ruby flying away to be a raptor’s lunch. That would be a bummer, but also sort of interesting, in the there’s-something-you-don’t-see-every-day sense of the word.

A friend was walking his dog on the ice in the U.P. one fine winter day, and looked up to see a bald eagle studying the two of them. Eagles eat fish mostly, but if one can carry off a 20-pound salmon, you wouldn’t think a cairn terrier would give one that much trouble.

Of course, the world is a dangerous place for animals of all sorts, even those living in the protection of a nice zoo somewhere. The deer at the National Zoo jumped into the lions’ enclosure, and whether or not it immediately said uh-oh, I think we took the wrong exit is lost to the ages. If nothing else, it put on something of a show for the spectators:

It’s not as bad as you fear. There’s something awesome about predators in action. The fact the deer died and the lion didn’t get her meal is sad. One of the very few zoo stories that belonged on Page One but didn’t get there happened when i was in Columbus, and two workers stayed late, had a few drinks and pitched a troublesome, butt-nipping goose into the jaguars’ enclosure. Nowadays, they’d shoot a cell-phone video. At least you’d hope so.

Guys, I promised a friend I’d take his Wayne State class this morning, and I have to get out of here. For bloggage and discussion, I suggest we take on the “Mad Men” finale, which I stayed up late to watch and which I will bet you Joan’s gold pen necklace you’ll find so, so, soooo good. And this from the comments of the last thread: The auction for the old midcentury modern furnishings at Connie’s library, complete with a note from herself. I’ll be going at top speed until 1 a.m. tomorrow, so that’s it for me. Happy Monday.

Now it can be told: I knew some people in Fort Wayne whose son-in-law was shot in one of these incidents like the one yesterday. It was also at a military base; it was what’s come to be known as the Fort Bragg sniper incident of 1995.

Now it can be told because I didn’t tell it then. It would have been a fine localization for a national story, but not everything has to be localized, especially when a man is fighting for his life for weeks and months on end. From what I recall of their account, the soldier/shooter took a bead on a row of officers overlooking an athletic field and started moving down the line. The first man was killed, the second one paralyzed. I think my friends’ son-in-law had just enough time to react, and was shot in the abdomen. He nearly died, but he didn’t, and when he recovered he was transferred to a teaching position at West Point.

I wonder if they gave him a Purple Heart. I’ve come to think of these incidents as skirmishes in America’s war on…something, even as I know they’ve happened elsewhere in the world. They still seem so uniquely American.

I haven’t had the heart to really go looking for reaction to yesterday’s news from Fort Hood. This is one of those stories where I think I’m going to stick to the best of the official accounts and stay out of Blogland. Recalling the reaction to the Virginia Tech shootings, I don’t want to accidentally run across John Derbyshire calling American soldiers a bunch of cowards for not “taking him down while he was reloading,” which I recall was one of his gems of insight following Mr. Cho’s rampage. I’ve already heard that soldiers on the base don’t walk around armed, and I’m sure that even as we speak, some keyboard warrior is calling that policy pussified, that they need to be strapped at all times. I might even agree. When it comes to guns and violence and crazy, maybe the whole country is a war zone.

At this point it seems the decent response is to maintain respectful, alert silence while we wait for the fact-finding to find some facts.

And how convenient: This attitude meshes perfectly with my need to be at a meeting in 30 minutes, and get out of here early. May I just say before I go, however, how much I enjoyed all of your comments yesterday, about how you found yourselves here at NN.C, whatever path you took. One of the coolest things about this site, no, the coolest thing, is the comment chorus, and how my part is only prelude, like in “Henry V.” Last summer I had lunch with an out-of-town friend who said he never misses a day, etc.

“And how about those comments?” I said.

“I don’t read the comments,” he replied.

WhAAA? Rob, if you’re reading, you’re missing the best part.

Now to wash my face. Defeating Eric in the crossword will have to wait. I’m running late.

There are stats nerds on this here internet, but I am not one of them. Every so often I run across a blogger who uses their stats program and its tracking powers to hunt down and punish readers who have displeased them in some way — posting IP numbers, sometimes names, in one case contacting some poor shlub’s boss to complain (he had displeased the blogger from a work computer) — but I can’t do that. I even feel bad (sometimes) about blocking Dwight; I ran across a few of his comments while hunting down some old posts, and it reminded me he was once just an occasionally sharp-tongued guy who simply disagreed with most of us, before he became a nasty old troll.

I believe we all have enough forces of evil tracking our every move and dollar spent. We don’t need another. Also, most of the crap displayed on my Google Analytics dashboard is over my head, and I don’t want to bother learning about it.

There is one facet that never fails to amuse, however: the search terms that bring readers here.

Once, early in this blog’s life, I got a nice note from a teacher in Los Angeles. I’d gone through a rough day at work with a knuckle-dragging boss and was feeling lost in self-pity and self-doubt — I’m going to DIE in this awful place, I just KNOW it — when I opened her e-mail. She told me how much she loved the blog, and confessed to having used passages from it in a writing class (my heart, it soared!), and closed by telling me how she found me. She’d been searching “puu-puu platter” and came across something I’d written about Polynesian restaurants.

It was a miracle, I thought, suddenly grasping the truth: I was living in a world without editors, but with search engines. Boss Hairy Knuckles couldn’t hold me back in a world ruled by the Google.

As frequently happens, it didn’t quite work out that way. The Google could hold us both back — and most of the other journalists we knew — by torpedoing our industry below the waterline. But for a writer who always felt misunderstood in Allen County, Indiana, finding readers from around the world was something of a thrill. Still is.

While I never write with search terms in mind, I like to think our discussions here are electic and wide-ranging, small-c catholic in the best sense of the word. You’ll find all sorts of arcane words and phrases batted around here; let’s take a look at a few:

** My name is the first and second most-searched term here in the past month, but guess what numero tres is? Cane rat bouillon, dropped in the comments once by our very own Coozledad, in a discussion we had earlier in the summer about lousy restaurant food. It accounted for 224 visits, and what’s even more amusing is that cane rat bouillon searchers spent three minutes on the site and visited 1.3 pages. Welcome, cane-ratters.

** No. 4 is fort wayne mediawatch, and fuck those guys. The last time I expressed that opinion, they got all huffy and rattled their wee plastic swords and threatened that if I didn’t stop saying mean things about them, they would write about me on their two new blogs, Why We Hate Nancy Nall and That Stupid Bitch, Nancy Nall. Both are empty, so no link, and besides, why should I drive traffic to them? Let ’em whore for it like everyone else. Moving on:

** cokie roberts interesting nancy nall, which appears to be an accidental collision of those words in the comments somewhere; I haven’t written about Cokie in forever.

** No. 8 is the full Fresian name of our own Connie, whose last name I will obscure so it doesn’t come up in yet another search. The entry was one where we discussed our unusual names.

** No. 16: free crack. Heh. Sorry, folks.

** No. 19: nancynull.com. For the first 16 years of my life, no one ever misspelled my last name. Then one of my friends started calling me Null, and that was that. It obviously unleashed a demon.

After about 25 or so, the searches fall to single digits — of searchers, that is, be they human or ‘bot. Still, the things they’re looking for! Queen Noor plastic surgery and jon meacham tiresome fool (he’s the editor of Newsweek), smashed tits and death of the adverb, drug-seeking behavior and spook beckman.

Every so often I get these community-college catalogs offering various one-off classes. I’ve changed my mind; I’d take one called The Thorough Appreciation of Google Analytics. Someone, please offer one.

OK, that’s it for today, then. Oh no, one bit of bloggage. Fisticuffs at the Washington Post! Platform-agnostic shit content-management system bullshit… I love it:

I have to say something about Henry Allen, a journalism story that’s mostly staying in journalism circles and probably that’s where it belongs, because it has no greater import or anything. I mention it mainly because I always wanted to work for or with Allen, a legendary writer and editor at the Washington Post, whose career ended abruptly last Friday when he scuffled with a writer who was chapping his ass. He literally went down swinging, and while I can’t condone punching one’s colleagues, I can certainly understand the urge to do so, and given that no one was hurt, let’s chalk it up to a final glimpse at a certain Front Page standard of newsroom behavior and leave it at that.

I first encountered Allen, then a superstar of the Style section, when I took a two-day writing workshop very early in my career. It was a strange trip — a hot weekend in late May. My salad-days starter car didn’t have air-conditioning, and I drove from Columbus to Champaign, Ill. with the windows down, wearing a pair of bib overalls with a bikini top for maximum air circulation. It was a long trip, and I arrived windblown and looking crazy, at least if I’m to judge from the looks the desk clerk at the hotel gave me. Things went further downhill when I realized I’d packed all my career clothes but not my career shoes, and had to attend the workshop and networking sessions in jeans and a T-shirt. A few of the young reporters stayed up late the first night, drinking wine in the courtyard of the hotel, asked by management several times to keep it down. (“It’s that girl with the overalls and bikini,” someone undoubtedly said.)

Allen’s seminar was the following day, and what I mainly remember about it was that I fell in love. He quoted a colleague at the Post: “I want to write stories people can dance to,” and I got it immediately. The guy next to me didn’t — I could tell by the look on his face — but I committed the phrase to memory, and use it from time to time when I’m teaching young writers. Prose, even journalistic prose, has rhythm and mood and recognizing it is very much like having an ear for music. It’s hard to teach that quality, but show me someone who understands the phrase — writing you can dance to — and I know I can work with him or her.

From then on, I mainly just sat there and made dreamy eyes at my new hero. He made fun of AP leads and talked about the drive in from the airport, and afterward, I came up to gush. He said he had a book coming out, and could he send me a copy? Who, me? Um, sure…. “Fool’s Mercy” arrived at my apartment a few weeks later, with a note, “Please, run to your library and demand it be taken off the shelves.”

(Recalling that note, I wonder who might be the source of this Amazon reader review, penned by A Customer: “This is a novel that has taken the art of shaping the reader’s worldview and raised it to the level of physical intervention. By that I mean that Mr. Allen has discovered techniques of using English syntax to alter synaptic relationships within the brain itself, possibly permanently. He may have gone deeper, as well, functioning as the analog of a computer hacker as he cracks the DNA code and blithely rearranges the human genome with untold consequences for generations to come. Were this novel some outre exercise in modernist befuddlement, the danger would be minimal, but Mr. Allen’s darkest motives are masked by a brisk yet poignant thriller populated with haunting personalities. As such, it may pose the severest test the First Amendment has faced since the founding of our republic — a book that is what the law calls ‘an attractive nuisance,’ but a nuisance on the level of Jacob-Kreutzfeld syndrome, the human equivalent of “mad cow” disease. It should not only be banned, but all of its known readers should be rounded up like cattle and incarcerated pending central-nervous-system biopsies. Meanwhile, it remains available to an unwary citizenry from Dryad Books, of 15 Sherman Ave., Takoma Park, Md. 20912.” I have a sneaking suspicion.)

I still take “Fool’s Mercy” off the shelf from time to time, to soak in his graceful prose style. Is it a great thriller? Probably not enough plot, and characters a bit too three-dimensional. But there are some wonderful descriptions, and, well, it was sent to me personally by the author. Those books are always special.

The story linked above said Allen, a 68-year-old former Marine and Vietnam vet, was moved to violence by the reaction of a reporter whose error-ridden “charticle” he was criticizing:

(Allen) gave pretty much the same sharp-elbowed spiel to both Hesse and Roig-Franzia. Hesse responded by asking for the story back so that she could iron out some of the wrinkles.

Roig-Franzia responded by saying, “Henry, don’t be such a cocksucker.”

Boom.

Oh, well. As is noted in the story, this is a new era in journalism. Chicago Sun-Times writers don’t pee off the ledges into the river anymore, either. It doesn’t mean we can’t miss the good ol’ days, at least a little.

Enjoy retirement, Henry. Write another novel. I’ll buy it. And I’ll still pay any price to hear whatever writing advice you might give at another University of Illinois workshop.

So. Up until 2 a.m. last night, but with an E-day school holiday, got to sleep clear until 8. They say you can count the hours of sleep Roger Penske gets on one hand, and that he is master of the power nap. He’ll announce, “I’m going to grab 40 minutes,” put his head down, fall asleep immediately and awaken 39 minutes and 59 seconds later.

My role model.

My other role model is Elmore Leonard. What does it say about me when my role models are old men? Vigorous old men, but still. The next thing you know, I’ll be asking for a Viagra prescription.

As you can imagine, yesterday was in the crazy-busy, and today will be the same. With that heedless extra hour of sleep I had to cut something, and today it was: Gym. Haven’t done that in a while. (Where’s my medal?) But if I’m ever going to learn Russian I have to give my homework the respect it deserves, and today I have to write 10 sentences, using the genitive singular. I’m inspired because I watched a Russian-language movie Friday night, one of the few truly indolent me-times I get in the week, and I understood more of it than I thought I would. It’s like I’m trembling on the brink of another leap in understanding, and I want to nurture it along.

The film? “The Italian,” or, as imdb.com insists on transliteration, “Italianetz.” Worth your time, even with subtitles.

One of these days it’ll be you folks I cut loose. Don’t assume I’ve been kidnapped or anything.

One brief item of bloggage: Eric Zorn finds the new GOP in North Carolina. Cooze, is this one of your neighbors?