It all started with a conversation with my sister, who used to sell telephone systems to big corporations and now sells antiques, in an antique mall and on eBay. She specializes in American glass — depression, carnival, that sort of thing. Mostly utilitarian items prized by collectors. Pretty things. Hostessy stuff.

One day I was watching her pack stuff for eBay shipping, and she said, “If you ever see a square cake stand at a garage sale or something, buy it. You can name your price.” The lesson sunk in, and a couple years later, I saw a square cake stand. This one, in fact:

This was at a Grosse Pointe estate sale, notorious for overcharging. It seemed someone had already named their price, and it was ridiculous: $90. But the thing was in mint condition, so I called my sister and described it. “That sounds like Fostoria American, and if it’s perfect, it’s worth a lot more than $90.” So I bought it. Checked eBay, and she was right: Fostoria American square cake stands with the rum well and in mint condition were selling for about $300 at the time. (Less now — recession — but still well over $200.) I considered giving it to her to sell, but thought eh, it’s pretty, and added it to my china cabinet, to stand as a memorial to the day a simple peasant woman got a bargain at a Grosse Pointe estate sale.

So this Christmas, we went to my sister’s, and guess what one of my presents was? Ten cake plates, in the Fostoria American pattern:

But wait, there’s more! Also, a Fostoria American cake knife:

I mention all this to underline something we all learn about ourselves sooner or later: One minute we’re the sort of girl whose most prized possessions are a hand-written letter from Warren Zevon, a signed copy of “Freaky Deaky” and a “Kind of Blue” CD, and the next you own a Fostoria American cake stand, matching plates and a knife. As David Byrne says, “And you may ask yourself, ‘how did I get here?'”

That’s how.

The thing most people don’t realize about certain cake stands is that you can invert them — the base is almost always hollow — and use them as a snack plate. The dip goes in the hollow base:

OK, then. Some bloggage:

Resolved:

Sit through internet ads that appear on real, need-the-money websites (which is to say, newspapers). No more “click here to skip.” Endure the stupid thing. On favorite blogs, click one or two of the ads every day. (Boy, are they stupid, too.)

So you may have to sit through an ad for the Economist to read this NYT story about a new wrinkle in foreclosure culture: Roving bands of skaters chasing the ultimate skater perk — a nice dry pool:

Across the nation, the ultimate symbol of suburban success has become one more reminder of the economic meltdown, with builders going under, pools going to seed and skaters finding a surplus of deserted pools in which to perfect their acrobatic aerials.

In these boom times for skaters, Mr. Peacock travels with a gas-powered pump, five-gallon buckets, shovels and a push broom, risking trespassing charges in the pursuit of emptying forlorn pools and turning them into de facto skate parks.

Hey, I saw “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” so I know this could well have some legs. But this smells like one of those bogus-trend stories to me. In fact, a large chunk of the story is about pool builders and real-estate developers who are looking at a fraction of the orders they had a year ago. The fact teased in the photo caption — that skaters are coming from as far away as Europe and Australia to skate American pools — is entirely hearsay, too. Still, not a bad read.

Also, not for the faint of heart: Another excellent dissection of the collapse of yet another criminally managed bank — WaMu. Sooner or later we’re going to get wise and put someone like Kerry Killinger before a firing squad. Until then, he has his millions. Un-fucking-believable.

So have a good week. Today’s Holiday Photo is from Bill, who comments here as Bill, taken last summer in Alaska when he was stalking Sarah Palin on vacation:

I think I’ll go make a cake. Later.

Hope you all had a great Christmas. I got a new camera:

Doesn’t mommy set a bourgeois table? Those cranberry candle things are embarrassing, but what the hell, how often do you get to use your late Aunt Edwina’s silver compotes, anyway? Note to lifestyle editors in the readership: How about a story on how to repurpose all those little maiden aunt hand-me-downs for the modern hostess? I have a cut-glass knife rest that will never support a knife again, but it seems you ought to be able to do something with it.

Anyway, Santa must have heard my plea the other day, because whaddaya know, the new camera shoots Tri-X:

That’s a setting called “dynamic B&W” (yes, as opposed to “smooth B&W”), i.e., Tri-X. I have to plow through a substantial owner’s manual to figure out just how many of the bells and whistles I’ll be using, and I’m hopeful I can figure out how to make run-of-the-mill crapshots like the ones above not throw 3.5 megabytes of shade on my hard drive. I think it has something to do with the delete key.

Also, I’ve heard you can get far better shots if you actually leave the house once in a while, but at the moment freezing rain is falling, and you know how that stuff is. I may be here until the thaw, at this rate.

It was a good Christmas. It continues through the weekend, after which the Great Housecleaning begins. I figure, I might not be able to sell my house at the moment, but at least I can make it gleam like a new penny. Of special concern this year: Closets. Beware, closets. I am coming for you.

From the comments, it sounds like everyone had a pretty good holiday, too. Sometime around 3 p.m. on the Eve, all my animosity about the holiday falls away and I find myself, usually unexpectedly, in the Christmas spirit. I think it’s because when the stores close, the jig is well and truly up, and you have to live or die with the preparations you’ve made, and perhaps by default, they’re almost always Good Enough. My final act was to throw a double sawbuck in the mail to my newspaper carrier, who along with many of us is going to be having a lousy 2009. (Unless that’s the year he finishes med school and starts his general-surgery internship, in which case he’ll be getting even less sleep.) I’ve never laid eyes on this man and wouldn’t know his name if he didn’t send me a please-tip Christmas card every year, but his outstretched hand doesn’t bother me. He does a thankless job well, and that’s the very definition of someone who deserves a little something extra this time of year. The day of our big blizzard last week, I went out to shovel the front step, which by the time I got up had already piled up to the bottom of the storm door. There were no footsteps on the walk and I’d assumed the carriers had been snowed in, too. And what did I find as I reached concrete? A New York Times, a Wall Street Journal and a Detroit News, all wrapped in plastic and perfectly dry. So he deserves it.

By the way, I think I’ve found the worst Christmas song ever, a new one to me. The local all-Christmas station played it on the Eve: A Soldier’s Christmas. Excruciating.

And now, the holiday in our rear-view mirror, we can turn our thoughts to other things, like contemplating the fate of the Lions. I’ll say one thing for this season: Sportswriters who had already turned it up to 11 after the fifth or sixth loss of the year have had to find new frequencies to wail at, some audible only to dogs. Drew Sharp in the Freep:

If you assessed the public mood eight months ago on the greater impossibility — the country shedding its shackles of racial intolerance and electing America’s first black president, or an NFL team going winless through a 16-game parity-driven schedule, the concept of perfect football imperfection would’ve comfortably won the argument.

The Lions have one-upped Barack Obama.

Passages like that make me miss the sports copy desk.

Let’s kick off Holiday Photos week, then. I actually have fairly slim pickin’s this year, mainly because you all made merry swapping links to Flickr pages in the comments last week, but no mind. This is a good one, Deborah from Chicago with her husband Steve, in happier meteorological times:

Light jackets! Short sleeves! Open water! The skyline of a thriving city! America, be optimistic — happy days will be here again. In the meantime, have a good weekend.

A few more inches of snow last night, followed by what seems to be rain. (Checking…yes, it’s 34 degrees. Rain.) More snow behind it, but tomorrow promises to be mostly sunny hereabouts, so the usual platitudes about gratitude for small favors apply. Anyway, let’s all join hands and thank the deity of our choice that we’re not with Danny in Hawaii, where he’s stalking the Obamas and sending back photos of seasonal icons rendered in baby-shit brown.

Shudder. I mean, some things are sacred. Or should be.

What I will do is flake off for the day (because absolutely no one is reading this today) wishing you all a happy and safe holiday weekend. I may be in and out here — I have some video to edit if I get a chance today — or may not. If not, safe travels, great memories and happy celebrations to all. You folks are the absolute best, and deserve it all.

Well, you could have this weekend and return it to the manufacturer, eh? The giant snowstorm was followed by a big freeze — this is not news to a large number of you, I know — and everywhere was suffering. The dog is irritable, torn between his instinctual need to visit the outdoors regularly and its utter suckitude. My poor car looks like it has leprosy, but it’s too cold to wash it and besides, it’s only going to snow again tomorrow and probably the next day, too. I deprived a local mall of my business and went to one farther away, because the former is one of those Potemkin Village lifestyle-center malls, and if there’s one thing I don’t want to do on a day with single-digit temperatures and a howling wind, it’s walk outdoors between stores.

I went to Somerset instead. Every luxury store under the sun, plus a few you haven’t heard of. None had anything I wanted. Everything seemed cheap and stupid. The upside: Cheap and stupid is now 30 percent off. Even Barney’s was having a sale. You could buy a pair of ugly shoes for $325, marked down from $545. I really can’t wait for Christmas to be over. Nothing like double-digit unemployment (barely; Michigan’s now at 9.4 percent, but expected to go much higher, and I suspect that makes us No. 1) and the promise of an even worse future to extract all the fun out of spending your money.

But enough about me.

Some good bloggage today: Every so often I go Googling for Tim Goeglein (who really should work for Google, don’t you think? He could answer his phone, “Google, Goeglein.”), to see if he’s left a breadcrumb trail. The new Washington will be a hostile place for conservatives other than Rick Warren, but you should never underestimate the ability of people to land on their feet, change and/or find a seat somewhere on the Wingnut Welfare gravy train. So far, nothing’s turned up, until this, a WashPost story from earlier this month, about a lunchtime gathering at a D.C. Buca di Beppo. Deal Hudson, founder and former publisher of Crisis magazine, was host of a big table in the Pope Room, and the idea was to read Christmas poetry aloud to the group. That’s it. Sort of charming when you think about it.

Tim’s not in the story, only in the photo (and only the top of his head, at that). But just to show you what a big tent the right wing is and remains, note that lineup in the picture: born-again virgin Dawn Eden; nice Lutheran Tim (hands folded prayerfully?); and Hudson, the host. (The other two guys are Googleable, but ciphers — to me, anyway.) Eden is known for having rejected what she calls a “‘Sex and the City’ lifestyle” for orthodox Catholicism, celibacy, anti-abortion activism and a book contract (“The Thrill of the Chaste”). Hudson became ex-publisher of Crisis after a story surfaced about a drunken sexual encounter with a teenage college student that led to harassment charges against him, i.e., unchaste behavior. And among the magazines Goeglein plundered in his strange career as a writer was Crisis.

We are all sinners, and the balm of literature is soothing to all. Remember that.

Thinking of the Wingnut propaganda chorus reminds me that Alicublog is still on the job keeping tabs on them all, and has a fine roundup post on Christmas Week at the National Review. Sample:

“Why does an obsessive Nazi-hunter like Simon Wiesenthal get positive press,” (Mark Goldblatt) asks, “while an obssessive Communist-hunter like Joe McCarthy is vilified?” Maybe because Wiesenthal hunted actual Nazis, while McCarthy was happy to tar citizens ranging from Owen Lattimore to Adlai Stevenson.

Finally, although it isn’t technically Holiday Photos Week yet, I’m kicking things off with a couple of contributions from our webmaster, J.C. Burns, who is way ahead of me on the digitizing-old-photos chore. He sent two along, pegged to my comment about Tri-X film, but since one includes me and another features a famous mystery guest, let’s get it started. First, here are three of J.C.’s women friends, c. 1979-80ish, in the courtyard of his salad-days garden apartment in Atlanta. The woman on the left is Verneda I-forget-her-last-name, the one on the right is Deb Warlaumont-now-Mulvey, my BFF then and now (posts here as deb, always lower-case), and in the middle is a woman who really should have rethought that scarf. And her hair. And the shoes (Dr. Scholl’s!). And certainly the glasses, although that was the fashion at the time.

It looks like I was consulting my checkbook while about to descend concrete stairs in wooden sandals. Which explains why I frequently sported bruises in those days.

The other is today’s Comment Thread Mystery, and if I had something to give as a prize I would, but alas. Below is another picture of Deb, along with a college classmate of ours. Same general era. He is, today, a journalist of national reputation (his official bio calls him “renowned,” but I think that’s pushing it), who makes frequent appearances on TV. This puzzle may favor the men in our audience, but that’s the only clue I’m giving you. Once his identity is correctly identified, I’ll post a contemporary photo in an update, so we can all laugh over the difference. Who is our mystery man? (And please: Those who knew him then, or know because they read all the comments here, sit this one out, please? This means you, MarkH. The underlying joke of this photo is the physical change.)

Everyone have a great start to a short week. And try to stay warm.

UPDATE: Jeff TMMO wins, but I think he had help. I just don’t see how you could recognize “renowned NFL reporter Peter King” based on the jaw alone. Not when the hair is such a distraction, anyway. (It looks like a wig, doesn’t it?) I guess it’s all that practice at looking at the soul within, because this is what he extrapolated from:

Whew. Congratulations.

I’ll say this for durable goods: There’s nothing like a brand-new major appliance to take your mind off your troubles, especially when it’s linked to the one activity that can always make me feel competent and in control — banishing dirt and clutter. Sears delivered our new washer today, a Bosch high-efficiency model. It uses about a tablespoon of water per load, and no more electricity than can be generated by a single stroke of a butterfly’s wings. The clothes are spun so thoroughly they come out practically dry. If I could, I’d move it into the living room and watch the clothes go ’round, which is more entertaining than the HGTV show I watched on the elliptical at the gym yesterday morning.

It reminded me of when we bought our first house, and got a brand-new washer and dryer. It was the first time I’d ever lived in a place where I didn’t have to shlep my laundry somewhere else, and along with the dishwasher, nothing before or since made me feel so rich, virtually overnight. All those nights spent in the Solar Sudser on Broadway in Fort Wayne left a mark — the dirty kids who would walk up to you and cough in your face, or the attendant with trichotillomania who would talk on the phone for hours, narrating events in her life, which lurched from crisis to crisis as she yanked her bald spot bigger and bigger. I’d sit there with my book and try to let the white noise of the swish swish swish do its job, but it could never compete with the cigarette smoke and the yelling and everything else. To do one’s own laundry, in one’s own basement, while you got something else done, too? Sheer luxury.

The delivery man was Croatian. Someday I’ll be able to hear an intriguing accent and refrain from doing an impromptu interview with its owner, but that day hasn’t arrived. Besides, when someone says they’re from “the good part” of Croatia, don’t you want to know which part that is? (It’s the part where the war wasn’t.) So what brings you to Detroit? The fact your homeland is entirely run by thugs? And how is that different from Detroit? Ha ha ha ha ha. Enjoy your new washer, you parody of a bored housewife, you.

Well, that may all change sooner than we think. Today’s the day we find out if the household can continue to afford detergent, and if so, for how long. I intend to be in my weightlifting class at the time. Good wishes appreciated, but our fate is already sealed. We just don’t know what it is yet.

Bloggage to take your mind off it all:

Those Brits really know how to write a headline, or at least a subhed: The worst christmas party injuries I see in my surgery / The comedy stuff, such as plucking shards of photocopier glass from revellers backsides, happens when the surgery is closed. Now that’s something to read.

Gay penguin soap operas. A good story, actually.

The Iraqi who graciously offered his shoes to our president? Is a folk hero.

My admiration for Roger Ebert’s blog grows with every entry. Today, one for you parents out there, likely to be the only ones who’ve seen a Tru3D movie (unless you really are a Hannah Montana fan, in which case I will back away slowly).

Off to wash away my worries. I’m doing darks.

Seventeen degrees as I write this. It seems it’s been 17 degrees forever, except for earlier this week when it was 38 degrees and raining. Did I mention I bought some cool-weather cycling gear, and tried it out when it was briefly not 17 degrees? I discovered my personal threshold of misery was 40 degrees — anything above, and I could handle it. It hasn’t been that warm since Halloween.

Because I know that my readers come here for a weather report, that’s why.

You know the worst part of being chronically sleep-deprived? The constant failure. You make a to-do list of, say, five items, and you’re lucky if one gets done. You just don’t have the energy. Today, for instance, mine has three: Take dog to groomer, work out, write three script pages. Just watch me fail to do at least one, and maybe two. The first only requires me to stumble to the corner, but who knows? It’s 17 degrees outside! I may not make it. Besides, there’s all sorts of stuff to read on the internet today, like hot details on the “Twilight” sequel. I did my parental duty on that score last weekend, and took Kate to an afternoon matinee that still cost $9.50 for an adult ticket. It was…well, it was competent, assuming the director’s intent was to produce 100 minutes of teen entertainment that looked great and contained many smoldering glances.

When I go to these things, I think of my friend Adrianne, aka Lance Mannion’s Blonde, whose father dutifully took his children to every “Planet of the Apes” movie when they were growing up. He would buy everyone some popcorn, escort them to a row, take up the end seat and promptly fall asleep. In the great tradition of children everywhere, Adrianne and her siblings had no idea how agonizing these films were to their father, until years later he let loose with his mockery of the final installment. “Ape has killed ape!” he intoned, capturing the moment when the arc finally came back down to earth, when the apes realized they had become the humans they’d spent all that screen time conquering. (This would be “Battle for the,” etc. title in the series, for you cineastes.) In the tradition of Adrianne’s father, I kept my snide remarks to one, whispered in Kate’s ear in the early moments of the film, “Whoever has the teeth-whitening contract for this high school is doing a great job.” The rest of my petty observations — if she’s so in love, why does Bella always look constipated? why do the vampire teens go to high school if they don’t have to? why doesn’t the same school change its name to Diversity High and get it over with? wait, her mother has a 17-year-old daughter and she’s married to a minor-league baseball player? let’s see more of this cougar! — I kept to myself. This movie wasn’t made for me, it was made for Kate’s demographic, and she liked it well enough, although even she said, aftereward, “Bella doesn’t smile very much.” That’s my girl.

If Alan had come along, I might have slipped out and gone down the hall to see “Milk.” A friend of mine used to do that — get his kids settled, then say, “Daddy’s going to see ‘First Blood’ now. You wait for me outside when the movie’s over.” A simpler time.

So, we have a few odds and ends to get out of the way, then? We do:

My local papers get on my nerves plenty, but at least they have a few good writers. It’s hard not to read the rest of a story that starts like this…

On third thought, Wayne County Probate Judge David Szymanski has concluded maybe it wasn’t a great idea to jail a woman for writing about her court case on a Web site.

…and continues with this…

Szymanski jailed Anderson, 59, twice Monday after she refused to shutter the site, which she has used as a pulpit in her tangled battle with her brother over the care of their elderly mother. The battle has extended to the mother’s ailing, 17-year-old cat, Toupee (who has his own, first-person column on the Web site).

Judges hate gadflies. Not to mention cats with columns, evidently.

It’s that time of year again: “A Christmas Story” cast, 25 years later. Ralphie in particular has aged well, and Scut Farkas continues to terrify. Thanks, Dexter.

Finally, in the last, desperate days of my time at The News-and-Sentinel, the staff was showed some market research that said, basically, that our readers were dumbasses who thought local television — yes, those even dumber dumbasses — did more in-depth and follow-up reporting. This is preposterous on its face, and it’s probably good that I wasn’t doing the questioning, as I might have been tempted to ask the respondents a further question: “On a scale of 1 to 10, just how stupid would you say you are?” The only reason we could see for this is that TV marketing people said so, constantly: Now with more in-depth reporting to serve YOU, etc. This led to us adopting a bunch of standing column sigs that read FOLLOW-UP ON THE NEWS and IN-DEPTH REPORTING. I only wish I were kidding. But since this next item involves my N-S ex-colleague Dorsey Price, let’s dust off the sigs and call this…

FOLLOW-UP ON THE NEWS

You remember Dorsey’s son Derek, who made the incredibly cornball video, in pursuit of a pile of college cash? And who asked us to vote for him, because the cash went to the video that got the most popular support? He won! We can’t say what the NN.C bump may have had to do with it, but $20,000 is $20,000, so who cares? The money, by the way, came from iCorn. Which is? Ahem: At iCORN we’ve created a new way to select and purchase seed corn and soybean seed….your way and on your schedule. iCORN is now starting their 9th year of business providing high-yield potential corn and soybean genetics with the latest traits.

Now you know.

Time to leash the dog and check one item off the list. Have a good one.

I didn’t trust my first reaction to Alex Kuczynski’s cover story in Sunday’s NYT magazine. The story is about how she, a very rich woman with a “successful investor” multimillionaire husband, had a child with the help of a surrogate, obviously far less fortunate, although not the white-trash rent-a-womb you might be expecting. We know this because Kuczynski, in explaining her reasons for choosing Cathy Hilling to be her designated vessel, makes an issue of it:

When we came across Cathy’s application, we saw that she was by far the most coherent and intelligent of the group. She wrote that she was happily married with three children. Her answers were not handwritten in the tiny allotted spaces; she had downloaded the original questionnaire and typed her responses at thoughtful length. Her attention to detail was heartening. And her computer-generated essay indicated, among other things, a certain level of competence. This gleaned morsel of information made me glad: she must live in a house with a computer and know how to use it.

See? She lives in a house with a computer and knows how to use it. So much for any class guilt.

But what am I talking about? Alex Kuczynski suffers from no such thing. If she did, she might have hesitated at posing for the remarkable photos that accompany the piece. For starters, there’s the cover…

…which sort of suggests someone thought stretch marks and fat ankles would totally not go with that black sheath dress. The copy contradicts that — Kuczynski did indeed try to get pregnant herself for years before hiring Hilling. But then there’s the real money shot, inside:

That was taken “at home in Southampton, N.Y.,” just one of the couple’s fabulous homes. Note the “baby nurse” standing at attention, waiting for Mistress to hand off little Max, about two months old, should he need something only a nurse is qualified to provide, like maybe a diaper change.

I’m aware that my reaction to these photos seems pretty by-the-book. I can scarcely believe Kuczynski is so clueless that she didn’t know what the pictures would suggest. (There’s another porch shot, of Hilling on her own. You should not be surprised to learn it isn’t nearly so grand. Go ahead and click to see it, because I’m done hot-linking.) So I have to believe she planned it this way, for the “buzz.” As long as I’ve been doing this job, I’ve always held my most toxic contempt for people who say or do things they don’t believe, just to get the phones ringing.

So I’ll refrain from taking the bait, and hope little Max Dudley Stevenson is soon kidnapped by loving fairies who will spirit him away and raise him far from his horrible parents, perhaps on a farm in Iowa, like Clark Kent. (Kuczynski is her husband’s fourth wife, and Max either his sixth or seventh kid.)

I asked a bona fide member of the eastern media elite what he thought of this, and while he hadn’t read the story yet, he offered an interesting observation I hadn’t thought of:

Before the great weeding out of newsrooms, didn’t every shop have (or should have had) a pampered richie-bitchy? Whom all the male editors could not wilfully ignore? In features? (Or metro g/a? If nothing else, I’ve seen it in ingenue photogs, who just arrived from the Eddie Adams Photo Workshop and had long blond hair and only weeks or months into their extended internship do you learn she’s, like, a Rockefeller or something.)

I think he’s right. One of my first colleagues in Columbus used to speak of a former secretary, who cashed her paycheck every Friday and promptly took the loot next door to an upscale boutique, where she spent every penny on a new outfit. There was a columnist at the other paper who gave the accountants fits; they had to remind her to please cash her paycheck, because she always had half a dozen stacked up in her drawer, and they needed to get them off the books. And now that I think of it, I recall a copy editor in Fort Wayne who had married well and was passionately devoted to the cause of animal rights. She refused to wear leather, although she made an exception for the upholstery in her Mercedes.

And Caroline Kennedy interned at the New York Daily News. So I guess it could be worse.

My Monday-morning moping went away almost as soon as I expressed it yesterday. On my way to the gym, I returned a missed call to my cell phone. A man with a heavy Indian accent answered, and when I asked who had called me, said he represented something like Tech-Ar Corporation, and if I’d share a little personal information, he’d be happy to tell me about their exciting financial services.

“Please put me on your no-call list,” I said.

“We are not selling products or telemarketing,” he protested.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“I am …Don …Junior,” he said. I started to laugh. In the background, I could hear another Indian accent saying, “Ma’am? Ma’am? I am not harassing you!”

I finally told Don Junior that if he made another call to a phone I have to buy minutes for, I’d be reporting him to the attorney general. Total b.s., but I figure they have their hands full in Mumbai these days, and really don’t need to be calling me.

One of the things I’ve learned from this blog after nearly eight years of keeping it daily, or nearly so:

Sometimes you’re just not that into it.

I suppose it’s inevitable. The election nearly killed many of us, and even though the news has not stopped or even slowed down — economic meltdown, brink-of-disaster-Detroit, Mumbai bloodbaths, hello newspaper what horrors have you brought me today? — it lacks a certain frisson of late, and that frisson is: Opposition. You could get into the election because no matter who you were rooting for, there was a guy on the other side, and you were working toward the crushing defeat of that guy, and when it happened or didn’t happen, we had, what’s the word? Closure. I hate that word, because it’s bullshit, and because it implies that stories end. Stories never end, which we’re discovering now. To be sure, a curtain rang down on November 4, but on November 5 Sarah Palin was still with us and campaigning was giving way to governing and the narrative wasn’t nearly so clear.

It isn’t just me. Even Rachel Maddow is getting on my nerves of late. Keith Olbermann has gone back to being supremely annoying. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert keep their standards high, but if it weren’t for that Christmas special, who knows how I’d feel?

Anyway, it just seems like a little air has gone out of the balloon, and many days I sit down to the blinking cursor with one thought uppermost in mind: Meh. It’ll pass; it always has in the past. And this isn’t navel-gazing. I’m telling you so if one day you check in and see a sign reading, “Gone to Texas,” you’ll know it wasn’t you, it was me.

Texas. I should be so lucky.

So today the New York Times has a story on Page One, about the way cost-cutting is hitting local TV news, and that is: Farewell to the highly paid local-TV anchor. I am hearing the sound of the world’s tiniest violin, and it is playing a sad, sad song. While a part of me can empathize with any journalist who’s feeling a moving rug underfoot, anyone who’s worked in newspapers isn’t going to be moved much by hearing the local show pony down at Channel 6 is losing their six- or seven-figure salary. Especially those of us who’ve worked outside the big cities, and may have known a few of these lucky bastards personally, may have trouble empathizing. It’s hard to accept, sometimes, that simply by virtue of showing up every night at 6 and 11, they have the power to command advertisers, and hence earn their dough. You think: Even viewers in this town aren’t that stupid. And yet they are.

It’s the passing of an era, to be sure. How many entertaining stories have we heard through the years? The adulterous male-female anchor team, caught making the two-backed beast in a deserted state park somewhere. The blow-dried talking head, annual salary somewhere north of $450,000 a year, enraging the local stripper community with his attempts to tip with quarters. (They called the station to complain.) The female anchor, arrested for DUI after her car pinballed off the Jersey barrier one too many times. Another so thoroughly useless around the newsroom for any job other than smiling and reading, told by the news director that she needn’t bother trying to actually write any copy. Dinosaurs stumbling into their own version of the tar pits. All that will be left are the veneers and the toupees.

Off to start the day with a little exercise. Envy me, world: I have the metabolism of a 50-year-old 51-year-old woman.

Oh hai! It’s my birthday. I’m spending the morning renewing my driver’s license, and then shopping for Thanksgiving dinner. Y’all talk amongst yourselves, and maybe we’ll have some cake later in the day.

And this link’s for Jeff Borden.

One of my favorite things to pick up at Trader Joe’s is their carnitas-in-a-bag heat-n-serve deal. Nothing like putting that on a tortilla with a little chopped cilantro to make you feel you made the right choice. It was maybe the third time I did so before I thought, $5.99 is a ridiculous price to pay for two cups of stewed pork. So I resolved to make my own. I recalled a “Splendid Table” episode that spoke of the wonders of the pork shoulder, a poverty cut well-suited to slow-roasting. I went online, found the recipe — mmm, a “mole-inspired spice rub” — and set out for my own culinary adventure in make-your-own carnitas.

The first problem was with the “3-1/2-pound organic pork shoulder.” They must breed some wee little piggies for the organic trade, because at the Gratiot Central Market’s Temple o’ Pork, the very smallest pork shoulder I could find was eight pounds. Still, at $1.29 per, it only cost me $10 and change. If this thing dollars up, I’ll be way ahead. The recipe is maddening for someone as impatient as me — rub, entomb in a heavy dutch oven and cook for hours in a very slow oven — but now, at the three-hour mark, I’m starting to get some pretty good smells upstairs.

Yes, it’s another write-on-Sunday-for-Monday entry. School lets out at noon Tuesday; I expect the week to kick my ass.

After-dinner update: Mmmm, slow-roasted fatty pork. Poor people get all the good chow.

That’s one consolation, I guess. Although, even rich people have it rough these days. They’re scared, I tell you. Here’s Tom Friedman in Sunday’s NYT:

So, I have a confession and a suggestion. The confession: I go into restaurants these days, look around at the tables often still crowded with young people, and I have this urge to go from table to table and say: “You don’t know me, but I have to tell you that you shouldn’t be here. You should be saving your money. You should be home eating tuna fish. This financial crisis is so far from over. We are just at the end of the beginning. Please, wrap up that steak in a doggy bag and go home.”

Tom Friedman, one week (one! week!) previous:

Now is when we need a president who has the skill, the vision and the courage to cut through this cacophony, pull us together as one nation and inspire and enable us to do the one thing we can and must do right now:

Go shopping.

I am a happy and satisfied New York Times subscriber — at least as happy as I get with any newspaper — but I’m starting to get frustrated with this phenomenon of rich guys panicking. Ben Stein, same paper:

The problem now, as in 1929 to 1940, is that the economy is not functioning normally. It is shot through and through with fear, even terror. Worse yet, and unlike the situation in the Depression, government miscues have been only a part of the problem. This fear is so pervasive that it has brought the credit sector to a virtual shutdown, even to borrowers with good credit. At this point, the lending sector is so panicked — largely from the government’s inconsistent behavior and failure to rescue Lehman Brothers — that it is frozen. Not totally, but way too much for ease of lending and maybe even for the survival of a robust economy. And if a colossal worldwide deleveraging spreads to Treasury debt owned by foreigners, the situation will be deadly serious.

“Shot through with fear, even terror,” so he thought, what the hell, can a little more be all that bad? It’s always interesting to me how many different personas Ben Stein deploys in maintaining his fabulous career. In the pop-culture joke sector, he’s all about the voice and the “anyone? anyone?” gag. In the NYT, he’s the serious economist. And there’s always room for another face, as his role in “Expelled” demonstrates. But he’s a rich guy now, he’ll still be a rich guy if the whole economy falls into the toilet, and I wish he’d save the fear and terror for those who might actually be going hungry or turned out in the street if such a thing happens.

All I can say is, thank God for Gretchen Morgenson, who explains it isn’t necessarily “fear” that has frozen lending. After all, didn’t we all recently chip in $700 billion to get the system oiled again? Yes, but oops, there seems to be a hitch in the plans:

When the Troubled Asset Relief Program of the Treasury Department handed over $125 billion in taxpayer money to nine banks a month ago, they were supposed to lend to small businesses, home buyers and other worthy borrowers to keep the economy’s gears in motion.

At the time, the Federal Reserve Board and three bank regulatory agencies said: “The agencies expect all banking organizations to fulfill their fundamental role in the economy as intermediaries of credit to businesses, consumers, and other creditworthy borrowers.”

Alas, that admonition wasn’t accompanied by any real requirements to lend. When the Treasury gave taxpayer billions to the banks, it attached no strings. So is it any surprise that lending is tight?

But remember: It would be wrong to loan Detroit automakers 20 percent of that amount. Because some Senate staffer bought a Chevy Vega right out of college, and it went through oil like you wouldn’t believe.

So I guess we’re either screwed, or we’re not. I eat tuna fish in good times and bad, and I don’t think the solution is to stay home and wait for the inevitable. I always wondered, reading about apocalyptic events in history, how ordinary people weathered them, and the answer seems to be — they did what they always did. (There are exceptions. Pompeii comes to mind.) As for me, I’ll continue to buy local, put money into Salvation Army kettles, floss, pet my dog and only pull the covers up over my head when I’m really tired.

Cautionary note: I’m always confident and expansive after eating a good meal.

Some good bloggage for you today: A fascinating read in New York magazine on Bellevue, the city’s infamous psychiatric hospital. News peg: It’s on the verge of closing. (Now I’ll never get to check in in a straitjacket.) What does it take to get committed to Bellevue? A lot:

Bellevue is not for “some Upper East Side suicidal neurotic or whatever—they’d go to NYU Medical Center next door. Our patients were the ones with no money, no resources, and multiple stressors.”

That, or their behavior is so extreme—criminal or otherwise—that no other option presents itself. Merely wandering into the middle of Broadway while muttering incoherently? Probably not enough. “You know, the brilliance of the schizophrenics when they’re directing traffic,” says Covan, “is that they always direct it in the direction it’s already going, so their grandiosity is reinforced. But if they start to direct it in the opposite direction, or if they’re assaulting other people, or if you came in and said you really wanted to kill yourself, not just that you were thinking about it … You know, Bellevue is not the place for you if you’re just not feeling good today and you’re really worried about the stock market.”

Remember when I talked about seeing people in motorized wheelchairs driving on the city streets? I wasn’t kidding. Jim @ Sweet Juniper has photographic proof.

Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Coozledad are adding to their happy menagerie, newest member seen here. Actually, they’re getting two mules, and they don’t match. Coozle reports he’s learning to drive them, and their favorite command is whoa. As they are now the hands-down smartest critters on the spread, I expect his blog will be even more of a laff riot.

Ten o’clock already? Time to study Russian.