I went to high school with this guy named…I’m going blank. Bill? Bob? Something like that. Bill/Bob was in the class ahead of me, 1974, but finished in 1975. In his senior year, he started playing euchre in the student lounge and smoking area. (Yes, smoking area. Hello, I am old.) And he started down a dangerous path, paved with 24 cards, the 9 through the ace. He couldn’t stop.

He started skipping class to play euchre. The players came and went, but he would deal and play with any and all comers. I played him many times, but I never skipped class to do so. When players left, others would take their place. To say he was single-minded about it was an understatement; he just dealt and played, dealt and played, until the final bell rang.

I don’t know why someone didn’t stage an intervention with him. Maybe someone did, but it didn’t take. When he showed up for class in the fall, months after he was supposed to graduate, I asked what happened.

“I got euchred on my last trick,” he said.

Those of you reading this outside the midwest may not understand the lure of euchre, but trust me, it is strong. It’s a simple game that anyone can play, but rewards experience and a certain amount of strategy; in other words, perfectly suited for a 17-year-old mind. You doubtless have something like it in your part of the country, but that’s not what I want to talk about today. I’m thinking about addiction, and the computer’s role in it.

Many years later, there was a woman at the News-Sentinel who couldn’t stop playing Windows solitaire. Two women, actually, and one of them was me, but I was limited by not having it on my primitive, DOS-based computer. I had to go to Leo Morris’ office to play, but play I did. Both of us did. When I quit smoking, it replaced cigarettes as my favorite tool of procrastination. In the old days, I’d write a few grafs, lean back and light a cigarette, regarding my prose through a few puffs, then stub it out and write some more. Replace the cigarette with getting up and sauntering down to Leo’s office, where I’d wave him aside — he’d usually go outside to smoke, having failed to conquer that addiction — and play until he came back, sometimes longer. We’d run up the wins/losses in dollar figures and pretend we were getting rich off our mad solitaire skilz. Eventually, though, he’d have to write an editorial, and I’d go back to my cubicle and feel grateful my computer didn’t have Windows, because that’s some dangerous shit, that solitaire.

The other woman had Windows, and lo, she was weak. She played for hours, and I know because I could recognize the telltale mouse movements, the way a junkie knows which guy in the park is the connect. She had an office, too, and could angle her screen slightly so no one could see just how many times she was dealing herself a new hand, except of course everyone knew. (Her output didn’t match the keyboard hours she was putting in.) When the time came for the newsroom to lose an FTE, the editor in chief chose her department to take the loss, and further decided the solitaire addict was a fine candidate for the copy desk, a plain and humiliating demotion. It did cure her solitaire problem, but it sort of wrecked her newspaper career, although she landed on her feet in local government, where for all I know she’s still playing.

Procrastination is one of the two great temptations for writers. (The other: Alcohol.) Go have a cigarette. Make a phone call. Take a walk around the block. Feign writer’s block. Anything but confronting that blank screen. I once read someone’s theory about why the O.J. Simpson trial got so big so fast, and it was refreshing, having nothing to do with brown skin or blonde hair. The writer speculated that the case built buzz because Los Angeles is full of screenwriters avoiding their work, who instead expended their energies watching the trial, e-mailing one another about the trial, spinning alternate theories about the culpability of the various players, etc. It made perfect sense to me.

But computer games may be the stickiest quicksand of all. Almost all writers work at a computer. Almost all computers come with some sort of game. It’s like holding AA meetings in a bar. When we had our first iMac, it came with a game called Bugdom, and Kate and I played it together. When I started it in the presence of John and Sam, our friends from Atlanta, both shuddered and turned away. “What’s wrong?” I asked, only to be told that the music had bad associations for both of them; it’s “the sound of Sammy not writing her dissertation,” John said.

(She got her dissertation written, but it went down to the wire. She’s Dr. Sam now.)

Anyway, I guess my point is, I’ve been thinking about how quickly any behavior can become compulsive, and why it does. I suppose Bill/Bob was using euchre as a way to avoid the rest of his senior year. I know I was using Windows solitaire to avoid writing. I’ve noticed that even when I have a deadline, I rarely miss a day of blogging, so blogging is obviously a replacement for solitaire — it’s writing that allows me to avoid other writing, and isn’t that quite the trick.

In getting to know the iPhone, I’ve downloaded two games from the App Store — Jawbreaker, a form of Bejeweled/Bubbles, where you pop contiguous circles; and Peg Jump, an electronic version of the golf-tee game in every Cracker Barrel on the interstate. Neither one is addictive. Yet. Jawbreaker is my favorite, but so far it’s no Windows solitaire. I limit myself to 10 games at a stretch, and so far have kept my vow. But you never know. There are times I think I should just start smoking again; maybe I’d get more work done.

A bit of bloggage:

Observers of the hackneyed prose style of Mitch Albom know one of his favorite tricks is the Dramatic Repetition, singling out one phrase and repeating it every five grafs, usually set off by itself. It’s an old trick and not a very effective one, but he’s very proud of it, and uses it in most of his columns. When I saw he was writing about Michael Phelps yesterday, I imagined, Carnack-like, what the phrase would be, and whaddaya know, I guessed it on the nose. See if you can, too. No fair peeking. I’ll post the answer later in the day. P.S. It’s an obvious one.

They say the days after Halloween are battle-stations, no-vacation-days-for-anyone times in orthodontists’ offices, when kids who promised not to endanger their braces with taffy and chewing gum come a cropper. In the UK, something called the Gadget Helpline is dealing with a number of calls (story’s unclear on how many, the sure sign of a b.s. trend story, but what the hell) from people wanting to adjust their stationary bikes and ergometers — rowing machines — to match the pace of Great Britain’s Olympians. Of course, the story winds up with the duh quote, from a physiologist from the English Institute of Sport:

“It’s great that people are being inspired by the Games and the performances taking place across different sports, but each individual needs to know their limits. To avoid injuring yourself by overstretching, setting smaller targets for performance improvements in your fitness regime would be the best start in improving your exercise rates, whether that’s on the rowing machine, bike or on the treadmill.”

And don’t forget the sunscreen. Come back later and see if you scored in the Write Like Mitch competition.

The Mother of the Year is traveling this morning and will be filing later in the day from the Roller Coaster Capital of the World. No, I’m not braving the Millennium Force. But I figure I can give you some pictures of the tattoos and pudge on the midway. Later, dudes.

Tonight? Blueberry:

As my BFF Deb says, “The only thing wrong with cake is, it’s not pie.”

UPDATE: This was a very good pie, but not my favorite. The recipe came from Rose Levy Berenbaum, a source above reproach. The crust was pre-baked, and the filling was a trick I’ve not seen before — cook one cup of berries with water, sugar, lemon juice and cornstarch, then fold the rest in, fill and wait for it to cool and set. This produces a pie with a firm filling and a lovely, glistening topside, and nothing runs into the gap when you cut a piece. However, I think I’m returning to the two-crust variety — I like a thoroughly baked fruit-pie filling, m’self.

But we’re talking about blueberry pie here. There really aren’t any bad ones.

A mostly photo post today, because I’m lazy.

On Saturday I went kayaking. I’m sort of on an exercise binge, at least to the extent that I’m capable. A true exercise binger would have been undaunted by the brisk wind from the west, and would have dug in and headed out to the shipping channel for a quick there-and-back, damn the rollers, but not me. I stayed in the canals and collected data for my eventual master’s thesis on boat naming.

You can make a study of these things. Once upon a time boats were named for monarchs (Queen Mary), nobler ideas (Courage, Intrepid) or people who’d earned the privilege (Edmund Fitzgerald, Harry S. Truman). These aren’t names you’ll see in your local marina, unless you live in Liverpool or Norfolk or some such. For the average boat-owning American, naming the vessel is less high-minded and more fun, an occasion that calls for all the creativity they can muster. Like most creativity, though, it’s kind of predictable, and tends to fall into broad categories. Most common is puns and wordplay:

Some boaters can’t get over how the first two syllables in “nautical” make a homophone of “naughty.” People drink beer on boats and wear brief swimwear; naughtiness is frequently uppermost in mind. Also, basic facility with lines and knots is a requirement of the job, and so “knotty” is sometimes deployed in its place. We had a boat docked nearby our first year called the Knotty Lady, with the name spelled out in a font that looked like ropes. Alan once overheard the owner’s wife saying, “It says on our contract that if the boat isn’t removed from the water by November 1, they’ll do it for you. Isn’t that nice of them?” Perhaps Dumb Lady would have been more appropriate.

Bertram is a big manufacturer of motor yachts. I don’t think this is one of them:

More wordplay. It says something about the world of boating that you can drive around in a vehicle with a giant advertisement on the back saying, essentially, “There’s a good chance I’m drunk.” For the record, the law of the Michigan sea says you can drink aboard, but you can’t operate while drunk. Imagine driving down the highway, knowing you can legally raise a bottle in salute to a passing cop, as long as you won’t blow .08. (The funniest car-accident photo I ever saw was from a small paper in Indiana, showing a beater that had run off the road. Emblazoned across its trunk lid: “Daved and confused.” Go Dave!)

Many boat owners, in choosing names for their vessels, emphasize the mental-health angle:

Walk through any marina, and you’ll find versions of this: Seaclusion, Serenity, Escape, Cool Breezes, Hakuna Matata, In Recess. (The more jargon a job has, the more likely it’ll turn up on a stern somewhere. Lawyers in particular are guilty of this, but I bet if we’d explored the yacht basin in Sausalito, I’m sure we would have found at least one Offline and Away Message.) Skippers like to emphasize how chill they are, which lasts until the next set of bills comes, or one hits a rock. In my time on the water, I’ve witnessed beautiful watercraft pounded into near-splinters by heedless teenagers, squabbling crew members, screaming couples, fires onboard, near-sinkings. Somehow, you never see boats named Divorce Court or Poor House. Huh.

Also, note: This is Tranquillity II. Some people only have one name in them; all over the nation’s waterways are the Three B’s IV, Gone Fishin’ III, etc. Boats are distinct from one another; this just seems wrong to me.

I’m baffled by this one:

Inside joke/reference, I guess. Maybe Christine got a palimony settlement from Andrew Lloyd Webber. Maybe she got the house in the divorce, leaving her ex with this consolation prize.

Local color plays its part. This is a terrible name for a boat:

What’s the point? It moves fast? It would fit for an iceboat, but the last thing most people want to think about during summer sailing season is the Red Wings. But then, a boat is like a little floating nation with a single monarch, who gets to have it his/her way. So there.

Another local reference. Anyone get it?

It’s a Kid Rock lyric:

Buy a yacht with a flag sayin’ chillin’ the most
Then rock that bitch up and down the coast

Kid Rock is a local hero. He’s got a big hit now (“All Summer Long”) that name-checks northern Michigan, every Mitten Stater’s favorite summer-vacation spot. In the video…

…he drives a classic mahogany speedboat, which I will bet a sawbuck is not an original but one of those jillion-dollar reproductions. My friends Paul and Mark had a boat like that, and still do. It was a Chris-Craft, named The Kid. Here it is, in a scene from a summer day much like the ones in the video, only no one is pole-dancing or displaying breast implants:

I don’t know who that girl is. She looks drunk.

Anyway, Kid Rock’s boat name in the video is also a reference to that song about chillin’ the most, but not, I’m happy to say, something like Rockin’ That Bitch. It’s just the song title: Cowboy.

Then there’s ours:

Alan’s a jazz fan. I favored this name, and suggested Kind of Blue as an alternative. I thought Boplicity would be cool (it’s a Miles Davis song), even though no one would get it, and probably pronounce it “Bopple City.” Long after our friend J.C. designed this new name for us and it was installed, Alan revealed his secret second choice: Box of Rain.

I didn’t even know he liked the Grateful Dead.

Bloggage:

Fascinating story in Sunday’s NYT magazine on trolling (the internet variety). What awful people.

That Obama-is-skinny story was made even worse over the weekend, after Maureen Dowd echoed its central premise and money quote, taken from a Yahoo politics message board. In both the WSJ and the NYT, it was reported as, “I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.”

In its full version, it reads: “Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I’d of Voted for Her.I won’t vote for any beanpole guy.” Hmm. The story appeared Friday, which tells me Maureen Dowd is still writing her Sunday column on Friday morning — not unheard of, certainly, but if she’s going to cut it that close, she should check the blogs first. That thing had been stripped by piranhas by noon.

Can I just say that few things drive me as insane as people who write “I’d of voted for…?” It’s my “supposebly.”

And that’s it for today. Monday. Another one. Sigh.

It was perhaps foolish to take a weightlifting class on the same day I’m restricted to a clear-liquid diet, but oh well. I’m already hungry, and the zero hour isn’t for another 20. Sigh. Gonna be a long day.

I briefed Kate on mom’s upcoming procedure, and she thinks it’s simply hilarious. “You have to drink ALL THAT? And it has LAXATIVES in it?” Then she falls out laughing, perhaps at the joy of being 11 years old and 39 years away from her first routine colonoscopy. Who can blame her? And speaking of being 50 and having an 11-year-old daughter, thanks to LAMary for passing along some handy visual aids to show why Hollywood stars keep Photoshop geniuses on retainer (and why the paps work so hard to get the unguarded shot). Jesus, cheek implants, Madge — whose idea was that?

Well, I hope she enjoys her colonoscopy.

As you can imagine, I’ve been thinking a lot about bowels today. (And I haven’t even started with the magic drink.) They really are a mystery to too many people. One day when Alan’s mom and Aunt Dorothy were still alive, we went to Defiance one day, only to be told, “Dorothy’s bowel is dead.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“The doctors say it’s just dead. Everything she eats, it just goes straight through her.”

I can’t recall how close this was to the decline and fall of my own parents, but it must have been close, because I snapped a little. I’d grown a little tired of calling mom and dad, asking about their latest medical appointments, and being told, essentially: [Shrug.] I don’t know if they didn’t know the questions to ask or failed to remember the answers, but their attitude was always, “Ah, well. There’s nothing to be done.” It was like living in a 19th-century novel, where people were always “in a decline,” after which they’d either take to their beds and die or visit a sanitarium and recover, but there was rarely anything more to be done.

“Well, if Dorothy’s bowel is dead, you’d all better say goodbye, because the rest of her will soon be following,” I said, a little sharper than I’d intended. “You really can’t live without a bowel.”

We saw Dorothy later that day, and while she seemed to be in some pain, her color was good and she didn’t look like a person who wasn’t digesting anything, although, once again, she claimed that anything she ate would come out the other end, more or less untouched, within minutes. I kept my self-control this time and settled for muttering, under my breath, “That’s impossible.”

Dorothy lived another decade at least. I meditated on the subject for a while. The mysteries of what happens below the navel have been a source of fascination — and money-making opportunities — for as long as we’ve been self-aware. (Warning: Much grossness at that last link. Best leave it untouched. You’ve been warned.) Dogs just sniff and, occasionally, taste. We analyze.

A couple years ago, we had a marvelous discussion here about the 37-pounds-of-impacted-feces urban legend, which is said to be the postmortem fate of either Elvis Presley or John Wayne, and turns up from time to time in places it shouldn’t. Not the celebrity angle, but the standard line peddled by the colonics industry, which I still find in publications that should know better. A few months ago, a medical magazine asked me for story ideas. I replied with a few, and added a P.S.: “By the way — the colonics story in this issue? Where the writer says that all meat eaters carry three to five pounds of mucous-covered decaying meat in their intestines? That’s not true.”

I never got an assignment from the magazine, although one of my ideas turned up under a different writer’s byline a few months later. The secrets of my success, revealed!

Anyway, here’s a line I’ve been waiting my whole life to write: By the time some of you read this, I’ll have a 17,000-foot-long tube up my butt. Try to contain your excitement.

I’ll be back when I’m able, but I don’t think I’ll be able to improve on Dave Barry’s account (HT: Jen), so let’s leave it at that, eh? Fingers crossed for pink and healthy, and a 10-year break before the next one.

Ms. Lippman claims to be on an internet diet. As she is a very disciplined person, I believe it. (I add that I’m honored she includes this site in her restricted surfing, particularly considering it has no supplemental vitamin or minerals.) What’s more, I think she’s on to something. I didn’t miss the internet (too much) during our vacation, and I’m thinking I want to be more analog for a while.

So I’m going on a diet. I will not be neglecting this site. Too much. Same daily updates, perhaps less bloggage. Maybe you won’t notice it at all, but I’m going to restrict my time spent a) blogging and b) looking for things to blog about to 45 minutes a day, 60 at most. I have a few writing opportunities I want to explore, and if the mile of tombstones* this year has reminded me of anything, it’s that we don’t have all the time in the world, just some of it. Wouldn’t it be stupid to lie on your deathbed and think, “I spent it all blogging”? I think so.

Also, I need to do more video. Even though I am unemployable by traditional media, I like to keep the skills sharp.

What I mainly think I’m going to do is stop reading the sites that bug me. While there’s a certain scab-picking satisfaction in seeing What That Idiot Has to Say Today, it’s just, alas, a waste of time. So long, Jim Lileks. Au revoir, Rod Dreher. Farewell, about a dozen other blogs. It was fun while it lasted, and besides, I’m still reading Roy, who will keep us updated on the highlights.

* turn of phrase borrowed from Thomas McGuane, who used it as the title of an essay about a rash of deaths in his family

OK, then. What a nice weekend. Spent it at Eastern Market (July! Time for corn, peaches, snow peas, bok choy, sugar snaps, tomatoes, beets, weensy little carrots and yes I made two trips to the car), sailing, moviegoing (“Journey to the Center of the Earth,” which will go on my parental-duty roster in the plus column, but otherwise be entirely forgotten in a matter of days) and, Sunday, a Tigers game. As a recent transplant, I really don’t give a crap about the Tiger Stadium demolition, despite the Free Press’ dedication to covering every swing of the wrecking ball, and besides, Comerica is hardly a dump. It was hot and sweaty in the sun, but the seats were great (thanks, Michael and Diane) and the Tigers won. Pudge Rodriguez went four-for-four — a Hot Pudge Sunday — and there were a couple of nice homers. And the heat wasn’t even that bad; fortunately, there was beer.

Friday night at the movies was something else, however — we went to the 5 p.m. show and came out in the midst of Macomb County Friday Night, a vast gathering at a new “lifestyle center” mall up in the northern ‘burbs. “Lifestyle center” = open-air. Their gimmick is, they allow dogs, and every time I go there I wonder if this will be the day disaster strikes. Because there are an awful lot of stupid people in the world, people who think dogs “enjoy” a Friday night spent strolling at the mall, in the company of hundreds of people and dozens of strange dogs, some of which are barely under control in the first place. Since we were last there the mall added an outdoor splash fountain and climbable play area, so add a bunch of toddlers to the mix, too. Every time I go there I witness at least one dog argument barely avoided, sometimes between, oh, an 80-pound boxer and a 100-pound lab, both straining at the ends of their leashes, which are held by 110-pound women who simply don’t have a clue. About anything.

Also, these trips enable me to see how many people think it is normal and admirable to put clothes on dogs. I’m not talking a bandanna around the neck, either. I ask you.

So, a little bit of bloggage:

Mitch Albom, I beg you, take the buyout. A grateful readership would thank you. I would, anyway.

And one final housekeeping note: This week is when I’m collecting the last of my doctor’s 50th-birthday presents, the one that requires a special diet, Miralax and general anesthesia. So if I disappear for a couple of days, please try not to picture what I’ll be doing. ‘kay?

Talked to a couple of old friends in the past few days. One recently had a hysterectomy, and it went well. She described the moment when the doctor came in to her hospital room and announced she could be released, just as soon as the surgical packing was removed from her vagina — gauze, mostly.

“You know that trick where the magician pulls out a long string of scarves, and it just goes on and on and on?” she said. “It was like that, only grosser.”

The other one told a few stories about her work life, which are the best stories ever. I’d pay money to see her one-woman show someday, and maybe I will. If you want to collect good stories about people, don’t bother becoming a bartender. Become a house cleaner instead. Better stories. One of my editors used to say a mailman knew more about your life than any other stranger who touched it. I say it’s your house cleaner, who knows the state of your marriage from the remains of your romantic dinners for two, and certainly by the number of votive candles arrayed around your bathtub. This friend used to clean empty houses for Realtors, and could tell the ethnicity of the former owners with astonishing accuracy:

“Asians lived there,” she said. “Long black hairs in the bathroom, lots of spilled rice in the pantry.” Indians left behind cooking smells, and favored certain paint colors. (White folks like neutrals.)

The best story she told me was about a lovely house in an upscale suburban area that one of her clients picked up very very cheap. It had been trashed, she said, by the previous owner’s children. It seemed that one day mom ran off with her boyfriend and moved to a faraway state. Then, a few months later, dad accepted a job in another distant city. When the teenage children, who were entering their junior and senior year of high school, objected to the relocation, he said, “OK, you kids can live here until you finish school. You’re old enough to take care of yourselves. I’ll send you some money. Bye.” You can imagine what happened: It became party central, a cushy crash pad for every local kid who needed a place to drink, get high or get laid. And over time, no doubt egged on by the effectively orphaned tenants, the place was very nearly destroyed — they threw cans of house paint out the window onto the driveway to see what it would look like, let the pool go back to nature, wrecked the furniture and carpets, punched holes in the walls and so on. Rehabbing it was a six-figure job, and it was practically a new house to begin with.

That should be a movie, don’t you think? The most interesting stories are be-careful-what-you-wish-for stories.

I have the bestest friends.

Bloggage:

My new rock-star husband, Don Was — yes, Rodney Crowell, while I will always love you, it’s all over between us — was in the Metro Times last week. I missed the show he was promoting, The Don Was Detroit Super Session, and yes I am kicking myself. But he’s so generous in his interviews, which is one reason I love him. They just go on and on and on, and he says so many interesting things. I bring this up because we were talking about the Jill Sobule album-financing deal a while back, and lo, guess what happened:

MT: Other than the Todd Snider project, do you have anything else major coming up?

WAS: Well, just before that, I finished an album with Jill Sobule. She did the original “I Kissed A Girl,” but she shouldn’t be judged on that. She’s a really deep songwriter — both funny and profound. She has a devoted fan base, and she had a “telethon” on her website where fans could contribute as little as $18, for which they got a T-shirt and an early download of the album. For $10,000 — which some people actually bought — you got the hyper-platinum package which allowed you to come and sing background vocals on the album. And she raised $85,000 in about three weeks. Then we made that album — recorded and mixed it — in less than two weeks. Same basic principle. And, you know, there’s just, something about it – that immediacy.

And also in the Metro Times, one of the Starbucks that’s closing is the one on Jefferson in Detroit. Alas, it was beloved by someone other than the usual nobodies:

Long before Renee Zellweger’s brief marriage to country “singer” Kenny Chesney, long before Jack White married model Karen Elson while floating down a Brazilian river, the movie star and the rock star were, as your grandparents might have called ’em, an item. Zellweger spent much time in Detroit, in fact, which was a shocker to us regular folk who spotted her wandering about in supermarkets and dining in restaurants like someone who is, as she calls herself, “just kind of normal”… “Oh, yeah,” she says, drawing the “yeah” out with a few extra vowels. “I’d like to say hi to my friends at the Starbucks on Jefferson. Nice guys.”

A little housekeeping: I’m now on Twitter, as NNall. Like Facebook, I don’t quite get it, but maybe I can figure it out.

The Starbucks closing list is now public, and I’m pleased to see our local isn’t on it. I’m generally pleased with Starbucks, except when I am not. I won’t rehash all the standard bitching about the mermaid, because it doesn’t matter; Starbucks introduced dark roasts to much of America, and give them that at the very least. If it’s much more difficult to palm off a watery brown tincture as something worth your $1.25, then they’ve done the world a service.

Of course there’s a downside. I saw it last week in the Las Vegas airport, on a short layover when all I wanted was a great big cuppa strong black coffee, and got stuck in line behind the eight pickiest people in the world. When one opened with, “I’d like two tall skinny soy lattes, one just a tad cooler than the other,” I threw up my hands and sought out a fast-food place down the row.

Once upon a time America drank coffee. And America was strong. An America that drinks tall skinny soy lattes — one just a tad cooler than the other — is an America that is, dare I say, French.

Ah, well. I have bigger fish to fry today. Picked up the dog yesterday, and could feel his bones poking through his coat. He’d been off his feed most of the week, the vet said. OK, can’t blame him — abandonment in one’s dotage is probably grounds for a hunger strike. Since he’s gotten home, he’s done nothing but eat. And then sometime last night, he got up and pooped on the dining room floor. Which is either the beginning of the end, or just evidence of a senior citizen’s discombobulated constitution. I’m going with the latter. Poor old man. In seven weeks, he’ll be 17. Deaf, mostly blind, but still swingin’.

Speaking of dogs, let’s swing into some tasty bloggage today with one I’ve been carrying around a while. I don’t know how many of you read the NYT’s magazine cover story weekend before last, the one on psychotropic pharmaceuticals for pets, but it made me laugh so hard I nearly had my own dining-room accident:

Aggression is a feline problem too. A few weeks after visiting Dodman, I went to the home of a man in West Los Angeles whose pet was on Prozac. The owner, Doug, asked me not to use his last name because he didn’t want business associates to know about what he called his “cougar psycho little miniature stalker” — Booboo the cat.

Booboo was apparently poisoned by an unfortunate dried-flower-eating incident, which led to the onset of, I dunno, catzophrenia:

From then on Booboo was different. He would periodically ambush Doug. Over time, Doug noticed that attacks were more likely if he smelled at all abnormal — for instance, if he had been near a woman wearing perfume — so he would take a shower after coming home and then change into his designated cat-wrangling outfit.

…Doug led me up the stairs in his house to the second floor. He donned a pair of khakis that he had lined with heavy-gauge ballistic nylon and washed up because he had shaken hands with me. He crept toward the master bedroom, where Booboo was permanently quarantined behind a door that had been remounted to swing outward to facilitate quick escapes by Doug. “Just behind this door lurks the Tasmanian devil,” Doug said before slipping inside. I squatted at ground level and watched through a transparent doggy door. The 400-square-foot room had a walk-in closet, a four-poster bed and a floor-to-ceiling view of Beverly Hills mansions dotting a scenic canyon. The suite belonged entirely to Booboo, though Doug said he was now able to sleep over a few nights a week. Booboo slinked past the window and gave me a steady gaze. He had a tuxedo coat, mostly black but with patches of white on his feet, underbelly and forehead. Doug scooped him up and they nuzzled face to face. “He’s just warm, soft and fuzzy, and he purrs, and he’s cuddly,” he murmured.

The theme of the story: These critters wouldn’t need all these drugs if we, their owners, weren’t quite so crazy ourselves. Good reading.

Those who can get back to the land, do. Those who can’t, delegate. Another reason to hate California foodies:

Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden? That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves. Call them the lazy locavores — city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs.

Here’s a story that’s been getting some play here of late, about a Michigan woman who escaped from prison in 1976 (drug charges), went straight, assumed a new identity and was found 30 years later living the good life in the suburbs of San Diego. The question is, of course, how do you treat a self-rehabilitated soccer mom whose original crime was non-violent but whose escape from custody remains unpunished? As one, the howl goes up in Michigan: Send her back to prison, for a very very very long time!

I am not among those howling. Of course she deserves punishment; the state has to do something. But jailing her again seems pointless, and what’s more, I know of a punishment that will a) hurt; b) hit her where she lives; and c) help the state of Michigan. Among many other things. And it is? Ahem. Fine her.

Fine her big. If her family wants her on the outside so bad, make them pay a hearty sum. Half a million, say. Or more. Why is this so hard? You’re welcome. Just call me Solomon.

Off to the gym, which I am dreading.

The other day I was listening to a story on NPR, about people stuck driving the guzzliest gas guzzlers, and what they were doing about it. I was struck by one man’s interview. He drove a Ford Excursion, the biggest SUV evahr, the station-wagon equivalent of an F-350 SuperDuty pickup truck. The man explained that he needed an extra-large vehicle; he and his wife had five children between them, “so we had no choice” but to buy the Excursion.

Five plus two is seven. That’s how many seats he needed. By my reckoning, that means he could have chosen just about any minivan, and a large number of other SUVs with third-row seating, nearly all of which get better gas mileage than the Excursion. But he had no choice.

Of course, as all adults know, there’s always a choice. It’s just difficult to make sometimes. For instance, yesterday I could have chosen to have something lean and protein-y and vegetable-heavy for lunch, but instead I had a cheese quesadilla. Then I had two Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookies for dessert. If only it had been mandatory, but it was a choice. Some of you are feeling smug and superior, the same way I felt about Mr. Excursion. If it makes you feel any better, I went fiber-heavy for dinner (black beans) and took a long bike ride in penance. That was a choice, too.

I hate choices. I especially hate the way they’ve become the behavioral equipment of fiber. Been in an elementary school lately? “Make good choices” is the new “eat from all four food groups.” Earlier this year Kate was scolded by a teacher for the following: A boy threw down a book, and it took a funny bounce and hit a girl in the leg. She gave out a loud, cartoon-y howl of pain, hopping around on one foot, and Kate laughed. Laughing, the teacher said, was “a poor choice.” I wonder what George Carlin would do with that one.

We rail about wanting more control over our world, which means more choices. And then the vacuum cleaner dies, and we go to Sears. First we choose a price range, then we choose a brand, then we choose bagless or not, onboard tools or not, upright or canister, until our heads spin and we howl with pain and go eeny-meeny-miney-moe. There have been times, while buying a household appliance, that I wished I lived in the old Soviet Union. I would have happily gotten on a list and stood in line for five hours if, at the other end of the line, there was one vacuum cleaner, and the choice was: Take it or leave it.

Grumble, grumble.

OK, bloggage:

A particularly smelly Metro Mayhem today: Boy, 1, shot during fight over glasses. Eyeglasses, that is. (Huge, heavy sigh.) And they were probably knockoffs.

Christopher Hitchens speaks ill of the dead, and boy did they deserve it. Jesse Helms, of course.

Oh, and if you have time, prepare to waste it now: Look at what everyone’s uploading to Flickr, in real time, on a rotating globe. Don’t blame me when nothing gets done. (HT: Vince.)

Now, I choose to go to work and write more mediocre prose. Leave a better comment. (It shouldn’t be hard.)

The trip to Cornerstone went well, if you were wondering. As Jeff commented in an earlier post, Cornerstone isn’t really your typical Christian music festival. It’s more…alt-Christian. Multi-colored hair, much body ink, piercings, ear grommets, you know the drill. The mood was much closer to this…

…than, say, Up With People.

(Man, I just realized how little I know about contemporary Christian music.)

But the talk went well, and I had an interesting chat with Jane Hertenstein, who is a member of Jesus People USA, who put on the festival. It’s JPUSA for short, pronounced J’poosa. J’poosans live communally in their very own 10-story apartment building on the north side of Chicago, kind of like those FLDS compounds, but without the wack hairdos, child abuse, plural marriage, raids by the feds and, of course, a scary prophet. If it sounds a little hippie, I guess it is — they admit their roots are in the Jesus-freaky movement of the late ’60s and ’70s. I read a little in their website and, while I can no more imagine living communally than I can living in, say, Kabul, I can see its appeal, and they truly do seem to be doing their best to imitate Christ.

Their festival is certainly tolerant of all types:

Not sure what this guy’s journey was, but he was eye-catching.

I think this van belonged to Brother Ray:

Brother Ray wandered into the speakers’ hospitality trailer. Most people would notice his yard-long gray dreadlocks, but I was intrigued by his feet, which looked so toughened by exposure to the elements they were more like paws. If that is his vehicle, I suspect he propels it Flintstone-style.

It was a nice trip. A lot of travel for less than an hour of work, but what else is summer for but crashing in your friends’ guest room, driving far up into the wilds of east-central Illinois, crossing all the swollen rivers and creeks, hanging with the Christians for a few hours and then doing it all in reverse? I’m sorry I missed most of the speaker who followed me, from Exodus International. I could scarcely believe this crowd was swallowing it, but I also noticed the speaker didn’t wear a wedding band, so it’s possible she was selling the 20-percent-less-offensive alternative of celibacy for gay people, rather than full-out joining the other team. Dunno.

Anyway, that was my weekend. How was yours?

(Note: He didn’t. But he tried.)

Bloggage:

I don’t truck much in the workings of the blogosphere, mainly because it’s a huge waste of time. The oh-no-you-di’n’t between the right and the left can go on forever, and frequently does. But I still read it from time to time, and if I recall correctly, wasn’t there a dust-up about so-called liberal photojournalists altering photos to make smoke blacker or some such? I guess the practice is catching on, only in a more chickenshit sort of way. Embedded video has the visual evidence. (Gawker has it in a one-stop, non-video graphic, too.) The NYT has picked up the story, and notes the network’s defense that “altering photos for humorous effect is a common practice on cable news stations.” I’m calling bullshit on that — there’s obvious Photoshopping and there’s this kind, which is just nasty. Note that one of the victims is Jewish; couldn’t they fit a few dollar signs on his eyeballs?

Lots to catch up on today, and I’ll be back later. Enjoy Monday. If you can.