Mommy woke up with a stomachache today, so mommy’s going back to bed to clutch a pillow and moan. Fortunately, mommy found some bloggage for you first, because mommy knows you folks love bloggage the way kittens love playing with string, and the way mommy likes referring to herself in the third person.

Anyone catch the speeches last night? If McCain doesn’t fire his production designer, or whoever is responsible for putting him in front of that green backdrop, he won’t get out of the gate. Someone on another blog said it looked like a post-game presser, and that’s just about perfect. He looked old, out of it and unable to get through a sentence without a third look at the ‘prompter. Even the chants sounded like they were started by a guy just out of camera range, holding up a sign. Obama hits the ground running with his rainbow coalition of smiling young people — whom you could see! while he was speaking! because they were seated all around him! — and looked like Secretariat warming up on Belmont Day.

Permit me to say: The contrast was startling. Discuss.

Elsewhere:

The worst time to be a feature writer is when a big hard-news story is breaking. Everyone else is wading through New Orleans, and you’re writing a think piece on Whither the Creole Restaurants. A head of state is assassinated, touching off a shooting war, and you’re gathering notes on whether the widow’s mourning dress sent some sort of coded message to the insurgents.

Worst of all was post-9/11. Who gives a shit about a movie opening the following Friday? (Ask the people who made “Zoolander,” which I believe had that unlucky designation, although it had other problems as well.) I met someone who had a book published that very day; it’s hard for him to discuss it now without a wince. But features editors soldiered on, gamely trying to take the pulse of a freaked-out nation, searching for the shopping/fashion/culture angle. The Wall Street Journal was particularly ham-fisted in that crazy time, as I recall. There was a piece on how expensive it was to cook your own meals — because everyone was staying in after 9/11, cocooning and reconnecting with the neglected home fires — when a set of All-Clad cookware cost $900 and lemongrass- and truffle-infused oils were something like a million dollars a quart. Someone had six friends over for dinner, and it cost $700! The horror!

Well, OK.

Now that the economy is in the tank again, but in a different kind of way, these travails-of-rich-people stories are popping up again. You can’t really fault the big papers for running them; who else is supposed to respond to all those Van Cleef & Arpels ads in the A section? They know their readership.

Here’s one from this past Sunday’s NYT:

The wealthy don’t generally speak publicly about their finances, in good times or bad. It’s in poor taste, for one, and their employers could fire them for talking even a little. But people who provide services to the wealthy — lawyers, art advisers, personal trainers and hairstylists — say they are getting an earful about their clients’ financial anxieties.

Interviews with the people who actually see the bank statements, like divorce lawyers and lenders, say their clients are definitely living on less than they did a year ago, regardless of how expansive the definition of “less” may be. Hairstylists and private jet rental companies say the wealthy are cutting back on luxuries like $350 highlights and $10,000-an-hour jet rentals. Even nutritionists and personal trainers notice a problem. The wealthy are eating more and gaining weight because of the stress.

I love those killer little end-of-paragraph lines, and details like these:

On a spring afternoon, a half-dozen hairstylists to the very wealthy talked about how customers are stretching their $350 highlights and $150 haircuts to every eight weeks instead of six weeks. Some women are cutting out highlights entirely, saying they would “rather be brunettes.”

Brave, brave rich people! Not afraid to make the hard choices!

Ted Nugent proves how far you can go after you flunk Comp 101:

Gather around, high school and college graduates, and listen good — real good. What I am about to tell you will help you immensely throughout the rest of your lives if you commit to practicing Uncle Ted’s proven modus operandi for a quality of life.

It’s full of the usual dipshittery:

Be intelligently and effectively defiant. Defiance is the very spirit that gave birth to this country when our forefathers fought against overwhelming odds, signed the Declaration of Independence and fired the “shot heard ’round the world.” Lock and load. Really.

Of course, when Ted had the opportunity to fight against overwhelming odds, locking and loading all the while, he chose to poop his pants. I don’t think people can be reminded of this enough.

Thinking of Ted Nugent makes my stomach hurt more. Back to bed.

Summer is party time, and it won’t be long now before we can’t open a magazine without hearing about some rapper’s coming-out party in the Hamptons, where guests sampled hors d’oeuvres made from fetal veal, served by waitresses dressed as mermaids, who swam around the perimeter of a fountain with trays held high. Upon arriving, everybody walked through a footbath of Cristal, just to get their toes all tingly and refreshed. At midnight, fireworks erupted from the ass of the ice sculpture of Michelangelo’s David, and as a lovely parting gesture, everyone got a goody bag contained gift certificates for round-the-world cruises and Lancome’s summer line of eye shadow. In Style will have all the photos.

Someone will bitch about the fetal-veal canapés. It’s not included in their Zone diet plan, or something.

Sunday morning I did my Alter Road loop ride, about 12 miles, maybe a little less. Alter Road makes a 90-degree turn at its southeastern terminus, and there’s a park there — Mariner’s Park, little more than a parking lot, a field and a fishing plaza overlooking Windmill Point, where Lake St. Clair narrows and becomes the Detroit River. It’s never deserted; no matter when I come there are always at least a few people with rods set in the brackets, trying their luck.

On Sunday, the white bass were biting with a vengeance. Everybody’s bucket was full, and those who had double hooks on their lines were bringing them up two at a time. A party atmosphere prevailed among this mostly middle-aged and older crowd — old-school floating from a boom box, lots of laughing and comparing the biggest on the stringer. One lady brought a portable grill, and was firing it up to make some lunch with the abundant catch.

No one asked me to either party, but I think I’d rather attend the second one. From the looks of the clothes everyone was wearing and, especially, the cars in the parking lot, no one here had a lot of dough. (There was one aging Ford Taurus that looked like it was, literally, held together with silicon sealer, Bondo and superglue.) But they sure were having a good time. It was the ten thousandth reminder that parties don’t turn on the food, the venue or even the occasion. Parties turn on the guest list, and the spirit everyone brings to the event.

Something to remember when you’re planning your Fourth of July soiree.

As for me, I was up early on an empty stomach. Package 2 of the 50th birthday present from my doctor is the usual blood work. You know I’m going to put off opening Package 3 for as long as possible, but the nurse was very stern: “We’ve had several patients who refused to accept this present, who are now seeing oncologists.” Got it. Anyway, after an hour spent with a growling stomach, cooling my heels in various waiting rooms, I rewarded myself with scrambled eggs with black beans and salsa, basically a breakfast burrito without the tortilla. And now I feel at one with the world and in love with all humankind. What a way to start Monday.

So, a bit of bloggage? Sure:

Hank Stuever tackles the question that’s been keeping you up nights: Just who wrote ‘Footprints,’ anyway? It should not surprise you to learn that lawsuits are involved.

The Chinese take the Soviets’ place as medal-mongers. Just one more thing I hate about the Olympics:

The American and Chinese (rowing) programs are drastically different.

In this Olympic year, about 60 United States rowers receive monthly stipends of $1,200 from the U.S.O.C. Last winter, they trained together for about four months, all expenses paid, but for the most part, they pay their own way.

Some, like Matt Muffelman, work part time. He is an associate at the Home Depot in Ewing, N.J., where he answers gardening questions like, “Are those mums squirrel-proof?” and “Where is the mulch?”

In non-Olympic years, most United States rowers work full time or attend school, often following training schedules prepared by coaches who live elsewhere. Some stop rowing.

Bryan Volpenhein won a gold medal in the men’s eight at the 2004 Olympics, then moved to Seattle for culinary school, preparing for what he called “real life.” Now 31, he returned last spring to the national team’s base in Princeton, N.J., where it rents boathouse space. Some rowers live communally, but Volpenhein house-sits for a professor. For meals, they fend for themselves.

Needless to say, the Chinese do not fend for themselves.

Someone — Jolene, maybe? — wondered if I had anything to add to the Michigan delegate fiasco, how the story was playing here, and the answer is: Not loudly. The fact is, we have bigger fish to fry — it’s hard to overstate how bad the local and state economy is at the moment; we’re heading into “Roger & Me” territory — and that’s good news for the architects of this bloody fiasco, who have largely escaped punishment. I’m not tight with the Hillary camp, but I’d think they’re smart enough to see the writing on the wall and settle for the 50 percent solution reached over the weekend. Brian Dickerson at the Freep has more, but I think the best course of action is to say, “We made our point,” sit down and shut up.

I won’t say anymore, because like I said before, I’m feeling in love with mankind this morning, and want to stay that way. Despite what the self-portrait, taken just moments ago, suggests:

Have a merry Monday.

It is finally spring here in Michigan, and we’re trying to make our space a little nicer. The enormously expensive back-strip landscaping is fleshing out nicely, and we’ve added a couple bird feeders. Of course this attracts not only the wrong birds — if I wanted mourning doves, I’d have put on a funeral — but squirrels. My experience firing a shotgun last week leads me to fantasize about more interesting target practice, preferably on those little bastards. The other day I wondered idly what they might taste like.

It turns out squirrel cookery is in Alan’s immediate bloodline. His parents used to go hunting together, and sometimes brought home a bag of them. “I remember my mom would boil them, and then fry them,” he said. Alan’s mom was a humble cook with a limited repertoire, but I give her points for guts and pluck for even trying to cook a squirrel. (Although, to be sure, boiled-then-fried sounds positively vile.) Turns out I’m not the only one giving this critter some thought:

(Squirrel) meat is selling faster than butchers can get it, not least because it is currently nesting season. Ever since Kingsley Village Butchers in Fraddon, Cornwall, began offering grey squirrel two months ago, it has shifted up to a dozen a day.

That’s from the Telegraph. The British can be very strange.

The story goes on to reveal the astonishing price English butchers are fetching for “tree rat:”

At £3 to £4 for one, the shop-bought variety is hardly an obvious answer to keeping the lid on an escalating grocery bill.

Jeez. At current exchange rates that’s almost $7 per squirrel. Alan and I split a one-inch Delmonico from time to time, which at current prices costs us around $14. And for that we can get two squirrels? The dollar is weak, but please.

But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Via Nervous Rod Dreher, a profile of Marston Hefner in GQ magazine, teenage son of you-know-who:

Marston doesn’t actually live in the Mansion—not anymore, not since his parents split up in 1998 and his mom, the blond Playmate Kimberley Conrad (January ’88), moved into a more modest house that adjoins the property. He’s 18 now, about to graduate from high school, a tall and lanky kid with heavy brows, watchful, slightly sad eyes, and a complexion that says “I spend too much time playing video games.” He has none of his dad’s swagger or mothlike attraction to the bright lights of Hollywood—which you could attribute to a young man struggling to define himself in opposition to his famous father, or to the fact that they just don’t spend that much quality time together these days. Marston doesn’t make it over every day. He’s usually here on Thursdays, though, for…backgammon night?

Nervous Rod thinks the kid is a slack zero, because of course GQ is the last authority in all things, and because he disapproves of Hugh Hefner. I’m a parent, too, and I had a different reaction: Marston Hefner is turning out about as well as can reasonably be expected, a typical child of a parent who blots out the sun, his odds in life perhaps 50-50 — his money will provide him cushion and opportunities, while the essential weirdness of his upbringing and its attendant pitfalls will try to take him down.

And while I’m always happy to see a freelance writer getting some work, I’m less fond of hit pieces against people who don’t deserve it, and while the hit wasn’t aimed at young Marston, he’s certainly collateral damage in passages like this, in which the writer interviews Hef pére:

Did you ever try to explain the fact that, just after the separation, you started dating seven blond women?

“Not really. What is there to say?”

There was never any conversation about monogamy or marriage?

“What kind of conversation would that be?”

What kind of signal does that send?

“I think the signal that it sends, quite frankly, which the boys liked, was that instead of somebody replacing mama, I dated a bunch of girls.”

After about forty-five minutes, Hef appears to be losing steam. I turn off the tape recorder, and he rises from the couch. As he does, he rips the kind of fart that one does not even attempt to hide from. No one in the room blinks.

News flash: Hef was a lousy father, and 82-year-old men fart unexpectedly. Wow. I bet Ronald Reagan was the picture of refinement at that age, too. (And, to be sure, not much of a father, either.)

Let’s just hope they had better taste in picking the mothers of their children.

Nice David Edelstein appreciation of Sydney Pollack, actor.

OK, Friday. I’d looked forward to a long, relaxing bike ride today, and in the last half-hour three e-mails arrived that will see to it I’m desk-bound for half the day. Better get to work. Enjoy your weekend, and I’ll see you back here after.

My commitment to saving gas is so pathetic as to be comical — I mean, a fair-weather cyclist who works from home is hardly capable of a real sacrifice in fossil-fuel consumption — but I’m trying to approach it with some level of seriousness. And I’ve set a goal: The one-month tank of gas. Fourteen gallons in 30 days.

It’s not that far-fetched. I made it to three weeks between fill-ups recently without making myself a hermit in the bargain. If you can go three weeks, you should be able to go four, right? Here are my main rules and strategies:

1) Combining trips. If I’m going to Royal Oak for a meeting, I try to think of other stuff I can do while I’m out there. I mean, besides eat lunch. If the trip takes me past Costco (and most do), I make a stock-up stop.

2) Telling my dear only child, “Can’t you ride your bike? Lansing’s not that far. ”

3) It’s difficult to shop for a week of groceries on a bicycle, but easy to get a day’s worth. I pretend I’m French and live in a tiny Paris walkup with a refrigerator the size of a shoebox.

4) All shopping excursions requiring the car get a second, third or fourth look. All chances to interact with other human beings I don’t even question. The idea is to save gas, not become a crazy miserly energy tyrant.

5) You can fit more on the back of a bike than you think, if you have the right bungee cords. It does make the thing a little light up front, however. And carrying home certain loads — a few bottles of wine, a big bag of dog food — make you look like a crazy person who lost her driver’s license to multiple drunk-driving convictions. But it’s fun to be crazy. At least people get the hell out of your way.

6) Finally — and this is huge in Detroit — I started driving the speed limit. There’s an essay in that, because absolutely nobody in this town, in the state, does so. The default driving style is fast, cheap and out of control, and while it can be fun, it doesn’t exactly make the real-time mileage gauge on the dash track a nice steady number. Driving the speed limit in Detroit is like being an atheist in Colorado Springs. People not only look at you funny, they think you’re with al-Qaeda.

If none of these strategies seem particularly earth-shattering, well, you lived through the ’70s, too. It’s hard to make you younger folks understand how unsettling that era was, and prices aside, it was unsettling. Stations closed at 5 p.m. Some areas restricted sales to every other day depending on last name or plate number. Lines at the pumps stretched a block or more. And it happened so fast — one day gasoline was an expense for most households the way coffee was an expense, and suddenly it turned into a mortgage. I drove to Cleveland with some friends for a day trip during this period, and we delayed topping off the tank. As we turned for home, we entered a strip of gas stations near the freeway entrance, and justlikethat, they all turned off their lights and closed for business, and it was like that all over town. We had to spend the night, like pioneers stranded by a blizzard.

For teenagers accustomed to getting a couple days’ driving out of a dollar’s worth of gas, it was shocking.

A few years later came the big coal strike that led to voluntary restrictions on electricity use, deep into one of the coldest winters on record, and certainly in my lifetime. I think of that era as cold, dark and expensive, and it changed my energy-use behavior forever. I’ve never bought a car without at least considering its gas mileage. I never set the thermostat above 68. I watch my tach as closely as I watch my speed, and shift to minimize RPMs whenever possible.

This sort of era can turn you crabbed and mean; the dark side of thrift is miserliness, a refusal to share in any sort of bounty for fear of a coming shortage. But I’m sympathetic to those caught flat-footed. Many of my neighbors are in the automotive business, and many drive enormous, hulking, high-profit-margin vehicles that are surely running them to the poorhouse, one tank at a time. (Remember, this is the industry that, when confronted with the early Honda subcompacts, offered as competition the Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto.) Many are younger than I am, and don’t remember the fun old days. Ah, well. As my parents responded to my whining then with stern reminders of the deprivations of the war years, so too do I nod in sympathy, as I roll past on pedal power.

How do you save gas without being totally anal about it?

By the way, today I’m having lunch on the patio at the Detroit Golf Club — a planning session for our movie challenge entry, next month. See Rule #4, above. I’m so starved for a non-family human interaction I’d drive to Ypsilanti for donuts with Mitt Romney. (Downside: Again, it’s not even 50 degrees yet. Maybe they’ll have to serve us our coffee in thermal casks.)

A bit o’ bloggage:

In addition to the big essay on conservatism, I also read this in the New Yorker this weekend, about Katie Couric’s travails as anchor of the CBS Evening News. I read it with the same sense of awe I have whenever I think about the evening network news — that somewhere in this country there are still people with nothing better to do at 6:30 p.m. than watch 22 minutes of old-skool network news. So, I think, does Nancy Franklin, who wrote the piece:

The evening news continues to have value for millions of people, but millions more are now turning to the Internet. Increasingly, and in more ways than one, there is an end-of-the-day feeling to the nightly-news half hour—there’s ad after ad for products that treat all the things that go wrong with your body after you’re fifty, and in the broadcast itself there’s the endless use of the tired phrase “pain at the pump,” for stories on fuel prices, and always, in stories about pharmaceutical companies or warnings about drugs, the same shot of pills moving rapidly along a conveyor belt.

Our witty pal Alex once described the overarching theme of network news as “somewhere, someone younger than you is spending your tax dollars on things you wouldn’t approve of,” and that’s word, too. Later:

But I don’t think that people want less news; they want, I believe, the same kind of informed passion and doggedness that TV-news people displayed while covering Hurricane Katrina, and they want anchors to go deep into issues. Who knows, young people might turn on their TVs in droves if news organizations had a few choice strands of Michael Moore’s DNA in them, and pointed out when, say, a public official wasn’t telling the truth. Jon Stewart is a lightning rod both for people who decry the notion that young people get their news from watching “The Daily Show,” and for people who think that his (and Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report”) is the only current-events show worth watching. I’m not a Stewartite, but when Dick Cheney denies making certain statements about the war in Iraq and Stewart shows three video clips that prove he’s lying, I think he’s providing a real service to the country, and I’d like to think that that’s what his fans are responding to.

That’s exactly right. I’m late to the Jon Stewart fan club, and I certainly wouldn’t want to see him on a network newscast — it would ruin his magic — but I’d drive an SUV to Ypsi to see him do an author interview before I would, say, Brian Williams. (His dissection of Jonah Goldberg is a minor classic.) Stewart brings a level of honesty to the table that so-called professional journalists either can’t or won’t, because they interpret “objectivity” so strictly that they can’t call a spade a spade. Haven’t they figured out that the people they cover are wise to this? How many books does Scott McClellan have to write before it gets through: Sometimes the people behind the podium? Are LYING. It’s not bias to point this out. It’s, um, journalism.

Well, don’t want to start ranting.

Why newspapers are dying: Because they think there’s no room for ALL the “Sex and the City” movie-premiere fashion pictures. But Jezebel does.

The morning, she is slipping away. Better go select my long underwear for visiting the golf club on the 28th DAY OF DAMN MAY, FOR GOD’S SAKE. Have a good one.

Because the New Yorker was made for ink-on-paper reading and it arrives days and days late here, I didn’t get to the George Packer essay everyone was talking about until Saturday. I read it poolside, presumably in the presence of actual conservatives, based on recent election results.

“The Fall of Conservatism” lays out, perhaps too optimistically for my money, how the political movement that defined my adulthood lost its way and now teeters like a shack on the beach awaiting November’s hurricane. My initial reaction: Well, we’ll see. Pat Buchanan gets the money-shot quote, paraphrasing Eric Hoffer: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” I’ve seen the racketeers for some time now; it seems like a hundred years ago that I started telling people the success of buffoons like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh indicated the right had run out of steak and was selling nothing but sizzle, but obviously I was wrong about that one. Packer mentions in passing the two great rocky shoals conservatism wrecked itself on — Iraq and Katrina, but these were only rocks that showed above the waterline. It’s one thing to argue that government is always incompetent; it’s quite another to staff government agencies with incompetents and then, when they’re revealed as such, yell, “See!? See!?”

I might add that it’s one thing to praise business and unfettered capitalism like some sort of god, and quite another to look the other way when corrupt financial markets can drain billions from American pockets and reward the perpetrators, but that’s another discussion.

Here’s what struck and saddened me: The way the GOP gained power through what Kevin Phillips called “positive polarization.” Divide and conquer, basically, but not only divide — demonize. People who disagreed with you weren’t just wrong, they were evil. In the midst of it, a woman called my newspaper and informed my editor she would be canceling her subscription because a certain female columnist had described herself as a feminist, and this was simply too much to be endured. Packer thinks it’s on its way out. I can only hope so:

Yet the polarization of America, which we now call the “culture wars,” has been dissipating for a long time. Because we can’t anticipate what ideas and language will dominate the next cycle of American politics, the previous era’s key words—“élite,” “mainstream,” “real,” “values,” “patriotic,” “snob,” “liberal” — seem as potent as ever. Indeed, they have shown up in the current campaign: North Carolina and Mississippi Republicans have produced ads linking local Democrats to Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor. The right-wing group Citizens United has said that it will run ads portraying Obama as yet another “limousine liberal.” But these are the spasms of nerve endings in an organism that’s brain-dead.

We’ll see. I lived in deep-red country for 20 years and learned to get along with people who considered a self-described feminist to be a she-devil. Part of my belligerent attitude of late has to do with leaving that place for a more purple-hued environment, but I worry that positive polarization has caught me, too. I certainly wouldn’t pay for a newspaper that carried Ann Coulter’s column. Maybe that’s the real legacy of the last 40 years: We disagree, therefore, you suck.

Anyway, I think Roy gets it right: Do not count out this movement, even with half its teeth missing, syphilis overtaking its bloodstream and the odor of the grave emanating with every howl:

The conservative heavy thinkers to whom Packer gives much credence may feel as if the world has passed them by, but the racketeers really run the show. As formerly grumbling conservative operatives learn to love McCain and go all-in for the big win, philosophy is the least of their concerns, and their whither-conservatism thumb-suckers become mere padding for pages filled with stories about Obama’s Muslim past, inability to bowl, and other such boob-bait. If you think they can’t pull it off because their approach lacks intellectual vitality, you may be overthinking the whole thing.

Josh Marshall makes some good points, too.

That’s what I did on Saturday, when I had to readjust my pool chair six times to find the right balance between out-in-the-sun (too bright to read) and under-the-umbrella (too cold to concentrate). It didn’t even touch 70, but the pool was open (and heated) and by god, we were going. The lifeguards sat around glumly in sweats, hoping no one needed saving. Sunday was warmer and Monday was downright hot — upper 80s. I went to sleep last night with all the windows open and the ceiling fans on, and woke up 90 minutes later with the blinds banging and cold air rushing in to reclaim us. Again. Current temperature: 48, and fuck you very much, Canadian air mass. Frost warning (!!!!!!!) tonight.

As the previous post demonstrates, I finally took up Alan’s fancy shotgun and took my chances on the skeet range. The double I got on that station wasn’t typical, but I did pretty well — hit maybe 30 percent of the faces of my enemies rendered in brittle ceramic clay pigeons, some fairly tough. I didn’t get any of the “rabbits” — targets launched to roll along the ground — but I came close, and I nailed a few in the incredibly satisfying ways they blow apart. I thought “vaporizing in midair” was my favorite, but then I experienced “breaking into three pieces, each spinning off on its own symmetrical trajectory,” and that was the new standard of excellence.

For what its worth, none of the targets carried the face of the president. Hey, I’m evolving!

So, bloggage of a related note: Anyone see “Recount”? What did we think? I found it surprisingly engaging for being unafraid to take on fairly complicated legal concepts, but nearly unwatchable just the same, if only for its arousal of the old we disagree/you suck anger. I came away hoping someone learned a lesson or two in that mess, and maybe, by 2006, we did — the corrupt GOP establishment that nearly turned Ohio 2004 into a rerun of Florida 2000 was ejected on its ear. But the elements that let the fiasco happen are, most likely, still in place somewhere. I thought Gore did the right thing at the time, but when I see what actually happened as a result of that election, maybe not so much.

Skipped Rob’s torture session this morning, so I’m off to ride my bike until my legs fall off. Make merry in the first day of quasi-summer, when the furnace will likely come on.

Almost enough to make you forget that sore knee.

Although now my shoulder is sore, too.

I suppose you people think you’re going to start a euphemisms-for-privates thread down in the comments. Well, you’re right. I’ll start with a brief anecdote:

An old neighbor of mine had a cousin who worked at a medical answering service, the people who pass your messages along to the doc on call. Because they’re calling the doctor out of a sound sleep and/or off the golf course, they’re instructed to ask minimal questions about the problem. So one night this woman calls and simply doesn’t want to say why she wants her gyno to get back to her ASAP. Hem, haw, etc. Finally the cousin says, “If you won’t tell us anything at all, we’re not allowed to call the doctor. Really, it’s OK” and the woman blurts out “MY TWAT ITCHES!” and hangs up.

They all had a good roll around the floor laughing at that one, and then the doctor, who was in the building, stops by for his messages. They’re still laughing, he asks why, they tell him and he says, “Hmm, I guess no one told her the medical term. Muffin.”

That story doesn’t read as funny as it tells, especially early in the morning with no alcohol, but that’s my contribution: Muffin.

And that’s it, because now I have to get ready for my long-overdue MRI of the right knee, which has been hurting for a year now. My MRI order reads “internal derangement,” which describes me many days, I think. Anyway, I think I’ll take a shower, shave my legs and strip all metal from my body. I’ll likely be back, but if you’re not — have a great long weekend.

You guys are having such a good time in the comments I’m thinking I should just turn the wheel over to you. Surely you have more to say than I do. I just wrote eight paragraphs of an obituary of Edward Kennedy, then thought Jeez, let the man die first. Then I went back to bed for an hour. I need a very long bike ride and I plan to take it, but before I do so, let me fish this comment by mild-mannered Jeff out of the comments previous and hold it up to the light:

OK, i finally got around to reading the second page of the “purity ball” story and looking at the slide show. For the record, “ewwwww.”

Having typed that, i gotta type this — have y’all been to any Midwestern ceremonial of any of the following: Job’s Daughters, Rainbow Girls, DeMolay, Key Club, Eastern Star, Knights of Pythias, Civil Air Patrol (yes, especially their youth dept.), Grange youth auxiliary, or DAR? I’ve ended up sitting through all these and more doing the opening prayer or singing a solo at the request of the new officer installation or something. They’re all off-kilter rehearsals for weddings and even, in a dim sort of way, funerals, and they share elements of the kitschy and creepy all wound up in Enlightenment symbolism and patriotic fervor and a vague kind of practical mysticism that may use the name “Jesus” with some emphasis but isn’t worried about being Christian at all.

What i find most fascinating (as opposed to appalling) about this is how it’s another expression of the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon in American society — these are events that replace what used to be spread through a whole nine-month, Sept./May programmatic year of youth organizations that you joined and worked through the offices for . . . 12 officers for a group that had maybe 20 members at most meetings.

Those ongoing organizations are fading fast, and “events” are getting cobbled together to replace them, like . . . the Purity Ball. Concentrated kitsch and intense focus on a relationship that needs to play out over time, not find an artificial focus on one evening.

I still laugh at the horror-stricken look on my wife’s face when i pointed out to her, decades after, the Freudian aspect of the major service clubs in her high school for boys and girls — I kid you not, Key Club and Lockets. No points for guessing which was which!

I used to date a boy who was in DeMolay, if an eighth-grader carrying on a long-distance correspondence with a gawky geek in southern Ohio can be called “dating.” I met him when I was in Ironton visiting a friend, and he came to Columbus for a DeMolay convention. I kept saying, “DeMo-wha-?” and I’m still not sure what, exactly, it is, although it has something to do with the Masons. Fortunately, they have a website, which explains:

DeMolay is an organization dedicated to preparing young men to lead successful, happy, and productive lives. Basing its approach on timeless principles and practical, hands-on experience, DeMolay opens doors for young men aged 12 to 21 by developing the civic awareness, personal responsibility and leadership skills so vitally needed in society today. DeMolay combines this serious mission with a fun approach that builds important bonds of friendship among members in more than 1,000 chapters worldwide.

Jeff’s right. One thousand chapters or not, these outfits are dying dying dying. They don’t fit with modern life. Those ladies’ clubs where dowagers gathered in flowered hats to discuss gardening and good works? Going and gone. When I was a columnist, every so often I’d accept a speaking invitation from the Rotary or Lions or (my favorite) the Optimists, and it was like One Hour in Middle-Management Hell. I was frequently struck by the rituals — the group singing, the pledge of allegiance, the pledge of brotherhood, repeated loudly. (Roar lions, roar lions! Bite ’em bite ’em bite ’em!)

It didn’t work out with Mr. DeMolay. I hope he found a nice Rainbow Girl and settled into a nice southern Ohio life. I will always remember him fondly, though, because he took me to see “A Clockwork Orange.”

Since we’re letting others carry my load today, let’s toss it to Michael Musto:

There seem to be more publicists working the Sex and the City movie than hairdressers gathered around Burt Reynolds’ noggin trying to make his shit look real.

Man, I’ll say. Is there a photograph of the Fightin’ Four walking toward the camera in color-coordinated outfits that hasn’t been published yet? It’s like a downmarket version of “The Wire” blitz last winter. And the movie doesn’t open for another week! I may have to go on entertainment-section hiatus to get through it.

Bossy has fallen in love with Rachel Maddow. I haven’t, although I like her fine. She’s strangely compelling to watch, mainly because of the disconnect between her confidence in her ideas and expression, and her plain discomfort in her TV makeup and pearl-gray jacket. She looks like a man who wandered, jacketless, into a restaurant with a dress code, and has to wear one out of the lost-and-found box. I know she probably doesn’t normally spend a lot of time thinking about the semiotics of the smoky eye, and neither do I, so I’ll leave that to her makeup artist. But she was on “On the Media” talking about those jackets, and she said MSNBC finds them for her. MSNBC doesn’t need my financial support, so I won’t take up a collection, but I’d like to suggest they buy her another two or three of them, preferably in deeper colors that will flatter her fine skin. If I were dressing her I’d also put in a word for a necklace or two, maybe some very very subtle silver earrings, but that would probably burn her flesh the way the smoky eye seems to. Bossy has unearthed a picture of her in Buddy Holly frames, and she looks perfectly natural. That’s what she should wear on the air.

(When I was on TV, people were always giving me advice about my turnout. I said to myself, “Boy, I hope I never waste time picking apart TV-news outfits.” Shows what I knew.)

A few of you reader folks have been saying, in comments, that I’m a liberal/socialist for supporting Obama, and I’d like to correct that, although I wonder why I bother, because I suspect some of you would describe anyone to the left of Dick Cheney as such, but here goes: I’m not supporting the Democratic ticket, whatever it shapes up to be, for lots of specific policy reasons. I want us to start developing some sort of solution to the health-care mess, and to get out of Iraq, and to figure out what we’re going to do with the part of the country that has been cut out the American bargain in recent years. That’s a heavy load, and I don’t know if the Illinois senator can carry it all on those slender shoulders of his. But I do know this: No one running for president today can be worse at the job than the current occupant of the Oval Office. So all the talk about whether Obama’s ready or if he’s been tested or if he did something in Chicago that isn’t absolutely kosher good-government best-practices seems irrelevant at this point. All the candidates are imperfect, but for Republican in particular to say, “He’s not qualified,” after eight years of blood-drenched fiascos just seems, I dunno, galling. I’m not getting a tattoo. I’m not buying a T-shirt. But I’m pulling the lever with the sense that whoever wins will be an improvement, and some will represent more improvement than others.

That’s why John McCain is putting as much distance between himself and George W. Bush as is humanly possible, and that’s why, barring a disaster, Obama’s the favorite to win. Yes, it’s that bad. Get the hook.

Back tomorrow. More rested, I hope.

I had a meeting this morning in Troy. Normal travel time to this particular venue is 25 minutes. I gave myself 30, and arrived 31 minutes late. Ah, well. I only need two words to tell you why — crash, construction — and it was worth the trip anyway, because someone told me a good story, and now I offer it to you:

It was about the very first website design the storyteller ever did. It was 1993, before the Web. The client, a large automotive supplier, wanted an online resource for the company’s many locations, and came to an ad agency to get one. The agency’s biggest issue was with billing; no one could agree on what, exactly, they were doing, and how the client should be charged — was it media, service or something else? They finally settled on a quote of $700,000, based on billable staff hours. The client paid without dickering.

Today’s clients were shown a website design that would make the automotive supplier’s site look like a cave painting (which is was, comparatively). They will pay considerably less than $700,000. Don’t emerging technologies have interesting economics?

I like this account for the same reason Diane Keaton’s character in “Manhattan” did novelizations: It’s easy, and it pays well. And I like it for lots of non-specific ones that stem from it being my sole non-journalism writing gig, and as such, offers me entree into the exciting world of American business. My boss on this project can sling meeting jargon with the best of them, and I like to jot it down, if only to look busy in the meetings — “build out” is a big phrase now, and today I heard “loop” used as a verb in a non-knitting sense. We’re going to build out our timeline, and loop Bob and Bill along the way.

Unless Bob and Bill get caught in traffic, that is. Interesting tidbit from the jam: When I knew I was going to be late, I called to tell them so. I didn’t have the number in my phone, but I did have it in my laptop. Since I was stopped, I opened it up and searched my inbox. This was near an underpass. You Mac users know that when a wifi-enabled laptop can’t find its home network, it scans for open ones in the area and gives you a dialogue box: “None of your trusted wireless networks can be found. Would you like to join (the one with the strongest signal)?” Today that one was called “bridge 1,” presumably the overpass just ahead. It had a wifi network, presumably for the traffic signals. I can’t think what else a bridge would need wireless for, unless it’s surfing bridge porn during lulls in traffic.

I wonder if the network cost $700,000 to set up. Likely far, far more. And what do we really need? A new bridge.

Because of my late start and busy morning, no bloggage. But feel free to bat the ball around in the comments anyway, while I go look for some, or maybe clean my family room. What to do, what to do?

My husband should have been an archaeologist. He really has the knack. Putting in our garden in Fort Wayne, he turned up half an ancient horseshoe and an Indian-head penny. Replacing some bushes here a couple years ago, he found a St. Joseph figurine someone had buried, probably in hopes of selling the place.

Then, yesterday, while planting a rosebush for our anniversary, look what turned up:

Two half-pint milk bottles, 3-cent deposit, property of Dairy Container Corp., Detroit, Mich. I suspect they were dropped there by the workers pouring the foundation back in 1947. I found several on eBay and other sites, just like it, in the $10 price range. But I’m not going to sell ’em. They’ll make cute little vases for the roses, whenever they come. If they come. Did I mention we had a frost warning last night?

And that the pool opens in a week?

Thought about Obama on my bike ride today, and something I learned riding horses:

When approaching a fence, do not look at the fence. Find a focal point beyond the fence, and look at that. What is a fence, anyway? A stride in the air. Keep your rhythm, don’t pick pick pick at the reins, go forward confidently, and stay focused on that spot beyond. Never ever look down; did you know the human head weighs eight pounds?

If you do it right, you should go ba-dump ba-dump ba-dump and-jump ba-dump ba-dump and-turn, and find the next focal point.

(This is also where we get the expression “take it in stride.”)

This is how I’m approaching November. The election is the fence, but I’m looking at Thanksgiving, to raising my glass with best wishes to President-elect Obama and his family. Early signs are encouraging, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a Jack Russell terrier ran out on the course and started nipping at our heels, but I’m looking to November. I’m ready to wash these Republicans right out of my hair. (Ever see a horse kick a dog? This happened to my trainer once. She turned a horse out in the paddock one morning, and it went scooting off, kicking up its heels, which attracted the Jack Russell, who rushed in to put a stop to such frivolity. The next thing she saw was the white blur of the terrier, Triscuit, flying through the air. Thud. She ran to Triscuit, who was lying in the dirt, apparently dead. “Oh my God! Triscuit!” As she mourned, Triscuit’s eyes opened, blinked a few times, and then she hopped to her feet and trotted out of the ring. What horse? What kick? For purposes of this story, I think we should change Triscuit’s name to Michelle Malkin.)

I expect the next few months will be nasty, brutish and very very long, but I’m staying focused on Thanksgiving. HBO is running promos for “Recount,” and in one, Bob Balaban, playing Ben Ginsberg, intones, “The stain of the Clinton administration is being washed away…” That’s how I’m thinking about the campaign. The stain-scrubbing.

You’ve probably all read this Peggy Noonan column by now. The stopped clock on one of her twice-a-day sweet spots, or early rope-a-dope to break the horse’s rhythm? I put nothing beyond this administration and its apologists, but maybe this is just Peggy, angling for some better TV work. There’s always a good living in criticizing your own tribe — you’re a Fresh New Voice Unafraid to Challenge Conventional Wisdom. She’s got an IRA to stock, too.

A wee bit o’ bloggage:

God, this is so creepy it makes my skin crawl. We’ve discussed “purity balls” here before, but this shit is positively Islamic, only grosser:

Loss tinged many at the ball. Stephen Clark, 64, came to the ball for the first time with Ashley Avery, 17, who is “promised” to his son, Zane, 16. Mr. Clark brought Ashley, in her white satin gown, to show her that he loved her like a daughter, he said, something he felt he needed to underscore after Ashley’s father left her family a year ago.

It’s too bad Ashley’s father left. He could probably have shared in the four fat goats and six laying hens the elderly Mr. Clark paid for her “promise” to his teenage son.

OK, back to work. Make merry!