There are days when I wouldn’t go back to work in an office, in a downtown, for any amount of money. There are days when I’d pay any amount for just another day there. Tuesday was one of those days — a successful meeting in the morning, a lunch hour all to myself, a sparkling day on the riverfront. Lousy picture, seen here:

(Why do they even put cameras this crappy in cell phones? You’d be better off drawing a picture.)

I tried the new Asian Village on the waterfront, a combination fast-casual/sushi/white-tablecloth complex that’s new in town. Verdict: OK, but needs more foot traffic, and if you can’t get foot traffic on a perfect fall day, keep your fingers crossed. “It’s not organic,” Alan points out, and he’s not talking about the vegetables. It’s one thing when a Whatevertown springs up because the whatevers are drawn together individually, and another thing entirely when they’re plunked in by fiat. But it’s beautiful, the location can’t be beat, and with thousands of GM office staff right next door, my guess is they’ll be rolling in dough eventually.

(“Don’t be so sure,” says Alan. We’ll have to make a bet.)

While I was there, I looked around at contemporary American white-collar workers, wearing their lanyards of IDs and card keys and personal electronic devices. We’re becoming a nation of janitors. At my meeting, I not only had to be card-swiped into the building and personally escorted, but also the reverse. Employees had to swipe themselves out for smoke breaks. I had just been telling someone I sort of missed the days when all men wore neckties to the office, if for no other reason than to indicate status, and the more I watched these salarymen and women go through their day, it became clear why: Why wear all that crap and a tie? I tried to think of the last time I saw Alan in a tie (months). GM is a conservative company, and a few of the men tucking into Thai noodles wore neckties, but more didn’t. Khakis, polos, loafers — this is the new gray flannel suit.

I don’t mind it; I’m all for comfort within reason. But I recall watching the deterioration of dress at my old newspaper, which over 20 years went from neckties to collared shirts/no neckties to collared knit shirts to plain T-shirts to the day one of the Neighbors reporters came in wearing a T-shirt that said MUSTARD PLUG on the front, along with Teva sandals that showed off his grody toenails. I used to wear skirts and pantyhose to work; now I wear jeans to business meetings with bankers, and frequently the bankers are wearing jeans, too. If I have a blazer on, it’s like I’m dressed up. Yay me.

OK, just a bit of bloggage, because this is a busy week and I have less time for web-surfing and nose-picking:

This is too good not to be real: Mrs. Larry Craig’s Super Tuber recipe. HT: Weingarten.

When Alabama men of God die, they die alone. Thank God.

See you soon.

Unseasonable warmth here of late; today’s high is predicted to be in the mid-80s. Of course journalistic objectivity requires me to insert the phrase “so-called” in front of “global warming,” so I’ll refrain from bringing it up.* I’ll only say it makes for some strange mornings.

Summer flip-flops, for instance, are not made for my driveway these days, littered so heavily with acorns it’s like walking through a landscape of marbles and broken glass. The birds are quieter as the sky lightens, so the earliest sounds of the awakening city come from the freeway, half a mile as the (less talkative these days) crow files. Zoom. Zoom. The rumble of a truck. The blat of a motorcycle. I lie there and think: I went to bed 4.5 hours ago. Why am I awake? Answer: Because the universe hates you and wants you to suffer. The leaves are changing right on schedule, the mums replaced the coleus and impatiens on the front porch two weeks ago, but they have to be watered just as often, because the fall rains aren’t coming. Also, 85-degree temperatures take it out of even hardy mums.

Meanwhile, Charlotte died. She was a spider that spun her web in a corner of our back doorway. I watched her the other evening, catching her just as the spokes were complete and she started on the orbital sections. She didn’t look quite like E.B. White’s description of her namesake — she was a pale beige, not gray, and smaller than a gumdrop. When she finished, she took her place at the center of the web to wait. The next morning, the web had a few torn spots in it — left by the ensnared bugs, I expect — and Charlotte was gone. The following night, the web was unrepaired and Charlotte was back, but she wasn’t moving. I touched the web, and she raised one leg, rather weakly, it seemed. The next day, the web was in tatters, Charlotte was gone, and that evening, she didn’t show up at all.

I dunno. Maybe she moved.

Thus concludes the Annie Dillard wannabe portion of today’s post. As I occasionally point out, at least 50 percent of the reason I started this blog was to force myself to keep a daily journal of some sort, and sometime in the future, I’ll be glad I wrote all this down. Also, low-rent woolgathering about the weather keeps me from thinking about the Grosse Pointe News, my local weekly. Motto: One of America’s many lousy newspapers..

Just to show you where I’m coming from: The state of Michigan narrowly avoided a government shutdown early this week. Unemployment is up, revenues are down, deficits are huge. The state needs more money, but opposing taxes, any taxes, is now an actual religion among Republicans. The no-new-taxes crowd said the deficit could be made up by cutting services, but when pressed to be specific, couldn’t be. The stalemate dragged on for months. At the very last minute, quite literally the last minute, the legislature passed a sales tax on services and an income-tax increase, crisis averted.

The Pointes’ representative voted for the tax increase. His name is Ed Gaffney. Page One headline in this week’s edition: Gaffney defends tax gaff. See, it’s a play on words! And, oh yeah, “gaffe” is misspelled, but what the hell. And the headline is outright editorializing. Never mind that. He had his reasons for voting for the increase, which he explains in the story. He doesn’t say that he’s a lame duck thanks to term limits, and the story doesn’t mention it. An editorial does, but that’s on another page. (It also speaks of his “gaff.” I’m wondering if I missed a photo of my representative running around Lansing brandishing a long pole with a hook on the end.)

The editorial makes a big deal out of noting how fiscally conservative the community is. On the facing page, a man-on-the-street interview asks locals how they thought the crisis should be solved. Of six people interviewed, three were Pointers. Of the three, two answered: With new taxes. Ha.

One more amusing detail: At the end of the angry editorial, there’s a subhead. Late breaking news. (Yes, no hyphen, my copy-editing friends. Argh.) Under it: While going to press we heard that Mr. Gaffney, in budget negotiations, was able to get an additional $800,000 to $1.2 million for the Grosse Pointe and Harper Woods school districts. Oh.

It’s like no one edits this paper at all. It’s like it just assembles itself. The Weekly Miracle, indeed.

Are you ready for some bloggage?

Snort:

LOS ANGELES—A Malawi couple has completed adoption paperwork for Sean Preston Federline, 2, and Jayden James Federline, 1, after their mother, Britney Spears, lost custody of the children Monday.

It was Ms. Spears’ inability to provide car seats that initially brought the plight of her children to the attention of the Malawi couple, who wish to remain anonymous, and who will be referred to here as Mr. and Mrs. M. But it was the widely circulated photograph of Ms. Spears’ vagina that really drew their concern. “In our country, a good mother does not show her business to the press,” Mrs. M said. “It is very bad luck.” After Spears’ “performance” at MTV’s Video Music Awards, the adoptive couple knew they had to do something. “We could not allow innocent children to live under such horrific conditions anymore,” they explained. “The Third World can no longer turn a blind eye to the tragedy affecting so many U.S. celebrity children.”

Chris “Leave Britney Alone” Crocker is coming to Detroit Saturday:

On Saturday night, Crocker is scheduled to appear at Ice in Hamtramck, which bills itself as Detroit’s premier gay nightclub. What will he be doing there, other than being his fabulous self? “It’s a surprise,” said Crocker, who uses a pseudonym. “It’s going to be worth it, for sure.”

If you get on the road now, you can still make it. I’ll change the sheets in the guest room.

Oh, and finally, the Freep takes a look at how Islam is lived on the majority-Muslim football team at Fordson High School in Dearborn, sneeringly referred to as “Dearbornistan” by people who have never been there. Join us as we see how the high-school athlete copes when Ramadan falls during football season:

Last season, Fordson High’s football team, which is about 95% Muslim, started 4-0.

Then Ramadan came.

The team lost its next four games, all held during the holy month. After Ramadan, the team won its last regular game of the year, squeaking into the playoffs.

Did the fasting affect their performance? Maybe.

But this season, new head coach Fouad Zaban isn’t making it an issue.

“It became an excuse, whether legitimate or not,” said Zaban, a former star running back at Fordson. “It became a distraction, something we had to deal with the last four to five years. …But our motto this year is: ‘No excuses.’ We will not bring the issue up, and we haven’t.”

Zaban is a devout Muslim and fasts. But he’s leaving the choice up to his players: There’s water on the sidelines if they want to drink during workouts. During a practice last Thursday, though, the players chose to sweat it out.

Really interesting story.

Have a great weekend.

* Of course I am kidding. We are currently experiencing climate change that is almost certainly man-made and will be catastrophic, and not just to the bottom of our boat when we try to get it out of the harbor this fall, now that the water has dropped precipitously. Sorry for any misunderstanding. That is all.

So I guess a new Mr. Olympia was crowned over the weekend. LA Mary sent me a picture, impishly noting that her governor is a former title-holder. I don’t know this guy’s name; it might be Jay Cutler, the 2007 winner, but the official website hasn’t been updated yet, and I’m too lazy to do a full Google. Anyway, here’s a 2007 contestant:

His head looks Photoshopped, doesn’t it? And yet, if you were going to digitally manipulate any part of that picture, wouldn’t it be the guy’s basket? Have you ever seen anything more pathetic? Oh, well — life is a series of choices, and I’d say he gave up one thing in return for another. Nice lats.

As things do so often these days, it send me into a [swimmy screen effects and harp glissandos] reverie of my salad days. I covered a Mr. Olympia contest once; for many years it was held in Columbus, Ohio. From Wikipedia’s table of results, I guess that would have been 1979. Sounds about right. Although nowadays the contest is held in, where else, Vegas, at the time bodybuilding was still pretty obscure, and having it in Columbus was solely the doing of one man, who worked at Nationwide Insurance, and his good friend, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was as green as a greenhorn could be, working in what was then still called the Columbus Dispatch women’s department. How did the department that handled weddings, engagements, ladies’ club news and “society” end up with Mr. Olympia? Through a time-honored practice at American newspapers — dumping an undesirable assignment on another department.

It was Sports, of course, that did the dumping. Sports departments are famous for jettisoning coverage of any non-traditional sport, of which sports editors are deeply suspicious. They’re the most conservative journalists in any newsroom, believing anything not played with a ball or puck isn’t really a sport at all. They only cover the Olympics because it involves international travel and pictures of women’s beach volleyball victory celebrations. I exaggerate, but not much.

Anyway, they shopped the Mr. Olympia assignment around until they found a sap (my editor), who found her own sap (me). Because this was the women’s department, and because my editor had no imagination at all, the original assignment was to write about defending champion Frank Zane’s wife, who was advocating the then-shocking idea that women should work out with weights, too. I went to their suite at the Sheraton for the interview. Frank popped a bicep for me to squeeze; it was, quite literally, like a rock. But they weren’t the story, not the whole story. The story was that my hometown was hosting an event that brought in dozens of competitors and thousands of spectators from all over the world, truly an international event, and it was doing so with virtually no local media attention, except my little inside-page women’s-department lameness.

After the story ran, I went to the competition. I was young and fairly naive at the time, but at the first posedown, it became clear why Sports didn’t want it and Metro was just embarrassed by it and only a sap like me would even think of wandering into Vet’s Memorial to watch: The body builders stood and flexed, and thousands of muscle queens howled with approval. I mean: Howled. I don’t know what I was expecting — maybe enthusiastic applause with a few woo-hoos thrown in. But this was like being stuck in the bonobo exhibit. If strip clubs tend to be dour, downbeat places, all those men sitting quietly at their tables for one, nursing Cokes and distributing their salaries in $1 and $5 denominations, this was its polar opposite — raw man-lust, foot-stomping, seat-pounding gimme-gimme-some-o’-that carrying on. It turned out that the Village People didn’t have all the gay erotic archetypes covered.

It occurred to me that now would be a good time to interview Frank Zane’s wife, but she was somewhere else.

The next day, the photo editor approached me in a panic; the AP was desperate for a picture, any picture; clients around the world were clamoring and the paper had nothin’. I turned over a roll of film I’d shot with my own camera, and suddenly we had somethin’, my first and only photo contribution to the Associated Press.

This was the very dawning of the fitness boom; “Pumping Iron” was still a cult documentary. Within a few years, “Conan the Barbarian” and “Terminator” would make the future governor of California a star, and the roots of Mr. Olympia in Columbus would become the Arnold Sports Festival — my goodness, but that man has had some work done, and not on his biceps, no? — and it gets a great deal of respectful media coverage.

I bet not by the Sports department, though.

Before we leave bodybuilding entirely, however, here is a terrifying picture. What’s in his wallet?

Okily-dokily, bloggage:

Ever since Lynn Johnston started letting daily life — the funny and unfunny — affect her comic strip, “For Better or For Worse,” everyone is getting in the game. If Johnston was an original, Tom Batiuk and “Funky Winkerbean” is an imitator. He tries pretty hard, though, and I was willing to forgive him as long as he didn’t get too…unfunny.

That lasted until this morning, when Lisa, dying of breast cancer, apparently went blind. Jeez, what’s next? Coughing up blood? Her death is timed to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but this is too much.

The MGM Grand invested $800 million in their new Motown casino, opening today. For some reason, no one likes my slogan: “What happens in Detroit, stays in Detroit.” I think it brings a note of menace the wussy Vegas original doesn’t have, but what do I know?

Have a great day. I’ll be workin’.

I was right about Flower. And I’m glad I was the only one in the house when the episode aired, not because I wept with despair (I didn’t), but because when we all watched it together the following day, Alan was disrespectful. He hates sentimentalizing wild animals, even though, to my mind, “Meerkat Manor” hits more notes in tune than out. And so, when a litter of three pups from the Zappa clan was introduced, named Axl, Slash and Rose, he wanted to know why they they weren’t named Axl, Slash and Duff.

“Because obviously they had a female pup and they needed a female name,” I said. “Now shut up.”

But no. Last year he made the paper’s TV writer say nooooo and hold her hands over her ears when he told her the season finale would include heartbreaking footage of Flower being run over by the research team’s Land Rover. That’s not how it went — Flower was bitten by a cobra while bravely trying to defend her litter — but Alan prefers his version, and openly speculated that’s what really happened, and the whole snake story was trumped up to cover the Land Rover’s tracks, so to speak.

Then we saw a heartbreaking final shot of Flower dying, her head swollen like a rotten melon. “She could probably breathe easier without that radio collar,” he said. I swear.

If I were a meerkat dominant female, I don’t think he’d be allowed to pick my fleas for a while.

However, I’m not a meerkat dominant female, I’m a suburban mother who must take a shower and be prepared to take her offspring to the orthodontist, where I will buy more rubber bands to sell on the street sit reading in the waiting room for the next hour or so. More in a bit.

As we have recently entered the Journey of Orthodontia, Alan signed up for a Healthcare Spending Account this year. I know, I know, we should have done it years ago, but we’re stupid. That big caveat they tell you at the informational meeting — all funds not spent by December 31 are forfeit — always put us off the idea, although in our defense that was before we knew the money could be spent on bourbon, as long as you filed a signed letter saying your doctor told you to relax more.

Once we took the plunge, it was a revelation. They sent us a debit card that we could use to tap the funds at will — pure genius — and I started toting it to the orthodontist’s office, where every month I use it to make a payment on our daughter’s steadily improving smile.

Then a letter arrived: Please document the following purchases, blah blah blah, or risk the deactivation of your card. Apparently the debit-card tapping from an orthodontist’s office sent up the red flags. I understand. I might have been trying to launder that $100 per month through a Roseville ortho’s office by buying little rubber bands, which I then might sell on the street and spend the cash on crack or something. You can’t be too careful.

At our next appointment, I trudged back to the ortho and asked the receptionist for a printout of all my payments so far, so I could make copies, highlight the disputed payments and fax everything back to HQ, so that I could go on spending my own money. She was familiar with my plight.

“This isn’t really bad, as these things go,” she said, indicating it happens quite often. “A lot of plans make it much harder. They’re hoping you just give up, so they can keep the money.”

Every so often, in my health-care news farming, I come across an editorial in which some conservative airily dismisses all concerns about our current system by saying, well, this is what happens when consumers are divorced from the true cost of things, by having everything paid by their insurance. The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed last year in which the writer praised those savvy Amish, who don’t have insurance and don’t carry debt, and hence go doctor to doctor haggling for the best price on having a rotten tooth pulled or some other elective procedure. What to do when the patient has crushing chest pain is conveniently not explained, nor is the Amish fondness for Mexican border-town doctors, herbalists and other low-cost options that may or may not quack like a duck. The last grafs of these pieces are generally spent genuflecting in the direction of “the market” and its holy healing power.

I wonder what the line item for “abandoned funds” is for this particular company. I wonder what accountant crunched that number. I wonder who came up with the idea. I wonder how they sold it in the meeting.

OK, Grumpypants rant over. It’s a gorgeous day.

Shall we wrangle some bloggage? Get along, little bloggies:

I really don’t want to get into the habit of deconstructing op-ed columnists at my alma mater; Tim Goeglein is enough for me. But I read this piece with a sense of deepening wonder, trying to guess how long it would take the writer to get to the point. I imported it into Word so I could nail it precisely: 582 words. Talk about Grumpypants.

A nice NYT op-ed on what happens to Detroit factories when they close down. Short answer: They’re exported. The longer answer is much more interesting:

In the Budd plant, “press” means stamping presses, and many of them still stand, a couple of stories high, in numbered lines of half a dozen presses each. A Spanish auto supplier, Gestamp, has bought 16 Line for one of its Mexican plants. A couple of Mexican engineers from Gestamp, along with German engineers from Müller Weingarten, the press maker that Gestamp contracted to oversee the 16 Line’s installation in Mexico, have been observing the disassembly. “Their role is to stand there, in awe, and hope they can put it back together when they get it to Mexico,” said Duane Krukowski, General Rigging’s electrical foreman.

For moms only, every word that comes out of our mouths in 24 hours, distilled to two minutes and set to the William Tell Overture. A YouTube link, of course. Funny. Wholesome funny.

There’s nothing a staff writer likes more than an in-joke. In newspapers, we make elaborate fake front pages when people leave or retire. For TV shows, scenes that won’t be shot, but should. For fans of “The Wire,” with a new catch phrase (“meta motherfuckers”), thanks to Ashley.

I’ve come to believe that any movie with Chris Cooper in it won’t let me down, but man, when the NYT calls “The Kingdom” “‘Syriana’ for dummies,” dude, that is cold.

Anyway, if I’m movie-bound at all this weekend, it’s to see “Eastern Promises.”

Lance Mannion takes a look at “On the Road,” and does a better job of it than most people paid to do so.

And that is all. Have a swell weekend.

Just one question: When Rudy Giuliani took that call from his wife, why didn’t the audience stand up and throw pens at him? What a strange, screw-you moment. For once more or less agree* with the WSJ editorial page.

Anyone like to imagine what that editorial would have read if it had been, oh, John Edwards taking the call? Ball-busting bitch henpecks husband, no doubt. It’s all in how you spin things.

Surly, surly, surly. I can tell it’s Wednesday. Sleep deprivation is starting to catch up, but it’ll be several days before relief beckons from my fluffy pillows. Ah, well. That’s life in these hardscrabble times. A break for blogging, and then we’re back in the saddle.

One of the things I like about Safari, Mac’s Own Browser, is the way it lets you organize bookmarks. I have several folders right on the menu bar: NN.C, News, Blogs, Money, Detroit, Shopping, RSS and Reference. They’re self-explanatory, right? Any questions? I have one rule — no drop-down menu can drop down longer than the depth of the screen, so I cull and refresh regularly. That’s mainly a problem with the News and Blogs folders, but the surprise (for me, anyway) li’l bookmark folder that could is turning out to be Reference. It’ll soon have to be culled, it’s growing so fast. This is where I keep all the handy sites for looking stuff up; as a journalist, of course facts are very important to me. (Yes: Kidding.) But sometimes I just page through some of these sites to turn up Fun Facts to Know and Tell.

Top four on the list: Google maps, Wikipedia, WHOIS lookup, Bartleby. That last one’s toast, most likely; nothing beats the Google in looking up famous quotations, although Bartleby has a bit more authority, I guess. Anyway, I bookmarked it to have Bartlett’s close by, and it sucks, or else it’s incomplete. I just asked Bartlett’s to find me the original source of the phrase “better angels of our nature,” figuring I’d give it a slow pitch right over the middle. Citation not found. Click “all sources” and Bartleby finds it no prob, but by then I could have Googled it and written three more paragraphs. I’ll keep it around, but it’s on probation.

Screenplays — I use this one a lot when I can’t remember a line of dialogue. It only works if the movie’s in the database, however, and lately IMDb’s “quotes” section in individual movies is kicking butt. But let’s give it a try: Ooh, what’s that line John Goodman yells over and over as he’s running down the blazing hotel corridor in “Barton Fink?” I can’t quite recall…I’ll show you…something. Ahh, here it is:

Charlie: Look upon me! I’ll show you the life of the mind!

And as a bonus, here’s the rat-a-tat-tat between the two police detectives investigating a disappearance:

Mastrionotti: Started in Kansas City. Couple of housewives.
Deutsch: Couple days ago we see the same M.O. out in Los Feliz.
Mastrionotti: Doctor. Ear, nose and throat man.
Deutsch: All of which he’s now missin’.
Mastrionotti: Well, some of his throat was there.
Deutsch: Physician, heal thyself.
Mastrionotti: Good luck with no fuckin’ head.
Deutsch: Anyway.

Psst: Don’t even go to “The Big Lebowski” quote page. You’ll be there All. Day.

I warned you.

OK. One little taste:

The Dude: Jesus, man, could you change the channel?
Cab Driver: Fuck you man. If you don’t like my fuckin’ music get your own fuckin’ cab!
The Dude: I had a rough…
Cab Driver: I pull over and kick your ass out!
The Dude: Come on, man. I had a rough night and I hate the fuckin’ Eagles, man!

Ha ha. Moving on, Worldometeres, world statistics updated in real time. I hope you’re not among the 69,792 who will die today.

Hard-to-find 800 numbers, none of which I’ve ever called. How to Beautify a Face in Photoshop. Turns out it ONLY works on photos, damn it all. (Bossy has another P’shop tutorial, which features a picture of her Great Dane. LA Mary, go check it out.

Who is Sick? for the medical writer, or just the geek hypochondriac, in all of us.

Tired of taking calls from an editor? Post a word meter on your site and tell them to talk to the hand.

I did NOT write that/Yes you DID and the Internet Wayback Machine might be able to prove it.

If I ever get a ticket for parking in the old handicapped spots at my local drugstore, which are no longer legal handicapped spots but still have blue lines on them, the ADA Accessibility Guidelines will get it thrown out of court. (And yes, there are other, legal spots, and I never park there. Although sometimes I will take the “expectant mother” space at Kroger, if it’s raining and I’m in a bad mood. Because it’s stupid, that’s why. And I’m hoping, if I’m ever challenged, that I will have the presence of mind to say, “Isn’t it wonderful? I’m expecting twins!”)

The Electric Eclectic, because sometimes you’re just bored.

What’s a reference site you can’t live without? Leave it in the comments. Me, I’m back to work.

* edited from “total agreement,” which was sloppy and inaccurate, earlier.

Nothing like a little smack in the face to start your Monday off right. From a story in my alma mater, the Columbus Dispatch:

Patrick Sims was driving and typing a text message when he fatally struck a bicyclist in Colorado. Ashley Miller was doing the same when she killed a driver in Arizona. And New Yorker Bailey Goodman might have been reading or typing when she slammed into a tractor-trailer, killing herself and four passengers.

Even if you discount the final example — dead men tell no tales — that’s some sobering stuff there. People sometimes ask me why I still drive a stick shift, and I tell them, “Because you have to pay attention.” Also, it occupies your texting hand.

Ah, what a weekend. Lessons learned: Don’t eat braised lamb shanks at 10 p.m., followed by a big cup of strong coffee, if you want to sleep well that night. Also, avoid scallops the next night, unless you want to spend early Sunday morning throwing up. In between was some fine sailing with John C and his wife Mary, on their share-boat Voyageur, which is docked at Windmill Point, Grosse Pointe Park’s public marina. Windmill Point is at the very bottom of Lake St. Claire, where it funnels into the Detroit River. The current is stronger, and the freighters come a lot closer:

But you get a little skyline with your sunsets, imperfectly captured here:

Everybody looks at the sunset, but when you’re on the water, it’s always rewarding to look to the east, too, to see the dark rising out of the lake:

I don’t know if I got bad scallops or just too much fine food in too short a time. My life is so PB&J these days, it’s a shock to the system to see a white tablecloth. Maybe that’s what did it. In any case, it made for a wasted Sunday; nothing like dehydration to take it out of a gal.

So let’s skip to the bloggage:

The pros but mostly cons of mercenaries: “If I’ve got one ambition left here,” (the American officer serving in Iraq) said, “it’s to see one of those showboats fall out.” Out of the helicopter, that is:

In a style now familiar to many living beneath Baghdad’s skies, a Blackwater sharpshooter in khaki pants, with matching T-shirt and flak jacket, sat sideways on the right side of each chopper, leaning well outside the craft. With their automatic weapons gripped for battle, their feet planted on the helicopter’s metal skids, and only a slim strap securing them to the craft, the men looked as if they were self-consciously re-creating the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme.

Blackwater defends its low-flying, ready-to-shoot posture as a powerful deterrent to attacks on American officials being moved through the capital’s streets. But that posture has become, to the company’s critics, a hallmark of its muscle-bound showiness.

…Contractors say the high profile of their armored convoys, coupled with the covert nature of the insurgents, places a premium on high mobility and rapid response — driving at high speed and in a bullying manner through city traffic and driving on the wrong side of boulevards and expressways, always ready to resort instantly, at the first hint of threat, to heavy firepower.

It is a formula fraught with potential for error. To be overtaken on Baghdad’s airport road by a private security convoy driving at 120 miles an hour, with contractors leaning out of windows or part-opened doors with leveled weapons, waving their fists in a frantic pantomime, is a heart-stopping experience even for other Westerners in armored cars with guards of their own. For ordinary Iraqis, with no weapons and no armoring, it can be pure terror.

No shit. Never mind when they open fire on a carload of civilians.

I guess the UAW didn’t learn from the Detroit newspaper strike: It’s unwise to strike an industry already on the ropes. But hey, they’ll give it a try. Maybe. This all comes with the news the state legislature has one week to get the lead out and put together a budget agreement that will keep state government running into the next fiscal year. “Wouldn’t it be great to have a UAW strike and a government shutdown at the same time?” Alan wondered this morning, a surly note in his voice. Sure. Our house has already lost 18 percent of its value since we’ve lived here; soon it’ll be like Mississippi, only with more snow.

T-minus 12 minutes to strike deadline? Better hit publish and hope for the best.

I was raised a Catholic, one of a long line of Catholics, which is to say, we were not all that Catholic.

We went to church on Sundays and holy days of obligation. We did the sacraments — baptism, first communion, confirmation, confession. My older brother and sister went to Catholic school; but when we moved, the summer before my first-grade year, to a house with an excellent public grade school at one end of the block and a junior high at the other, my parents lost their commitment to Catholic education. (My siblings were released from uniform bondage at the same time.) When we misplaced something, my mother told us to say a prayer to St. Anthony. We lit candles in front of saints’ statues. My dad ran the church softball team.

What we didn’t do: Pray the rosary at home, put a holy water font by the door, display religious art in the house (although there were crucifixes in the bedrooms). When I had a headache, my mother didn’t say, “Offer it up.” My prayer life was pretty childish and never really progressed — I prayed to pass fourth grade and later, for world peace, with a 50 percent success rate. When my later teen years came along, I found it easy to skip church and then stop going altogether, although my mother attended Mass until she couldn’t drive herself anymore.

In our practice, I’d estimate we’re right in the middle of the Catholic continuum, at least for our time. We weren’t holly-lily scofflaws, but it’s fair to say we chose what we wanted in the cafeteria line and didn’t consider ourselves bad Catholics as a result. I was taught the Communion host becomes the actual body and blood of Christ in CCD class, but even as a second-grader, I understood it as a metaphor. I suppose this, by church teaching, makes me a Protestant, but all I have to say is: Please.

One reason I’m so fascinated with Amy’s blog commenters is, they’re the kind of Catholic I never knew growing up. They don’t practice birth control, they march for life, they think Nino Scalia is a great man and are very big on Opus Dei. I’m sure these folks were in my church — there were a few families with 10, 12, 13 kids — but they didn’t stand around afterward talking about it. Of course, there were no blogs then.

So the other day I drop by Rod Dreher’s blog, who converted to Catholicism and then left it for Eastern Orthodoxy, and has written approximately 8 million anguished words about it — he’s quite the hand-wringer. He’s writing about a criminally corrupt priest who died recently:

Samuel Greene was a con man. He was a TV pitchman who got religion and founded the Christ of the Hills monastery in rural central Texas. At some point, he affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), which cut him loose after the child abuse scandal happened in the late 1990s. But his trailer-park monastery was quite the spiritual hotspot for a while. When it became known in the early 1990s that there was a miraculous weeping icon of the Virgin Mary there, the monastery began to attract lots of pilgrims — many of them Catholics. I was one of those pilgrims. When I’d go visit a Catholic friend in Austin, we’d drive out to the monastery, and I’d wait in line with the faithful — most of them poor Hispanic Catholics, as I recall — to venerate the miraculous icon. The monks would hand out cotton balls with her sweet-smelling tears on them. The substance was said to be myrrh. Years later, I found one of the cotton balls — this was before the fraud was exposed — and noticed that it smelled acrid and chemical-like. But I didn’t want to accept that it was a fraud.

Needless to say, miraculous weeping icons were not part of my religious experience. I can’t imagine even my faithful mother falling for such bullshit. That even a convert like Dreher could stand in line to “venerate” such a thing seems simply ludicrous to me, makes me want to look at a point on the horizon until someone changes the subject to baseball or the stock market. I was never that kind of Catholic.

Gene Weingarten is the WashPost humor columnist, but every so often he writes a long piece for the paper’s Sunday magazine, frequently of a serious nature. Here’s one that’s nine years old, but I read only recently: Tears for Audrey, about Audrey Santo, a Massachusetts girl who fell into a backyard swimming pool as a toddler, was gravely brain-damaged, and lived the rest of her life without regaining consciousness. She died only recently, and in her short lifetime, became a fixture of religious veneration. People believed she was a “victim soul,” a person chosen by God to suffer for others. People believed she had the power to cure, to heal, and wrote letters asking for her help. In her lifetime, she was displayed to visitors, although — allow me to say “blessedly” — never for profit. Her home was filled with religious statuary, and much of it also wept miraculously. Oil.

Weingarten’s story is very long, but I urge you to read it, if this topic interests you. It’s very deft, very sensitive, and very telling. There’s not a hint of sneering or snarkiness at this bizarre subniche of Catholicism, but as you read it, one thing becomes entirely clear: Her mother was making the “miracles” happen:

In the back yard, the Rev. Mike McNamara is celebrating Mass. Linda Santo takes a consecrated wafer on a brass plate and disappears into the house with it. Every day she gives Communion to Audrey. (Audrey has a feeding tube; the wafer is the only solid food she receives by mouth.)

A few minutes later, Linda returns. There is a peculiar look on her face. She is holding the empty Communion plate gingerly, and replaces it on the altar.

Liquid sloshes out and onto the tablecloth.

“Sorreee,” she whispers to the priest.

After the ceremony, four priests crowd around the Communion plate. It is filled halfway with opalescent yellow oil, maybe three or four tablespoons of it, and on top of that is a large, floating bead of clear liquid. It smells of pure roses, eerily strong. It wafts up and out into the sweltering summer air.

Linda Santo meekly explains that the plate quickly welled up with this substance as she walked alone from Audrey’s bed to the back porch, a trip of some 30 feet.

The priests nod. It is a miracle, everyone agrees.

I mean, come on: Isn’t it obvious? Well, maybe that case. The story is several thousand words long, and lots of people are quoted saying these things are miracles, that this statue “hemorrhaged” oil when Linda Santo wasn’t around, that this happened, that that happened, and sorry, but whatever it takes to believe such things are possible without human intervention, I don’t have it. I’m doubting Thomasina, sorry, Jesus. (For what it’s worth, I also don’t believe in non-religious spiritualism — ghosts, spirits, auras. I figure if I can’t believe a saint can help me find my car keys, I also can’t believe the spirit of my dead grandmother guides my hand when I’m cooking dinner. I also acknowledge I don’t know everything, and am always prepared to be surprised, one of these days.)

Weingarten’s story does find a miracle, by the way. You have to read all the way to the end; it’s very artful. A few weeks back, in his weekly chat, he said he thought the way he ended the story was a mistake, but I think he just needs smarter readers.

I never know what to say when people speak of “miracles” like this, except to go into grad-student mode, and reflect that this is a very old church, that literacy arrived in the congregation fairly recently in the grand scheme of things, and that one way simple people keep their faith alive is by believing in Marian apparitions and the healing power of Lourdes water and mysterious weeping icons. When I’m feeling mean, I think Catholicism married Voodoo and had a baby daughter they called Santeria.

But ultimately I shrug. What can you do? Given a choice between Catholicism, any kind of Catholicism, and, oh, Tim Goeglein’s Bartlett’s Familiar Lutheranism, I know what I’d choose. (The one where I already know the words.)

OK, so as we skip to the bloggage, let’s make sure we preserve the reverent tone, OK?

Britney got some glasses, which explains why she was always forgetting her pants — she couldn’t see!

Headline o’ the day: Bill would ban texting while driving in Michigan. What is happening to freedom in this country? Next they’ll be making it illegal to stick your tongue into electrical sockets.

From my nighttime career farming health-care news, I have learned one thing: No matter how bad I feel, it could always be worse. Ebola is the one that features bleeding from the eyeballs, right? How do doctors distinguish it from PMS?

Sometimes you read a blog for the post, sometimes for the comments. Like here.

Time to go to work. If God doesn’t strike me dead!

Big big news in Michigan today: The pets are having an uprising.

I don’t mean to be flip. Three people are dead in two separate dog-maulings. I mentioned one yesterday — a four-month-old baby killed by a Rottweiler. Worse was one that followed, in which two adults were killed by the same pack of roaming curs in an adjacent rural county rapidly going exurban.

Here’s the story; note the photo. I wonder what that sign means, the “if you don’t like it, go away” part. Clashes between long-established rural concerns and newly arrived suburbanites have been going on for years, but it usually involves issues like hog-farm smells or slow-moving combines on rural section roads. Even country people would consider the maintenance of a free-roaming pack of killer dogs to be a bit un-neighborly, but you never know. There’s a strong streak of antisocial libertarianism that runs through rural Michigan, of the fuck-you-it’s-a-free-country variety. Remember, Tim McVeigh spent a spell here, along with his close pal, Thumb native Terry Nichols.

That said, I know nothing gets a posse of farmers to take their rifles from the wall faster than a wild dog pack. Freedom’s one thing, but livestock-killin’s taking money out of pockets. I guess the question to raise is whether two people constitute livestock.

Man, I’m under-caffeinated today. The thing about sleep deprivation is, it builds up. I once heard Bob Edwards interview an expert in these things, who studied people who had jobs that put them out of sync with normal circadian rhythms. It was really more of a conversation, as Edwards was one of those people whose alarm is set for 1 a.m. By Thursday, he said, he was snapping at people for the crime of having squeaky shoes. Dr. Frank once observed that he’d gotten three voice mails overnight from a cardiologist friend doing the all-night on-call shift, an action-packed one in artery-clogged Indiana. The 1 a.m. call was merely terse and grouchy, the 3 a.m. message clouded with increasing shittiness, and by 5 a.m. the voice was screechy and enraged — and these two were fast friends.

I get bitchy, too, but more often I just get tired. If I were that cardiologist, I’d be trying to insert an angio balloon into the patient’s appendix.

So let’s call this a draw and skip right to the bloggage. New chick-blog for bookmarking: I Am Bossy, which I only discovered this week, after Weingarten linked to her ever-so-helpful tampon test (note: safe for fainthearted males; all fluids are a color other than red). Just earlier that day I had been admiring the Simply Vera by Vera Wang ad insert in my morning newspaper, thinking maybe I’d mosey over to Kohl’s and see if anything caught my eye, and then Bossy just…destroyed it. In a highly amusing fashion. I wonder how I’d look in that Liberty Bell cozy.

Fidel Castro writes a newspaper column, and fellow columnist Eric Zorn has a few questions. No. 4: Is he able to take one of life’s minor indignities or insults — a crooked crease the dry cleaner left in the pants of his camouflage suit, say — and spin it into a 700-word tirade on the overall decline of society? I can!

Finally, if you missed it in the comments of the previous post, our own Brian Stouder vexes the help in Logansport, Ind., via that community’s splendidly named Pharos-Tribune.

I’m awake now. Just in time for lunch.

Before I started this blog, I thought I was the only Nancy Nall in the known universe. It’s such an oddball name, after all — who other than my parents would choose it for an innocent girl baby? It turns out that I’m not, of course; since the Google came around I have virtually “met” at least a dozen relatives (all Nalls in the U.S. go back to a single ancestor, so we’re all at least distantly related), including a couple of Nancys. But this e-mail may be the best ever:

are you by any chance THE talented, nancy nall who starred on the Riley High School stage in Firefly, among many other memorable performances?  if so, though you may not remember, I played opposite you in that one. 

 No. But if I were, I would certainly remember my co-star.