Eric Zorn’s RSS reader must be the best one in the world, because it somehow snagged the Lost Post in the 120 seconds or so that it existed. So here it is, and we love us some Eric:

Among the pleasures of the internet age, from sub-sub-sub-niche pornography (brunettes in pure-white Keds, anyone?) to the London dailies a click away, I have a new nominee for Top 25 status: The online package tracker.

I do a certain amount of catalog ordering, and have fallen in love with the small joy of watching my box, on this trip holding New Balance running shoes and two sports bras — please, draw no conclusions about my fitness plans — make its way to me. Origin scan, March 9: Commerce City, Colo., after which it was scanned for departure, arrival and departure again, all at the same facility. (I’m assuming it’s a hub.) On to Omaha, then Davenport, Iowa — how are you enjoying the humidity of the east, shoes and bras? much different from Colorado, no? — then Hodgkins, Ill., wherever that is. From Hodgkins to Livonia, Mich., where it stayed only a few hours. Its final departure scan took it to Detroit. In at 6:45 a.m., out at 7:40, delivered at 1:49 p.m., to the back door.

The dog didn’t bark. He’s likely to sleep through these things, these days.

Why can’t they put this technology on the cable guy? “We’ll be there sometime between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. Can’t be more specific than that, sorry.”

(Of course, one day they will. And I’ll complain that it’s wrong to micromanage human beings to this extent, and predict that the cable guy with a bar code on his forehead is the next disgruntled postal worker, and who will be able to blame them? People are not packages. Consistency, thy name is…not mine.)

But until then, it’s nice to dream.

I like my shoes and bras, by the way. They’re all closeouts, for obvious reasons which I won’t get into, except to say: Bra designers, don’t put seams right down the middle of the boob, OK? Most women prefer a nice smooth line there. But it’ll do for something to sweat in this summer.

One deadline passes, another approaches — they’re like telephone poles on the highway. In the meantime, though, I have to see my doctor this morning, to find out why my knee hurts. No, I know why (slipped on the ice); I need to know why so long. Also, I’m hoping to score some powerful narcotics. I wonder if that would work, not pussyfooting around with the so-called drug-seeking behavior, but just asking outright: “How about a little Vicodin/Oxycontin mixed grill, doc?” It worked with my old doctor, who appreciated directness, as well as the fact I never asked for anything stronger than Tylenol 3. (On a scale of 1-10, there’s a reason that one has a 3 in its name.) A few weeks back, the Wall Street Journal ran a story on off-label prescribing. The opening anecdote was about a woman who was licking those narco-lollipops for relief of pregnancy-related migraines*. She was up to five (!!!!) a day by the time labor started, and surprise surprise, her baby’s first words were, “(Sniff.) How much for an eightball, doc? Can I get it on credit? I seem to have left my wallet in my other diaper.”

Of course, if he says I have arthritis I’ll just ask for a bullet. To shoot myself.

In the meantime, festive bloggage:

I’m not the biggest fan of the Freep’s pop-music critic, but I thought he did a pretty good piece on Why Cobo Matters, even if that wasn’t the headline (but should have been).

Jacob Weisberg went to the American Enterprise Institute’s gala the other night, and wrote a nice piece for Slate. They should change their name to Home of the Unrepentant Neocon:

In his address, the 90-year-old (Bernard) Lewis did not revisit his argument that regime change in Iraq would provide the jolt needed to modernize the Middle East. Instead, he spoke at length about the millennial struggle between Christianity and Islam. Lewis argues that Muslims have adopted migration, along with terror, as the latest strategy in their “cosmic struggle for world domination.” This is a familiar framework from the original author of the phrase “the clash of civilizations”—made more famous by Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington. What did surprise me was Lewis’ denunciation of Pope John Paul II’s 2000 apology for the Crusades as political correctness run amok. This drew applause. Lewis’ view is that the Muslims started it by invading Europe in the eighth century. The Crusades were merely a failed imitation of Muslim jihad in an endless see-saw of conquest and re-conquest.

Were you to start counting the ironies here, where would you stop? Here was a Jewish scholar criticizing the pope for apologizing to Muslims for a holy war against Muslims, which was also a massacre of the Jews. Here were the theorists of the invasion of Iraq, many of them also Jewish, applauding the notion that the Crusades were not so terrible and embracing a time horizon that makes it impossible to judge them wrong. And here was the clubhouse of the neocons throwing itself a lavish ‘do, when the biggest question in American politics is how to escape the hole they’ve dug. Reality seemed to have taken up residence elsewhere for the evening.

Mark Steyn can turn a clever phrase, but reading this piece o’ crap (only the first two grafs available online, sorry) last night made me want to cancel my subscription to The Atlantic. Please, editors of the world, don’t let idealogues write arts criticism, OK? Styled as a tribute to the talent-free Denny Doherty (“the other Papa”), it comes off as one long snark about the excesses of the ’60s, which is a record played so often by this crowd you can’t even hear the music anymore. Not that they ever heard the music in the first place. Michelle Phillips, he says, is “seriously hot, in a way few rock chicks are in the cold light of day when the drugs have worn off.” Oh, please. How would you know? There’s more snarkage about Cass Elliot, who could only get laid because she had drugs, and pokes at John Phillips’ “vacuous” lyrics, proving Steyn may be the only person alive who could listen to the Mamas and the Papas and think their appeal was about the lyrics.

Put it this way: Reading this, I was reminded of the time Alexander Cockburn, hard-core leftist, described the scene in “The Untouchables,” where Elliot Ness throws Frank Nitti off the roof after the latter taunted Ness about how his recently departed colleague (Sean Connery, sigh), “squealed like a stuck Irish pig” before he died. This person, Nitti, Cockburn describes as “an unarmed murder suspect.” So there.

Off to tend the knee.

Late-breaking update: Knee diagnosis unclear, but he suspects arthritis. (Muffled gunshot. Thump.)

* I originally wrote “nausea.” My memory was faulty.

One of my Fort Wayne neighbors was a police officer, and worked overnight. I’m a part-time editor for a company whose senior staff works overnight, too. I have an easy shift; I knock off at 1 a.m., while they’re up until dawn and beyond crafting custom newspapers for corporate America to read on their BlackBerries on the pre-dawn treadmill. The woman who relieves me should be leaving work (i.e., turning off her computer) right about now, in fact.

I really hope there’s not a wood chipper outside her house at the moment, as there is at mine.

The world just isn’t set up for night-shift workers. After a year of this, I think I’ve finally settled upon the right mixture of coffee and naps that allows me to function on five hours of sleep a night (at best). Basically, it’s this: I write in the morning, I edit at night. Sometime after lunch, when the afternoon sleepies strike, I don’t fight them. I turn off the phone and go to bed. If I’m fortunate and there are no wood chippers about, I get one hour of decent sleep, which I pad out with some recreational reading in a prone position. I’m up and about by 3, feeling like aces.

I’m always looking for tips on how to make this work better. When Detroit hosted the Super Bowl, there were lots of stories in the media about Roger Penske, who was the main mover/shaker behind the event. Penske works pretty much all the time, and has the ability to turn himself on and off at will; he’ll say, “OK, time for a 20-minute power nap,” tilt his head to the side and drift off in seconds, then wake up precisely 20 minutes later. This is why he’s a billionaire and I’m not. Also, he probably doesn’t get bothered by wood chippers.

The business press is full of stories of high-functioning insomniacs and others who claim to be totally refreshed by absurdly little sleep. This is always reported in an admiring tone — such superhumans! — and for the life of me, I don’t understand why. Martha Stewart gets by on four or five hours, or so she says. Madonna, ditto. Half the corner offices, it seems, are occupied by people whose e-mail is time-stamped 3:20 a.m. Meanwhile, all the people I work with at my night job are on my buddy list (we communicate almost entirely by e-chat), and one has this as her Away message: “I’d BETTER be sleeping now.”

I used to be a night owl, and transitioned through my 30s into lark-hood. My natural body rhythms — banished now — would send me to bed between 10 and 11 and get me up around 6, and screw all these naps and cappuccinos. But who can live that way? Not this home-office worker. The price for all our flexibility, for being able to run errands during the day and start stews braising at 2 p.m. and beating the rush at the dry cleaner and grocery store, is paid 12 hours earlier, when I shut the laptop, stretch, turn out the lights, check the locks and look up and down the street at all the dark windows. I think: Lucky bastards. And then I join them.

The wood chipper has moved to the next block. Time to get some work done. For now, the bloggage:

“American Idol” is shaping up to be more talent-free that usual — can we fast-forward to the inevitable showdown between LaKisha and Melinda now? — but entertaining in many other ways. The sadism of the baby-boom producers continues to amuse, as we watch these young’uns forget the words to “Love Hangover,” a song I’d happily pay money to have excised from my brain. And young Sanjaya, cocking his head like a puppy when Simon uses a fancy-schmancy 10th-grade word like “wail.” (Sanjaya thought he was talking about the marine mammals.) This sort of entertaining brinksmanship is why we tune in. The assignment seems so simple — find a song you can sing from the back pages of Diana Ross, a woman who wasn’t much of a singer in the first place — and yet, hardly anyone can find one. I was astonished at how many of the old Motown finger-poppers were spurned in favor of Diana’s disco catalog, or the apres-disco craptastic stuff. (“I’ve chosen a song from ‘The Land Before Time,’ Ryan.”) Melinda should have sung “Touch Me in the Morning” if she wanted something downtempo and emotional. Why didn’t anyone tackle “Reflections”? Leave it to LaKisha to play the “Lady Sings the Blues” card and sidestep the whole oeuvre by snagging a Billie Holiday song. That was smart. If you can sing better than the supposed master-class teacher, don’t sing one of her songs.

Ken Levine is funnier than I am, however: Could they pad the show any more? Christ! It was so long Paula’s drugs were wearing off.

Today is Pi Day. Happy 3.14, etc. to presumed infinity, to you.

Greetings from west Michigan. Here’s how you know where you are:

1) This is what passes for workplace benefits in the less-unionized part of the state, and
2) the snow stick.

Ha, that first one’s a joke. I just thought the sign was funny, as the business was deep in one of those light-industrial parks — low-slung buildings with indeterminate names (“FlexCo”) arrayed along a winding road, thundering with truck traffic, dotted with storm-water retention ponds and about as pastoral as a parking lot. Who would want to fish there, you wonder? I’d say the occasional employee looking to spin out his lunch hour with a little fly-casting practice would be a rarity, but evidently they get enough interlopers that they needed to put up a sign.

The snow stick — that little marker on the edge of the driveway — is there to remind plow operators where the curb is. In the world of Lake Effect, you need those sticks.

That’s where I was Monday, working on an assignment, which I have to spend most of Tuesday writing. I’d like to tell you more about it, but it’s a magazine piece, which means standard non-disclosure applies until publication, which is weeks away. Alas.

But hey, it was nice to get out of the house, even for a there-and-back across the Mitten. It was strange to see signs in yards reading, WE SUPPORT PRESIDENT BUSH AND OUR TROOPS IN EVERYTHING THEY DO. (Yes, a real sign. Elsewhere in the same yard: WE LOVE AND SUPPORT AMERICA. Glad to get that cleared up.) Western Michigan is pretty red, but the traffic’s thinner over there, so they’re frequently outvoted by the blue southeast. Movie writer/director Paul Schrader’s from Grand Rapids. I once attended a columnists’ convention — yes, they have them — with a guy who wrote for the paper there. He claimed Schrader put a small, subtle f-you to Grand Rapids in every movie he wrote or directed. I’ve seen most of them, and never noticed a single one, except maybe for the hometown in “Hardcore.” Even Iris, the lost soul girl prostitute in “Taxi Driver,” hails from somewhere in Pennsylvania.

But I can see why he — Schrader — might be tempted. I’m sure he fled as soon as he could.

OK. Because I was out in the actual world yesterday, I didn’t get out in the ‘net world, so I have no tasty bloggage, and my overwhelming impression of what went on yesterday is filtered through the radio — both the NPR affiliates I was able to find, and the rokkin-the-lakeshore stations I turned to when I tired of the plight of indigenous Guatemalans. And so, to bookend this entry with another list of two, here’s all I know today:

1) Alberto Gonzalez deserves to be smeared with peanut butter and set upon by pit bulls; and
2) Bob Seger’s wrapping up his tour with two dates at Cobo, and they’ll be RECORDING. Is “Live Bullet 2” in our future?

We can only hope. Discuss anything and everything in the comments.

OK, so it doesn’t look springlike, but trust me — this is spring in Michigan. And this ice is unusual; the Free Press says so. People were driving down Lake Shore Road all weekend, snapping pictures of the pileup of floes. Some of the lakefront mansions are losing their seawalls. (Not that this constitutes a tragedy; I’m just reporting.)

This is not the most dramatic of the pileups, but it is my favorite picture.

Mmm, a nice weekend. We had a small dinner party Saturday night. I learned two things: If you start with a soup course, the rest of your timing better be great. (Mine was acceptable.) Also, nothing gets things off on the right foot better than a bottle of champagne. Forget serving it with dessert, by which point your guests will already be half-sloshed on the red and the white and the cocktails. Just pop open that sucker and get the little bubbles tickling noses early.

Today is the week’s busiest, and the rest of the week is front-loaded with deadlines. So in lieu of the usual, accept another picture. Oooh, look, a pretty flower:

Back later today or tomorrow.

I’ve started taking a writing workshop, down at Wayne State. It isn’t precisely what the doctor ordered, oriented more to freeing the writer within than I’d like. (My inner writer has been free for some time, running around the pasture kicking up her heels; what she needs is some work under saddle.) But it’ll do. It’s two hours a week when I have to concentrate on something other than the things I’ve been concentrating on, and the course description contains my favorite words in the world: free and open to the public.

The teacher and I have some differences of opinion, primarily regarding the value of longhand. For years now, I’ve been doing all my writing at a keyboard, to the point that my handwriting muscles have atrophied. I pick up a pen to write checks and grocery lists; even my sympathy notes are done on the laptop. (As a consolation prize, I try to make them long and meaty, letters rather than notes. There’s something about the lines “Dear Bob, so sorry for your loss. You have my condolences” that, when written on a computer and printed out, really says “You shouldn’t have.”)

However, this teacher believes we get in touch with a different part of our creative selves when we compose by hand. I can agree with that — it’s the part that says “ouch.” He gives us short assignments we’re supposed to write in class, in our notebooks. Last week my hand felt like a claw by dismissal time, so this week I switched to a No. 2 pencil, figuring less pressure would help. It didn’t, at least not much. I pared my scratchings down to my journalist’s combination of shorthand, abbreviations and the sort of incomprehensible scribblings we hope will protect us in court if our notes are ever subpoenaed. And so I have a legal pad that contains a two-page reverie on Ohio State football fans that I could only reproduce at gunpoint.

This is the thing about writing, though, the really cool thing — you start out thinking you’re writing about one thing, and then you start writing about something else. Your brain gets out the way of the mystical bond between your fingers and your subconscious. (Some call this “losing the plot.” I prefer to tart it up with b.s. about the creative process.) So I wrote the sentence, “Columbus is the sort of place where a man named Gray can name his daughter Scarlet Ann and nobody considers this child abuse.” It made me think of when I first heard this story — when I was just starting my career in Columbus. Mr. Gray was a lawyer, I believe, and baby Scarlet Ann would be an adult by now. Whatever happened to her, I wonder? Did she grow up to become S. Ann Gray or did she fully embrace her dad’s egomania in making an infant a reflection of his sports-team loyalties? If I were a betting man, I’d take the latter option. Every little girl wants to make her daddy proud.

(Why should no one be surprised Mr. Gray was a lawyer? Discuss.)

Parenthood and sports made me think of the earlier comments this week about the new basketball uniforms, which made me think of a funny line from the Poor Man, from years ago, in an entry called “Fashion Victims of the ’80s.” No. 9, Larry Bird:

Super-short green shorts split up to the waist are a notoriously hard look to rock, and Larry Bird was uniquely unqualified to pull it off. Unafraid to show all twelve feet of his milky-white thighs on the basketball court, Bird topped the ensemble off with knee socks, Chia-hair, and a permanent milk mustache.

Of course, Larry would have looked even worse in those baggy shorts. Most white guys from French Lick, Indiana would, I expect.

You see how this works, you amateurs? You start out talking about Columbus, and end up at Larry Bird. And you make your readers suffer along with you! This is why blogging is such a runaway success.

Speaking of which, I was checking my incoming links the other day, and found a blog I was unfamiliar with, Englishgirl in Indiana. Whaddaya know, it’s run by the folks who bought our house in Fort Wayne. She links to photo albums of family events, and I ignored the people in the pictures to concentrate on what I’m really interested in — what they’ve done to our house. They refinished the floors! They look fabulous. They painted the dining room yellow! It looks fabulous. I’m wondering why I didn’t paint the dining room yellow. I’m so pleased our old house fell into the hands of someone who loves it as much as we did. I’m still forging my relationship with my new one, and while I like it more every day, I say with real regret that I miss my Fort Wayne eaves. I used to leave my upstairs windows open all summer long and now I have to run around like a commando every time a drop of rain falls. The Committee to Bring Back Eaves — this is my new cause.

Have we meandered enough? Does this entry make as little sense as possible? Good. On to the bloggage:

In re Fox’s attempt to make “conservative” humor, Roy Edroso points out the difference between art and propaganda.

Henry Allen, one of my writing idols, makes a point about the Walter Reed fiasco that hasn’t been made yet: It has something to do with the difference between enlisted soldiers and officers.

I am shocked, shocked to hear Newt Gingrich has a wandering pecker and the soul of a hypocrite.

Gotta go bust some scum. Guests for dinner tomorrow.

Letters, we get letters here at NN.C:

I thought I would share a tale of corporate horror with you.  On Saturday, I hosted an open house to attract pipe-fitters to this factory. I had a quota of 25 hires in one day. Steep, but I thought I could do it.  A lot of planning and very very long hours went into this event.  Our Chief Pipe-Fitting Officer asked if he could say a few words, and silly me, thinking it would be a little welcoming/come work here/we love you speech gave the OK. As if I had any choice.

Ten a.m., the doors open, pipe-fitters come in, have brunch, get schmoozed, get steered to the correct managers to interview, get toured around the pretty parts of the factory, it’s all great. Noon, the CP-FO starts his speech.  It’s a f*cking PowerPoint presentation with lots of statistics. It goes on for 40 minutes in monotone.  Then he introduces a Six Sigma black belt who works with the pipe-fitting department.  He goes on for an hour explaining what Six Sigma black belts do for you, me and the world, as well as the history of Six Sigma black beltedness.

Pipe-fitters are leaving through side doors… Pipe-fitters are asking me if they have to stay…..people are walking out of interviews…..

I’m judged by how successful the open house was in attracting pipe-fitters.  I’ve been rendered powerless by two curses of our decade: the Six Sigma black belt and PowerPoint presentation.

Some details have been changed; the experience remains nearly universal. Six Sigma — it’s like Scientology for business people. No one can fully explain it, but it involves thetans and e-meters and being the best black belt you can be and maybe some burnt offerings to an effigy of Jack Welch, at the end of which you are capable of 40-minute PowerPoint presentations and all the rest of it. Being a conscientious objector to corporate America these days, I am largely spared this torture. I guess what’s why you guys get health insurance, though.

The combined sleep deprivations of the week tend to catch up with me by Friday, and I’m dead on my feet. I’m exercising the perogative of every lazy bum and going back to bed for another 90 minutes. By the way, the weather yesterday was every bit as awful as the radar image promised, although we were spared tornados. I had to be down at Wayne State in early evening, and traveled there and back in torrential rains. The freeway was flooded and treacherous, which had the usual Detroit effect, in that it slowed traffic not a whit. At one point I was passed — and this while clipping along at 65 — by a bus. On the way home I hit some debris scattered across the eastbound lanes, something that appeared to be a dozen or so sodden telephone books. Just another day in heaven.

In the meantime, enjoy some bloggage:

Jon Carroll is his old witty self on the problems of being dead when you’re not, identity theft from beyond the grave and, of course, bureaucracy:

A while ago I wrote a column about a man trying to convince the Department of Motor Vehicles that he was not deceased. He stood before the clerk with two pieces of ID and said, in essence, “Behold, for I am a man born of woman, and I live.” He had his daughter with him, and she also had two pieces of ID. (Apparently the daughter was important because she was officially alive and was therefore a qualified witness.)

And the clerk said, again in essence, “That is all very well and good, sir, but our records indicate that you are deceased.” The clerk thought the line on her computer screen should be given equal weight with the solid, well-identified human in front of her.

Finally she said: “This is the kind of thing they handle in Sacramento.” That’s among the 50 worst sentences you can hear, right behind “I’m afraid the tests are inconclusive.”

Once upon a time you stood atop a building while prowling searchlights tried to find you, and you shouted, “Come and get me, copper!” Nowadays you go to your MySpace page and post a semiliterate taunt: “2 fast for the feds to cocky for the cops!” Bonus amusement factor: the cops, being perhaps somewhat less cocky, caught the dumbass within 24 hours.

Back later, perhaps. Please, don’t call me.

This just in: Spring approacheth. The equinox is still a month off, the weather of late has been atrocious, but yesterday when Sprig and I were mincing along the treacherous, icy sidewalk, trying to avoid falling on our canine and human butts, suddenly, there it was — that ineffably subtle change in the air that says, Hold on, I’m comin’.

At first I thought it was way too early, and then recalled that it’s usually the second week in August when I notice autumn off on the horizon, approaching on his dun-colored horse. That is, six months ago.

Then the sheet of ice I was baby-stepping on cracked, and icy water swept over the dog’s paws. He looked pissed. Can’t blame him.

Speaking of dogs. I recall a line from an essay — Thomas McGuane, I think — saying the best dogs refuse to be completely domesticated, that the streak of wildness that remains in them is what makes them worth sharing your lives with. I think of this whenever my own gets into some sort of trouble. Like yesterday. I finished lunch, got a couple of Girl Scout cookies for dessert, and dropped the last quarter of the last Samoa on the floor, because it’s nice to share. Went back upstairs. Shouldn’t have.

Kate has her GS cookie orders bagged individually and sitting on the floor of the family room, awaiting delivery. I’ve been telling myself they’re safe because they’re double-wrapped in plastic and cardboard. When the dog sticks his nose into a bag, I say, “Get out of there” and he does without objection. A couple times I’ve thought I heard something and checked it out, only to find the cookies untouched, the dog peacefully sleeping on his bed, which is what he does most of the time these days.

Until yesterday. Thank God Girl Scout cookies are packaged in super-noisy crinkly plastic packaging, because I heard the plunder in progress from upstairs, ran down and caught him before he did too much damage. Only one box had been torn open. Samoas, of course.

“Bad dog!” I said. He didn’t slink or cower. You knew durn well I was a snake before you brought me in.

Kate used to have a videotape of a BBC production of Beatrix Potter stories. The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse is about the fussy, compulsive cleaner and tidier-up of her little mouse burrow. A giant toad in a waistcoat stops by one day and asks for some honey. She says she doesn’t have any, the liar.

“Mrs. Tittlemouse,” he says, in this low, growly, BBC-Cockney accent. “I can smell it.” It’s the filthiest line I’ve ever heard in a children’s production. This cookie event will be known in the future as the Mrs. Tittlemouse Incident.

So, bloggage:

Emma is learning to play the violin. As always with Emma stories, when she changes gears away from her own experience to talk to others — the people who actually justify doing the story — I get impatient. Who cares about these boring people learning the guitar at 50? I want to hear more about Emma:

For years, I’ve operated under the deluded fantasy that, given the opportunity, I could rival Itzhak Perlman on the violin. Not that I’d ever had a lesson. No, this fantasy was born after watching a 5-year-old on “Sesame Street” play a feisty version of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” A 5-year-old can’t even tie her own shoes, right?

And this was the writer my alma mater let slip through their fingers. (Bonus: Downloadable audio clips of Emma playing “Mary,” as well as “Good King Wenceslas.” Itzhak Perlman can relax a while longer.)

I know some of our readers are into general aviation. Spriggy would like to be taken for a ride like this, although he requests a nice soft cushion in the back seat:

If the central fashion revelation of Oscar night needs to be made any clearer, it’s by comparing this photo of Helen Mirren to this photo of Jessica Biel. Central fashion revelation: You can look as great at 50-plus as women half your age. Central fashion lesson: Ladies of all ages, bras are our friends. Central overall lesson: Worst show ever.

Sometimes the headline says it all: Police say driver in fatal crash was using laptop.

Back later. Carry on, you crazy kids.

We have two items on the agenda today:

1) Set the speed-dial on stun, start firing at 10 a.m. and, insha’Allah, score tickets to the Iggy Pop concert at the Fox Theatre in April, and;

2) Drive to Fort Wayne. Kate’s been clamoring for a trip to see her old friends there, and we finally got it together. I intend to collect on payment for that big editing job I did back around Christmas time, the payment being: Dinner. I told my host to choose a venue suitable to the quality of the work, which means we might end up anywhere from Joseph Decuis to Coney Island. It’ll be a short stay — 36 hours at the most — so I doubt I’ll be picking up the tab for all comers at Henry’s, but one of these days, Alice…

(Acknowledgement of The Truth Department: Detroit is a coney-crazed town, and its Mosque No. 1, so to speak, is a greasy little place downtown called Lafayette Coney Island. It’s open all the time, a great stew of humanity, with swarthy countermen and that ineffable Billy Goat vibe. At bar-closing time, it resembles the set of a Fellini movie. But I ate there exactly once, and feared for my health. I still have yet to find a coney here that’s the equal, taste-wise, of Fort Wayne’s Famous. So I wouldn’t mind eating there at all. They serve Cokes in the little 6.5-ounce bottles. Mmm.)

So let’s kick off the bloggage with a Fort Wayne theme. Hoosiers of the 3rd congressional district, this is your congressman, a man who claims 65 percent of all drug-related ER admissions are for marijuana use.

Man, I’m tired of people tailgating me, too. But I stop short of gunfire.

Do we want to wait until they develop weapons of mass destruction? Or do we want to nip this chimp thing in the bud? Your call, America. Bonus amusement: The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females — the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps — tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.

I’m not laughing at Britney anymore. If only she could sing, you could call this breakdown the Full Judy Garland. (Here we see the female chimp using a crudely fashioned spear.)

Ever wonder just how the camera adds 10 pounds? Slate’s bird-dogging that one:

Bad lighting, mostly. The flat, even illumination on the red carpet makes it hard for the camera to capture dimension, unlike in a photo shoot with flattering soft lights. Cast from an angle, light creates shadows that sculpt the face and body by hiding unwanted flesh. Softer lights can hide wrinkles and smooth out the skin for women, while harsher lights on male faces exaggerate lines for a chiseled look. Without the aid of shadows, however, light exposes the imperfections of the face and body and makes the resulting image bigger and flatter. That’s why everyone avoids white dresses—which cast fewer shadows under even lighting—except the thinnest actresses, like Nicole Kidman.

Off to bird-dog Iggy! Back after the weekend.

Alan would like the record to reflect the following, which I have agreed to stipulate:

1) It wasn’t his idea to get me a Scum Buster for V-Day. For years, I have asked for one. Recalling our experience with the Black & Decker Snake Light (underpowered, broke almost immediately), he always thought this was a joke. Finally, after about three successive Christmases when I said, “I guess Santa forgot my Scum Buster,” he said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?” And I replied, “You betcha.” He said, “Maybe for Valentine’s Day.” (He wasn’t serious.)

2) V-Day was not particularly romantic in our house because I was working the 6-9 news-farming shift and was unable to make a fancy dinner or even buy a bottle of wine. Nevertheless, as 9 p.m. approached and Kate went to bed, I said, “I guess I STILL don’t get my Scum Buster. I guess I’ll have to buy it MYSELF.” And on and on until finally he brought out the brand-new deluxe model with on-board cleaner reservoir and nine-count-’em-nine attachments. It was a very exciting moment.

To those who believe this gift shows a lack of romance, all I can say is this: While a clean bathroom doesn’t exactly get me hot, a filthy one is a real buzzkill.

(For our first V-Day, Alan bought me pearl earrings. I wore them at our wedding and still wear them several times a week. One had to be replaced after Spriggy the Puppy possibly ate it, or maybe it went through the vacuum cleaner. So it’s not like the man doesn’t have any romance in his soul.)

(And what did I get him? I baked some cupcakes. What do I look like, Venus?)

OK, then. Off to get my car tinkered with. I’m taking “The Looming Tower” and at least one crime novel, and plan to switch back and forth between them.

Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be back later.

OK, this is weird: It’s after 2 p.m., and so far, not a flake. See that hole in the precipitation over Detroit? I live under that hole. All around us are blizzard warnings, and I could walk down my driveway in strappy sandals and while my toes would get cold, they wouldn’t get snowy.

It’s kind of freaky, really, and I see it happen all year long. Banks of precipitation march east, get to I-94 and break up into nothing much.

Detroit: Where even the snow is afraid to go. I like it.