Yeah, I’d say going two weeks with one-third of the house out of commission was worth it.

Did you have a good weekend? I had a good weekend. Didn’t do anything much, other than reassemble the house, do grocery shopping, attend two soccer games, ride 30 miles or so and finish stripping my oak table project. It’s amazing what you can get done when you close the laptop on Friday afternoon and say, “See you in three days, bub.”

I did see part of “Baghdad ER” on Friday evening, though, which left me in no mood to deal with what has become a hardy perennial of patriotic holidays in blogdom — some weasel telling me What It Means, and How It Must Be Honored. (That link takes you to a TBogg deconstruction of one such example, btw.) I have so little to say to these youngsters it can be compressed into one word: Enlist. I mean, just shut up about doing your part on the home front and hearts and minds and all the rest of it. If you’re so sold on this war, go see your uncle, raise your right hand and make the pledge.

This piece didn’t help, either. Warning: Very long. Very sad.

Forgive me, I’m cranky. It was a very hot weekend, and given the occasion, it had the effect of making every SUV that passed me on the road seem to coruscate. I’m thinking of ordering a supply of magnetic bumper stickers — no, those are too easily removed. Maybe, instead, the ones that go on with Krazy Glue. I’m going to save them for Hummers, which seem to be every third car on the road here. (It’s a proud GM product.) I try to stay evenhanded when considering SUVs; some of my best friends drive them, and many need them. Yes, really. But Hummers? They make my eyes cross with rage, this silly macho pretend Army truck with a kickin’ sound system. It’s like seeing a Vogue layout that puts Kate Moss in camo, one stiletto’d foot up on the running board, touting the hot new military-inspired looks for fall. Just…cross-eyed, I tell you. Anyway, back to my bumper stickers. I think I’ll order two. One will read, THIS VEHICLE RUNS ON THE BLOOD OF U.S. SOLDIERS and the other, IF YOU WANT TO DRIVE THIS VEHICLE, JOIN THE ARMY.

Maybe I should lie down instead. See if this passes.

Well, I have plenty plenty work to do today, and plenty plenty coffee to make the work go fast. In the meantime, a mixed bloggage grill:

Nathan Gotsch steps in to guest-edit Fort Wayne Observed for the next few days. His first big post is yet another story I didn’t see in either of the dailies, about a Fort Wayne girl gone bad, and then gone badder.

Once a craven weasel, always a craven weasel: Pat Robertson claims he can leg press 2,000 pounds. Slate sets us straight on what leg presses really are: Dropping your leg-press numbers in casual conversation is like bragging about how fast you can do the TV Guide crossword puzzle. Simply put, the leg press is an ego boost for the beginner lifter. There’s no easier way to move a large amount of weight.

I have no idea what this comic strip means, but just imagine it running in an American paper. “A Mexican shit bath?” Hmm.

OK, then. Off to clatter the keys for fun and profit. Let the comments be your playground.

There must be something in testosterone that goads men into establishing silly clubs based on pointless physical achievements. A guy I knew in high school spent some time at the south pole, and at a subsequent reunion reported he was a proud member of the 300 Club. The sole requirement and initiation ritual is a nude dash from the sauna in the geodesic dome outside to the marker for the magnetic pole and back inside. Membership trials are open anytime the difference between those two environments is 300 degrees Farenheit — usually -100 outside, 200 above inside.

At the time he told me this, the internet as we know it didn’t exist. Is there possibly a website for these shenanigans?

Well, what do you think?

One of those links is for a women’s initiation. I take back what I said about men.

Last night’s British-press perambulations was the first time I ever heard of the Kingsley Challenge, however.

Described by its originator as a “near-impossible feat,” it requires those who accept to row a mile, run a mile and ride a mile (horseback) — in under 15 minutes. Held in London’s Hyde Park on the summer solstice, it’s not open for public participation, probably to keep it from being overrun with Type A Yanks looking for some cool physical-culture tourism opportunities. It sounds like fun, though.

So does the 300 Club, for that matter. The first of those links up there contains male nudity, although the naughty bits are so shrouded in steam and frost it’s practically work-safe.

Holiday weekend ahead — the Detroit techno music festival and probably some boating is on our agenda. Maybe both at the same time. Have a good one, y’selves.

Sorry for the light posting of late. It’s been a busy week, compounded by the fact my afternoon downtime (yes, a nap — sue me) has been impossible, due to Project Floor. Do you have any idea how the sound of a nail gun travels? Today is Sanding Day, although there may be some staining, as well. Just had a stain-approval meeting. Alan attended, along with his Super Stain Vision. There were two to choose from, and I couldn’t see a dime’s worth of difference between them, but Alan could. He always can. I delegate all paint colors and now, stain shading, to his superior eye.

At this point, my eyes burning like Drano-scrubbed orbs, they could paint the thing green and I wouldn’t care. (Too much.) I stay up until after 1 a.m. and rise before 7. I need my damn nap back.

What do I do until 1 a.m.? I read the world’s English-speaking press for a corporate client, and let’s leave it at that. However, in the months I’ve been doing this job, I’ve fallen hard for the British press. I wonder if they’re having the same problems with declining readership that we are. Hard to imagine — they’re as lively a read as I’ve ever seen stateside, and they’re like that pretty much every day.

At least they know the proper attitude to take toward Madonna: She insulted George Bush, simulated sex and suspended herself from a giant mirrored crucifix, head adorned with a designer crown of thorns (provided by Cotter Church Supplies, LA) in an all-out attempt to get someone, anyone out there, riled.

When she unveiled it, you couldn’t take your eyes off it – not as a thing of beauty but as an object of sheer, sinewy significance. Even the bouncers looked scared.

Apparently, in this show, Madonna puts her leg behind her head. Shocking!

Sweet jayzus, the sanders just started up. (Whimper.)

Someone called what happened to Barbaro on Saturday “the dark side of racing,” but it’s more than that — it’s the dark side of keeping horses. For all their strength and speed and beauty, horses are surprisingly delicate animals, prey to a whole host of physical complications that can cut them down justlikethat, most of which are the result of our insistence that they live the way we do.

In the wild (and understand, horses are not really wild animals, not after centuries of domestic breeding) a horse would graze around 20 hours a day, moving idly across grasslands, drinking when it’s thirsty and running only when pursued by predators. It would lie down only briefly, sleep standing up. Movement and grazing, though — that’s its nature. So what do we do? Lock them in barns, turn them out briefly, feed them concentrated grains to make up for 20 hours of grazing and try to channel all that strength into our own idea of competitive pursuits, even if they do seem to work in concert with a horse’s own instincts. Disaster is a byproduct.

Whenever a horse like Barbaro “breaks down,” the horseman’s euphemism for the frequently grisly fractures that end racing careers and, nearly as frequently, a horse’s life, people are puzzled and ask: Why can’t you just put the leg in a cast?

For lots of reasons. This Slate Explainer does a fine job laying them out in layman’s terms. Poor Barbaro. Fingers crossed.

What a weekend. Two soccer games, the first sail of the season, the St. Joan of Arc fair, a dinner out to more or less celebrate our anniversary, and flower day at the Eastern Market. One of those weekends when you need another weekend, just to recover.

You don’t need a blow-by-blow, but hear this: I’m terribly disappointed that I didn’t win the Basket of Cheer at the St. Joan of Arc fair — a wheelbarrow full of so many bottles of booze I could have opened a tavern and not restocked for a year. Five bucks seemed a small price for a chance to win this third-place prize (first was a new lawn mower, which I don’t need). Ah, well. I guess Jesus loves me anyway.

The first sail was glorious — stiff breeze straight out of the west, clear skies, a rare day above 70 degrees. I picked up a little split of champagne en route and we all had a drink, plus a bit for the boat and the lake. Kate made a face at her own taste, and we told her about Dom Perignon’s eureka moment when he accidentally made champagne (“I am drinking stars!”). She was unimpressed. I wonder if any of the Dom’s Own was in the Basket of Cheer.

So, bloggage:

HoffaFest 06 — No body yet. We’ll keep you posted.

But many bodies in the Wayne County morgue after some bad heroin comes to town. Gotcha WMD, gotcha WMD!

He climbed Mt. Everest, even though he’s… something. Gay, blind, whatever.

I should say, though, that errors are errors, and then, there are errors: The lead story on Indiana’s NewsCenter Sunday 6:00 P.M. newscast was that former Mayor Ivan Lebamoff “was laid to rest today.” According to Eric Olsen, funeral services had taken place earlier in the day at St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church. … Funeral Services will be held on Monday at 11:00 A.M.

Every so often people ask me what’s the big deal if newspapers and TV stations cut staff, so what if fewer people are there? So what if we save money by hiring greenhorns? So what, so what, so what? Well, because sometimes you bury a guy a day early, that’s what. Presumably they spelled his name correctly, though; I’ve tuned in local TV in Fort Wayne to find a former mayor, Win Moses Jr., ID’d in his super as “Wynn Moses.”

(Oh, and speaking of local media and the work it’s been doing lately, Fort Wayne Observed broke the actual news of the former mayor’s death more than four hours before the evening paper did.)

Curse you, John Scalzi, and your infernal link to the Make Your Own Motivational Poster generator.

Between you and those damn videos, I may not get anything done tonight.

Housekeeping note: I put up a few recent clips in pdf format on a new page, The Clip File. It’ll be a work in progress.

On the one hand, it’s pretty hard to argue with the local posters to various internet forums around here, who are calling the current search for Jimmy Hoffa’s body a May-sweeps perennial. We’ve only been here a little over a year, and this is the second we’ve seen in that time; the last one had agents sawing up pieces of floorboard in a Detroit house to test for 30-year-old DNA evidence — all while a TV news crew stood by recording. (“Is that a bloodstain? Could be spilled Pepsi.”)

But this one does seem better than most — the FBI is executing a search warrant, the agent in charge says the info is pretty good, and who knows? Maybe they’ll finally find him, or Judge Crater, or any of the other missing-presumed-dead cases still open out there.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Ah, to be a child in Ohio in the ’60s and ’70s. The simple pleasures — the misadventures of Woody Hayes, a swimming pool in flat landscape on a hot summer day, waiting for the new license plates. Yes, that’s what I said; the plates changed every year, and you always waited to see what the new colors would be. The introduction of the “Seat Belts Fastened?” plate in the early ’70s was, simply, well… it was the introduction of a license plate, but it was something you noticed.

Well. Time passes, state budgets shrink and you no longer get a license plate every year. It’s silly, really, when you can go to a five-year plan on plate replacement and show current registration with a sticker in the corner. But some states don’t even do that, and one of them in Michigan.

When I registered my car here, I was offered the usual silly array of alternatives — plates for a Michigan alma mater, lighthouse preservation, or just flag-waving patriotism. For only $5 more, I could get a plate showing the Mackinac Bridge, totem of much of my early U.P. partying years.

But I spurned them all. I wanted the navy blue blazer of license plate-hood, the venerable white-on-blue plate known only as standard.

And I do mean venerable. The plate has been in use since 1982 with only minor tinkering. This leads to a curious sight in this wintry, car-crazy state — like-new cars bearing salt-corroded license plates. (This is an illustration, but it’s a pretty good facsimile.)

Before we had the white-on-blue plate, Michigan had a white-on-black one. During the economic upheavals of the early 1980s, when thousands of out-of-work Michiganders headed for the Sunbelt in search of a better life, some welcoming Texans referred to them, sneeringly, as “the black-tag people.” You can see why, when the price of oil collapsed a few years later and Texans were being foreclosed upon, my eyes stayed dry.

Anyway, after a mere 25 years, we’re getting a new license plate. No design yet, but they’re saying most likely we’re going with the same ol’ same ol, only blue-on-white, this time. The state says it’s time to make plates using newer “reflector technology” and anyway, 25 years is a long time to be rockin’ the same plate, even if it is a classic.

Having lived through Indiana’s misbegotten Wander plate, the much nicer blue-and-white and, finally, the “back home again/www.IN.gov” fiasco, I’m just hoping whatever discussion the state needs to have about this will blow over quickly.

OK, then. It has been raining for most of the past two weeks, but not today. In fact, the sun is shining. I’m going to exercise one of the perogatives freelancing gives you and go outside. It’s not supposed to last long, so carpe diem.

Never say never, I know. But jeez louise:

28-year-old Broward woman found dismembered by alligator in canal

Abducted while jogging! See what exercise can do to a person?!

“She was pulled in, in my opinion,” said Joshua Perper, chief medical examiner for Broward County. “If she had been dragged I would have expected to see grazing marks.” She died quickly, Perper said, of massive blood loss after the alligator broke one of her legs, ripped off one arm, and then the other. She didn’t drown — Perper didn’t find much water in her lungs.

I don’t know whether to be grateful that the story didn’t explain what “grazing marks” are, vis-a-vis alligator feeding. Worst single detail, for me:

Alligators tend to wander in May, the peak of mating season.

Ewwww.

Had lunch yesterday with two gentlemen infinitely more powerful and plugged-in than I am; of course both had cutting-edge cell phones (Treo, black Razr — I declined to display my stone age candy-bar Nokia). We briefly discussed the pros and cons of each, and one confessed to checking e-mail on a PDA while driving, then having a slam-on-the-brakes moment.

And you thought it was improved performance in automatic transmissions that killed the stick shift.

Maybe they should incorporate this into one of those new VW commercials. Which I think are fantastic, by the way, a feeling not shared by all, it seems:

Marderosian says she’s heard the complaints — about using “shock value” to sell, about the unpleasant reaction that accident victims might have upon suddenly encountering the commercials. But that misses the point, she says: “We’re trying to get people’s attention, yes, but not purely for shock value.” Instead, the ads are pegged to the Jetta’s four-star (frontal) and five-star (side) ratings in NHTSA’s tests.

I’m consistently amazed by the self-image so many Americans have of themselves — flinty, swaggering, cowboy-independent folks who Built This Country, dammit — and yet, we still find room to complain about the honest depiction of an event that happens every day in every city in the country, during an activity (driving) that virtually all adults participate in every day. Around here in SUV-land, one of the stock defenses for driving these behemoths is how “safe” they are, how “protected” the passengers are. And here are these little Jettas getting T-boned, while people walk away. Sacrilege!

The job I do in my evening hours involves reading health-related news, and every so often, I kick up a doozy. From Reuters:

The portrayal of coma and awakening from a coma is grossly inaccurate in major motion pictures, research shows, and many moviegoers are unable to tell fact from fiction.

Oh, get OUT. Really?

In a review of 30 movies from 1970 to 2004 with actors depicting prolonged coma, coma experts found that only two showed a “reasonably accurate” representation of coma.

That’s nothing. I once saw a telenovela in which a woman was having her bandages removed after eye surgery, apparently designed to restore her eyesight. (I base this not on my vast knowledge of Spanish, which is pretty much limited to “no mas margarita, por favor” and being able to count to eight, but on the fact I’ve seen the same scene in about eight million old movies.) Around and around her head the doctor unwound the gauze, until he got to the end, the bandages fell away and revealed — madre de dios! — two elaborately made-up eyes, including false lashes.

But back to comas. The problem is, of course, that people base their health-care decisions on something they saw on “ER,” and sometimes these people have influential columns in national newspapers and, well, they should know that problems with the depiction of coma included comatose patients, without feeding tubes, suddenly waking after years of being in a coma with no physical or mental problems and with a Sleeping Beauty-like appearance, as the story points out.

Well, I saw “Kill Bill,” too, and I never believed that stuff about Uma Thurman waking up after four years and being able to kick ass moments later. I’m such a skeptic.

But here’s the punchline:

One film showed a comatose person tapping out a message in Morse code with his finger. “We expected misrepresentation – not gross representation,” Eelco Wijdicks told Reuters Health.

Someone tell Peggy Noonan.

Speaking of health news, looks like my old congressman is up to his usual tricks, too:

The upcoming National STD Prevention Conference, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among other groups, has just been given an unhealthy shot of ideology. The conference was supposed to include a symposium designed to explore how abstinence-only sex education may undermine other efforts to reduce STDs. The papers and panelists had gone through the customary vetting of peer review. But now the symposium has been abruptly retooled to include two proponents of abstinence programs—and to exclude a well-respected detractor. This is bad news, not only because abstinence-only work is scientifically unfounded but also because the switch represents a new level of government intrusion into the peer-review process of a major scientific meeting.

It’s from Slate. And it goes on:

So, who’s responsible for the switcheroo? Two senior scientists connected to the conference said they were told that Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., had intervened.

But of course. A guy who doesn’t believe in evolution would likely not be swayed by science, no matter what it has to say.

I have to stop torturing myself like this.

Yesterday’s day off gives way to today’s day on, so to speak. The good news: It involves a real grown-up lunch, which means I’d best go start the vast grooming process required, these days, to make me even remotely presentable. What makes your coma special? Discuss it in the comments.