Another week where I thought it might ease up after a while, but didn’t. But no matter — work is better when it’s busy and this week I got to interview Don Was, so that was a cool interlude, although it was on video, which I hate, but oh well that’s where the ad buy is this month.

It’s up, and you can see it here. Please don’t say anything cruel about my hair or makeup.

The weather cooled off this week, and Alan’s been working in the yard. New bushes, transplanting a hydrangea, the usual mulching and cutting back and waiting for spring to really hit the gas, as well as getting the boat ready for the water in a few more weeks. Much of the work we’ve been doing (OK, Alan’s been doing, although I scrub the fucking toilets, so it evens out) around here is stuff we’ve put off for years, which makes me wonder if homeownership is even worth it. It’s wonderful on a summer night when you can go into your back yard, put some cool tunes on the Bluetooth speaker, start a fire in the pit and enjoy it all, but man — keeping even a well-built house in good repair is exhausting.

On the other hand, a friend of mine just bought a house in Ann Arbor, and the prices there are — no other word for it — simply jaw-dropping. Like, over $400 per square foot jaw-dropping. They’re bad here, but there? Ai yi yi. Then I think about people I know who went back to renting after owning, and simply hated it. The noise, the neighbors, dealing with a landlord after being your own, all of it — they couldn’t deal, and bought another house p.d.q. Our own is approaching payoff, and I expect we’ll be here until we can no longer climb steps.

What’s going on in the news? Afghanistan, the world’s tar baby, claims another victim. It’s the Venus flytrap of quagmires, to mangle a metaphor. And someone asked about Covid in Michigan. It’s…complicated. The governor is resisting further restrictions, and pushing vaccination instead, but the acceptance rates are insanely low. I can’t explain it. Unburned forest, i.e., large numbers of uninfected? Yes. Variants? Yes. Dumbasses who won’t get the shot? Also yes. We’re carrying on, and fully vaccinated. Doesn’t look like a month in Europe will be in the cards this fall, though, as I had hoped. Sigh.

On the other hand, children are still being shot to death by police, so. Things could be worse.

Happy weekend? Yes, happy weekend. I’m going to watch the new Bob Odenkirk movie and be an extra in a video — not for Kate’s band, another one. Tell you more after.

Now this was a weekend to enjoy. Busy, but not too. Productive, but not too. Saw friends. Weather was nice. Started on my latest project — restoring my grandmother’s old cast-iron Dutch oven. It’s currently in the garage, bathing for 24 hours in Easy-Off. Fingers crossed.

Sometimes I wonder if projects like this are worth it, then I think, what else am I going to do — throw it away? Unthinkable. In the Thomas Harris novel “Hannibal,” aka the book where the “Silence of the Lambs”/Hannibal Lecter legend really goes off the rails and ends up in Crazytown, he has this passage, in a letter Hannibal writes to Clarice Starling, telling her to buck up after a professional disgrace:

Do you have a black iron skillet? You are a southern mountain girl, I can’t imagine you would not. Put it on the kitchen table. Turn on the overhead lights.

Look into the skillet, Clarice. Lean over it and look down. If this were your mother’s skillet, and it well may be, it would hold among its molecules the vibrations of all the conversations ever held in its presence. All the exchanges, the petty irritations, the deadly revelations, the flat announcements of disaster, the grunts and poetry of love.

Sit down at the table, Clarice. Look into the skillet. If it is well cured, it’s a black pool, isn’t it? It’s like looking down a well. Your detailed reflection is not at the bottom, but you loom there, don’t you? The light behind you, there you are in a blackface, with a corona like your hair on fire.

We are elaborations of carbon, Clarice. You and the skillet and Daddy dead in the ground, cold as the skillet. It’s all still there. Listen.

I remember reading that and thinking wtf, Dr. Lecter? Maybe some of you who understand science better than I do can explain how those molecules are hanging on to the vibrations of me saying, “Whoever said you should never wash cast iron cookware in soap obviously never made a pineapple upside-down cake two days after cooking onions in one.”

Anyway, for those of you interested in these things, here’s Before:

Also for those keeping score at home, I’m now 72 hours-plus from my second Pfizer vax, and felt nothing worse than a sore arm, so I guess I’m one of the lucky ones.

Let’s keep it light in this week’s bloggage: Everything you ever wanted to know about findom, or financial domination:

“It’s controlling someone through their wallet,” said Mistress Marley. (The Times agreed to identify her only by her professional name to prevent stalkers from finding her.) “I love waking up every day realizing that submissive men pay all my bills and I don’t spend a dime.”

Trysts take place mostly online, though there can be in-person encounters. And the humiliation could be as fleeting as a few moments, or persist for hours during so-called draining sessions, when the dominatrix hurls a barrage of insults and demands that ends only when a monetary cap is reached or a finsub’s bank account hits zero — whichever comes first.

In its purest form, financial domination is not transactional. Sending money is the kink, and finsubs offer tributes without expecting anything in return. “The arousal is in the act,” said Phillip Hammack, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the director of its Sexual and Gender Diversity Laboratory. “It’s about that loss of control.”

Man, I missed my calling on this one. (And I know some ex-wives who could give Mistress Marley a run for her, um, money.) I met a woman here in Detroit who does fetish videos on customer demand. Nothing really gross, though; she said she specializes in Mommy.

“Like, mean mommy?” I asked.

“Oh no, I’m nice mommy,” she replied. She dresses like June Cleaver and smiles a lot, tells her clients that they’re good boys and make mommy very, very proud and happy.

My head, it whirls.

Seems like a good place to stop. And the week begins!

I interviewed a futurist today. (Such a job title. I ask you. “Hi, Bob, what’s your game?” “I’m a futurist, Ken.”) Although he was a very nice man, and our conversation was interesting. As part of my prep, I listened to a radio interview he did, and they went off on a tangent about the pandemic’s effect on retail.

This is nothing new, the observation that retail is at a crossroads. Even before Covid, malls were on shaky ground, and those stores that thrived in them likewise, well before. Most of us are old enough to remember the mall era, its glory days. I remember being in one with my sister and little preschool Kate, and I said, “Wasn’t there a Bath & Body Works on the third level?”

My sister replied, “There are two. Bath & Body Works thrives on impulse shoppers, so they put two in one mall, to maximize the chances people will pop in and buy something.”

Me: Mind blown.

Anyway, the pandemic is adding a turbo boost to the death of malls, the death of the big box store, the changing of everything. Back to the interview:

“So our challenge is, what do we do with the infrastructure?”

Ah, there’s the rub.

If it were up to me, we’d nuke them and turn it back to farmland, but that’s, shall we say, not feasible. Probably the best solution for urban areas is medium- or high-density housing, but for rural? Eh, hard to say. A lot become things like laser-tag venues or indoor go-karts, or whatever — a definite comedown.

So what do we do with the empty big boxes? Question for the room while I phone in yet another week. Sorry to miss Wednesday, but it just happened.

So accept a little bloggage:

A nice kinda-sorta appreciation of G. Gordon Liddy, hell’s newest resident.

Let’s also have a big laugh over Matt Gaetz, too. Because no one deserves it more.

Good weekend, all.

A productive weekend, on the House Overhaul project. Alan took most of two days to clean out the garage, and the number of heavy-duty trash bags at the curb — oy. Me, I handled a Problem Closet, and added one bag to the lineup, and also did some basement tidying, so while I didn’t pull my weight equally, I did my part.

In between, I came up with little chores to do. Like finally taking some copper polish to the bowl I bought at an estate sale a couple years ago:

I was so amazed, I looked it up online, because the polishing revealed a previously undetectable maker’s mark; that’s a $200 beating bowl, made in France. I got it and another saucepan for around $15, as I recall. Surround yourself with beautiful, functional things, if you can. You don’t need a lot — one or two will do.

In other news at this hour, I cooled on “Genius: Aretha” as it went on. It did do an interesting job with the central relationship of her life — with her father — but like so many of these things, it was too damn long and the dialogue could grate. The last episode or two was all OK time to wrap this up, so we’ll put the actress in a fat suit and give her some needlessly expository speeches. Why is it so hard for screenwriters to listen to the way people talk and then try to duplicate it? And watching the animations of the song titles rising to the top of the charts were…ugh.

Now I’m just waiting for some inspiration to strike, and allow me to progress with my day, which is mostly filled with chores, but oh well. Fortunately, I have some bloggage:

Mother of six fatally shot in road-rage attack. Yeah, this is perfectly normal and just collateral damage from all this freedumb:

Officials said they responded around noon to a report of a person shot on Interstate 95 in Lumberton, N.C., about 125 miles from Charlotte, N.C.

They discovered Julie Eberly, 47, of Manheim, Pa., had been shot through the passenger door of the vehicle her husband, Ryan, had been driving. She was taken to Southeastern Health in Lumberton, where she later died, the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office said. Mr. Eberly was not injured.

The couple celebrated their anniversary this week, Sheriff Burnis Wilkins of Robeson County said on Facebook. They were headed to Hilton Head Island, S.C., for a getaway, the sheriff said.

The story says they had a close call during a merge, so the other driver came around to the passenger side, rolled down his window and let fly. No suspects yet.

The Man With Ohio’s Most Punchable Face, Josh Mandel, was a participant in this so-called “Hunger Games” competition for the favor of the Lord of Mar-a-Lago as the Buckeye State’s Senate race heats up:

The contenders — former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, former state GOP Chair Jane Timken, technology company executive Bernie Moreno and investment banker Mike Gibbons — had flown (to Mar-a-Lago) to attend the fundraiser to benefit a Trump-endorsed Ohio candidate looking to oust one of the 10 House Republicans who backed his impeachment. As the candidates mingled during a pre-dinner cocktail reception, one of the president’s aides signaled to them that Trump wanted to huddle with them in a room just off the lobby.

What ensued was a 15-minute backroom backbiting session reminiscent of Trump’s reality TV show. Mandel said he was “crushing” Timken in polling. Timken touted her support on the ground thanks to her time as state party chair. Gibbons mentioned how he’d helped Trump’s campaign financially. Moreno noted that his daughter had worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign.

The scene illustrated what has become a central dynamic in the nascent 2022 race. In virtually every Republican primary, candidates are jockeying, auditioning and fighting for the former president’s backing. Trump has received overtures from a multitude of candidates desperate for his endorsement, something that top Republicans say gives him all-encompassing power to make-or-break the outcome of primaries.

And the former president, as was so often the case during his presidency, has seemed to relish pitting people against one another.

Of course he does. He’s that kind of asshole.

Well, midweek kinda got away from me, didn’t it? A burst of work and…more work, so no Wednesday blog. Also, Alan was out of town for a couple nights (fishing), and I decided to CUT LOOSE and do stuff like eat a single hot dog for dinner, standing up at the sink, then go out and see friends.

So that’s what I did. So no blog.

Now I’m lurching toward the end of the week, with still a lot to do, but the hump is passed. Alan got Shot Numero Dos today. Mine is April 8. Watch out, end of April, because I’m going OUT.

How’s everyone? Anyone else watching “Genius: Aretha” on …I guess we watch it on Hulu, one day behind its premiere on the…National Geographic channel? There’s a National Geographic channel? Who knew.

Anyway, we’re watching. I’m enjoying it at the 25 percent mark, so I’m taking that as a good sign. I normally don’t care for music biopics, because they’re all essentially a 98-minute version of “Behind the Music.” But this one is different, at least so far. I think they’re doing a nice job exploring her relationship with her father, which was…complicated, to say the least. And with several hours to fill, they can play around with those complications more than most biopics would.

The dialogue is too expository at times, though. Hate that.

But we’ll see.

Here, watch this. You’ll dig it:

Gabby fkn snapped!!!! pic.twitter.com/0nFko3LCpm

— Mike B. (@MikeB45) March 23, 2021

And the only thing I have to recommend is this amusing essay about the big ship stuck in the Suez Canal:

Let’s put it this way: When someone joked that we’re five minutes away from learning “all of our vaccines were being stored on the big ship stuck in the Suez Canal for some reason,” it took an uncomfortably long second to realize that’s fiction. The whole thing feels so absurd, so ridiculous, so perfectly on-brand for the state of the world that it crossed the bridge from “heinous” to “hilarious.”

Instead of wondering how on Earth does a boat get stuck in the canal that sees almost 20,000 ships a year, everyone just thought: Well, duh. There’s nothing the sadistic screenwriters of our current reality can throw at us to faze us anymore. Instead, we delight in the disaster. What else can we do?

Yes, what can we do? Maybe start the weekend.

And just like that, spring has kissed us on the forehead, blessed us with her favor, coaxed the first green shoots out of the thawing earth.

All this by way of saying we saw a couple of squirrels fucking in the driveway the other day. The male was having a hard time getting his lady to hold still, and we lost track of them in the higher branches, so I don’t know if the deed got done. I imagine it doesn’t really matter; there’s never a shortage of squirrels in these parts. Wendy managed to catch one the other day; its pea-size brain told it to outrun her, which was very bad braining. It got away, but I suspect it was mortally wounded, so score one for Wendy.

If you’re sensing I don’t care for squirrels, you’re right, but hey — they’re part of the kingdom. I don’t poison or shoot them or anything. Live and let live.

What a glorious weekend, though. Got a lot done. Got a bike ride in. Got over my first vaccine’s side effects (a sore arm) and the first truly warm weather got me fantasizing about a summer of outdoor socialization without fear of death. What a concept.

Couple bits of bloggage today:

This is the local Covid-related dustup: Another recalcitrant Michigan restaurant owner collides with The Book, thrown by a judge who is just not havin’ it:

A 55-year-old Holland restaurant owner operating in defiance of a court-ordered closure and the state’s COVID-19 restrictions, including Michigan’s mask mandate, will remain in an Ingham County jail for up to 93 days.

The story is not paywalled, and reading it, you get a sense of the judge’s impatience. This paragraph, though? Chef’s kiss:

During Friday’s hearing, Aquilina also ordered a man attempting to represent Pavlos-Hackney as “assistance of counsel” to be arrested for contempt of court because he allegedly had represented himself as a lawyer when he was not licensed to practice. Richard Martin, who described himself as a constitutional lawyer and is the founder of the Constitutional Law Group, was ordered to serve 93 days in jail.

It’s worth a google to see the Constitutional Law Group website, especially the video, showing Martin in action.

Here’s video of him getting arrested, and sounding like a dolt:

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina had “constitutional attorney” Rick Martin arrested for contempt of court after he tried to represent Marlena Pavlos-Hackney. Martin is not licensed to practice law in Michigan. pic.twitter.com/zznrhUWSAj

— Malachi Barrett (@PolarBarrett) March 19, 2021

This is the judge who allowed the extraordinary Larry Nasser sentencing hearing, by the way. It took the better part of a week for every assaulted woman to make a statement.

Also, since we were talking about Josh Mandel here just last week, here’s his latest blurtage. What a dick.

But let’s not let that ruin this lovely day! Let’s get it under way — oh wait, it already is.

Two good things happened Tuesday.

First good thing: I got a vaccine appointment for Thursday, without having to lie, even a little bit, although I admit some confusion at the scheduling end may have worked in my favor. Word got around that the state had decided “media” were essential workers, and I saw my opening. My opening, I should add, was only three days ahead of another opening, i.e., the 55+ with no complications opening. But man, the days are lengthening and getting warmer, and I need to get this over with.

When I called, I was able to get an appointment in 48 hours. I don’t think I’m taking a spot from someone more deserving. But the guy who booked the appointment seemed confused about whether I was essential, and couldn’t find it in the most recent guidance.

“I’ll put you under….’other,'” he said. Good enough.

So that’s great. The other good thing is, Kate has a lead on a job — running the board at a local jazz club. Which is a gig, granted, but the first gig actually related to her field that she’s had since the pandemic started. So maybe, in small baby steps, we’re getting there.

What a concept: The AfterTimes, within reach. It’s been so long.

More Kate news: Last month, she and her band did a very fast trip to Los Angeles, not to perform but to be, get this, models. Long story short, when she was living there in late 2019, the other two came out to visit and on their perambulations around town met a woman there with a vintage clothing store. That woman was branching out into something a lot of vintage people seem to be doing these days — buying deadstock fabrics, i.e., odd lots no longer in production, and designing their own clothes using them.

So they did a quick photo shoot then, it went well, and this year she has a new line coming out, and hired them back. They spent three days striking poses around Oceanside, California, and now the pix are rolling out on the ‘gram:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by MIRACLE EYE (@miracleeye)

I lived through the ’70s once, and none of this stuff is for me. But I guess the kids like it. Here’s Kerri, the drummer, and the one with the longest stems in the group, showin’ ’em off:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by MIRACLE EYE (@miracleeye)

They’re doing it for many reasons, but raising their profile on social media is a big one. I told her hey, Rihanna sells a lot more lipsticks and bras than records these days. More power to ya.

Time to get Wednesday under way. Have a good one.

By the next time we gather here, it’ll be Daylight Saving Time. What used to be a transition barely worthy of a Monday-morning — or Sunday-morning at church — comment now seems to yield a week of whining and, lately, policy re-examination.

After years of this, I’ve come to realize it’s all about where on the time-zone line you live. The three main states I’ve lived — Ohio, Indiana and Michigan — are all on the west-ish part of the Eastern zone, and so I don’t have that early-darkness extra winter sucker punch that…New Yorkers and Chicagoans have to endure. When we went to London for an insanely low package price in December one year, we got a clue that the insanely low price might have had something to do with darkness lowering around 3:30 in the afternoon.

But sorry, year-round DST is not the answer. Who wants to confront winter with a late-rising sun contributing to the misery? A girl in my high school got hit by a car walking to school in 1970-something, the year Congress decided the way to confront the energy crisis was to adopt DST in, like, January.

There are only so many hours in a day, and only so many of them are daylight. Trying to stretch the clock to fit over them is like pulling a too-small T-shirt over a pot belly; pull it down, you’re gonna show too much chest, pull it up then someone’s gonna see your gut. Winter is a prison term, and the only way through it is through it, so: Get through it. Enjoy DST when it arrives and brings those long summer evenings. If you’re going to whine about it, then never take a vacation that takes you across time zones again. Three days, maybe four, and you’ll be adjusted.

Why didn’t anyone tell me Geraldo Rivera had moved to Ohio? When did he do this? And now he’s talking about running for the Senate? (I don’t take that part seriously, but honestly — an Ohioan. I’m amazed.

Oh, here comes the weekend. Warm spell is over, but the next one won’t be forever arriving. Spring, soon. Finally.

Wednesday was the warmest day of the year so far. I think the temperature passed 50 degrees. I’d already arranged to peel off work for half the afternoon, to go to the Detroit Institute of Arts. To limit capacity, you have to make an appointment to visit, and the weekends are booked through the middle of March, so we did a weekday. There was a photography exhibit I wanted to see, and the usual — it’s a pretty great museum. But this being Detroit, of course there was a car thing.

Truth be told, it was just meh, a few concept cars from past auto shows with no unifying theme other than Detroit design. However, I did find the Buick interesting, because it appears to have a cloaca:

Look it up.

Afterward we had one beer in a tent outside a brewhouse before the sun went behind a cloud, the temperature dropped by five degrees and our brief hint of spring became less pleasant. Came home and ordered carryout.

But man, it was nice to get out of the house and go somewhere other than food shopping.

And now, at week’s end, I feel a bit tapped out. There are some good links to follow in the comments from yesterday, and I recommend them, but if you’re tapped out, too? Join the club. Have a good weekend, all.

Another late-arriving Monday blog. Sorry about that. Yesterday I did a hands-and-knees scrub of my kitchen floor, swung by a local demonstration to take a couple of pictures, swung by the lake to ditto, and then came home and made brown rice pancakes for dinner. (Recipe at the link if you’re so inclined. They sound like hippie crap on the page, but dab a little sour cream on, and they’re right tasty.)

Then I watched two episodes of “Freaks and Geeks,” and no, I did not watch “Farrow v. Allen,” sorry.

In my crone years, I have come to the conclusion that not everything happening on the earth requires me to have an opinion about it, and this includes “Farrow v. Allen.” I have read both sides. I have thought about it, probably more than it deserves. And I think both sides are telling at least a somewhat credible story, and one is telling the truth and one is lying, and maybe it’s a mix of both, and anyway: I can’t say who I believe and so I’m tapping out of this one, and spending the next three nights of this thing watching comedies, which is my preference these days. I’m working my way through “30 Rock,” which I only saw in bits and pieces the first time around, and I’m not sure why, but by the middle of season two I’m basically relying on Tina and Alec to be my friends, because I’m so distant from my own, these days.

(I do think Mia Farrow is a bit tetched, however. I’ve known women like that, who have (or adopt) baby after baby, eventually filling their houses with chaos and bowls of half-eaten Cheerios and unflushed toilets. I know for them it’s all about love, but I think it’s possible to be all about love and not be a kid-hoarder. And yes, this has a bearing on my inability to reach a conclusion in the case at hand. Beyond that, I will say no more.)

So, then. The weekend came, the weekend went and now it’s Monday and a thaw is in progress. Big improvement over last Monday, but it means potholes will be opening all over the area. Good thing I have no need to go anywhere but the grocery store! Because that is my life now: I get up, I exercise in my basement, I prepare, serve and clean up after meals, I work, I watch “30 Rock.” If you sense a thin layer of hysteria to that, you’re not correct; it’s more like depression. A walking-around, non-crying, subclinical depression to be sure, but definitely the mid-to-late-winter doldrums.

I picked up a book this weekend that seems to fit the mood. I was returning books to the library (located next to the grocery store, how about that) and stopped to peruse the giveaway rack. Selected “Stoner” by John Williams, which rang a distant bell in my stressed-out brain, like I read about it somewhere, but couldn’t remember where. Turns out I did, but god knows where — apparently it was republished recently, became a huge hit in Europe and has been bouncing around in cult-favorite and movie-option world ever since. It’s not an uplifting story, and is in fact sad and depressing, but it’s so honest and unsparing that I’ve been devouring it.

I’m glad one of you posted this Slate piece in the comments last week, about Limbaugh, and even gladder that you singled out the passage that most hit home with me, in the final graf:

It’s not that everything bad about American politics today can be traced back to Limbaugh. It’s that the sneering, self-pitying, bad-faith style of argument that he perfected is practiced not just by right-wing media, but by many right-wing politicians, too. Every senator who jumps on television at a moment’s notice to whine about cancel culture even as hundreds of thousands of Americans have died of a virus that many on the right had been loath to admit even existed; every representative who exalts baseless conspiracies while railing against stimulus payments for the unemployed; every governor who cares more about owning the libs than about administering his or her state; every local official who seems not just to misunderstand the role of government but to actively resent it: They are all Limbaugh’s children. The mean, self-pitying illogic he mainstreamed is endemic now. The chief ghoul is gone, but the ghoulishness is here to stay.

A-men. OK, conference call in 20 minutes. Let’s let this week unfold, shall we?