I need to do a limited skinback here. I’ve been mulling something over since Hank brought it up in comments last Thursday, when we discussed the strange case of Andrew Shirvell, the Michigan assistant attorney general waging a one-man war against Chris Armstrong, the gay student-body president at the University of Michigan. Hank said:

Someone I know, a high-functioning autistic man who would certainly know what he’s talking about in this regard, looked at the Shirvell interview and immediately diagnosed a fellow high-functioning autistic man. It’s what happens, he says, when the rigidity and obsessive behavior fails to find an appropriate outlet.

I’ve watched the video a couple of times since then, and I think he’s right. There’s something about Shirvell that’s not quite all there; he seems to have no idea why what he’s doing is at all inappropriate. (It’s hard to judge a person’s demeanor in one of these on-camera interviews, which do not favor amateurs — you sit in a chair, staring into a camera lens while Anderson Cooper yaks in your ear. You have no conventional feedback to tell you how you’re coming across; if you’re lucky you might get a monitor, but not always.) Turning to the wisdom of the crowd, i.e., Googling “‘andrew shirvell’ + asperger OR autism” turns up many other armchair psychiatrists who recognize the same traits they live with every day in a colleague or loved one with this condition. It’s good enough for me. While by no means excusing Shirvell’s behavior, it’s safe to say that outraged umbrage and gaydar jokes here are uncalled-for, and I apologize. Shirvell, meanwhile, has decided this is an excellent time to take a leave of absence. Wise move.

However, I’d like to use this as a jumping-off point for a subject that’s interested me for years — how we deal with, or don’t deal with, mental impairments/illness/less-than-normal brain functioning in our society.

When I was a columnist I wrote a bit about mental health, and I always liked to bat this balloon around with my sources, asking them how we draw the line between eccentric and crazy. “Not very well” was their answer, in a phrase. They often spoke of the frustration of dealing with, say, the very religious family of a schizophrenic patient, who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand things like brain chemistry and psychotropic drugs and 72-hour commitments, but had a very easy explanation in “demonic possession.” Sometimes a person’s symptoms fit very nicely into a particular culture’s drawer, and it takes a while before anyone figures out they have a person on their hands who needs help and support, not reinforcement.

I have no idea at all what sort of family or community Shirvell comes from, but it’s entirely possible that among his tribe, this is normal behavior, even admirable. It’s funny how the internet has made a certain sort of obsession — and what is a blog called Name of Person I Hate Watch but an obsession — not just acceptable but normal. And if people you hang with hate the same people you do, it becomes noble, a cause. And soon no one questions whether Andrew is getting a little too engaged in the cause, he’s just a man with admirable energy and focus.

Maybe we should all undergo a periodic life audit by a panel of friendly strangers with board-certified Common Sense ™. They’d go over a few key documents in our lives, we’d submit to a short interview, and two weeks later the report comes in the mail: Nice work on cutting back on your drinking and increasing your exercise, but you’re starting to become a bore about your vegetarian diet. Watch that.

And so another weekend vanishes in the rear-view mirror. I spent most of it in the kitchen. I’m experimenting with a new food this week — quinoa.

“May I have a pound of kee-no-ah?” I asked the girl at the store.

“I have some keen-wa right here,” she said, handing over a bag. Nicely played. So far I’m finding the Aztec’s magic grain interesting. Yesterday — cold bean salad with cherry tomatoes, mixed greens and quinoa. Today: Fried quinoa in the style of rice. I’ll keep you posted.

Bloggage: When you get to be my age, you’ve already been puzzled by at least half a million success stories, but the one that’s bugging me at the moment is that of Kathleen Parker, who always struck me as the ultimate media chameleon, one of those women who scored the “conservative” slot on op-ed pages back when female columnists were all Ellen Goodman clones, and then switched sides during the Bush meltdown, thereby earning the Strange New Respect award, and — funny how often this happens — a goddamn Pulitzer Prize, and if that isn’t a testament to how slim the pickings have gotten in the op-ed stable, I don’t know what is. Her column always struck me as content-free, I-was-just-thinkin’ culture-war musings on whatever was on the cover of Newsweek in any given month. But she had one thing working for her, something she’s always been willing to trade on. She’s very pretty. An early version of her website had a collection of photos of her, all taken at the same session, a little brainy pin-up gallery of Kathleen with her head cocked, Kathleen leaning her head on her hand and smiling, Kathleen twirling her reading glasses, etc. She once wrote that her mother died when she was very young and her father remarried something like four or five times, thereby confirming another of my long-distance armchair psychological diagnoses — another woman who, like Dr. Laura, could never get dad’s attention, so she grew up to be a men’s-rights advocate and good little defender of traditional gender roles. I may well be full of shit, and if so feel free to tell me so.

Anyway, speaking of puzzling success stories? Parker Spitzer, complete with a wet kiss for the launch by none other than Howie Kurtz. Break a leg, Katie.

Related, the disarray at CNN, from New York magazine:

“They do not recognize a reality that Fox and MSNBC recognize,” says a former senior CNN staffer. “You have to be real showmen and hook into America, which is blue collar and angry. The CNN culture is still very strange. You walk into that building, you think you’re the Jesuits and you’re protecting a certain legacy. They still look at Fox as a carnival—not Fox as a brilliant marketing entity. It’s weird. They’re decades into it, and they’ll protect it to the end.”

Finally I leave you with a recipe. Someone asked me for it and I copied it down, so I’ll share it with you. Never like to waste a good transcription:

This is from the Junior League’s Centennial Cookbook, and don’t draw any conclusions from that — I am as far from a Junior Leaguer as they come, but the book came to the newsroom a few years ago, and I was pleasantly surprised to find some of those skinny blondes could actually cook.

Anyway, this comes together pretty fast, and it’s one recipe where I don’t mind letting someone else do the prep work — butternut squash are such a pain to peel and dice, I generally buy them already prepped at Trader Joe’s.

Curried butternut apple soup

Puree the soup with an immersion blender. Season and serve with a dollop of cream, if you like. Note: This soup improves with keeping. Prepare a day or two in advance if time allows.

Happy soup! It’s going to be soup weather for sure this week.

For dinner at Casa NN.C night before last: Mark Bittman’s espresso black-bean chili. Verdict: If you’re a chili purist, probably not for you. But an adventurous eater will find cinnamon, coffee and brown sugar worthy, interesting additions to a bean soup. Plus, it will make you fart like a machine gun, with interesting bass notes lingering in the room. But that’s the price we pay for eating natural foods.

Next time I’m making it with the chocolate variation.

The book that recipe is from — “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” — is not only the single best vegetarian cookbook I’ve ever clapped eyes on, it’s probably the only one you need. Pair it with “How to Cook Everything,” and you could take the rest of my cookbook library. I’d be pretty well-set.

That’s the gist of the comments at the link, above; I now draw you to the one made by Isaac Mizrahi, a fashion designer. Emphasis, as they say, mine:

Throw away all your old recipes and buy How to Cook Everything. Mark Bittman’s recipes are foolproof, easy, and more modern than any others.

What was I saying just last week about the five all-purpose adjectives used to describe fashion? What was one of them? Uh-huh, yeah. You listen to your auntie Nance from now on out.

Oh, I can’t wake up this morning, so I’m scanning Facebook to see what all my local friends thought of “Detroit 1-8-7.” So far the verdict is brutal. I reserve judgment. I couldn’t watch it last night, but I turned it on to stave off sleepiness and as a counter to the mortar barrage of acorns landing on the roof in the wind. I’ll catch up with the DVR over the weekend. Plus, you can’t judge any show by the pilot; if there’s one thing TV promises you, or should, it’s long-term character development over the course of 10 or 12 hours. I did hear one good line: “We fight them here so we won’t have to fight them in Ferndale,” which as network cop-show lines go, is pretty good. (Keeping in mind that “The Wire” pretty much ruined all network cop shows for me forever.) I’ll give the producers credit (literally, as a big part of this production is subsidized by the taxpayers of Michigan) for shooting here; I saw a few familiar faces in there, people I know in our little community of creatives. If the show does for Detroit actors even a fraction of what “Law & Order” did for New York’s, then I’ll tune in every week.

I’m having trouble waking up because today is pretty much the sort of day I’d order from the menu in September — overcast, rainy and warm. The southwest exhaled a big gust of hot air yesterday, and it reached 87 by day’s end, followed by rain. The rain arrived at 4:30 a.m. with wind, making me curse the skylight in my bathroom; how on earth do people sleep with these things over their beds? In even light rain, it’s like having a drummer sitting five feet over your head, improvising. Throw in the acorns for a month every year, and it’s ridiculous. I see why people fall into the Ambien embrace when they get to my age, but there’s something about being female and middle-aged that makes me avoid prescription meds of all but the most essential sorts; I get the feeling it’s just a short hop to Judy Garland’s street. Every night I read about teenagers arrested with fistfuls of pills no doubt cadged from mom and dad’s medicine chest, Vicodin and Xanax and all the rest of it. Mama isn’t that high-strung just yet. Just tired.

So, can we round up some bloggage to flesh out this undercaffeinated, phoned-in entry? Let’s seeee….

With the exception of Ta-Nehisi Coates, I generally stay away from the political bloggers at the Atlantic, but I stumbled across this Andrew Sullivan post on Sarah Palin Jr. yesterday, and it made a point I have been making with unbelievers for a while, i.e., most people have no idea how crazy religious-right voters are, what they expect, what they see as their baseline conditions for backing a candidate. I recall a conversation with your basic eastern elitist, a Jew, about the evangelical right’s support of Israel, which I told him had nothing to do with their desire for his people to have a homeland, but rather a precondition for the return of Jesus, and he told me I was the crazy one. Folks, I am not. Sullivan gets it:

O’Donnell is an important figure not because she is a flake, as Bill Kristol says. She is important because she is as yet too guileless to lie about her real views, or to conceal the reactionary worldview that animates them. She is not an outlier. She is a very powerful way to understand what the theoconservative project is really about – and what the GOP base truly believes in.

She is the modern GOP. And maybe her emergence will help more people snap out of denial.

OID: Ten men, including one MSU football player, charged in theft of laptops from Detroit Public Schools. I ask you. No, I don’t.

OK, time to hit the shower, drink more coffee and trudge off to office hours. Have a good one, all.

There’s something about autumn that gets me in the mood to batten down the hatches. Alan took Kate to a Matt & Kim concert Saturday night, and…

…may I just interject something here? I think I’ve mentioned before that Kate’s enthusiasm in pop music isn’t for superstars like Lady Gaga, but these smaller, less well-known artists like, well, Matt & Kim. In the last year she’s been asking to go to their concerts. She doesn’t ask for much, so if certain circumstances are met (parent escort, not a school night), I generally say yes. But these bands don’t play at arenas, or even at theaters, but at clubs. Rock clubs. And while I guess I always thought I might someday sit down with my daughter at a bar, I didn’t think it would be when she was 13. Last night it was Matt & Kim at the Majestic, and next month she has tickets for All Time Low at the Shelter. The Shelter is the basement part of St. Andrew’s Hall, a.k.a. “the most dangerous concert venue in America.” That’s not literally true. It’s just outside of touristy Greektown; the description refers to all the hip-hop acts that got their start there. Still. The accompanying parent on that trip will get the full treatment from me — don’t let them get too close, nowhere near the speakers, no moshing, whatever.

Saturday night they didn’t get home until after 1 a.m. Alan said the show was pretty good. (Although he mentioned that Matt recalled their last gig in Detroit, after which he was robbed at gunpoint.) Kate got her CD signed by Kim. That’s another reason she likes these little bands — the meet ‘n’ greets at the merch tables. Lady Gaga doesn’t do those, methinks.

OK, back to hatch-battening. While they were out, I tackled my home office, where I was losing the battle against the heaps of paper that work their way into our lives. Why so much paper? I’m striving toward a paper-free existence, and the rest of the world is picking up the slack, plus some, it seems. I sort into piles, then re-sort, and by the third time through I’ve usually made my peace with throwing most of it out. It can take me days to clean an office. My final six months at my last full-time employer were the best, because I’d made a resolution: In hostile territory, it’s best to travel light. When I quit, I walked out with my coffee cup, one file folder and 20 years of memories. It. Felt. Great.

Oh, and the ankle’s better, thanks. If it happens to you, follow RICE therapy immediately. Also, praise G-d for ibuprofen. It made all the difference. It’s still puffy and sore, but I was able to go for a little bike ride yesterday without howling in pain. Progress.

The usual crazed week lies ahead, but I have a jump on things — nothing like a mild sprain to get your paperwork done — and I think I’m ready, just as soon as my loins are girded. In the meantime, some bloggage:

Leave it to nerdy NPR for something like this: When everyone in the world is being called a socialist, what does a real, admitted, avowed one say? These people are not socialists. In part 2, what is a libertarian, and why many of the Republicans who claim to be so, are not.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/09/17/129936548/the-friday-podcast-socialists-libertarians-part-1

The Wall Street Journal has its own axe to grind with the web, but I think their reporting on online privacy, or lack thereof, is pretty prize-worthy. Bottom line: Nothing on the web is free, and the price you pay is your personal information. (Except here at NN.C, where all I know about Dwight is that his ISP is somewhere in the Chicago region. Or was. Maybe.) The latest installment is on the worst offenders — websites frequented by children. Lovely.

Only in Detroit: The Guerrilla Marching Band. Watch the video for some great glimpses of Hamtramck — pierogi, For Sale or Lease signs and fat people. Great town.

Out the door, I am.

I have a rather busy morning today, pals, and frankly, I’m a little tapped at the moment. Things will ease up after noon, but I think I’ll use the time to catch up on a little housekeeping — real, literal housekeeping — instead of blogging. Fortunately, good peanuts for the barflies today:

Fascinating: Farm boy steers his steer to a blue ribbon at the Iowa State Fair. Twice. He wins in 2010 with Doc before it’s revealed that Doc is a clone of Wade, who the same kid showed to the same title (“big steer”) two years previous. You have to be from Iowa — or Ohio — to understand how important a big championship at a big state fair can be, and while this has aspects of a joke, it was obviously intentional; the kid’s dad is president of a bovine-genetics firm. And maybe you have to have an amateur’s interest in animal husbandry, as I do, to find this interesting, but it is.

Fierce! Woman pulled over for suspicion of drunken driving walks the line like it’s a runway, demands her “Amanda rights.” Via Eric Zorn.

Fu’ u’: Via Roy, a look at libertarian thinking on the Tea Party. It all started with George W. Bush, says Steve Chapman, only it was apparently an invisible movement then. Huh. Meanwhile, Carl Paladino is a vile racist, and I’ll cut any bitch who says he isn’t. But, following Chapman’s reasoning, the GOP is “lucky” to have him.

Faboo: When your baby photo becomes a meme, better lie back and enjoy it.

Back tomorrow, with 50 percent less lameness.

This past weekend was the reunion of the Knight-Wallace Fellows, all classes; the Running of the Fellows, if you will. Excuse me, but whenever I spend time with those folks, I feel called upon to be droll. Ann Arbor, and Wallace House in general, is a very droll place. Someone’s always chuckling dryly. The executive director is a big fan of editorial cartooning, and every term the New Yorker’s cartoon editor comes in for a visit, as well as Pat Oliphant. Oliphant is soft-spoken and a little shy, and prefers to draw his way through his seminar. One or two are always suitable for framing, and are hung in our little clubhouse:

I didn’t do every event this year, but I missed this guy at the last reunion, and was told I might as well have missed Bruce Springsteen at MemAud, c. 1975, again:

That’s Ralph Williams. He’s a rock star at Michigan, or was until he retired a couple years ago. I took one of his classes back in the day, on the Old Testament. (His lecture on Job had to be relocated to a larger hall, so all the parents could attend.) His “last lecture” packed the house back then, and there’s a reason for that. He is to lectures what ducks are to water. Big, booming voice, expressive hands, amusing asides — give him a topic and he’ll go extemp for an hour without breaking a sweat. I forget his formal topic, but the gist was the complaint of all people who remember what was, confronting what is, worried about what will be — the explosion of information, the dearth of meaning. He read some Thucydides, some Shakespeare, some Gore Vidal, mixed well, baked for 45 minutes and sent us on our way with a head full of intellectual muffins, or something. I try not to worry about things I have no control over, but he did make some thoughtful points, the main being that our democracy is based on concepts that are in eclipse at the moment, including respect for other views and the time it takes to pay attention and learn about the nation’s business. Whereas, just now, I checked three Twitter feeds and my Facebook while I tried to think how to finish this sentence. Clearly I am not cut out for Congress. Then again, at least half of the people who have represented me over the years weren’t, either.

I never know what to do when people inform me the world is in grave danger. Wring my hands. Nod sympathetically. But mostly I go make a cup of coffee.

I stopped at Ikea on the way home, and didn’t go to the dinner that night. The required energy level ultimately gets wearing, so I just went shopping. Ikea was full to the rafters with people who were not speaking English, so many that I suspected one of those overnight shopping excursions from a European capital, like they used to have to Gurnee Mills. But I think they were new Americans of various sorts — university people, immigrants, others with an eye toward making fortunes here after they’ve found a cheap couch. Which reminded me of another chat I had in Ann Arbor, with a business professor. She is one of those people with a brain like a computer; ask her a question, she blinks twice, the hard drive spins behind her eyes and she gives you a concise, informed answer.

She also has no obvious emotional triggers. I recall, seven years ago, asking her about Burma. Fort Wayne was at the time, and still is, absorbing large numbers of Burmese refugees, and the U.S. was going its usual route — economic sanctions and lots of talk about tyranny. She blinked twice, the hard drive spun, and she said China, while no fan of the military junta that rules the place, was going ahead and forming trade partnerships, in the interest of having a friendly neighbor between it and the Bay of Bengal. Guess which one would likely prevail. (The Obama administration took a turn away from this policy last year. GOP, help me out — was this part of the Apology Tour?)

Anyway, she marveled at how many of her students — masters candidates, mind you, at a top-10 business school — are amazingly ill-informed, read little news, either in newspapers or offline. She said she recently discussed exchange trading in class, how a person who is buying and selling commodity contracts has to be well-informed in general, has to know how a storm brewing here might affect the harvest there, what the stress of a natural disaster might do to a shaky ruler (speaking of Myanmar), etc. The class response? Crickets. Bottom line: Expect further rug-pulling by Asia, and learn Chinese.

Which seems a good time to skip to the bloggage, highlighted by one of our own college students:

Eighteen-year-old Indiana University freshman dies after aspirating vomit. Why yes, he’d been drinking. (At Ball State, if that sort of thing matters to you.)

Jon Stewart, national treasure, and why he is funnier than you. (He has writers. A lot of writers. And good ones.)

Speaking of someone who probably wasn’t snoozing through b-school, Gretchen Morgensen talks sense about the continuing housing mess, and the arguments against “let it crash.”

Speaking of which, I’d better go attend to my so-called career before it does the same. The week awaits.

Almost forgot: Why I do not follow sports. It just breaks your damn heart, every time. If that isn’t a completed catch in the end zone, I’m Sarah Palin.

As I believe I mentioned earlier, my absence the past day is the result of my fulfillment of a promise to Kate earlier in the year: Yes, I would take her and three of her friends to Cedar Point, and we would do it this week, aka Michigan Week, the week before Labor Day, when Ohio and Indiana schools are back in session but the Mitten, which starts after Labor Day by law, dammit, is not. Lines are miraculously short, the weather still irritatingly hot, and while it doesn’t feel like we have the park to ourselves, all the other people here seem to be wearing Tigers-branded sportswear.

Yesterday I struck up a conversation with two women wrangling seven-count-’em-seven little boys outside the changing rooms at the water park. “Where are you from?” the oldest boy asked, polite and sweet right down to his side-parted hair. “Detroit,” I said. “So are we!” he replied. “What part?” I asked. “Grosse Pointe!” they all said. Small world.

And so here we are. Drinking coffee on the balcony of our suite while the teenagers sleep. Soon they’ll be up and I’ll be pouring calories down their throats, and we’ll be off to ride the coasters we didn’t ride yesterday, plus extra rides on the ones they did ride yesterday, which was most of them.

I shouldn’t like this place, but I do. The prices are still on the reasonable side of steep, the service on the pleasant side of surly-seasonal, the views lovely, the grounds clean, the maintenance evident, the wifi free. I may even ride a coaster today, maybe, in keeping with my geezer status, the Blue Streak. Less terrifying than the big guns — the Millennium Force and, of course, the Dragster:

For now, I hear a rumbling from the bedroom; time to break out the granola bars and yogurt and get set for another day of high-speed and high-pitched yakking. It’s a wonderful life, and I’m grateful for it. Have a great weekend, all, and I’ll see you back here after Labor Day.

P.S. Yes, I know I should have been at the Eminem/Jay-Z concert last night. I wasn’t. See above.

A question for you frequent fliers: Do you ever fly first class?

I don’t travel often, but I fly at least once or twice a year, and in all that time, I’ve been seated in first class only once. It was when the puddle jumper from Key West to Miami broke down on the runway. (Add “do you smell jet fuel?” to the list of things you don’t want to hear two stewardesses murmuring to one another back by the galley.) I missed my connection, and I was rebooked back to Columbus in first. Without going into too much detail about what happened on my last night in Key West, let me just say that a first-class seat going home felt like a gift from… well, not from God. God would never have rewarded bad behavior that way.

But it was wonderful. The wide seat, the halfway-decent food, and especially the Bloody Marys, which started on the ground and continued without so much as a raised eyebrow until I drifted off into a lovely nap somewhere over Tennessee — it all felt positively luxurious, at least as compared to the conditions in steerage. (And this was 1980. Conditions in steerage weren’t all that bad.)

I had a friend at the time who traveled often for business, and always flew first-class. It was company policy that the consulting work they did had to include the expensive ticket, and she always said that if I ever needed to travel as much as she did, I’d understand why. Oh, I understand.

Over the years, I’ve known many people who brag of their ability to get upgraded to first, either through strategic deployment of frequent-flier miles, shameless flattery of gate agents, or equally shameless lying about bad knees and hips and pounding migraines. One guy just had the gift, he said; he had mastered the combination of grovel and assertive confidence that made the person with the power helpless before the request, and would unhook the velvet rope to the front of the aircraft.

I ask because there’s always a pause during boarding when you have to stand in the aisle right inside the door, and you can examine the lucky 16 or 20 or however many who have the good ticket, and while there are always the obvious candidates — the women with expensive jewelry, the guys whose innate imperiousness screams CEO, Sarah Palin — there are always a few wild cards, too. The ratty-looking guy with the enormous stomach — does he absorb the extra cost as a comfort measure? Because I wouldn’t want to pack that basketball into coach, either. The kid staring out the window with no evident parent — an unaccompanied minor? Someone tell her it’s not like this, and not to get used to it, she’s just getting the parental-guilt upgrade.

David Sedaris once wrote amusingly about flying first-class transatlantic on Air France — I guess when you sell books like that guy, your publisher doesn’t mind paying — and being asked if he’d mind if the crew seated someone next to him, someone who spent the entire flight sobbing. Having flown transatlantic in coach, I can say that if that kind of midflight upgrade doesn’t cheer you up, you’re probably suicidal. My transatlantic flight nearly featured a mutiny; a bigger seat would have made it that much easier to bear. (Confidentially, I’ve always wanted to make that crossing on a no-name freighter, maybe in an unused crew cabin. I could get some reading done and stroll on the deck twice a day.)

But the best comment on the subject was, of course, “The Airport,” one of the best “Seinfeld” episodes ever. I’d like one of those ice cream sundaes.

Bleh day, bleh me, bleh bloggage:

Said it before, saying it again: You should add Planet Money to your bookmarks. Especially if you’re not much of a money person.

“Deliverance,” the novel, reconsidered. I missed this last week, but the novel’s been out for decades — the reconsideration didn’t get stale in seven days.

Tonight marks the official announcement of the end of the war in Iraq. Years ago, when my crappy newspaper planned a special Victory in Iraq issue, my husband spoke up at the meeting and said it was a ridiculous idea, and that we’d be there for years. It got him scowled at, but it’s good to know he was right.

And here comes another hurricane. Time to get to work.

It’s good to get away from time to time — visit your buddies, observe the strange ugliness of the Bronze Fonz, swing over to Madison for pitchers on the terrace at the Wisconsin Union. Planned correctly, and with a lot of driving, a good weekend can be as much fun as a weeklong vacation. I’m grateful to all who hosted, cooked, drove and otherwise extended Dairyland hospitality.

The souvenir of the weekend — besides a mild hangover — was one of these, a Himalayan salt plate. I didn’t spend $60 for the big chunk, but I figured for $18, I could take a chance that my disk of pink rock salt might be an interesting addition to my batterie de cuisine. It certainly was an interesting addition to the TSA workers’ Sunday, as it got my bag yanked and hand-searched:

“Do you have ashes in here?” the guard asked.

“No, but I have a disk of Himalayan rock salt,” I said. “It probably has lots of minerals in there, too. Should I unwrap it?” He said I didn’t have to go that far, but he got a chuckle that anyone would buy a chunk of salt to serve food on. Obviously someone who doesn’t watch the Food Network.

Here it is, in case you’re wondering:

Impulse purchases — they’re what make our economy strong.

I’ll be getting away a little later this week, too, taking Kate and three friends for a two-day Cedar Point adventure. We chose this late date on the advice of fellow Michiganders, who swear by the secret week before Labor Day, when Ohio and Indiana kids are back in school and the Mitten rules the peninsula. Short lines for roller coasters, etc. We shall see. I think the only thing we can reasonably hope for is good weather. Fingers crossed.

For the moment, however, it remains stifling. The last few days started wonderfully, with bright blue skies, low humidity and reasonable temperatures, but once again, something happened and the heat settled in on Saturday. I am ready to wear something that doesn’t need to be white and absorbent. I guess I’ll have to wait a while for that.

Can’t have too much summer, I guess. So let’s skip to bloggage:

Because I don’t expect the relatives of exceptional people to be exceptional as a default, I am not surprised to learn that Martin Luther King’s extended family is a little, how you say, daft. But I found this story on Alveda King, Glenn Beck’s new BFF, to be instructive:

Alveda is dismissive of (Coretta Scott King), who died in 2006, saying, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t, she didn’t … Therefore I know something about him. I’m made out of the same stuff.”

Oh.

(And may I just say, it was wonderful to be [mostly] away from the internet for two days, and thus be spared Beckapalooza? I may throw my laptop away.)

Things you shouldn’t do when you’ve been drinking: Try to climb out on a window ledge on the 22nd floor to take a picture.

Finally, something that frosted my cookies last night and continues to do so: The egg industry says it’s time to say farewell to poached and sunny side up. Because how can they possibly keep 50 million damn chickens healthy? I’m now paying $2.50 a dozen at the farmer’s market I guess, what? Permanently.

Must run — manic Monday.

Sorry I’m late today. School registration this morning, followed by school-supply buying, followed by FIX THE PRINTER NOW SO I CAN PRINT LIZ’S BIRTHDAY CARD followed by this.

I’ll be late tomorrow, too. Actually, I’ll be gone tomorrow. Doing a little traveling this weekend, off to see the Trowel Tart in Wisconsin. I’m flying. In case you were wondering what it costs for a 75-minute flight from Detroit to Milwaukee, the answer is: Too damn much. Northwest’s heretofore reasonable fares between its Midwestern cities went pfft when it was swallowed by Delta. Still, it offers multiple flights daily and the only non-stops, although I love to see what Travelocity’s bots can cobble together for me — sure, I’d love to go from Detroit to Milwaukee via Atlanta and Houston with a flying time of 11 hours; and I’d save $20? Sign me up.

But never mind the cost — how often do you get to visit your best friend? Never often enough. Plus, a side trip to Madison is on tap, and that includes our other great pal, Dr. Frank. Who is now, a quick Google tells us, is on YouTube. Look at that mop of Irish hair. You’d never know his mother was Eye-talian.

So, with that, I make this a lame-ass fly-by. Let’s go right to some bloggage:

Stories you can’t make up, from the pharma beat: There’s a new drug to treat impotence. It’s made by a South Korean firm called Dong-A Pharmaceuticals.

As of late yesterday afternoon, this guy was on track to be the next Susan Boyle, but what the hell, maybe you haven’t seen it yet. Most excruciating candidate interview ever.

While we’re on the topic of amusing videos, via Hank and Kim Severson, a fine collection of Wendy’s training videos from the ’80s. Go ahead and make fun, but remember — that’s when Wendy’s had its mojo working. Now? Well, Dave is surely spinning like a lathe.

Did you know the case that led to this week’s stem-cell ruling started with a complaint filed by the people behind the “snowflake babies” publicity stunt? I’m sure that had nothing at all to do with it landing on the docket of a right-wing judge. No, not at all.

OK, I’m off to pack and groom. Have a great weekend, all.

A few people forwarded me this list today, about the worst bedbug infestations in the country. To my amazement, Cincinnati tops the list. Columbus — such a clean city! — is right behind. Detroit is No. 5, Dayton No. 9, and Baltimore — hey, Lippman! Feeling itchy? — is No. 10.

For the record, I have never seen a bedbug, or felt one’s bite. I know they’re a problem in New York (No. 7), but until I read this, I never dreamed they were moving west. I blame washed-out Brooklyn hipsters leaving Williamsburg to move back in with mom and dad in Worthington. Along with all their little friends!!!!!

The first person I knew who picked up scabies was gay. It was the ’70s, and we all know what that meant. He got scabies, then crabs, then hepatitis, then AIDS, and that was that. But it was the scabies that freaked me out. I knew the chances of me ever having unprotected anal sex with a stranger were pretty damn slim, but you could get scabies — he told me, scratching his arm — from sitting on the wrong couch. Yikes.

Alan had a friend who got the same thing in a Motel 6 (he swears), and for years on our many travels by car, he refused to even consider stopping there. (The prices for more respectable lodgings in Santa Fe changed his mind, and we found the Motel 6 there to be nicer than many Holiday Inns.)

Every night I troll the nation’s newspapers and wire services for health news, and I am here to tell you: From microscopic to smashable-with-one’s-foot, them bugs is gonna get us all. What doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger, and you can never kill them all. That said, I am never buying another piece of upholstered furniture used, and anyone who comes into my house is going to have to stand on the back steps for skin inspection and fumigation.

Which just dislodged a memory from “Gone With the Wind” (the novel): As the soldiers begin walking home after the war’s end, Mammy polices hygiene at Tara, requiring all to strip naked and submit to having their clothes go into “the b’iling pot,” while simultaneously scrubbing down with lye soap, followed by a home-brewed dysentery remedy: “…one and all, they drank her doses meekly and with wry faces, remembering, perhaps, other stern black faces in far-off places and other inexorable black hands holding medicine spoons.” Such happy slaves. Such a fascinating book.

Whenever I mention it, I teeter on the brink of a doctoral dissertation. I’ll spare you and skip right to the bloggage:

Why does everyone assume Mrs. Tiger Woods learned about his cattin’ ways via a supermarket tabloid? I’ve suspected from the beginning the revelation came at her gynecologist’s office, delivered with averted eyes and maybe involving, yes, crabs. Not that she will tell you.

Rich people of means, please learn to grow old gracefully. Plastic surgery might fool some people in your 40s, but down the road, it will only make you look like a monster. Your wife, too.

With the retirement of the Crown Vic Police Interceptor, competitors are rushing to fill the market for police cars. The Freep showcases the contenders, including one from an Indiana startup called Carbon Motors. One of the police stations around here has a tricked-out Mustang, and no, I don’t know why, either, except that they had the money and felt like spending it.

Meanwhile, the News looks at 75 years of the Chevy Suburban. You have to really love cars to live in this town. Tolerate ’em, at least.

Thank God I have Tom and Lorenzo to tell me Isabel Toledo now has a line of shoes at Payless. And they include a fetching fake-fur boot, just in case I need to make some extra coin on Woodward some grim winter.

Have a great hump day. I’ll be humpin’ copy, as usual.