Yeesh, what a morn­ing. I decided to take time to absorb the morn­ing news­pa­pers in all their deceased-tree glory, really pay atten­tion and be-here-now and all that, and what did it get me? Behind. That’ll teach me.

And now, since I have about a mil­lion edits to do before 1 p.m., let’s toss up some links and let you guys get the party started, eh?

This story flapped around like a dying carp for a few hours yes­ter­day, and I still can­not believe it: The Amer­i­can Spec­ta­tor calls Shirley Sher­rod a liar for say­ing one of her rel­a­tives was lynched. I sim­ply refuse to link to the orig­i­nal mate­r­ial; you can find it else­where. But Josh Mar­shall cap­tures it suc­cinctly:

This one’s really one for the his­tory books under the sub­head­ing of right-wing #out­rage­fail, as the young folks might put it. (Writer Jef­frey) Lord starts off vaguely sym­pa­thetic and works up into a crescendo of high-dudgeon because Sher­rod says her rel­a­tive was lynched when in fact he was arrested by a sher­iff and then beaten to death on the cour­t­house steps while allegedly resist­ing arrest even though he remained hand­cuffed through the fatal beat­ing.

I am shocked, shocked that any­one would think any part of the right wing has racist ele­ments.

Haven’t checked in on Sweet Juniper for a while; appar­ently he’s been can­ning and camp­ing and — Jesus Christ, Jim — mak­ing a home­made sleep­ing bag? But there’s always inter­est­ing action over there if you check the side­bars. And whad­daya know? This photo is evi­dently not Pho­to­shopped. But this was the week’s show-stopper for me:

We are the annoy­ing peo­ple who come to your kid’s birth­day party with home­made presents. It’s okay for now I guess, but in a few years, when your kid wants Legos and we bring hand-sewn madras shorts or some­thing, it’s going to be really embar­rass­ing for our own chil­dren.

No, Jim. It’s embar­rass­ing for the other par­ents at the party who didn’t give, along with the home­made present, a cus­tom photo book of a story fea­tur­ing the home­made present and the birth­day boy and all the rest of it. Damn over­achiev­ers.

Do you have Planet Money book­marked, and do you lis­ten to their pod­casts? If not, you should. By the way, when Mitt Rom­ney said “lib­eral poli­cies” destroyed his fam­ily home in Detroit, recently lev­eled by bull­doz­ers? I think this is a far more likely nar­ra­tive.

Richard Cohen sort of embar­rassed him­self today, regard­ing the Wik­ileaks doc dump. Mitch Albom sounds a lot like this, too, when he dis­misses “inter­net blog­ging,” as he did in his own recent cane-shake, at Andrew Bre­it­bart. And Bob Greene is still sit­ting in a hotel room, still try­ing to draw grand con­clu­sions from triv­ial obser­va­tions. This has been your edi­tion of Print Dinosaurs at Play in the Tar Pits for today.

And I’m off to spin straw into… if not gold, at least some­thing read­able. Later.

Can’t decide whether to ride my bike to this morning’s meet­ing. Sun is out, skies are clear after a ban­gin’ thun­der­storm last night, but the temperature’s going right back to 90 again today. Which means I’ll arrive a sweaty mess, but? It’s sum­mer, and it already feels too short. I’m going.

Maybe I’ll swing by Grosse Pointe South High School on my way home, see if any movie trucks are there. They’re shoot­ing some­thing called “LOL” with Demi Moore and Miley Cyrus. “Scream 4″ is shoot­ing nights some­where in the Farms, at some rich person’s giant house. And there have been Hugh Jack­man sight­ings here and there; he’s mak­ing “Real Steel” in the neigh­bor­hood, as well.

“Real Steel” with Hugh Jack­man — it only sounds like a porno movie. It’s sci-fi, some­thing about robots. The dirty ver­sion will star Jack Huge­man. It’s one crazy Hol­ly­wood sum­mer here for sure.

Since I have to leave early, a bor­ing vaca­tion slide show. I finally got around to upload­ing our Mon­treal pic­tures.

This is the Basilique Notre Dame de Mon­treal. We enforced a rule that no one was per­mit­ted to call it “the church where Celine Dion got mar­ried.” You are sim­i­larly for­bid­den:

One after­noon drench­ing rains drove us into the con­tem­po­rary art museum. They were host­ing some sort of avant-garde film exhibit, empty room after empty room show­ing stu­pid film loops. I was far more inter­ested in the atmos­pher­ics of the dark rooms than any­thing else. Kate con­tem­plates Art:

A bike ride out to the islands took us past Habi­tat 67. If Stalin had a sense of humor, this is the sort of con­crete hous­ing he’d have built in the Soviet Union:

The Jazz fes­ti­val was just get­ting under way when we were there. There are guide­books:

“Pour les nuls.” Doesn’t “dummy” cross all lan­guages? I guess not.

Some blog­gage for the table? Sure:

Has the leak really stopped? I’m skep­ti­cal. Extremely.

Is Mark Williams for real? This guy is taken seri­ously? Are you kid­ding me?

Kwame Kil­patrick finally cops a feel on the woman he’s sup­posed to be touch­ing — and gets writ­ten up for it.

Time to slurp cof­fee and run out the door. Have a great week­end, all.

Michi­gan being one of the last states to start school — by law, it can­not start before Labor Day, the rather thin leg­isla­tive legacy of my last state rep­re­sen­ta­tive — it’s among the last to fin­ish, too. The teach­ers have to over­see their unruly herds for 4.5 more days, includ­ing today, and I don’t envy them, because the cor­rals are in dan­ger of being kicked to pieces. In keep­ing with the live­stock theme, I hope they were all issued cat­tle prods after Memo­r­ial Day.

No, that’s not fair. The end of the school year is as impor­tant as any other part of it, even if the tone is dis­tinctly dif­fer­ent. Yesterday’s sci­ence class was the time-honored Mentos-and-Diet Coke exper­i­ment, and next week in math class, they’ll be watch­ing a movie.

“What movie?” the cinéaste par­ent queried.

“I don’t know.”

“A math movie?” I pressed.

“Who would make a movie about math?” she replied.

Oh, child. How young you are. I’d sign a parental R-rating waver waiver [Yoinks! -- ed.] if the teacher screened Pi. Or “Good Will Hunt­ing,” or “A Beau­ti­ful Mind,” for that mat­ter. “Stand and Deliver,” “Proof” — there’s no short­age of pos­si­bil­i­ties, but my guess is, they’ll prob­a­bly watch some­thing bland and PG, and it’ll likely be “The Blind Side.”

Are there any doc­u­men­taries about math and its close rela­tion­ship with mad­ness? Surely that ground has been plowed. Ted Kaczyn­ski was a math­e­mati­cian, remem­ber, a PhD from Michi­gan. Go Blue. Many years ago, the New Yorker ran a long pro­file of two deeply eccen­tric Russ­ian broth­ers, one of whom lives in an apart­ment where they do noth­ing but tend to a super­com­puter that cal­cu­lates pi, end­lessly.

How long will it take Google to find it for me after I type “russ­ian broth­ers who cal­cu­late pi” into my search win­dow? Point-one-seven sec­onds. Some Rus­sians used their math prowess to more prof­itable ends. You want a movie? Your head could explode just think­ing about stuff like this:

Around the three-hundred-millionth dec­i­mal place of pi, the dig­its go 88888888—eight eights pop up in a row. Does this mean any­thing? It appears to be ran­dom noise. Later, ten sixes erupt: 6666666666. What does this mean? Appar­ently noth­ing, only more noise. Some­where past the half-billion mark appears the string 123456789. It’s an acci­dent, as it were. “We do not have a good, clear, crys­tal­lized idea of ran­dom­ness,” Gre­gory said. “It can­not be that pi is truly ran­dom. Actu­ally, a truly ran­dom sequence of num­bers has not yet been dis­cov­ered.”

Not long after this arti­cle was pub­lished, “North­ern Expo­sure” had an episode in which a young woman blows through Cicely, Alaska, doing this very same work. She is lovely and sane, not Russ­ian and a lit­tle bonkers. Which goes to show “Law & Order” writ­ers aren’t the only ones who rip from the head­lines.

More math/movie strange­ness: Schlock direc­tor Paul Ver­ho­even has a doc­tor­ate in math. I hope the class won’t be watch­ing “Show­girls.”

Does today have a theme? Let’s just cut to the damn blog­gage, eh?

This South Car­olina Sen­ate sit­u­a­tion gets weirder by the moment:

Indeed, in a three-hour inter­view, the unem­ployed mil­i­tary vet­eran could not name a sin­gle spe­cific thing he’d done to cam­paign. Yet more than 100,000 South Car­olini­ans voted for him on Tues­day, hand­ing him nearly 60 per­cent of the vote and a resound­ing vic­tory over Vic Rawl, a for­mer judge who has served four terms in the state leg­is­la­ture.

“I’m the Demo­c­ra­tic Party nom­i­nee,” Greene says in the inter­view at his father’s home on a lonely stretch of rural high­way in cen­tral South Car­olina. “The peo­ple have spo­ken. The peo­ple of South Car­olina have spo­ken. The peo­ple of South Car­olina have spo­ken. We have to be pro-South Car­olina. The peo­ple of South Car­olina have spo­ken. We have to be pro-South Car­olina.”

Some­one punch that guy’s reset but­ton.

A strange piece of e-mail arrived last night, from “Infor­ma­tion Tech­ni­cian,” i.e. ser­vice -at- vh4rs​.com. Sub­ject line: The infor­ma­tion you requested. No links within. No attach­ments. WHOIS lookup ambigu­ous. The con­tents of the e-mail, in its entirety:

Recipe: Overnight Fruit Salad

1. Place cab­bage on bot­tom of large salad bowl.
2. Top with pineap­ple chunks, man­darin orange sec­tions, grapes and raisins. Sprin­kle cheese atop.
3. Com­bine yogurt and sour cream; spread over salad, seal­ing to edge of bowl
4. Cover and refrig­er­ate for 4 to 24 hours. If desired, gar­nish with lemon and lime twist, curly endive, and a grape.

I won­der if this is some sort of extremely baroque virus. I won­der, if I pre­pare and con­sume this fruit salad, if I will be turned into a zom­bie. What­ever, I think two cups of dress­ing sounds like way too much, even for this much cab­bage and fruit. What’s the ver­dict of the crowd?

What­ever, it’s time for me to get a-movin’. Sec­ond wind is in progress! The week­end awaits!

UPDATE: No, wait, one more, for any of your Fort Wayn­ers who recall Charles’ Pugh’s brief time as a TV reporter in town. Now that he’s coun­cil pres­i­dent here in the D, he’s moved on to cost­ing tax­pay­ers even more money than his salary and the city car he wrecked his first month in office. For his body­guard. Every Detroit res­i­dent I know man­ages to find their way around the city at all times of day with­out hired mus­cle, using naught but their com­mon sense. Not this waste of oxy­gen. I ask you.

A cou­ple of days on one topic, and the blog­gage piles up. So let’s hop to it, shall we? There’s some good stuff here:

First, the Palin fam­ily con­tin­ues to stain the nation’s car­pets as young Bris­tol mama-sees-mama-does her­self into a poten­tially lucra­tive career as a pub­lic speaker. Her fee is said to be some­where between $15K-$30K, depend­ing on “what she has to do to pre­pare” to speak on such top­ics as absti­nence clap­trap and anti-abortion clap­trap. Hey, you know what index cards cost these days? Sorry, that’s edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing. I’m choos­ing not to be upset by this, as the sorts of groups who would pay such a fee very likely need to be sep­a­rated from their money some­how. Also, Bris­tol needs to start her five-school col­lege edu­ca­tion odyssey one of these days, and needs the bucks for tuition. My only regret is, this increases the chances we’ll see her on reg­u­lar old non fee-paying media. One more rea­son to con­fine my media con­sump­tion to NPR exclu­sively.

Also, the don’t-make-fun-of-public-figures’-families rule no longer applies. Not that it stopped any­one, but good lord, when you ask for it like this…

The peo­ple who came up with the Bacon Explo­sion evi­dently have Google alerts, because I was copied on their e-mail noti­fi­ca­tion that they have sam­pled the KFC Dou­ble Down sand­wich, found it lack­ing, and mon­keyed with it. How? By adding a slice of Bacon Explo­sion, sil­ly­pants. Taste test and many pho­tographs here.

I’m a sucker for a cer­tain kind of lib­eral patri­o­tism, and this story, about the United Nations of Ham­tramck High prepar­ing for its senior prom, touched me. Det­News colum­nist Neal Rubin calls Ham­tramck “absurdly diverse,” and it is, more diverse than an after-school spe­cial:

“You tell ‘em, ‘It’s some­thing seniors do,’ ” says Mohamed Alge­haim, 18, the class sec­re­tary. He was born here, but his par­ents are from Yemen, and the part about the tuxedo took some work, too.

“If you’re the first child, it’s harder to get across,” says Emina Alic, 18, the Bosnia-born class pres­i­dent. “If your broth­ers and sis­ters already went, your par­ents tell you you’re going.”

The 200 cur­rent seniors had read the memo early on. “There’s com­pe­ti­tion between classes,” says class his­to­rian Sab­bir Noor, 17, whose roots go back to Bangladesh…

Throw in the Poles who still live in the old neigh­bor­hood, the African Amer­i­cans who moved there in their own flight from Detroit and the rest of the eth­nic fruit salad, and you get a sense of the place.

Mov­ing on, a few cou­ples who will not want to hyphen­ate their names.

Finally, it can be told: This is the project I’ve been work­ing on since Jan­u­ary, the 75th anniver­sary book for the Detroit Eco­nomic Club. It’s a custom-publishing job, i.e., work-for-hire, but it was really inter­est­ing and I count myself lucky to have got­ten the gig. The DEC is a noon­time speaker’s club, but one of the most sought-after podi­ums in the coun­try, and lemme tell you, they have heard from every­one. (Except the Palin fam­ily.) I had full access to their archive at the Detroit Pub­lic Library, and it was pretty cool, going through files of cor­re­spon­dence with let­ters from peo­ple like Richard Nixon and Henry Ford II. The story of Detroit in the 20th cen­tury was the story of Amer­ica, and it was fas­ci­nat­ing to see who came to town and what they had to say when they got here. It cer­tainly left me with some new ideas about how we learn his­tory.

Any­way, the anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion starts tonight, I have to write about it for the book, and I need to throw together an out­fit that won’t dis­grace me in front of the movers and shak­ers. Both the News and Freep did sto­ries pegged to it.

I also have an early meet­ing tomor­row morn­ing, so this may have to serve for the week’s blog­ging. One ques­tion I leave you with: Where’s Coo­zledad? He hasn’t spo­ken up for a few days. Did he get kicked by a mule?

Jim at Sweet Juniper has a brief but hilar­i­ous post about a chap­ter of par­ent­hood that has passed for me, i.e., the parental expe­ri­ence of the play­ground. You should not be sur­prised to learn that it’s dif­fer­ent in Detroit than in San Fran­cisco, his last res­i­dence. (When an essay turns on the ful­crum, “Then I smelled the weed,” you know we’ve entered a new city.) And yet, in so many ways, it’s the same.

I used to love to take lit­tle Kate to Fort Wayne’s var­i­ous play­grounds, mostly Fos­ter Park and, when we felt like get­ting the bike trailer out, Kid’s Cross­ing at Law­ton Park. I’d push her in the swing and hope for another kid for her to play with, so I could con­cen­trate on the people-watching and eaves­drop­ping. You never knew what, or who, might turn up.

There was one fam­ily whose sched­ule matched mine for a time; the son took a ten­nis les­son while his three sis­ters killed time on the swings. They were nice girls, clad in the unmis­tak­able cloth­ing of the home-schooled Chris­t­ian — “mod­est” hem­lines, long sleeves, a cer­tain Little-House-on-the-Prairie vibe to the cut and print — but they were lively and sweet, played eas­ily with oth­ers, and I always enjoyed watch­ing them. One day they showed up, all three of them wear­ing some sort of kerchief-type head­gear, obvi­ously gleaned from a close read­ing of that ol’ misog­y­nist, St. Paul, and it was like their mother had tat­tooed WEIRDO on their fore­heads. The other kids kept their dis­tance, and they did the same.

Week­ends were dif­fer­ent. That’s when you saw the fathers, either because of cus­tody arrange­ments or just to give mom a break. Fathers relate to their chil­dren dif­fer­ently — they hover less, they care a lot less about clean cloth­ing. Once I watched one beam approv­ingly as his daugh­ter wal­lowed in an enor­mous mud pud­dle, as hap­pily as a pig. Every stitch of cloth­ing she wore was ruined, and her dad kept look­ing around to beam — that’s my kid, yep — as though he deserved some sort of medal for cool­ness. As the des­ig­nated laun­dress of the fam­ily, I with­held my approval. Dirt has its place on a kid, but this was ridicu­lous.

And there were the fathers who were look­ing for girl­friends, play­ing the sensitive-dad card, or maybe some­thing else. One mem­o­rable Sun­day, a young father com­man­deered a large por­tion of the play struc­ture as his per­sonal work­out facil­ity. He stripped off his shirt and began hoist­ing him­self around, doing chin-ups and var­i­ous abdom­i­nal moves, punc­tu­at­ing each rep with an ear-shattering ARRRGHHHAHHH that pen­e­trated every cor­ner of the park, the sort of grunt-yell that brands you an ass­hole even in the gym, much less on the playscape. Every­one glared, but he con­tin­ued until every mus­cle was shin­ing and engorged, then looked around for the babes he seemed sure would soon start flock­ing. I don’t think any did.

A dad tried to pick me up once, as I read Ruth Reichl’s “Ten­der at the Bone.” “Tender…at…the…BONE. Now, what could THAT be about?” he leered. As though I brought a dirty story to read on the play­ground. Because I’m such a horny mom. Sheesh.

The full breadth of the human car­ni­val parades before us, every day. It’s a crime not to notice.

No blog­gage today, other than Jim, because once again I have to clean myself up and cover three miles by bicy­cle in, what? Fif­teen min­utes? Best get movin’! Have a great week­end.

Eight­ies nos­tal­gia is all the rage these days. I told Alan the other night that “Hot Tub Time Machine” was prob­a­bly sold on the basis of the title alone, but now that I know it’s about the ’80s, maybe not. Every­one wants to wear their hair in those can­tilevered bang-poufs again, don’t they? Skinny ties, any­one?

For some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, I sug­gest you watch “Magic & Bird: A Courtship of Rivals” on HBO instead. I caught a few min­utes the other day, and was inter­ested enough to watch the whole thing on demand a few days later. (For some­one who pays zero atten­tion to sports, that’s some­thing.) You want ’80s hair, ’80s glasses, ’80s TV graph­ics? You got ‘em. In the bar­gain, you get some ’80s Mid­west, espe­cially Indi­ana. You can wal­low in it.

The title is the story — a look at the love/hate rela­tion­ship between Magic John­son and Larry Bird that stretched from col­lege rival­ries to NBA head-knocking, and like all great head-to-head matchups, tran­scends it all and ends up being about Some­thing More. That part, the something-more part, feels a lit­tle tacked on, if only because you get the idea the main play­ers didn’t give a crap about race rela­tions, ginned-up-for-TV con­flicts and clips from Spike Lee films, but just when you feel the riv­ets pop­ping, the nar­ra­tive skips back to clips of behind-the-back passes and arc­ing jump shots, and who can’t get with that?

My atten­tion was taken more by Bird, who was at the apex of his career when I arrived in Indi­ana, a source of great state pride, the embod­i­ment of all of Indiana’s beliefs about itself — not hand­some, but approach­able; not flashy, but hard-working; not a show­boat, but a team player; not Show­time, but Grind­stone. And so on. I was prob­a­bly the last per­son in Amer­ica to learn that Larry Bird mowed his own lawn in Boston, fre­quently with an audi­ence of fans watch­ing from the curb. How quin­tes­sen­tially Indi­ana, the poor boy’s reluc­tance to pay good money for some­thing he can do him­self in less than an hour. What else was he going to do? Read a book?

John­son, on the other hand, was a Michi­gan kid, one who learned his work ethic from his father, who worked at Gen­eral Motors, back when that was the dream of every blue-collar man in Michi­gan. Magic was another home­body who stayed close to home for col­lege, and ended up on the other coast, goggle-eyed that in Los Ange­les, you could have your own orange tree.

You could have a lot of things in L.A., it turned out, includ­ing six women in your bed at once, and we all know how that turned out for him. Bird hurt his back build­ing his mother’s dri­ve­way back in French Lick — why pay good money for some­thing you can do your­self? — and that was his turn­ing point. All sports careers have to end some­time, and you could hardly pick two more fit­ting end­ings for those play­ers.

But this was my favorite part: When the two were per­suaded to shoot a sneaker com­mer­cial together, and did it in French Lick, at Bird’s mother’s house, where Larry had built a full-size bas­ket­ball court to prac­tice on when he was back home again in Indi­ana. The script made much of how testy their rela­tions were, but when the crew broke for lunch, Bird invited Magic up to the house, where his mother had made lunch for them. Beau­ti­ful. There was no men­tion of the menu, but I bet they had fried chicken and baked beans. Just a hunch.

And now it is spring. Bright sun, etc. I didn’t think I’d live to see it. But here it is, and here’s the blog­gage:

One of our Grosse​Pointe​To​day​.com con­trib­u­tors caught a lovely pheas­ant photo this week. Look at those col­ors. Pretty, pretty bird.

Wow. This is remark­able. Rus­sell King’s open let­ter to con­ser­v­a­tives. I’m prob­a­bly the last per­son to rec­om­mend this, but there you are.

Best Twit­ter joke in a while: #Sarah­Pali­nonDis­cov­ery

Off to get my oil changed.

The head­line I’ve been wait­ing to write: Cause of death is elec­tro­cu­tion, but not by urine.

Thanks! Noted.

Well, I’ll get an iPad. Even­tu­ally. Not this year, but maybe next, when the hard drive gets big­ger and the price drops and I start doing all my work in cof­fee shops. If noth­ing else, it seems to be the e-reader that might tip me into e-reader ter­ri­tory, not that I’ve been wait­ing for one. But, you know, I like to keep up. And if the iPad and other tablet devices throw a life­line to news­pa­pers, then I’ll feel oblig­ated.

You have to be care­ful, though. I some­times call my iPod my musi­cal id, because when I started buy­ing music online, I flocked to the shame­ful hit sin­gles I’d been turn­ing up on the radio all these years, but only when I was alone in the car. Songs I was too cool to like, or songs that were the one decent track made by Dis­ap­point­ing Artist X. I wouldn’t buy DAX’s album, but 99 cents seemed to be the right price point to buy the one or two Madonna songs I enjoy (“Don’t Tell Me,” “Ray of Light”), or Lou Gramm’s “Mid­night Blue.” You have ear­buds in all the time any­way, so it’s not like any­one knows you’re a secret Eminem fan.

And then dig­i­tal music became the only music to buy, you hook the iPod to your stereo now, and so I have an iPod clut­tered with crap, and more than 1,000 songs to sort into “ear­buds only” playlists, lest one pop up at a din­ner party and embar­rass me. (I down­loaded Chakakas’ “Jun­gle Fever” after watch­ing “Boo­gie Nights,” OK? And I regret it! I always fast-forward past it!)

I don’t want the same thing to hap­pen with my e-reader. Yes­ter­day I asked Laura Lipp­man what’s bet­ter for her, as an author — ink on paper or pix­els on a screen — and she men­tioned the obvi­ous use for Kin­dles, et al:

I use it pri­mar­ily for travel and I stock it with B-reads, things I don’t care about own­ing in hard­cover for­mat.

In other words, pretty much the way I used my iPod at first.

I also asked Hank Stuever about this, and he got his own blog post out of it, and you should go read that, too.

It’s the news­pa­per model I’ll be watch­ing most closely, of course. These are my peo­ple, they pro­vide my health insur­ance, and I have a stake in see­ing them sur­vive. Late in Hank’s post, he quotes a lovely para­graph from another essay about news­pa­pers, about the authen­tic expe­ri­ence of actu­ally hold­ing and touch­ing your authen­tic expe­ri­ences. I keep com­ing back to the 3A Tiffany’s ad, run­ning daily in the New York Times and Wall Street Jour­nal, upper right-hand cor­ner of the page since for­ever, and how much I look for­ward to see­ing it every day. The other day it was the engagement-ring ad, four big Tiffany soli­taires tum­bled in a row. I always take a minute and appre­ci­ate it. I will never own a Tiffany’s soli­taire. I don’t par­tic­u­larly want one. But it’s a beau­ti­ful photo, and I allow myself a few sec­onds of mild envy, the way if you were walk­ing past Tiffany’s in New York, you might stop to look in the win­dows, like Audrey Hep­burn.

Over to Face­book. Upper-right-hand cor­ner: If you are a 52-year-old dri­ver from Michi­gan, your car insur­ance rates can be as low as $14.98 a month. Click to learn more. Ear­lier today, it told me 52-year-old women could get a free pair of Uggs for par­tic­i­pa­tion. Click to learn more. I’ve asked this ques­tion a thou­sand times, and no one can give me a good answer: If all the college-educated eye­balls are online, if the smartest and the wealth­i­est peo­ple are look­ing at com­puter screens all day and most of the night, why are the ads the equiv­a­lent of the free Amish fire­place?

Oh, and as to the name of the iPad: Are all you peo­ple chil­dren? When did Beavis and Butthead join the focus group? Do you snicker when you hear “heli­copter pad” or “note pad” or “pad Thai?” Maybe because I was always a tam­pon girl, and grew up in the era when men­strual pads were called “san­i­tary nap­kins,” one of the great euphemisms of its day, I don’t imme­di­ately asso­ciate the word “pad” with men­stru­a­tion. Grow up.

I also thought Barry’s speech last night was pretty damn good. I liked how he called out the party of No. Fuck you, Sammy Alito, you smug piece of shit. And great job on that GOP response — find the XY equiv­a­lent of Martha Coak­ley, flank him with a black woman and an Asian man, and have them nod and clap on cue. Way to bring it, you soul­less toads. I’m stick­ing with Barry.

OK, then: Yesterday’s work spilled over into today, so I’d best hop to it.

We’ve had a few sunny days this week, sunny and warmish, so of course these must be paid for in blood, and today is the pay­back — cloudy with a chance of leaden. I started to go for a third cup of cof­fee and reminded myself to let the first two do their thing before I mak­ing the call on a poten­tial stomach-sourer. But if there was ever a day for it…

Despite the sun­shine, yes­ter­day sucked the big one all around, didn’t it? The Supreme Court deci­sion promises to be a shit tsunami; about the only good thing I can see com­ing out of it is the final strip­ping away of all that who-me?-a judicial-activist? pos­ing by Roberts, Alito, et al.

Actu­ally, I can see other good out­comes, too. If there’s one thing jour­nal­ism has taught me, it’s this: You never know. You really don’t. Any­thing can hap­pen to any­one, any­time. One or two elec­tion cycles jam-packed with corporate-sponsored lying could lead to a great pop­ulist revolt in this coun­try. Scalia could drop dead, with Clarence Thomas throw­ing him­self into the grave right behind him. (“Papa!”) I have faith the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is not over, not by a long shot.

For now, I’m choos­ing to be opti­mistic. It’s really the only one for a day like this.

I have to be out of the house in just a few min­utes, so let’s just go to the blog­gage and let you guys take it away, eh?

Farewell, Beck­ham. Tbogg’s dog died yes­ter­day, too.

Via Hank, a con­ser­v­a­tive dares to speak truth to the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment.

Some­times, when your side loses, it helps to imag­ine the oppo­si­tion in its under­wear. Or in other sit­u­a­tions where you just know they wish there hadn’t been a cam­era around. This pic­ture (the fes­tive clam­bake one, that is; scroll down) has been around for­ever, but in light of yesterday’s events, let’s make  sure it lives another day, eh?

And now I’m off.

Warn­ing: Major lan­guage ner­dos­ity ahead.

There are a bunch of bill­boards around town right now. Adver­tis­ing a new smart­phone, they pro­claim it “a bare-knuckled bucket of does.” Every time I pass, I think of deer. Every time. The ads sug­gest a cer­tain dystopian men­ace, and does — as in a deer, a female deer — are not men­ac­ing crea­tures, for the most part. I’m not alone. Lan­guage con­sul­tant and blog­ger Nancy Fried­man writes:

Only the tagline, buried at the bot­tom of the ad, solves the rid­dle: “In a world of doesn’t, Droid does.”

What we have here, folks, is anthime­ria gone bad: a verb (third-person, present-tense to do) treated as a noun. And because said verb ends in an S and is spelled exactly the same as a real noun, we end up in a buck­et­ful of don’t go there.

Anthime­ria, I learn from fur­ther research, is the use of any word that’s nor­mally one part of speech as another. For years I’ve been rail­ing against impact — a NOUN, peo­ple, a NOUN — used as a verb: The cuts impacted the teacher’s union, or, if you really want to pile on the 21st cen­tury usage, The cuts neg­a­tively impacted the teacher’s union.

As fre­quently hap­pens when the forces of good bat­tle the forces of evil, how­ever, we’re los­ing. A drug­store dis­play I saw the other day:

Yikes.

In the case of the bucket of does, this might be one case where I’d advo­cate hip-hop spelling. At least it would make sense that way: bare-nuckled bucket o’ duz, yo.

OK, then. About once a week I feel the need to sleep in, and today was one of them. I’m get­ting a late start on a busy day, so we’re going to make today a grab bag of this ‘n’ that and links ‘n’ stuff. Ready? Let’s begin with that other always-evolving insti­tu­tion, mar­riage:

I’m won­der­ing what it would do to the atmos­phere at our break­fast table if I marched in one morn­ing and said, I’m telling my lawyer I’d like a hefty seven-figure sum to stay with you. Prob­a­bly it would crack every­one up, but that’s what you get when you don’t look like Mrs. Tiger Woods in a bikini — com­edy.

Jim at Sweet Juniper had an event­ful Thanks­giv­ing. Read all about it. May I just pause here and thank the blog­gers of the world who write about par­ent­hood and fam­ily life as well as Jim does? Say what you will, but very few news­pa­pers ever pre­sented any­thing as won­der­ful as that brief essay. Par­ent­hood — or, almost always, moth­er­hood — was either pre­sented Bombeck-style or Albom-style and very rarely like this.

I have a whole rant cued up for the Asian carp issue, prob­a­bly not one that’s of inter­est to you peo­ple who live out­side the Great Lakes, but I’ll spare you today. Just know that once again, we’re learn­ing about the haz­ards of non-native species intro­duced into com­plex ecosys­tems. The hard way.

Gym, shower, cross­word, shop­ping. I’ve got a whole bucket of does on line today. Have a good one.