OK, it’s wrong to laugh at another’s misfortune. And the behavior in these circumstances doesn’t exactly seem…rude. But don’t you wish that more people answering their cell phones would find them suddenly bursting into flames?

I mean, you know, like at movie theaters. Or in class.

UPDATE: Oh, poop. The link requires registration. Here’s the money part:

New Paltz � Matt Erhorn was pumping gas into his car at the Route 299 Courtesy Mobil station at about 9:30 p.m. Thursday when he reached into his pocket and answered his ringing cell phone.

���Erhorn refused treatment at the scene and didn’t answer his phone yesterday.

If you want to know the technical part — why answering the phone set off the gas fumes — then go ahead and register.

From the beginning, the worst thing about the Abu Ghraib affair was this: That every humiliated prisoner puts scores of innocent American troops in heightened danger. That while Leash Girl might be back in Fort Bragg safely gestating her little Damian, what she left behind makes her fellow soldiers that much more unsafe. Anyone who thinks we aren’t thisclose to a barracks bombing or some other mass atrocity as a result of this simply isn’t paying attention. Nick Berg could well be only a warmup.

So what’s the reaction in the whistle-blower’s hometown? Oh, they have their priorities straight:

“They can call him what they want,” says Mike Simico, a veteran visiting relatives in Cresaptown. “I call him a rat.”

Sorry for the lack of activity around here. I feel like a deflated balloon these days. The hours are empty, and yet strangely purposeful: Find the next thing. Only the next thing is like something in Tony Soprano’s half-hour dream sequence last night — in the firm grasp of someone I’ve whacked. No, that’s not quite it. Still.

I start the day making a list: 1) Exercise. 2) Find the next thing. With the weather finally warm, the first is easy. Number 2 gives me problems.

Don’t read anything into that last sentence.

We opened the lake cottage yesterday, and got the usual early-season bad news — who’s bought what, etc.. A nearby shack, unoccupied for years but on a nice lot, finally sold for a preposterous price, which means we’ll likely have a new whiny rich neighbor building a horrible huge house nearby. I wonder what he’ll do when he discovers he has about six inches of water going out 50 feet or more — dredge, probably. Or try to. Then, when the DNR denies his permits, whine about his property rights.

Can you tell I’m feeling peevish?

The brown drake mayflies are hatching with a vengeace, in numbers not seen in years. A simple walk across the lawn kicks up clouds of them, which then land in your hair, on your nose, on your glasses. Houses and trees are covered with them. It’s really kind of cool. Years ago a friend of mine in the U.P. invented the Cedarville Sling — gin and Squirt with a hexagenia mayfly on the rim of the glass.

Speaking of peevish, I’ve been wondering what the reaction was to the Catholic bishop who said parishioners who vote for pro-choice politicians should not receive communion until they repent, although, God knows, that probably won’t be enough: “It might take a public recantation,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “There is no sin that is unforgivable” but Catholics shouldn’t vote for candidates who support abortion rights and “then slip off into the confessional.”

Oh, and that’s not just abortion rights, by the way. He also singled out euthanasia, stem-cell research and gay marriage. I’d imagine birth contol is on the list, too, but he didn’t say anything about it, so never mind.

From reading Amy’s blog I know the conservative Catholic reaction, but I was interested in the rank and file. So I asked cradle Catholic Dave:

I can’t believe there are still any Catholics with minds of their own left.� I can’t understand why anybody is still taking communion from these creeps.� I don’t understand why anybody even sets foot inside a Catholic church anymore.� I can’t imagine how that bishop can have the gall to speak as though he has any moral authority left and I can’t imagine how anyone in his diocese keeps from laughing in his face.

I don’t know how many other Catholics feel the way I do, but our church is full every Sunday.� I’m guessing that a lot of the men are there for the same reason I am, to make their wives happy, to present a united front for the kids.� But I don’t know.� I see a lot of guys who look like they’re really praying.� My wife won’t talk about it with me, other than to say that the priests don’t represent the church.� But if they don’t, then what’s the church?� The ladies in the Rosary Society?� They’d love that.� Power hungry harpies!

Glad to know I’m not the only peevish one around here lately. Off to the bike lane and the iPod — anything to get Diane Rehm off the soundtrack, which will no doubt help my mood.

We like precise weather information in our household, so I can tell you what the conditions were in our back yard at 10:30 a.m. today — 70 degrees, relative humidity 93 percent. For those of you who live outside the humidity zone, I can tell you this means the effort of lifting a cup of coffee to your lips causes sweat to drip off your nose. I had a cafe date with Fatih and Idil, and wanted to arrive exercised and showered. I arrived sweaty and late.

Oh, well. This didn’t stop Fatih from his customary over-the-top Turkish greeting, calling me, for the millionth time, “my favorite American.” The cafe owner, a fellow middle easterner, was unimpressed: “My favorite American is Julia Roberts.”

Turkey isn’t really the Mideast, is it? But it’s not really Europe, either. If nothing else, I have my acquaintance with Fatih, Yavuz, Idil and Nursen to thank for our family’s latest catch phrase for when we end up in the weird hinterlands (lately, any place outside Ann Arbor): We are in eastern Turkey now.

What a nice visit we had, a little post-Fellowship fellowship. They’re awaiting the birth of their little American citizen, I’m awaiting the end of Kate’s school year. None of us have jobs — they’ll be looking when they return to Istanbul, aided by the absurdly low salaries paid to nannies there. Evidently you can hire a Moldovan woman to care for your child, clean and cook for about $300 a month. If you’re lucky, she might have a medical degree. Yes, your own personal five-day-a-week pediatrician and household chef.

“I don’t know if I’d like a pediatrician vacuuming my carpet,” I said. “I’d think she’d have special reason to be irritated.”

“No, they’re the nice ones,” Fatih said. “The greedy ones become Natashas.” (A Natasha is a prostitute, and you can probably guess why they call them that.)

The wind is howling — tornado warnings north of here, severe t-shorms coming this way. So let’s round up a few links, for the bare handful of readers who come our way over the weekend:

Poor Diane Kruger: Tall, thin, beautiful, but not beautiful enough. Slate explains the problem Helen of Troy poses for casting directors. I can’t imagine looking like her and then having to read a bunch of reviews written by nose-picking movie critics, complaining I don’t have what it takes to launch a thousand ships. She looks plenty pretty enough to me, although she certainly doesn’t look Greek.

The Boston Globe Iraq sex pictures story is just too weird for words, but even more worrisome is the objectionable picture itself, which even an amateur surfer of internet porn could tell you depicts …internet porn featuring actors, not the real deal. Sometimes I think a dirty mind is one of the most valuable assets a working journalist can have.

Slate’s Timothy Noah claims he predicted, like, two days ago that soon the right-wing apologists for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal would start blaming the ’60s. Hmpf. I actually made that prediction days earlier, but not out loud or in print, just, you know, inside my head. So I can’t claim credit. But I don’t really want to, seeing that Noah has compiled the assorted blaming in one handy clip-n-save guide.

Summer is really here when the dog gets a stylin’ new summer ‘do. Today was the day.

Before, fuzzy and hot:

After, slick and cool, with a new fashion accessory:

He is such a handsome devil. As usual, the groomers thought he was the cutest thing in the joint. And he was.

One of the things I did in the undisclosed location was mainline media. Hotel life is lonely, and you find yourself leaving the TV on, if only for the comfort of hearing another human voice. I hardly ever watch cable news, so I took the opportunity to sample all that was available — MSNBC, CNN, Fox. And all I can say is: I fear for my country, if people who watch this stuff consider themselves well-informed.

But that’s nothing compared to commercial talk radio, where lies, misconceptions and wrong-os fly by at the speed of sound, uncorrected. Yesterday I set the button on scan and picked up a show somewhere on the AM dial. Turned out it was O’Reilly’s, with a guest host, someone named Napolitano. The topic was whether John Kerry is a good enough Catholic to receive communion, although the host and caller were on a side road, discussing his first marriage.

“The church rarely, rarely grants annulments, and never grants contested annulments, and the first Mrs. Kerry contested this annulment,” the host said. “So we have to ask, is his marriage to Theresa Heinz illicit in the eyes of the church?”

Sure, we have to ask that question because it’s really so important. Only how can a guy with an Italian name hosting a right-wing news show talk such crap? Rarely? Does this guy actually know any Catholics? I haven’t stepped into a church in going on five years, and I can probably fill up my fingers with couples granted annulments just in my social circle, and some of them were contested by ex-spouses. They’re about as hard to get as anything that costs a few hundred bucks, involves lots of paperwork and requires a wait of several months. Like ordering a foreign sports car, only way less expensive.

…in Mich-i-gaaaaan. Hmm. That song doesn’t really work without that extra syllable, does it? Ah, but who cares? A long drive home from the undisclosed location last night — 10 hours at freeway speeds, except in the Chicago area, which hardly ever runs at freeway speed. Not that everyone isn’t trying. Aggressiveness was a feature of the big-shouldered city even before the invention of the motorcar; the high-end SUV — yes, I’m talking about you, BMW drivers — only gives it a new, fun outlet. I’m talking weavers, tailgaters, bumper-to-bumper 70 MPH expressways.

The best compliment I ever received on my driving came from John, when we were traveling from Fort Wayne to Milwaukee for Deb’s wedding. We had time, so we got off I-90 after the Skyway and took Lake Shore Drive through the city, to enjoy the sights, but of course the driver doesn’t get to do this, as you must play DeathRace 2000 to get through not only unscathed but un-f*cked-with; show any sign of weakness, and soon you’ll be pulled off on the shoulder weeping into your hands. (Something like this happened to Bob Greene the last time he drove a car; I remember reading this somewhere.) Witnessing my transition from happy Hoosier to snarling urbanite, John said, “It’s just…seamless! We passed some invisible boundary, and you became an urban driver!”

You better believe it. Now let me in this lane!

I found the western edge of Chicago driving around the Cook County line on I-90. On one side, calm and courtesy and slower traffic on the right. On the other, every man for himself. I actually refused to let a driver into my lane because he had a Bush/Cheney sticker on his Honda, shocking even myself, but what can I say? I’d been listening to war news for a large portion of the trip. If I can’t make the president himself pay, his supporters will have to do.

So now I’m home. What a difference 10 days makes. The leaves have gone from a delicate, pale green to a deep, takin-care-of-bizness green. The lawn needs mowing. And today the dog goes for his summer haircut — photos t.k., as we say in the newspaper biz.

As for me, I’m off for a bike ride along the river and a chance to listen to the MP3s I ripped out of Alex’s record collection. You think you know a person, and then you find Grand Funk Railroad’s Greatest Hits in his CDs and realize: Facets upon facets — aren’t people wonderful?

Dr. Nancy Snyderman responds to the Fort Wayne bishop who got her booted as commencement speaker at a Catholic college. Her crime was mentioning “fetal reduction” in a piece on the litter-like pregnancies produced by fertility drugs. Not only that, she did so SEVEN YEARS AGO, which suggests someone in the diocese has one hell of a clipping service. One passage:

Do not presume to know me. That is offensive. I hold my political and social views very close and very few people could tell you my opinions on such matters. In my 20 years as a journalist I have been careful to separate my personal views from the facts of medicine and science. I have taken great care to try to objectively explain complicated medicine and science to the American public. On the rare occasion when I have voiced an opinion, I have labeled it as such. None of those occasions has included the subject of abortion rights.

In my experience, issues are rarely black and white; life�s journey is rarely linear. I think I understand and respect the sanctity of life and have made some gut wrenching decisions as a surgeon. I marvel daily at the depth and magic that my three children have brought to my life.

This won’t do any good with the bishop, because, see, first she calls it “abortion rights” instead of “the vicious slaughter of millions of preborn innocents;” she says “issues are rarely black and white,” when everyone knows that in this case, they most certainly are; and finally, she only has three kids. How can she say the bishop doesn’t know her? It’s as plain as the nose on her face.

…when I read the papers about the Bad Soldiers’ hometowns, the American reporters never seem to dig up the quotes the foreign ones do:

At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong.

“Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you’re hunting something. Over there, they’re hunting Iraqis.”

On the other hand, there’s no shortage of bar drunks to say things like this, either…