Man. I was so careful. I bought my Panther upgrade last month but decided to wait until the term was over before I installed it. My plan was to upgrade my 4-year-old iMac from OS 9 to Panther, then upgrade the PB, and finally have the Fabulous True Home Network I always wanted.

The good news: I backed up all the data on the iMac before I started.

The bad news: The iMac took the first Panther disk and said the machine would require a firmware update before it could proceed. I hit “eject” and the machine hung. I hit restart and the screen went black. I got the disk out but the screen remains black. My theory is it’s stuck in a twilight zone between two the OSs, and doesn’t know what its display is. John’s is, the monitor perhaps picked a really coincidental moment to curl up and die.

In the meantime, I have my laptop. And my frustration.

Any thoughts? Send them.

In the meantime, two things: Catching up on the news these last few days, I’m not surprised Kathleen “Glamour Shot” Parker came to dear ol’ Strom’s defense (sort of) on the nation’s op-ed pages, but I’ve been too busy doing laundry and Christmas shopping to do what Greg Beato did, i.e., see if her thoughts about Jesse Jackson’s out-of-wedlock fatherhood were any different.

Amazingly — I mean, who’da thunk? — they were. Beato’s got links.

Second, I don’t know who it was that thought the first “Angels in America” was disappointing — oh yeah, it was James, in the comments — but I just saw part II last night and it was breathtaking. Breath. Taking. Huge themes, deftly woven, passionately stated. No wonder right-wing critics can’t stand it; it’s too good.

Make the time to see it on one of its frequent replays. More tomorrow.

While I was gone, Alex wrote a nice recollection (scroll down) of Zoltan Herman, the Hungarian refugee who made his career as a Fort Wayne restaurateur. You might recall I wrote about our visit there last summer, when Zoli told us his dream to sell the place and return to his native land for his twilight years. (One look revealed he didn’t have many left.) Well, he didn’t make it.

Lunch, day one. Note the plate of touched — but not too touched — sweetbreads. It was a jet-laggy feed that produced the quote of the day: “Pass the medulla oblongata.”

Isn’t it great to see American culture as such a reliable export? “La venganza.”

It’s not just violent movies, though.

Evita still has her cult of personality.

From 1976 to 1983, the military waged a “dirty war” against political dissidents. Approximately 30,000 went missing, taken to be tortured and killed and, in the case of the pregnant women, kept as broodmares to supply military families with adoptive children. There’s been testimony and hearings, but so far no complete accounting of individuals. Their mothers still march every week, and sometimes there are larger demonstrations.

Not all demonstrations were mournful, though. While we were there, the city’s Boca Juniors soccer team won the international championship. Of course there was a loud, joyful and spontaneous party.

Whew. Sorry about that. I know I said I’d try to get something written during the week, but everything conspired against me, “everything” being defined as personal exhaustion. (Also, that Spanish keyboard, which reduced my usual brisk writing pace to hunt-and-peck.) The trip was, how you say, packed. We spent most of every day racing from one engagement to another, interspersed with the sort of eating you thought went out with the Romans, but didn’t. More on that in a minute.

I rode a horse on an estancia (“dude ranch” in Espanol), and I shook the president’s hand in Evita’s own Pink House (“Casa Rosada” in Ingles). That was pretty much the range of experiences we had. We met the U.S. ambassador, took a tango lesson, talked to political dissidents and victims of the military junta of the late ’70s, had briefings from bankers and economists on the country’s current economic problems, went leather shopping, drank many toasts to international friendship and rare beef. I can’t say I came away with an incisive understanding of the place, but then again, we heard again and again from Argentines that they haven’t figured the place out, either.

It was a wonderful trip. What a fascinating country. Interesting Argentine fact: Did you know this country is one of the last places where old-fashioned Freudian analysis still thrives? Really. There are 40,000 psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires alone. I sat next to one at dinner one night. She specializes in domestic violence and scorned the American method — Prozac and a few sessions of focused, results-oriented therapy — as superficial. I wouldn’t want to quote her on anything — her English was spotty, but far superior to my Spanish — but I think she told me that if one of her clients repeated her pattern of choosing Mr. Wrong, at least she’d understand why she kept doing so.

The country is one of the most European in South America, and shows it in its wedding-cake architecture and the easy-on-the-eyes faces that pass by in the streets. You see Indian bone structure and skin coloring here and there, but far more common the sharp noses and deep-set eyes of Spanish and Italian bloodlines. These are some great-looking people, the women with long, flowing hair and effortlessly chic outfits, the men in shaggy haircuts and nicely cut suits. They give you an air kiss when you meet and say “ciao” when you part, and if you try to speak Spanish to the shopgirls, more often than not they’ll answer back in excellent English, even outside the tourist districts. When I tried to ask which way Avenue Santa Fe was, the clerk said, impatiently, “Don’t try to tell me in Spanish. Just speak English.” Ohh-kaaaaay. I didn’t think I was massacring “donde esta” that badly, but I’ll take her word for it.

The food: Protein. We had at least four or five meals in parillas, steak houses where the grill is in the front window, a large, open fire surrounded by whole pigs, goats and sides of beef. They’re tended by career grill men and the meals they serve are orgies of protein. We generally started with an empanada — a meat pie, appetizer-size — followed by sweetbreads and assorted innards, salad and then — only then! — do they put a cut of beef the size of a baby’s head on its own little brazier next to your plate, along with a side of fried potatoes and whatever else they can stuff down your throat before you get gout. It was an embarrassment of riches, and led to a painful, “Y Tu Mama Tambien” moment our last night, when the last in our group to leave witnessed poor people fighting over the leftovers in the restaurant’s trash bags. We were told over and over that Argentina’s poverty rate now stands at 50 percent, with half of those in extreme poverty, and a smaller but still disturbingly high number who don’t have enough to eat. We saw evidence in the people who come into the city every night, digging through trash for paper and cardboard, which they sell to recyclers. Everyone was optimistic the improving economy might chip these numbers away, but I still spent too much giving to panhandlers and tipping at a 50 percent rate. With prices for nearly all locally made products at about one-third of what they’d fetch here, how can you not?

OK, then. I’m tired, having spent about 18 hours today in transit of some sort (and may I just say, the “trip map” function on the 777 aircraft personal video screen is the coolest thing since cinnamon toast), I’m ready for a Canadian beer, a vegetarian dinner and a long, deep sleep. Pictures later. Comments welcome.

The rest of the world knows all about internet cafes. As a person whose travels are more likely to take her to Indianapolis than Istanbul, they�re new to me. But as an alleged student of new media, I figure I�d better learn about them. So here I am, on Avenido de 9 de Julio (I think), blogging at 45 degrees south.

This won�t be a long item. I�m using a Spanish-language keyboard, and I can�t figure out where my favorite keys are. The apostrophe has been moved, so, few contractions.

Having a wonderful time! Wish you were here! BA is lovely and hot, full of handsome people and enormous steak dinners that sell for around $4 American. Otherwise, we�re seeing the city (Evita�s tomb yesterday, “Carmen” at Teatro Colon last night) and falling under its spell, if that isn�t too cheesy a way to put it. Tonight, tango.

And I must pay my cafe bill and meet my party. More later.

As much as I hate to say it, this is about it for me. Tomorrow is our departure for the southern hemisphere. There’s an internet cafe down the street from our hotel. I will try to blog. I do not promise to blog. I will certainly take good notes for a big upload in eight days or so, but no promises for in between.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this timeless image of Christmas. What? You mean you don’t have a white fiber-optic Christmas tree covered with Holiday Barbie ornaments? Get one.

See you, oh, a week from Friday? Sounds about right.

UPDATE: OK, I can’t stand it. I have to leave you with this, a remarkably straight account on, er, “alternative” naming (of actual children, mind you), by a Freep columnist:

Of late, the surprise inspiration for names has been products. In researching a list from the Social Security Administration of babies born in 2000, Evans found 273 boys and 298 girls named Armani, and 526 boys and 741 girls names Harley.

Cars and alcohol seem to inspire names; perhaps the combination was the inspiration for the children themselves. Evans has noticed a smattering of names like: Skyy, Champagne, Chianti, Chardonnay, Courvoisie(r) and Guinness, along with Lexus, Infiniti, Jetta and Camry.

A couple years ago, a particularly heinous murder in the Fort was perpetrated by a man named Ronrico. “That’s what his mom was drinking the night she conceived him,” I told Alan. I meant it as a joke; little did I know.

Sounds like a good time to flee the country.

If you haven’t heard, the woman involved in the day-after-Thanksgiving stampede at Wal-Mart — which spawned, among other things, a George Will chin-scratcher on returning Puritanism to Christmas, or something — is a “frequent faller” with a long history of these things.

I think it’s safe to say that if you have a child, you have a different fellowship experience than if you don’t. Tonight we had a party to bid goodbye to two of our number, leaving at mid-year, and the entertainment included a slide show of the first-term photo highlights. Watching it, I realized I’ve completely missed Thursday Night Bowling (Alan has a late class), and I left the Up North party in October before the player piano-and-charleston-dancing portion of the festivities.

On the other hand, I think it’s safe to say no one else in the KWF Class of ’04 marched in the Ann Arbor holiday parade today.

I was a parent escort for Kate’s Brownie troop. If there’s a happier duty than watching your giggling daughter march along behind a rippling brown banner, waving to passersby on a cold winter afternoon, I don’t know what it is. OK, I know: Marching in a parade on a warm spring afternoon. But it wasn’t too cold, the band was playing “Jingle Bells” and Santa’s sleigh was pulled (on wheels) by a real, if somewhat freaked-out, reindeer.

Afterward we watched the freaked-out reindeer stand in their pen, moved on to the less-freaked-out llamas, and had a late lunch in town.

I wish I had a more entertaining post for today, but I missed “Angels in America” and the most exciting thing I have to report otherwise is this: My screenplay is done. It’s been perforated three times down the side, bound with brads and will be turned in tomorrow, if the house doesn’t burn down overnight. In September I was warned this would be “the most challenging course you will take at the University of Michigan,” and while I wouldn’t want to give organic chemistry a whirl just to see how it stacks up, I’m glad to have survived it.

Anyone who’s visited San Francisco knows that city’s homeless problem is like no other, and this week the SF Chronicle addressed the problem with a series that can be difficult to read, but is worth your time.

What’s even more interesting is the reaction to it. Romenesko reports there were picketers, but I found the transcript of the online chat with the lead reporter even more enlightening — early on, they were assailed by an advocate for the city’s “mobile residents.”

Yes, “mobile residents.” Now there’s a euphemism for you.

Anyway, I read the Sunday kick-off piece, and it was both horrifying and, I regret to say, not too surprising. Concentrating on a knot of homeless people who sleep on a city traffic island, it introduced us to the group’s leader, who died of a necrotizing bacterial infection long before the stories ran:

It was the leg that did it. He had been letting it go for years.

“I kind of like it being open because I can shoot straight into the vein, ” he said last summer, while he fingered a fat vein pulsing up through the open flesh. He was sitting on the Island with people walking by — none of whom seemed to notice him or his leg or the syringes dotting the dirt under the trees. “Gets me well (high on heroin) quicker.”

Good God. There has to be another way.

The new edition of Poynter Report is online. My copy arrived a couple weeks ago, and seeing the online link reminded me how the smoke curled out my ears when I read this, by Skip Foster:

Jill Geisler, Leadership & Management group leader at Poynter, did something shocking a couple of years back.

People lashed out at Geisler in their website feedback, filling their responses with profanity of the worst kind. Letter writers gratuitously laced their responses with profane and vulgar language, as if it were a badge of honor. Few rose in support of her position. It was frightening.

Hmm. I remember that column, and I remember a different sort of response. Yes, some of the commenters “laced their responses with profane and vulgar language” in response to Geisler’s kindergarten-teacher scolding, but the gist was more along the lines of, Newsroom budgets are being slashed, editors spend more time in meetings than at their desks, news hole is shrinking. And you think, in a climate like this, that we should worry about cussing in the newsroom? Get a fucking clue, lady.

Or words to that effect.

Foster continued: Those who responded make up a significant faction of people who work at our newspapers. They are answering the phones, dealing with the public, and serving in a variety of positions. They are a component of a newsroom culture that apparently values profanity, meanness, and hate over civility, composure, and caring.

Apparently? Or it could be that we value plain speaking, honesty and traditional newsroom values over yet another head-scratching staff meeting over what our 21st century mission statement should be; or maybe we remember when raises amounted to something and employees were not told they’re now part of a “performance-based” workplace culture (no raise for you!). Or maybe we think, crazily enough, that newspapers ought to cover their state legislatures, and when we don’t, we feel like swearing.

Just a thought.

The idea that Foster thinks the same person who uses a bad word to describe Geisler’s dumb column cannot be trusted to answer the phone without saying, “What the hell do you want?” speaks volumes about why reporters think editors are clueless and out of touch.

One view: Somehow, our crucial watchdog role has morphed from healthy skepticism of the powerful into a dark force � an ugly brew of anger, mean-spiritedness, and antagonism that alienates readers and turns newsrooms into personality war zones. We have lurched from the honorable mission of holding the powerful accountable to a wholesale mistrust of anything that moves, even our colleagues. That attitude of mistrust and a disconnect from the newsroom and community is reflected in this “defense of profanity.”

Oh, for God’s sake.

You can read the rest of it — at the bottom of it all, he’s onto something, although I don’t think he knows how to fix it, because it seems to boil down to more meetings and team-building exercises — or you can turn the page.

I know what I’d do.