It occurs to me that I’ve been falling down on the job here. It seems NN.C has become Just Another Blog, only more boring. Oh, to be TMFTML, if only for a day (preferably the day I could write something like this). To have the sharply focused BS detector of Soundbitten. To be as funny as The Poor Man.

Or, for that matter, to be able to leave for a night class and not have my daughter stick out her lip and say, “You’re never here anymore!”

Failing at all jobs — that’s me, these days.

Did I mention my laundry’s undone at the moment? And we have houseguests coming for BirthdayFest 2003 this weekend.

I think I’m just feeling the enormity of missing my REM sleep last night. The wind started howling at nightfall and didn’t let up all night. It tore the cap off the chimney and blew trees and branches down all over the region. We kept our power, but our house is surrounded by tall, mature trees, 10 of them, and at least one or two look to be in suspicious health. In winds gusting to 60 miles per hour, this does not make for sound sleep.

Plus, I just realized I have less than a month to write about 50 pages of screenplay. Screenwriting — there’s a siren’s trap for you. You pick up a screenplay and say, “Hey, it’s what? A hundred pages? And most of it is white space? Why, this’ll be a snap!” OK, so I wasn’t that ignorant, but for someone who can bat out 800 words in a few minutes, I was stunned at how slowly script pages can come. On the other hand, this is some of the most interesting writing I’ve done — not that it’s a great script, but it’s completely new. When you’ve done essentially the same job for 18 years, novelty is not something to dismiss. And I cannot lie: It’s exhilarating, when your character says something boring, to just hit delete-delete-delete and make her say something a little snappier. That’s not an option you have in journalism. (On the other hand, if it stays boring, you have no one to blame but yourself.)

So, if things get a little, oh, dry around here, give me a few days and I’ll catch up. In the meantime, here’s a joke our speaker told tonight:

A writer picks up the Village Voice and reads an ad: “Writers wanted for a free Caribbean vacation!” So the guy goes down to the pier the next day and shows his books — “Look, I’m a writer!” A man says, “Great! You qualify!” and takes him onboard the ship, where he’s taken into the hold and shackled to an oar. He looks around, and the hold is filled with similarly shackled people, presumably all writers. A man comes in with a whip and starts flogging them, and away they go.

So they row and row and row for weeks, getting whipped all the time. After seemingly forever, they’re unshackled and taken out of the hold, onto a beautiful white-sand Caribbean beach. The next day, they’re all taken back into the hold, whipped some more, and driven, after weeks and weeks of rowing, back to New York.

As they’re being unchained from their oars, the writer says to the guy sitting next to him, “So. Do we tip the guy with the whip?”

And the guy replies, “We did last year.”

Thank you! We’ll be here all week!

I feel bad about posting that stuff about bad flight attendants. It reminded me of something I read once in Salon — a hilarious recollection of passenger behavior on the infamous San Juan Special. Recommended.

Now I have to go pick up tonight’s seminar speaker at the airport in Detroit. Since the wind is gusting at about 50 miles per hour outside, I expect he’s going to have a story of his own to tell, not to mention an urgent need for clean underwear. I wouldn’t fly today for all the poppies in Afghanistan.

Some of you longer-time readers remember when we swung the mighty weight of teeming dozens of NN.C readers to vote Mark the Shark’s daughter Leah into a rookie spot for the Indianapolis Colts cheerleading squad.

Today, the Journal Gazette gives us the obligatory hometown girl makes good feature. But it has a great big picture! The good news: They didn’t make her dye her hair.

Today’s news theme is: Bad flight attendants.

First, a Supreme Court case, via Slate’s fine Dahlia Lithwick: The problem here, of course, is that Hanson didn’t die as a result of an “accident,” as we’d colloquially use that word. He died because his flight attendant was a bitch. Sadly, his wife can’t recover for that under the Warsaw Convention.

And from the Freep, a reminder that bitchery, like dunderheadedness, crosses gender lines: A flight attendant with a novel approach to a crying baby:

Cunningham drugged the then-19-month-old with Xanax, a prescription medication for panic attacks and anxiety. The FBI said the baby was squirming and crying, Cunningham became upset and told the mother: “This is starting to be a problem.”

He got probation and a curfew.

Bad news for the mitten state: Deer hunting is in decline in Michigan, perhaps the sport’s world capital.

And why? The usual reasons: Enthusiasts are aging, and they’re not being followed by their children, who’d rather pursue other interests, to wit, “soccer, computers, skate-boarding, music.”

But before deer hunting fades into the sunset, this seems a good a time as any to Google the lyrics to Da Yoopers’ greatest hit, eh?

The good news: Jon Carroll is back from his longest vacation, like, ever. He went to Mexico this time, and we are all better for it.

The bad news: For the next year or so, I will be writing three columns a week rather than five. I do not want to cut back, nor do my editors want me to cut back, but bureaucratic exigencies have prevailed. This temporary curtailment has nothing to do with either with my political opinions or my health. Please set your paranoia meters to zero.

Damn.

I’m so old — how old are you? — I’m so old I remember when Bob Seger was called the Bob Seger System, and had one song worth listening to: “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man,” which I love for many reasons, but mainly two. Those would be 1) the organ intro; and 2) those crazy lyrics, which seem to sprout entirely from the appealing rhyme of “ramblin'” and “gamblin’.” Let’s see, we’ve got a man born lonely down by the riverside, who learned to spin a fortune wheel and throw dice. He needs to ramble, he needs to gamble, he needs some lovin’. Add that great organ, and what else do you need?

Seger’s subsequent career arc as the poet laureate of blue-collar workers and inspiration for Bob Greene column collection titles didn’t exactly leave me cold, but for every gem (“Come to Papa,” “Roll Me Away,” “Main Street”), there were seemingly a dozen overplayed, overexposed, overeverything classic-rock radio standards that made you wince and change the station. Have you ever been to a wedding where “You’ll Accomp’ny Me” was the bride and groom’s first dance? Come on, you know there have been a few.

Seger’s been gone so long I thought he’d retired, but it turns out, no. Yes, this is Michigan, but when Salon signs on, it’s plain my indifference is not widespread.

Over the years, I’ve written a column or two for my newspaper on my fondness for John D. MacDonald’s novels, particularly his Travis McGee series.

But more people will read Jonathan Yardley’s appreciation, probably because it’s, you know, so much better.

When my good friend Dr. Frank Byrne was promoted to president of Fort Wayne’s largest hospital a few years ago, he was the first M.D. to become head of such an institution in Indiana, and part of a national trend of doctors switching to health-care administration.

My newspaper ran his promotion as a business-page brief.

Over the years, we’ve gotten many a chuckle over this. Frank’s no longer hospital president; a couple years ago he became vice-president of the hospital’s foundation, giving money away to health-care charities and getting more into the public-policy end of administration.

Then this week, his position was eliminated. Front page!

We will have many more chuckles over this, I’m sure. In the meantime, if you want to hire a smart pulmonologist with strong administrative experience and a good sense of humor, well, he’s available.

It happened — I’m quoted in The Michigan Daily story about Mankoff. (Hiding behind the thin shield of my married name, of course.) Always happy to help a young reporter, that’s me.