During the class break last night, a young woman reported that she’d run in the Chicago marathon over the study break. She finished in a respectable time and now wants to try for Boston. “But I need to lose 20 pounds first,” she said, taking a drag on a cigarette. (Yes, really.) “And give these up.”

Hell, the fact she was able to finish a marathon in the four-hour range with 20 extra pounds and a party-butt habit is already pretty damn impressive, if you ask me.

Anyway, someone asked if anything interesting had happened during the race. “Some woman shit herself,” she said. “And she kept running! That’s amazing, and pretty dangerous.”

Actually, I think I’ve read that diarrhea during marathons is pretty common; certainly it is in ultra-marathon and Ironman-style races, if the brown backsides you see on ESPN are any indication. It only confirms my belief that running is insane, or at least: Not for me. (I’ve always said I’d take up running when they come up with a sports bra with hydraulics.) A few years ago the Washington Post ran an interesting piece advancing the Marine Corps marathon, where they asked experienced runners to talk about their most memorable experiences in the sport.

Good lord, but if I hadn’t been put off before, that certainly sealed the deal — bleeding nipples, hypothermia, leg cramps that register on the Richter scale and my favorite, attacking ravens (this in a marathon in Antarctica, for those whose goal is to run 26.2 miles on every continent).

Later, one of my classmates asked, “How much money would it take to get you to run a marathon?” Not for sale at any price, I told him. “Ten thousand? How about $10,000?” he asked. No. Finally he upped it to $100,000. Put the cash in escrow and I’ll think about it.

Tonight in screenwriting the teacher told us to be brutal to one another in our study groups. He didn’t exactly put it that way, but he did tell us to correct one another’s grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, and for some of the folks in my group, that means being brutal. I’ve been impressed by the originality a lot of my classmates have shown in their stories, but a few seem utterly uninterested in the its/it’s distinction — in the age of text-message abbreviations (CUL8R) and alternative spelling, it seems schoolmarmish to point out that you misspelled “douchebag” in your dialogue on page three. I let it go by in study group today, but as the only professional writer among us, I guess it’s time to bring out the blue pencil.

The other problem that’s arising in everyone’s pages is dialogue. The rule is: Show, don’t tell. And yet we all want to tell. “Now that my graduation is but three months away, it’s time for me to look for a job in a metro area large enough for me to get soy lattes and day-spa treatments in the same two-block area, but still with that small-town warmth I value so much,” a character might say. “Fortunately for me I just dropped my arrogant, posturing boyfriend, who thought he was too good for me and valued me only for my narrow waistline, large breasts and piercing blue eyes. If only I could meet a man who values me for what’s inside, not just my attractive exterior.”

Disclaimer: My own stuff suffers from these problems in spades.

The fabulous Michael O’Donoghue once wrote a guide to this stuff called “How to Write Good,” and hey — it’s online. And his riff on exposition through dialogue is much funnier:

(The curtain opens on a tastefully appointed dining room, the table ringed by men in tuxedos and women in costly gowns. There is a knock at the door.)

LORD OVERBROOKE: Oh, come in, Lydia. Allow me to introduce my dinner guests to you. This is Cheryl Heatherton, the madcap soybean heiress whose zany antics actually mask a heart broken by her inability to meaningfully communicate with her father, E. J. Heatherton, seated to her left, who is too caught up in the heady world of high finance to sit down and have a quiet chat with his own daughter, unwanted to begin with, disposing of his paternal obligations by giving her everything, everything but love, that is.

Journalists: Make sure you read at least as far as “Covering the News.” Word.

Today is one of those days, the first one back in class after fall break and with a to-do list a mile long. It starts with Russian 101 in 49 minuntes and goes on from there — haircut, office hours w/prof I need to schmooze, a really interesting-sounding lecture on libraries and the Patriot Act, then home to print the first five pages of my quote screenplay unquote, then off to screenwriting study group and then, finally, screenwriting 310.

In other words, little to see here today, other than that wholesome-looking picture below.

In the meantime, may I suggest some of my fave blogs of late: The Minor Fall, the Major Lift, The Antic Muse, Low Culture and, of course, Dong Resin. Please try not to notice how much I’ve been stealing from them, OK?

See you back here late tonight, mos’ likely.

Those of you who use MS Word know its trick of guessing what you’re writing, then either a) sending that annoying Mr. Monitor in to “help,” or b) giving you the option of saving a few keystrokes by finishing the word for you. The first one gets on my nerves; I know how to write a damn letter, thanks so much. But the second is sort of cool, since it’s non-intrusive, although I type fast enough that by the time I’ve noticed it’s offering to fill in the rest of “November” for me, I’m already done.

Today, hunting and pecking in Russian, I started to write the word “Sunday,” and what do you know? I got as far as “Boc” and yowzah, there it was: “Bockpecene” (with the myaky znak that belongs after the n, of course), hovering over the text. Why, thanks, Mr. Gates — always happy to let you finish that one for me.

I thought of that, wandering the high-tech wonders of the Media Union today. Not being much of a sci-fi reader, my first ideas about what technology might do for us came from “1984.” I feared a world of two-way telescreens and Big Brother and lovers creeping away to a grove of saplings, none big enough to hide a microphone. And look what’s happened? It’s almost 180 degrees different. Technology puts power in the hands of people more than governments, makes our lives easier and safer in a million ways. Ninety-nine cent album tracks you can pick and choose, a video-editing program so cheap it came bundled free on my laptop, the world as close as an e-mail address. And it finishes my words. Wonders upon wonders.

P.S. Yes, I know I will be singing a different tune when the aging iMac eats my screenplay four pages from its conclusion. Just let me go with it for now.

Part of our fall obligation, as Knight-Wallace Fellows, is to prepare a 30-minute presentation for our fellow Fellows. Topic: Ourselves. Yep. Half an hour of chitchat about ourselves. Just kill me now.

It’s pretty wide open. You don’t have to stand up and tell your life story. One guy played the cello, another woman decorated the house southwestern style and sang praise to her native Texas — these are all stories from past years, which we were told to give us the gist and an idea. (Why is it always Texans who do this? You’d never catch a Coloradan preaching yee-hah and cowboy boots to a bunch of people in Michigan.) There’s a schedule for these things, and I go next week. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but I expect there will be visual aids. I went over to the Media Union today with a stack of old slides and scanned them. This is one I actually sort of like — the box said “summer ’83,” so that’s me at 25. What was I thinking, parting my hair that far over with a forehead like mine?

I think I have my theme: “Good times, bad hair.”

Sometimes being an auditor is kind of fun. My Russian assignment for tomorrow is to write two short stories, one about a house, the other about a family. Story #1 goes, basically: I live in Ann Arbor, on the street called “South Circle.” My house is big and red. It has a large kitchen but small bedrooms. There are 10 trees in the yard. On Sunday, I raked leaves… And so on.

For story #2, I decided enough was enough with that boring crap: These are the Smiths, John and Mary, and their children, Robert and Susan. They are Americans, living in Moscow. “John Smith” is not a true name. “John Smith” is in the Mafia! John and Mary import narcotics from Siberia and send them to America. Yesterday, Susan took a trip to Siberia with her class. “Please,” John asked his daughter, “Carry this package to my Siberian friends…”

I hope the instructor appreciates it.

Having a hard time getting moving this morning? Pour a second cup of coffee and speed-read this long but fascinating analysis of the online writings of John Doe, Disciple of the Englober, Br. Mujahid, Prof. J — all pseudonyms of John Walker Lindh.

Had to think for a minute, didn’t you? Yeah, it seems so long ago.

It’s still interesting.

Despite not having actual jobs, Alan and I are doing more tag-teaming of our parenting duties than I thought possible, this fall. Today, a can’t-miss meeting of his study group left me alone to attend our first parent-teacher conference. Kate’s teacher and I sat in those little chairs that make you feel like a giant and shared the good news.

I’m so lucky — she’s doing fine in school and I’m thrilled that she’s doing fine. But no kid is perfect, and so there were “areas in need of improvement.” One, “modulating voice” and two, “controlling side conversations.” You can go through all of my grade-school progress reports and find me consistently lacking in both of those areas. And so I feel the fiercest, most binding parental emotion of all. Empathy.

It took a while — like, until about 15 minutes ago — to remember that today is Columbus Day. It’s a pretty laid-back one around here, because there’s no class today and tomorrow, a custom the U. calendar calls “study break.” (Based on my efforts to find a sitter who can stay late tomorrow night — we want to see Lucinda Williams — everyone has gone home for four-day weekend and is probably not studying.)

Anyway, having the students gone neatly sidesteps the tiresome debate over how to honor a bloodthirsty genocidal blah-blah and shouldn’t we instead be spending our time in contemplation of indigenous peoples blah-blah, and blah de blah de blah.

I will have none of this. Never mind the city of my upbringing; I’m down with my man Chris. The old and new world were on a collision course, and smallpox and bloodshed and all the rest of it was inevitable, given the times and the evolution of man’s thinking on the subject of the differently melanined. Yep, it was a big fat sucky turning point for the natives, but it was one for the world, too, and I can’t say it was an entirely awful one.

Columbus Day also makes me think about my hometown, Ohio’s capital city. When I was in grade school, we were asked to think about the far-off date of 1992, the 500th anniversary of the great voyage of discovery. Our fourth-grade teacher told us to expect the Olympic Games in our very own city, because surely that is how the world would want to honor this wonderful anniversary. Ha. Political correctness, a wave no one saw coming, swamped Columbus’ little flotilla of pride. I remember attending the National Society of Newspaper Columnists convention in Columbus in ’92, and hearing some droning bore of an Indian, name of …I forget his name. He was included on a panel discussion of how awful Christopher was, and he concluded with a ponderous, mau-mauing speech about how the white race introduced — introduced! — murder and rape to pristine, virginal North America, and why didn’t we talk about that, huh? Huh?

Oh, well. Water, bridges, etc. The P.C. wave itself sort of petered out, but the timing was all wrong, and the 500th anniversary was marked not with the Olympics, but an international flower show and a replica Santa Maria docked on the city’s boring, tame riverfront.

The columnists toured the little ship, and that, as much as anything, made me think Columbus is worthy of a minor holiday. The 15th century was not a time when people reached ripe old ages, especially sailors. The ship was impossibly small, and remember, it was the largest of his little Navy. To take such a vessel into the trackless, unknown ocean (during hurricane season!) seems as brave as tying a bunch of weather balloons to a lawn chair, just to see what’s up above the trees.

Me, I’m at work on my screenplay (which explains the frequent blogging today). Half the day is gone, and I’m on page three. I’m struggling with the problems of dialogue — how do you introduce an obscure cultural custom without having the characters sit around talking like the characters in a fourth-grade hygiene film?

“Mom, why is it important to wash our hands after we use the bathroom?”

“Well, Jimmy, eliminating bodily waste can be a messy process, and even if we’re neat about it, we can’t see every germ that might be passed to our fingers when we touch–“

I’m tempted to add a character — Mr. Anthropologist, a small cartoon figure who will pop up while the rest of the actors stand around in freeze-frame.

The new loyalist line on Rush Limbaugh was only a matter of time coming, wasn’t it?

Will the Dittoheads forgive him? Probably. Gary Bauer, president of the conservative organization American Values, drew a distinction between a crack addict and Limbaugh�s brand of addiction. “From a moral standpoint, there’s a difference between people who go out and seek a high and get addicted and the millions of Americans dealing with pain who inadvertently get addicted,” Bauer told Newsweek.

BONUS: How Rusty might spin his statement if someone else made it.