There comes a time, even in a pandemic, when one simply can’t abide the restrictions for one more minute, throws caution to the wind and opts for something UTTERLY CRAZY like… indoor dining.

It was perhaps irresponsible, yes, but honestly I thought I was going to crack from boredom. Alan too, so when he said, “You want to do something?” I thought fuck yeah, I want to try this spot in Dearborn I’ve been meaning to check out for something like three years. I know we’re negative and won’t be infecting anyone. If it goes the other direction, well, I knew the risk.

This place is said to have the best hummus on the planet. (Possible headline for my obit: Unsuccessful writer ‘died for hummus;’ in last words, claims ‘it was worth it’) I can report that while my personal experience with hummus isn’t all that wide, it was in fact very good, and so was the foul, the harhoura, the falafel and the mint tea, as well as the roasted potatoes they sent to the table on the house, why I’m not sure. But I tipped 25 percent. Everyone’s having a hard time, and it was so nice to get out. Of course any carb-fest in Dearborn wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Shatila, a bakery and sweet shop where they serve Lebanese and French pastries:

Truth be told, I’m not the biggest fan of that super-fussy style of dessert — I’ll take a good slice of in-season peach or apple pie over that, any day — although they certainly are fun to look at. And my choice, the pineapple cake at the top left, was very good.

While we were at the first place, we stumbled across the restaurant’s chickpea stash and I took a picture, but I won’t post it here because I suspect it could be an OSHA violation to store a literal ton of chickpeas in 50-pound sacks in a hallway, but when they’re destined for such tastiness, I am willing to keep my mouth shut.

And now I’m so full I won’t eat until tomorrow, but a good swim in the morning will use up the calories.

It was a fine day, for January anyway, and we drove home on surface streets, Warren Avenue all the way, from the hookah shops and clothing stores for traditional Arab women through the industrial this and that of Detroit, then Wayne State, then the east side and all the way to GP.

On the drive out, Alan’s phone chirped with a news alert, which he immediately checked. “I always hope it’s news about Trump having a massive stroke,” he confessed. “Not today.”

The rest of the weekend was spent absorbing another Lansing scandal: The most recent Speaker of the House, a 33-year-old preacher’s kid who spent his six years in the lower chamber basically being a professional Christian, was revealed as anything but. His sister-in-law came forward to claim he started sexually abusing her when she was 15 (and he was 21), and didn’t stop until last summer. It’s a tawdry tale, but only surprising if you are shocked that halo-polishing Christians dig hanging at strip clubs and banging lots of chicks. I am not.

Nor am I surprised by the ex-Speaker’s high-and-tight fashy haircut. It’s like semiotics with these guys.

Bloggage? Here’s something a little light-hearted, that serves as a pretty good example of why Detroit stands alone as a news town, or at least on a par with Miami: A flashback story about the time a radical anarchist prankster threw a shaving-cream pie in the face of a so-called “child guru,” then was tracked down by the guru’s followers and beaten with a hammer. The prankster sounds like someone I would have liked a lot:

Halley was a well-known rebel character in the Wayne State University neighborhood. He drove a cab for a living but was also a writer, poet, pamphleteer, actor and self-described anarchist clown. He staged guerilla-theater events in parks, streets and the lobby of the Fisher Theatre, where he and fellow performers taunted people paying top dollar for mainstream Broadway plays.

Operating his own storefront theater, Halley once put on a satire about the 1978 massacre in Jonestown, Guyana, offering the audience Kool-Aid. That was a sardonic reference to the hundreds of Jonestown cult members who died after a drinking a fruit-flavored beverage laced with poison. On another occasion, Halley led audience members through the Cass Corridor as actors popped out from behind trees and garbage cans. One of his characters was Dirty Dog the Clown, who played a harmonica and spouted radical slogans.

In a 1978 Free Press article that recalled the pie incident, Halley, with a straight face, told a reporter the plastic plate surgeons had implanted in his head picked up radio signals.

All this entertainment for the cost of a newspaper. I ask you.

Happy week ahead, all. Let’s hope I’m still testing negative at the end of it.

Covid test came back negative. I went back to the pool Wednesday. Of course, if I go to the pool, there’s a chance I’ll get it from one of my fellow swimmers, because everybody has Covid here. Kate’s entire band. All the other bands in the city, seemingly. And now, the governor’s husband.

Part of me wants to get this over with before we have our bathrooms remodeled at the end of the month. God knows those Ukrainian contractors haven’t been vaccinated.

Just what we need, coming out of the holidays, right? Another winter confined to quarters, or to a drafty tent somewhere? I put on makeup and a fancy French scarf to go to CVS this afternoon, because I think I may be going insane. As the man says, I picked the wrong month to stop drinking.

Oh, what am I talking about? We had a lovely dinner tonight. (This one, plus some oven-roasted potatoes.) Tomorrow starts the weekend. The tree has been dragged to the curb and run through the chipper. Kate and Alan are downstairs buffing the bass they’re working on. Life is good, even if it is very cold. Eleven degrees this morning, 19 at the moment.

Peter Bogdanovich, or as I like to think of him, Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, died today, a man with great talent who proved that at heart, even great artists of keen intelligence are sexual toddlers. His erotic fixation was a lot like John Derek’s, it turns out. Derek was married four times; his last three wives looked so much like one another they could have been sisters. Bogdanovich fell for a series of 20-year-old blondes, two of them sisters. Those would be Dorothy and Louise Stratten, of course, and you can google the details. Dorothy was murdered by the husband she left to be with Peter, of course. We all saw “Star 80,” which wasn’t terrible at all, and not directed by Bogdanovich, but Bob Fosse. Don’t know much about Louise, except that she’s allegedly a movie producer and that their marriage didn’t last. (No! Really?)

I liked him as Kupferberg, which for you non-“Sopranos” watchers was Tony’s therapist’s therapist. He was great in the part, no doubt having done years of therapy himself. He understood the subtle humor of the role, the kind of doctor who keeps a giant water bottle at hand and drinks from it often, because lord knows you can’t drink enough water, can you?

Anyway, he was 82, surprisingly old to me. He got his full measure.

I see everyone took apart that J.D. Vance profile from a few days back, so I won’t bother to link. What a fucking maroon that guy turned out to be. This seems to get to the point with admirable succinctness:

Some people think this is the sound of a thoughtful man whose ideological transformation should be treated with respect. https://t.co/xxgnTBrCSH

— Stephen Rodrick (@stephenrodrick) January 6, 2022

Onward to the weekend, then. Have a good one.

Day three without alcohol, and I slept well last night and had the best workout I’ve had in a while. Starting to remember why I do this every year.

There’s a fair number of doom-and-gloomers on Twitter at the moment, ringing the fear bell, saying omicron will devastate American workforces in coming weeks, and it’s best if you stock up on everything now and have a plan for when you’re down to existing on ketchup soup and a seven-year-old can of white asparagus spears, which is all that’s left in your pantry. Case numbers certainly are mind-bogglingly high, but hospitalization is fairly stable. I’m not inclined to panic just yet. Although I headed out to the grocery at a very bad time yesterday (5 p.m.) and found it had been stripped like the last visitors were a swarm of locusts. I’m blaming that on the holiday weekend, however. Lots of company, much of it staying longer thanks to airport snafus.

Meanwhile, Margie Greene lost her Twitter permanently, leading some of American’s leading conservative intellectuals to lose their shit:

Just totally absurd. These companies need to be crushed. pic.twitter.com/FqAsMoZZaR

— J.D. Vance (@JDVance1) January 2, 2022

Once again, I must say it: The comedown of this guy, from Thoughtful GOP Leader to I’ll-Say-Anything-to-Get-Elected Troll, is breathtaking. And he still won’t get elected.

Just a quick blog offering today, the NYT obit for Sandra Jaffe, who along with her husband established Preservation Hall in New Orleans, and in many ways saved traditional jazz in the process. Another of the many, many contributions of Jews to jazz.

Random France picture? Sure. Since it’s scarf season, a stop at the Hermes store:

Au revoir!

Well, happy new year to all. I promised three posts this week and I guess this is the third, even though it’s Saturday.

I hope you all had a peaceful and pleasing Eve. We’re feeling fine, and it seems we may have dodged Covid. Kate’s illness flew in and out the window in about 48 hours, and so far, we’re symptom-free. I got a PCR yesterday — no results yet — and Alan got a PCR and instant, with the latter coming up negative. So you see? It’s true! Covid is just big-government mind control!

I’m still self-isolating until my results come in. It’s supposed to be warmish today with a snowstorm later tonight, then bitter cold, so I’m planning a long outdoor walk, maybe on Belle Isle. I walked three miles yesterday, to the grocery for a few supplies and back, and was amazed by how it wiped me out. Three miles! Of course, having slept four hours the night before probably didn’t help. But Dry January starts today, and I might as well make it comprehensively healthy.

I did a fancy surf ‘n’ turf dinner for my last night of wine consumption for a while. Beef tenderloin and scallops, with individual spinach soufflés and chocolate lava cake for dessert. Then we watched “The Lost Daughter” (recommended) and I folded my tent early. Even the usual midnight fusillade of gunfire couldn’t wake me. Man, I needed to sleep.

Resolutions? This year? OK, just some easy ones: Read more ink on paper, fewer pixels on screens. Listen to more new music. Don’t look back. Get to Spain (or maybe Italy). So I best get moving, eh? See you Monday.

This is a story probably little-noticed outside Michigan, the Midwest, and/or political-junkie circles, but the newly created Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission finished their work (for the most part) last night, approving new district maps for the U.S. House and state legislative districts.

The state is losing a district, which will make for some musical chairs. As for the Nall/Derringer co-prosperity sphere, we’ll move from the 14th to the 13th, expected to be a safe hold for Rashida Tlaib, the pottymouthed Palestinian-American squad member of impeach-the-motherfucker fame. The state districts are more of a we’ll-see situation, but most agree that the new maps, while still imperfect because of course they are, will make for a more representative state legislature and federal delegation than the disgraceful gerrymander they will replace.

There’ll be a lawsuit filed in the 13th, in fact, over the loss of majority-minority districts, and in fact, Michigan could end up with no black congressional representatives, which is startling for a state that contains America’s blackest city. On the other hand, “packing” is one of the ways to dilute black political power, and blacks have been moving to the suburbs for decades. Rashida is Arab-American, but she’s been a stand-up voice for people of color in her district so far. The courts will decide, I suppose. But for now, I’m pleased. (Tossup districts are way more competitive now — in that they exist. And if Trump tries to steal another election in 2024, we might have more of a fighting chance, at least in Michigan.)

This is the current 14th District:

And barring court modification, the purple-shaded area will be the 13th:

At least I’m no longer in a district with Pontiac, which would take me nearly an hour to reach by car. On freeways. In a densely populated urban area.

From the whining I’m picking up in rural areas of the state, I’m calling this a success.

That’s the good news. The bad? Kate went back to her house two days ago, after testing negative for five days previous AND the day after Christmas, started feeling bad, tested again and came up positive. So now we wait, and isolate. Oh well — we didn’t really have any firm plans for New Year’s Eve anyway. And she was feeling better within a day. Me, I’m fine-ish, in that I’m not sick but not not-sick, if that makes sense. Alan’s fine so far. Me, I’m running on about 87.5 percent, which is indistinguishable from the mildly bleh feeling I get after the rich foods, too much wine and scarcity of outdoor exercise during the holidays. But I’ll be safe. No socializing until I test negative and another week passes.

Some stuff to read in the slow week? Sure:

Here’s the always-interesting Olivia Nuzzi on Dr. Oz’s Pennsylvania Senate bid, which contains a hilarious long anecdote involving an improperly disconnected cell-phone call to Mrs. Oz:

To my surprise, she picked up — for about a second. Just as quickly as it started, the call was over. I had barely said hello. Unsure if we’d been disconnected or she’d hung up on me, I tried her back. The tone of her voice suggested it had definitely been the latter.

“How did you get my number?” she asked sharply. I told her that her number was listed in public records, and this annoyed her too. “Oh,” she said, “I should have gotten rid of that.” I was about to explain that public records don’t work that way, but she cut in. “Have a nice day,” she said, but it sounded like a cross between the way women of the South say “Bless your heart” and men of Brooklyn call some asshole “pal” after being cut off in traffic. Then she hung up.

Or she thought she did.

It may be paywalled, and if so, I’m sorry. Try an Incognito window.

Also, the battle over wind power in west Michigan. Not everyone thinks it’s wonderful.

Me, I”m off to work now.

Our favorite — OK, my favorite — cheeseburger place is one door down from a vacuum-cleaner shop. Lately when we walk by I say, “I am Dyson-curious.” The newfangled ones, the battery-powered stick vacs that are super light, cordless and work really well.

Do I need to tell you what I found under my Christmas tree this year?

But not a Dyson! Alan, our household’s shopping ninja, did the usual exhaustive research and reported that Consumer Reports — Consumer fucking Reports! — has blackballed Dyson stick vacs because the batteries give out after two years and aren’t replaceable. So mine is another brand, recommended by Wirecutter. It has an app. It’s very light. And it sucks like (insert vulgar expression here). I love it.

I also got a lovely scarf from Alan, and some new clogs. The vacuum was from Wendy, because Alan says he knows better than to give me a vacuum cleaner for Christmas, but when you really want one, who would mind? This is the time of year when, on clear days, the low winter sun blasts through the front windows like a spotlight and finds every stray dog hair and dust bunny in our house. I do not have to drag out the old one, plug it in, find the right attachment and the hose and all that. I can just zap it. So it’s a highlight of the holiday, in my book.

The other big highlight was just being able to see everyone again. We blew down to Columbus for an 18-hour visit, minus Kate, who was staying away because Covid is bouncing through her circles like a pingpong ball. She’s masked more than a surgeon, but it’s popping up in the clubs where she’s doing live sound, among her friends — everywhere. She tested every day last week and came up negative, but given that her uncle has COPD and another uncle isn’t in the best shape, she did the abundance-of-caution thing and stayed home. But she came over here for Christmas Eve and Day, and we had a wonderful time. I did minimal cooking, moderate baking and we all got plenty to eat and of course, to drink. We watched “Don’t Look Up” together, and I watched “The Courier” while Alan and Kate worked on a guitar-restoration project in the basement. I made this cake. (It’s easy and great, although mine looked like someone cut their finger over it, rather than artfully impressionistic peppermint swirls.) I recommend “Don’t Look Up,” even though it got some blistering pans. “The Courier” is best saved for Russophiles like me. Oh, and we watched “Lamb” because Iceland, and it kinda blew our hair back in the end, although very slow-moving in getting there.

So. Some of you are off next week, you lucky dogs. Some are in a very slow-moving workplace. Almost everyone is trying to vacuum up all the year’s dog hair, so to speak, before another one sneaks in. Maybe you’d like to take a break from closet-cleaning to read some longform journalism, and if so, I can’t recommend this piece highly enough. It’s about three January 6 defendants and what happened to them as a consequence of invading the Capitol. It’s very readable, very smart and very good. Enjoy. It’s from New York magazine, and if you’ve used up your article quota this month, do an Incognito window or whatever. Totally worth it.

I’m going to try for three appearances this week, so here’s hoping.

Who were you people who didn’t like “The Power of the Dog?” We checked it out over the weekend, and I thought it was pretty great. Such fabulous acting; Jane Campion must run her actors through Subtle Facial Expressions U. before she shoots a single frame. I loved the way the power shifts over the course of the story, I loved the scenery, I loved the way it put me in 1925-era Montana and basically posited: This is what it was like, here.

Otherwise, a weekend. Fuck Joe Manchin and I hope his stupid houseboat sinks. Actually, it wasn’t a shit weekend. We went to a Friday-night party — all vaccinated — but I will still get tested on Wednesday because Covid is running wild here, helped on by irresponsible behavior (like mine, maybe). Saturday was the Eastern Market and its associated pleasures, and Sunday I did a gift exchange with a friend. He has holiday travel plans and is being super cautious, so we tried to find a heated tent, but ended up in the back yard of a Cass Corridor bar. They wouldn’t turn the patio heater on because we were just two people, so we sat there and shivered for one round. It wasn’t all that cold, so it wasn’t terrible, and it wasn’t cold enough to drive us inside. Kate gave us notice yesterday that everyone she knows has Covid now, including someone she worked next to (masked) a few days back, so she’s testing daily and may not make it to Columbus at the end of the week.

It’s beginning to look a lot like a Covid Christmas, in other words. Everywhere I go.

I forgot to mention: While we were sitting on the cold patio? A sizable rat ran from under one section of deck to another. Happy Christmas in Detroit!

It hasn’t been a terrible holiday season, although I have yet to make gingerbread. Maybe tomorrow. But this cloud of doom hovering over all? That I can do without. It’s gonna be another long winter.

Wouldn’t it be nice to get some genuinely nice, happy news one of these days? A certain former president collapsing in a serious health crisis, maybe? Justice running down like water? That would be a present we could all open.

Speaking of presents, the GIF in this tweet makes me so happy:

Here's a great attraction at a great landmark. pic.twitter.com/u9C3CfxB3w

— Marco Schaefer (@mhschaef) December 19, 2021

For those who don’t get it, it’s the last move in the Ohio State marching band’s signature formation, Script Ohio. The i is dotted by a sousaphone player, and it’s considered a great honor to be the i-dotter. It’s really the only thing I’d watch the OSU band to see, but they don’t do it for every game. I feel like I have to start using this GIF in every text message now. Just to, y’know, emphasize things.

And now we’re in the countdown week, i.e. the second-dullest week of the year, unless Trump just lost an election. I realize these offerings have been a little thin of late. It’s not that I’m tired or not into it or whatever. The well simply feels a little dry at the moment. It’ll refill. I just can’t say when. Maybe time for another France picture.

Explanation: The market plaza in Nice had an installation of these poster-size photos, dedicated to local livestock breeds. The explanation placard stated that market forces were flooding meat and dairy markets worldwide with products from a relative handful of bloodlines, which anyone who drives in the Midwest country can see with their own eyes. Dairy cows are almost exclusively Holstein now, the breed which produces the most milk, and selective breeding of championship bloodlines has further increased the amount an average cow can produce. Semen collection, and sales of sperm and frozen embryos, have made some bulls and cows super-parents, with a few having hundreds of thousands of offspring. The dangers of this concentration into a few bloodlines are obvious, but it sure dollars up on the hoof, as they say in the auction ring. Yay, capitalism. This exhibit of less-popular, but beloved, breeds was one of my favorite things to look at as I was gathering provisions for the apartment. Not a great pic (by me), but this bull is so cool:

Another week in the books, and I can’t quite understand how it happened. You ever get that way? Monday dawns, and it’s another grind ahead, and then you look up and it’s Friday, and you’re another week older.

Not that I wish to depress you. It’s just something that happens.

Today I found Barack Obama’s year-end list of his reading and viewing, and once again, regretted… well, you know what we regret:

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That’s a two-page list, by the way. I’ve read two books on there, total — “Harlem Shuffle” and “Leave the World Behind.” I’m clearly not smart enough to touch the hem of Barack Obama’s garment, but I think we could share a laugh at a cocktail party. I read “Harlem Shuffle” in Paris, where I learned that every current best-seller on the U.S. list is available in Europe in a fancy paperback, which is maybe not important to you until you have to schlep this stuff through one, two or more airports.

I did better on the movie list:

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Saw three of these – “Pig,” “Summer of Soul” and “Judas and the Black Messiah,” all excellent. I want to see the rest, but after the “House of Gucci” experience, I can wait until they play in the living-room cinema.

As you can no doubt tell, the holidays are sapping my energy, as is the January 6 subcommittee and all the rest of it. One of these days I’ll find something to say about it, but for now, probably just as well to look at other people’s reading lists.

Back after the weekend.

I was making a new recipe for chicken curry and threw the seeds and trimmings of a jalapeño pepper down the disposal, then made the mistake of turning it on and not immediately running to the other side of the kitchen. Been coughing ever since. Instant pepper spray! How many times have I learned this lesson? Too many times to count. Sometimes I feel like the world’s stupidest home cook.

The curry was…C+, I guess. Splendid Table recipe, used yogurt. I think I prefer coconut milk, but it was good enough for dinner and it’ll be fine for next-day lunch.

The carnage in Kentucky was awful, as was some of the social-media snark about Rand Paul strutting on the floor of the Senate in 2012, talking about how “other people’s money” was going for relief from Hurricane Sandy. The response to a 180 in a dim-bulb libertarian may well be jeering, but maybe we can point this out another time, eh? The response to a disaster in the United States is to relieve the suffering. Yes, Rand Paul is an hypocrite. Yes, the people of Kentucky elected him (and Mitch McConnell, oy). No, the response is not to tell them “sucks to be you” when tornados kill them and destroy their homes, businesses and towns.

However, we’re in a sucks-to-be-you moment right now. I read a little over the weekend about Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania. Lia swam for the men’s team for two years of her college career. She transitioned during the Covid-cancelled season, and is now swimming as a woman, and winning. “Breaking records,” in fact, but here is one place where I have to part with Sherri, to name one person in our readership, who has said that any advantage to being a biological male in sports disappears after a year of hormone treatment. I simply don’t believe that, at least in this case.

Thomas isn’t just breaking records, she’s obliterating them. Winning by 7 seconds in the 200 free, and 38 in the 1650-meter free, to name but two. These aren’t normal new-record margins. Swimming is a sport where records fall by fractions of seconds, not seven of them. (Unless she is Katie Ledecky. Lia Thomas is not Katie Ledecky.) There is an advantage here that comes from being taller, stronger, more broad-shouldered and from having trained and competed all your life as a man. The photos of her are crazy. She’s a hulk.

As you would expect, the right-wing media has picked up this story and is shaking it like a dog. I had to scroll down in the search results to find a source I thought could be fair — Swimming World magazine, which I am confident knows more about the sport than, say, the New York Post or Fox News.

And this piece is pretty evenhanded, explaining that while Thomas is swimming slower on female hormones than when she was a male, she suddenly catapulted from an Ivy League finalist to an Olympic-level contender, threatening records set by the greatest women in the sport, including Ledecky and Missy Franklin. Swimming World also had the decency to ask for decency, after getting the expected onslaught of reader abuse following their reporting. And they’ve also done sensitive reporting on F-to-M trans swimmers like Schuyler Bailar, so I feel like I can trust their editorial judgement.

But even SW editorialized against allowing Thomas to compete in the NCAA championships in March:

Athletes transitioning from male to female possess the inherent advantage of years of testosterone production and muscle-building. There is also the advantage (in many cases) of larger body frames, hands and feet. All of these traits are beneficial in the sport of swimming. In the case of Thomas, she had nearly 20 years of this testosterone-building advantage, something cisgender women could not attain. Although she took part in the testosterone-suppression process, a look at her performances clearly reflects that she is benefitting from the genetics of her birth sex.

“There’s absolutely no question in my mind that trans women will maintain strength advantages over cis women, even after hormone therapy,” said sports physicist Joanna Harper in an interview with WEBMD Health News. “That’s based on my clinical experience, rather than published data, but I would say there’s zero doubt in my mind.”

…Now, Thomas is stalking Ledecky’s 500 freestyle record, a chase that reveals the unfairness in her racing against cisgender women. A look at the all-time rankings in the 500 free shows that Leah Smith is the second-fastest female performer in the event. Yet, she is almost five seconds back of Ledecky. The fact that Thomas could break the record of such a once-in-a-generation athlete confirms the biological advantages she possesses, and their power.

The stories of Thomas’ meet performances are agonizing: She finishes first by a wide margin, and the crowd sits on their hands. When the cisgender female touches the wall second, they erupt in cheers. This may be a cruel reaction, but it is also honest. These are not fair competitions. The question is, what do we do about them?

The floor is open. I’m honestly interested in what some of you have to say.

The fallout from the school shooting continues to be felt. Everywhere. The county prosecutor has her hands full with a shit-ton of copycat threats to other schools in the area. I have no doubt they’re all bullshit, but it certainly suggests kids kinda…hate their schools? Yes, that seems to be it.

Of course, lots of kids “hate” school, but they miss it terribly when they’re not there. It’s the center of their social lives, but even kids like me — stable home, lots of support, did well in what was indisputably a first-class public school district — had days when, if the building had burned to the ground, I would have stood outside, roasting marshmallows.

Lots of the threats are at the middle-school level, which tracks. I mean: Middle school, amirite? Others are more serious, leading to evacuations, dismissals for the day, and the expected messages to panicked parents: Don’t panic!

Well, we’re all on edge. I think it’s not just because this shooting happened close to home. Rather, because we look at those mugshots of the Crumbleys and realize: I know 25 people exactly like this. How many of them leave guns lying around for their disturbed teenagers to pick up? Probably more than a few, because really, what good is a “properly secured” weapon worth in a tense situation? Home invaders don’t send advance notice; you wake up in the night and think you heard something. Or you walk into the kitchen on a warm summer day and realize someone’s there who shouldn’t be. Do you say, “Hold that thought while I unlock my properly secured weapon?” Or maybe you don’t have children, so you leave the gun in the nightstand, or on the nightstand — badass! — or somewhere else. And then someone breaks in while you’re gone, and steals it.

Someone called in a threat to my high school, maybe a year before I arrived there. Only there really was a bomb, a homemade thing made of fireworks, as I recall. It blew up a toilet, and a kid was injured by flying porcelain. The perpetrator was expelled, the only permanent expulsion I’m aware of during my time there. He wasn’t a terrible kid, just one lost in the dark tunnel of adolescence. I just looked him up on Facebook, and he appears to be fine. Has an interest in general aviation. Who knows what Ethan Crumbley might have become, with different parents? A question for the ages, I guess.

I once saw a cop show that featured a middle-of-the-night home invasion, of Regina King’s house. She played a cop. Leapt from her bed to the closet, quickly keyed in a four-digit combination on her gun safe, and took out a Mossberg pump-action shotgun, which which she dispatched the bad guys. Now there’s a well-secured firearm. I’ve heard police say a shotgun is actually the safest home-protection weapon you can have, because the rounds won’t fly through your walls or windows into the neighbor’s nursery, and you can keep it loaded with rock salt rounds (do those even exist outside of southern gothic fiction) just in case you accidentally shoot your daughter’s boyfriend, sneaking in for some middle-of-the-night shenanigans.

OK then! Must run — the Deadline Detroit holiday party is tonight, and I have to throw together my contribution to the buffet. And get a Covid test first, which is scheduled in about 30 minutes. Probably be crowded, too, what with our heedlessness and surging case load. Best get moving. Happy weekend to all.