Michael M. Jackman

"You won't get away with this!" SNOOORRRTTT "THIS IS IT!" SNOOOORRRRTTTT "You're in BIG TROUBLE!"

Explains why everybody is just filing out in an orderly fashion best they can.

This country reminds of a guy in a pool hall challenging everybody to a fight while just basically doing cocaine in a corner and screaming and throwing gasoline everywhere.

When I was a kid, I envied my classmates their Baby Boomer parents. My Silent Generation parents were no fun. Now that I'm older, I know I was better off in the end.

The final week before an election is a time of ratfucking.

I trapped him once and had him neutered. Hope I didn't scare him too much. Follows me around the block now.

The alley cats weren't always my friends. One year, a lame-legged orange appeared, unafraid, accepting food. His pal was a kitten, white with a black spot. I fed them both. Eventually, the orange disappeared. But the white cat stayed. Now he comes up to me, still doesn't like being picked up.

There are reasons thornless honey locusts are so common in the city. They're tough, almost as if they were nitrogen-fixing. They fill up space well, twisting and turning and casting lots of shade, even near buildings. The leaves dry up into wisps that skitter down sidewalks and seem to disappear.

He looked at me with some chagrin, as if to say, "No? Why can't I go?" Well, you can, but somebody is eventually going to explain it to you in a physical way why you cannot.

I was driving home down John R with the kid yesterday and a motorist in the lane right of me tried to execute a left turn in front of me when the light turned green. I leaned on the horn and blocked his car, shaking my head and saying quietly, "No." He was a grown-ass man. What is wrong out there?

I thought it was so obnoxious today, so I took a picture of it. Guy in a powerchair carefully moved into the bike lane to pass it while I ambled by. And jeez, it was 41 F this a.m., pack it in. Don't nobody want to freeze their azz there. (I was tempted to put a FREE PUMPKINS sign there.)

I sometimes feel the moment you agree to go in front of them they ease off the brake as if to give you the countdown. Follow the advice motorists heed: Don't be nice, be predictable.

Though neighbors were stunned, since the crash took place at 3:42 p.m., most residents hadn’t yet returned from school and work. Nobody on the ground was killed. The only fatalities were the six-man crew aboard the RAF Avro Vulcan jet bomber.

The crash shattered windows within two blocks, littered an 8-block area with wreckage, and created a mushroom cloud lifting into the sky.

This week in 1958, the calm of an autumn afternoon on Detroit’s eastside was shattered when a British delta-wing bomber came hurtling out of the sky, tore through a few houses, and exploded into a ball of fire near the corner of Ashland and Scripps streets.

So, we have to fire everybody so we can stay competitive with all the countries we used to trade with but don't anymore.

Me: So, I'm writing a nonfiction book, a bildungsroman, a detective novel, and a period family saga, along with several treatments.
Creative consultant: I see your problem.

All BAD

In our household, we're having a lot of luck this week.

For all the faults of the United States, the scale of its government buildings was domestic, not palatial. Unlike the queens and kings of Europe, the person presiding over the government lived in a house, with a street address.

My least favorite kind of garden is appearing all over the city: It is a garden that is a nature band-aid, a little moat of greenery almost completely surrounded by carriageways. Just make a smaller road already.

How much of all this is just make-work to prime the economic pump somewhere else.

This is what you get when the people charged with implementing a vision are indifferent to it.

Yes, I heard complaints from cyclists about them and remembered that part only.

All the new city contractors LOVE closing lanes. I never saw so many lanes closed for a median to be mowed as Brightview does.

I believe Major is the contractor that built the "bike lanes" on the new bridge over 94.

You know, I realize I haven't a clue what Major is doing there. And they closed off so much of it that drivers are pretty restless, looping, medianing through, so I keep my eyes on everybody else.

I turned on Stoepel this a.m., because those Major crews turned Livernois into a zoo.

In Psychology 101, we were being taught what "manic behavior" was, and the example was a dentist who closes his practice to rip out a wall and expand the business.

His parlor must be big enough for a public meeting, his dining room for a banquet.