[Time on me is wasted time]

This weekend has been pretty low-key. Fall is creeping. The pools are closed and now I’m suddenly paler than a Victorian virgin. Once upon a time, I could sustain a tan. Now, not so much. Well, all the better for me not to get cancer, I guess.

Yesterday Phil and I went to K-Mart to see what was left. All the K-Marts in town are closing, and yesterday was their last day open, when most of their stuff was marked down to 95 percent off. It was insane. Junk everywhere, out of packages, strewn along the floor like wild boars had ravaged the aisles. Lipstick was smeared on everything in the makeup aisle. I felt like we had wandered into some looted department store on Canal Street, it was in such disarray. We left without buying anything, but hundreds of other crazed bargain hunters picked up our slack, I’m sure.

At a pet store that has not paid me to advertise its name, we bought Izzy the fish a new big 10-gallon tank. If you’ve ever seen this thing, you’re breathing a sigh of relief. He’s huge and he’s been stuffed into a 5-gallon tank for years where he has very little wiggle room. So now he has twice the room to swim around in. Which means he’ll get twice as big, just like he did when he was put in a 5-gallon tank.

See? He’s a big sum’ bitch.

Last night we went to the $2 theater to see Batman Begins. I’d seen it before and liked it, but Phil saw it for the first time last night and was sort of meh about it. I contend that he was punishing me for not liking The Brothers Grimm by insulting Batman (which was infintely better), but he says I’m crazy. Can you imagine?

Then, almost as if I was trying to turn him into some kind of slacker prophet, we came home and I was randomly attacked by a cleaning bug at midnight. So I spent the night wiping down everything in the kitchen and bathroom (including the floors and walls) with bleach. Sometimes it happens. I just need to clean. And you’d better not get in my way when that hits me, or else I’ll be up in your eyeballs, scrubbing with a toilet brush.

I count the desire to clean as a mood swing, but most of the time I’m fine living among piles of paper and dust. I prefer to reserve my anal-retentive tendencies for more important things, like type margins and grammar.

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Today I’ve been over at The Southern Scholar, wheezing out a few Monday posts. I have tremendous respect for daily political bloggers. It’s quite a challenge to just keep up on local, national, and international news, not to mention cultivate something remotely intelligent (and timely) to add to the discourse about whatever subjects come up, varied as they may be.

So hats off to people on all points of the political spectrum who make their living on the 24-hour blogging cycle.

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Last week I laid out an AP story that Kristin worked on about the high school water heater explosion in Cornersville. How cool is that? Not the explosion, of course, but that I laid out a story Kristin helped produce.

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How did “Everybody Loves Raymond” beat “Arrested Development” for best comedy series at the Emmys? My mind is boggled. I mean, I’ve never really seen “ELR,” but there can be no comedy on TV right now superior to “Arrested Development.” Of course, “Six Feet Under” got no love, so fuck the Emmys. I guess good writing is scary or something.

And how convenient that the new season of “Arrested Development” premieres tonight! Don’t miss it, chumps.