"Watching Love Boat again. I love that Gopher!"

"You should come to the dance at the Rec Center and help raise money for the homeless!"

I call the above a "dialogue lead." They were the scourge of my high school newspaper. I banned them from the pages I controlled, and for that I was despised by the lazy preliterates who relied upon them.

Well, not just for that.

I just realized that the modern-day equivalent is the alleged professional alleged journalist who quotes random twits on social media—as opposed to doing any sort of legwork like, say, interviews or dialing a phone number.

This is from a random CNN story.

The offer of a free night wasn't the most popular move among some of the posters on The Mansion's Facebook page.

"Tom Brady, a free night? Why? He's an insulting, pompous (fill in the blank)," wrote Kathy Dembek-Licata.

The Mansion said on its Facebook page that it's "having a bit of fun" with the incident, using it to promote the Buffalo area. "Tom Brady is an exceptional athlete and, much like the Patriots, The Mansion also strives for excellence!"

That's scintillating stuff that I certainly couldn't find myself. Quoting bathroom walls would be better journalism.

Enjoy this letter from a former slave to his old master.

We Kordell Stewart and Sage Rosenfels fans wonder: do the Colts have vibrating horseshoes eight feet up their asses?

"You were fighting something," people tell me, which was almost certainly the case. But the thing is, I had no other symptoms. I felt fine. Great, even. I just connected two nights of sleep with two days' worth.

I was, if but for two days, a cat. And it was glorious. They're on to something, people.

And thus did I pack four champagne flutes and a bottle of Dom and head to my friends' house. It would be them, me, and another friend of theirs. When the time came to pop the cork, I took the bottle outside on the deck and fired the cork to the heavens. Some foam seeped out the top of the bottle, at which point the friend grabbed the Dom from my hand and put her mouth on the $150 bottle of champagne, slurping the foam.

“Why would I make any more (‘Star Wars’ movies) when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?”

That's my dog Dex right now. A wisp of snow on her muzzle. She just schooled her little brother in the perils of snow and ice. He, meanwhile, looks like, well, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Busy week at work. And not in any entertaining way. Unless you count me railing about the helplessness of the people who work for me as entertainment. I know I don't.

I'm so okay with this alternative to speed-listening to Indians.

Would it have killed my classmate/professor to sign that?

Although they are in my handwriting, although the margins are littered with Steelers logos, I do not recognize their author. This guy knew stuff. He was incredibly well-read, well-rounded. He was conversant in music and physics and programming and linguistics and literature. He was everything I aspire to be.

Lost, all lost, to the ravages of time.

I'm reminded of Watergate's mantra. What exactly did John know, and when did he forget it?

Most interesting to me are my astronomy notes. F still = MxA and Shakespeare is still dead, but astronomy? It's changed. Dark energy, the force that's making the universe accelerate apart, was not even an inkling then. The Hubble was still a punchline, a failure, so the age of the universe was not known. Black holes had not been proven. Planets orbiting other stars had not been observed, but my professor predicted precisely how they would be. Europa's ocean-smoothed ice was just a "smooth surface." Water had not yet been proven on Mars.

This is like reading an outdated textbook, except that it's in my handwriting. I'm thrilled. And horrified to have lived that long.

On with the Urban renewal in Columbus.