But not many gringo journalists spend more than a few days in Juarez. None — at least that I know of — move there. Nor do they make much effort to write about what it feels like to live in the city, as opposed to dying there.

Which is what makes Robert Andrew Powell’s new book, "This Love Is Not for Cowards," so gripping. It tells the bittersweet story of Juárez’s hapless professional soccer team, Los Indios, and the rabid fans who support them. The book reads like a mashup of Nick Hornby’s "Fever Pitch," Bill Buford’s "Among the Thugs" and Charles Bowden’s grim 2010 survey of Juárez, "Murder City."

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This will come as bad news to the small but persistent fan cult who harbor hopes of a Soul Coughing reunion. (And I might as well admit right now that I’m one of them.)

For a few years there back in the '90s, Soul Coughing was making the most interesting music on the planet, a sonic collage of Doughty’s downtown beat poetry and guitar riffs, the monstrous syncopation of bassist Sebastian Steinberg and drummer Yuval Gabay, and the zany sampling of Mark De Gli Antoni. Doughty called it “deep slacker jazz.” The critics, by and large, raved. But the band minted only a few minor hits before imploding.

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Even more striking was the book Kaplan giddily showed me: a new anthology of stories by South Florida writers called "Blue Christmas: Holidays Stories for the Rest of Us." (As a former Miamian, I’d written a piece for the collection.)

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, gazing at the deep-blue cover.

Kaplan is a guy who gets excited about all sorts of books. The difference, in this case, is that he published "Blue Christmas." More precisely, his new imprint, B&B Press, released the book. It thus represents a heartening trend in the brave new world of publishing. Rather than trimming their sails, a number of independent booksellers are taking a page from Amazon by producing titles themselves.

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Not wanting to be rude, particularly to someone from New York City asking about a book, I decided to text back a response, something I had never done before.

I wanted to type, “Who are you?” But I knew that no one actually types out words such as “are” and “you” anymore. I also had no idea how to make a space between words, or a question mark. I wound up typing: Whoru

Almost immediately, I received this: Did you just call me a whore?

I frantically thumbed my reply, making a couple dozen errors on my way to this gem: nosorrydontknowhowtotext.

It never occurred to me simply to call the number and speak to the human who sent the message. That seemed somehow too forward. If my interlocutor had wanted to talk on the phone, after all, he or she would have called.

In the spirit of full disclosure, the texter in question turned out to be my editor at Salon. (Hi, Sarah!) She has not texted me again.

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And then one morning, in our eighth-grade metal shop, he simply stopped speaking to me. He began, instead, a concerted campaign to humiliate me. At first, this took the form of neglect. But pretty soon he was mocking me to his friends, and then they were mocking me, and before long one of them was threatening to kick my ass.

This went on every single day for months. I wasn't frightened so much as terribly sad and confused. I was an insecure kid, often excluded by my brothers, and therefore hypersensitive to social neglect. I spent weeks puzzling over what I'd done wrong. I cried in my room, not just at Sean's abrupt and unexplained scorn, but also at my own cowardice. Because, of course, I never said anything about this stuff -- not to my parents or brothers, or teachers, or anyone. I felt ashamed of being picked on, and that shame served as my consent.

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The men around him -- wise sycophants, pampered sons, fat generals with medals over their hearts -- required this of him. They were sly and every moment relentless. They whispered slanders and bowed deeply. For each of his 42 years at the helm of liberty, it had been thus. And he had kept these forces aligned only by a scrupulous and continual application of his balance.

He stepped into a room and a great calm settled, like the veil a bride might wear, something to lure and disguise, and this was the sensation of balance, of knowing whom to embrace, whom to shun, whom to dismiss into the night with its perfume of balsam and gasoline.

How, then, to explain the feelings stirred in him by Leezza? The lurch beneath his ribs? The moist trembling of his tongue?

He had been married before: first to his soldiers, then to his wives, then to history. He had absorbed the roar of sand and bombs. This was not like that. It was something to do with his soul, a disturbance at the delicate border where his body joined his soul.

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I'm going to go out on a limb and say: Because we behave, as a democracy, like a 5-year-old with her ass on fire.

In fact, an entire domestic industry has arisen that specializes in cracking wise about our idiocy. The big names (Stewart, Colbert, Maher) now rank as the most trusted names in journalism.

The catch, of course, is that these folks insist they're merely comedians. They're not interested in curing our political dysfunction; they just mine it for laughs.

Nato Green has a different agenda. The San Francisco-based comedian has teamed up with two of his cohorts, W. Kamau Bell and Janine Brito, to form a collective called Laughter Against the Machine. This fall they're taking their show on the road -- and hardly looking to preach to the converted.

Their destinations are what Green refers to as the "flashpoints of American ignorance and upheaval," locales such as Phoenix, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio delights in humiliating inmates, and Dearborn, Mich., home to our nation's largest Muslim population.

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After months of slow-motion capitulation, President Obama has cut an eleventh-hour deal with Republican leaders to raise the debt ceiling. After vowing to heed the public outcry for a balanced approach, he has instead consented to a plan that manages to run rough-shod over the poor and middle-class, coddles those who caused the recession, imperils the government’s two most popular entitlement programs, and virtually guarantees that our economy will continue to falter.

In other words, just another day at the office for our 44th president.

I have no doubt that Barack Obama wants to do right by the country, and that he genuinely believes giving in to every Republican demand (and then some) is his only play. But to me, the debt deal proves once and for all that Obama lacks the courage to lead effectively. The evidence resides not just in his policies, but in his words.

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Charlotte was a freelance writer and a lover of Mexican culture, its folk art in particular. She was the one who suggested we vacation in Mexico City. We knew a couple of folks down there, including our glamorous friend Dave, who ran the Latin American bureau for a major daily newspaper and -- get this -- had a maid.

We spent much of the week wandering the lovely shaded streets of his neighborhood and debating whether any physical record of our copulation would be detected by the aforementioned maid. (I, being male, argued no.) But Charlotte was determined to escape the city and Dave said we were in luck because we'd arrived in time for Day of the Dead -- Dia de los Muertos, at the start of November -- and did we want to travel north to Michoacán, which just happened to be the capital of Mexican folk art?

So up we went with Dave at the wheel. Our destination was a small city called Patzcuaro, ground zero for Day of the Dead celebrations. Charlotte and I stayed in a room in a private dwelling -- more of a cell, really -- that smelled of kerosene and things decomposed. Charlotte's reaction was a familiar blend of disappointment and suppressed rage.

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As so often happens when you give in to the tug of your own insecurity, this means I’ve become part of a bona-fide mainstream media trend. According to the New York Times, annual spending on "male grooming products" -- the acceptably heterosexual code words for makeup -- doubled last year, to $4.8 billion. If that weren’t enough to keep Susan Faludi and her grim fraternity of subjects up nights, consider this recent investigative foray from the Times, which blows the lid off the Spanx coverup. It turns out lots of dudes are now wearing dude girdles! But the crème de la crème is a story from the Toronto Sun detailing the astronomical rise in breast reduction surgery for men.

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I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about the death of Peter Lenz, age 13, who was killed Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, during a warm-up lap of the Grand Prix National Championship for children 12-18.

I’m equally sure that you feel saddened and troubled by this event. It would be impossible to react any other way.

Here are a few additional facts that strike me as relevant:

• Lenz earned an "expert" license from the American Federation of Motorcyclists at age 11.

• Last November, a serious crash left him with four broken bones and a severed radial nerve requiring surgery.

• The eventual winner of the race described the track on which Lenz crashed as "very greasy."

• Lenz’s vehicle was capable of traveling 120 mph on the Indy straightaways.

• Although he was thrown over his bike’s handlebars, his death was the result of being struck by another driver.

• At the time of his death, Lenz was 4-foot-11 and 81 pounds.

• The driver who struck him was 12 years old.

I mention these facts not for the sake of initiating a debate with you about the morality of allowing your children to race motorcycles. There’s nothing to debate. This is an intervention.

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In the article, Pamela Paul argues, persuasively, that depression may be a condition that reaches further into childhood than previously thought (though she does cop to the risk of slapping a scary psychological label on toddlers). The earlier it's detected, she observes sensibly, the more effectively it can be treated. Still, it's impossible to read a piece like this and not instantly start diagnosing your own brood. The piece describes one "at risk" kid, for instance, who gets frustrated trying to put on his shoes and hits himself. All I could think was: Wow, my 3-year-old does the exact same thing!

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This is invariably the message that gets sent when it comes to professional athletes. The ones who "play through pain" are heralded as paragons of manly virtue. It's a deceptive, dangerous message that hits home with the legions of high school athletes – football players, in particular – many of whom are now returning from their summer vacations to a world of vicious two-a-days.

A case in point: the two dozen young men who were admitted to a Portland-area hospital last week. All of them were players on the McMinnville High School football team, who had taken part in a weeklong immersion camp conducted by a new head coach. Three of the boys had to have emergency surgery to relieve swelling in their arms.

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What’s surprising is how enthusiastically Palin’s tweets are covered as news. She’s become the avatar of a new breed of quasi-journalism. Call it tweetalism.

Consider the "story" the Associated Press sent out on its wires just last week. The headline read, "Sarah Palin Hits Obama for 'View' Appearance." The sole source for this item was a Palin tweet in which she complained that the president should be visiting our "porous US/Mexican border" rather than gabbing with the hosts of a popular daytime chatfest. The item ran in hundreds of media outlets.

Just a week earlier, Palin scored massive coverage by exhorting New Yorkers, via Twitter, to "refudiate" the plan to build a Muslim center near ground zero.

If you want to understand how severely the Fourth Estate has degraded its own mission, the rise of tweetalism should serve as Exhibit A.

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Don't worry, though. I'm not going to bore you with another paean to the poetics of the Beautiful Game. If you can't see them, or don't care to, that just means more room on the couch for me.

But I do think it's worth summing up what we learned from this year's Cup, which amounts to the world's largest sporting event, and which culminates Sunday with a contest between Spain and the Netherlands.

The last time the Spanish and the Dutch fought a battle this big was in the 1580s, when William of Orange bucked the rule of King Philip II of Spain, an act that essentially paved the way for Dutch independence. OK, so it's not exactly a grudge match with a lot of recent history. But that doesn't mean it won't be great. 

Lesson No. 1: Commercials Totally Ruin American Sports

Throughout the course of the Cup, I kept trying to figure out why I found watching the games so relaxing. And yes, part of it was the natural flow of the game, its spontaneous grace. But a lot of it was simply the absence of commercials.

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For what it's worth, most of the players seem to hate the vuvuzela, which they claim makes it hard to communicate on the field. The captain of the French side, Patrice Evra, managed to blame the vuvuzela for his team's lethargic effort in their scoreless opener against Uruguay -- a move that struck me as pretty, well, French.

The television commentators are also in a snit. They can't hear themselves talk. They miss the distinct crowd noises you get at soccer matches, such as those wonderful ooohs and ahhhs that accompany a missed shot, or the cleansing roar that follows a goal. They probably also miss the really loud burping.

But as a longtime fan -- of sports in general and the World Cup in particular -- my take on what I'm afraid I must call "the vuvuzela kerfuffle" is pretty conflicted.

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Jacquie frets about her 18-year-old, Ashley, who refuses to heed her warnings about the dangers of going to clubs.

"Ever try knocking the shit out of her?" Dina says.

Both women laugh.

"I just think that she maybe needs to open a can of whoop-ass, kick her ass, and then maybe she'll listen," Dina clarifies. "She needs a good old-fashioned Italian beating."

Rest assured, the RHONJs do not actually beat their offspring on camera. That would be illegal. What they do instead, on a weekly basis, is harass, humiliate and exploit them.

Consider housewife Danielle. She's the designated villain of the program, a skeletal divorcee with a dark past and money problems. During the same episode, we see her informing her 15-year-old, Christine, that a modeling agency wants to hire her.

"When you make it big, you gonna remember me?" Danielle asks.

"Yeah," Christine mumbles.

"Promise?" she says, nudging the girl with her sandal.

"Yeah," the girl repeats.

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Let me add, reluctantly, that I have two small children whose emotional and psychological well-being depends, in part, on my being an attentive parent, which is to say a parent who is not actively checking e-mail while bathing them.

Which reminds me: I need to check my e-mail.

[Writer checks his e-mail. Only one new message. A high school student named Amanda writes, "Our teacher just made us read your story 'Moscow.' We have to write a paper. What was the idea behind this story?" Writer sighs.]

Please don't worry. This isn't one of those articles where I announce, "My name is Steve, and I'm a cyber addict," then relate the details of my abusive childhood. Nor will it offer tips on "How to Kick the Internet and Increase Productivity."

I'm just going to try to relate how I got here, which is (I'm guessing) pretty much how you got here, too.

The Pre-Internet Era (Dawn of creation-1995):

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As a longtime resident of the Boston area, it's especially galling to see a bunch of angry old white people -- many of whom, we learned recently, are on the federal dole -- behave as if their democratically elected officials are foreign despots. It would probably behoove the Fourth Estate to draw a thick line between genuine victims of colonialism and sore losers.

Still, if you're looking for a cheap excuse to get the Fox News Militia fired up, Tax Day is a gimme. And why not? As viewed from the comfy confines of conservative punditry, taxes are a form of bureaucratic robbery.

You dittoheads know how it works: Every April 15, millions of decent, hardworking Americans get shaken down by the IRS, whose sadistic geeks make them fill out really complicated forms, then send checks. This moolah is handed directly to welfare queens and illegal immigrants, who are required to mate in the hopes of producing a Mongrel Super Race of Criminal Freeloaders. If there's any dough left over, it goes into the Super Secret Christian Baby Abortion Fund.

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But you can't tell someone his or her ears are wrong. You can't rescind the pleasure they derive from a particular piece of music. You can certainly deride that pleasure. If we were to meet and you were to break into the refrain of "Renegade," for instance, or "Come Sail Away," I would feel embarrassed. I might even, for the sake of camaraderie, go along with the gag. Ha-ha-ha. Yeah, Styx: what was I thinking? But that is quite different from what my body experiences when I listen to Styx. And in particular, when I listen to what I will now call -- with no alcoholic intervention -- the Styx masterpiece, "Paradise Theater."

"PT" was released in the winter of 1981, my freshman year in high school. It documents the demise of Chicago's Paradise Theater, which is a metaphor for the demise of America's civic culture, which is deep, man. So it's a concept album, or half a concept album, because only Dennis DeYoung was committed to the concept and he was the pianist. The rest of the band almost certainly thought DeYoung was a fag.

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