You'd be smiling too.

He called to confirm. I could have covered 500, just barely, and I did have a brief premonition that it might result in great riches. But cooler heads prevailed. I told him to stick with the 50 shares. When it soared to about $29 a few months later, I saw my chance and pounced: Net profit: A cool $250.

Actually, this is the first time I have done the math on this: If I had gone ahead with the order for 500 shares, and held onto them until, say, right now, I would have about a quarter of a million dollars. Minus a few grand for whiskey and whores.

So it’s like I said. Do not heed my investment advice. And my counsel on Facebook is this: If you are lining up for a few of the 421 million shares available on Friday, you are a dumb-ass. I base this on pretty much the only thing I know about investing: If everybody else is buying a stock, that’s the time to be selling it. And I have a feeling that certain insiders will be doing that real soon now.

From what I can see, everybody wants to buy Facebook. The same way everybody used to want to buy houses for nothing down and flip them two months later. It’s a can’t-lose proposition. Like Elvis in the early ’70s, Facebook is everywhere. Facebook is everything. Which is why it’s going to break so many hearts in the fullness of time. The fact that a big player like GM took a hard look at Facebook and then took a pass doesn’t seem to register with anybody.

Then again, as I’m fond of saying, I’ve been wrong before. Boy, have I been wrong. But I’m still not touching Facebook. It’s stolen enough of my time; it doesn’t need to steal my money too.

Those crazy clerics and their crazy hats. The things they get ruffled about, and the things they don’t. Apparently, they’re not going to give this contraception-coverage thing a rest. Here’s Washington’s Catholic archbishop shocked all to pieces because the head of Georgetown University has asked Kathleen Sebelius to be among the commencement speakers.

You're kidding me, right?

Whatever. It’s their religion. But I won’t be the first or last to point out that the church was a quite bit more circumspect on the issue of priests buggering boys, which to a lot of laypeople was pretty shocking too. A bit more so than anything to do with birth control. Cheap shot? Sure. But when an institution lets an issue like felony sex abuse slide for a couple of decades, any moral authority it tries to assert immediately afterward isn’t very convincing. In fact, it’s laughable.

Not to mention the idea of telling a top-tier university that it shouldn’t engage speakers who hold divergent views. Kathleen Sebelius: godless bomb-thrower. Have any atheists ever spoken at Georgetown? Any Presbyterians? When you start vetting speakers based on how their personal beliefs diverge from those in Rome, eventually you’ll narrow the field to those guys in the crazy hats.

I love mystery novels, to the extent that for quite awhile I read nothing else. I was a little embarrassed by it, too. People would talk about the serious books they had on the nightstand and then ask what I’d been reading. They’d mention something like Anna Karenina and I’d cough into my fist and mutter something like Kiss Me, Deadly.

But then I realized that all the best books are mysteries, whether they’re classified as crime fiction or not. Every good book turns on conflict, and all good writers make a mystery of how that conflict will be resolved. Even Atlas Shrugged is a mystery novel when you squint at it: Who is John Galt, baby? And why does the damned book have to be so damned long? Very mysterious. Riddles wrapped in enigmas.

While I still love mysteries, I admit I’ve grown a little weary of American crime fiction, particularly all the series characters and their never-ending sequels. Sue Grafton is dangerously close to the end of the alphabet and John Sandford is scraping the bottom of the barrel for “Prey” adjectives. To get good, surprising crime fiction these days, you have to look abroad.

Or, you look to authors who have never bothered to focus their efforts at a particular genre. Charles Frazier, the author of the fine and literary Cold Mountain in 1998, is such a writer. His latest book, Nightwoods, is literary too — and just happens to be the best crime novel I’ve read since No Country for Old Men. Set in the early '60s, it’s the story of a young woman who finds herself the unwilling guardian of her murdered sister’s two children.

Read the first few lines and see if they don’t make you want to read more:

Luce’s new stranger children were small and beautiful and violent. She learned early that it wasn’t smart to leave them unattended in the yard with the chickens. Later she’d find feathers, a scaled yellow foot with its toes clenched. Neither child displayed language at all, but the girl glared murderous expressions at her if she dared ask where the rest of the rooster went.

The children loved fire above all elements of creation. …

What follows is a story with all the elements of a good crime novel: a memorable villain or two, some dark secrets, and yes, some missing money. But Frazier’s flawless language, his flawed characters, his sense of time and place and season — they all add up to a novel that can’t be confined to a genre.

I haven’t sworn off crime fiction, far from it. But a book like this could make a fan of the genre a bit more picky about what he considers good.

Suitable for farming.

The accompanying letter underlines the eight words of the Romney platform: “I stand for freedom and opportunity and hope.” It requests a donation of at least $35. Which seems like kind of an arbitrary figure. Why not $25, or $50? But studies have probably shown that $35 is the magic number among those who prefer policies of eight words or less.

I have yet to receive a similar package from the Obama campaign. When it comes, I expect to see a radically different platform, something like “liberty and the chance to succeed and optimism.” Oh yeah, and we’re with Biden on the gay marriage thing. It will be interesting to see what sort of donation is regarded as the minimum.

Not that it matters. I never give to any political campaign. Mostly because I’m cheap, but also because I’m insulted by the invariable use of disingenuous images and poll-driven positions. Has there ever been an American candidate for anything who didn’t “stand” for freedom and opportunity and hope? Who believed in anything that didn’t poll well? Has there ever been campaign ad that didn’t cast the candidate as the stalwart pal of the blue-collar worker?

Hate to say it, but at this point it’s not entirely clear which of these guys would be the better president. I suppose Obama is less patently fake, and slightly less beholden to gigantic financial institutions. If he gets through the next few months without posing in front of a weathered barn, I might lean that way. But I imagine the chances of that happening are nil.

This aftershave stings.

Unfortunately, my kid didn’t paint it. And somebody wanted it badly enough to bid $119 million over the phone, quickly eclipsing my own conservative estimate of $49. Now that famous painting is going out of public view and into somebody’s extremely large private home. Fine with me. Maybe art collecting isn’t my thing. Next time I get an urge to check out an example of late 19th-century expressionism, there’s always Wikipedia.

You can buy a lot of things for $119 million. At Sotheby’s in New York City, the very pinnacle of Western civilization, you can buy one Edvard Munch painting. In the same neighborhood you could buy about 400 Bentleys. Who knows what you could buy in Haiti, or Sub Saharan Africa or certain blighted areas right here in the United States? One thing’s for sure: A picture of a guy slapping his cheeks like Macauley Culkin probably isn’t real high on the wish list.

Everything is worth precisely what someone will pay for it at any given moment. This is the moment we’ve reached right now. You can see why the most recent buyer of “The Scream” might wish to remain anonymous. And if you squint at the picture, you might get an idea about why that guy is screaming.

You'd look tired too, after a case like this one.

So I’m keeping that in mind. Because it’s hard to say too much about this show without revealing about 50 spoilers. And when I say “spoilers,” I really mean “red herrings.” After 13 episodes, roughly analogous to 13 days of a murder investigation, pretty much everybody in the cast except the lead detective (Mirielle Enos) has emerged as a solid suspect. Then some new clue surfaces and the focus shifts to somebody else.

Normally I’d quickly lose patience with that sort of thing. But as preposterous as the labyrinthine investigation seems when viewed as a whole, the writers somehow make each twist and turn seem plausible. You don’t get the feeling you’re being jerked around — until you come to the season finale. I stayed up way past midnight to get to it, and when it was over I had two competing impulses: swear off the freaking show forever, or get on the computer and buy the next season pronto.

It’s that kind of show. Great writing, with a superb cast and deft, interwoven story lines that take it way beyond a regular police procedural. But since the story is shackled to a single investigation, it’s impossible to ignore that nothing conclusive will ever happen until the finale. And (OK, one spoiler alert) apparently not even then. Instead, we have to be content with minor sub-mysteries being resolved at precisely the same rate new ones are being added.

In some ways, The Killing reminds me of Twin Peaks: both set in the Pacific Northwest, both involving the murder of a young girl who turns out to be less innocent than she seemed. Both shows also toss out red herrings like it’s feed-the-sharks day at Sea World. Twin Peaks, of course, finally abandoned the pretense of being about a particular crime and vanished in an aimless spiral of contrived weirdness.

I haven’t started Season 2, so I don’t know if The Killing is going that route. I don’t know if the writers have something more in mind than a bunch of new suspects and disintegrating relationships. I do know that another full season seems like a few episodes too many. I guess I’ll have to wait until it’s over to comment further. Meantime, feel free to weigh in.

Of course, I'd watch Noomi Rapace (center) even in an Adam Sandler movie.

The rest of the crop — ugh. It’s all comic books and cartoons and stupid romantic comedies. There are sequels out the wazoo. There is also Adam Sandler, who keeps committing career suicide and keeps reappearing like Jason in those Friday the 13th movies. Somewhere along the line he made a deal with the Devil, and the Devil definitely got hosed on that deal. I’ll bet when you saw the first “Opera Man” sketch on SNL, you never thought that dude would be haunting the big screen until the end of time. I know I didn’t.

Take a look at the list and try to identify the very worst of the lot before the reviews are in. Something that will make Jack and Jill look like Citizen Kane. You know at least one of these movies is going to top the Razzie list next year. Pick the one that garners the most Razzies, and I’ll give the winner a $25 gift certificate to Chili’s. (Hey, crap food for crap movies). I’m totally serious about this.

My selections, just based on concept and a feel for this sort of thing: A Little Bit of Heaven (Kate Hudson), Battleship (Rihanna), That’s My Boy (Sandler) and G.I. Joe: Retribution (Bruce Willis).

That's my girl.

This is what happens when the fates conspire to give you funny, talented and engaging kids despite all your efforts to screw them up. You find yourself at the edge of the room, smiling benignly when people come up and act like just because your offspring are cool, you must be too.

Just between you and me: It doesn’t work like that — as Jessie’s Lexington friends discovered. But I’m happy to bask in reflected glory, and take credit where none is due. This book could make Jessie moderately famous. While the writer in me struggles with a minor twinge of envy now and then, the dad in me is just as pleased as punch. At this point I’m hoping she’ll become just famous enough to buy me a new car.

Kidding. The Subaru’s running fine. And realistically, it’ll probably take a couple more books and an appearance on Oprah before Jessie gets into major car-buying mode. In the meantime, a dad can be proud of his kids, and dispense cheap advice about where to go from here. (Tip One: No reality shows. Ever.) When you’re a parent, you can never stop acting like one. Even after your kids have proven themselves immune to your wisdom.

I have three kids. We tried to raise them all the same, but each one is unique. The thing I’m most proud of is that each is smarter and funnier and braver than I am, which are my main criteria for evaluating people. Beyond that, the one trait they most have in common is that they’re all pretty good writers. I’m not sure how a love of words and a way with them can be inherited, but that’s my story. And I’m sticking to it.

Alittle quiz: Who do you think would be a better dinner companion: Samantha Brick or Rachel Dratch? This is for women as well as men.

That's Samantha on the left.

Like everyone else in the past couple of weeks, I have an opinion on Brick. First, I think we can all agree she’s a little less stunning than she imagines. Second, any antipathy she detects in the workplace is probably a reflection of her own personality, as opposed to ugly coworkers envying her supposed radiance. I know it’s not professional jealousy, since other stuff she’s written recently reveals a style that’s aggressively and invariably vapid — exactly the sort of work you’d expect from someone whose only muse is her mirror.

The problem with getting by on good looks is that many of life’s important lessons tend to sail right over your head. Chief among them: People don’t like jerks, no matter what they look like. It’s important to be nice even to homely people who can’t advance your career. Yes, the hint of sexual availability can be used to manipulate most men, but it’s not something upon which to build a portfolio.

Or, I don’t know, maybe it is. For now, Samantha Brick is more famous than Rachel Dratch, her two weeks in a teapot tempest overshadowing Dratch’s seven years as a comic on SNL. I’d like to think it’s the Celebrity Apprentice sort of fame that will one day soon loop around to smack Brick on the back of her airy head. But these days you never know.

It’s not really necessary to debate Brick’s beauty, or the lack of it. Or to curse her for a self-regard that’s comically misguided. We’re really talking about how outrageous statements almost always overshadow wise ones, and make stars of the stupid. It’s starting to seem like a trend.

I'm getting social media fatigue. While it all keeps getting bigger and more pervasive and the terms of service keep getting revised in sinister ways, I can never figure out how any of it is supposed to enhance my day-to-day existence.

Somebody please shoot me.

Don’t get me started on Facebook. I’ve gone through several stages, most involving (a) enthusiasm for showing the world what a fun person I am, and (b) petulance when nobody seems to care. Now I’m at (c) annoyance. At this time, I’d like to urge all my Facebook acquaintances to please turn off the “social reader” sharing. Not that I’m uninterested in Lindsay Lohan’s shocking hair-removal secrets — far from it — but it’s maddening when I click on the link and end up on a page that orders me to enable sharing too. Ugh, no thanks. In the hierarchy of things to share, the fact that I’m reading celebrity gossip is right down there at the bottom.

Oh, and as long as we’re fiddling around with our sharing settings, can we all turn off the one that broadcasts every freaking two-letter word we play in Words With Friends? Really, if we can’t do better than “UT,” shouldn’t that tidbit remain confidential? Facebook’s data-mining mavens will understand.

I complain, but I never quit. Every time I tire of Facebook, I flirt with other sites. I’ve tried Tumblr and Posterous, two micro-blogging sites that have revealed themselves to be completely unsuitable for a guy like myself — that is to say, a haunted, bitter man who can barely generate enough content to keep this site breathing, never mind a bunch more. Ditto with Path. Ditto with Google+. All those services seemed designed for slim hipsters who are always upgrading their iPads or downing shots of Jägermeister in the company of beautiful women.

The stuff I throw out there, tepid blog posts and links to articles I’ve only partially read, seem to generate about the same buzz as flushing the toilet late at night. So for me, none of them are different enough from Facebook to warrant a permanent change.

I use Instagram, too. I like it well enough, but I’d like it a lot more if Facebook hadn’t just bought it for $1 billion. And I have a feeling my nine followers have already grown weary of my artfully filtered shots of the dog and food on the grill and day-to-day weather conditions. I know I have.

I guess the problem is that to really leverage social media, you have to be, well, sociable. You have to believe, at some level, that you’re the most interesting person in the world. Never mind all the evidence to the contrary.