Since I know you’ve been following my health avidly, I ought to tell you that I heard from my doctor, and she says I don’t have an ulcer.

This is actually a disappointment. Not only for the stupid reason I mentioned last night, but because I actually haven’t been feeling well, and I thought the treatment for the ulcer would improve my general wellbeing.

But I’m back to square one. Next week, another blood test, and then we’ll see what happens.

Beyond that, I got nuthin’ tonight. Have a good weekend.

My final impression of my medical tests yesterday is this—if someday I were absolutely forced to acquire one chemical dependency or another, I’d definitely go for Valium.

I sat around for several hours without a care or worry. I’ve been trying to recall the last time I’d felt that way in normal life, and I don’t think there ever was one.

Nobody told me anything about what they learned—not that I asked. Hey! I was on Valium! But my in-depth research on the net (admit it—you do the same thing to when you get a health problem) indicates that I probably have an ulcer or two, and they’re testing biopsies to see whether it/they is/are caused by the coveted h. pylori.

Personally, I draw some satisfaction from the idea of having an ulcer. From childhood I’ve seen ulcers as a sort of red badge of courage, identifying really serious, responsible adults.

Today is Israel’s 60th birthday. Happy birthday, Israel. I’m not a devotee of Left Behind or The Late, Great Planet Earth, but I do believe that Israel exists for a divine purpose, and came into existence in fulfillment of God’s promises.



As it happens, this year is the 150th anniversary of Minnesota’s statehood. All across the state, you can see the celebrations, the decorations, the bunting, the fireworks.

I’m kidding. So far almost nothing has happened in commemoration of the date, as far as I can see, and I don’t expect to see much.

I remember the Centennial. I was seven years old that year. I remember special events in school, and a big parade in our little town, complete with celebrities from Twin Cities TV stations, riding on floats.

The difference is, of course, that back then we were proud to exist. Today we’re ashamed. If you took a poll, I suspect more than half of all Minnesotans would tell you that the only really appropriate way to celebrate would be to give all the land back to the Ojibway and the Lakota, and crawl back to Europe.

The only reason we don’t do that is because nobody would know what to do with the Hmong and the Somalis.

My submission for our official Sesquicentennial song:

I’m from Minnesota.

Where brave Paul Wellstone took a stand.

We stole it from the Native Americans,

Except for that little pointy chunk at the top, which we stole from Canuckistan.

I’m from Minnesota.

A very up-to-par land.

We are the source of the mighty Mississippi, according to traditional, Eurocentric map-making techniques,

And also of Judy Garland.

I’m from Minnesota.

Where we still root for the Twins.

Our winters are pretty uncomfortable,

But they help us begin to do penance for our numerous sins.

Update: It occurs to me that I might have subconsciously cribbed the above from a poem James Lileks posted a while back over at www.buzz.mn, and which I can’t find now. If that turns out to be true, let me know, and I’ll ritually disembowel myself.

For those of you who were wondering, the test went fine, and now I’ll have to wait for the results.

I had to take an anesthetic and a relaxant, and they warned me seriously not to make any important decisions today.

Well, what decision could be more important than settling on a subject for today’s post?

So no topic today, on Doctor’s orders.

I assisted the police with their inquiries last night.

If you read English mysteries, you know that’s a code phrase for sitting in jail. In my case, I mean the expression literally. A policeman asked me questions, and I answered them. Unhelpfully, but the best I could.

I noticed cops poking around a house across the street last night. I don’t generally watch what goes on in the neighborhood, because I don’t want to be one of those people. But when the police are prowling, it’s entertainment. (And, by the way, isn’t it nice to live in a country where, for most of us, the police are interesting rather than terrifying?)

One of them came over to my house and rang the bell. He showed me a picture on a police report and asked me if I’d ever seen this guy at that address. I told him I hadn’t. “Just a D.U.I. case,” he said.

Right. That’s what they wanted me to think. Probably so I wouldn’t panic, jump my mortgage and flee the local tax base in terror. I know how things work. I read thrillers.

Tomorrow I go in to the hospital for some tests. So if I never post here again, you’ll know the Mystery Psychopath tracked me down there, posed as a doctor, and tied up that loose end forever.

The Civil War continues to take its toll. A man in Virginia, working on refurbishing a civil war cannonball, accidentally detonated it, and was killed.

I could say something about how a historical buff would choose to go, but that’s probably inappropriate. So I’ll just say that, as a reenactor myself, I understand his passion, and I salute him. I probably would have liked him.

The good folks at First Things put me on to this blog: Stuff Christians Like. And I do like it. There’s lots of truth there.

And yet it troubles me too.

Because all these jokes about how Christians make dorks of themselves just reinforce me in my habit of never saying or doing anything about my faith, for fear of looking dorky.

I wish it were possible to list the right things to do as easily as we’re able to list dumb things.

But of course that’s unnecessary.

Because the right thing to do isn’t usually a mystery. All you have to do is choose the most embarrassing, frightening, humiliating choice you’ve got, and that’s probably the right one.

And the real kicker is that two out of three times you’ll still be wrong, and you’ll still look like a dork.

Which, I guess, explains that “fools for Christ” thing.

Demonstrating once again that there is no evil beyond the reach of the human soul, we have the story of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned his daughter in his cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her.

People are shaking their heads, unable to imagine why a man would do this.

I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you right now. You watch the reports of the trial, when it happens, and tell me if I’m wrong.

Fritzl believes he’s the victim. He was himself abused as a boy, and he considers it horribly unfair that everyone is making a big deal out of what he’s done now, when nobody stepped in to save him when he was victimized himself.

He believes that he actually had his daughter’s best interests at heart, because if he’d let her have her freedom she’d have used it badly.

He believes he deserves some praise for installing mechanisms (or so it’s reported) that would release the captives in the event of his prolonged absence.

He believes that everyone who’s condemning him now is a hypocrite, because they’re doing things equally bad and just haven’t been caught yet.

The best quote of the day comes from Dirty Harry over at Libertas, in a piece on a couple new films about Che Guevera: “I can’t imagine what it must be like to hold an ideology where Wal-Mart outrages me more than the slaughter of 600 people.”

We married off the Older Niece down in Iowa this weekend, and it was one of the better weddings I’ve attended, I think. They chose to do the whole thing low-key, low pressure.

So I had to make my own pressure.

I left too late. I should have left at 7:30 a.m. at the latest on Saturday, but I thought that if I waited till 8:00 I could drop off the package I’d promised to mail to my new publisher at the Post Office, and still have plenty of time.

Unfortunately the Post Office doesn’t open till 9:00.

So I hit the road (taking care to go around the area where they’ve closed off Highway 35 south, at Highway 62, for repair). We had snow on the ground, and a nasty west wind was shooting across my bow. Continue reading “The vegetable is gorgeous!” →