Tip: For some time, I’ve been following old Li’l Abner daily comics over at Comics.com. Recently they went back to the beginning and re-started the strip at its very inception (or close to it, as far as I can tell). As you can see if you click over there, at this point Al Capp had not developed his mature style. He was trying to draw fairly realistically, and hadn’t yet adopted the simplified shapes and heavy outlines that made his later work so graphically compelling. Also the characters are unevolved. Mammy (whom you’ll see if you go to the strip on the day I’m posting; I don’t know if you’ll see her tomorrow) is wearing her “classic” outfit, but she actually only put it on a few strips ago, identifying it as her good clothes, which she had to wear for a trip to New York. You’ll also note that she’s too tall. Pappy is also too tall at this point. Capp hadn’t yet decided that they’d be a lot funnier if they were both the size of midgets, so that you’d ask, “How did this couple produce that boy?”

Also Daisy Mae’s bosom has not yet reached its full potential.

Anyway, it’s historically interesting, and I’m looking forward to watching the artwork develop.

How do I feel today, after 24 hours of a book acceptance? Good, but worried. I can’t help thinking that it’s all a big mistake, and that the publisher will soon recover from the concussion that surely disordered his mind. I think that, strictly speaking, this isn’t me spoiling my enjoyment. This is how I enjoy things. It’s my way to celebrate. And I gotta be… you know, me.

I also went to the doctor today, as a couple commenters suggested, to see whether my anemia is cause for concern. I await the results, confident that I probably have only a month to live.

I hear there was an earthquake in Illinois last night. We did not feel it here. Or if we did, I slept through it. Just in case you were wondering.

I went to give blood tonight, and was rejected. My hemoglobin level, apparently, is a little low. This has never happened before, and I’m nonplussed (I ask you, how many blogs use words like “nonplussed” these days? We give full value at Brandywine Books). My chief suspicion is that it’s a result of dieting fairly severely this week. I’d slacked off for today, just to prepare my corpuscles, but apparently it didn’t do the job.

Or maybe it’s the first sign of a lingering, fatal disease. Whatever.

I’m going up north this weekend for the confirmation of my nephew and godson, The Youngest Nephew (note to burglars who may be reading—my renter will still be here and he’s a survivalist and former Navy Seal, clinging in Midwest bitterness to his collection of classic Uzis). I suppose I ought to sit TYN down at some point and give him a lot of good advice. I’m sure he’d appreciate that a lot.

But somehow I suspect I’ll keep my mouth shut all weekend.

“Walk Hard: The Lars Walker Story.” That’s me tonight. Got my second evening walk of the year in, and it left me more winded than the one I took last week, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure why.

And it was cold. Not cold overall. The landlocked portion of the walk was pleasant. According to the thermometer on my porch, we got up to around 70° (that’s 20° for you soccer fans, though it may be an anomaly, caused by the sun beating on the Astroturf). But going past Crystal Lake, the wind was as bitter as a Pennsylvania voter. There’s still a skin of ice on the lake, and it has its effect.

I apologize for introducing a political note in a book blog, but I want to comment on Barack Obama’s “bitterness” statements. It seems as if all weekend I heard the recording over and over, in various degrees of context. And I think I caught something I haven’t heard anybody else mention.

I’m certain Obama is astonished at the response his words have raised, because he sincerely didn’t intend to say anything offensive. In fact, it’s my impression that his intention was to defend middle class Pennsylvanians, in his own fashion, and he can’t figure out how anybody could take it amiss.

Because in Obama’s world, the kindest, most uplifting thing you can do for another human being is to bestow the status of Victim on him. And what he was trying to say was that the Pennsylvanians are victims too—victims of the economy—and therefore we should cut them some slack if they’re not enlightened enough to vote for him.

What he can’t understand—what is entirely outside his conceptual framework—is the idea that there are people out there who aren’t actually pleased to be labeled victims.

Man, I’m wasted.

Let me rephrase that.

I’m very, very tired, and have been all day. I drank three cups of tea today, which is two more than my usual consumption.

You know how I said yesterday that events had all the earmarks of giving me one of those nights where I don’t get to bed at all?

Sometimes I scare myself. Turned out I was pretty close.

The flight arrival, originally scheduled for 7:30 p.m., got moved back to 8:30 p.m. A while later I checked the airline website again, and now the plane was expected around 11:00.

And then it was midnight.

Then 1:00.

I finally set out for the airport, at midnight. I figured I’d leave about the same time the plane took off from Chicago, since it takes me about as long to get to the airport on a dirty night as it takes to fly here from the city of big shoulders.

And the weather was dirty. Snow mixed with rain. Slushy highways. I drove around 35 or 40 mph all the way.

When I got there, I found that arrival had been moved back again, to 2:00 a.m.

At that point the regression mercifully ceased. I sat by the baggage claim and read a Dean Koontz (The Funhouse—early work, not his best) until Moloch and Mrs. Moloch showed up, and then I drove them back to my place. By that time they’d been thrown off their circadian rhythms so drastically that they figured they might as well just drive home. The weather had lifted, and the roads were supposed to get better the further south you went.

So I got to sleep at about 3:00 a.m.

For all I know, I have my fingers on the wrong keys and am typing pure gibberish.