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!” →

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.