So this is Valentine’s Day, huh? Well, I’m not about to let anybody say I lack the proper spirit, even if I’m standing wretchedly on the outside, looking in at the revelers at the party, cold and hungry. In the snow. With the sniffles. And wet feet.

Here’s a link to Gene Edward Veith’s Cranach site—featuring a picture of the original St. Valentine’s relics. You can’t get more romantic than that.

My friend and fellow author Michael Z. Williamson sent me the following joke (can’t imagine why he thought of me):

Every Friday after work, a physicist goes down to the ice cream parlor, sits in the second-to-last seat, turns to the last seat, which is empty, and asks a girl, who isn’t there, if he can buy her an ice cream cone.

The owner, who is used to the weird local university types, always shrugs but keeps quiet. But when Valentine’s Day arrives, and the physicist makes a particularly heart-wrenching plea into empty space, curiosity gets the better of him, and he says, “I apologize for my stupid question, but surely you know there is NEVER a woman sitting in that last stool, man. Why do you persist in offering ice cream to an empty space?”

The physicist replies, “Well, according to quantum physics, empty space is never truly empty. Virtual particles come into existence and vanish all the time. You never know when the proper wave function will collapse and a girl might suddenly appear there.”

The owner raises his eyebrows. “Really? Interesting. But couldn’t you just ask one of the girls who comes here every Friday if you could buy HER a cone? Never know — she might say yes.”

The physicist laughs. “Yeah, right. How likely is THAT to happen?”

So there you go. I’ve done my part. Now go out and show your sweetie how much you care about him/her. Don’t even give a thought to me, alone in a quiet house, paying my bills like I do every other Thursday night. You have a good time. Enjoy yourselves. That’s all that’s important.

I do have a life, but this cartoon hits too close to home. I’m out.

The Minnesota blog Freedom Dogs posted this YouTube video yesterday, and I forwarded the URL to several people, because I thought it was hilarious. Maybe you’ve got to live up here to appreciate it, but this is gritty, slice-of-life filmmaking.

By the way, Minnesotans for Global Warming is a real group. They’re planning a rally at the state capitol this weekend.

I’d be tempted to go, except it’s so cold this time of year.

Today was quite nice, actually. The mercury rocketed up to about 40° F. (that’s about 5° Euro). Driving home, I saw people sitting at outside tables at a coffee shop (they were wearing parkas, but they were nevertheless drinking their coffee outside).

But it’s all a cheat. All tease. Tomorrow the high temperature will be 25 or 30 degrees lower than today. And the high Wednesday will be about zero. Then it’ll ease up a little, but there’s plenty of freeze left in the freezer.

That’s why I think nature worship will never catch on in Minnesota. If you live in California, you might be able to join some animist cult and delude yourself into thinking Mother Nature is a soft and indulgent sort, a nurturer. Up here we know her better. We figured out long ago that if she doesn’t take her medication regularly she’s likely to wander out of the house in her nightgown, and sometimes at night you hear her playing with the cutlery in the kitchen, and you wonder…

Today the temperature didn’t claw its way up much past zero (about 17 Celsius, for our European readers), but according to the best authorities it will be warmer tomorrow, and may get up around freezing by the weekend. Oh, how sweet that sounds—“up around freezing.” Where did I put my sunscreen?

I’ve had an unaccustomed streak of feeling unusually good for the past week or so, but tonight I’m depleted. It probably has something to do with my renter waking me up at 5:00 a.m. to jump-start his car, but I also feel as if I’m coming down with another cold. So I’m galvanizing my stomach with zinc tablets, as Phil has counseled me.

I found myself, while driving home tonight, behind a car with a bumper sticker that said, “Equal Rights Are Not Special Rights.”

I don’t think it was an act of unreasonable stereotyping for me to assume that anybody with a bumper sticker like that is very likely homosexual.

Then the car turned off into a bowling alley.

What’s wrong with this picture? I thought.

Perhaps I was observing the first emanations of a harbinger. Perhaps the creative minds that determine what’s fashionable and what’s not in our culture have decided, at long last, to embrace the noble and ancient sport of bowling.

Think of it—bowling, the new feng shui.

Bowling shirts will suddenly be trés chic, seen on all the A List celebrities, and on sale in trendy shops at exorbitant prices.

Bowling shoes will come in exciting new colors.

Bowling alley snack bars will start selling brie and espresso and white wine.

The movie “Kingpin” will be adapted into a Broadway musical.

“Bowling For Dollars” will be revived on network television in prime time.

Go now and invest in Brunswick stock. And remember, you read it here first.

On-site report: It’s cold outside.

Editorial comment: I don’t like it.

Watch for updates as the situation develops.



Our commenter Aitchmark sent me a link to this YouTube video on the Engadget site.

The 24-barrel, tripod-mountable monster you see above, lovingly known as the Disintegrator, was rather amazingly hand-carved and assembled by Anthony Smith of the UK, who spent four months on the ambitious build. Unlike your dinky little six-shooter, this model boasts a 288-band capacity and 40-round-per-second firing capability…

You’ll note that this device was created in the United Kingdom, where gun ownership is illegal.

This, my friends is what happens when you deny men real weapons.

Actually, it puts me in mind of the days when I was an avid shooter of cap-and-ball revolvers. It took what seemed like twenty minutes to load the things (actually about five, but I was eager). Then you got to shoot for about thirty seconds. Then you had to spend an hour cleaning the things (and you’d better do a good job, because that powder residue is mostly salt).

But it’s what a man’s gotta do.

In my own part of the world (known in the reference books as the Walker Sphere of Influence) we have this story, in which a man took the utterly reasonable and sober-minded action of blowing up his old pickup truck by loading it with explosives and shooting at it from a distance with a high-powered rifle. Note that he exercised role-model-level prudence in not trying to light a fuse with a match and run away, like Wile E. Coyote. He did the job at a prudent remove. And yet people are criticizing him.

(I don’t know the guy, but the story takes place in the county where I grew up. Makes me proud, it does.)

Listen, it’s a man’s testosteronic birthright to blow things into the stratosphere and send objects hurtling at high rates of speed toward distant targets. What shopping is to women, explosions are to guys.

And if you don’t understand that, you’re a woman.

Hey! Did you know that Neville Shute Norway is an anagram for Easy Hull vote-winner? It is! Not only that, but “Norway, the land of the viking” is an anagram for “Heavily farted know-nothing!” Can you believe it?! My source, for our friends in the press.

Everybody seems to be talking about the Iowa Primaries today, wondering how the cold weather will affect turnout.

This is nonsense. In general (there are exceptions) there are only two temperatures in winter, up here in the northern plains—colder than yesterday, and warmer than yesterday. Today is warmer than yesterday, so cold shouldn’t be a factor.

What, you ask, is the significance of the Iowa Caucuses?

The answer is simple—none at all. As all informed people know, nothing of any importance of any kind has ever happened in Iowa. Iowa is like a square-shaped force field that sucks significance out of everything that crosses its borders.

Full disclosure—I have Iowa roots. Both of my father’s parents were children of first-generation Norwegian immigrants who settled in Iowa, then relocated to Minnesota in the 1910s (for the sake of the children, I have no doubt). Even when I was a kid, forty or fifty years later, people still referred to us as “the Iowa folks” in my home town (I think that counts as hate speech nowadays). I also attended two colleges in Iowa, one of which I liked.

Nevertheless, the tragic fact remains that speaking of important events in Iowa is like talking about monsoons in the Sahara, or thoughtful Hollywood actors. It’s an oxymoron. Tonight’s exercises will give Iowans a short-lived feeling of being in the spotlight, and they’ve got it coming, heaven knows. But when the winners tell you they’ve got momentum, remember they’re talking about a state whose greatest claim to fame is that it’s the birthplace of Capt. James T. Kirk.

Who doesn’t even exist.

But they don’t know that in Iowa.

UPDATE: Just to let you know, I probably won’t post tomorrow evening. I have an appointment to give blood, and then there’s a Viking Age Society meeting, so my time will be tight.

Do not believe any rumors that I’ve been kidnapped by Iowan terrorists. There is no truth whatever to that rumor. And I’m being very humanely treated.