No, it's not a new program to protect the CPU of my Xbox. It's a book by Jeffrey Schwartz that my counselor recommended for tackling Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. And boy oh boy, some things are starting to make sense. Turns out that OCD is primarily a biochemical illness of the brain; it's a screwy situation where your orbital cortex (primarily responsible for screening out false or goofball thoughts) malfunctions, and as a result you suffer the intrusion of unwanted thoughts and/or urges.

I say suffer not just because the thoughts themselves can be unpleasant (though, in my case, that's definitely proven true in the past), but because the felt need to act on a given urge is most definitely unpleasant. I simply must go back and check the front door one more time, or we'll be robbed. Oh, and is the stove off?

Common manifestations of OCD include blasphemous spiritual thoughts, which my folks will attest began to afflict me as early on as 13 years old or so. I think in some way, OCD also exacerbated my tailspin in the wake of TAing that Religious Studies link class with Bart Ehrmann.

The good news is that there are some pretty cool basic strategies for dealing with this thing, and I wish I'd had them two decades ago when these symptoms first started to appear. Maybe I wouldn't have pestered my pastor with so many late-night panic-stricken phone calls!

We finally got the comics issue off to HQ. Woo hoo! I must say, it is the finest lookin' feature I can remember. We've actually seen proofs of it in its layout.

I'm so proud of my wife, and the work that she did in bringing this together. I know most of you have probably heard me say it, but I'll say it again: Shel is brilliantly gifted at this! She's got both intuitive feel for text as well as the ability to vocalize that intuition. The latter is what makes her such a good editor.

Hopefully we can find good avenues for her to exercise her talents here in Chicago. We're looking...