You know you're deep into writing a book proposal when food and sleep seem like unnecessary luxuries, you're filled with uncharacteristic self-doubt, you've developed a keyboard hunchback even more pronounced than usual, you pass the Million Visitor Benchmark without noticing, and -- most shocking of all -- you're down to less than one InstaPundit visit each day.

On the other hand, research for the book involved inventing a pasta sauce made from heavy cream, parmesan, mozzarella, and some secret herbs and spices. Wisk it constantly over high heat, and it becomes – no other word will do – fluffy.

Really. Lighter than air, yet as artery-clogging as a Big Mac whipped in a blender and injected directly into the heart, like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. Melissa ate the leftover sauce on melba toast. This thing had better sell, if only to pay for our cholesterol medication.

And if I don't get a book deal? Why, I'll publish the recipe here for free. Ain't life sweet.

Meanwhile, the world stubbornly refuses to go to hell. Wal-Mart doesn't even have any hand baskets marked down to the tune of Depression-era theme music. Iraq still isn't Lebanon. Syria's Bashar Assad, if I read correctly, is offering to toss W's salad. Yasser Arafat, to steal a line from a better writer, hasn't been shown the door, but he has been given his coat and hat. PATRIOT Act II looks to be buried somewhere. And best of all, tonight's Buffy was seriously good fun.

Random thought generated by Buffy Watching. There are two words which trump every and anything else in human male experience: Hot lesbians. Willow has had a tough year, but she finally had some stress-reducing fun tonight with Kennedy. And the world didn't blow up. See what I mean?

A few hours before Buffy, The New York Times's Warren St. John contacted me about doing an interview for a story he's doing on warblogging. He never did get back to me. I don't know if he decided he didn't need my input (no surprise there), or if the story got spiked, or what. A damn shame, too, since I'd thought of a line sure to piss off my libertarian readers – an important objective, since I spent most of last week getting the conservatives and liberals all riled up. No, I won't tell you what it was. Saving it for a rainy day, or at least one predicted to be partly cloudy.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to do some research for a recipe I'm calling "Chicken Iraqi (She'll Surrender, Too)."