DREHERMANIA! I love Nancy Nall but I'm not sure I can ever forgive her for notifying me, in a giddy and openly baiting note, that Rod Dreher is blogging regularly again, this time at The American Conservative. It's like having a huge mosquito you thought you were rid of in October find its way back into your house in February.

Oh, I'm just kidding. When Dreher seemed to be under some kind of interdiction by his masters at the Templeton Foundation, though there were plenty of other nuts to occupy my attention, I found I was missing Dreher's particular blend of Christian viciousness and modish epicureanism, like Seth Pecksniff in a Whole Foods apron. When I found he'd been returning to circulation I was actually pleased.

The new blog may be too much of a good thing, though. He's been posting up a storm. In one item he brags on the weight he's lost since escaping the black-robed Da Vinci Code harriers of Templeton -- well, actually he doesn't mention Templeton, he just reports that

...my wife signed the family up for a YMCA membership so the kids could have swimming lessons and a pool to play in for the summer. She’s been nagging me nagging me for years to exercise for my health, but I’ve never done it. But I’d just bought an iPad2, and decided maybe I could stand the crushing boredom of exercise if I sat on the recumbent elliptical trainer and watched “30 Rock” on Netflix streaming.

Thus nagging- and tech-toy-enabled, Dreher got fit, and the penchant for sudden enthusiasms that has led him to two religious conversions now has him "waking up every morning at 4:30, 5 a.m., and driving out to the Y to exercise for an hour and a half."

And what does Dreher make of this new means of feeding his endorphin addiction?

Philosophically speaking, it seems to me that without really understanding what I was doing, I was living out a conservative principle of taking personal responsibility and making hard but necessary changes to live within my means.

Maybe a third conversion to the Church of Christ, Personal Trainer is in the offing. He can take a pew with the BlogProf.

I may not be able to keep up. Another of his posts actually begins "On his blog, Steve Sailer introduced me this morning to the essays of Paul Graham..." which was enough for me, thanks. As for his maiden life-in-Philly post, I did read it all, but hardly know what to say about it except "gaaaaaaack." It contains passages like this:

I’m pretty sure that most of the people we associate with in our neighborhood would be horrified to know what we really believe in. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty secure place to live in terms of comfort and peaceability. It’s strange, though, to feel so alien in such a nice place.

Believe me, context doesn't redeem it. The upshot is that Dreher's discomfort at living in a liberal enclave where he is nonetheless well-treated is relieved by returning to his favorite Robert Putnam study, which he takes as proof that people are just natchurly meant to stay with their own kind. And here's the punchline:

With the nation in for a long stretch of hard times, I find within myself an urge to be around people like me.

I've envisioned such a scenario before, and hope Dreher attracts enough adherents at TAC to make it so.

UPDATE. Fixed a spelling error -- thanks, M. Krebs -- but you'll have to see comments to find out what it was. Not that it isn't worth your time to visit anyway, especially with Roger Ailes (additional lyrics Mr. Wonderful) fitting new, Dreher-specific words to the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." ("Rod Man, there's a place you can go/ When your wife nags about your flabroll...")

UPDATE 2. While you're here, let me ask: I see my <target="blank"> tags aren't working anymore. Anyone know why?