For all the malaise of the Internet, it’s still like having a library – a really big library – on your desk or, for those who prefer smaller boxes, in your palm. Otherwise how could I look up some Chaucer on the subject of April, just like that?

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour

That is to say, April showers relieve March dryness and bring forth flowers, if not May flowers exactly. A fair amount of rain fell today, though in northern Illinois at least, March wasn’t particularly dry.

I’ve had little regard for April Fools Day over the years, probably a legacy of the idiotic and occasionally cruel uses schoolkids had, in my experience, for the day. The Comics Curmudgeon touches on that very thing today in reviewing Dennis the Menace and Blondie.

“Is there any ‘holiday’ more vile and unpleasant than April Fool’s Day, which is mostly marked by ‘pranks’ perpetrated by the least funny people alive?” Josh Fruhlinger writes. “These tricks generally take one of two very simple forms, as illustrated neatly in these two strips: making someone believe that something bad is happening when it really isn’t, or making someone believe something good is happening when it really isn’t. Does anyone enjoy either? I’m going to say no.”

Mr. Dithers, one of the pranksters, is prominent in today’s Blondie. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated how fat he is, a lingering attribute (I assume) from the Hoover-era origins of the strip, when fat meant prosperous. That association has been decoupled in the many decades since. Chalk it up to the wide introduction of corn syrup to the American diet, so that a wider class of people can be wider themselves.