Pope Palpatine Is At It Again...

From The Times of London:

Pope Benedict XVI’s rehabilitation of a British bishop who denies that millions of Jews died in Nazi gas chambers has alarmed Catholics who fear it risks dealing a fatal blow to the inter-faith dialogue promoted by his predecessor.

Over the weekend the Pope issued a decree welcoming back into the Roman Catholic Church Richard Williamson, 68, and three other breakaway bishops excommunicated by John Paul II in 1988. The bishops had been ordained without Vatican permission by the renegade French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who rejected the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The Vatican decree referred to the need to overcome the “scandal of divisiveness” and seek reconciliation and “full communion” with Lefebvre’s order, the ultra-conservative Society or Fraternity of St Pius X. It lifted the excommunication not only of Bishop Williamson, rector of the Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, Argentina, but also of Bernard Fellay, the leader of the order, Alfonso de Gallareta, and Tissier de Mallerais.

Renzo Gattegna, head of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy, said the rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson was “terrible not only for Jewish people but for the whole of humanity”. He said that Italian Jews would refuse to take part in joint prayers with Christians on Tuesday marking Holocaust Day, known in Italy as “The Day of Memory”.

Some Vatican officials are also saying privately that although the Pope’s stated aim was to unite the Church by bringing the rebels back into the fold, his move would have the opposite effect. “The Church will pay a price for this” one Vatican prelate said. “The Pope is undermining the legacy of John Paul II.”

Benedict’s actions are also reviving his old nickname when he was Cardinal Ratzinger — that of the “Panzerkardinal”, known for his hardline conservatism as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“This is not so much an act of grace as a surrender,” the veteran Vatican watcher Marco Politi said. Benedict wanted a new era of reconciliation, “but the new era has begun with a lie. The Pope has made a openly declared and unshakeable anti-Semite a legitimate Bishop”.

Lefebvre, who died in 1991, had set up “a fanatical and reactionary counter-Church which openly contested, repudiated and defamed all the crucial points of Vatican II, from respect for the Jews to modernisation of the liturgy”. There are an estimated 500 Lefebvrist bishops and 600,000 followers worldwide.

Gianni Gennari, a theologian and contributor to the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire, said it was “shameful that the lifting of the excommunications was not accompanied by any repentance whatever on the part of the Lefebvrists”.

Bishop Williamson, who has said that the Vatican is controlled by Satan and that the Jews are bent on world domination, reiterated in a broadcast last week on Swedish television that the historical evidence was “hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers”.

He added: “I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers.”

Prosecutors in Regensburg in Germany, where the interview took place — and where the Pope once studied and taught — have opened an inquiry. Holocaust denial is an offence under German law.

Father Federico Lombardi, the papal spokesman, insisted the lifting of the excommunications had “absolutely nothing to do” with Williamson’s views on the Holocaust. “One is not connected to the other,” he said. Vatican Radio said Williamson’s statements had been condemned by other members of the St Pius X fraternity.

This month Elia Enrico Richetti, the chief rabbi of Venice, said Jews had been deeply offended by the reintroduction by the Pope in March of a Good Friday Latin prayer for the conversion of the Jews as part of the revived Tridentine Mass. “We are moving toward the cancellation of 50 years of Church history” the rabbi said.

Other Catholic-Jewish tensions include plans by the Pope to beatify Pius XII, the wartime pontiff accused by critics of failing to speak out in defence of Jews. The Vatican insists that Pius helped the Jews while avoiding public statements that would have made matters worse, and has demanded the removal of a plaque attacking him at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

The Pope has twice visited synagogues, in the US and his native Germany, and sought to make amends with the Islamic world after a speech at Regensburg two years ago in which he appeared to suggest that Islam was inherently violent and irrational. However, he recently declared that inter-religious dialogue “in the strict sense of the word” between Christians, Jews and Muslims was “not possible”.



There are so many things that are so horribly wrong with this that I don't know where to begin... Oh wait, yes, I do: THIS GUY RICHARDSON IS A TOTAL NUTTER and should be "rehabilitated" in a rather different sort of place. The kind with padded walls.

Un.Be.Lievable.

To start on a minor note, last I heard of Catholic dogma, Mary is NOT the "co-redemptrix" (as the name of Richardson's Argentinian seminary---hey, Argentina! Where all good Nazis go!---would have it) right along with Jesus. Unless that's changed. Infallibly, of course. She was a nice Jewish girl, not the Goddess conflation and sexist confection that a bunch of skirt-wearing misogynist males have made her into. Though I kind of like the Goddess identification...inadvertent, I'm sure.

And, frankly, if I believed in Satan it would not surprise me in the slightest to learn that he was indeed in charge of the Vatican, as Richardson posits. In fact, I believe there was a long-ago heresy that held ALL organized religion to be the work of oooh, could it be...SATAN. A quashed heresy, natch.

But the rest of this loony's positions? "Alleged" Holocaust? No gas chambers? ONLY a couple of hundred thousand dead Jews? What kind of crack is this guy ON?

I get the vibe that Benny wants not to have an interfaith dialogue, but to launch a new Crusade. I also get the vibe that if he doesn't STFU, he or his successor (if there is one) will be presiding over the Fall of the Roman Catholic Empire. And he will well deserve the job.

Senatrix Populusque Novum Eboracum

Forgive the possibly incorrect word endings; it's been a long time since Professor Wallace's Latin class...

Well, we now have a new person in Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate seat, and the long knives are already out. Perhaps justifiably...

I have to say, when I first saw Kirsten Gillibrand's name put into play, I thought this was a good thing. A person from upstate NYS, and a woman. We desperately needed someone to represent the interests of Outside New York City, and at first glance she seemed reasonable.

She may still prove so. I, for one, have no problem with her NRA standing: I like guns, and I believe that as long as criminals have guns, everybody should have them. Not a very liberal attitude, you're thinking (or else an EXTREMELY liberal one)? So shoot me. If I don't get the drop on you first.

She supports gay marriage rights and other such issues. As for the rest, I guess we'll find out. I do think she'll be facing hugeous primary challenges next year and in 2012, and Governor Paterson may find himself doing the same.

Not so much because of Gillibrand, though that, but because he's proven himself to be, or at least to look like, an incompetent dithering fool by his handling of the whole Caroline Kennedy as senator thing.

I didn't approve of Caroline getting the appointment, because I thought she came across as a spoiled, self-entitled little princessy bitch. "Waaah! I'm a Kennedy! My family has suffered! It's my murdered uncle's old Senate seat! Gimme!"

She had no elective experience, couldn't carry on a coherent interview in public, refused to allow reporters access (apparently with good reason), and finally either withdrew in a fit of pique, withdrew because of nanny and tax issues, withdrew honorably for the greater good of the state, or was sabotaged out of contention by Paterson's own people and a hired PR gun, depending on whose story you buy.

Oh, I tell you, New York state politics! An endless source of good unclean fun! I look forward to seeing this play out. Maybe Paterson should have appointed Capt. Sully Sullenberger. At least he demonstrates unflappable grace under pressure. If he can land a crippled jet on the Hudson, he can certainly manage the fractious Senate.

Forty Years On: 25 January 1969 - 25 January 2009

Forty years ago last night, I saw the Doors at Madison Square Garden. Forty years ago this afternoon, I met Jim for the first time, and changed my life forever.

I describe it all in “Strange Days” just as it happened; the courtesy, the gorgeousness, the heart-stopping fairytale sparks when we touched hands. Now I just want to talk a little about what it felt like.

I was 22 when we met; he had just turned 25. He was wearing a white cotton Mexican shirt and black jeans and Frye boots, the same clothes he’d had on for the Garden concert the night before, and he was in one of his very longhaired periods, right down on his shoulders. I was wearing a dark-gold velour long-sleeved microminidress as a tunic over brown leather pants and cocoa suede boots and a vintage black fur coat, with tigereye scarab earrings, a long, heavy, goldtone chain knotted up and a silver and bloodstone ring (I had very little jewelry at the time, nothing expensive or impressive).

(For all those toxic weasels who sneer about how could I POSSIBLY remember things with such detail, I will say only that if THEY had been lucky enough to be with Jim, they wouldn’t have forgotten anything either…)

We talked for almost three hours, two of those completely one on one; then some other people came in. When we started, there was winter sunlight outside over Central Park; by the time we said goodbye, it was dark. There wasn’t a second in all those hours when I wasn’t completely aware of him and only of him; I was shivering inside, so intensely did fate come on, so conscious was I of him and of how this was going to play out.

I think I knew right then that we were never going to get to live happily ever after, and I decided right then, too, that it didn’t matter, that whatever joy I was lucky enough to have with him, and I knew it would be a lot, would be worth all the pain, which would also be a lot.

I was right. I’m still right.

I also think that I honored him not by sitting around and moping, or delusionally imagining that he was still alive, or pretending that he was coming back, or by losing myself in drugs and whoredom, but by taking my grief in both hands and going out to work every day to support myself, with no help from anyone and no comfort for my loss, and by going on to focus and achieve real works of creativity in my name and his and ours. By having a life, not merely an existence.

I did it for us, and I’m still doing it for us, and I will continue to do it for us until the day he comes to fetch me and we’re together again.

And it all started forty years ago today. I remember that day, and this is how Jim himself remembered it, in a letter:


In a cold chamber
in a cold stone house
in a cold city
on a winter afternoon
a young Empress
is seated in a high-back’d chair
w/roses in her lap


I remember. And he remembered too.



© Patricia Morrison

National Woodstock

People hugging, singing, laughing, crying. And nobody's even stoned, as far as I can tell. Hundreds of thousands of people, millions, all feeling together for the first time ever. The Dark Knight has run the Joker out of town, and the euphoria is unbelievable.

The loony giddy feeling may or may not dissipate. But I have a feeling that people are so glad for this enormous change that even if the crazy happy goes, since that's hard to sustain, it will be transformed into a settled joy that I like to think will truly be able to accomplish stuff.

I love that he socked it to Shrub, and Shrub had to sit there and take it.

I love that it really feels different today.

I love that I saw eighty-year-old black people crying from joy and eighteen-year-old white people doing the same, though their joy came from different reasons and different roots.

I love that the Obamas look totally nuts about each other and can't keep their hands off each other in public.

I love that we actually seem to have a President who has brains, heart and nerve; who believes that ethics in government are as necessary as ethics in individuals; who apparently has begun as he means to go on.

I love feeling included in this country for the first time since I worked for Bobby Kennedy's 1968 campaign. I love feeling like an "us."

What I do not love: the flubbed oath. Either by accident (he had no copy of the oath on him, and apparently hadn't memorized it either) or on purpose (Obama voted against him in confirmation hearings), Chief Justice Roberts blew it bigtime, and forever marred what should have been a truly awesome and splendid perfect moment.

So now there has been a do-over of the oath, today, in the Map Room. It apparently didn't matter,since according to the Constitution the victor in the Electoral College becomes president at noon on January 20, regardless. So he is.

It's just a shame that so historic an event got all messed up by an idiot.



I see where some people are feeling sorry for the Boy King (as Maureen Dowd calls him) as he goes off to forever exile, and even profess to respect him for sticking to his ideals. I understand the sentiment, but cannot share it.

Well, no, that's not true, I don't understand it.

The man disrespected ALL of us: the country, even the whole world. He deserves no respect back. He dishonored his great office. He merits no honor in return. He had deeply flawed ideals and did not acknowledge or even understand those of others. He was not a public servant, but lived to serve only himself and his rich friends and dark masters. He wasn't Voldemort, just a Death Eater, but he did more to destroy this country than all of his predecessors. He forfeited his due as a president and his due as a person.

I'm glad he's gone, and I do not wish him well. And even my new President can't make me thank him for his "service." With service like that, we don't need enemies.

Some Observations

Liked the style of Michelle's outfit, but not the color. The necklace was nice, though. The girls looked adorable, and I thought for a minute that Malia had a BlackBerry or some such...texting during Dad's inauguration! But it was just a camera, which was equally charming.
What must they have going on inside their heads...probably not a coherent thought.

The fluff of the Presidential oath first appalled me, then amused me when he just laughed it off and corrected the Chief Justice, who is probably going to go home and commit seppuku for the dishonor of it all.

Loved seeing the Prez looking up at and waving to the people atop the buildings of the parade route, not just acknowledging the folks right alongside the roadway.

Nice to see the First Couple holding hands all the time. And when Michelle wanted to change her waving arm from left to right, she grabbed Barack's hand with her free one, just so she was always holding on to him. Very sweet.

The Bidens seem quite pleased with it all, and I liked hearing the initial introduction of "Vice President-elect Biden and Dr. Biden". She looked very foxy in the high-heeled black boots.

Hope that Teddy Kennedy is okay after the seizure during the Capitol luncheon.

LOVEDLOVEDLOVED the Rev. Lowery's benediction. And you just bet I said Amen three times!

Did NOT care for Rick Warren, that smug, oleaginous pimp for Christ. Could he have BEEN more excluding?

Would have liked to have had a shoutout to Buddhists, Shintoists, Taoists, Pagans and Witches, though.


This gladdened my heart: from the LA Times:

On the drive to Capitol Hill, the current and future presidents passed protesters carrying signs reading "Arrest Bush." When Bush entered the grandstand with the orchestra playing "Hail to the Chief" for the last time, the crowd below began singing a different refrain: "Hey, Hey, Good-bye." One man waved his shoe.

I would have liked to see a whole FUSILLADE of shoes, a whole asteroid shower of footwear, aimed in Shrub's fleeing direction.


Parade is great so far, though some horsies would be nice. I do love a good parade, and when I was a tiny Girl Scout I marched in several, one of which I even got to carry the flag in, which was nicely militaristic.

And he gives a SHAKA TO THE KIDS FROM HAWAII!!! And so did his daughters! As his old high school's marching band goes by, Punahou on Oahu. How cool is he! Our first bodysurfing Hawaiian president!

Oh, and here ARE horses! With Native Americans riding them in full regalia. Excellent!

And bagpipes! Always a very good thing. I remember once, on St. Patrick's Day long ago, our local AOH band in Babylon, Long Island, the awesome Saffron Kilts, marched in the parade that day and then had to go straight to the airport and jump on a plane to go down to D.C. to play for the then President, Carter maybe? My sister, who knew some of the Saffs, said there was much consternation at the airport when forty men with knives in their socks tried to rush on board the plane...

Hmph. The reviewing stand emptied out pretty quickly...

If Hillary had gotten in, which is the outcome I was pulling for (and not just because of this), I would have been there right now, thanks to my wonderful honorary nephew Fernand, who worked hard for both Kerry and Hillary. Let's see, what WOULD I have worn to the ball? I think this lovely Victorian-style ballgown I have, with big leg-o'-mutton sleeves, flared out at the upper arm and tight-sleeved with buttons from elbow to wrist, Empire style with a little train and a low scoop neck, in mulberry velvet; with the aquamarine and rose diamond Victorian demi-parure Jim gave me as a wedding present. (Hey, you KNEW it was going to work its way around to clothes and jewels sooner or later...)



Okay. Now for a bit of reflection.

Obama wasn't my first choice, as you may recall from reading this blog. Or even my second. In fact, I'm not even sure he ever was a "choice" at all. I voted for him because the alternative was utterly unthinkable, and I was very happy to do so.

But I never really drank the Kool-Aid, and I still haven't. I don't know if that's because I have genuine reservations, which I don't think I do anymore (though I did, based solely on his lack of experience on a national level), or because I'm just a journo at heart and we tend to stand away and observe with wary eyes, since that is what we've been trained to do and also because it's how we are; hence our choice of career.

Of course I think it's a huge, tremendous thing, for the country and the world. I have come round to thinking that he's the right person at the right time, or the wrong time, depending on how you look at it. It's incredible, many times more so than if it had been Hillary as the first woman President, which would have been historic in a very different way, but not as unifying and euphoric as this undeniably is, even for us cynical hacks.

I think he's an admirable family man and a literate, thoughtful individual, and what he's accomplished is truly staggering. I was out in the streets of my neighborhood on Election Night, cheering with my neighbors at the victory. And I certainly wish strength to his arm in what's going to be a rugged, harsh job.

I'd be thrilled to see him turn out to be one of the greats, and as far as I'm concerned he can take all the time he needs to do so. If anyone can be, I think he's the one.

And he's Not!Shrub, which is a joy and a wonder all to itself.

So yes, I am a happy 60s chick this day. A day that, frankly, I didn't think I'd live to see.

Two Words

President. Obama.

Give "Em Hell, Cenk!

A man after my own wrathful heart...


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/bush-drops-fake-cowboy-sh_b_158186.html


Here's his close:

Why the hell has our press gotten so timid? And when did they think their job became to reinforce the fake images and storylines of politicians rather than to challenge them? It's like they're playing their role in this scripted movie. It's almost as if they're being paid to go along with the fraud. The man grew up in a very exclusive, private boarding school in Connecticut. He was a snotty nosed cheerleader. His grandfather was a United States Senator and his father was the President of the United States of America. He was possibly the most privileged man in America. And the press helped to sell the American people on a line of bullshit about how he was a simple cowboy from a ranch down in Crawford. And it helped to get him elected!

That should be a stain on every reporter who covered him for the rest of their lives.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Harry Windsor and the Half-Wit Prince

What the hell is wrong with young Prince Harry of Wales? In 2005, he was busted for going to a costume party dressed as a Nazi officer, complete with swastika armband. I can imagine his great-grandmother the Queen Mum, who stuck it out like a good 'un in London during the Blitz, boxing his royal and apparently tin ears for that one.

And now a tape surfaces of young Prince Harry calling a colleague and fellow soldier "our little Paki friend" and referring to him as a "raghead." Surely at some point someone must have told him that this is not exactly the way to foster warriorly camaraderie in the troops? I like to think that his mother would have smacked him good had she heard that...and I hope his father gave him a talking-to. Even Prince Hal of yore had more sensitivity than that.

He certainly seems to be the less mentally endowed of the Wales boys. Wills is no academic whiz, but at least he looks to have a grasp on certain realities that his younger bro appears incapable of achieving. Pakis and ragheads, forsooth! One might as well call the Mountbatten-Windsor family a pack of feckless Krauts...oh, wait...no, no, just kidding.

Anyway, the Brits have always had a breathtakingly insensitive approach to such things. It was only in the Sixties that it finally occurred to them that using "nigger-brown" as a descriptor for the color dark brown might not be an entirely terrific idea. True story! I heard and read it myself, back then: salesmen sold nigger-brown shoes, or wool coats...and there was an inn-keeper in Glastonbury once who had my jaw hitting the fourteenth-century floor with a thing or two she said in conversation. But she was from South Africa, so perhaps her prejudice could be explained, though never excused. Stupid racist cow.

Prince Harry's tin ear does not clang alone, it would seem.

So he issues yet another half-baked "apology", but I bet you dollars to doughnuts he feels put-upon and picked-on and still can't see what he did wrong. Good thing he's the spare, not the heir. Otherwise, I could see the fulfillment of something I once dreamed, long ago: King Henry the Ninth, last king of England...which would make me sad, really.

Laird!

Got to meet Laird Hamilton, albeit briefly, at a book signing in New Jersey tonight. Verrrrry exciting. (Yeah, we're all somebody's groupie...)

Lovely little indie bookstore in Ridgewood, called Bookends. About 100 people downstairs for the signing: he took a few questions, mostly from people who wanted to make darn sure we all knew they surfed, and then gamely started signing copies of his book, "Force of Nature". Which is not about surfing so much as it is about his personal philosophy, and is surprisingly good: advice on exercise and eating and mind-body matters, plus oh yeah some surfing stuff too. Well written and very engaging.

As is he. Seems like a very down-to-earth guy, not full of himself or anything. Well, insofar as you can judge anybody by one of these events. He was sitting down, so didn't get to judge his height, but he certainly looked big and tall and fit enough. And the hair is fabulous.

Anyway, I'd been told that Laird's a big Doors fan, plus I had mentioned him and his wife in the acknowledgments to "Ungrateful Dead" (for inspiring me to get to the gym), so I brought copies of that and "Strange Days" to give him. When I got up to the table, I introduced myself and said I'd sign my books for him while he signed his for me, and he laughed and said that seemed fair, but did he also have to read them? I said no, no, just have them, and besides they weren't waterproof, and he allowed as to how nice it was of me and that indeed he was an admirer of my husband's work.

Then the store owner, who was standing right there, asked me if I got to keep the sword from my scene in the Doors movie. I said the only way I would have wanted to keep it was if it had been dripping with the blood of Oliver Stone, and we all had a good chuckle about that. About thirty seconds more conversation, I thanked him in Hawaiian, we shook hands and that was that. About two minutes mutual face time altogether, but that was about four times as much as everybody else got. And he wrote a lovely long inscription in the book. By then they had moved in the second shift of another 50-60 people, so he was probably signing for quite a while after. Poor guy.

There were two fans of my Keltiad there, who had brought books for me to sign, which was gratifying, so we talked a while after, and then my friends Andrew (who does the cover art for the Rennie books) and his wife Diana drove me back to their house, where we all had dinner with their lovely daughter Emma and toured the house and then Andrew drove me back to the city.

A wonderful evening indeed.

Oh, and Laird's on the Today show Thursday morning, 9:30, if anyone's awake and watching...

A Profession of Quislings

I see where there appears to be a concerted effort made in and by media to drum up some sympathy for poor, persecuted, misunderstood outgoing usurper president George W. Bush.

This. Makes. Me. Sick. Leaving aside for the moment the breathtaking wrongheadedness of such an attempt, all I can say is WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, JOURNALISTS OF THE WORLD??? Did you not go through the same past eight years I did? And did you not see the egregious perversions this creature practiced on us all? The rape of the Constitution, the disassembling of the economy, the pushing of two wars and the abandonment of the first one when it got too tough, the boastful claim of "Mission accomplished", the shameless preening atop the still-smoking pile of rubble and bodies at Ground Zero...I could go on and on, but my typing fingers are getting tired.

And if you did see all this, then WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU THINK TO TAKE HIM TO TASK FOR IT? And, getting back to the breathtaking wrongheadedness, why now are you STILL seen to further whitewash this vile piece of trash by attempting to score him some sympathy props?

I have about as much respect for my journalistic profession at the moment as I have for Shrub himself. Which is to say not even none, but it's measured in negative increments so large as to approximate geologic time. For eight years, journalists colluded and conspired, nudge-nudge-wink-wink, at propping up his lying, cheating, stealing Potemkin-village tactics with matching ones of their own. Where was the outrage and fury as all this went down, to get us to where we are today? Where were the crusading journos ripping the lid off the noxious brew of favoritism, elitism and screw-the-people that Bush and his minions and lackeys were pouring with such success down everyone's throat? Why did none of you sputter and spit it right back in their faces?

Why? Because you were a cowardly pack of sycophants and suckups. Because you just caved. Because you'd rather quit than fight. You're far too intelligent NOT to have realized what was going on; therefore I can only assume that you accepted and agreed to this monumental screwing.

Which makes you just as guilty as the scumbags who perpetrated this mess. I am thoroughly ashamed of your failure to fight back, and thoroughly disgusted at your current attempt to soften the image of Bush, probably not out of affection for him but just to make yourselves look less like the jackasses and political whores you really are.

Not to mention the bend-over sellouts to your masters: the big conglomerates that own all media and rule the airwaves and front pages. It all comes down to money: the masters run the plantations, and the serfs knuckle under. And the few who do speak out are summarily bounced, as a warning to uppity journos everywhere: not "All the news that's fit to print", but "All the news that's going to get printed, we'll tell you."

Well, maybe that's a consideration for which journalists should validly be cut a little slack, in the cause of keeping their families fed, but in these days of the Internet, there are many other ways to get the truth out there without anyone's job being imperiled. I don't notice any renegade journalists out there: any Zorros, any Batmans, any Green Arrows, let alone any Deep Throats. Fear and money rule. And who do we have to thank for that? That's right: the corrupt Sith Lords Darth Cheney, Darth Rove and their little Darthian friends who have enriched their pockets at the expense of the American public. They conducted themselves as if we're THEIR servants, not they ours.

And by not holding those who could report these abuses to the standards of their profession, we colluded and turned a blind eye, even as we all struggled to survive. The two things should not be mutually exclusive. If people get the government they deserve, as is said to be the case by common wisdom, then maybe people get the Fourth Estate they deserve, too. Or that deserves them.

The honorable and integrity-laden firebrand journalists of the past are spinning in their graves. Whatever happened to "Speak truth to power?" Somehow over the past eight years, journalists read that as "Kiss power's ass no matter what."

I say again, you make me sick.

Happy New Year!

A lovely and cold day, though we have no snow in town. Suburbs had a ton, but us? Zippo. So unfair.

I want to wish everyone a wondrous 2009, with health, prosperity and all manner of good things.

I don't really do resolutions, but this year I'd like to, in no particular order:

1. Get back to the gym on a regular basis; I've slacked off the last month.

2. Finish "A Hard Slay's Night: Murder at the Royal Albert Hall", so it can come out for Christmas.

3. Get the apartment tidied up. It looks like the goats got in...clothes and books everywhere. It's not dirty, just untidy. Massively untidy.

4. Hopefully get a full-time gig, or at least a regular part-time one, though I must admit the freelance editing is nice. Enough money to maintain me in comfort, lots and lots of free time to do my own stuff.

5. Clear out closets. Tons of stuff I could give to various charities. Also start deaccessioning my personal possessions: the acquisitiveness is pretty much over, now it's time to pass stuff on. Anybody want some swords? Real ones? (The Scottish broadsword with baldric and silver fittings is reserved for Jared...)

6. Install the new flat-screen HD TV. Or, pay someone professional to do it for me.

7. Buy a color laser printer. I've been using the funky local copy shop, to print stuff out; not that I print out much, but it would be nice to see stuff in the fonts in which I create it.

8. Buy a DVD/VHS player. (The old TV had one built right in, so now I need a separate one. Not that I use it all that much, but I do like to keep a tape in, so I can record little snippets of things I like when I see them. And then never watch the tapes again. But I have them!)

9. Meet Laird Hamilton. Which I just might, on January 7th: he's doing a signing in New Jersey, in the same town where my friends Andrew and Diana live, so we've planned an outing. Since Laird was responsible for getting me to the gym in the first place, I thanked him and his wife Gabrielle Reece in the "Ungrateful Dead" acknowledgments, so I want to give him a copy, hopefully. Also he's a big Doors fan.

10. Learn to cook some new stuff. Like Rennie, I can make about seven things, not counting idiot-proof fare like hot dogs and French toast and scrambled eggs. But I'd love to learn how to make some nice new things, perhaps seafood crepes and a really good boeuf bourguignon. Must be top of the stove, though: the oven has long since been turned over to storage.


I look at the long lists of inspiring tasks that people have set themselves, and I feel lazy and slothful and unchallenged. Then I lie down until those feelings pass, and they do, very quickly...and so it goes...