Reason? There's no TIME to be reasonable!

Happy New Year y'all and good riddance to the awful decade that's passing.

I hope everybody has a prosperous 2010. Except Buckeyes fans. They're going to start the year off in a foul (fowl) mood.

Dean

Now you go home and write "I am very sorry for what I did to Frosty" a hundred zillion times.

One reason I haven't blogged much (besides work) is that I mostly blog about politics and the state of politics right now makes my heart hurt too damned much.

I didn't expect to get everything I wanted with the new administration, but on the other hand I didn't expect that there would be absolutely no consequences to the last election. None.

I've volunteered on campaigns and held elective office in the democratic party since I turned 18. I have never felt like my time spent was worthless, even after some spectacular defeats for the candidates I've supported. That is; until now.

The pattern is clear. Republicans take power every few years and fuck everything up. Democrats then take power a few years later and simply slow Republican screw ups, rather than work to correct them. I'm tired of having Democratic rule be nothing more than a Time Out for GOP disasters.

In supporting Lieberman over me the president and the D.C. establishment have turned their back on me. There will come a time when that establishment comes back to us and expects our support or our vote.

In response I respectively say they can kiss our ass. You turned your back on us.

My blogging will be restricted to movies, games, pop culture and Lady Gaga in the future. Politics are worthless.

UPDATE: Lockwood comes to much the same conclusion.

UPDATE 2: I forgot to add to this post that this decision didn't come without considering the consequences to the Democratic party or President Obama of people like me checking out. With the retirement of more and more Blue Dog Dems, the push to pass a crappy healthcare bill that will actually HURT voters, Obama's center-right approach to governing and weak cowtailing to assholes like Sustak, Nelson and Lieberman it's increasingly likely Dems could even lose the House next year.

In such case with the batshit crazy GOP we have now President Obama will be impeached. The reason for impeachment, as in the case of Clinton, will be immaterial. The Right is truly radicalized to the point that any tools to exercise power that they control will be exercised. They can't help themselves.

In such case President Obama will be turning to his base for support just as Clinton did when the GOP went after him. I don't expect we'll be there for Obama in the same way this time around. He'll have no one to blame but himself for this. He turned his back on us first.

The clean, cool chill of the holiday air... an asshole in his bathrobe, emptying a chemical toilet into my sewer...

I took this with my camera phone last night while shopping. I have no idea how that book got there. :-)

Well, if I can't have any fun I might as well leave.

I started this post several times in commemoration of World AIDS Day last week. At times it's gotten pretty long so I'm going to just pare it down to it's essence.

Somebody that my wife and I knew personally, loved and lost to AIDS was Father Peter Davis. Peter was a wonderful man, bigger than life and the pastor at the Catholic church my wife and I met at.

Part of what's made it so hard to finish this post is that it's difficult to find the words to describe just how great a man Peter was. He was down to earth, charismatic and had a great sense of humor. Most importantly; Peter advocated a Christianity based on caring for the weak in our society and centered around forgiveness. He was as much a true Christian as I've ever met.

So I was thinking about Peter on World AIDS Day and decided to do the Google thingy and see if I could find a biography or maybe his obituary to share. To my chagrin the only thing I could find was a mention on the Women for Faith and Family website on what amounts to their Priestly Hall of Shame. No doubt because of the cause of his death, but also it seems because he ministered in a flamboyant manner.

This excerpt from Peter's obituary (not available online, alas) is supposed to be taken as ironic. I read it and it made me glad I knew the man. Go figure.

From auctioning a suckling pig dinner while dressed as Miss Piggy to lighting Easter fire from a trail of gunpowder, Father Peter Davis lived and ministered with passion, humor and drama. On Dec. 28, he died at a Portland, Ore., hospice of AIDS. He was 43. He loved being a Jesuit and a priest. "I absolutely love it," he told a radio talk show host. "I do it easily. I do it naturally." [obituary by Brad Reynolds, S.J., in the National Jesuit News, April 1990]

So for no other reason that it breaks my heart that the only mention of Father Peter Davis anywhere on the world wide interwebs is by an organization run by a bunch of intemperate evil shrews, I simply want to give testament here on my little corner of the digital world that Father Peter Davis was a great man. He was the kind of man who...

...would willingly volunteer to take part in all sorts of goofy, outrageous youth group activities that may have been beneath the dignity of his position but endeared him to teens in the parish...

...would light up every time he saw a baby...

...put the ministry of the poor first and foremost as the parish goal...

...would go out of his way to tell you the worst joke you'd ever heard...

...made Christianity real and not a series of hollow rituals and motions...

...when he was diagnosed with AIDS went against the wishes of the Portland Archdiocese and, trusting his parishioners, publicly announced what he was sick with and how he had contracted it...

...meant so much to Mrs. Wormer and me that even though we were no longer Catholics, nor believers for that matter, we named our son after him.

I am lucky to have known him.

When you gonna drop Magnum on us, buddy?

This gallery of movie stars posing in shots that call back their iconic roles years later is chock full of WIN. Probably my favorite out of the bunch...