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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year’s Eve to all of our blog family. We will be spending New Year’s Eve at home this year — preparing for our annual New Year’s party on January 1st. I will be toasting to everyone on our extended blog family.

Tonight Leslie and I will share our traditional bottle of Schramsberg Sparkling wine. This is my wedding anniversary. Thirteen years ago, Leslie and I eloped on New Year’s Eve after eight years years of dating. (There is an ongoing dispute over calculating the event, I insist that this is our 22nd anniversary but Leslie insists on not counting the eight years of dating). We always celebrate with a bottle of Schramsberg. This was the bottle I bought after we got hitched at Alexandria City Hall. I used my house school ring to seal the deal.

The kids made it to midnight and watched the painful display of Anderson Cooper trying to restrain Kathy Griffin. It turns out the Mayan Apocalypse merely predicted Griffin’s appearance on New Year’s Eve. This included her attempt to throw cash into the crowd – a moronic idea that had to be physically stopped by Anderson to avert a disaster. If this was Griffin’s idea of a joke, it came across as an unhinged, unfunny person trying to fill time. The kids insisted that we turn to NBC instead.

We are expecting 200 friends to share in Wasabi Bloody Marys) and our traditional soup: The Bowl of the Wife of Kit Carson Soup. I have smoked two turkeys to put into the soup. I also have enough Wasabi to light up Tokyo.

Everyone drive carefully and have fun. I will be giving a toast to our entire blog family tonight (and, of course, my marriage).

308 thoughts on “Happy New Year!”

    1. “Mike,
      But what if he eats his meat?”

      Gene,

      You pre-suppose something that that might not be borne out by the evidence. One has to understand the nature of one’s actions to be able to decide what to do about them, if anything.

    1. “I thought it was “Thank you, sir. May i have another?””

      Mark,

      It was a direct quote so I was dealing in substance.

  4. nick:

    No animus at all. I just enjoy reading your thoughts and it distracts me with all the diatribe. Frankly, I’ve got just a few minutes on most days to read through and it is a real pain to parse through the venom to get to the good parts. I think you make a valuable contribution to the blawg with your substantive stuff which I agree with a lot of the time. That said, you do get into a lot of sidetracking which invokes the wrath of some. Justifiably too –sometimes — but still you seem to get more than your share of negative feedback. Bottom line is that you’ve got too good a mind for this trifling.

    Mark

    PS: I can’t take credit for the last line. That came from my wife and was spoken quite pointedly about someone she knows pretty well.

  9. “It’s not all gravy, Darren.”

    On the other hand, HenMan, a trillion dollars buys a lot of rubber chicken.

  11. id707,

    Other than your previously good advice to nick? Nothing in that above post was helpful.

  12. Learn to read.

    “When did you drink the kool-aid?” – ad hominem by nick directed at me.

    Cause.

    “It’s not against the law to be stupid.”

    Effect.

    I’ve told you time and again if you act like an ass I’ll treat you like one, nick.

    Apparently that lesson is too hard for you to learn.

    You really don’t want to make this an evidentiary issue, nick. It starts with the interaction on the Tarantino thread where I pointed out that her “not being mother of the year” was irrelevant to the circumstances and legality of her road side search to which you responded with a long litany of unprompted ad hominem. This way of “arguing” on your part is simply part of the same pattern Mike S. noted above. When the facts or logic don’t fit what you want, your first course of action is to attack the speaker. And you whine like a little girl when attacked back and play victim.

    I told you before you need to learn to argue better and that civility towards you rests in how you treat others (Ethic of Reciprocity). Me? I’m as nice to people as they let me be and until their actions demand otherwise. I am, however, no one’s doormat.

    No one else here is your doormat either.

    Learn to attack arguments and not people and you’d have no problem here. Win? Lose? Agree? Disagree? It doesn’t matter. That is up to the audience to decide.

    Continue to act like you do – which by your own admission is like a dick?

    There will be consequences.

    You don’t get to endlessly and without provocation break the civility rule (and then complain about civility) without there being consequences.

    You should take your buddy Id707’s advice.

    We have very few rules here but you are perpetually pushing the limits and it will not be allowed to continue indefinitely. Whether or not you respect anyone here or not is irrelevant to the fact you are expected to respect the forum and what rules we do have.

  13. My oh my!

    NickS, we do agree in part, but one man’s voice I can not accept unless time has proven´him correct. Examples: Ellsberg, Russ Baker, and Ishmael Jones. So I’ll waít for other studies which confirms his assertions.

    Gene and Nick, What a couple of “dicks” you are. (Tongue is out now, but not the finger.) 😉

    Gene, enjoying your sadistic strain now? Read him the rule on geniality, no it was something about not being abusive. Yourself being excluded.
    And would you get pissed if your sob story was kicked in the testicles with “and hitler loved his dog”? That is not civility. Did anybody trace that puppet?

    OS You are not Emily Post. Keep to the defined rules please.

    Messpo,
    The most generous comment on this thread. Congratulations from me.
    Particularly like people who can take advice from their families. I never had one.

    NickS in re the shit you are getting now. All I could do was use myself as a template for adaption. Worked for me. WTF are you protecting? Integrity.? Where did you buy that? Prestige? Accorded after free will, assuming GeneH is not big brother.
    I told you most don’t like brawls.
    Change. Even if Obama could and can not, I could. And have more fun and no fear as a consequence.

    I vacate my pulpit for the next orator.

  17. Darren-

    I am sorry to have to tell you this, but you must find out sometime. Now that you have exposed yourself as America’s newest trillionaire, your mailbox will be filled with solicitations to join the Republican Party and run for United States Senator from one of the unrepentant Confederate States. You will also receive solicitations from numerous “consultants” offering you seminars on how to screw your employees out of their overtime, their paid holidays, their vacations, their health insurance, and their children if you happen to own a cotton mill. You will also receive invitations to $50,000 a plate dinners where you will be forced to sit with Donald Trump, three grade school drop-outs named Walton, and at least four members of the Bush family. And, just wait until you start dating one of the Kardashians!

    It’s not all gravy, Darren.

  18. SWM, You’re killing me! When I get to San Diego that is always my first lunch. I go to LaPlaya, a small taco stand, obviously on the beach, owned by a nice Mexican family. The owner gives me a big grin when I walk in and asks, “Posole, Nick”? Do you make it? I’ve never tried.

  19. OS and mespo, I respect both of you. The intellectual honesty is one of the qualities I always seek. You two are righteous veterans and while we have disagreed I don’t think there is any animous. I know there is none on my part.While I accept my responsibility on this thread it seems I am the only one ever called out for “being a dick.” Hell..I know I can be a dick. The transcript shows I feared this before is devolved because I know the pathology of fellow “dicks”. What pisses me off is how we got off the substance. However, when I have purported intellectuals saying they refuse to read a book by a “war criminal”[apparently already charged, tried and convicted in a secret tribunal] and refuse to see a movie I say WTF!! I will repeat for the 5th time, there is hardly any disagreement on substance. My last substantive comment @ 11:13 gave a synopsis of my views on this. I want you two to tell me if they are stupid, or if I am stupid. Because that’s what I’ve been called numerous times, along w/ “out of my league.” Thanks.

  20. “The notion of Five Husbands would drive any woman to drink heavily.”

    Not to mention the increased risk of stroke and heart attack.

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