NOTE- MY GODDAMNED ISP HUGHESNET SUCKS. I accidentally posted a typo addled version of this post and then couldn't get connected again to fix it. So I look like shit because they can't keep me online for sixty fucking dollars a month
This year reviewing is tough work.

First you have to, uh, review the damned thing -- which means go back and relive the past year.

Then you have to recover from the nausea.

Then you have to find an excuse for not doing the whole job implied by the term "year in review." (space limitations and more sucky things than you can flail a keyboard comprise this year's alibi).

Then you have to settle on an approach and tone for the piece ( to harbor the dwindling hope that you're still at least a borderline artist).

Then you have to write the damned essay-- at least a few times-- and it's always at least twice as long as it should be.

Then you have to take many phrases, sentences, paragraphs and entire sections that you have slaved and agonized over and highlight them as if they really are special, only to then euthanize them with the 'delete' key.

Along the way you have to find at least some humor in the horror because that's what you do.

Throughout the process you have to fight a pervasive feeling of futility because you've been summarizing the alleged progress of humanity in either performance or print (or both) almost every year since about 1980 in hopes that your efforts will help spark a prairie fire of social lucidity and common decency -- this  despite the fact that after almost three decades, you know that things almost always only get worse.

So I guess what I'm saying is I can't seem to find a portion of my soul free enough of self-inflicted claw marks to scrape for something worthy of your faithful readership at the moment. And the prospects aren't great that this will change in the immediate future. I do have a special holiday season post planned for sometime this week, that was originally slated for last Friday. I promise I'll get to that at some point in the near future when for my own mental health I  avert my snowblind gaze from 2007.

So thanks for your continued patience. Since getting economically disappeared by the limo libs at Air America, I've worked very hard to build up this site and you, oh exalted general public, have rewarded me by visiting in growing numbers. I hope that my brief respite from daily posting will make retrospective sense when you read what is beginning to look like a sensible retrospective on a nonsensically reprehensible year.

On the puppy front

Lettie and Lu send their love and want it known that they are now five months old. Lu weighed in at 36 pounds at the vet on Saturday. Lettie is now 32 pounds of perpetual motion. They are both good girls who, while still having plenty of growing up to do, are becoming more trustworthy and beloved each day. They are fabulous athletes- quicksilver fast on all fours, and  and daredevil gymnasts to boost. They are adept at going fifteen rounds with one another while circumnavigating our land at top speed.

Lloyd the Dog is missed more than ever. This in no way has anything to do with  Lu and Let and in no way causes us to do anything but redouble our efforts to be kind, guiding and loving toward them. Karen and I are carrying on but we still have a lot of grieving to do for our boy. As the days pass and various seasons and holidays come and go, accompanying them are reminders of how Lloyd managed to make himself an integral part of everything from leaf piles, to snowstorms, to holiday decorations. He also knew his way around hunting season and understood that, during that rueful period, the majority of his exercise came via chasing tennis balls in our yard. He did it with joy and never complained of the deprivation that arrived when a blizzard of orange flakes besieged our neighborhood.

Finally I'd be too damned American if I failed to send congratulations to our friends in Australia for ridding themselves of that human insult, John Howard. It's nice to see that from now on his only "work choice" will be in the private sector. I am jealous of any country that can run a scumbag out of town by way of the voting booth.