Hey it's new years. We made it all the way around again!

I'm still sitting here and again I'm trying hard to care that the year has come to an end. And this time even the decade is ending.

Nobody else seems to care about the end of this decade either. All of the "best of the decade" lists have come late, almost as an afterthought. I think that's because the decade has no name. Goodbye seventies, eighties, 20th century, ... now what? The BBC calls them "the naughties", but I think that's the disease I blamed for having caused me to steal all of the cookies (if you know what I mean) and have sex with them. No wait, I think the naughties were the villain in the pilot episode of the Teletubbies.

Anyway, I think "first ten years of the century" probably fits best. So, goodbye ftyotc. We hardly knew you.

Ross Douthat is a fat ass and a bad writer.

The President of the United States gets the Nobel Prize and that's a problem for you... whatever. But can you at least write a two-sentence summary of your stupid piece without mixing up past and present tense?

It was obvious that he wishes

Are you an idiot?

The "Old People Boom"

Am I the only one tired of saying "baby boomers"? They're not babies and should probably stop being defined by the post-war fuckfest that created them.

It's Called a "Cross WALK"

Not a "Cross DRIVE THE FUCK THROUGH".

Do you know how many people I've yelled that to? A lot.

"fuck all"

One Britishism I wish I could get away with is "fuck all", or better yet "sweet fuck all". As in:

"I would definitely take take your advice about parenting, but for the fact that you know sweet fuck all about raising children."

Nothing Rhymes With "Nothing"

See for yourself.

Straight-Up Propaganda Torture

After reading this article in the NYT I realized that Cheney had already won the PR war on torture. He's got people debating about whether the information we got was worth the means. Maybe yes, maybe no. Who cares? The important thing to realize is that this torture was never meant to get any information in the first place. According to the article, they were using techniques known by our military not to be effective in getting information. These techniques are known to be effective in getting propaganda confessions. They used these techniques on people who had been off of the battlefield for months -- sometimes years -- and could not possibly have any actionable intelligence.

What was Cheney trying to get them to say? Well, they were very interested at that time in convincing us that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. They may have believed that a "confession" would have helped them in this cause. Why did they fail? Maybe the Army/CIA/etc. aren't as full of toadies as Cheney thought.