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Dear 2011,

Given what it seems like we can expect from our association, I look forward to spending a whole year with you about as much as I look forward to spending a year with intestinal parasites.

However, in the always-memorable phrasing of Pawn Stars‘ Old Man, “I will piss on your grave and still be here.”

Matt

I’ve recently been re-reading Ian Williams’ Rum: A Social and Sociable History. In the introduction, the author recalls growing up in a poor family where rum made its rare appearance around Christmastime, when dad would splurge on a bottle; the recently-ended Christmas season put me in a mood to pick up my copy and enjoy Williams’ storytelling again. Which in turn has prompted a few musings, while sipping a glass or three, on “the real spirit of ’76.”

Not least among these reflections has been wondering whether there is any non-teetotal American who doesn’t go through a rum-and-Coke phase, at some point. (more…)

I probably left out a lot of things from my 2010 Year in Review, but one which definitely seems worth coming back to make note of is the Cordoba center. If only because of how well it fits the theme of “things which seemed so all-important at some point during the past year and yet probably haven’t been given a thought by most people in months as the year ends.”

As with, say, the BP oil spill, the big picture hasn’t really even changed; in this case though, not even the proximate cause of popular outrage has changed. The BBC actually did a follow-up a couple of weeks ago and, yeah, Islamic cultural center and mosque still planned for a site several hundred yards from Ground Zero. Yeah, still. And yet all those Tweeting reactionaries and red-faced bigots who condemned this idea, not to mention all the spineless Democrat douchebags who mumbled disapproval rather than stand up for something, seem to have decided that it’s no longer really worth commenting on, after all.

What a joke.

While I’m on this subject, I’d like to share an odd little discovery which actually reminded me of the issue in the first place. (more…)