I Hate New Year’s Eve

By admitting this, I give legitimacy to every liberal stereotype of conservatives as prudish throwbacks stuck in the past, I know, but still: I’m not ready for a new year. I never am. I don’t understand the necessity and it dismays me that so many of you are so accepting of this unavoidable fact of reality.

I DON’T WANT 2011 TO GO!!!

Now, don’t get me wrong. 2011 was just awful in lots of ways. For example, I spent the first seven months of it out of work, running my savings down to nothing as I wondered whether my father would live another day.

So it’s not 2011 in particular that I’m anxious to hang onto. I’ll probably feel the same way one year from now even if the Republicans screw up 2012 big enough to allow Barack Obama an unjustifiable second term.

I just hate having to relinquish my favorite 1/3 of any given year for the beginning of the 2/3rds that do almost nothing for me. Halloween is almost 11 months away. The Summer heat won’t let up for another eight or nine months. Hell, Christmas, beloved Christmas is almost a year away now.

I’ll be grudgingly all right tomorrow, or in a week or two. But for now, I’m inconsolable.

Oh, Just Go And Watch The Second Episode of Misfits

I’ve got way, way too much on my mind tonight, and this is a perfect diversion.  You’re welcome.

Susan A. MacKay Taught Others How To Be A Friend

Susan A. MacKay, Wife, Mother, Friend

This is Susan A. MacKay.  On September 11, 2001, she was on American Airlines Flight 11, the plane which was flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center by Islamic terrorists.

This was the only photo of Susan that I could find online, and it doesn’t seem nearly large enough to do justice to the memory of a woman who remains, based on the tributes available, dearly missed and much beloved.

Susan was a wife and a mother of two.  She was 44 years old.  She lived in Westford, Massachusetts with her husband Douglas and two children, Matthew and Lauren.

Susan had worked in the retail industry all her professional life and risen to the position of Assistant Vice President of Merchandise Planning and Allocation for TJX Co.  According to a friend, even more than her professional accomplishments, Susan was devoted to her children and loved being a mother.

Her husband Douglas said that Susan had been looking forward to her trip to Los Angeles on September 11 “all Summer.”  In the wake of her murder, grieving co-workers placed roses and chrysanthemums in Susan’s parking space at TJX.

There isn’t a whole lot of other information available about Susan on the Internet.  She wasn’t famous and appears to have led a life without particular notoriety.  However, as Dennis Prager has aptly pointed out, the famous are rarely significant, and the significant are rarely famous.  By all accounts, Susan MacKay, whilst not famous, appears to have led a life of noteworthy significance.

Based on the recollections of her offered up by her husband, numerous cousins, friends, co-workers and other relations, Susan was much loved and admired.  In their various tributes, those who knew her invariably mention her lively spirit.  Susan was a lot of fun, they say.  I’ve also gleaned that she had a flair for fashion and style and took to sharing this with those around her, offering advice and helping people look their best.  A prolific seamstress, according to Douglas, Susan had transformed her own wedding dress into a christening gown for her children, sewn pillows, comforters, and even her younger sister’s wedding dress the year before her murder.

By every account, Susan was one of those people who made the world a better place.  The pain of her loss is still deeply felt, and memorial masses have continued for years.  In 2007, a memorial mass was celebrated on what would have been her fiftieth birthday.

One of Susan’s cousins said that Susan taught her, amongst other things, how to be a friend.  The world needs more people like Susan A. MacKay.

May she Rest In Peace.

***

You can read more about Susan here, here, and here.  These were the sites which provided the information I’ve related.  If you’d like to read about some of the other victims of the September 11^th murders, please visit Project 2,996.

Spreading the Word on CNN Bad Faith Shenanigans

I don’t have anything to add to this discussion.  Ace had probably the best takedown, although Allahpundit’s wasn’t too shabby, either.

Patterico points out that CNN is using bogus copyright infringement claims to prevent you from seeing this and encourages all bloggers to post it.  I’m happy to oblige.

Founding Fathers, the source of this clip, has more on the controversy.  Patterico suggests that people consider uploading their own copy to Youtube as well.  Flood the zone and make it harder for them to suppress them all!  I used Savetube to capture my own copy and uploaded it here.

Catholic Deacon Takes A Swipe At Governor Palin at Christmas Mass

“And then there were all the political scandals, from the ones involving our Governor here in New York, to the Alaskan Governor…“

I may be paraphrasing slightly, but that’s how the deacon at Mass today referenced what he referred to as all the political scandals that rocked the country this year.

In all honesty, the larger point of the homily was lost to me.  It rambled, and the acoustics were poor (which has been true of almost every church I’ve ever attended — it seems almost to be intentional), but the deacon began by referencing the tumult which has been so prevalent this  year.  He went from referencing the economic crisis to political scandals.

I don’t know if he was just trying to touch both the Republicans and the Democrats, but my eyebrows raised when he sought to include Sarah Palin amongst his examples.

Sarah Palin?  Really?  She was a big source of scandal?  Really?  In a year that saw Elliot Spitzer lose his job over dalliances with whores?  In a year when the shockingly inexperienced Democratic candidate for POTUS was exposed for having unseemly ties to radicals and terrorists and nobody seemed to care?

In an environment like that, Sarah Palin is a good example of a scandal-ridden politician?

It was, to say the least, disappointing. I tried to imagine what it would have been like for her if she’d been in our church today with her family.  A good woman of impeccable character and stainless ethics, and she continues to be an object of derision and scorn from people who aren’t fit to say her name aloud much less judge her or label her as scandalous.

But there remains a strain of toxic liberalism flowing through the Catholic Church, and everytime I try to get past my incredulity over Catholics voting for Barack Obama, they go and remind me that, for some Catholics, religion comes second to being partisan Democrats.

Meanwhile Over at the TV Blog!

In case anyone’s interested, feel free to pop on over to the TV Blog! for a politically neutral discussion of this week’s How I Met Your Mother, The Office, and The Shield.

For some reason that’s probably pervy, I seem to get a lot of hits for the HIMYM posts.  I don’t really get it, but that’s what’s happening.

Elton John Has Perspective

Has Sense

As thuggish proponents of same-sex marriage continue responding to genuine democracy by assaulting old ladies,  holding sensless and cowardly protests at Mormon churches and producing TV ads of staggering anti-religious bigotry, Sir Elton John comes out as a voice of reason and rational perspective in the face of all the hysteria

Is There Life on Mars?

I have not been able to get this song out of my head for the last several days.  I bought two versions of it for my iPod and can’t resist listening over and over every day.  I sing it aloud to myself, too.  I do it in my kitchen.  I do it in my car.  I even do it in my office building when the elevator is empty?

What’s wrong with me?

More importantly, what’s wrong with him?  He looks like a lesbian.  Which raises a more eternal question: what the Hell went wrong in the 1970s?  How completely screwed in the head were we that guys who made themselves up to look like some sort of bizarro hybrid of Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge and Glenn Close with too much eye make-up were the sex symbols?

Well, to be fair, there were hairier and more conventional masculine sex symbols like Burt Reynolds, but seriously, WTF?

This Week’s Episode of The Shield

In case anyone is interested, I’ve got a new post up over at my other blog discussing tonight’s next to next to last episode of The Shield.  If you haven’t been watching, you’ve missed out on an amazing series.  Fortunately, the twenty-first century being as clever as it’s been, there are lots of ways to see it, from DVDs to Amazon-on-Demand to Netflix, so get to it, bozo!  There are no excuses, unless, perhaps you’ve lost your job in anticipation of the upcoming HopeyChangey goodness and have no money.  If that’s the case, then you’re really going to need to distraction, and The Shield will definitely absorb your attention.

A Quick, Half-Assed Rationalization for Writing About TV

I’ve made a half-hearted attempt to maintain a sister blog of television reviews and commentary, but, as “half-hearted” would imply, my efforts have been…wait for it…half-hearted.

Partially this is because I’m remarkably lazy.  Partially it’s because I find it deeply shameful that my life can be so empty at times that I’ve nothing to write about other than that I’m watching on television.  Perhaps more significantly, It’s also partially because I think television criticism is the work of parasites feeding upon the hard work of genuine artists, and then also partially because I don’t think I’m very good at it.