Thomas Hardy's Darkling Thrush is my favorite New Year's eve poem.  Enjoy. 

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate   When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate   
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky   
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh   
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be   
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,   
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth   
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth   
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among   
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong   
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,   
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul   
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings   
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things   
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through   
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew   
And I was unaware.

I'm going on Christmas holiday for a while. I don't have anything funny to say except that there are 3 kinds of people in this world: those who know how to count and those who don't. 

So, take to heart God's role in your life.
 
And really think about how much you love your family with whom you're stuck.  And really take care of your health.  After dinner, of course.  And a nap.

I'll be back with my favorite annual poem on New Year's Eve. 

My wife and I had it made.  We live in a fabulous apartment that overlooks a clubhouse, pool, tennis courts, and a lake wih a fountain. We live over the model apartment which means there are no neighbors below us to bother. The walls are pretty sound-proof.  Plenty of elbow room. Nice neighbors.  Diverse peoples here.  Close to the stores and parks we like. 

But, proving that humans have not changed much since Adam and Eve, we could not leave well enough alone.  We decided to get a puppy.  We had been wanting a puppy or a kitten. I had never had a cat and do not trust them. They are fast and have fangs and claws and are psycho, in my opinion. I mean, you'll be petting them and they'll be purring along all nice and mellow and then PHSSTTT MEOW ROWRWRWR PHSTTTT!!!! and it's out with the clawing.  What is that anyway? At least a dog will give you plenty of warning before it attacks.  Anyway, we went with getting a puppy. My wife has never had one.

We went to the Pet Pound and looked a couple of times a week for 3 weeks.  We wanted a puppy.  So did a lot of people.  Very competitive at the pound when it comes to puppies, let me tell ya.  Finally, one day, I bogarted my way to a cute little feller and my wife and I made arrangements to adopt him.  He looked like "Oh Belvedere! Come hyah boy!"

Everything went well until the day before we were to pick him up. My wife was very excited and in love with the dog.  An officer from the pound called and told us that the doggy we wanted had to be put down due to contracting parvo, which is a nasty dissentary-like disease.  My wife was very upset and took it hard. 

We found another possible candidate but it, too, got put down. Finally the pound literally cleaned up its act and got rid of the parvo.  A lot of dogs died because it is very contagious.  Anyway, we got a refund and a promise for a puppy free of charge next time around.

In the meantime, we checked out a pet adoption group that shows up at the giant pet stores on the weekends.  We found Ringo at one of the pet shop visits.  Here is a tip: just about every dog at a pound or adoption is labeled a "lab/(fill in the blank) mix".  This must be so that people will adopt them faster.  Ringo was labeled a lab/boxer mix.  After playing with him and getting to know him, we think he is a shepherd/terrier or shepherd/boxer mix.  He is playful and adorable and has been good as gold (for the most part):



Ringo the Brave, Hammer of the Socks

aka: Sir Poopalot, Mr. Peebody

Being people who don't want to pass up what's coming to us, we decided to get another puppy.  What were we thinking?  Well, the pound did owe us one.  And we figured that the two puppies would wear each other out.  Sleeping puppies are the best thing in the world outside of sleeping toddlers. 

So we went to the pound and eventually ended up with Huggy Bear:

Huggy Bear, the Stout Hearted
Scourge of Sandals

So now we're getting a divorce. Just kidding.  But for the first three days our little plan was not really working out as we thought.  First, Ringo treated Huggy Bear not like a brother or buddy, but rather more like his new chew toy.  Ringo is two months older than Huggy and twice as big.  We tried to tell Ringo to lay off because Huggy will probably grow up to be bigger than him, but Ringo didn't want to hear that.  Huggy shows spunk by fighting back as best he can.  It is friendly wrestling, thank goodness, but it is rough.

Secondly, Huggy had worms which the pound did not tell us about.  Well, that was nasty.  Huggy is feeling much better now. 

And thirdly, it is like a John Ritter meets Lucille Ball in a Benny Hill skit when my wife and I wake up at 5 am to let the dogs out.  Trying to coordinate among two frantic puppies and two adults who just came out of deep REM state is something. I kept wondering where that zany background music came from while we were trying to get them out the door.  

Thankfully, things have settled down.  Ringo, who has golden eyes, has always been able to hold his natural urges until we get outside.  He is fun and sweet.  He loves to lay in our laps or on the couch with us.  He is fast as well and loves to play tug of war. He never barks.  Ringo is real quiet except when he is trying to get attention and then he only whines a little bit. One thing that is funny about him is that I don't think his sense of smell is that good.  Nor can he see in the dark. 

Huggy Bear is really smart.  Now that he feels better he can hold his urges until we get him outside.  He has a great sense of smell.  He does not run much and is not much of a walker on a leash yet.  When we go outside, he just sits in the grass like Ferdinand the Bull, smelling the flowers.  It is adorable (when we are not in a hurry to get to work).  And he already knows the way home. 

Well, we love our puppies and I reckon they are worth the trouble. We have far too many pictures of them in our camera.  And my wife, who never owned a dog, told me that she didn't even know she was a dog person. 

I was thinking about getting a kitty to complete the package.  Somebody stop us before we adopt again!

A U.S. Marine squad was marching north of Fallujah when they came upon an Iraqi terrorist, badly injured and unconscious. On the opposite side of the road was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state. The Marine was conscious and alert and as first aid was given to both men, the squad leader asked the injured Marine what had happened.

                       

                        The Marine reported, 'I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway here, and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. We saw each other and both took cover in the ditches along the road.

I yelled to him that Saddam Hussein was a miserable, lowlife scumbag who got what he deserved, and he yelled back that Ted Kennedy is a fat, good-for-nothing, left wing liberal drunk who doesn't know how to drive.

Then I said that Osama Bin Ladin dresses and acts like a frigid,mean-spirited lesbian! He retaliated by yelling, 'Oh yeah? Well, so does Hillary Clinton!'

 
'And, there we were, in the middle of the road, shaking hands, when a truck hit us.'

I don't know how the Laura Ingrahams and the Hugh Hewitts of the world do it. I listen to Laura's show and she's cutting these jerks a break. She thinks Chris Matthews is just a fun roly poly fella who is just doing his job and is sincere in his ways. Hugh does the same thing: let's treat looney-toon people just like any other well-meaning Americans - agree to disagree etc. I mean, I have some acquaintances, friends, and associates who are liberal.  We just don't talk about politics or social stuff that much.  The few times we have discussed issues we were cordial and fair.  They were not foaming at the mouth and looking at me like I owed them money. I doubt I persuaded any person to whom I was talking but at least I didn't want to force them to be Michael Moore's personal hygiene assistant.

Which brings me to Howard Dean and a gathering of Dem/libs. Too bad Howard Dean didn't get taken hostage yesterday. I had CSPAN 2 on in the background last night (excellent channel). I was doing some things around the place when I heard this terrible voice of a high-strung do gooder. It was the Dems gathering of envious liars hosted by the Dean his own self.

Normally I turn the channel immediately whenever I see things too gruesome to watch.  I usually can't handle watching medical shows where the doctor is lifting someones eyeball to inject fat from that person's scrotum; that show where the guy does all these horrible jobs like getting cows ready for the bull; shows where Bear Grylls crawls inside a camel, scoops out the intestines and drinks the water from them; or shows that show Keith Olbermann's face. But I thought I'd man up this time, try to steel myself, and actually watch Dem/libs tell me their brilliant plans for saving America.

To start the show, the Dem/libs actually had the colors marched in. Yes, they were proud to have the United States Flag presented at their gathering. I was pleasantly surprised before I remembered that they love the flag so much (when convenient) because it protects their maniacal, provocative speech.  They use the flag to protect themselves whereas most normal Americans feel a natural pull to protect the flag. I'm sure most of them had to eat antacids to keep their nausea down while the colors were presented by a military color guard.

The next surprising thing was that they had a rabbi give the invocation. His name is Rabbi Jack Moline.  He is a conservative rabbi.  Since he's obviously enamored of the Dem/libs I take it that he is of the traditional jewish faith wherein the faithful look to Caesar to handle social issues for them.  It was a general non-offensive, vague prayer. Again, a lot of the Dem/libs looked confused like "Who's he talking too? Bill's not here." 

Then the Deaner spoke. He spoke for several minutes. I gathered that the platform that the Dems will use to win the Whitehouse are the following:

 

Repubs are bad

Repubs don't want children to have insurance

Dems will clean up corruption just as soon as they are in the WH (I thought Pelosi and Reid were going to do this just as soon as they won the house and senate last year). 

Dems have a spectacular, if secret and vague, plan to save America 
Dems want to go back to the values that America was founded on (they didn't say what these were)
 

I listened for several minutes before I started talking back to the television.  I used my indoor voice - calm but firm.  I proposed several answers and extrapolations, trying to help these morons out.  Dean yells out that W and the mean ol' Repubs want to prevent children from being covered by insurance.  Not just ignore the kids, no, these Repubs want to actually BLOCK kids from getting covered. I had no idea.  I asked, out loud, "Why don't the parents cover the kids? Why don't they provide the insurance?"  For some weird reason this was not thought of by the Dem/libs. 

Then Dean went on about how the new Dem president and the Congress were going to get rid of Repubs by some new law or code of ethics that was going into effect in January.  Dean said Lott was quitting ahead of time because he wouldn't last under the new law.  No mention of Diane Feinstein's conflict of interest involving her husband and contracts; Harry Reid's land deals; or William Jefferson D. La were included in his propaganda spiel.

I continued to talk back to Dean. "You mean the American values of freedom from paying your bills?  The value of free stuff for everyone? The values of attacking the job creators?  The values of pornification of America?  The values of running away from our friends and allies? Those values?"  I admit my voice got higher as I went along. I don't think Howard heard me.  But he really doesn't have to listen since he knows he's right - he can feel it in his gut.  At least he's looking older nowadays. Can't wait for some of this generation to go sit in their rockers and shut up. 

Honestly, how do Dem/lib constituents put up with this drivel?  Dean and his Dem/libs are lying to the people all the time. Their plan is "Bush sucks".  Their plan is "Through some nebulous actions we're gonna get government to pay for your stuff. No effort on your part required."  They attack Repubs, conservatives, and Christians more consistently than they want to attack Al Quaeda.

Democrats rankle me.