A man named Waters from Baltimore
has a following larger than Valdemort.
Many loved his Devine,
whose “Hairspray” was fine,
but shit-eating “Flamingos” was fault to more.

It’s that list-making time of year. Best books. Best movies. Biggest news stories. This is a different kind of list. 2009 was quite a year for assholes. In fact, even in the last days of the year, new assholes were revealed. We need a list of them to keep up! I posed the question to Twitter to ask folks who they thought were the biggest assholes of the year. This list is partly mine and partly from my Tweeps. It seems politics is a fertile field for assholes. But sports and entertainment aren’t without theirs. Let me know if I missed anybody.

• Tiger Woods – world champion Casanova, amateur texter
• Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab – luckily he was incompetent too
• Glenn Beck – there is hope for dumb people
• Lou Dobbs – because talk show hosts ought to be leading the country
• Rush Limbaugh – somehow, he seems like small-potatoes asshole anymore
• Goldman Sachs – mismanage your business – blame poor people – get rewarded
• Jon Gosselin – posterboy for the horrors of “reality” television
• Kanye West – “Imma let you finish” music video critic
• Global climate change – polar bears are hating it
• Joe Lieberman – small man relishing his power
• Ben Nelson – protector of wealthy women’s access to abortion
• Sarah Palin – death panel critic
• Max Hall – BYU quarterback, is there anything less classy than saying your opponents are classless?
• Bernie Madoff – investment Ponzi world champion
• Joe Wilson – “You lie!” South Carolina congressman
• Mark Sanford – South Carolina governor, Argentina Casanova, and Appalachian hiker
• Rod Blagojevich – “how much you willing to pay?” former Illinois governor
• Richard Heene – Balloon Boy’s genius father
• Elizabeth Lambert – Lobo soccer player, expert in the ponytail takedown
• Mike Locksley – “those aren’t my fingerprints on the guy’s neck!” UNM football coach – great year for UNM sports
• Maine voters – because California voters won the biggest assholes award in 2008 – Iowa out-cooling y’all
• Charlie Sheen – long-time asshole thought to have turned himself around
• Perez Hilton – giving victims everywhere a bad name
• Chris Brown – small man taking his frustrations out on a woman
• Joe Jackson – even in losing a child showed high levels of asshole. Worst parent ever?

So,  who is the BIGGEST asshole of the year? Cast your vote in the comments!

Silence

It’s like a roar in the head
Even though no source for it
Exists

No grizzly straddling prey
Giving voice to predatory
Triumph

No attack planes shrieking
Overhead, no shock and awe
Apparent

Not even the machinery of
Industry, deafening, productive
Enmity

Just the quiet tapping of
Keyboard fluttering out text
Whispers

And the turning page’s soft
Rustle, momentary blink of
Paragraphs

While the heart strains in
Vain to escape, break free of
Restraint

The brain calculates the price
Of it all, real and imagined
Penalty

It’s like a roar in the head
Breaking the quiet world
Apart

The dog has eaten my arms

The dog has eaten my arms
but I soldier on
typing out tweets with my elbows
Googling the river of words

below
our
hopeful
end

When the capybara with
a blog boggles my mind
but I soldier on
marshaling the social media

beyond
time
on
high

Where I live a life within
a virtual lie
Kindled with a fire of ice
but I soldier on

beneath
each
empty
word

Winter arrived in Albuquerque last week. It didn’t stay long, but it was quite cold and slippery for a day.

1) My yard at sunrise,

2) The feet of someone waiting for the bus in the evening,

3) Snow-covered yucca in a parking lot.

Another typical Albuquerque happening during the holidays. Luminaria! You can buy faux luminaria with electric lights. But it’s suppose to be a fire hazard! Candles and paper bags. This is the scene that greeted me when I left work in the Zimmerman Library the other day.

I love having the iPhone handy to do snaps of Albuquerque as I drive around, but it never does justice to what the skies really look like. This cloud looked like a huge black shadow in reverse over the Sandia Mountains.

OK, the gloves are off!  I just read a NY Times article about the role Mormons played in getting Prop 8 passed in California. Frankly, I’m appalled by Prop 8.  I’d say I’m about where Keith Olbermann is on this issue. Some people are in love and you want to deny them the expression of that love?  How in any way does the existance of even a single gay marriage affect your own relationship?  How in any way does the existance of even a single gay marriage affect your admission to heaven?  How in any way is it acceptable for religious principles to become state law?

So here is the thing, as far as the Mormon church is concerned, I am a member of their misguided, bigoted, hypocritical little faith. Baptism at 8 years of age to appease the grandparents got me into that mess. Truth is, I’m an atheist. I understand the comfort many people feel through religious faith. I reject it altogether as a way of understanding the world and interacting with other human beings. I am especially disgusted by the Mormons proselytizing about the sanctity of marriage and against gay marriage, given their history on that point.  Many of my high school friends took part in this campaign. You are misguided IDIOTS!  I completely reject the Mormon position on this. I wish they would just skip to the f*%king chase and excommunicate me.  I couldn’t believe in their doctrine and principles any LESS.

Last night we were driving on Jefferson and looking for something to eat. We didn’t really feel like wandering the city to find something, but we’ve already eaten at most of the places along Jefferson and in the @25 area. So we said, “what the hell, we’ll try this Twin Peaks place.” Yikes!

I guess we should have known based on the sexy cowgirl exterior decorations. The place is one of those softcore T and A joints with a rustic, log cabin kind of theme: sort of Hooters meets Monty Python. I’m a lumberjack! Wonder Bras under flannel.

The food wasn’t especially remarkable. Neither was the service. Thankfully, our waitress didn’t try to do the “perky” thing. Or the cleavage in your face thing. I wonder what the point of this kind of uniform is? Do people really go to a restaurant to see a little skin? Surely there are places where they can see A LOT MORE skin. Wonder(bra)s never cease.

The dogs are loving the new deck. They go up there and wrestle, when they aren’t peering down on neighborhood cats and howling with frustration.