Weird shit of 2006

Soccer fans in action, Germany 2006

This is the last post of 2006 barring some kind of disaster between now and midnight.

James Kim

When I think about his heroic death, I think about how easily he got in a survival situation. A wrong turn on a snowy road. That's it.

Most of us don't own GPS's in our car, forget accurate map reading. And we would feel silly sticking a case of bottled water, a camping stove and freeze dried food in our car. Most of us never go father than up and down a well-travelled highway. I mean, we would be more likely to use the water to fill up the radiator than to save our lives. It would seem paranoid to drive around with that.

Until nature strikes.

What this reminds me of is how close we live to nature. We like to pretend we don't
, but tragedies like this, which happen every winter, remind us that we live at the mercy of nature, not the other way around.

Mr. Kim did the best he could in the situation, and saved his family at the cost of his life.

It just reminded me how few Americans are prepared to deal with nature when it crashes into their life.

Muslimphobia

When Rashad came into my bedroom, he smiled, knowing I had fallen for his dusky Muslim ways. He roughly woke my husband, the infidel, up and shoved him to his knees, so he could properly prepare Rashad to enter all my holes.........

Most of the Muslimphobia sounds like stories adapted from Literotica, substituting Muslims for blacks. The abject hysteria over Keith Ellison winning a Congressional seat reached comic proportions. Are these people aware that Muslims have Top Secret/SCI clearance as members of Special Operations Units, the NSA and CIA. That Muslims have served this country faithfully since they have been in the US?

No. They worry about the Koran instead. A book. The whole thing is almost comic to see in print. People like Debbie Schussel think they are more than cranks with computers, when their world view is so beyond reality, one can only laugh.

Jeanine Pirro

If you don't live in the Empire State, you missed the weirdest drama of the year. Pirro, who faltered when she tried to run for Senate, was found to be using Bernie Kerik to investigate her cheating husband Al. Al is a convicted felon. Yet she wanted to run for Attorney General.

OK. But then, it turned out she refused to review a case of an innocent man who spent 12 years in jail. Oooops.

Madonna

Ah, she basically bought a baby from Africa and the poor father had to go along. Weird doesn't begin to cover this. The kid wasn't an orphan. But she has a billion dollars. At least the Portuguese used to leave salt and muskets behind.

The Birth of Suri

I've never seen such cynicism about a birth in my life. First, Cruise wasn't the father, then the baby looked Asian, then it was a test tube baby. They were hiding the child. Jesus, you would think it was Children of Men and a child of Cruise and Holmes.

The collapse of the right blogosphere

Remember how the year started? People took Powerline, Red State and Instacracker seriously.

Well, when they tried to promote Young Ben from Red State, he got gutted and exposed as a plagiarist and racist in a day or so, and from there, it didn't get any better. Mike Krempasky had problems with Wal Mart, which was quietly sending bloggers PR pieces to defend their company from facts.

But my favorite moment of impotence, showing the divergent growth patterns between right and left, is the way the right had to sit and watch how the NRCC savaged conservative Steve Laffey in Rhode Island to save a doomed Chaffee campaign. They had no power to raise money, or even rally people to their cause. Other people they raised money for lost.

They bitched and moaned about AP photos, but no one cared. When Chris Bowers raised a couple of million dollars and Matt Stoller helped campaigns draw support, the right sat at their keyboards, impotent.

Now they rage against Muslims as they lose relevancy by the day

Gossip

Ok, so tell me who acts unlike a 2o something college student?

Paris Hilton

Lindsay Lohan

Nicole Ritchie

Britney Spears

Ms. USA

With the exception of Spears, who would be returning from Iraq, the rest did nothing worthy of notice, but this, and Jennifer Anniston's dating life comprised this year's gossip.

What fallow fields we have. Once gossip used to be fun. Now, it's the dorm RA's meeting.

CBS

They sued Howard Stern and hired Katie Couric.

How did that work for them?

Stern is doing fine on sattelite and a hell of a lot happier. Couric is an embarassment.

Les Moonves, not a genius.

The World Cup

More readers posted here every day during the world cup than at any other time. I kept hearing about soccer exceptionalism, but the ratings, on ESPN/ABC were high enough to make everyone happy. Even though the US crapped out, again, I think people realized that we crossed a line in terms of how soccer is seen. It is the number 2 youth sport in the US, it has a growing fan base, and interest in soccer is growing.

It doesn't mean it's dominating American media, but it is no longer the stepchild of American sport. The Olympics, however, was a blip on the media screen, despite millions in hype. MY favorite story: Italians in Turin reading about the Italian national team, and eventual cup winners, the Azzuri.

And

.....I bought an MacBook