How it plays in Punxsutawny

So you're asking yourself: how is 2011 going so far?

Well, by this time last year, everything seemed fine as well, so I'm not getting lulled into a false sense of security. The wife didn't do the moving-out thing until early in the second week of the year. You have to keep your head on a swivel.

Sometimes things can creep up on you. Like the apocalypse, for example. No, not because birds and fish died, but because the event spurred a very public Kirk Cameron sighting. I don't think he's the Anti-christ, nor do I think his appearance, like some kind of eschatological groundhog, portends the Biblical fire-and-brimstone End Times. I just think there are a limited number of Kirk Cameron appearance the world is prepared to take before it just kind of shuts off out of cosmic ennui.

I was a little bit heartened by a warm-fuzzy bipartisan Congressional ritual reading of the Constitution. It seems like a really awesome use of the new majority's time to stand around with their Democratic colleagues and not actually do anything for two hours on a work day. But then Democrat punchbowl-turd Jerry Nadler had to up and say something I agree with in principle and fuck up a perfectly good pro-America half-a-chub-on, pointing out inconvenient stuff like "...Republican bills to strip courts of authority to consider constitutional challenges to specific congressional or executive actions, and attempts to undermine the rights of all Americans to be free from excessive government surveillance and intrusions into their private lives."

The response to Nadler's utterly disrespectful employment of his critical-thinking faculties ("You are not supposed to worship your constitution. You are supposed to govern your government by it") has been met with a strong and equally thoughtful approach, mostly pointing out that Nadler is both Jewish and fat.

The stuff about him being a gay communist traitor pedophile are all unconfirmed as of press time.

On the West Coast, we are still but six days into the new year and about 12 hours into the new Congress. And so far, it's a mixed bag. The good news is I learned that no black people lived in America until 1865. Believing it makes me feel less guilty, so I'm not going to look at that one too closely. I like learning new stuff, so we'll call that a positive. On the negative side of the ledger: everything else is exactly the same. But with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Motivated entirely by... something, I don't know what.

The re-balancing positive there is that people will only give a shit about Congress up until the State of the Union speech in like three weeks. And then it all goes pear-shaped again because that kind of kicks off the next presidential election cycle, which promises lots of very public speeches by Mitt Romney. Is it too early to be underwhelmed?

Apocalypse... you know what, I'm not going to say no right away.