every beginning has a new meaning

* Shut Up Already lists the 10 Most Outraegous Comments of 2004. excerpt:

Michael Savage: "When you hear 'human rights,' think gays. ... [T]hink only one thing: someone who wants to rape your son."

Oliver North: "Every terrorist out there is hoping John Kerry is the next president of the United States."

Pat Robertson on gays and lesbians: "[S]elf-absorbed hedonists ... that want to impose their particular sexuality on the rest of America."

Pat Buchanan: "[H]omosexuality is an affliction, like alcoholism."

* Favorite books read in 2004 (in no particular order): B.F.'s Daughter, by John P. Marquand; All three volumes of Edward Sander's History of America in Verse; Meat is Murder, by Joe Pernice; and Franz Wright's Walking to Martha's Vineyard

* A Poem by Chris Stroffolino:

irish coffee

One could enjoy one's greedy need
If one knows that satisfaction
Perceived (because it has been)
As the beautiful clothes of solitude
Surrounding the ugly socialite of a body
Who doesn't have to identify with
What gets called national interests
To be torn between contempts and fear
Jokes and soberness in a terror
One could find at a party
That still seems like a superstore
Or a cafe where coffee builds walls
Which, later in the evening,
When the lights go down on us
And we can see our shadows rise,
Alcohol manages to tear down
While cigarettes look on
Until a 60 block wal stamps them out.