A note to our readers

Hey --
The first Sunday of the year. That must be why we had the endurance to finish this edition.

Along with Dallas, the following helped on this edition:


The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

We thank them all. What did we come up with?

Truest statement of the week -- Ralph Nader on the Cult of St. Barack.

Truest statement of the week II -- Caro on the Cult of St. Barack.

Editorial: Iraq -- The Iraq War didn't end. Barack didn't keep his promises. People are still dying. At what point do the Whores for Barry plan to get honest?

TV: Scrub up -- Ava and C.I.'s latest. This wasn't planned. A friend with Scrubs asked, at the last minute, if they could review it. They hadn't seen it. 'All five episodes so far this year are up at Hulu' was the response. I (Jim) don't know how the begging went but the person got their way. They had no idea how to review it because they hadn't planned to. Finally they said, "Oh, hell, let's just pretend we're on the set." They've done that before. They also note that they don't have to worry about health care. That's in there to give an excuse for them doing the show and to provide some 'weight' to what they see as a light show.

Buried story of the year -- What should have been the BIG STORY of the year? Judging by polling, it should be what Congress is trying to force onto the American people.

Idiot of the Year -- We had a list of five people and were going to award it to one of them when, last Sunday, Janet Napolitano managed to break from the pack and pull into the lead.

'Religious' joke of the year -- If you're a "Baptist organization," you're Baptists. Ditto Methodist. Ditto Catholic. Etc, etc, etc. It's not a difficult concept. We had five more of these short features, by the way, but went with what we thought were the three best.

I don't get it (Dona) -- Concept? Long features were not working. I assigned Ava and C.I. a topic "The Public Account." And Ty said, "Well why don't we each do an individual article." Which is what we did. Consider this our Abby Road edition. Dona wants it noted that she begged Ava and C.I. to put their names to this "after they provided three different jokes for this that were funnier than my original lines. But they turned me down. So I'll just say thank you."

Ty's Corner -- Ty had no topic and I said, "E-mails!" Ty zoomed in on the movie aspect.

The Penis Monologue (Jim) -- And as we talked about e-mails, there was talk of doing strangest e-mail or weirdest or whatever at which point my e-mail exchange was brought up and that's the topic I wrote on here.

Clarification (Jess) -- This is the e-mail topic that ticks Jess off. Really ticks him off. I'm not joking. You can't tell it in this though. Because Jess keeps it light hearted. But if you read closely, I think you do get the tension. Illustration is by Betty's kids.

The Public Account (Ava and C.I.) -- That's all you got? That's what I asked them when they thought they were done. Originally this ended after eight paragraphs -- the first seven plus a concluding paragraph no longer in the piece. It was cut and dry. They went back and added an example of an e-mail because I said, "Add an e-mail." And after they did, I kept saying, "We should split this into two pieces." They said no and pointed out that I thought it was a weak piece until they added more. I painted myself into that corner.

DVDs -- Ann and Stan's joint-post that I mentioned we would repost here (mentioned last week). We used to do this all the time. But it's too time consuming. Since Ann and Stan are the newest bloggers and due to the topic, we decided last weekend we'd post their DVD piece here. (Repost here.)

Highlights -- Mike, Elaine, Kat, Wally, Betty, Rebecca, Ruth, Marcia, Stan, Ann and Cedric wrote this and we thank them for it.

2009 archives -- this will be a link on our blog roll before next Sunday. Not today. We're too dam tired.

And that's what we got. See you next Sunday.

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.