Every year, Anne and I make tons (tonnes) of Christmas cookies for our friends and family. We do gingerbread men, snowmen, ginger snaps, and sugar cookies with pounds of sugary “frosting” on them. Oh, it’s the opposite of healthy, but so much fun! We take these cookies, put them on a nice festive plate, and deliver them to our neighbors on Christmas Eve. Of course, this year, we were both sick as hell in the weeks leading up to Christmas, so we didn’t bake anything for friends (family still got some plague with their cookies, but if you can’t give plague to your family at Christmas, what can you give them?) Yesterday, we were both well enough to make several plates of cookies, and last night we delivered them as “New Year’s Treats.” Our neighbors are so wonderful, we ended up spending the entire evening in their homes, looking at pictures, drinking wine, and catching up. People talk about “your friends and neighbors,” and we’re incredibly lucky that our friends are our neighbors.
When I bought my first house about ten years ago, I was totally oblivious to the importance of location, and I ended up living next door to The Absolute Worst Neighbors From Hell. Their ability to be slovenly, inconsiderate jerks was stunning. They were so terrible, we ultimately sold the house we loved to move away from them. When we were looking for a new house, even if the neighborhood looked nice, (which many of them did) I went out of my way to knock on doors, and meet the potential new neighbors. (“Hi, I’m Wil, and I may be buying a house on this street. Are you cool?”) I’m sure that seems a bit weird, but if you’ve ever lived next to The Absolute Worst Neighbors From Hell, you may understand why it was so important to me.
I was a long, tough, and sometimes frustrating process, but we finally found a great house, on a great street, surrounded by great people, and that’s where we live now. In a way, I’m glad we lived next door to The Absolute Worst Neighbors From Hell when we did, because they taught us the value of neighbors, and the value of living on a street where there’s real community.

This is quite funny. I’m mentioned in today’s comic from Goats.com. I hadn’t heard of goats until about ten minutes ago, but I went back to the beginning of the story arc, I laughed out loud.
So check it out. Unless you don’t like to laugh. Then you should grab your nuts and say to your nearest buddy, “Hey, I sat in some gum!” If that doesn’t get you laughing, I don’t know what will. (Yes, I realize that this advice won’t work for the ladies . . . so you should just . . . uhm . . . line up to the left for make outs.)
Hey! Look! I sat in some gum!

Check this out:

In 1968, Richard Nixon won the White House. He did it in a shameful way–by dividing Americans against one another, stirring up racial prejudices, and bringing out the worst in people.
They called it the “Southern Strategy,” and the Republicans have been using it ever since. Nixon pioneered it, and Ronald Reagan perfected it, using phrases like “racial quotas” and “welfare queens” to convince white Americans that minorities were to blame for all of America’s problems.
The Republican Party would never win elections if they came out and said their core agenda was about selling America piece by piece to their campaign contributors and making sure that wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of a few. To distract people from their real agenda, they run elections based on race, dividing us, instead of uniting us….
In America, there is nothing black or white about having to live from one paycheck to the next. It’s time we had a new politics in America–a politics that refuses to pander to our lowest prejudices. Because when white people and black people and brown people vote together, that’s when we make true progress in this country.

My pal Keith is running in the AIDS Marathon, and we’re doing two special J. Keith vanStraaten shows to help raise money for him and his girlfriend.
The first show is coming up on Wednesday, January 7th. All the details are here.
The JKvS Show is always great fun. If you’ve seen me on TechTV, it’s like that but without the constraints of television. Also, Keith and I have been friends for years, and when we’re on stage together, we share a bit of a common brain, and that creates fantastic comedy.
If you’re a kind-hearted person who wants to help out, but you can’t make it to the show, go here and show your love in a donation sort of way.

Well, the sickness took me down, and took me down good. After three days with fever, I went to the doctor on Xmas Eve, and he said I was somewhere between severe bronchitis and pneumonia. He put me on an antibiotic called Levaquin, gave me some mucus-thinning medication, and told me to take it easy.
Well, easy is just about the only way I could take it. I have enjoyed all of the “less common” side-effects of the antibiotic, most notably extreme irritability, inability to sleep, and my personal favorite, dizziness. Oh, the joy of the dizziness. I am reminded why taking any mind-altering drugs has never held any appeal for me.
I also haven’t been able to focus for more than one or two pages at a time, so I haven’t even been able to really dig into Wolves of the Calla, or any of the other bitchin’ books I got for Xmas.
I have watched all the appendicies on the LOTR DVDs, and I’m about to go watch some Fellowship commentary. It’s been nice to live in Middle Earth for a few days.