I wondered what it would take to kick me in the ass enough to bring me back here again.

When I was thirteen, Mom gave Sis & I to a nice couple from church named Ken and Virginia Savage for the duration of a summer or so. They lived in Soap Lake, WA and made annual road-trip pilgrimages back to Kansas City and to Omaha for the purpose of visiting relatives and important church sites. It was right around the time of that year’s trip when, while we were at the grocery store, I spotted a book cover near the checkout counters and decided that I really wanted that book.

Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

That little story, read out-of-sequence from the rest of its series, helped ruin me for lesser books. If it doesn’t involve friendship, wonder, perseverance against the odds and the bad opinion of people who shouldn’t matter, risk, reward, at least one proper brawl, and considerable doses of humor… then what’s the point of your book, I ask. I read the hell out of that book, and it survived up until just a few years ago… so I replaced it with another from the same printing.

I love quite a few books, but Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonsinger” will always hold a peculiar and special place in my heart. Only a few others share a similar prominence: Raymond E. Feist’s “Magician” volume, for instance, and Julian May’s “Intervention.”

Folks might look at a guy funny for listing McCaffrey as one of his favorite writers, but I can live with that. And, true, there are things about some of her books (parts of the Pern series in particular) that it doesn’t pay to examine too closely. In later years, I think she lost a bit of her storytelling verve and took to treating bad guys and good guys alike a bit too much with kid gloves; consequences became gentler than one might expect. That was her choice to make, of course, and it’s my choice to leave off the reading of certain novels.

Today’s a sad one, for today we all learned that Anne McCaffrey is no longer with us. This avid reader, at least, is largely so because of her talent and because of a very nice couple who indulged a spoiled little boy all those years ago in Soap Lake.

Let’s face it: Reality, should we choose to anthropomorphize the cosmos for the sake of argument, doesn’t give a damn about when we say a new day begins, or a new month, or a new year.

I ended 2010 with a wearying, annoying head cold. I started 2011 with a wearying, annoying head cold. At no point anywhere near midnight of December 31st did the universe change so that the new year would be better or worse than what came before.

This may seem blindingly obvious to you. I, however, spent the first half of my life (give or take) looking for signs, meaning in the meaningless, pointers from a higher power. That sort of thing. Even now, I approach the end of four decades on this planet and it’s still all too easy for me to get caught up in wrong-headed nonsense.

Still and all, I hope 2011 goes well. We could all stand a bit of improved circumstances, couldn’t we?

And I really wish that this stupid cold would go away.

First off, I would like to direct you over to that webcomic of mine for this year’s holiday event: The Quackvent Calendar 2010. (Last year the ducks presented The Twelve Days Of Christmas in their own off-kilter fashion. This year I decided that coming up with a second new set of lyrics was completely out of the question.)

On a wholly different note, may I just say that I cannot take all of this manufactured-hype “Cyber Monday” and “Cyber Wednesday” (Really guys? Really?) shopping stuff seriously. Why? Because once upon a time, I was a young man on the Internet.

Think about it.

You know, given the mania for all-things-Twilight this past few years, you’d think that sales of ELO’s “Time” album would’ve picked up at some point…

Would the Palindrome be the arena in which Michael and Sarah duke it out for supremacy?

…

Among the items you should give thanks for today, perhaps, you might include, “I don’t live inside of Karel’s mind.” Heh.

I wonder: Why do we devote two days of the year to talking about a half-horse, half-bovine creature?

You know… the equine ox.

(As George Carlin quipped, “These are the thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools.”)