Lawrence Walker's Blog "A Better Nation" Careens (Gracefully and w/Care) Into 2008

New year's greetings and salutations (and effervescent though a bit groggy thanks) to you, dear readers of A Better Nation, you, my pointedly pontifical and precious public, my adoralicious audience. Thank you from the bottom of my virtual mail bag.

In the past four years, since this grand and mighty (make that slightly mighty) blog was born, we have worked together, as a national and even planetary consortium for change. We have righted the wrongs and fixed the ills of this nation we love, the good ol' (and not so good new) U. S. and A.

We have shined our lights (key fob flashlights and frugal LEDs) on the powers that be and brought them to their knees, at least to their proverbial (and some would say, imaginary) knees. We have banded together, like the good brothers and sisters that we are indeed not, to act like family, with our own set of American family values. We have gotten the lead out and led the way.

I support you in your hour of needing me, Mr. ABN, your humbly omnicient reporter and culture critic. I've been there for you to criticize. And criticize me you have, more often than not. Yes, like the true patriots you are, you have really given it to me, and I have taken it like the beguiling blogger man I am.

In the chin.

Virtually, that is, in the virtual chin.

And in the gut, too, in the gut I have taken your blogger body blows.

And I have taken up arms, your arms, your virtual arms, as it were (or is?), and run with them, flailing. But not failing. No, we, the Royal WE, as in YOU with ME, have succeeded in keeping this thing going, in making this a better nation than it was when we still had the last four years ahead of us.

Now they are behind. US. Or we are behind them. But not behind the eight ball, even though it is '08 (and though I am not the first, surely, to try that pun). We refuse to be back there (behind the eight ball). We're not suckers, and we refuse to succour ourselves. We stand up straight (if not tall, unless we are tall) for the measly blogger facing up, in some small, piddling, inconsequentially infinitesimal way, to the might that makes wrong seem right. We stand together (or surf alone, in the privacy of our own homes, in a slouching towards virtual togetherness), yes, we do this together or alone as the BNP, the Better Nation People, we silly supercilious magnificently magnanimous mongrel menagerie, we, yes you, we/us hobnobbing hobos of the webby world, we like no one else. And there are a lot of them.

At other times, we stand, at other times (as in the kitchen and at the car wash), and yet, we here while here at A Better Nation, we tend to sit, alone, scattered, fingers splayed or poised, hovering over quivering keyboards, pulling from our quivers our poisonous quips, persistent, wayward, poised to stay a bit or surf onwards against the tides, we the few, the proud, the perseverant (sp? people? I defend my use of that perse-something word, even if, as may be the case, it is not one).

Onward.

And SO, I say to you, dear reader(s), Happy New Year and OH (8) GREAT DAY to each and every ONE (1) of you.

And you know who you ARE.



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