Happy New Year

One of the constantly shocking things to me about blogging is how poor my memory is and how the American news cycle seems to compact history. Looking back on the last 12 months of blogging, I'm reminded that we started out this year with the aftermath of a tsunami, which left CNN's bloated bodies floating face-down through my dreams for weeks. It was the year of Terri Schiavo (wasn't that 2004?), of Ratzinger and Harriet Miers and Pat Robertson (who famously said activist judges are a worse threat than al-Qaeda, and called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez). The Downing Street Memos were leaked, Cindy Sheehan had her galvanizing moment in the ditch, and support for Bush, the GOP, and the war in Iraq all started unraveling (remember this guy's "
bullshit detector"?). It was also a year of deaths and births, with heroes dying—Susan Sontag, Rosa Parks, Saul Bellow, Sens. Gaylord Nelson and Bill Proxmire, and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm—and new paths emerging (more on this later).

As I head off for a week away from the blog, I've been looking back at the year. I feel like Eyeteeth has turned a corner: I'm getting a few more readers, I'm focusing more on art and innovations than on venting my spleen
about politics, and I'm enjoying blogging more. So in 2006, come back for more, including, hopefully, an all-new design.

Here's a few of my favorites from 2005 to tide you over til I return:

Divinity for the Reality-Based Community: how can art connect us to the divine without distracting us with religion?

A good way to die: Scott Nearing's life was about integrity—inner values integrated with external expressions—and having lived it well, he decided when and how to die.

Bush in a skirt!

September was a doozy: Hurricane Katrina really pissed me off, and a life-changing trip to Berlin dominated the blog.

It's all about me: after many years, I finally got my autograph project online, posting examples of celebrities who used their pens to sign my name.

A year-end plea: Love thy bro!