Mr. Tripp likes to be provacative. He likes to be in-your-face. <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp01012005.html" source="CounterPunch" author="Ben Tripp">Put Down the Faggot: Requiem for 2004</a> is all that and a bag of chips. Go on, read it. It's short. It's the touching story of two small boys in Ireland who convince an even smaller boy to do something whereafter he's <iq>...blinded, shrieking for help, [and] covered from head to toe in a hideous stew of viscera and decay.</iq> Not a lot of end-of-the-year recaps include <i>that</i> kind of imagery. The final twist on the metaphor comes at the end, all at once, with: <bq>That boy, ladies and gentlemen, is us. The cow is 2004, and the boys that convinced us to jab the cow with a stick are laughing themselves silly in Washington, DC. Or we are the cow and the boy is Washington, and the boy is 2004, or possibly I am the walrus. The point is, 2004 blew like a dead cow.</bq> Perhaps it's just more fun to write when drunk ... a lot of people swear by it.