Just over two hours ago it was 2004. At 11.58, I stepped out onto the balcony to listen the calendar change, noble in my new Yukata. The concrete was cold under my feet. Car horns were hooting, fireworks and perhaps guns were going off, echoing in the Hollywood Hills, and then, as precisely as I could judge, right on midnight, a silent dark dog – or maybe a coyote – raced up the street, running flat-out desperate, breakneck, and headlong north, into the darkness between streetlights. The omen potential was so overwhelming that it left me a little stunned. As far as I could tell, I was the only one who had seen it, and I hardly cared to make an analysis. The black dog looms large in my native folklore, and, for the most part, it isn’t at all good. But was this black dog – so real that I considered I was hallucinating – crossing my path or running on past me?

HAPPY 2005, BOYS AND GIRLS – FOLLOW THAT FALLING BALL
Unless someone asks the Deviants to play, I no longer go out on New Year’s Eve, considering it amateur night for drunks, with overpriced drinks, surly bartenders, and gouging cabs. Plus, here in LA we have the added attraction of the vatos locos firing their Uzis at the moon at midnight. Although that doesn’t worry me any. I don’t believe there’s a stray bullet with my name on it, plus I’ve heard a lot of opposing theories about what happens when rounds fired in the air come back down.

Thus 12/31 finds me at my computer attempting to process...

TSUNAMI REACTIONS
Since I freely admit truly I can’t get my mind around a vast natural disaster except in the abstract, or by tightening down to the tiny details. (Like Eisenstein’s glasses on the steps.)
Just now some TV news show bleeped two words from a Tsunami home video, presumably "Fucking Jesus!", a very Australian reaction to the apocalyptic wall of water. Seemed to say too much about our cowardly new world. Accordingly I did a quick cull of the agitweb (with the help of the excellent Peoples’ Daily Briefing) for other reactions and came up with the following...

ANIMALS (esp elephants)
http://www.rense.com/general61/seu.htm

US NAVY
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2004/291204foreknowledgeofdisaster.htm

CHRISTIAN RIGHT
http://www.workingforchange.com/printitem.cfm?itemid=18309

QUOTE
Gloucester said (although I can’t recall in which damned play.) "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."

The secret word is Lang

CRYPTIQUE – ...if on time you depend.

EITHER THE ALIENS ARE BACK OR THE TRENCHCOAT MAFIA ARE TRYING TO BRING DOWN A JET
Cleveland -- Authorities are investigating a mysterious laser beam that was directed into the cockpit of a commercial jet traveling at more than 8,500 feet. The beam appeared Monday when the plane was about 15 miles from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, the FBI said. The pilot was able to land the plane, and air traffic controllers used radar to determine the laser came from a residential area in suburban Warrensville Heights. In Colorado Springs, Colo., on Monday night, two pilots reported green pulsating laser lights shined into their cockpits. Both the passenger plane and a cargo plane landed without problems.

FROM MY OLD PAL STEVAN...
There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.

The secret word is Huh?

JERRY ORBACH RIP

ATLAS SHRUGGED
I guess it’s serious when I find myself quoting bloody Ayn Rand, if only for effect. The planet twitches, a nervous twitch, and 100,000 and maybe more are dead. How can that be reconciled with the storm outside my window, that Newton the cat doesn’t like the thunder, or that I spent half yesterday fighting a inundation of pop-ups? (Or that Bush thinks that $35 million in disaster aid – far less than he’s spending on his fucking inauguration – is going to really help? Isn’t that like $350 per fatality?) I guess it has to be reconciled, the micro and the macro, otherwise we go insane.

But what happens when the Earth actually screams?

Meanwhile here’s a scarey Simon Winchester piece from the New York Times along the same theme...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/29/opinion/29winchester.html?pagewanted=2&th&oref=login

The secret word is Helpless

AND ON THE SUBJECT OF POPUPS.
The software Ad-Aware seems to have worked very nicely, thank you. But now I ponder what dumb bastard thinks advertising that interrupts my work, wastes my time, ruins my day, and gives the impression it’s destroying my computer is going to make me buy their fucking product. Are you capitalists terminally half-witted?

CRYPTIQUE – Get off of my cloud.

"So far so good," he muttered with the unease of a guy defusing a bomb and wondering if he should cut the red wire.

The secret word is Trepidation.

DOC 40 IS KILLING A PLAGUE OF POPUPS. NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED ETC.

The secret word is Fuck this shit.

CRYPTIQUE -- Die you bastards!!