Weekend Update - New Year's Edition

(As you may have heard, The Ducks lost the Rose Bowl this time around. But we'd like to thank The Ducks for a wonderfully exciting season. And before you get all gloomy consider this: Most of this year's starters will be back next season. Rose Bowl again? Sure. But how about the BCS Championship ...? Hey, we're Ducks, we can dream.)

• A group of British journalists were asked to make predictions and wish-lists for the coming year. Interesting to read a group of them at the same time, to see some clear themes emerge. But a big political comeback by Imelda Marcos? Oh spare us.


• Did you feel it? Did you reach up and lick the full, pregnant, bursting blue moon on New Year's Eve? Did you howl and wail and stomp your feet and raise your glass high and say oh my God let us now move and dance and shimmy and finally, finally get this nasty nefarious monkey of a doomed decade off our collective backs once and for all? Mark Morford hopes you did.


• In what has to be the first sign of the coming Apocalypse a recent very strange gallup poll lists Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck as "most admired" contenders. Maybe this 2012 doomsday thing isn't as far-fetched as we originally thought.


• Bad Hat Idiot of the Month for December is Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to ignite his exploding underwear on board an airplane on Christmas Eve. Apparently the only thing he accomplished was to destroy his ability to produce any little terrorists in the future, and caused the TSA to comtemplate forcing passengers to drop trow on command. I think I'll take the bus, thanks.


• Earlier last week, Glenn Beck's Daddy Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a hospital in Hawaii after he complained of chest pains and had reportedly been taken from his hotel “in serious condition." Thankfully for thousands of DittoHeads nation-wide, El Rushbo is okay, and now he's praising the American health care system as the best in the world. So there.


• "Bring 'em on." Remember Dubya's unfortunate quote about the bad guys? Well, it made the list of the decade's top 10 quotations.


• Bad Hat starts our third year as a Blog, and we thank all of you for your support and continued interest. Junior has started his own Blog, Oregon Duck themed, of course. He calls it "Duck Lips," and there's a link to it posted at the bottom left of this page. He says he's going to keep up with it, and fill it with sports for the rest of year. We'll see. Check it out, and give him some encouragement.