The Colonel's Year in Review

It is one of the things I dislike the most about the end of a year. Everyone of any self-considered importance assaults our awareness with an anthology of annualized review and remembrances. Each brings to us a breathless recap of the momentous events of the ending year, bearing bias and little brains as backup material. And, as a special bonus, each year whose numeration ends in the numeral 9 is proclaimed as the "end of the decade," necessitating a breathlessly brainless and biased recap of the last ten years' "important" events. So we have that to look forward to this year. Never mind that the current decade does not actually end until midnight on the 31st of December 2010...but, that's grist for another post.

Needless to say, those of us with no lives (and that includes the three of you who have absolutely nothing better with which to occupy your senses than to regularly waste valuable rod and cone time perusing posts hereon) will have eyes glued to the tube as some windbag (the Colonel knows windbags, being a prominent one his own self) winds down the year/decade with prejudiced recollections, replete with arched eyebrows and disapproving vocal inflection when describing the demise or accomplishment of a productive member of society who happens to be a conservative, or worse, a Republican--and lavishes praise on the "world-changing" impact of deviants like Michael Jackson. The Colonel would have you, instead, consider the year's events as they transpired here aboard Eegeebeegee, capital of the Tallahatchie Free State, situated at the northern end of southern nowhere on the periphery of the middle of nowhere.

The Colonel's Year in Review:

January 1st, 2009. The Colonel awoke clear-minded and relatively pain-free after a good night's rest preceded by a quiet non-alcoholic evening with the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda watching Ilidia Batatcha review the most momentous events of 2008.

January 2nd, 2009. In the 73rd playing of Cotton Bowl, and in the last such named post-season match-up to be played in the venerable Cotton Bowl Stadium, the 25th (BCS) ranked Ole Miss Rebels of the vaunted Southeastern Conference defeated the 8th (BCS) ranked Texas Tech Red Raiders of some little known collection of teams out west. In the highest scoring Cotton Bowl in history the Ole Miss Rebels continued their long and storied domination of the aforementioned little known collection of teams out west, having last trounced a team, Oklahoma State, from said little known and lowly regarded conference in the 2003 Cotton Bowl.

January 26th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the completion of 53 solar revolutions standing hours on end waste deep in a cypress swamp whose liquid foundation hovered barely a quarter degree above the freezing mark on Herr Fahrenheit's scale, in vane hope of contributing to the noble cause of defending the northern end of southern nowhere from the annual mallard reenactment of Sherman's march to the sea. The Colonel has always been a sucker for lost causes...

February 2009. Sucked...

March 2009. Didn't suck so bad...

April 22nd, 2009. The Colonel celebrated Earth Day by harvesting timber aboard Eegeebeegee and turning it, with the help of his brand new personal saw mill, Semper Filet (not to be confused with his pick-up truck Semper Fillit, his trusty tractor, Semper Field, and his dearly departed boat, Semper Fish), into a few board feet of lumber and a prodigious amount of sawdust.

July 4th, 2009. The Colonel commemorated the 146th anniversary of the fall of Vicksburg to Grant and celebrated the 233rd anniversary of the independence declaration of the since-re-United States (see events surrounding the fall of Vicksburg to Grant) by loading the worldly possessions of Number 1 son and his family into the world's largest U-Haul truck and subsequently leading the exodus from bondage in the Scumslime State to freedom in the promised land on the shores of Lake Brenda at the northern end of southern nowhere just west of the middle of nowhere.

July 31st, 2009. The comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda celebrated the 33rd anniversary of her marriage to the man of her dreams, the dashing rake, the man, the myth, the legend... The Colonel. The Colonel celebrated said anniversary in much the same way he has celebrated every day since securing his bride in the bonds of holy matrimony--in amazed appreciation of a good and gracious God whose second act of unmerited love toward this colossal sinner was to place the comely and kind-hearted Miss Brenda athwart the path of my hitherto errant life.

September 18th, 2009. The Colonel returned from a week-long excursion to the Ozarks and declared definitively that he shall never initiate an overnight leave-taking from the comforting confines of Eegeebeegee as long as he shall live...or until the comely and kind-hearted puts her dainty foot down...which ever comes first.

October 6th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated completion of his second favorite person's 4th air-breathing circle round ole Sol. Master Caleb, first of the Gregory men in his generation, is accumulating worldly wisdom at a much more accelerated pace since his escape from the Scumslime State and subsequent arrival at the center of the universe here at the northern end of southern nowhere. The hope of 21st Century Civilization is fast learning the manly arts only practicable in a rural setting. Freedom cannot be truly appreciated until one relieves himself, without fear of neighborly recrimination, at any place of one's own choosing in one's own expansive back yard--for example.

November 10th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the 234th birthday of his beloved Corps. Many of his fellow Marines celebrated in the midst of combating the enemies of our great republic.

December 7th, 2009. The Colonel celebrated the completion of his third favorite person's 2nd air-breathing trip around the sun. Master Taylor is taking great advantage of the wide open spaces here aboard Eegeebeegee and is fast becoming a race-runner of great renown.

My friends, the Colonel is quite sure that the last few minutes of your life have been spent in frantically bored hope that the next paragraph of this missive would in some small way improve upon the previous. Sorry to disappoint. The Colonel expects that the next year will not fulfill our lofty expectations, as well. Here's hoping I'm wrong.

That, in and of itself, will be a rare event worthy of recollection this time next year.