Seven Rude Years:
Indulge a few moments of navel-gazing: It's been seven years today since the Rude Pundit decided that he couldn't take the disgusting insanity of the Bush administration and emerged to offer his own versions of karmic justice that could be enacted on the various and sundry criminals who we called our leaders and media figures. He's pretty sure that every year he does this comes with a three-year loss of life on the back end. Bloggery is the intellectual coal mine. But it offers a liberatory experience that few so-called journalists and pundits are allowed to have.

Despite the best attempts by sites like Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, both admirable in their own ways, despite some of us being asked to appear on major media outlets, we have resisted being gentrified here in the blog ghetto. Witness the liberal sniffing at Markos Moulitsas's book American Taliban for daring to use the attitude and language of blogs in monograph form, like how dare we bring our crude, countrified ways to their refined and erudite cities. The Rude Pundit still loves that we're offensive to a good many people because we should be. And the Rude Pundit has striven mightily to be so.

Usually, every anniversary is accompanied by a fundraising drive. Now, the Rude Pundit would never stop you from clicking on the PayPal button over there on the right and tossing a few scheckels in the hat. But he's gonna ask most of you to sit on your wallets and hold your purses for a bit. (Unless you're in that magical 3% income-wise - in which case, fuck, please, be the Rude Pundit's House of Medici.)

'Cause, see, he's got a book coming out soon, The Rude Pundit's Almanack, from OR Books, best known as the publisher of Going Rouge, the anti-Palin volume, as well as works by Douglas Rushkoff and others. To answer the most-asked question, the Rude Pundit's book will be mostly never-blogged and totally new stuff. And blog posts that are in the book have been updated and expanded.

So, dear, sweet, 97% who have been so amazingly generous in the past, keep your hard-earned dollars and pesos and Euros and whatever the fuck you have down there in Australia (Is it Woggies? If not, it oughta be) for now. And when the book comes out, let's put that fucker up the magical Amazon charts. As soon as he has the publication date, which will be in the next few months, he'll post it here.

Tonight, the Rude Pundit will celebrate in the old way: a deranged foursome with some very open-minded Muslims while sucking on opium hookahs and downing an anise liquor drink called the Suicide Bomber. It won't be pretty. Or maybe it'll be beautiful.