During my absence, the Pony Express delivered a New Year’s gift from Grant County: Musing by Bob Lancaster on things that he intends never to mention again in 2018.

It is a pleasure to welcome the emeritus columnist back to our pages with this special report.

I’ve often marveled how he compiles these lists. It isn’t easy.

You can read it all at the link, but a sample here:

This renunciation is a personal nu yrs resolution now — not trying to persuade anybody else to boycott or endorse anything. Or espouse or eschew or embrace or flee from. Or retweet. Not looking for likes or shares or smileys, nor ES&Ds or GFYs. So here at the ano changeover, check out this ripped-from-the-headlines basket of deplorables and be glad you’ll hear nothing more about any of it. At least from Ol’ Moi you won’t.

Additional sexts of Weiner’s wiener. Sequel demigorgons in the Upside Down. The Bowling Green Massacre. Bizarre Duggar body piercings (as opposed to the customary plentitude of ordinary Duggar body penetrations). Breaches of whatever vital personal data is left that hasn’t already been breached. The Great Antarctic Polynya. Selfie dysmorphia. 3200 Phaethon and 52 other “near earth” asteroids that slid silently by Rock 3 in 2017. Smishing. The old bad cheeseburger emoji (cheese on the bottom). Space-alien bacteria takeover-plotting in secret bunker beakers in Putinia.

“It’s OK to be white.” “The Traveling Butts.” Internet fast-laneing (now with neutrality’s orange cones gone). Fisting (yeah, they really do). LOLWUSS and other too-clever chat acronyms (“laugh out loud, with unintentional snorting sounds”). ‘The jellyfish takeover.” The Babadook. Exact-date doomsday hooey. The anthem-stand-or–kneel foolishness. The Confederate statue stay-or-go nonsense. The trans-banned bathroom freakout (“Get away from that peephole, Huck!”)

There is a whole lot more. And I for one hope I need not rule out hearing more from Bob Lancaster in 2018.

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PS: One personal exception. I can’t get enough photos of bulldogs in tuxedos.

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