He left for Pakistan Thursday night. And by tonight, Anderson Cooper will be in Times Square for CNN's New Year's Eve special. But would he have preferred to stay in Pakistan and report on the Bhutto assassination? From today's NYPost, a quote from Cooper in Paper magazine:

"Each year it gets worse and worse, and then I always think it can't get any worse, and then it always does. No matter where you go, I think everyone is having a bad time on New Year's. There's so much pressure. It's like amateur night."

In his autobiography, Dispatches from the Edge, Cooper writes about covering the CNN festivities just days after the South Asian Tsunami in 2004. "There's been talk of canceling the celebrations, but in the end it's decided that the show will go on. I've always hated New Year's Eve," Cooper writes.

>Update: Cooper posted a blog entry late this morning about looking forward to tonight's New Year's Eve special:

"As a kid I was never a big fan of New Year's Eve. There always seemed something slightly menacing about the event. New York City streets are packed, people are drunk, it always kind of freaked me out. Then as an adult, I didn't like it much because there was always so much pressure to have a good time, and you can never find a cab to go home in when you realize the party you're at is lame. Now I really like New Year's Eve because I'm working and Times Square is actually a really fun place to be."

Also, CNN tells us the quote from Cooper in today's NYPost is actually several years old.