Re: Solutions

Well, the New Year is about to be upon us. Actually, depending on your part of the globe the New Year has already arrived. And with the arrival of a new calendar year comes the question of resolutions, a brief history of which can be gathered from the good old Wikipedia.

Currently, my resolution is 1280x800, I mean you know how that classic joke goes. In 2014 though, for real, I might finally have to get a new computer. But if anything, my resolution will likely only be smaller. I mean it will just be an entirely different dimension. Because that's what happens as you age, you reach new dimensions, and it affects how you view the world.

At the moment my resolution is brandy and bourbon infused and it adds a soft hue to a landscape basked in a continuing-to-fall powdery layer. The thermometer might read 4, but hey, who's to say what [fahren]hei[gh]t's we might get to next year.

So anyway all you inhabitants of the planet, Happy New Year.

Conundrums

The thing about a conundrum is that it's nothing but a shared nundrum, and a nundrum is nothing but the drum of a nun. This is none too likely, and all too logical. A co-nun-drum then is assisted nun drumming, which could mean that we've got two folks drumming on a nun's drum, two folks drumming a nun, and both seem absurd enough to bring us to what a conundrum really is said to be: a confusing and difficult problem. And thank goodness as I think my efforts to break down the roots were otherwise tapped out.

Speaking of tapped out, could it be any more clear that it's that time of year? The end, I mean. Where at one point I branched off separate blogs to house fiction writing and song parody writing, that writing risks all running right here. 2014 then, the year I remember to keep those things separate, by which I mean actually updating those other blogs.

In the meantime, I'll think long and hard about my 2014 resolutions, just as I never do.

'Twas the Night Before This Mess...

Little introduction is necessary for this improvised rendition of the holiday classic as it may or may not have happened for me this year after several brandies and some might say too much bourbon...

'Twas the night before Christmas, and somewhere in-house
A martini was stirring, to be placed in my mouth;
Some stockings were hung on the back of a chair,
Because we all know they'd shrink in the dryer;
The neighbors were watching some Walking Dead;
While I wondered whatever happened to Keds;
Some boogers in a 'kerchief, a desire to nap,
But first I needed tending to a big, healthy crap
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the can to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I shuffled with pants 3/4th up,
Since I'd not taken the time for wiping my butt.
A half moon was displaying if behind me you'd go,
And I could feel a light breeze there down below,
When what did I feel there dripping down my rear,
But the remnants of a fifth and more than one beer,
With a lingering hangover that could make me sick,
I smiled thinking of a drunken St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles my trousers down came,
And I stumbled and shouted, my cheeks red with shame:
"God, dammit! There's Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
Which is Comet? Which Cupid? Is there a Donner and Blixen?
Seeing fake reindeer in the midst of nature's call!
I must still be quite drunk after all!"
As heaves that post hurricane 40oz fly,
When I tried for vomiting, the heaving was dry;
So up to the housetop this drunkard he flew
With a gullet full of booze on this alcoholic Jew—
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of John Wilkes Booth.
As I thought in my head, my face made a frown,
This was the dude that took Abe Lincoln down.
He was dressed in a suit, from his head to his foot,
Damn this was the dude that made Abe's life kaput;
Oh I thought how I'd like to break his back,
Though I guess that'd throw history all out of whack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! an unseen adversary!
His cheeks were quite gaunt, his nose like a fairy!
His damned little mouth was cast in a direction down,
And the 'stache on his lipe was as brown—doo-doo brown;
The hilt of a pistol was hidden underneath,
And I must admit he had rather nice teeth;
He had a slim face and no hint of a belly
But he was down on his luck and really quite smelly.
He was hungry and trim, with an anger not shelved,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a duck of his head
I was reminded how he'd shot honest Abe dead;
He spoke not a word, but pantomimed his work,
And cocked back that hammer—my god, what a jerk,
And laying his finger on the trigger it goes,
And that's about the end to this non-prose;
He fled from the scene, and just then I heard a whistle,
It was the damn kettle, I wish I'd disarmed Booth of pistol.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he faded out of sight—
“I'd do it again, it served Old Abe right!”

Social Meteor

Coming right on in from outer space are the people in your life who are adept at using social media who don't think you're adept at social media. These people aren't anything new in terms of their behavior, it's just that things are now cast through a social media lens. Really then they're not from outer space at all, it's just the behavior that's alien to me. It's this behavior (really, how many times will I say behavior) that has irked me for most of my life. In its simplest form, it's when people are jerks and don't think you know that they're being jerks just because you choose not to be a jerk or call them out in return.

You know what though? All kinds of people got all kinds of hang ups, and at the risk of sounding like a self-help pamphlet, the problem is rarely you, it's them. It makes me wonder if we're a collectively more miserable society than any before, or if we just keep a nice, fresh log of it.

As for things that don't stink: Boston's Logan airport. Okay, not strictly true. When I landed there in late November it did have a scent of cheesy foot. But this was counteracted on my flight out by the fact that security doesn't require a you to remove shoes, liquids...anything? I put a bag down, and I walked through a metal detector. No radiation beaming off of and also into me, no, oh right, I said the other things. Amazing.

And all that in a city that you might think would remain on high alert after the Boston Marathon bombings just eight months back. Speaking of, I might just sit myself down to read this article on the alleged/convicted bombers, at the very least because I'm glad to see that in-depth investigative journalism still goes on. I've only read the first three paragraphs but labeling it "the greatest act of terrorism in Boston history" might need adjusting. The British, after all, might have something to say about that. Still, it would be semantics to argue, and for the time being I'll take an antisemantic stance.

Adieu les hommes et les femmes, les garçons et les filles, et tout les autres de l'internet.