New Years Approaches

New Years Eve, my least favorite holiday of all, is fast approaching on clonking monster feet. I hate this time of year. It fills me with dread and ennui, and also, I'm getting tired of cleaning the fucking house. The dog has been sick twice in the last 48 hours; the second time, this morning, he managed to do it on the long suffering living room rug. I just finished cleaning it up and it was no fun, although, okay, it was more fun than yesterday's sick in the kitchen, which was really gruesome and you probably don't want the details. The paper towels slid. Isn't that enough? In a just universe, cleaning up two instances of dog vomit in two days ought to be enough to get a pass from housecleaning for all of 2006.

But this isn't a just universe, and yet again I must contemplate what I'll give up in the coming year. Smoking. And drinking. And being fat, which entails giving up eating and time spent lolling around in bed reading novels. 2006 already sounds like a year of penance, and I've had enough of those. I'd throw the I Ching, except that all it ever says is that it will further me to cross the great water. I've no doubt at all that it would totally further me to cross the great water; in fact, crossing the great water would be extremely high on my priorities list if certain stupid nagging little details like paying the rent and eating weren't up there higher. If I give up eating, though, maybe I'll have enough cash to cross at least the little water, which could be either the French Broad River or possibly my basement. I cross the French Broad all the time: usually on my way to the bar, and then I cross it again on the way home, sometimes rather wobblingly, but crossing nevertheless.

2005 was a fairly gruesome year, as most of them seem to be since about, oh, 1972, when I had a pretty enjoyable 3rd grade year and Paul DiAntonio hugged me in the math corner. It's not so good when you get more action in 3rd grade than you do in your 40s. Now, all the radio stations and media outlets are frenziedly hawking the best movies and books and songs and albums and, oh god, I don't know, toilet paper origami animals of 2005, and I haven't heard of hardly any of them. I only go see bad science fiction movies, because that is just who I am, dammit, and they never make the top lists. I read books from the Goodwill, mostly, and while they may have made best of lists in their day, they haven't been mentioned since the late 80s. I lost track of popular music sometime shortly after M was born in 1991, and I guess I'm altogether out of it. Ah well. I have been invited to a New Years Eve party and, because I'm a twit who keeps on having some kind of whacked out faith against all expectations and odds, I'm hoping that it's actually going to be fun. Yeah.