Resolutions and Lamentations

I resolve to continue smoking this year-- at least for the time being. I know that cigarettes are bad for me, particularly since I'm an asthmatic, but I really couldn't give a fuck. The world moves on in endless birth and death and rebirthing cycles. Tsunamis, wars, poverty, stress, enviromental holocaust, and bad sitcoms. Tim Russert is the mouthpiece of a criminal and corrupt administration. Arnold Schwarzenegger tells us Californians to tighten our belts. The president of the United States couldn't be fucked to make a single statement for four days after the worst thing that ever has happened happened. My job is futureless. I resolve to take more ecstasy this year. It really is a fantastic drug. The colors blend with the music in swirls of light, love, and hope. And then you wake up to remember that Colombia is burning. That Iraq is burning. That the oil is running out. And how do you engage in a conversation about oil policy with your mechanic cousin who has staked his life on driving and fixing these oil-hungry machines? How do you tell his brother that it isn't "the niggers" who are responsible for the fact that he is poor, sick, unenlightened and stupid? How do you tell the guy you work with that you do not wish to be bombarded with anecdotes about Ronnie James Dio and Kip Winger every time you walk by his desk? How do you tell him that you stopped caring about those guys when you were still in grammar school? How do you tell the kid you work with that his habit of spitting incessantly in the smoking alley is disgusting and unsanitary? How? I resolve to drink less this year. More ecstasy and less booze. I think about the hangovers I've had this past year and I am overcome with a sensation of loss. Brain cells, money, humor, all. Who are those people that flock by the millions to Times Square for the New Year's bash? What compelled them? A compulsion to be part of something? So many of the guys that I know are able to speak forcefully and sophisticatedly about the inside linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens, about the point guard for the Miami Heat, about the different coaching styles of Joe Torre and Jim Tracy, about Howard Stern's imminent departure from the radio airwaves, about cars, girls, pot, and beer. I like that stuff, too. But Jesus, man, would you apply just a bit of your gray matter toward the things that actually affect your lives? Politics and reverberations of policies last longer than the duration of the corporate-sponsored presidential horserace. Pay a little attention, please! The meter maids continue to be the bane of my existence. I resolve to punish them by getting no parking tickets this year. Money's tight. I resolve to do less cocaine. R.I.P. Susan Sontag. R.I.P. Johnny Ramone (even if you were a ditto-head freak). You will be missed. For my friend P.H.-Unbalanced: I hope you get your shit together this year. Time's running out, my friend. Get into rehab. Fuck it. Maybe you'll learn something about yourself. The "Deep, Dark, Truthful Mirror" is a bitch that we all try to avoid, but on the other hand, most of us don't live in flop houses and sell Vicodin to sustain our amphetamine addictions either. What compells those millions? I'll never know. They probably all watch Ray Romano's television show. I swear the television stunted at least a whole generation's intellectual capacity-- and the rest are being finished off by Ritalin and Christianity. Take some acid, for God's sake! Do something weird. Wear a sparkly orange beret to work. Eat well. Order your steaks medium rare. Have a colonic. Drink some wheat grass. I'm talking to you, Caption Jockey! Be good to your girlfriend. Be good to your mother. And if you don't have a girlfriend or a mother, find someone to be good to. And when I say "good," I mean tell them you love them. Be kind. Stand up for them. Give them everything you have. Find out what you have. I resolve to get a credit card. No more trips to the pawn shop or Check Into Cash. I'm going into debt the American way-- Visa and Mastercard. I'll hereby join the throngs of debtors that keep Alan Greenspan happily employed, that make the rich richer and keep the rest of us in debt, that makes Walmart the be-all-and-end-all of American style free-market capitalism. What compells me? I'll never know. I was born into this combine-- this swirling, mechanized, broken-down, counter-revolutionary, lifeless thresher that's thrashing about in a last gasp of desperation and disillusion, that's choking on itself and vomitting out tsunami horrors on orangutans and children in Sumatra, that's slouching towards Bethlehem to be born to kill everybody's mother. Happy New Year, everyone! 2005 should be a doozy.