Sunday, January 01, 2017

A New Year's Post In Which I Manage to Not Invoke the Name of the President-Elect*

Dear 2017,
Image result for Baby New Year
It’s been a long time since I’ve felt the need to address the New Year. Things seemed to be progressing at a pretty normal pace. It seemed my input wasn’t necessary like it was for your siblings 2012 and 2014.

And then there was your sibling 2016 – the Hannibal Lechter of years. I realize now that, as New Years go, these little discussions are mandatory since evidently subjective and arbitrary timeframes have no respect for decency.

In the past, I’ll admit I’ve judged you and your siblings on the crap you flung at me, personally. It never occurred to me that, lacking my direction, you’d expand your systematic destruction to the world at large.

So…2017…we need to talk. Because evidently, like a pre-teen, you seem to think that if I don’t specifically tell you not to do something, it automatically means it’s okay to do. For instance – I never said to my kids, “don’t play Jousting Tournament on your bicycles.” I went for the simple “don’t be a moron,” assuming that would prevent them from careening at each other with the gas grill rotisserie shafts. I was wrong.

Indeed, I never specifically told your sibling, 2016, to not bring our entire civilization to its knees. At this time last year, such as statement was sort of like telling someone “don’t take any wooden nickels.” Such a phrase was outdated because any idiot would know the difference between a sanctioned, intricately-minted coin and a piece of worthless junk carved to look like something of value that can slip through a dysfunctional mechanism.

And so 2016 was the year that was so horrible, a bevy of celebrities opted to jump ship rather than endure even one more week of it. It was the year so horrible that even the people who got their way still seemed to be really mad at the people who didn’t. It was the year no one was happy.

What has made it even worse is that 2016 packed up and disappeared, but didn’t take its garbage with it. So here we are, drowning in the detritus of your sibling and you show up expecting some sort of celebration.

Well 2017, you’re going to have to prove yourself. Frankly, you don’t have a whole lot to work with and Kardashian mutations are still infesting every aspect of our culture (deep down I suspect this is the root of all the world’s problems).


So for now I’ll wait…and watch…and find a nice, safe place for my spare pair of glasses.

Warily,
Sisiggy

*Sort of.