Saturday, January 01, 2022

Happy Better Year

I used to do an annual feature on this date.  I used to say “I hope (the upcoming year) is as good for you as (the current year) was for…”  and then I’d list all the people who won awards or celebrated big events or achievements.  It was as positive and hopeful a New Years greeting as I could write.  

I haven’t done that for the last couple of years.  It’s hard to wish any year since 2017 on anyone.  

I never understood the ritual of cheering a new year.  Who knows how the year will unfold?  Maybe the year you’re leaving behind was better.  But this year, I think we are all happy to — if nothing else — say goodbye to 2021.   We go into 2022 with our eyes wide open (well, some of us) — there’s a pandemic surge, Trump is not in handcuffs and leg irons, the Supreme Court is taking away our freedoms, and Republican congressmen are committing acts of high treason.  

But hopefully, with a White House that now cares and wants to do right by its citizens (what a concept), vaccines protecting those not stupid enough to shun them, the January 6 committee, criminal investigations in New York and Georgia, and Adele appearing in Vegas — there may be a glimmer or two of hope.   There was a year when World War II ended.  There was essentially a year when the Depression ended.  Same with the Spanish Flu, polio (oh wait… people weren’t morons — everyone took the vaccine), and Roseanne was fired.

So maybe this will be one of those years — or at least a turning point to lead to one of those years.  At this point, I think that’s the best we can hope for.  You don’t have to win awards or invent a new phone to have a great year.   If we’re all better off to any degree one year from today that’ll be worth celebrating.

Here’s wishing you and yours a happy and healthy New Year.

Ken

24 comments :

  1. Darwin's Ghost1/01/2022 7:18 AM

    2021 wasn't all bad. Rush Limbaugh ceased stealing oxygen, Ashli Babbitt and three other domestic terrorists got deep sixed, hundreds of other domestic terrorists are serving long sentences or sitting in jail awaiting trial, countless Republican politicians and Qanon types refused the vaccine and then died of Covid, and Trump's close personal friend and frequent Mar-a-Lago party guest Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty on five counts of child sex trafficking and abuse and faces 80 years imprisonment.

    I'll drink to that.

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  2. And the same for you, sir.

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  3. Back atcha, Ken. I'm looking forward to another year of posts here. Stay well.

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  4. In my game world of The Third Colony, they don't celebrate New Year. Instead they have a tradition of the Annual Funeral in which they put the previous year behind them, burying grudges and baggage of the old year to get a fresh start for the new one.

    I find this to be a far more sensible approach.

    (Unrelated - Curse You, Ken Levine! I've been reduced to using The Night Chicago Died to try to drive Billy Don't Be A Hero out of my head. I wonder how they could have gotten in there, hm?)

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    1. I was a little boy when those songs came out. I LOVED those songs. Along with Seasons In The Sun, I had those lyrics memorized! I assure you though, I have moved on since.

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  5. Ken -- Your blog is always something to celebrate, and I'm happy it will continue in the new year. Just wanted to share a quote from "Utopia for Realists" by Rutger Bregman. "If we want to change the world, we have to be unrealistic, unreasonable and impossible. Those who called for the abolition of slavery, for suffrage for women, and for same-sex marriage were also once branded lunatics until history proved them right."

    The way to change the world is to tell ourselves better stories, and those stories will be much more popular if they make people laugh. As psychologist Sheldon Kopp said, "Laughter is the sound of freedom."

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  6. Did you forget the horror show of celebrity deaths 2016? Never mind the politics of that godforsaken year. Looking back I see 16 and 20 as the standout years for Logan Roy to voice his trademark insult.

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  7. "Ken wrote...
    polio (oh wait… people weren’t morons — everyone took the vaccine)"


    Ah, not EVERYONE. My parents were Christian Scientists, and thus, by definition, anti-vaccers and, also by definition, morons. When everyone was getting polio shots at school, I and my siblings were sent to school with "Religious Exemption Cards" to protect us against the danger of being vaccinated against a terrible, crippling disease, and we were not inoculated. When, decades later, I berated my mother for this crime against her children, she replied, "You didn't get polio, did you? Prayer worked." To this I replied at the top of my lungs from one foot from her stupid face, "I DIDN'T GET POLIO BECAUSE EVERY OTHER HUMAN BEING FOR MILES AROUND WERE VACCINATED, YOU IDIOT!!!"

    To this day I adamantly think that my parents should have gone to prison for this crime against me and my siblings. And I made sure they knew I thought this.

    Before my mother had been dead for a full 24 hours, all the TONS of Christian Science "Literature" in her home, her Bible, her copy of Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, her decades of copies of The Christian Science Journal, dozens of books on the religion, all of it were in plastic trash bags and on their way to the dump. I personally packed them up in those bags, dragged them to the curb (They FILLED five 20-Gallon bags, and weighed a ton), and then watched from the window as the garbage men threw them into their dumpster truck and drove them away. I was sad because Mom had no fireplace, as I would have enjoyed personally burning every page. I had to make do with the dump.

    Happy, fully-vaccinated New Year.

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    1. When my wife was four years old, she became deathly sick. Her Christian Science mother and grandmother sat at her bedside praying. When my wife's condition worsened, her father (no declared religion) realized he was being a fool and hurried her to the hospital (against Mom and Grandma's wrath) where Doctors said she was near death. Of course, my wife then survived. Unfortunately, her father was not as concerned when he and his Christian Science wife were told by Doctors that their very young daughter had a hole in the base of her spine and an operation was needed. At the time, my wife did not show any signs of trouble. Now though, she has had several surgeries on her spine and needs another, dangerous surgery. That surgery had been scheduled for 12/28/21, but had to be canceled. She already has several cadaver disks in her spine, replacing those which had collapsed. My wife is disabled and terribly miserable. All this due to Christian Science. Thanks, Obama. Wait, scratch that. In the same tone... Thanks, God.

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  8. Ahhh, 2021, I remember it like yesterday....

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  9. Yes, polio had its refuseniks, too, and not just D. McEwan's Christian Science parents.

    wg

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  10. I can remember my mom dragging all us kids [not including the ones who were born later]] down to the local health clinic to be given the polio vaccine on sugar cubes....which probably led to my sugar addiction and future diabetes. Oh well.....beats being in an iron lung or dead.

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  11. I am headed to a remote, vacant North Carolina inn for ten days. Heaven. (I am self-employed, and currently not working.) I get to stay for free, to just watch it empty. Hopefully, no "The Shining" shenanigans. Snow may hit soon, due to this psycho, global warning winter.

    Omicron getting ready to slam. Get ready. I'm boostered. Can still get a bit sick, but it's limited in most cases. For those of you not vaccinated? Be VERY afraid. This is fucking insane. I went to a damn Evangelical elementary school in the late 60s/early 70s, and they gave us fucking vaccines. Every year. WE were taught science.

    I could never have imagined this stupidity...

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  12. I really enjoyed "Lost in Space"'s final season on Netflix.

    "Curb Your Enthusiasm" is "meh."

    "And Just Like That" is trying WAY, WAY too hard.

    Binged FAR too much "Frasier" today. It really WAS a "white" show. Just interesting...

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  13. Yesterday, our new mayor of New York City, who got elected by saying everything that everyone wanted to hear on all sides of every issue (and boy, did the sophisticates of Gotham ever swoon!), gave one of his perfect 30-second inspirational homilies about COVID-19.

    I'm sure that for most people, his salad shooter of sound bytes masked the parts which they might have found troublesome, had they been paying attention. In the midst of of an uplifting general reassurance about the pandemic, he both managed to raise the flag for sending kids back into school regardless of the numbers, and he spiritedly informed the City that, quote, "We have the tools to live with this pandemic!"

    We're "living with" COVID-19, now? Oh okay. I guess the bar has officially been moved. It's never going away. Live with it, my babies!

    I always thought that the rubes who fall off vegetable trucks all lived in the Heartland. Silly me. They're eating this shit up, here. I just wonder how bad the death rate has to get before native New Yorkers manage to recognize yet another slickoid and decide that they hate this mayor the way they always hate their mayors by the end of their reigns (even the good ones!).

    Polio. Never forget the POLIO thing. It's right there in the damned history books, kids.

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  14. I am trying not to think about it any than I have to. I am vaccinated + the booster and I still wear a mask in public to I am cautiously optimistic/

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  15. My first Friday Question of 2022, yay!

    How did you and the other MASH writers go about writing Father Mulcahy? I have to say he seemed very authentic and respectful to the cloth but still quirky and funny which is hard to balance with any religious figure on a television series\movie.

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  16. For it to have started and ended as crappy as it did with January 6th and the loss of Betty White, 2021 was actually pretty decent for me. That's not even compared to the so-low-it-was-underground bar set by 2020. It was refreshing to see a return to democracy, even if people insist on latching to politicians like it's Yankees vs. Red Sox or Packers vs. Bears. I'm just happy to see a President not start a Twitter war with Kim Jong Un or.........the cast of Saturday Night Live. A President who realizes the importance of science and vaccines.

    Hopefully 2022 is the year we see some normalcy we haven't seen in at least five or six years. I say five or six because the Trump years made The Twilight Zone look like a documentary.

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  18. Thank you for a new year wish that goes beyond bland sentimentality and is clear-eyed whilst remaining positive.

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  19. Ah, Marka, I see you have the usual Christian Science Wall of Separation Between Church and Reality. To equate a religious delusion, reliance on Chrisitan Science instead of actual science, that kills people every year, that killed both of my parents, killed two of my grandparents (One of whom was a Journal-listed Christian Science Practitioner, in other words, a con woman, as she took money from sick or injured people and gave them imaginary help), killed every pet I had growing up, to equate that with not liking pineapple on a pizza is obscene. Pineapple on a pizza never killed children.

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  20. Darwin's Ghost1/02/2022 5:46 PM

    Christian science. An oxymoron if ever there was one. Like compassionate conservative. Or nice Republican. Or decent Republican. Or compassionate Republican. Or non-violent Republican. Or honest Republican.

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  21. Russ DiBello, good rant. I don't know much about your mayor of three days except that he used to be a police officer, but I was reminded of THE TAKING OF PELHAM (the good one with Walter Matthau) -- you know the mayor is arriving because everyone starts to boo.

    Do you by any chance live in Staten Island? Just wondered.

    I think we put too much pressure on new years. As Ford Prefect observed, "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."

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  22. Buttermilk, your evaluation of me as "Staten Island" suggests you may think I'm a Republican. No, far (-left!) from it; I just don't tongue-bathe the latest Professor Harold Hill oil slick, simply because he has a "-D" after his name. Remaining religiously devout to your own political tribe, regardless of their lies and evil, is something Republicans do. On an hourly basis, it seems.

    More importantly, since I posted that story about Eric Adams, I heard a sound byte from Connecticut Democratic Governor Ned Lamont. He, too, is pandering to the conservatives like Ron DeSantis' voters in Florida who don't want their precious kids to stay home with them. Note, however, the words HE used:

    "We HAVE ALL THE TOOLS...:

    And there's your "tell": "TOOLS"? Odd word to keep popping up in this context, y'think?

    The national Establishment Dems once again went straight to the focus groups, and that's the phrase that pops. They're quite obviously telling all their first-string pols across the country to use it, as a way of straddling both sides of the stay-at-home issue; i.e., if you're worried about your kid being unnecessarily exposed to COVID in the classroom, don't be. We got this! Everything's gonna be okay!

    And again, the second part of that phrase... I don't know if Adams was saying the quiet part out loud, frankly!.. is "... to live with COVID-19".

    So to review: yes, everything is back to normal! No, you're kid's in no danger. Yes, COVID will be with us forever. No, no worries, 'cuz "We have the tools to live with it!"

    Pay attention, gang: this is the hill the Dems intend to die on in 2022. And after they do die, the Democratic consultants who pushed this crap will still get gigs. Kinda like radio consultants... :-)

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