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Dear friggin’ everyone,

Yes, I heard all the commotion last night at midnight. The celebration, the fireworks, and of course all the pistols shots, joyously fired off into the crisp night air, their bullets rhythmically thunk, thunk, thunking into my roof. All to welcome in a new year. (And if you think I’m joking I will gladly show you the AK 47 slug embedded into my back deck.)

But, this morning, after close inspection, I’m disappointed to inform you that the “New Year that we have been given is a previously used, heavily scuffed, old year … Once again, I begin January quite disillusioned.

I was hoping for a brand spanking new, bright and shiny New Year, bursting with promise. But as I look outside this morning I can see that this is merely a “previously owned” new year. It doesn’t even appear to be in its original packaging. I think that a New Year should come to us brightly wrapped. I was hoping to open the front door to be greeted by wall to wall rainbows and butterflies, songbirds belting out a version of Handel’s Messiah and woodchucks chucking wood into a neat pile for my fireplace. Instead, I opened the door this morning and was greeted by a slightly damp cat, and a very grey, overcast version of last January.

Once again we get a tired, retread of a year, covered with dents and scratches. Most of the switches and buttons on this year’s model don’t appear to work and the heat and air-conditioning come on at the damndest times. To employ one of the stupidest advertising terms ever created, this is a “re-purposed ” year that we are now stuck with for the next 12 months. As I embark on another long, grueling trip around the sun I notice that the leaves which have fallen off my trees still aren’t raked, my car still has 287,000 miles on it, my mailbox is stuffed with bills, my bank account is on life support, I appear to be 95 years old when I look in the mirror, the Powerball tickets I purchased, which held so much promise, all had defective numbers, and my wife still introduces me as “The idiot I live with.” So I ask, how does this differ from the previous 35 years?  I was so looking forward to starting out fresh this time.

I suppose we have no other choice but to forge ahead and try and make the best of it this time around.

A few suggestions:

1. Try not to vote stupid this time … Accurately recall the lessons of Bush, Sarah Palin and Ralph Nader.
2. Avoid church, catholic priests and naked athletic coaches who offer lessons in “soaping up.”
3. Don’t talk on your cell phone in the grocery store … ever.
4. Throw away that stupid iPad.
5. Sing in the shower more.
6. Sing in public less.
7. Discover that the Constitution gives others rights, not just you.
8. Don’t get a butt lift … you won’t look any better, and your ass will just be in the wrong location.
9. Rethink that flaming skull tattoo … Your career will thank you.
10. Don’t endlessly repeat “I want lower taxes” … nobody is ever going to lower your taxes. Grow up and live with it.
11. Consider good salami and smoked pork shoulders health food, along with butter and salt.
12. Try and figure out which statement is more accurate “Ron Paul has a few good ideas” or “Ron Paul is batshit crazy.”
13. Cook more, microwave less.
14. Learn how to shag fly balls and sink a foul shot.
15. Figure out that Reality TV is, A) not reality and B) talking about who was voted off an island last week makes you look demented.
16. Read more books.
17. Sprinkle your conversations with actual facts … I know it sounds crazy, just try it.
18. Feed your neighbor’s dog when they aren’t looking.
19. Buy lots of wrapping paper from the neighbor kids to support their public school.
20. Be nice to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormon’s who frequent your door but make them listen to 2 hours of your personal, atheistic, pagan philosophy and give them one of your old Green Lantern comic books, telling them “this really changed my life.”
21. Hide your neighbor’s garden gnome … in the trash.
22. Don’t try to “be the person your dog thinks you are” … your dog thinks you are an olfactory challenged, food supply device.

So get up off the couch, shake off last year’s dust and let’s try to do a better job with what little we have for the next 12 months.

Fondest regards to all,

BubbaRumSheetrock

Trevor Stone Irvin

Illustrator and Designer living in the Candler Park area...At one time I worked at the Atlanta Constitution and then for CNN at the startup...it all seemed too much like real work so I went freelance...which my father defined as "being unemployed for a real long time".

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