MtH#10 Happy New Year

Happy New Year everybody!

January 1 is a good day to make or review your resolutions. Not start them. What I’m suggesting is really only important for a few of the annual promises we make to ourselves, like quitting or cutting back on anything habitual. Let’s have a cooling-off pause, a grace period, much like some states and provinces have for things like car deals, mortgages or subscriptions to wrinkle cream. And let’s make it one day. Say, for example you resolve not to have a drink before 5pm anymore and you were out revelling the night before. You wake up with a headache and a mouth as arid as the Mojave, lying in your former stomach contents, shivering by a dumpster you don’t recognize (not at all like the one the night before), with no pants resulting in yet another explanation to the cashier at Walmart why you are wearing what you’re buying……. and you’re going to wait until almost dusk for a hair of the dog?

And smokes? First of all, you didn’t stop at midnight, in fact you had 40 more death darts, 3 joints and 15 or so puffs on the glass dick………..so you’ve already blown it anyway, unless resolutions don’t officially kick in until Jan. 2. See the genius in this?

Overheard Recently:

“You’re stupid”

“No. You are.”

“You are”

“You!”

“They did a survey and found the stupidest person in the world and you’re stupider”

“So?……you’re just as……….Wait a second, that doesn’t make sense!”

“Course not because you’re stupid”

“Listen, if I’m stupider than the stupidest person in the world then they didn’t find the stupidest person in the world”

“Noooooooo! They found the person but you’re just a bit stupider”

“Argh……”

Okay, two kids in the playground at recess? Wrong. I’ll let you figure out which one was the bass player and which one was the drummer. 

I Have One Important Resolution For 2017

Everything in moderation, including moderation. 

Hey folks, before you start furiously commenting, I know it’s not original. Famous for clever little word ditties like, “I can resist everything except temptation” the great playwright and novelist, Oscar Wilde, beat me to it by a hundred and twenty-five years or so. But if he hadn’t thought it up, I would have. It suits my philosophy.  It could be applied to a lot of things in life but it’s particularly useful in dealing with the fun things. Why does it seem like the foods that are really tasty are bad for you? And the peace that comes from a couple of drinks and some smokes takes years off our lives?  And what of the slothfulness hardwired into our lazy brains that turns the heart into a mush of flaccid impotence and the ass into a barn door?

Here’s An Original Thought

We like doing fun things. And the twenty-three and a half hours of tedium each day turns us into zombie-like pleasure junkies. (The other thirty minutes is abject terror). So we do them until we squeeze every last drop of fun out of them. That’s when they become toxic until we either feel the damage or imagine it after pernicious and relentless assault by the media. Like an elastic band stretched to the max, some of us snap back as far right as we were left. Cutting back on everything so extensively that we’re pretty much guaranteeing ourselves little success for any real change. 

Enter Mr. Wilde’s ideas about life’s indulgences. From what I know about OW it doesn’t seem like he knew much about moderation. All the same, what he proposes is a gentler self discipline. A concept most of us can embrace. And with that, it’s time for an Irish snack. Guinness and a shot of Jameson’s. See you next week. And welcome to 2017.