Some Closing Thoughts On My 22nd Year.

I don’t do lists. Like mashups, remakes, and sequels; I’ve always considered them a ground-zero for our age’s inability to be original. My site, who’s birthday is only a few weeks removed from mine, has done it’s best to be original, often changing formats, focuses, and styles just to keep up, by keeping far away, from the latest trends. However, as it’s my birthday, I offer both myself and you the reader something of a present: A list–easily digestible, comfortably portable, and can be read or not read at your leisure.

So, here we are: twenty-two thoughts, predictions, stories, observations, discoveries, two questions, and some all-out lies in honor of having gotten this far:

1. New York City, more than space travel or poetry, is mankind’s greatest acheivment.
2. 99% of all things called “new” are just redressed versions of things we hate.
3. JD Salinger, whose spent the bulk of his recluse life writing things for posthumous publication, will finally, hopefully, die in the coming year.
4. A bored man sits around thinking how much fun yesterday was. The next day he spends upset, thinking how pleasant it was yesterday to be able to sit around, in peace and quiet, and look back on the fun day before. The day after, he feels a great sadness as he wonders whether those last three reflective days were the best of his life. This story could go on for a while, but I’ve promised you brevity.
5. In history’s annuls there’s not one successful or meaningful person who’s ever, ever, ever, ever, ever “branded” themselves.
6. That “rocks”, “rock on”, or “you rock” is over and dead. It means nothing anymore. When someone says “that rocks” they’re really saying “I don’t care about that”.
7. You ever wonder how many people in your building, block, or street share all your secret perversions, all your hidden beliefs?
8. The biggest problem with our culture is that dreamers and philosophers won’t sleep on floors anymore. Starving and ‘getting by’ now translate roughly into having a decent car, a fairly impressive phone, and enough for a Frappuccino.
9. This year’s great personal literary discoveries: Schnitzler, Dos Passos, Lardner, and Melville.
10. Rain will fall no matter what. Whether it’s your wedding or your war, nature doesn’t give a shit that we all seem to scatter when she tries to gives us water.
11. The Times Square Subway station has a daily, official, sponsored busker–a musician, usually, who gets the best spot for all the tourists to notice him and stop and pay. But there’s other, lesser known, more underground performers in the crevices of the old station; they’ll be heard, if they play well enough; you can find them, if you look hard enough.
12. Salesman today are just as unimportant as they were yesterday.
13. Tom Waits didn’t put out a new album this year, but his last one was a three disc set so I’m still thankful and grateful for it.
14. There’s nothing scarier than the basic truth: men will invent myths, tales, and conspiracies to avoid it.
15. George Bush is sitting in a Texas bar, drunk beyond words, the day after he’s left office. The bartender, a kind and good-hearted soul, asks him (after the third whiskey) if he’s ever “sorry” for all the destruction and misery he’s caused. George thinks this over while swallowing a few peanuts and then replies, “No. I didn’t force any of you to vote for me.”
16. This been a large conspiracy in the world propagated by Germans (of course) and spread exponentially by North America. This myth: Beer is Good. Beer is disgusting and awful and anyone who talks of their “favorite beer” or says “Mmm” after drinking a beer is a liar and a fraud. Wine is wonderful, this I’ve learned; we only say “I want a beer” because saying “Hey, lets get drunk” sounds juvenile.
17. A woman gets pregnant at 18, she marries at 19, has her third child by 25, and finally discovers sex-toys at 29; her husband discovered them at 28. (I think I’ve told this one).
18. The theys, the powers that be, are not always right. Yes, we alone, singular little us, can sometimes be more right than the vast majority of people–even though those people will continually point out that they are a vast majority in order to feel right. However, don’t get too comfortable with this idea or you’ll be wrong a lot.
19. America: I’m not that interested in politics, but if you don’t elect Obama my generation will never forgive you.
20. Many well-intentioned people spend so much time saying “Life is short”, “Live every day as your last”, and “None of it matters in the end”; nobody, nobody actually lives this way–we all spend our lives scared, obsessed, and stuck in the short term. And we always will.
21. I’ll quit smoking when quitting smoking can be my only stress. In other words, when everything else in life has come to a victorious relieved halt, I’ll quit–after a triumphant cigarette.
22. What the hell does anybody know at 22?