Happy anniversary (to me)!

Ok, so this is technically a few days late, but - be honest with yourself here - most of you take a week or so to check my new posts anyway.  I'm not judging you (specifically), so don't judge my punctuality.

Hard to believe it has been a year since I started this little vanity project, almost as hard as it is to believe so many people decided to follow it.  And even though only a dozen of you are willing to commit your names to my official list of fans (wise), judging by the hit-counter (when it's working, that is), an improbable number of you must be checking in here way more often than my content warrants.  Which means you either find my bile amusing, or, like detractors of Michael Moore or Glenn Beck, you just can't resist listening to a pompous mouthpiece you hate. So, whether this blog is to you an insightfully comedic gem on par with Voltaire's corpus of witty satire, or a morbid fascination more akin to the white-trash-party-slut fetish evoked by Ke$ha, I thank you all from the bottom of my withered heart.

It's kind of like a car-wreck: you can't look away.  And you want to throw gasoline on it.

Alternately, if this is your first time visiting, please click on another article and read it.  I really am better than this most of the time.

That said, this isn't going to be some cop-out flashback episode or a retrospective "Best of 2011" list like so many media outlets do.  No, I'm going to hit you with some original material, even if it is only middling.  Because that's how much your support means to me, and I want to show you that on this, my first anniversary.  I'll give you a moment to wipe the tear from your eye.

Moving on . . .

It's January 2012 and, unless those doomsaying Mayans were right and we only have another 10 months or so of existence left, it's the perfect time to take a fresh look at this every-changing world and our places in it, to reassess and reaffirm, to seize the day and generally live life by any number of similar cliches.  You know, just like any other day.  My motto for the month of January goes something like "New year.  Same world," or a variation thereof.

Feel free to print this out and put it on your bumper.

As a species, when we aren't paying lip-service to the vitality of change, we are usually pissing ourselves in fear of it.  Novelty scares us, even if we invite it.  So whenever I see the media begin to hype the impending dawn of a new planetary revolution, I can't help but roll my eyes.  Granted, that is my natural reaction to a lot of things, but bear with me, intrepid readers.  My reasoning runs thus: if you have the desire, will, and means to affect significant, lasting change in your life, why wait?  The New Year does not imbue you with magical "change" powers any more than it enables you to drink more alcohol than you normally would (see my guide to drinking).  Making a change at the cusp of a fairly arbitrary measure of time does not automatically grant fulfillment.  And it's not as if you enter into a blood-pact with the New Year, which will claim your soul and firstborn, should you fail.

This is also not how it works.

Do you want to lose weight?  Great.  Nix the fucking McDiet and Segue cart.  Want to quit smoking?  Slap on a few nicotine patches, grit your tar-stained teeth, and forewarn your social circle.  Want to settle down, find the right person, and stop screwing piss-drunk strangers in nightclub bathrooms?  Quit going to shitholes where people like you hang out.  Doing these things in bleakest midwinter isn't going to make them any easier, trust me.  Generally speaking, it is darker, colder, more stressful, and more depressing than any other time of year; in other words, the time when you are least-responsive to shakeups in your routine, lifestyle, or outlook.  Sick as it may be, we take comfort in the familiar, even if the familiar is not particularly reassuring in itself, when we are faced with external pressures and threats.  How else do you explain people going back to George Lopez time and again?

Because it is a simple fact that the vast majority of people's New Year's resolutions are very reminiscent of Herman Cain's presidential campaign: an overblown, superficial, halfhearted show destined to fall flat before reaching full-steam.  It makes people feel better about themselves when they commit to bettering their situations in whatever capacity, even if deep inside they know damn well they are just counting down the days until they can throw in the towel and say they "gave it their best shot."  As my CNN affiliate David Frum shrewdly pointed out in a recent article, the average American is sort of a fat, mostly lazy piece of shit who is just getting fatter and lazier.  Those may not have been his exact words, and maybe he said them like they were some sort of profound revelation, but that was the gist.  And he authoritatively confirmed my assumption that most people can't keep a promise, least of all to themselves.

"I promise to stop breaking promises to myself . . . at least not when I'm looking."

If your life is going to have a turning point, a moment of clarity that causes you to totally reevaluate and reorder your priorities, it will not conveniently coincide with December 31st.  Nor should you try to force it.  When you feel you want to change, make like Nike and just do it.  Don't procrastinate until the calendar tells you it's the appointed time, for the love of Janus (word of the day!).

That said, I'm not swearing any vows or making any promises this year, to you or myself.  No, I am going to keep doing what I do best - I will think what I want and say what I think, and to hell with anyone who doesn't like it.  But, of course, I am always open to year-round feedback (especially fan mail, which I am still waiting for *fingers crossed*), and I will not be held hostage by my joke-a-day Garfield calendar if I decide a change is needed.  Just kidding.  Garfield isn't funny anymore.

See?

So, on behalf of myself, Carson the Flag Day Aardvark, God, and all the rest of the running jokes here at This Is My Bar, let me wish you a perfunctory Happy New Year, because everyone has to do so all this month, and thank you once more for validating my intellectual narcissism.

KP, out.