i resolve to be resolute

on those occasions when i'm actually paying attention to that sort of thing, the arrival of a new year brings a fresh ambivalence about the possibilities and consequences of living the way that theoretically i would like to live. here i am reminded of our terrifying friends, the jehova's witnesses, who prefer to live honorably every day of the year, rather than cherry picking a few days to be a slightly better or funner than the average person. along with taking oaths rather than having a word that you can give as if it is worth something, these ideas remind me of the violence of mimesis and the general shoddyness of values and life and the world is going to hell incorporated.

i would first like to point out that if the world were perfect our desire and self interest would be roughly identical and also neatly aligned with all of the other around us. the subtle differences and dissonances can really by painfully, earshatteringly, mindnumbingly, lifethreateningly less than optimal. like when you want to go to the mall, and your friend wants to go to the mall, but your friend wants to go to taco bell first. it would seem at first gloss that this is not really problematic, either suck it up and save your friend from hypoglycemic fury (and yourself from being at the angry end of it) or shoot yourself for being such a predictable mass culture cliche. of course the presense of mind to really weigh either of these options is usually reserved for the third person. in real life the primary urge to acquire shiny new objects blinds you to rational considerations of nutritional requirements (although "nutritional" requirements are prolly not what is addressed at taco bell, so let's just call it grease and salt addiction.) this will probably escalate into a battle of priorities where every percieved slight is weighed against the fundamental value of your friend as an associate, and in the end as a person. what started as an excited excursion to redeem those thoughtfully chosen giftcards, ends with the transmutation of a friend to an enemy over the tactical arrangement of the minutes of a meeting.

so at this point you might be wondering what in the name of greasy grimey gopher guts this has to do with the new year the violence of mimesis or jehova's witnesses. it shouldn't surprise you that the answer is a perfunctory nothing. of all the things i am hoping to do this year, furthest from my mind is the reduction of rambling. in fact, it would be far closer to the truth to say that one of my aspirations is to extend rambling to the point where a logical conclusion would exist if i believed in that sort of thing. hopefully any alienation attributed to my pointless pontifications about the point of having a point will be mitigated by the fact that you, gentle reader, are clever enough to realize that it's the kind of thing i'm likely to do, over and over again untill visions of smashing bolero records rise like lumps of sugarplums rising on a head overflowing with eggs and nog.

and now mercifully i will return ostensably to the matter at hand (handily as if it mattered.) we have made it through the looking glass of another season of command performances to cap a year that may or may not have implied their importance. the world has dried up and died again, we gave it a sadistic boot on all hallows eve, wickedly celebrating demons, witchcraft, decay and falsification (to say nothing of the always joyous and overconsidered opportunity for women to emphasize their desirability for sexual congress.) following was a seemingly endless series of obligatory parties where we all tried to pretend that we are who we want to be. giving, loving, gregarious and fun.

so welcome to the new year. after exhausting all our hope for social success and tiring of the company of our loved ones (or at least the cooking, doing dishes, spending money and incessant smiling and well wishing) we breath a collective sigh of relief, knowing that we have at least a month and a half before anyone will expect us to be happy on their behalf, and we can look inward to decide what we really want to do with our lives outside of that white hot spotlight.

sadly this aganda contains an implicit critique of its own sincerety. if you sincerely want to loose weight, but are far more convincing in your desire to eat chocolate cake (along with the storied collection of leftovers from the holidays) picking a day for atonement and redemption will not fool anyone. this i where the violence of mimesis comes in. if there really only was one day a year where you could quit smoking, or if perhaps we had to sign an oath in blood to leave public record of our resolutions, or find some possible way to care completely, or not care at all, we might have the makings of a tradition worth holding on to here.

and please find in my attack on tradition an attack on all tradition. now granted it is scientificalificalously proven that true belief involves some delusion that oscillates between psychosis and schitzophrenia, so for us to really accept a tradition we would by definition have to be nuts. the hipster institution of the ugly sweater party seems to approach not caring, but the curation of the sweaters tends to priveledge very nice sweaters, or at least uncommonly outlandish sweaters, while to my knowledge there does exist a rather large range of truly ugly sweaters, so the irony of the ugly sweater party is that it's ironic premise, is in itself treated ironicly. you can say what you mean, as long as you pretend that you don't mean it.

so can we just say something soothing about good will towards men and be done with it? perhaps vague intentions are the best way to short circuit our inevitable failure to be better people than we are. devote your live to self improvement, and pray to progress at night. mebbe we hold on to these traditions because it's amusing to taunt ourselves with the atrophy of our ambitions.

or mebbe (and of course this is where i say what i really mean {finally}) our failure is to lose touch with the psychotic break that allows us to pretend that a different year in some important respect presents us with a different reality, and a unique opportunity to effectivily change aspects of our life that we're unsatisfied with. of course ideas like this are for sappy weak willed losers who have to threaten themselves with some imaginary contract in order to take control of their lives, but that only makes the tradition more important.

our lives have become so dirty with opportunty, that the opportunity cost alone fills our boxes with spam until we leave a trail of abandoned addresses without ever moving. creating arbitrary traditions to convince ourselves to make commitments that we really want, but lack the sense of urgency to really move on is worthwhile (if a little goofy.)

so there. i resolve to be resolute. ima gonna try to say things and mean them(wow really) decide to do things and do them, and for the first time this year, really be who i wanna be. or i won't. i just wanna make sure i hedge my bets there. it's entirely possible that this year's new years resolution will adhere to the grand tradition of broken promises to myself. but maybe i won't be quite as lame as i was last year, or mebbe i will.