Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Happy New Ye– Or Happy Arbitrarily Demarcated Unit of Time, rather, because how better to start the year than by being contrary, with as many syllables as possible? Why, by shaping those contrary syllables into a rhetorical question, that’s how. You’ll have to excuse me, of course. You’re catching me at the tail end of a 10-day flu extravaganza, and the more I think about why I was afflicted thusly, all my theories seem to lead back to a packed cathedral on Christmas Eve.

When you have parishioners sitting elbow to elbow, sneezing and coughing onto one another, it ain’t just holiday cheer that’s brewing in the sanctuary. That’s the scientific explanation, at any rate. The flu may have possibly been a form of divine punishment for thinking “Man, this sucks!” right as the second or third stanza of “Silent Night” hit. Terrible, I know, but by the time I had the thought, it was too late. That’s the non-scientific explanation.

But that’s all in the past, and we’re here now. And I’ve got things to tell you. In fact, as I was drifting into one fevered nap, I mentally outlined all we’ll discuss for the next two weeks. This was frankly a relief, because that’s four posts in the bag, you know? You’ll recall the Mayan calendar supposedly predicts cataclysm by the end of 2012, so between now and then we’ll need to knock out approximately 175 posts, the prospect of which is sufficiently apocalyptic itself.