burn your fancy candles, eat pizza in your prom dress, and tell her, "I love you."

330-something days till the world implodes.

(No, it may not necessarily end, but the very fact that large waves of people still bow to the likes of defeated Michele Bachmann as she leads the nation's moral recovery [post-Obamacare, no doubt], speaks to the steep decline in our global welfare. The Economist now talks about an imminent "sub-Saharan Spring," China and India are up in hydropolitical arms, and it barely flurried once this entire winter. Human development has progressed to its peak; the social institutions of marriage, government, education, and medicine have ceded to carnal desire [#willworkforfood]. Science, cultivated over centuries of meticulous research and analysis, has ceded to the whims of the one social construction that has sadly maintained: religion.)

In fact, let's just say the world will explode. Seriously, the Mayans were on top of their shit.


At the risk of sounding like a poor cocktail of Oprah, Simple Abundance, and the usual trite New Year's carpe diem sentiments, I must say that this is the year to claim. It's the year when you travel to Zimbabwe just because it was the only Z-country you could think of when you played Scattegories; it's the year when you wear fuscia pants to work, even if it's a Wednesday; it's the year when you burn your fancy candles, the ones saved up for a special occasion.


It's the year when you rid yourself of fluff--of the shapeless pink dress in your wardrobe, that will only increase in its aesthetic horror, of the friend whose lies you continue to forgive, of the piles of miscellaneous papers gathering dust under your bed.


This isn't like any other new year, when you resolve to lose weight, work harder, and "be better." The time for nebulous goals has passed. In fact, the time for all goals has passed. Wistfulness ends. Fantasies end. Delusions of friendship, of happiness, of success end.

The time has now come to just do.

This is the last chance we have to turn our dreams into reality. All wishes must be fulfilled. All fantasies must be carried out. And the delusions upon which we have built our lives must crumble in the face of our own awakening.


On December 21st, if we're all still here, then we'd have spent an entire year living life, not just surviving. And if we're not, then we'd have spent our last year without secrets, without regret, without the uncomfortable uncertainty that the girl you've fallen for is yours for the taking.


Ten bucks says, she is.

And the clock's ticking.