We'va almost made it to the New Year and there are times when I wonder how we made it this far without having a national nervous breakdown. Politicians of both parties are competing among themselve to see just how low they can sink themselves in a lagoon filled with animal waste. Some politicians have expanded the definition of family values to include threesomes. and others will have to be screwed into the ground when they die because they're so crooked, (I see you, Bob Menendez). Former Congressman George Santos lent new meaning to the term: "Compulsive Liar", with his florid delusions making him into a latter day Walter Mitty. Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert demonstrated that even mature women can engage in unseemly public displays of affection. Girls just want to behave badly, sometimes very badly. A staffer for Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland used a Senate hearing room to manufacture pornography. But the Lifetime Achievement Award for Spectacularly Bad Behavior goes to Rust Gtuliani, who went from an American Hero to pathetic drunk in the space of 10 years. He's gone from being a feared bully to an object of ridicule. Donald Trump invites his many enemies to "Rot in Hell" as his idea of an appropriate seasonal greeting.
The Roman God, Janus, represents the transition from the old year to the new. Janus has two faces. One looks back to the year just concluded, while the other looks toward the future. During this week, the airwaves and the print media are full of retrospectives of the year just past, as if we hadn't just lived it. The interregnum between Christmas and New years is kind of a dead zone, where normal life exists in a hiatus. It's a good time to reflect on the year just past and the year to come.
That brings us to the subject of New Year's Resolutions. Some people treat these promises that folks make to themselves as bad jokes, while others embrace the promise of personal reinvention with the intensity of a recent convert, but the only winners are the owners of gyms and the pedders of home exercise equipment and self-help books. The gyms tend to serve the near fit and the already fit, as well as men who imagine themselves as a potential Adonis in waiting. The essential difference between men and women is that men tend to overstate their attractiveness, while women tend to understate their's. I've never forgotten the kid whose dad operated the old Elpis Bakery in Haverhill. The kid was something of a galoot who reminded me of the character, 'Flounder' in that classic film about college life, "Animal House". At one point in the film, the Dean of Students advises Flounder: "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son". This kid reminded me of Flounder, because he was fat and stupid, (and he had a bad complexion to boot), but I don't know if he drank. But he did have a license plate frame on his car that identified him as a "Super Stud" . You can't make this stuff up.
Women, on the other hand, are socialized to see themselves as fatally flawed, appearance-wise. I remember the time that my late wife picked up a copy of the Sports Illustrated 'swimsuit issue. She was going through one of those periods during which she was a bit heavier than she would have liked, and she reacted badly to those very lovely models, not a single one carried as much as an extra ounce on their frames. When I asked her what was wrong, she expressed her unhappiness about her physical attractiveness. She expressed a desire to be skinny. I told her that that I'd learned a long time ago that: "If you fuck a skinny girl, you're gonna get hurt:) I can say with certainty that no man ever asked his partner: "Do these jeans make my ass look fat?". Ladies who exercise are more likely than men to do their exercising at home. They buy Peletons and treadmills if they can afford these diabolic devices, or use hand weights and "Glamor Stretchers' if they aren't. Glamor Stretchers are basically resistance bands that could be used in a million different ways. My mother had a set of them, and I seem to recall that they came out in the late 1950s. The human action figure Chuck Norris has an infomercial touting some sort of all in one gym apparatus that you can conveniently slide beneath your bed when it's not in use, and chances are that that's where it will find a home after a couple of weeks. My favorite device is the 'Thighhmaster', an infernal machine touted by the late Suzanne Somers. I remember a Howie Carr radio program where one show whose topic was "Bad Valentine's Day Gifts You Have Given". There were some doozies, but the worst call was the fellow who called to admit that he had gotten wis [artner a thighmaster for that special day and could't understand why she was miffed. His excuse was that she'd asked for one, but I'm willing to bet that she didn't ask for it as a Valentine's Day Gift.
Back during the days when I had actual feet, my primary form of exercise was walking. Simple, cheap, and easy on the joints. Now that I'm confined to a wheelchair, I get my exercise from a combination of free weights, resistance bands, and an arm bike routine. One of the things that's important when you're confined to a wheelchair is upper body strength. I'm probably not as diligent in that area as I should be, but the work that I did in rehab and since has served me well. I'm as strong as I've ever been.
But New year's resolutions are not just about physical strength and a pleasant appearance. A good deal of the things that we resolve to do, (or not do), in the New Year fall into the category of 'self-betterment. I suspect that all but the most obtuse folks out there know that all of us have areas that we can improve upon. We can be kinder to those with whom we come into contact in the course of our everyday lives:,we can love more and hate less. We can resolve to lead healthier lives, by eating healthier, cutting down on our drinking, and finally quitting smoking. Americans once had a zeal for self-improvement, and a common resolution is to read and ponder things that may be outside of our comfort zones. Of course,sometimes the very people who most need to examine and reassess their motivations are the very last people to do so. But in the final analysis, all we can do is to try and improve our own attitudes.
The year ahead should prove interesting. There are 3 wars currently ongoing; in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan, any one of which can turn into a regional conflict. There's a presidential election that promises to be terrifying and entertaining in equal measures; a contest between a man as old as Methuselah and another morphing into an actual Nazi before our very eyes. Mass shootings increase every year, and there's no reason to think that this year will be any different .
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