I loathe New Years Eve.  Of all the holidays, this is the worst.  Transit is a mess, there’s no such thing as a taxi and the streets are full of the very worst type of people. People desperate to have fun.  People realizing that they’re not going to.

There’s no way to win.

If you go out, you’re inevitably disappointed, and feel like you should be somewhere better.  But, if you try to go somewhere better, you just can’t get there.  Then you stare down the nightmare scenario of being on the sidewalk when midnight rolls past.  God forbid.  Better start hooting and screaming.

If you stay in, you feel like a social leper.  The depressing tension builds, you figure everyone is having a better time than you, then you start thinking about life and all that nonsense.  Finally, you watch Bladerunner and fall asleep.

As for spending it with your loved ones, didn’t we just suffer through Christmas?

I’ve had exactly one good new years eve.  The switch to the year 2000.

I spent that one drunk on guaro, high on ecstasy and mushrooms, at a small rave on an organic farm in the Costa Rican Jungle.  At dawn, I fell asleep with some blond girl on the beach while a rainbow came up over the ocean.

Needless to say, the year went downhill from there.

This year, I just want to get into a bath and into my pajamas.  Watch some “Little House on the Prairie”, fall asleep on the couch and wake up tomorrow to pay rent.  The night isn’t over yet and people will, no doubt, keep trying to drag me outside.

I don’t want to go.

Nor do I want to do an end of year wrap-up post but here I am.  Doing one.

Truth be told, I can’t remember much about 2008.  I failed to accomplish a single goal, have a significant crisis or, really, do much of anything worth remarking on.   Life happened without incident and upon schedule.

That’s not so bad.  It’s not even boring.

I did meet a lovely young woman and have been enjoying her company.  So there’s that.  I also wrote off a computer, almost wrote off another and switched to Ubuntu.

Had you told me two months ago, that I’d be writing this on my couch on a Linux OS, I would have said you were mad.  Totally apeshit, bonker-land.  That just shows you how quickly and unexpectedly things can change.

Not that much has.

Though interrupted by the usual frantic, holiday banality, I’ve been reviewing the theater and enjoying it.  I plan to do more in the New Year.  Once the hub-bub dies down, I’ll also be writing an irregular column for another blog.  (You’ll hear more about that in the weeks to come.)  As for the fiction, I’m still plugging away.

“The Grumpy Owl” will probably undergo its biggest changes since I started posting sober.  As a direct result of my computer problems I now have a laptop with functioning wireless.  So I’ll actually have a degree of mobility.

I’ve never yet enjoyed that. I’ve never even owned a cell phone and, frankly, don’t see the appeal.  People can call me while I’m outside?  Why?  To talk?

I plan on making two purchases in the new year:  A bespoke, black suit with three shirts and a digital camcorder.  Now that the Israeli army has started Vlogging, it seems clear that the Internet is a weapon.  I plan to use it as such.

Though I have few hopes that 2009 will usher in the worldwide anarchist revolution, the overthrow of our plutocratic, corporatist masters and destruction of the nation-state as a weapon used by the people against the people, recent events in Greece give me some hope for change.  Those kids are basically my Obama.

It’s a step in the right direction.

And if their movement is proving anything, it’s this: We all have to step up the game.  Just like on America’s Next Top Model. The revolution can no longer settle for a marketing strategy, a subcultural elitism or bourgeois liberalism.  It never really could.  The Greek anarchists remind of us that.

Just as Blackwater, Haliburton and every government on this planet remind us of the option:  Blood, misery and slavery.  A few million more dead.

And for what?

A few million more dollars.

So, in the new year, I merely hope for a few things.  That we question the people who sell us our culture and, if we don’t like the answers, that we don’t buy their products.  We don’t need them.  Most of the time, we don’t even want them.

All over the world, on the Internets, people have built little transnational communities, united by common interest as opposed to the accidents of geography, race and religion.  I hope to see these become a bigger and better force.  It’s these groups that will have to supplant the nation, the corporation and, even, the police.

To do that, they’ll have to keep conversing but also to start acting.

It’s time for some of the trends we’ve seen in the virtual world to crossover into the raw world.  The value of open-source, the constant destruction of intellectual property (aka knowledge hoarding), the lack of borders, the overall craftiness and the rise of a the techno-petite-bourgeoisie artisan (a self-employed, entrepreneurial merchant class that does not require slave-filled factories to make and ship you a handcrafted product) and the ability for small voices done on the cheap to compete and beat big ones that cost a fortune.

We’re in an asymmetrical information war and we have the advantage.  All a guerrilla has to do to win, is avoid losing.

These are all small hopes but I think they’re on the right side of history,  Should they be realized, we’ll see the start of a better world.  We might overcome yet.

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