2007, a retrospective…

Long year.

Yep.

Guess we’ll be wrapping it up, huh?

Yeah, put it in the garage, next to 2006. There may be room under 2004. Just shove 2001 in the back; it didn’t turn out as cool as we’d hoped.

… where was I?

I’m going to chalk 2007 in the “Could have been worse” column. Economically, the bottom just about fell out in the US with all the foreclosures; we’ll leave that for 2008. We’ll leave the presidential election for 2008 as well, if Shrub lets us have one. The Repub-dicon nominees are a flock of people who can’t disavow all the scientific gains in the last several centuries fast enough – soon they’ll be arguing about who was the first to believe the earth was flat – while the Dems shout about the mess we’re in, while hedging over getting us out of it. There’s been only two exceptions: Kucinich and Dodd. Kucinich actually introduced impeachment papers into the House. Dodd stopped the Senate Dems from giving criminal phone companies the store after the phone companies cooperated with Shrub’s illegal wiretapping of… you. But neither Kucinich nor Dodd have a chance in hell of winning. They are not young enough, hip enough, cool enough, or unchallenging enough to be elected by a populace with an attention span that’s slipping faster than our collective IQs – wait, there goes another point. The Dems in Congress complained about Shrub’s illegal wars and continued to fund them with the verve of a closet cross-dresser at a Victoria’s Secret. Environmentally, the world came together in Bali to decide… they’ll talk about it later. Well, at least we’re consistent in our apathy. Too bad the victims of our apathy are our children – but if we really loved them we wouldn’t have global warming to worry about in the first place.

My hope for mankind was not changed in 2007. It remained in the shitter.

As for myself, 2007 was a pretty good year. I wrote three new books... and didn’t sell any… fuck. I started the year unemployed and ended it with a job I’ve learned to loathe. And Vicky and I are still together, which is a very good thing. I finished my first semester as a Junior at Cal State Fullerton and I’m still waiting for my instructor to grade my work and tell me if I passed… goddammit!

I’m 42 years old and I feel like I’ve crossed over marker in my life. I look back at all those years and I look forward to more to come. It could be many. It could be few. But one thing has grown in clarity. It may sound strange to you but the glance backwards shows me what lies on the road ahead. After over 19 years of growing up and 15 years with Rosa, four years before Vicky and more than three years with Vicky, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve lived an awfully long time. It’s hard to keep track of all those years. Some of them fall away. The older I get, the more the years will slip until it’ll be hard to keep track of any of it. Without my realizing it, my kinship has slipped from the young to the old. But that’s okay because I realize just how fortunate I’ve been. I’m not rushing to death as I once did but I’m not as afraid of it as I once was and I can live with my bride in peace and love.

I look forward to 2008 with the constant hope that things could get better. I remain optimistic… if doubtful.