OK now that Christmas is over, you survived the traffic, the big dinner, and the credit card bill, it's now time for a new year, a new beginning, an apocalyptic end to the world!

2012, isn't that when the world is supposed to end? Isn't that when the Mayans ran out of rock to carve on, isn't that when Nostradamus said everyone will get gas from eating too many Big Macs? Will Newt Gingrich become president?!

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” I say as I hide under a bed!

OK everyone get a grip. We all know, well some of us know, that bad crap will eventually happen to planet earth. And bad things do happen on a regular basis, like big earth quakes, tsunamis, volcanoes erupt, crazy guys get big bombs, you know the normal bad things. Heck one day a big rock could fall out of space and squash us all like bugs; it's happened before. Big dinosaurs once looked up into the sky as one squashed them with a fiery ball. They were clueless because of their small sunflower seed sized brains (like chickens), but it must have been one hell of a barbecue.

Hummmm, let's talk about other things like New Years resolutions. I think most of us think about new beginnings in the new year.

What will it be?

• Loose weight.
• Exercise more.
• Eat Better.
• Get more money.
• Find a way to get your asshat boss fired.

We all have our lofty goal that most of us fail at. You have to really want to do those things in order to accomplish them. If your love of Ho Hos is greater than your love of jogging in the rain then which one do you think will prevail, eh chubby? My motivation for exercising more is the painful body parts that remind me that if I don't move I will rot. So yes, I will be doing more exercise because pain just sucks. But fudge is coming after me from every angle and I don't know what to do! A little fudge won't kill me will it? I'm not allergic to walnuts.

I think this is going to be an interesting year. We are going to have a presidential election and we are going to have people acting like total nut nuts because of the 2012 end of world predictions. And the fun part is we get to experience the craziness the entire year! The election isn't until October and the end of the world isn't expected until December.

So Whooo Hooo! monkeys with pants will be freaking out selling their cars, houses, and... pants. Religious fanatics will be passing around the Cool-Aid, and seeing Jesus in their burnt potato chips. People will be giving money to heathen pet sitters who won't be ascending to heaven when the rapture hits.

So Happy New Year! Now go get good and drunk, put the taxi service on speed dial and have a blast. While your drunk tell your asshat boss he's a... well an asshat. You can tell him on Monday you were drunk and thought he was your neighbor Daryl, so he won't fire you.

Tonight we are celebrating a day early and hiring a sitter and going to see a movie call “My idiot brother”. It's showing at a small movie theater where you text for a beer refill, and waiters deliver food to your seat. I can't wait!

Spacy

While sitting here listening to “I Ran” by A Flock Of Seagulls I was thinking about outer space, specifically outer space TV shows and movies. Over the years I've become quite a fan of letting myself get amerced in space dramas. Star Trek with it's military order, and all of that exploration. Star Wars with it's Good Force vs Dark Side bad Force theme. Like all good nerds my very favorite was Firefly that lasted for 14 episodes and a movie. It was like the space wild west with smuggling.

Ever since I first saw Han Solo I've loved the space smuggler, and often played one in space games. I've joined virtual smuggling gangs, and have lived out my space smuggler fantasies. We would work together to smuggle contraband through space patrolled by the police, the navy, and groups that weren't too happy with us supplying to people that they didn't like. All of the unimaginative smack talk, and the “HALTs” as I ran away from my pursuers with my load of embargoed contraband always gave me a terrific rush. I always talked to my pursuers when I could to give them complements on their piloting abilities, or ask them about their intimate relationships with Wookiees. This usually threw them off long enough to bust a smart move and land at a friendly base.

I have no doubt that aliens live among us, have you taken a good look at your neighbors lately? What is that strange panel in the front yard, and what is living in that pond on the other side of the berm? Baby aliens? Space chickens maybe? Does a space chicken cluck? Do they taste good with barbecue sauce? That's a silly question we all know everything tastes good with chard on barbecue sauce. And those things growing in your neighbor's front yard, are you sure they are zucchini, and not body snatching pods?

Of course a lot of what you see on a show like Star Trek is a little implausible, inter species mating with half this, and half that as offspring. I mean hell you don't see half cat, half dog combos running around.

“Meow, rar rar rar” Is what a Chihuahua / Maine Coon would sound like before it bit and scratched your ankle to shreds. Give it a space helmet and call it an alien, then send it out on a little space ship with a crew of Guinea Pigs. What would happen if the Borg tried to assimilate their ship?

"We are the Borg, you will be assimilated." and "We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own..."

The Borg scan their ship.

“Oh, um, never mind.”

Maybe there are places on earth filled with aliens, and maybe they have erected huge antennas like the Eiffel Tower, or the “Space” Needle to talk to their planets. Maybe they congregate on earth in hot spots like San Antonio with its Tower of the Americas. All of those places serve food that could be contaminated with mind control powder that makes you shake your head up and down when Glenn Beck talks. Maybe the ten gallon hat is really an antenna to relay messages to the mother ship! Maybe “YEEHA!” really means “We are the Borg resistance is futile.” It's just a theory, you never know.

Tonight I'm going to drink three beers and stick my thumb up in the air while wearing a towel on my head; maybe I can hitch a ride to a new world. I could just toddle around experiencing all of the wild things there are to see without the expense of an expensive spacecraft. I'll watch out for those damn Vogons, they might recite some poetry and I would be in real trouble. But I think if I drank enough beers I wouldn't really care, I hear Vogons like to sing drinking songs.

But if it weren't for the expense I would love to have a space ship. It would have to be able to visit other solar systems without taking a life time to get there. I'm not to worried about the Borg, alien probes, or Siths. The universe is unimaginably vast, completely amazing, and we are all bits of it. I can feel it coursing through me when I lay quietly in silence, even without wearing a ten gallon hat.