New, knew what?
Seems I feel I am only a monocle and a Persian cat away from being a villain in a Bond movie. The getting to number one.
A recent study done by a notable individual summed it up. On Google search, we are number one. We come up on the first page of a Google search for “The Coffee Guy”. Not bad for only having started posting this year! Advertizing will be at our collective doorsteps pleading for the opportunity to list on our site. Dot Com history in the making I say.
Speaking of which why do we call it a New Year? After all it is more akin to just “another” year! There really is nothing new about it. Same old dates, same old months, same old weeks. Perhaps we should call them short years 1,2, and 3, and long year. They are definitely not “new”.
Define “new”, perhaps one of these fits:
- 1 - of a kind not now existing or appearing for the first time; novel: a new concept of the universe.
- 2- having but lately or but now come into knowledge.
- 3 - unfamiliar or strange (often fol. by to): ideas new to us.
Well the annual New Year is none of the above. So how does it come to be called that which it is not?
Were predecessors of ours unfamiliar with the word “another”? Did they not understand repetition? Were they enthralled with reinvention? It seems on the edge of preposterousness that they could be so puerile. But yet here we have it: they have brought into the world and kept it there in absentia, the concept of continuous time being new!
We don't say wait a new minute, or I will be there in a new quarter of an hour. If the year is new, hence should not the month, week, day, hour, minute and every second be a new one? You would think me unfledged.
The sense of time being something new only happens once a year. At the end, and only with regard to the “year” and no other time referent. Although in my cranial reference I sense that the millennium was referred to as “new”. As it happens, there were no men alive who in fact had observed and witnessed the last coming of a millennium and also the recent coming. So in that sense I could accept it as a “new” one. Hogmanay.
We take the word of a small sect of peoples in the northern reaches of a small island in a cold sea, and spread the word throughout the world. Hmm that sounds reasonable. But just not to me.
Here we have some heathens spriting about in skirts proclaiming that there are “New” times ahead. Hmm, they didn’t even have a watch! This was all started back in the beginning of the last millennium. After all, then they thought the sun rotated around the earth!
So the top pick to have a party on that night are in general order: New Orleans, Prague, Sydney, Las Vegas, Whistler, and Rio De Janeiro.
Well those are a few to cross of the ole bucket list. Lets have a link or two for those unaccustomed to surfing the interweb thingy.`
http://www.pubclub.com/neworleans/bartenderkatrina.htm
All the fun in the quarter.
In Eastern Europe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSsD1riw7y8
For some fireworks off the bridge.
Las Vegas, and you need a site for this from me?
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/buckle-up.php
From the sacred slopes of BC.
https://www.clubvibes.com/listings/listingsdetail.asp?id=35982
This looks like my kinda place in Rio.
After all the hoopla and related stuff, what are we about? A big bash at the end of one year, and the beginning of another? Not a New year as it were, nothing is new again after all. How many times can the same thing be called new?
Not even Newtonian physics is still new! And I bet you don't think of it more than once a decade. Let alone that it is new. Even New York is not called New New York. Forced approaches of untold newness will not make something new! It is only once. After that, it either, another, or an old one. Ever understand why they say "there is nothing new under the sun"? It not a cuz’in there are no new ideas. Just that the matter is the same just arranged differently.
We strive everyday to the pinnacle of our abilities. We work toward untold toils of the terrestrial tremors. And lo and behold along comes December and near the end we have something new! Whew! How was I gonna survive without that! Just put me in a bag and off to the curb! New!
I mean, Whew! What I would do when.
At any rate the best place in my mind to be on the Eve of another Year would be in Times Square. With the old Guy Lombardo playing nearby in the Astoria. We call it that with affection from frequency. Take Park Avenue south to 43rd and straight over to Broadway and the Times Square celebrations.
Who hasn’t, or thought of being there? The throng thick with anticipation. Mirth in the air like speed on a freeway. All about and not without consequences.
Pour some bubbly baby; I am coming in for a smooch.
Mark Hull
Comments