The week between Christmas and New Years, every year, brings the same old same old from the various media around the world. It is their, we have most of our staff on vacation so we are not really going after any new stories this week so just sit back and enjoy our version of:
If not for the daily college and/or pro football games, this week would be horrible for television viewing or newspaper reading. Do we really need to be reminded of all the horrible things that happened this year? Will it make us feel better? No it will not so why do they insist on doing these.
We finally made it to the end of another year and the last thing we need is to get dragged down in despair over what we've already forgot. My friend Tom has always said that the reason he hates going to sleep every night is because he made it through this day and is in no hurry to face whatever is coming his way tomorrow. I finally get it.
As if the bad news stories aren't enough,a huge part of their recaps involve which celebrities died this past year. This portion was much more interesting when I was 13 but now that those dying are my age, not so much. Who wants to be reminded of their mortality? I remember when stage and screen star Missy Blonde Long Legs died at the ripe old age of 64 and I thought, well she lived a long life. Now I hear this and think, crap she was so young.
The only thing less interesting than recapping bad news is sitting through all the dart throwing predictions for the new year. If anyone actually knows what is going to happen they would be using it to make a fortune, not sharing it on Entertainment Tonight for everyone to find out.
And by the way, we get all these prognosticators sharing their idea of what will happen this week each year but they never can be found during the recap to let us know how they did. I wonder why? I make a baseball prediction blog at the start of each season and when the year is over I share my guesses and feel the humiliation of being right about 20% of the time, about the same if you had your dog pick up a piece of paper with a list on it. But at least I take my punishment.
I don't care if Cal Tech created a new faster computer that can tell the future, wrongly about 85% of the time, and I certainly don't care that Fat Wally the Walrus from the local zoo has his guesses too. I would rather just live life and find out when stuff happens just like they did in the old days of 1956.
The media would be better served to just come clean and tell us that they are taking the week off, unless something major happens, and we should pick up a good book and read that instead.
Here's one that is available exclusively on Amazon.com. Go buy it for you and fifty of your friends.
The point here is that this week should be a gentle closer for the year past and a smooth opener for the new year ahead without being bombarded with excessive noise and nonsense.
As that great baseball player and philosopher, Satchel Paige once said, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."
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