Reset.

better than watching the ball drop pic.twitter.com/BOvloDhV07

— Mads (@MadsPosting) December 31, 2025

A New Year's mood.

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That's not my mood. It's what Instagram is serving up for me, either because it has an idea of my sense of humor or because it's some kind of evil monster.

The men of CNN charmingly circle the drain.

Anderson Cooper struggles to consume a shot:

They’re letting Anderson Cooper drink on TV again for New Year’s Eve.

CNN is getting desperate for ratings.

pic.twitter.com/hbZNY8ODUt

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) January 1, 2025

And Diplo — who's somebody, but I don't need to know who — calmly asserts that he's on LSD:

Diplo trips on LSD while appearing on CNN’s New Year’s Eve special.

pic.twitter.com/V9iauqF86B

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 1, 2025

How are men these days supposed to enact the meaning of New Year's Eve? It's traditionally about drinking a lot of alcohol, but they don't want to do that, so they put on a little show of finding it hard to drink just one shot, and then they talk to a guy who calmly and humorously says he's on LSD and he's "not even lying." This stuff has gone viral, so credit to CNN. Do what you must. It's not the news.

Meanwhile, CNN brings out a representative of the opposite sex: Whitney Cummings woodenly delivers some jokes that have — predictably — gone viral because they mock Democrats: 

NEW: Anderson Cooper stands completely speechless after Whitney Cummings says Dems couldn’t hold a primary because they were too busy holding up a dead body.

“It was amazing that the Pro-Choice Party didn't give their voters one…”pic.twitter.com/EtxIcMKRXZ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 1, 2025

Here we are in 2025 — the quarter century mark.

It's a nice solid milestone. 25 has a substantiality that exceeds that of 22, 23, and 24. It's more "famous," no? It's the atomic number of manganese.

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

One option is to talk about anything you want in the comments to this post. It doesn't need to be New Year's Eve-y, but feel free to discuss your aspirations for the year that lies ahead or to belabor whatever it is that you liked or didn't like about 2024. 

"Aw, twenty-three!"

"By the way, I have come upon a new piece of slang within the past two months and it has puzzled me. I just heard it from a big newsboy who had a ‘stand’ on a corner. A small boy with several papers under his arm had edged up until he was trespassing on the territory of the other. When the big boy saw the small one he went at him in a threatening manner and said: ‘Here! Here! Twenty-three! Twenty-three!’ The small boy scowled and talked under his breath, but he moved away. A few days after that I saw a street beggar approach a well-dressed man, who might have been a bookmaker or horseman, and try for the usual ‘touch’. The man looked at the beggar in cold disgust and said: ‘Aw, twenty-three!’ I could see that the beggar didn’t understand it any better than I did. I happened to meet a man who tries to ‘keep up’ on slang and I asked [about] the meaning of ‘Twenty-three!’ He said it was a signal to clear out, run, get away."

Wrote George Ade, in 1899, quoted in the Wikipedia article "23 skidoo (phrase)."

But why did 23 come to mean get out?

Some people think it originated with Dickens's novel "A Tale of Two Cities"! It has to do with the numbers given to the doomed prisoners going to the guillotine:

"My New Year’s Toast: to all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envys, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace."

Wrote Patricia Highsmith "well after midnight on what had been Dec. 31, 1947," quoted by Dwight Garner in his NYT review of her book "Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995."

2022.

It's a new year. It's also a new day. 

ADDED: I took a break from New Year's blogging to do the NYT crossword. Was that the hardest NYT crossword ever?

Precise opportunity seized.

Last midnight: "2020, 24 hours to go..." (my son John, at Facebook, embedding "I Wanna Be Sedated").

"How is this different to a million other things? Airlines, Uber, property. It’s called supply and demand."

One response, quoted in The NY Post, to Mayor Bill De Blasio's tweet, "Jacking up your prices on people trying to celebrate the holidays? Classy, @dominos.... To the thousands who came to Times Square last night to ring in 2020, I’m sorry this corporate chain exploited you — stick it to them by patronizing one of our fantastic LOCAL pizzerias."

A Domino's deliveryman was bringing pizzas out to the crowd in Times Square on New Year's Eve and asking and getting $30 a pie — about double the normal price:

[Deliveryman Ratan] Banik ran between the parlor and Times Square, balancing a stack of hot pies on his head while touting his cheesy wares — some hungry revelers tapping him on the shoulder to ask his price.

“Pepperoni, cheese, onion!” Banik called before being mobbed by starving tourists waiting in giant holding pens in Times Square, many having camped out overnight.

“He is our Santa,” said Amit Zanwar, 31, from New Jersey, who was with two friends for the spectacular and didn’t pack any food. “He came a little late [for Christmas], but we were happy.... It’s absolutely worth it. It was hot. It seems like it just came out of the oven... If he comes back, I will buy some more.”

The tens of thousands of tourists who decided to ring in the new decade in Times Square arrived as early as Monday evening and were not allowed to leave once they were in holding pens — meaning many were employing rather degrading tactics to last the distance....

Were the "fantastic LOCAL pizzerias" bringing pizza out to these people who were enduring the city's "rather degrading" detention of human beings in "holding pens"? If they were, were they charging less than an extra $15 for delivery to the site? De Blasio talks like a teenager. And he tweeted that from the official Twitter account of mayor of New York City.

2020!

I just wanted to write that.

The twenties! It will be so satisfying to say that, to be in a decade with a real name, like the old-time decades I knew so well — the fifties, the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, the nineties. We were verbally impoverished these last 2 decades. Now, once again, time will have the distinction of a name, a decade name.

The vague gray time is over. I feel so optimistic!

Happy New Year to all!

I hope you rang it in the way you like. I certainly did it my way by being asleep and then up at 5. We watched some episodes of "Twilight Zone" on the SyFy channel — "The Hitchhiker," "The Monsters Are Due on Main Street," "Eye of the Beholder," "The Invaders."

It’s New Year’s Eve.

Once again, we’ve made it to the end of a decade... and another year... as well as another day. We live in days, of course, but once in a while we force ourselves to think of the year-long unit and almost never, tonight being one of the exceptions, do we think of the decade-long unit. So here we are. It’s been a very distinct 10-year unit for me — a great 10 years. And here’s to the next 10 years.

Have you got any resolutions? I made some resolutions back in September, because I think of the year as starting in September. The academic year always gave me a crisp sense of beginning. I had a general resolution that was something like: Do something new every day. Every day! I think that can be done, if you take a fine-grained look at what is new. I did do 3 new things beginning in September, and I’ve kept them up and intend to keep going into 2020. I wanted to see the sunrise and photograph it. I combined that with learning to run, which I’d never been able to do before. And I wanted to figure out a way to eat that would make me lose some weight, and in fact, I’ve lost 15 pounds!

I would like to add more new things. Maybe a new writing project. I’m thinking of moving about more in where I write. I bought one of these backpacks today to take my laptop around town and see if I can’t do something new in a new environment.

New, new, new. What’s new with you?

Do you remember the New Year's Tick?

It was December 31, 2008, when I wrote, "I'm quite serious about replacing the depressing Father Time/Baby New Year with the New Year's Tick." I was inspired by a BBC headline, "New Year to arrive a tick later" (about a "leap second" that had to be added to the atomic clock). I said:

I think I'll try to draw a picture of the New Year's Tick. Or see if I can get people to send pictures of the New Year's Tick. And I'm going to push for the adoption of the New Year's Tick as the new New Year's mascot, replacing that stupid — and frankly depressing — Old Man and Baby mascot. Or the Ball. What the hell kind of symbol is a Ball?

It's just by chance that I got reminded of the New Year's Tick on the day of New Year's Eve. I was reading a Jennifer Rubin column in The Washington Post, "Resolutions for the media and politicians." One of her resolutions is:

Presidential candidates should promise to cut out their rhetorical ticks. Former vice president Joe Biden needs to stop saying “I’m serious” and “No joke.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) must not start sentences with “So … ” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) cannot say “billionaires” more than 10 times in a debate or speech.

Rhetorical ticks! I love the idea of ticks giving speeches! I'm tantalized by the prospect of using my favorite tag "insect politics" once again, but I've been down that road before across that grassy meadow before. A tick is not an insect!

The spelling should be "tic," but I'm thinking there's something perhaps a little politically incorrect about the figurative use of a word that denotes "severe facial neuralgia with twitching of the facial muscles" (OED).  I like this example in the OED:

1960 20th Cent. Apr. 361 This is an irritating tic of the British Left, this substitution of moral gestures for practical policies.

"Tic" is spelled like that because the medical condition is "tic douloureux" — French for "painful twitching." There is also a condition in horses, "The vice or morbid habit in horses called crib-biting or cribbing," and that has been spelled "tick" since the 18th century. Etymologically, it too comes from the French "tic," so it's easy to argue that "promise to cut out their rhetorical ticks" is just fine and nicely in English and un-French. The horse's crib-biting also has been used figuratively, and the meaning is the same as the figurative "tic": It means "whim."

I'm going to say that Rubin's "tick" is le mot juste if what you're picturing when you picture Elizabeth Warren saying "so" and Bernie Sanders saying "billionaire" looks something like this:

"The extreme isolation and hardness of the landscape is what drew me here, too. I took the trip with my partner Noah."

"Both of our marriages had recently ended, and in our 40s, we were suddenly rootless, dislocated in a way neither of us had expected. It was as though we’d sat on the shoreline, watching a glacier crumble into the ocean. We’d found each other, but our relationship was still new and untested. Perhaps we’d been drawn to the Arctic to see if anything permanent in the world still existed.... We booked a room at Funken Lodge.... We’d made New Year’s Eve dinner reservations at Huset... The main course showcased local reindeer two ways... accompanied by strands of salty kelp harvested from the island’s shoreline and microgreens provided by the island’s sole greenhouse, a pink geodesic dome visible from the main road.... A few minutes before midnight, Noah and I pulled our coats and boots on and half-stumbled, half-skated to the edge of the parking lot between the restaurant and the high wall of the glacier. Some of the kitchen staff lit off fireworks...."

From "Greeting the New Year in Earth’s Northernmost Settlement/In Svalbard, above the Arctic Circle, you can’t be born and you can’t be buried, but you can find renewal in the dark of winter/The northern-most greenhouse dome in the world provides microgreens to a local restaurant" by Kelly McMasters (in the NYT).

Later, the author and her companion Noah enjoy a sauna and — this is how the article ends — "My sweat felt like all the stars in the sky were wrapped around my body in a blanket, little spears of heat and ice, and when I turned to Noah his skin was bathed in silver, as if his body was part of the aurora itself."

Here's the top-rated comment: "As someone who has unbridled passion and respect for the Arctic, I am truly disappointed in the lack of respect and depth you seem to have of your Svalbard experience. Having been to to Svalbard and the Arctic in many countries around the globe, you fail to capture or even seriously understand the incredible value, beauty, uniqueness and importance this precious place has on our earth. I am not a scientist, simply a traveler who seeks to grow and learn about myself and this world with respect. The Arctic should not be the next hot bucket list destination that one can say 'yeah I have been aka aren’t I cool?' NYT, you can and should do better."

Oh! But all the stars and spears of sweat and Noah's silver body and the reindeer two ways!

"2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME."

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE, INCLUDING THE HATERS AND THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA! 2019 WILL BE A FANTASTIC YEAR FOR THOSE NOT SUFFERING FROM TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME. JUST CALM DOWN AND ENJOY THE RIDE, GREAT THINGS ARE HAPPENING FOR OUR COUNTRY!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2019

ADDED: Did the all caps bother you? It bothered Chris Cillizza: "Typing in all caps is a very good and very presidential way to calm people down!"

2019!

A great number! I love it. What have you done so far, making the new year great?

What's the first song you listened to? We listened to "Nowhere Man." Why? Because the Google Doodle today...



... reminded us of Jeremy Hillary Boob...



... the character in "Yellow Submarine" who is presented as "Nowhere Man."

We're still here.

Happy New Year!

ADDED: My first wholly unnecessary self-imposed task of 2018 was to look up "survive" in the OED. You can see, without looking it up, that it is made out of the root that means "live" and the prefix that means "over," "above," "higher than," or "on top of." But it doesn't mean that when Mr. X survives Mr. Y, he's living a higher life. It means Y died and X did not.

"I did loue a Lady, But she is dead... Sil. Say that she be: yet Valentine thy friend Suruiues." That's Shakespeare, "Two Gentlemen of Verona." You can also survive some thing or the thing can survive you: "Yea though I die the scandale will suruiue." Also Shakespeare. "Lucrece."

So "survive" implies that something else died. Drudge's headline tells us that 2017 has died and implies, jocosely, that it aimed to kill us. Every year threatens to kill us, and many of us did not survive 2017.

But all who are reading the Drudge headline have survived, and perhaps, finding ourselves in this still-alive condition, we will back off on the hysteria that made 2017 so weird.

Some year out there — if not 2018, then one with a number that's not all that much more than 2018 — is going to kill you, and there's no sense degrading this year or any year with your raging morbid fears.

Lighten up. "Survive" has its "trivial use," the OED tells us, often in the phrase "I'll survive":

1902 R. Kipling Traffics & Discov. (1904) 30 ‘But it'll bore you to death,’ he says... ‘I'll survive,’ I says, ‘I ain't British. I can think,’ I says.
1928 M. Arlen Lily Christine xiii. 240 ‘All this trouble your silly husband has brought on you!’ ‘Oh, we'll survive that,’ she said lightly....
1958 ‘C. S. Forester’ Hornblower in W. Indies 184 ‘I don't envy you, frankly.’ ‘No doubt I'll survive, sir.’

That reminds me. My mother — who wanted to survive to "the year 2000" but died in 1999 — would often respond to complaints and alarmism with a deadpan "You'll survive." I wish I had performed what I now think is the best comic riposte and burst out in song:

"I wonder if you might comment on Drudge FP photo of him and the missus. It's pretty cool and pretty provocative. (Also her dress alone deserves a blogpost) 2PM in Paris."

Emails a reader, presumably from Paris. Here's the referenced pic, which I screen-grabbed minutes before Drudge bumped it to highlight the story in the previous post:



I don't know where or when that photograph was taken, but it has a great New Year's Eve look, and Melania perfectly embodies Trump's well-known taste for gold. I love the dress. Is the photograph (with that headline) "provocative"?

How, if at all, are you provoked?

I am terrified of what that devil will do to us in the coming year.

I am enraged at his smug idiocy and his retrograde attitude toward women.

He's just another nitwit in a suit at a stupid party, but unfortunately he's President.

I cringe slightly, knowing how much he bothers other people.

I feel subtle confidence seeing this confident and -- I hope -- competent man who is our President.

I love it. He's happy. His wife is beautiful. And we're lucky to have him as President.

I'm overjoyed that this guy is where he is and that it's so unsettling to people who are not me.

pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Results:

"A man has been arrested on multiple charges after police located a small arsenal of guns on the top floor of the Hyatt Regency on Louisiana Street downtown..."

"... Houston police said. Police at the hotel called for backup around 1:30 a.m. Sunday after they attempted to arrest the man for being intoxicated and trespassing... The Hyatt is preparing its own New Years Eve celebration at the hotel with a 50,000 balloon drop at the stroke of midnight, its website said...."

Click2Houston.

"If there has been a single defining characteristic of Melania Trump’s public profile over the past year, it has been her relationship with sleeves."

That's what you were just thinking, right?

The sentence is the first line of "For Melania Trump, 2017 was the year of the sleeve" by Robin Givhan in The Washington Post. How does Givhan work through that thesis?

The mere fact that sleeves are even considered part of her fashion profile has a lot to do with her predecessor, who more often than not shunned them. Michelle Obama made sleeveless dresses a style signature....

Oh. Obama made the absence of sleeves her signature, so getting sleeves back on a First Lady counted as a thing.

Trump’s sleeves are the mark of a fashion aesthete who is willing to cast aside practicality in favor of line, silhouette and proportion. Her sleeves tell a story of an exceptional life, one that is now lived inside the White House security bubble....

Trump likes to wear her overcoat draped over her shoulders. It’s a fashion tic...

A fashion tic. It's like... it's like. Something makes me want to say it's like The Christmas Mouse. Ah, yes! Suddenly, I remember: The New Year's Tick!!!

2017 was The Year of the Crazy. We need a new year. Get ready for 2018. You can get excited about the arrival of The Christmas Mouse. Right now, I'm ready for The New Year's Tick.