I don't know about you, but I am tired of this New Year already, you know? Over it! And I blame Last Year and thinking about Last Year and a Look Back at Last Year and Last Year in Review. Can we just have regular time all the time now? Isn't it time to do stop doing this and start doing that? Can we just have Normal Year this year? No Rear in Review-Preview stuff? No more New and coming soon, just, now? Just, like, more days, onward in one-day increments? No more looking back? Or forward? Or anything? Can we just do stuff? Let's review 2013 now, OK? You [...]

I was walking over to The Awl offices this morning and I passed by a dad and his little boy who were walking in the opposite direction. The boy, who couldn't have been more than four or five, was jumping up and down and yelling, "School day! School day!"

Have you made any New Year's resolutions? I have decided that this year, instead of coming up with a long list of things that I am unlikely to achieve, I am going to stick with one simple thing, which I will phrase in the form of a question any time someone makes me angry: "How much of my day am I going to let this asshole ruin?" The asshole in question is Choire. Kidding! It is only occasionally Choire. (Generally on Tuesdays.) But it can be anyone. What I have figured out is if you do a cost-benefit analysis of how much power you want to give to [...]

Every year I screw this up bad. (Except the year that I resolved to "be less nice," in emulation of a friend who successfully went with that one the year prior. That WORKS.) So I started brainstorming about my New Year's resolution last week, and I finally came up with a winner. I hereby resolve: to record an album's worth of cover versions of the very fine work of one of the world's best bands, if not the world's very best band, Slow Children. This resolution has it all: personal satisfaction, a chance to gain some new technical skills and also the benefit of not being exactly what everyone [...]

Drink more efficiently.

Smoke a pack of cigarettes maximum each day. Okay, maybe a pack and a half on really stressy days.

Read at least one actual book a month, with the computer and other distractions shut down.

Give blood more often.