Almost Done.
So it’s the end of the year again, that totally made up and random moment in the incomprehensible existential flood we call life where we decide that this day is an ending and this day is a beginning. Or, as I like to think about it, The Week When I Can Day Drink Every Single Day and No One Organizes an Intervention.
As a writer I must naturally write everything using words because I am told constantly that because I’m an author I must have some sort of sacred holy love for words that I’ve had since before I was fully formed. Because writers can’t just be smart assholes with a penchant for dialogue and daydreaming, we have to be Holy Fools who are constantly covered in ink and muttering story ideas to ourselves. So! I will write out a Year in Review for 2013 to put everything into context. What happened? Why? What did it all mean? You lucky ducks. Let’s take it month by month:
January: Started off with a really great dinner and some drinks, then quickly trailed off into disappointment and chores. My life was changed forever when I discovered via a re-watching of The Sting that you can’t smell Vodka on your breath and thus my Year of Drinking Dangerously Began.
February: Publish my 7th Novel, Trickster. No one bought it and the Year of Drinking Dangerously became disturbingly literal. I ate falafels. I may have battled sentient garden gnomes and saved the universe, but the evidence is sketchy and boils down to a blurry photograph that’s either me wielding energy beams against giant arachnids or me falling down a flight of stairs while holding a flashlight. Also: I made several dozen Harlem Shake videos and forgot to post any of them. Also, my amazing agent sold my 8th novel, Chum. I got the news as I was preparing to perform Daffy Duck’s trick you can only perform once, complete with Devil Costume. Which I am still wearing.
March: Annoying yellow skin tone dating back to Week of Day Drinking 2012 finally faded to a healthier pink hue. I celebrate with several rounds of Tequila Fanny Bangers and wind up back in hospital where I am kept for six weeks for experimentation due to the fact that all evidence points to me having died in 1989. Had a chip implanted that plays Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke whenever I enter a room. Am just starting to regret this.
April: Celebrating the decision to finally remove Jay Leno from our televisions, I overdo it and find myself in May.
May: Somehow the highlight of May 2013 was an Eddie Money concert in New York City that, against all odds of sanity, I attended.
June: I decide that this writing thing isn’t working out and that I need a new goal, which turns out to be to get Amanda Bynes to call me ugly. Efforts are ongoing. At some point I went to Ikea to buy some shelves and lost about six weeks of subjective time.
July: <in Ikea screaming; shoppers think I am a ghost. Google “Ikea Ghost Jersey”>
August: What began with a triumphant escape from the Ikea time warp using a DIY sonic screwdriver curdled into existential horror as I had Yet Another Birthday (YAB). Next year: No birthdays. My wife, The Duchess, begins singing songs from The Sound of Music in preparation for the Christmas season. I go slightly more mad.
September: A sweet, fat cat dies, and we fill his spot here with a demonic creature we name Homer Spit. Homer proceeds to ruin everything. He is ruining this post right now. I also find myself in Montana, of all places. It is cold and my gout acts up. GOUT. I can feel death’s icy fingers closing about me. Chum publishes and gets good reviews, but so far no dumptruck filled with gold coins (as stipulated in my contract) has arrived at the house. I hold a contest to give away copies of Chum and almost no one enters, which is … not good for my self image.
October: I went to NY Comic Con and was swallowed by the gaping, apathetic maw of pop culture. Signed a gazillion books at the Pocket booth and saw things I cannot unsee.
November: The Duchess and I celebrate one year without a hurricane turning our house into a swamp by getting pants-shittingly drunk and singing sea shanties. At some point I have a meal with author Sean Ferrell that doesn’t end with sea shanties for the first time in our shared history. It ends, however, in shame, right as scheduled.
December: I write a Year in Review post. No one reads it.
I knew the Ikea Ghost Jersey, Mr. Somers, and you are no Ikea Ghost Jersey.
You’ve called me a lot of things before, including dead, resurrected, and a robot, but never “no one.” That odd sound you hear is me applying “you’re my favorite” stickers to Sean Ferrell’s head.. but don’t tell him.
You got out of Ikea? Everyone has had a spat with sentient garden gnomes now and then, but nobody ever escapes Ikea. The rest must be true.
yeah, well, I guess I read this, even though no one read it. Which makes my cybernetic brain go into a feedback loop and explode.
You must have kept a diary, I have no idea what I did in August much less January. But I do know I have never been to an Ikea and I plan to keep it that way.
I read it, too. Liked it, even. Must be depressing to be you, though.