Ding Dong The Former American Ally is Dead

The one question I've been asked more than any other in the last few months, besides "Who are you and what are you doing here?" has been "So, how's married life treatin' ya?"
I know this is simply a replacement question/greeting for such previous classics as: "How's work?" or "How are your testicles currently hanging in relation to the relative stress levels of your daily existence?" And I further know (wow, I seem to know a lot today!) this is all part of the function of recognizing and greeting people that we do every day. What we're really saying is "I recognize you. I think I might even like you and value you as a friend/acquaintance/ possible future partner in copulation (I only use the subtext of the later now when greeting my wife) and I want to acknowledge that even though I don't really have anything particular to say to you at this moment I still recognize and value to a certain degree our relationship. Whatever form that may presently take. But I'm sure if this conversation continues we may in fact end up discussing any manner of topics from Battlestar Galactica to Broken Social Scene to human on donkey sex." It's all about subtext people. Read some Pinter and you'll understand.
I bring this up because over the past few weeks I've done quite a bit of socializing with friends, family and co-workers. As have we all, I hope. It's just something I've noticed. Something, say, that I experienced several times on New Year's Eve. This is my fairly lame attempt to segue into my topic for today: the New Year.
I'm not big on New Years. I'm not small on it either. I just don't really care as much as I used to. And no, I don't want to sit at home watching movies and wincing as the cat kneads my thighs into an over-pricked pincushion. But I'm not going to pay $100 to get into some overcrowded club with a bunch of strangers drinking overpriced drinks all night. I'm in the small house party phase of my life. I attended two parties on New Years. One featured a Nintendo Wii and one didn't. I'm obsessed with this device. I mention it at every opportunity, which leaves some people bewildered and sometimes angry. Though now that I've purchased the new Zelda game for my Gamecube the urgency has lessened somewhat. I've been broadly hinting to the wife that we can't possibly live without it. Yet here I am in week one of 2007 and I'm Wii-less!
But 2006 did end with a hanging and you can't say that about a lot of years. Unless you live in a country where they hang people all the time, in which case you might be lucky if you could say the same thing at the end of every week. This is just my round about way of saying I'm not going to compile a list of bests and worsts of the year. New Years is arbitrary and the changing of the year doesn't really follow any natural flow of seasons. For obvious reasons this is a year I wont soon forget. (Arsenal came within 15 minutes of winning the Champions League! Oh, and I got married …) But I really can't remember what Cds I bought or movies I saw that merit being listed in order of their greatness from 1-10. I did see some great films this year (Children of Men, Volver) and hear some great tunes (Diableros and … many others). This was also the year that many of the people in this find land of ours thought Steven Harper would make a great PM. Maybe it was some type of National Neuroses. Or those Westerners are getting all uppity with all their newfound wealth. Well when the tar sands dry of and are just sands, where will they be? Well we'll all probably be under ten-feet of water by then. Perhaps people just wanted a less scandal-tainted party in power. Let's face it, as scandals go it was pretty Mickey Mouse. Maybe this year a MP will be involved in some pervert sex/murder cover up. Ok, there it is: my grand prediction for 2007: MP IN PERVERT SEX/MURDER COVER UP. Can't wait to see that on the cover of the Globe and Mail.
Anyway, I don't know how many people will be hung this year. I hope it's a few as psooible. Though the next time someone asks me how it's hanging, it may give me pause.