38 Comments on “Happy New Year”

1. Back atcha, sunshine

2. Actually John, the small business I’m employed by suffered a catastrophic fire in March 2013 and only survived through herculean efforts by myself and loyal colleagues. Now we look back at it as a blessing in disguise; it enabled us to take a fresh look at entrenched procedures, sweep out the dead wood (probably would have helped before the fire lol) and focus our attitudes on the future. In that light I’m not so sure a zombie apocalypse would be a bad thing.

3. Thanks. I still have about an hour and 7 minutes to go, but thanks anyway! :D

4. I’m tempted to stay up until midnight — not so much to welcome the New Year in as to make sure the Old Year goes away.

   Lessee, now… my cousin’s husband has been diagnosed with leukemia, the sole remaining local friend I can trust to tell “them” to pull the plug on me when the time comes has decided that he can’t cope with that & expects to pop off before I do, Betty reports that they didn’t get all of her breast cancer, Dick seems to be showing signs of the (untreatable) prion disease he picked up handling horses when he was young, My health-provider’s urologist tells me that I’m more likely to die with the prostate cancer than from it — but provides no Numbers or reasons to think that I’ll _want_ to do that. And primeval s-f fan Art Widner is mumbling that he might possibly not live to be 100 after all. For me, this has not been A Good Year. Perhaps next year will be better, but….

   For you & yours (& all your Readers)… hey, enjoy it while you can, and I hope you’ll all have a Great New Year.

   Meanwhile, I think I’ll pour a few glugs of brandy from the annual bottle, fill the glass with chocolate soy-milk (which is acually quite tasty), toast… whatever, and go to bed relatively early.

5. Should old acquaintance be forgot,
   and never brought to mind ?
   Should old acquaintance be forgot,
   and old lang syne ?

   CHORUS: For auld lang syne, my dear,
   for auld lang syne,
   we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
   for auld lang syne.

   And surely you’ll buy your pint cup !
   and surely I’ll buy mine !
   And we’ll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
   for auld lang syne.

   CHORUS

   We two have run about the slopes,
   and picked the daisies fine ;
   But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
   since auld lang syne.

   CHORUS

   We two have paddled in the stream,
   from morning sun till dine† ;
   But seas between us broad have roared
   since auld lang syne.

   CHORUS

   And there’s a hand my trusty friend !
   And give me a hand o’ thine !
   And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
   for auld lang syne.

   CHORUS

6. Happy New Year’s to all from the West Coast. Here’s to a good year and new adventures.

7. Don Fitch, your comment reminds me I want to get a t-shirt printed up that says

   THE GOLDEN YEARS:
   Actually, They Kind Of Suck

8. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

   As usual, I looked up from what I was doing, noted that midnight was a few minutes past, went “Hey, it’s a new year!”, and happily went back to what I was doing.

   I like that.

9. Actually, Scalzi, I’m so over The Zombie Apocalypse – yeah, sure, Crash of Civilization As We Know It, Hordes of Flesh/Brain-Eating Reanimated Corpses To Devour Your Loved Ones, All Remaining Humanity Reduced To Its Most Brutal Essence. Seen It, Played It, Got the T-Shirt, Bought the Happy Meal….

   2013 was a rough year – so here’s hoping 2014 will be much better!

10. It’s just an arbitrary demarcation, why would we hope people treat us better unless we treat them better and then demand more of the same back from them?

11. Happy New Year 2014 ^^

12. My wish for the new year – that the term ‘zombie apocalypse’ goes away for good. I can’t help thinking this is redneck code for some racial thing…

13. @Dana1119 nah, it is code for “sudden libertarian utopia, yeehaw ‘n’ guns!”. Apart from the Simon Pegg version where it was code for “British bank Holiday doldrums”. I join you in hoping it goes away, and takes the terms “dark and gritty” with it too.

14. A happy 2014 to you too, may you keep harvesting good karma as you weed out the bad!

15. With a few stellar exceptions (like, finally, a good treatment for my chronic pain condition), I’d like to run most of 2013 through a wood chipper and set the chipped bits on fire, then take a good long piss on them to put the fire out.

    I suppose it wasn’t all that bad, but the bad was VERY bad. Lots of extreme, constant physical pain (the kind that makes you think suicide’s not such a bad idea, after all), lots of abandonment by people I thought would be there, lots of isolation. Started the year recovering from a concussion and a breakup and ended the year with Dad having a stroke on Christmas morning. He’s getting rehabilitation help right now, but there’s no telling whether he’ll be independent again. Oh, and I’m handling it by myself, since there’s no one else to handle it.

    A few friends came back and brought new friends with them, which is a big plus. but honestly, most of the year was one to survive, not celebrate. I’m glad it’s over and I don’t know whether to look forward to 2013 with hope or dread.

16. And a happy new year to you and yours :)

17. No negativity from my poorly lit corner. Not on this day. Thanks and best of luck to the future! Enjoy the moment too!

18. Actually the zombie apocalypse applies well to Las Vegas on New Years Eve. Metro PD and the Highway Patrol lock down Las Vegas Blvd (The Strip) for miles hours before and after midnight (foot traffic only).

19. Happy New Year y’all.

20. “Unless you hope it’s the year the zombie apocalypse finally happens. In which case, dude, lighten up bit.” So then it’s self-immolation for all those folks who were or are hoping for the zombie apocalypse in 2014? That seems a little harsh.

    Happy New Year, everyone!

21. It’s a new year. Get messy. Make mistakes. Push the edge of your personal envelope. Throw the dice. Take your shot at the title. Ready…. GO!

22. Happy new year! May you live as long as you want to, and want to as long as you live.

23. Happy New Year! Or duck and cover, and throw chocolate.

24. As a trivia sponge I always wondered why January 1 was considered the start of a new year. From a cosmological point of view it makes no sense. Why not the solstice or equinox? Some causal reading today led me to a potential answer. As the 8th day after Jesus birth it would be the day he would be circumcised by Jewish tradition. What I have read so far just suggestions not proof that it is this event.

    That led to other interesting bits: there were at least 8 separate shriveled foreskins of Christ floating around Europe at one time including one that was worn as a ring – there were at least 2 saints who claim to have eaten the foreskin, one reporting it tasted like honey.

    I try to learn something new every day but knowledge like this makes me wonder that maybe ignorance really is bliss! All that aside I hope you all have a happy, healthy and prosperous 4,539,982,608 – about the mid-point, we have roughly 5 billion years left till the sun burns out enough hydrogen and expands to eat the earth. Enjoy it while you can

25. Starting ’14 with a 9 week old Bouvier Des Flandres puppy. She runs my life now and that’s not a bad thing. No more snacks when I’m online. More successful things to those that try. Less trolls. Gotta say it….Scalzi Rulz!!

26. @Frankly

    Actually, current best estimates for our sun leaving the mains sequence put it at very roughly 7.5 billion years. However, the sun gets denser and hence hotter with each hydrogen atom it converts to helium. Gradually, over the next billion years or so, this increasing insolation will vaporize the oceans and strip the carbon from the atmosphere, among other extreme greenhouse effects. Eukaryotes will be the first to go as the plant and animal life cycles collapse forcing evolution to simplify its strategies (which it will have plenty of time to do). Eventually surface fungas and bacteria will perish with the exception of extremophiles and possibly some more advanced bacteria and archaea in subterranean water deposits.

    Unless someone puts a sunscreen between Earth and the sun. But to escape the eventual swelling you mentioned would require moving Earth. Barring unforeseen supertech, this could be done with asteroid flybys to give Earth a gravity assist and get it past 1.2 AU (the estimated red giant radius of our sun). Doing this over a long time could keep the Earth one step ahead of the sun’s heating up. This is something we’ll have to master anyway if we stick around for any length of time (even thousands of years) because the first sizeable rock to hit land or airburst over one is increasingly a threat to growing population concentrations, and the most efficient and precise way so far to divert asteroids with our name on them is with very low thrust ion-rockets tugging them off course with the rockets’ own tiny gravitational pulls.

27. Good riddance to 2013. It wasn’t all bad but the bad was very bad. A few days in December were stellar so I’m hoping for a better 2014. Happy New Year to all!

28. 2013 was a very mixed bag in my life, with a cancer diagnosis and multiple surgeries, among other things, keeping life “interesting.” But on the whole, it came out on the plus side of the ledger, I think, and I’ve reached the point in my life where that’s all I really hope for.

    In 2014, I’m hoping for better health throughout my family, more opportunities to scratch my writing itch (even if I’m the only one who ever reads the result), no more lay-offs or furloughs, and fewer tea-partiers in Congress after November. I have a very limited ability to bring some of those about, of course, but I might as well dream. New Year’s Day is a good day for that.

    Health, happiness, laughter and love to all this year, and especially to our gracious host and his family.

29. Thank you for the good wishes. As usual lurker here for just about a year, i’m coming out of the cave to thank you for sharing with us, providing so much humor, entertainment, and frequent insight. That goes for John, as well as all his loyal commenters, who often restore my faith that there are sane(ish) people out there.
    It sort of just hit me that I’m planning to start homeschooling my 10 yr old next, just got accepted to grad school, and oh yeah have this job thing that sucks up

30. Thanks to Amazon I found Metatopolis and finished it today so while reading the liner notes, not unlike running your finger around the bowl of cookie dough to get the last remnants, I found the address to your blog! Happier year already!

31. Frankly: I seriously doubt Julius Caesar was commemorating Christ’s birth when he reset the calendar half a century earlier.

32. Happy New Year, John, for you, you family and all the readers of your fine work!

33. Happy New Year and thank you for Whatever.

34. I had no time to cry (sisters of mercy) last night but I have a few minutes right just now. so.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmVXYOJzAJM (sob).
    Bugger. I hate that song.
    And it was at her Mom’s funeral, not a grocery store

35. The weather this year, well, so far, bleah. Storm coming, and according to the latest prediction I’m right on the line between ‘heaviest snow fall’ and ‘blizzard conditions.’

    2014 can stop with this crap right now or we’re gonna get all nostalgic.

36. Happy New Year to you and your family. May Scalzi’s brilliance continue.

37. You can send the snow over to me. :)

    Happy New Year to John, his family, and his merry band of minions … erm, blog readers. BTW, no zombie apocalypse scheduled for 2014 as far as I know, but in 2032, wel’ll be hit by an asteroid, according to some idiot German TV program. I hope _something_ hits that channel before 2032.

38. I wouldn’t mind seeing the _ice_ zombie apocalypse happen this year, though. (Yes, I know, Neil. He’s not my bitch.)