Another year gone. Another 365 days closer to our inevitable deaths. Is that something to celebrate?
I never really like New Year's Eve. I think partly because of that enforced expectation of having a brilliant time. What if you aren't in the mood? I hardly ever am. The fact that I'm expected to have the time of my life, usually makes me have exactly the opposite. I think, well it's fun, but it's not the greatest party of all time. This was especially true in 1999. There I was waiting to party like it was 1999. And to be honest it becoming 1999 didn't make the party all that much better..
I am a grumpy old curmudgeon, no doubt. The Ebenezer Scrooge of New Year. Bah Humbug! Stop singing Auld Lang Syne. It's a stupid song clearly. I don't want to forget my old acquaintances. I like them. Not enough that they actually stopped being acquaintances and became proper friends. But enough not to want to obliterate them from my memory and never bring them to mind again. Of course, the stupid thing about the song is that just by requesting that old acquaintances be forgot, you automatically bring the old acquaintances to mind, as you think "I must forget them". If you don't, then you don't know which acquaintance you are meant to forget. You might forget the wrong one.
It's a bad idea to forget old acquaintances anyway, because a few years down the line you might be in an important social or work-based situation where you bump into the old acquaintance and you can't remember who he is. He'll feel upset and humiliated and you might lose an important contract, which you would have got if you'd just taken the trouble to remember that he was called Alan Saville and that is wife was called Cheryl. That would have made him feel special and you'd have got the job on the spot. It wouldn't have been all that tricky. Certainly not as tricky as forcing yourself to forget him and never bringing him to mind again, even when you were making the decision to forget him.
I think it's foolish to make a promise based on something that you don't understand. We all decide to forget old acquaintances, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne. But what is this Auld Lang Syne we are bearing allegiance to. Perhaps some Scottish people know what it means. But I don't. And yet there we all are thinking of old acquaintances, in order to forget them, for the sake of what? An old, long sign? It's probably an old, long sign with the words "All Englishmen are stupid cunts who we Scots can get to sing any old shit, as well as making them forget old acquaintances who they might meet again later on in an important situation, and thus lose out on a lucrative contract or something" written on it. No wonder the sign is so long.
