Your Resolution for the New Decade

New Year's Resolutions often follow three steps. A person comes up with a goal. They assign themselves that goal. The goal is adhered to for the coming year or (more likely) dropped before the year ends.

I'd like to rework the whole thing. I'll design a goal and have others help me, and by others I mean all of humanity. Lastly, instead of for the coming year, our challenge will span the entire coming decade.

So it brings me great pleasure to announce that as we transition from the roaring zeroes (200x) to the swingin' ones (201x) I will be assigning all of humanity a new decade's resolution.

All right, already! If you've read this far, you're okay with my being pompous (I prefer the term BOLD) enough to give a decade long homework assignment to all of humanity. You're getting sick of the pointless verbosity (What is this? A James Joyce novel?) and just want to know what the hell the resolution actually is so you can get busy working on it, or get busy laughing at me. Okay. Here it comes.

Adapt.

That's it? One word? You could have been reading World Net Daily's tabloidian eVomit and I give you one stinkin' word? Well, packed into that one word is a lot of suggestion, so I'll elaborate.

Here's what I want to happen: I want humanity to stop approaching the inevitable changes, surprises and revelations of life with fear, hatred and anger. Instead, I want everyone to approach those events with curiosity, enthusiasm and love. Can a brotha get a witness for the Serenity prayer?

Yes, "adapt" is rather general and I'm not a conservative teabagger, which means my ideas don't reside solely in a world of abstract labels, oblivious to what they mean in the real world. So I'll get specific about two of the many items that led me to suggest this assignment. Our assignment. I refer to The Kindle and The Gays.


The Kindle

The most obvious source of scary change today is technology. Advancements in gadgetry and medical tech come faster and faster. Before Windows has fully slowed down your computer, a new version is available to slow it down in cool and innovative ways.

As a writer, the recent 'thing I could not change' (as the Serenity prayer would say) was the advent of eReaders and eBooks. I'm often asked, 'Hey writer stud, are you scared about the impact that eBooks will have on writing?'

I was at first, until I realized that someone still needs to write the books, whether they are delivered on paper or on a screen. In fact, a strong argument can be made that eReaders are good for authors. They provide wireless on-demand bookstores, which means fewer barriers between hearing about a cool new writer (like this guy) and having an opportunity to buy his or her work.

Sure, there will be problems with piracy, and that could render the standard business model of book publishing (sell zillions of copies) obsolete, but the technology is not going away. The publishing business will have to come up with another structure for supporting itself. In a word, adapt.

Xbox Live had an interesting solution to the piracy problem: banning the systems on which it detected pirated software. (Story here.) Perhaps Amazon could imitate that for The Kindle. Upon detection of a pirated book, it shuts down your Kindle, or auto-downloads romance novels until it fills up. That'll learn ya! So yes, the details need to be hashed out, but the bottom line is, the technology is here, it's near, get used to it. Speaking of...


The Gays

What's another phenomenon of recent human history that reminds us our species needs better adaptive skills? The stampede of gays coming out of the closet, followed by the counter-stampede of ignorami who want to shove them back in.

Apparently what consenting adults do behind closed doors is of utmost concern to some. Of them I ask, 'Can you find something better to do than worry about who is getting naked with whom?'

It's entirely probable (almost certain) that over the last week, some people living near to us all have had a different sex partner every night, penetrated every orifice on their person with every appliance they own, and performed all kinds of other sexual stunts with other consenting adult(s) of the same or different sex. Somehow, this has failed to open up a fiery chasm beneath our feet.

Some people act as if gays 'decided' to be gay with the sole purpose of throwing a wrench into several 2,000-plus-years-old mythologies. Wrong! What happened was those worldviews were revealed as inaccurate. It's nothing to get upset about. Try adapting.


The Conclusion

There are many other things to which our New Decade's Resolution applies. For example, religion totally needs a makeover. That shit has jumped the shark more than Tiger Woods has jumped hotties.

So the world isn't like you thought it was. All of reality hasn't bent to your every assumption. The way you envisioned the world is off from the way the world really is. There's no need for alarm, hatred, or anger. It's a cause for celebration. It means you're learning.

So that's what I mean when I say adapt. Accept that your worldview is incomplete and have the right attitude when you find another gap. Just don't automatically reach for the hate button, okay?

I've got a bottle of champagne on ice for New Year's Eve 2019. We'll see how we did then. Happy New Decade!

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Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.

All the Glamour, None of the Work: Can I be James Bond's friend?

I hate those abstract questions that sometimes pop up in job interviews: If you could be a vegetable what one would you be? Sounds like something from an annoying Facebook poll. (Redundant, I know. All Facebook polls are annoying.) Sadly, one of those questions did manage to worm its way into my brain's busy schedule: If you could be a fictional character, who would you be?

My first impulse was to say Jesus. That would get me into trouble, one for claiming he was fictional and two, for claiming I could be anything like him. The problem as I see it? Jesus was only half god, so I'm over-qualified. Plus, as much as I like to make a point, I'm not willing to be tortured and die for it. Blogging is martyrdom for sissies.

So with Jesus out of the running, the question persisted. If I could be a fictional character, who would I be? I want to be James Bond's friend.

If you've seen one James Bond film, you've seen them all. The only thing that changes is how exotic (as compared to your average Englishman) is the babe who teams up with Bond. Will she be Near Eastern European or Far Eastern European? Or will they really mix it up and make her Latina? Or African-American? The JB writers must be nearing the end of their Encyclopaedia of Ethnic Hotties. You'll know the franchise has jumped the shark when he's banging an Eskimo named Fukluk.

Another Bond stock character is the poor woman I refer to as the "throwaway babe" for her sad predictable destiny. She's just a working English lass who realizes it's part of her job as a temp at Her Majesty's Secret Service to service James and immediately get murdered, so the audience can hate the bad guy even more and James doesn't have to run the risk of her turning into a stalker.

Bond confronted by all his ex-partners (assuming any of them lived) would make for an entertaining daytime talk-show marathon. Gadget your way out of that one, Bond!

Whether it's killing or fornicating, James never takes a break. He's a workaholic. M and Q are always getting annoyed at James, which is also a full time job. Seems like everyone has a tough job in the Bondiverse, except for James Bond's friend. Most of the time he doesn't even have a name, but he's the guy I want to be. He gets all the glamour with none of the work.

He's the one always chillin' at his estate on the Mediterranean coast, lounging in the sun among several smokin' hot babes who have no purpose other than to be smokin' hot babes. Actually they do have one other function: to leave the deck in a huff when I tell them to amscray so I can talk to my boy, JB.

Job responsibilities include hanging out with hotties, drinking fine wines, and spending five minutes every couple of years saying, "The guy with the eye patch went that way."

Sound easy? Hell yeah! But being JB's BFF is not without its occupational hazards. Sometimes the Bond movies really jazz up the formula and James Bond's friend gets killed (in addition to the poor English throwaway babe) which causes Bond to go on a murderous rampage. Yeah, like he wasn't going to already.

That will be my out. "Colonel Russkibad, you don't have to shoot. James is coming after you whether you kill me or not. Now try some of my vodka..." Then I'll be back to my dream job: doing nothing.

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Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available on Amazon.com as a paperback and Kindle eBook. It is also available for other eBook readers.