Yes, this is a deplorably Eastern-Standard-Time-centric blog…
#NewYearCountdown
The Midnight Clocks in Cecil B. DeMille's 'Madam Satan' (1930) pic.twitter.com/CM4YtsIt1w— 41 Strange (@41Strange) December 31, 2019
Celebrate with all due caution!
Cuban Tree Frog tries to eat a Christmas light
(Photo: James Snyder https://t.co/UhhEl66Fgt) pic.twitter.com/KA2OnkuA0t— 41 Strange (@41Strange) December 30, 2019
Ain’t nobody gonna be sorry to see 2019 end. Including the whole continent of Australia…
New Year is here (in Sydney)
"Happy New Year: Sydney welcomes 2020 ??" https://t.co/JwWz675l2C— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) December 31, 2019
Goodbye 2019 pic.twitter.com/JszfxOj4eL
— Schooley (@Rschooley) January 1, 2020
debbie
The celebratory gunfire has started 15 minutes early this year.
PST
Oh man! Central time. Another hour. I feel I should stay up. My wife and I got engaged five years ago tonight. She reminded me; I had forgotten.
mrmoshpotato
@PST: Stayin’ Up Till Midnight
WaterGirl
@PST:
Rut roh.
Steeplejack (phone)
Starting to hear a few pops of fireworks in the distance. Last year Threadkill Lane was pretty quiet—surprisingly so.
WaterGirl
Anne Laurie, that tree frog made me laugh out loud. Hope he was able to back it out, and that no tree frogs were injured.
Brachiator
I guess it’s almost that time back East.
Happy New Year.
And may all you all be as sharp as 2020 in the days to come.
WaterGirl
Still an hour to go here, no fireworks, all very quiet.
mdblanche
Should auld acquaintance be forgot…
NotMax
After midnight
We gonna let it all hang down
After midnight
We gonna chugalug and shout
Gonna stimulate some action
We gonna get some satisfaction
We gonna find out what it is all about
After midnight
We gonna let it all hang down
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Happy New Year!
waspuppet
If you remember the 2010s, you weren’t really there.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@debbie:
Please tell me this is a joke
debbie
Great. The gunfire is now competing with clattering pots and pans.
Steeplejack (phone)
Happy New Year!
No fireworks here. Quiet again this year. Okay, now a few more pops in the distance.
debbie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
No. It’s a NYE tradition. Sounds like semiautomatic.
prostratedragon
Happy New Year, eastern time zone!
mrmoshpotato
@mdblanche: Auld Lang Syne
Kattails
Cheers, loves. Patty the cat is getting very insistent that it is time for her evening treats; of course she’s been saying that since I got home at like 9 PM from work.
A shopper told me that the hot cocktail of the evening was a “Trump”– a White Russian with a twist of orange. ;-) Sorry I could not impart this in time for your own festivities, and hopefully it will be out of fashion next year.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@debbie:
Where do you live? I’ve heard of fireworks, but gunfire!?
?BillinGlendaleCA
We just finished Korean BBQ here and are waiting. I’m debating on whether to just stay up or trust my alarm, gotta catch the fly-by at a bit before 8am.
prostratedragon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Oh my, you did say you were pretty young, didn’t you?
Salvation Army part 2:
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): We get PSA’s ’round these parts about celebratory gunfire this time of year.
joel hanes
Good riddance to a kidney stone of a year.
May 2020 be a better year for all of us except Trump and his evil hench.
mrmoshpotato
@joel hanes: You start with May. We’ll all start with January.
eclare
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): We get celebratory gunfire in Memphis. So far not too much, but 33 minutes to go.
NotMax
Crappy, overproduced movie version but with one heckuva job on the SFX fireworks.
Matt McIrvin
Spending the opening moments of 2020 reading Twitter leftists shitting on Barack Obama, somehow. Guess the resolution didn’t take.
Emma from FL
Happy New Year everyone! My neighborhood is very fond of fireworks. And parties. Everyone is very understanding because, hey, no gunfire.
(and yes, I’ve added geographical ident to my name as I have seen another Emma recently)
mrmoshpotato
@Matt McIrvin: What the?
joel hanes
@mrmoshpotato:
no comprende.ETA
Aha.
I meant to say: My hope and my wish for all of us are that 2020 will be a better year.
Kattails
@Matt McIrvin: sigh. Please quick do something for an antidote.
I had a mind to go enjoy Dire Straights doing Telegraph Road, the aLCHEMY tour on youtube, sorry too tired to link. But it was a well-spent few minutes and the song has aged very well.
mrmoshpotato
@joel hanes: ??
Juice Box
We had some fireworks tonight. The new puppy was unconcerned. Yay!
eclare
@Juice Box: That is a big yay!
NotMax
Needed some smiles so watching (on Prime, so can see it on the big screen) one of my favorite episodes of Dobie Gillis (YouTube link), one precisely at the point in the final season when the producers decided to sprint headlong into full-on surreal ‘n’ wacky.
Nothing will ever convince me that Mrs. Osborne did nothing to pull her punch when she hauls off to box some ears.
Omnes Omnibus
Happy New Year from Wisconsin
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Happy New Year, Omnes!
JCJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
Happy New Year to and from Wisconsinites!
mrmoshpotato
Chicago spent 5 minutes trying to blow up 5 downtown bridges.
Gonna be smoky around there for a bit.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: Happy New Year.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: Happy New Year WaterGirl. Thanks for all you’ve done for the website rollout. I’ve not seen any site hickups the past few days.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: If they blow up the bridges, how will they cross the river?
NotMax
Neighborhood boom booms going off since 7 p.m. Come midnight in 3 and 3/4 hours, watch out. Unlike last year which was uncharacteristically subdued.
Next time I mow (this coming week) shall need to be extra vigilant about looking out for detritus lurking in the green.
Redshift
Happy New Year, Jackals, from Northern Virginia (an hour later, just got home from the party.)
Wishing you all a year of kicking righteous ass and restoring or creating all that is good and right!
I’m renewing the only good New Year’s resolution I’ve ever made, “don’t get into arguments with idiots.”
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA: We have more than 5.
frosty
@NotMax: I had occasion to try to describe Dobie Gillis to the kids at work last week. None of them (of course) knew anything about it. Context: Maynard G. Krebs freaking out when someone mentions work: “Work!! Work!!!!”
SAD! We need to edumacate the youngs.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@frosty: I’ve never seen Dobie Gillis, but remember watch Gilligan’s Island in first release. Bob Denver lived in the area where I grew up, I went to Jr. High with his son.
NotMax
@frosty
Remains funny after all these years.
“The G stands for Walter.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato: More than 5? Big spenders out there in Chicago.
mrmoshpotato
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Stupid long river
NotMax
@BillinGlendaleCA
Think perhaps we’ve stumbled upon your New Year’s resolution.
:)
WaterGirl
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You are very welcome! Let’s not jinx it. :-)
WaterGirl
@NotMax: To never watch Dobie Gillis?
frosty
@NotMax: It was funny. I was trying to describe Maynard: “He was the original hipster, no, that’s not it, I know he wasn’t a hippie, that was later … beatnik! He was the original beatnik!”
Blank stares.
NotMax
And… siren of a fire engine now heard nearby along with the splodeys. Not propitious.
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Yuppers. There are certainly resolutions less taxing to stick with.
;)
NotMax
@NotMax
I did not see the “never” you included and responded based on what I read.
@frosty
Beatnik, qualified yes. Beatnik wanna be, absolutely.
Sans beret and turtleneck, of course.
;)
hells littlest angel
I believe in realistic expectations, so i’d like to wish all Balloon Juicers a not horrible new year!
prostratedragon
@frosty:
There was a beatnik character (along with various other bohemians) who preceded MGK by about a year, on Peter Gunn. Fellow by the name of Wilbur. First appears in the episode “The Blind Pianist.”
prostratedragon
@hells littlest angel: I’ll take it! And same to you.
Amir Khalid
Happy New Year from the new new new laptop. If I may explain:
I had begun to weary of my elderly wheezing Win7 laptop, which I had purchased late in Obama’s first term. A week or so ago I happened upon a used-laptop dealer and noted the specs of an Intel i3 machine with Win10 and a 15.6″ screen and a 240GB solid-state drive. But when I came back for it, they told me it wasn’t working and offered me a similarly spec’d Intel i4 laptop, which I took home. That, alas, was the one with the failing battery.
Back to the shop. They said the battery would be replaced by the next day. But when I showed up again, there had been no battery replacement; the battery was still on order from abroad, I was apologetically told, and could I come back around New Years Day?
I showed up today, and this time they said the battery had still not arrived. (Which I was half-expecting, at this point.) So they gave me a third new laptop: an i5 machine. I just cranked it up a few minutes ago. No issues so far. Fingers crossed this one doesn’t die on me.
Matt McIrvin
@Kattails: That’s a good song.
Anyone else, though, ever feel a little guilty about turning to “respite” media when you’re feeling horrible about politics? Like, feeling that refusing to stare the full horror of the world in the face until it literally destroys us is how we came to this pass?
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
15 minutes before midnight here in Arizona the jail called and told me my ex just made bail. His rich uncle probably ponied up the money. I’m going to bed depressed and angry. Happy Frickin New Year.
Suzanne
Some of my neighbors are setting off a ton of fireworks at the elementary school behind my house. My poor pupper is very stressed out. We went to a party tonight, which was fun, but we came home before midnight to hug our Loonie.
Here’s to a great 2020, and hopefully a great decade of positive change, for us as individuals, but also for the country and the world.
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
There’s taking the occasional break from being face-to-face with the full horror of the world. And there is refusing to face the horror at all. The first is entirely appropriate, the second is just willful blindness. If there’s one thing we don’t do here as jackals, it’s willful blindness.
Amir Khalid
I sympathise with the poor children and pets being frightened by the noise from celebratory fireworks (and firearms!) this New Years evening. Hug them for me, and promise them everything’s going to be all right.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: Soooo happy New laptop year, I guess.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
“When we can’t dream any longer we die.”
– Emma Goldman
mrmoshpotato
@Matt McIrvin: It’s necessary to practice self-care and unplug from time to time. If you stare at this shit without pause, the desire to go “Fuck it.” and completely unplug is too great.
Many others are fighting. Think of it as a relay race.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: Congrats on the new, new, new laptop, an i5 is a pretty good general use processor.
mrmoshpotato
@hells littlest angel: Sounds good. Same to you. ❤️
Viva BrisVegas
A collectors item.
opiejeanne
We have 13 minutes to go and the noise has started up again. Around 9pm there were a few big booms that sounded like a small cannon but were probably big cherry bombs. Now there are sounds with a lot more bass, very deep booms, that don’t sound at all like cherry bombs.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The Dobie Gillis tv show was based on a couple of books, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and I was a Teenage Dwarf. I think it was a stage play before it was on tv.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: I had to look it up on Wikipedia.
opiejeanne
Today was the 100th anniversary of my mother’s birth. She said her mother was at a family party and was annoyed that she went into labor with the party in full swing. These were southern Baptists deep in the Ozarks so there was no liquor but I guess they figured out how to have fun. The party must have been at Grandpa’s parents’ house because she said she was born there, so they probably just took her to a birthing room at the back of the house.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I seem to remember that the play was considered a wee bit scandalous for some reason, so when it came to tv there was concern that there might be some faint hint of S-E-X.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Happy New Year from Glendale.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Viva BrisVegas: Yup, the i4 is very rare.
?BillinGlendaleCA
The fireworks have started here, the cocker spaniel is NOT amused.
Anne Laurie
@opiejeanne: I still have a handful of brittle 1960s Max Shulman paperbacks — including, IIRC, I Was A Teenage Dwarf.
Shulman’s stuff was as of-his-moment as The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (MadAve ad-men were among his favorite subject-targets). Another few years (assuming we survive the current moment), and his books will probably be re-released by one of the nostalgia presses. I’m thinking that Maynard G Krebs was the spiritual baby-daddy of today’s Cosplay Socialists… young men who assume a world-weary attitude and a talent for snark is a substitue for actual talent…
opiejeanne
HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM JUST EAST OF SEATTLE!
WWIII has started here. I assume there are fireworks but it’s been raining all day, so maybe not.
opiejeanne
@Anne Laurie: I was a little kid when I watched Dobie Gillis. I thought Maynard G. Krebs was a pretend beatnik, and kind of a bum.
Anne Laurie
Yup! Dobie Gillis was a success because Shulman made it clear he considered Maynard as big a fake & a poseur as his ‘opposite’, all those Men in Grey Flannel Suits. Horseshoe theory, but for sociology instead of politics.
CaseyL
OK, it’s been 2020 for almost 45 minutes and nothing’s changed yet. Someone do something!
From 2016 onward, each year has been worse than the last, so the best I can come with is: Happy New Year, may it be not nearly as bad as we think.
Goodnight, jackals!
NotMax
@Anne Laurie
Maynard G. Krebs, Ralph Kramden, Sgt. Bilko, etc. – templates designed with a set of foibles intended for humorous exaggeration.
Anne Laurie
@NotMax: It’s a very old template… going back to Greek theatre, at least, and very much under the aegis of the Trickster God!
Kathleen
@Anne Laurie: I’ve caught a few episodes of Dobie Gillis on You Tube and am amazed at how well the show has held up. My dad was a huge Max Shulman fan so Dobie was one of the few programs I was allowed to watch.
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Giving up Dobie Gillis might be the ultimate best answer to the question: What should I give up for Lent this year?
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Self-harm.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I can think of several ways to interpret your comment. For the recordI i did like Dobie Gillis growing up.