The List

It is January 2, 2009. Those who follow my blog regularly (both of you) know that for four years now I have been kicking off the new year with my annual list of things I hope will go away this year, but probably won't.

We're doing something a little bit different this year. Jennifer Aniston and Britney Spears are being left off the list. And no, it isn't because Britney has a "new look," nor is it because Jennifer appeared nude on the cover of the last issue of GQ and we were told that she is now "hotter." (I never thought she was "hot" to begin with.) It's because every year I wish they would go away and every year they don't. I give up. I think I'll just start wearing dark sunglasses when I go to the grocery store in the hope of somehow avoiding both of their vapid, stupid mugs on every other magazine I walk past.

Okay, here's my list of things I hope not to see anymore next New Year's Day:

1. Superannuated election campaign bumper stickers. Do you know there are still some yo-yos driving around with Kerry/Edwards stickers on their cars? What are you people, bitter? Obama gets inaugurated Jan. 20th. Get over 2004, already.

2. Stupid white guys wearing baseball caps backward because they think it makes them look like rappers.

3. Stupid white guys wearing baggy pants that practically show butt-crack because they think it makes them look like rappers.

4. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens and that whole asinine "New Atheist" fad. I always suspected that the "New Atheist" fad had something to do with George W. Bush anyway, and he's packing up to move back to Texas, so it's time for the next pseudo-intellectual fashion trend.

5. Speaking of fashion trends, can we get rid of those shoes for women that make them look like medieval court jesters? You know the ones I'm talking about, those shoes so long and pointed that they look like the best accessory to go with them might be a cap and bells.

6. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, or whatever the hell it is the "food police" are calling themselves this year. I'm talking about that prune-faced bunch of busybodies that comes out every couple of years wagging its fingers at us about something we're not supposed to eat. I'm not especially inclined to eat movie popcorn, seeing as how I haven't been inside a movie theater to see a feature film since 2006, but if I want to eat movie popcorn, dammit, I'll eat movie popcorn. Get out of my face, you freaking do-gooders.

7. Do-gooders in general, and PETA in particular, that organization of whack-balls who think Bambi and Thumper are not only real, but should be provided with lawyers so they can sue Disney for larger dressing rooms.

8. I don't know why this annoys me so much, but I'd like a stop put to people walking around in near-or-subfreezing weather wearing rubber flip-flops on bare feet. Rubber flip-flops are for the beach in July, not downtown Chicago on Christmas. What are you people, stupid?

9. Speaking of doing things at the wrong time, how about let's crack down on those die-hard NFL kooks who drive around with banners for their favorite football team flapping every which way all over their cars...in the middle of baseball season?

10. And speaking of baseball, allow me a personal foible here. I wish the San Diego Padres would get rid of Kevin Towers. As long as that cheapskate keeps yelling "poorhouse" and going on a salary-dumping binge every year, we Padres fans are never going to see the postseason again.

11. Never mind about people driving while blabbering into hand-held cellphones; I've squawked about that enough, including letters to newspapers and legislators. If the cops aren't going to do anything about it, nobody will. But how about people who walk mindlessly down the street, just rag-chewing away, completely oblivious to the world around them, just because they CAN? More than once I've been tempted to run over one of these cud-chewing morons on the premise that he or she probably wouldn't notice I'd done it.

12. Washington, D.C. residents who go around sporting "Barack Obama" T-shirts and hats. Folks, this is not a concert tour!

13. Television advertisements for fitness equipment featuring people who don't need it.

14. Since I brought up advertising, why is it that the only kind of beer you ever see advertised on TV is LIGHT beer? I happen to regard light beer as a crime against nature. Can we at least advertise REAL beer? What is this, some kind of sop to the nation's collective guilt about calories?

15. Body-piercing. Come on, enough is enough.

16. Ted Kennedy and his girdle.

17. Obnoxious buttheads who think it's funny to gun their engines and race past bicycle-riders within inches, at 90 mph.

18. That goes double for truck drivers who do that.

19. California Congressman Bob Filner, who has the grin of a jackass and all the charm of a dock strike.

20. I wish spammers would run out of ways to spell "Viagra."

21. Now that we're finally going to have a black president, can we get rid of Al Sharpton?

22. Computer games for kids that center around mass murder. What is it with us, anyway? We get hysterical if Junior glimpses a woman's nipple on cable TV, but we have no problem with him playing XBox games all day long with names like Grand Theft Gang Rape Part IV and Genocide Raiders of The Planet Splat.

23. Grossly-obese guys with shaved heads. Since when was Jabba the Hutt a fashion plate?

24. People sitting in restaurants texting while they eat. "Enabling" is something else that's gone too far.

25. And the best for last, because it actually looks like this one is going to happen.......O.J. SIMPSON.

Happy New Year.