The New Year in MEEP! Let's Get This 2026 Party Started!
I've been looking forward to this for 50 years!
A few thoughts as we start this year. I’m hoping it will be a good one.
I was two years old in 1976, so I don’t remember the bicentennial festivities of that year. I have a picture of me as a toddler with some 1976 bicentennial-themed tshirt on, and that’s all I got. Seriously, a picture of a t-shirt.
Bah.
LET’S PARTY!
So some advice for the beginning of the year in lieu of a look at what I did this week (mainly drive back from North Carolina to New York and do some light cleaning,)
Enjoy Life
The “ENJOY LIFE” motto was one I settled on when I was about 10, and I have no reason to drop it now.
Yes, bad things happen. There still persists beauty and joy… so let us enjoy the beautiful and true while we can and deal with the bad as it comes.
I searched on “Joy” from the Met Museum of Art, and here are some items from their collection:
Obviously, for me, enjoying life involves enjoying art…
But there’s lots of stuff in the world to enjoy… seek out beauty!
Unsolicited Advice: Do not give unsolicited advice
First: YOU CAME HERE (or subscribed, or whatever).
So, you solicited this advice in some way. (including the ENJOY LIFE you see above)
So, no, I’m not doing a paradox/being clever/yadda yadda.
I had thought about giving advice re: putting together New Year’s Resolutions, but as everybody reading this is are adults and can figure out stuff for themselves… I decided not to give any advice re: resolutions.
The only resolution(s) I have given in the past several years are:
Sleep more (never followed)
Survive (yay! I won!)
I have learned never to give unsolicited advice. I basically require people to request advice before I give it.
That they don’t follow it afterward… not my problem.
To be sure, my advice may not be good. But more to the point, I think about it as if it were me: if I didn’t ask for the input, the chances were I DIDN’T WANT IT. I already know what I’m going to do.
Because I write a lot (and talk a lot), people think that I say/write everything I think.
Yeah, I don’t have the time for that.
But more than that, even Stu didn’t hear everything I thought. If he didn’t hear it, why would anybody else?
Self-Help: The American Disease
The Stuff You Didn’t Learn in History Class podcast ladies covered self-help books in a recent episode:
And the funniest bit is pointing to Ben Franklin… because I’m not sure he was on the up-and-up.
Mark Twain bitched about having to read the Franklin autobiography as a kid in school and being pointed to his example…. but not realizing that some of the book may have been a prank. Why people took Old Ben at his word, when he was a notorious prankster, I don’t know.
Christopher Hitchens noticed that the (unfinished) Ben Franklin autobiography was one of the funniest things around. I agree, because Franklin was always making fun of his younger self in the text as well as other people. Here is just one paragraph about a self-righteous roomie who annoyed him: [emphasis added]
Keimer wore his beard at full length, because somewhere in the Mosaic law it is said, “Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard.” He likewise kept the Seventh day, Sabbath; and these two points were essentials with him. I dislik’d both; but agreed to admit them upon condition of his adopting the doctrine of using no animal food. “I doubt,” said he, “my constitution will not bear that.” I assur’d him it would, and that he would be the better for it. He was usually a great glutton, and I promised myself some diversion in half starving him. He agreed to try the practice, if I would keep him company. I did so, and we held it for three months. We had our victuals dress’d, and brought to us regularly by a woman in the neighborhood, who had from me a list of forty dishes, to be prepar’d for us at different times, in all which there was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, and the whim suited me the better at this time from the cheapness of it, not costing us above eighteenpence sterling each per week. I have since kept several Lents most strictly, leaving the common diet for that, and that for the common, abruptly, without the least inconvenience, so that I think there is little in the advice of making those changes by easy gradations. I went on pleasantly, but poor Keimer suffered grievously, tired of the project, long’d for the flesh-pots of Egypt, and order’d a roast pig. He invited me and two women friends to dine with him; but, it being brought too soon upon table, he could not resist the temptation, and ate the whole before we came.
Franklin was mostly vegetarian because he was cheap (but also he liked the health benefits - he found he had a clearer head under his vegetarian diet) — but he also noted this when some were cooking up fish, freshly caught, and he salivated over the smell:
I believe I have omitted mentioning that, in my first voyage from Boston, being becalm'd off Block Island, our people set about catching cod, and hauled up a great many. Hitherto I had stuck to my resolution of not eating animal food, and on this occasion I consider'd, with my master Tryon, the taking every fish as a kind of unprovoked murder, since none of them had, or ever could do us any injury that might justify the slaughter. All this seemed very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great lover of fish, and, when this came hot out of the frying-pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, "If you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet. So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
Franklin has a bit akin to I WANT MY TWO DOLLARS from Better Off Dead in the autobiography, even.
Look, nobody thinks Old Ben was on the Patriot side in the American Revolution because some Britishers owed him money due to debts from the French & Indian Wars.
HOWEVER.
I’m just saying some British guys owed Ben some money… and they never paid him back. And Franklin keeps mentioning it. Kind of difficult to miss.
The dude was very prudent about money. Also, he’s important for the history of insurance in America.
HTML E-Book Version of Autobiography of Ben Franklin at Project Gutenberg
Why not try some sumo?
I know some people look into new hobbies for their resolutions… so, why not try getting into sumo?
It’s a fairly easy sport to understand: in a match, the two guys start, and the first guy out of the ring or has a part of his body other than the bottom of his feet touching the ground is the loser.
Most matches are over in a matter of seconds.
The Grand Sumo Tournaments run in the odd-numbered months, for 15 consecutive days.
NHK World does a 30-minute (well, 25-minute) highlight of all the top bouts of the day.
And there are other sumo streamers, if you want to see hours of content, but for most of us, 30 minutes is just fine — that’s why it’s an attractive sport to follow. None of this hours and hours of slow active. Bam, bam, and you’ve got results.
The exciting thing? It’s not always the biggest guy who wins!
One of the hottest wrestlers right now, Aonishiki, is smaller than the top two wrestlers, Hoshoryu and Onosato:
This is a plot of the height and weight of the very top-ranked wrestlers. On my other substack, I talk about that a little more.
Aonishiki won the last tournament of 2025… he’s a contender!
Oh, and did I mention he’s from Ukraine?
Come on… compelling storylines, interesting physics, and quick action. Check it out!
If you can’t watch sumo when NHK streams it on its normal schedule, NHK has been putting its program up on-demand on YouTube and its own apps and channel.
There are other ways to watch, but these are the easiest ways to start.
Enjoy!
Party!
SUMO IS LIFE!
Comments are open.
It's probably better you don't remember '76. It was a tremendous let down.
Ford was President, and everyone knew that after Nixon, and the pardon no one was in the mood to vote for Gerald Ford.
The country was in a funk. After 2 years of Watergate hearings, and Nixon's resignation, the 1973 oil crisis, everything seemed off. The oil crisis brought Detroit to its knees for the first time. Datsun had been selling economy sedans for a while, but they came into the market with the 240Z, and started competing on performance.
Disco was on the rise. Saturday Night Fever would come out in '77, which was probably the high of Disco. To say the music wasn't the best would be an understatement. Disco Demolition would come in 1979. (I still regret not going into the City to watch them blow up disco records during a Chicago White Sox double-header. Though it was more exciting in hindsight than anyone expected at the time)
Happy 50th Birthyear!!!
I hit my RMD year in 2026.