No more clinging to material things, unless those material things are life preservers tossed as I go down for the third and final time, the few remaining strands of my once-majestic locks, or the skids of the last helicopter out before the fall of Little Rock. No more apologizing for anything, except my secret, shameful love of “The Real Housewives of New Jersey” on Bravo. I’m sorry for anyone I have harmed with my addiction to Phaedra’s delicious cattiness, and believe I need help.
No more drinking in the morning, even though it’s beer o’clock somewhere. No more plotting after ways to get myself one of those medical marijuana cards, because that stuff always makes me feel like I’m watching the world through a hole excavated in the back of my own head.
No more reading deep and meaningful think pieces on how this election is proof that Yours Truly, as a latte-sipping libtard, must find ways to understand the tormented mind of hicks from the sticks who spent eight years calling a president who had previously been a constitutional law prof with a J.D. from Harvard an idiot, even as the stress of saving our sorry asses from Great Depression Part Deux aged him so much that 2016 Obama looks like 2007 Obama’s wizened old Paw Paw. Seriously, check the photos. The man is HIS OWN GRANDPA, and all he got in exchange is a Nobel Peace Prize and eight years of being told he’s a worthless Kenyan socialist. No more driving through the more rural environs, head out the window, yelling at the top of my lungs: “How about you dopes try understanding ME for a change?” No more denying that while we may win the battle against cancer someday, there is no cure for dumb. No more reading Dorito Mussolini’s loony 3 a.m. tweets first thing in the morning, because all that does is make me rage-shatter my sensibly-sized glass of grapefruit juice in one clenched fist, creating a hell of a mess that I then have to angrily sponge up while wishing plagues and tribulations on 80,000 anonymous dipshits in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
No more standing in the way of the Ten Commandments Monument on the Capitol lawn, because approval will virtually guarantee the Satanic Temple will get to install its bitchin’ statue of Baphomet as well. Not only will it be a tourist draw like you won’t believe, the sight of Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Eally, this is the best you can do, Conway?) scurrying to his Ford Coal Roller 500 past throngs of nose-ringed kids waiting to shoot photos with Ol’ Splitfoot for their Instagram pages will almost be worth shredding the wall between church and state.
Most of all: No more denying that life is a magic garden of forking paths, each choice you make — each choice made for you by others, if you let them — causing those paths not taken to instantly seal over with impenetrable hedge so that you can never even glimpse where you might have gone had you cast your heel in the other direction. Choose wisely, traveler. No more sitting in the La-Z-Boy in our fleece britches and “I Stand With Coach Petrino!” T-shirts, expecting others to clean up this godforsaken mess. No more letting others do the heavy lifting and guesswork, because those we trusted to handle it during “Orange Is the New Black” bingewatches have failed us horribly. No more using that little “crying” emoticon on Facebook, which the Quiz Kids in Palo Alto couldn’t have launched at a worse time for national morale. Put on your angry eyes if you want to turn this around. No more looking back wistfully at the past, sighing over that which might have been but now can’t be fixed. The overflowing outhouse of a year that was 2016 is in the books. Nothing to do now but toss in a scoop of lime and shut the door. Nothing to do now except to show your war face and sound your barbaric yawp over the roof of the world. Nothing to do except to say: The past is full, so the only way open is forward to the dim and uncertain future. I will meet you there, brothers and sisters. Amen.