Truesday: Thank You And Welcome
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
I don’t believe I’m properly equipped to "welcome" myself after yet another year of meeting with you on Tuesdays (sometimes Wednesdays, Thursdays, Whateverdays). And it’s not easy to express my gratitude to people I’ve never met. People who have so many different reasons for being here, for something so irreverently personal. So I’ll defer my copy to the illustrious Mr. Samuel Clemens, as he handed thanks to the Lotus Club in 1908.
I wish to begin this time at the beginning, lest I forget it altogether; that is to say, I wish to thank you for this welcome that you are giving, and the welcome which you gave me [one year] ago, and which I forgot to thank you for at that time. I also wish to thank you for the welcome you gave me [two] years ago, which I also forgot to thank you for at the time.
Hm. Glad to know that he too was a stone-beater of the general bush area. Oh well. Twain and I tried to thank you in a literary way, but I sense that it just didn’t take. So I guess I’ll ramble it out on my own terms.
Yes.
It’s been a good one, this past year. Books were written, and read. Santa liked the lunch meat. Important people came and went from everyone’s lives. And quite frankly, that’s a big chunk of what makes this existence so fascinating. What with the yam-tanned bro-hams, fun with LOLcats, taking a dump on our apathy, karaoke goodness, and some recommended flags for our great city, well, I’ve been enjoying things.
As I stated last year, I never intended to write this thing for very long. Not that the cheers have been so astounding that I can’t begin to consider ceasing to type. Oh no, not that. Because you can’t hear cheers (or calls for beheading) through the internets without the aide of gadgetry beyond our meager budgets (sixty five cents). But I honestly told myself that I’d stop writing this column as soon as it started to become a burden (to me, not to the readers, as this column was a burden to some from day one, and that’s just dandy by design). The fact that I’m still writing this… thing, well, it says something.
Though I’m not entirely sure what.
Two years of words on pages and posting them out on the interdigitubes, for people I’ve never met, to read. When I first started writing this thing, what I was trying to accomplish was to get my shit-kicker neighbors to stop letting their garbage blow all over creation. Seriously. That was my aim. I mean, fuck. There’s toilet paper in their garbage. USED. That’s really, really, really goddamn disgusting and it’s only partially redeeming in that it’s kinda already compost when it hits my lawn, because I’m not touching those dudes’ shit paper.
But alas, their trash still blows like tumbleweeds of despair across the barren landscape of my abandoned hope and lawn. And to make matters ever funner, during one of their recent 3am attempts at target practice, they apparently had a Christmas Story Moment and put a pellet through one of my windows. I just noticed it the other day.
And I thought the soiled toilet paper was pretty back’rds and fucked up.
Wait, isn’t all this gentrification I keep hearing people cry about supposed to kill off poor hayseed-type people or something? Like the building of the pyramids? Why is it that my property taxes are doubling while the inbred circus still rages on next door with two-toothed abandon?
I’ve one foot in each hell, apparently.
Well okay then.
I’ll come to terms.
Unlike last year’s low-bar set, this year’s resolution will be more concrete. I’m drawing a line in the sand here in an attempt to actually start to map out the formal desire behind some ideas I’d enjoy seeing be born from action in the coming year. And to that end, I’ve one resolution to put forth:
To have a column written by a different guest Ist reader each week.
You read correct. That means you. Look for the details next week.
