Resolutely Into the New Year

Well, it's been a bloody awful year blogging-wise. Stew posted a grand total of one time, I think, and that was just by accident as he thought he was sending in his taxes electronically. Nuffy posted a few times, but many of those were just political shilling for Pip Clowson (Did he win? I didn't follow the election that closely.) I wasn't much better myself. The annual "Best of DOUI" post will be thinner than usually.

However, it's a new year and a new opportunity to begin anew with new posts and a new attitude and a commitment to really overusing the word new. As is traditional around here, some resolutions for the new year follow. For those of you playing along at home, score yourself based on how many of these you spot that we break before January 7th.

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Earl Fando's New Year's Resolutions for 2009

• Post more often and get the whole crew to post more often as well. Encourage them, praise them, offer gentle words of support, and then badger and humiliate them if they falter, just like the professional, paid editors do.
  
  
• Give up smoking. (Oh, sorry... that's from President Obama's New Year's Resolutions list. I've never so much as lit up. I have this cough, you see, and...)
  
  
• Learn the rules to jai alai. If one is to mock something, one should at least understand it somewhat... a little... I may glance through the Wikipedia entry... the heading at least.
  
  
• Eat more marmite.
  
  
• Play at least one game of Risk, just to show I can still roll a mean dice.
  
  
• Get fitter. The Fandos have gotten a Wii Fit this year and I will try to get the most out of the silly thing as I can before the next debilitating back injury.
  
  
• Mock Wii Fit every step of the way... Turnabout is fair play after all. The thing mocks me every time I step on it.
  
  
• Get the new blog template up and all the changes that go with it, instead of merely alluding to it every 4 months*
  
  
• Try not to go mental every time Arsenal don't take three points. I mean, it's only a game right; even if they can't manage a &^%$ing goal against &%$#ing Stoke City. What in %$#& happened to the %$#&ing defence??? $%#&!!!! Right... I'll work on that.
  
  
• Actually play the edition of Football Manager on my PC, instead of just staring at it the way a hungry raccoon eyes a wastebin.
  
  
• More prank phone calls to celebrities and politicians... I still haven't tried out my Joe Biden impersonation on Barbara Streisand. "What's that Mr. Vice-President? You think James [Brolin] looks like a fat zombie? Well (passage deleted) and your mother!" Oh, how she'll chuckle when she realises it's not the Veep. Not that I'll tell her.
  
  
• Use more footnotes**
  
  
• Get active on Facebook. Who doesn't have time for yet one more scarcely-visited web site?
  
  
• Learn to play the bagpipes in a variety of creative ways***
  
  
• Finally play Oliver in As You Like It
  
  
• Learn to speak Japanese so I can tell what the presenters are really saying in Ninja Warrior (or Sasuke). I suspect it's much more colourful. ("Sa!!!!")
  
  
• Get a style guide for THE blog.
  
  
• Finish my paint by numbers canvas of Guernica.
  
  
• Try to actually enjoy Dick Clark's Rockin New Year's Eve, despite the fact the studio portions were obviously filmed in July.
  
  
• Make next year's resolutions list much funnier.
  

* As in now, for instance.
** As if that will help.
*** Get your minds out of the gutter people, I was referring to salsa music.

Coming out of the Closet?

No, the title is not referring to myself or any of my fellow DOUI bloggers. We're all as straight as a granite yardstick.

The closet in question is the property of a Japanese man who failed to notice that a 58 year-old woman had been living in it for a year.

A year. That's 12 months, 52 weeks, and 365 days of going to hang up your coat and not noticing the middle-aged, homeless matron curled up on a small mattress on your hat shelf.

I realise that the average Japanese man works fairly hard, and that some single people don't spend a great deal of time at home. I also realise that Japanese culture has caused people to adapt to tiny enclosed spaces, such as capsule hotels and the tunnel crawl in the second stage of Sasuke.

However, the bloke who owned this home went a flipping year without so much as a clue that a living, breathing human being was ensconced in his closet. He was only finally awakened from his gormless state by the absence of food, and this over a period of several months.

"Hmmm... that's the fifth time this week the cuttlefish snacks have vanished. I wonder if the neighborhood cats are getting in here?"

Didn't he hear the munching? The inevitable flatulence or leg tightening during moments where his uninvited guest had to go but couldn't, because he was at home strenuously avoiding his closet? Didn't she occasionally moan in her sleep? Snore? ...Have that experience where you dream you're falling and then loudly jerk yourself awake?

After about a year, he finally discovered that someone was in the house when he had a security camera placed in the home and noticed someone moving about his bachelor pad. Even then he thought the woman was breaking in. I guess that would explain the absence of broken glass or mangled locks, right?

My conclusion: This woman is the greatest ninja of our age. Sign her up for Kunoichi right now... and check your closets.