2026 - we offer our sins to tlazolteotl who might eat them on the past year's corpse and absolve us
despite my on-and-off relationship with this blue website, i have written a new year's post every year since i began using tumblr, except for last year. and i think the reason 2025 sucked donkey danglers is because i never wrote a post to ring in that new year. of course there were many other larger reasons why last year was a real shitstorm of epic proportions but my comedic coping mechanism won't let me reflect on all of them. ha ha ha. i made funny joke. i don't know man. i'm tired.
anyway 2025 has left us and now 2026 has taken its place and might i say something in the air feels sweeter. of course all the reasons 2025 stunk still exist and will most likely proceed in the new year but if last year taught us righteous folks anything it is that the people who are out to get us are not invincible. in fact while their propensity for evil may strike initial fear in our hearts our brains will eventually remind us that these people are very stupid. the president of the united states said he takes too much aspirin to make sure his blood remains thin while he eats four meals from mcdonalds in one sitting. i mean good god man. he just doesn't care about anything. at this point i think the president of the united states and everyone around him should become a case study in nihilism. they really don't care what they do as long as they get their face on a screen and maybe another dollar in their pocket. the president can gorge himself on fast food and fling around the resulting feces like a mad ape while his health secretary tells people to drink more raw milk. this is their american dream and our nightmare.
but the past year showed us that among these brutes, the people who still care about other people exist in droves. there are still people in positions of power who care about making life affordable and enjoyable for all. there are still people in your area who care about treating each other with kindness, in big ways and small. there are still communities where great art and mutual aid and new ideas flourish. and there are still people around the world focused on the same things that james truslow adams wished for all americans when he coined the term "american dream": the ability for all to live without financial worry, with a roof over their head, for everyone to enjoy the free realms of "communal, spiritual, and intellectual life".
that's right, you right-wing crybabies: the american dream was inherently socialist. zohran mamdani's the mayor of new york city. take that back to your penthouses where you only live six months out of the year.
i read a thing on the feed of articles that google chrome's ios browser shows every time i open a new tab. i usually gloss right over this feed, but this time a headline read: "why 2026 is a "1" year". the article said that the digits of 2026 add up to 10, and the digits of 10 add up to 1, and therefore this year was the start of a new cycle, a new opportunity for beginning, a chance to start over. i don't put too much faith in numerology, to tell you the truth. i like tarot more when it comes to divination, as the cards have never failed me. i see no point in doing math to derive spiritual messages.
but i'll take it, random article from chrome's news feed. i sorta get what they're after. last time the digits of the added up to 1 was in 2017, and that started a cycle of cruelty and confusion. before that was 2008, which was basically obama's entire presidency, and things weren't too bad. before that was 1999, which i guess i would classify as an era of reckoning. i could get into that more later.
but for now, let 2026 start an era of good tidings. we've been through enough shit in the first quarter of this 21st century. the millennials who saw the beginning of it with bright eyes have become wrinkled and grizzled in the cold winds of time, and the future generations see us and fear for their own futures, while most of the population of the past generations - the boomers and gen-x-ers - have resigned themselves to their mortality, taking their trauma and treasures with them and leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves. we have a good load of work ahead of us. let this be when we begin the work of healing. no time like the present.
star trek's official canon says that 2026 is the year world war iii officially begins. i know it's fiction, but by god, i hope we can get to warp speed capability without having to go through any more war bullshit. by god, i hope the star trek lore is wrong. live long and prosper, motherfuckers.
(note: i realized upon checking my archive that i also did not write a new year's post for 2024, and my post for 2023 was rather short. oh well! again, i have not paid much attention to tumblr as of late and perhaps i should rectify that in 2026, as there are still many good things here. it's sure better than that other social media website that used to start with "t", let me tell you. i hear the stories about it on bluesky from people who still venture to the dark side for journalism purposes. the platform formerly known as twitter should be abolished and its servers should be melted.)
