el milésimo

In its 999 previous entries, this blog has saved six lives, converted eighty-three people to Zoroastrianism, undergone plastic surgery eleven and a half times, used 23,894 indefinite articles, sailed through fifteen global crises, ignored hundreds of pertinent questions, sold zero advertisements, offered seventeen compelling reasons to take up smoking, and tested thirty-five toys for child safety, none passing.

More impressive, though, is the list of items this blog hasn't accomplished. It has consistently failed to ignite WTO protests, spark KFC boycotts, predict NFL champions, preview ABC miniseries, out CIA spies, escape FBI wiretaps, relax EPA restrictions, understand DEA priorities, delouse GOP leadership, appreciate CBS sitcoms, or violate NBA dress codes.

And that's just the three-letter initialisms.

For the next thousand, I offer you a plethora of promises, a bold outlook for the future. Inspiration. Hope.

Wherever stuff happens, and I think of somethin' witty to say about it, I'll be there. Wherever a politician barfs into the lap of a Japanese dignitary, I'll be there. I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build--I'll be there, too.

I make this Whitmanesque oath because I am Walt Whitman.

I lean and loaf and scratch where it itches. I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world, in the culverts where children pluck legs off insects, in the subways where a million strangers ignore a million more, in the lunch lines where vegetables recline stupidly, in smoke-filled alleys and back rooms, in the cables and wires that shuttle thoughts from Massachusetts to Texas, Thoreau be damned.

I am over, under, within, without, together, apart. I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, Mr. Logic Man. I am large. I contain multitudes.

I am an army of one.

Join me.