Happy New Year!

Ah... expectations of '09. You've been keeping me up at night. As I lay in bed with the holiday cheer wearing off like a hangover: sweat and smokers' breath, I've come up with a few theories, each one bleaker than the last of what the new year will bring. I don't know about you, but I'm a consummate believer in low expectations leading to high results. If your expectations are high, then you might as well lay down and let the new year walk all over your tender hopes and dreams.



That being said, I'm pretty sure that in 2009 we'll be driving around in flying cars, or just lifting off ourselves into orbit. I predict streets paved in recycled concrete and cars running on solar power. A return to prohibition times for a whole two weeks before an uproar occurs which leads to the de-criminalization of marijuana. Weekends on Mars and summers on the Moon. I predict lots of strollers, lots of coffins, lots of success and petty failures. I expect some hardships, a moment of grace, and then all that good stuff we've been imagining, dreaming and holding onto, rolling in like waves off an ocean touching the grains of a parched beach.

I don't know what I'm saying. Just publicly publishing dreams I have. People twirling, flying, expanding and contracting, a whole sky full of people playing, laughing, dancing and jumping. In my dreams, no one ever touches. The digital revolution at a high price. Will we become nothing but ideas conversing in an open space of more ideas, forgetting the physicallity of the human experience?



Before I get too carried away let's have a round up of great '08 things:

1) vampires
2) "consumer rebellion"
3) dance pop


4) free shows
5) parties
6) accountability
7) new way of life
8) change
9) green revolution
10) OBAMA

and of course the not-so-great:

1) Palin

2) recession
3) bail out
4) corporate corruption
5) nihilism
6) loss
8) prop 8
9) break-ups
10) rock

and the in-between

1)the digital revolution

For a roaring '09 a couple of bottles of champagne. What's the point of celebrating if what you're drinking isn't bubbly and doesn't light up the inside of your heart and head like a christmas tree? At midnight, instead of searching for that magical kiss supposed to erase all our troubles so we can start fresh, I'll be standing outside looking at the sky and seeing our future written in the stars.

-Kastoory