1-1-11

Today is January 1, 2011 (that is, if you believe the calendar), otherwise known as 1-1-11. A number of numerologically-minded people have noted the singular (heh) nature of the date and asked me what I make of it.

I'm not the superstititous type - or rather, I operate on an entirely different set of superstitions than the average person. I don't put a lot of stock in playing mystic-number games, which earns me great enmity from some of my conspiracy-theory pals who find great significance in extracting numbers like 13, 666, and 9-11 from all texts by any means necessary, even if it involves Chinese algebra to make the data cough up the desired results.

But this time, I do have a soft spot for the symbolism of the positive-ness of a day that's rendered in all ones, because my new year's resolution for 2011 is to delete negative influences from my life.

I don't mean that in a saccharine pie-in-the-sky "power of positive thinking" nicey-nicey airheaded kind of way, to be sure. I'll still come across as the same curmudgeonly crank as always, as far as the folks in our studio audience can see. What I really mean by it is that I have always made an extra undeserved effort to befriend and communicate with obnoxious and negative people, even as they're picking my pocket and placing stones in my passway. As of today, the meter has run out.

Strictly for the purposes of this blog post, I even consulted (against my better judgment) a numerology website and was surprised to find that it gloomily predicts "the year as a whole may be fraught with intolerance and regress". Damn, even the New Agers are harshing my mellow already.

What does this have to do with Kentucky? Well, not a darned thing, to tell the truth. But hey, here's a picture of Isaac Shelby: