You know you love them. Those wonderful little stories of people proving Darwin’s claims of the survival of the fittest by opting out of the human race through shear stupidity. It seems to me that this year’s list is a bit darker than previous ones, however. The original winner was disqualified. The First Runner Up actually seems to fit the bill nicely, however…

I resolve for 2007…

…to be more diligent in seeking out the joy in life.

…to write more, for the sake of writing, as a crutch for introspection, and to tell the stories that bounce around in my head.

…to be open to adventure, to seek exhilaration, and to just every so often throw caution to the wind.

…to be there to teach my children, to protect them, and to see the world through their eyes.

Some fun for us music geeks…

Hey, I played a bass when I was kid and couldn’t stop laughing. A Merry Christmas to all!

Dick in a Box from Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg

Andy is the highlight of SNL these days for me…and if you want to see the uncensored version you can find it on NBC’s site.

I have made a living for a great deal of my life as a writer. Not the sexy I just hit the NYT Bestseller List stuff, but more mundane things. I wrote and published newsletters for book collectors for about ten years, wrote for several financial newsletters for several years, did some freelance research writing for some Wall Street firms, and most recently have been writing about SPACs (you’ll just have to look it up if you care) for another specialty financial publication. But over the last several months I’ve moved from a regular job back into the project world. I’ve stacked myself up pretty heavily for the next several months with a nearly fulltime gig for the summer and another 10 hour/week consulting job on top of that. And I’ve committed to a couple of more articles on those SPACs.

At my last fulltime gig I had an office girlfriend….a MARRIED office girlfriend. Actually I had several of them over the couple of years I served my time there. But I’ve moved on and my office girlfriend is gone. But while we were together, it was wonderful. We sat together at lunch meetings and served on committees together. We snuck out for ice cream cones on insane days when the temptation of looking out the window at the bay on a sunny warm day was too much for us. We were there for each other. Oh no, wait. I see what you’re thinking! Get your mind out of the gutter. We kept each other sane while all around us, assholes reigned. That’s what office girl and boyfriends do for each other.

I’ve made my living for a great portion of my life as a writer, though of the dedicated, owned variety. I recently delivered and saw published the first freelance article I’d taken on in quite awhile. Can I jump into freelancing and make a living? Probably not–the ex and the creditors and the electric company are unlikely to agree to a complete cut and run. But I think I can make it into a nice sideline and I am all about mulitple streams of income and diversity at the moment.

Nearly ten years back a fellow rotisserie league baseball player pitched me a murder mystery plot that revolved around a serial killer knocking off major leaguers in order to win his local fantasy league. Yeah, some of these people are that…umm….dedicated.

This month’s Fast Company has an article about James Montier, the Global Equity Strategist for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. Do you remember that name? He made a bit of a splash a couple of years ago by putting out a “research report” entitled “The Psychology of Happiness”. The subheading reads–

If you are after specific investment advice, stop reading now. We seek to explore one of Adam Smith’s obsessions: what it means to be happy. We also discuss why that’s important to investors, and how we can seek to improve our own levels of happiness…

Did you read Frank’s excellent book on politics of the midwest in What’s the Matter with Kansas? Well you should. Click the link and have Amazon send you one over. But Kansas seems a pauper in light of the latest shenanigans happening in Jefferson City.

I’ve been storing a few things up in my brain that need to be dumped out somewhere, and its either here or the floor of the bathroom at the hole-in-the-wall bar down the street. And last time I did THAT, well, lets just say that I found out there are other uses for that mop in the corner…

No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy is the author’s first since his critically lauded and award winning Border Series (which began with All the Pretty Horses, one of my personal five favorite books of all time). Its a thriller underneath with bad people doing bad things to other bad people, drug money leading to killings, and a pile of money. You pretty much know where it will end as soon it gets started.

In a previous life I read books and wrote about them. I did reviews, but more than that I helped my readers identify collectible authors as early in their careers as possible. Clearly my self-confidence was much higher then, given the vanity of thinking I could recognize genius better than the rest of you. Then again, there is a lot to be said about reading and writing for a living. I read both literary and mystery books for two publications (which I also published and edited which made it easier to get that job). If you have a passion for reading books in both these categories, you know that it is very seldom that you see much cross-over. Almost by definition, literary novels seldom contain the intricate plotting and twists of a good mystery. And mysteries almost never have the wonderful high style and lyricism of literary works. Mysteries are generally about the story-telling and literary books are about the writing. As readers, we are ok with that. Each category of books comes with different expectations.