Apart from the submental whoo-whooing from the drunks, last night’s Eiffel Tower light show in Paris was really sub-par…if this is in fact what happened. Where were the fireworks? Was their absence an austerity measure by French president Francois Hollande? The Tour Eiffel sparkly-twinkly thing happens every night in Paris after dark. It’s nothing. I saw the greatest fireworks show in my life 13 years ago in front of the Eiffel Tower…me and the kids. I’ll never forget it.

Posted two years ago: One, I haven’t been to a New Year’s Eve party in ages. And two, my last really cool New Year’s Eve celebration happened 12 years ago in Paris. But as I have nothing new to say, it couldn’t hurt to post the best-written humbug rants from the last four or five years.

Posted last year: “There’s nothing fills me with such spiritual satisfaction as my annual naysaying of this idiotic celebration of absolutely nothing.

“I love clinking glasses with cool people at cool parties, but celebrating renewal by way of the hands of a clock and especially in the company of party animals making a big whoop-dee-doo has always felt like a huge humiliation.

“Only idiots believe in the idea of a of a midnight renewal. Renewal is a constant. Every morning…hell, every minute marks the potential start of something beautiful and cleansing, and perhaps even transforming. So why hang back and celebrate a rite that denies this 24/7 theology, and in a kind of idiot-monkey way with party hats and noisemakers?

“I would feel differently if I was in Paris or Prague or Rome. It’s another thing over there.”

Posted six years ago: “My all-time best New Year’s Eve happened in Paris on the 1999-into-2000 Millenium year — standing about two city blocks in front of the Eiffel Tower and watching the greatest fireworks display ever orchestrated in human history. And then walking all the way back to Montmartre with thousands on the streets after the civil servants shut the subway down at 1 a.m.”

Posted five years ago: “I need to stay in the city until sometime in the early morning, despite the intense cold and wind. I live below a family of animals — Hispanic party elephants — who stomp around and play music so loud that the building throbs and the plaster cracks. It’s a fairly safe bet they’re going to lose their minds tonight so I may as well just huddle down in the city and bounce around from bar to bar. New Year’s Eve is the emptiest holiday ritual of the year, and an opportunity for shallow under-30s to act like assholes.”

Posted seven years ago: “I’d say ‘Happy New Year’ to everyone, but…all right, ‘Happy New Year.’ But I’ve always hated saying those words. Nothing’s ‘happy’ by way of hope. Happy is discovered, earned, lucked into, found. At best, people are content, joyously turned on for the moment, laughing or telling a funny story or a good joke, placated, relaxed, energetic, enthused, full of dreams, generous of heart, intellectually alive…but ‘happy’? The word itself has always struck me as one that only simple minds would use.

“I’m not forking over $14 to any bartenders for a drink. Anywhere. I don’t care who I’m with or what anyone thinks of this policy/attitude. I’ll give $14 to a homeless person first. I won’t give my money to anyone or anything that rubs me the wrong way tonight. I hate everything about New Year’s Eve, especially young guys going ‘ooowwwoooaaagghh!’ in animal bars as midnight approaches.

“We all know the same mistakes are going to be made over the next twelve months, and that the only thing certain is that everything will be more expensive twelve months from now. The only comfort I have is this: the morons who believe global warming is a myth are going to meet each other at parties and get married and have kids and try to teach their children that global warming is a myth, but a significant number of these people are going to fail in this effort because kids always see through their parents’ bullshit.”

From the Wiki page: “‘Auld Lang Syne=’ is a Scottish poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song. The title may be translated into English literally as “old long since”, or more idiomatically, ‘long long ago’, ‘days gone by’ or ‘old times.'”