Happy New Year, all!
And yes, I can still say “Happy New Year” at the time of writing this because it’s still a few days within the New Year’s Statute of Limitations. You can’t wish anyone a “Happy New Year” after January 5th. 7th is pushing it. 10th is full-blown insanity.
I was “Happy New Year’d” in February a few years ago. It was such a baffling occurrence that I still think about it every January.
Which is why I’m really happy that Larry David has also provided an official word on this because it means I can stay consistent with my blog having a Seinfeld or Curb reference in every single one.
The real reason I’m writing this is because I feel like 2024 is just closer to the future than the last few years. Doesn’t it to you?
I remember having a retrospective look back at a decade when it was 2019, turning into 2020. That was the last time I really felt this way.
Up until the shitshow that was 2020 actually began, I felt like I was actually jumping into something new.
Once we got into the 2020s, the future sort of arrived. But once we had to spend it inside most of the time and people felt like they lost 1-2 years of their lives because of the COVID lockdowns, everything got put on pause.
However, things started to happen once we moved into the 2020s.
Back to the Future was now bullshit:
Blade Runner was also bullshit:
And 2001: Space Odyssey among many others has all been bullshit for a long time:
Now, those three movies are three of the greatest movies of all-time. Two of which (being Blade Runner and Back to the Future) are in my Top Films of All-Time.
But if you were picking up what I was putting down, it seems like our view of the future is sort of crashing down to reality very quickly. But while there are no flying DeLoreans that run on garbage, Siri and Alexa are eerily close to HAL but still far from it, and there are no robotic human replicants walking among us, 2024 just feels a little closer to it than the last few years have.
Even just saying 2024 is an odd thing. Looking at it is weirder too.
Things like Blade Runner 2049 and Cyberpunk 2077 are further pushing the years of possibility for the futuristic tech to bring back the wonder that the above films had.
I’ll be 52 in 2049 and 80 in 2077. What will my blog look like at those ages? Quite possibly beamed into your brains.
We’ll see when we get there.
I just realized that I didn’t really have a point to writing this blog. It was sort of just a New Year’s check-in that addressed the social conformities of the “Happy New Year” greeting and that I observed the year on the calendar as an odd one.
I’ve been writing this over the course of like 24 hours to this point and I thought I could pull it together in the end, but I just couldn’t.
Happy New Year to All! Enjoy making your own future, because the Future is What You Make of It!
~DS
The Danny Diaries 
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