The end of the year is the traditional period for taking stock and contemplating the inexorable march of time and how it's ravaged our once-beautiful faces. In most of the northern hemisphere we associate these depressing annual summing-up periods with the chill and deadness of wintry desolation and upper respiratory ailments that could easily turn into bronchitis if you're not careful. The earth, as you've probably heard unless you went to elementary school in California or the deep south, has a more or less spherical form and can therefore be divided into top and bottom halves of a darling bowl shape. If you were to cut the earth in half with a knife the two pieces would wobble on the counter (instantly killing millions), the exposed center of one half containing the "pit" or molten core (Hell), the center of the other half wriggling with surplus demons and the sorrowful ghosts of extinct species and teeming with millions of pieces of missing luggage. Everything in the southern hemisphere is like a topsy turvy version of its corresponding element in the northern or "real" hemisphere. Moral codes are reversed, making the southern hemisphere a refuge for geriatric Nazis and unrepentant homosexuals.

Where was I going with this? Who knows. You don't mind, you've probaby been drunk since yesterday. Oh yes, the end-of-the-year assessment period, the time for breaking out the Regret Ledger and doing the somber accounts. This is the time of year when the past and future crowd you from both sides and you feel like you can't breathe and might have a panic attack at any moment, or burst into tears when that horrifying cartoon comes on, Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey. Poor Nestor first has to endure the cruel taunts about his suggestively long ears, then the horror and shock of his mother's frozen corpse on top of him, and then must deal with the final humiliation of being ridden by that dreadful woman all the way to fucking Bethlehem so she can expel Christ from her dirty dirty womb. This is a morbid and sickening fable, perfect for triggering a cleansing holiday season emotional meltdown. Let it all out, things will look so much better in the gloomy doldrums of January, when emotional frostbite terminally deadens the parts of you that feel.