Angry New Year

Happy New Year folks. Contractual obligations mean I must make at least one joke about not fulfilling resolutions in the first issue of the year, so here it is right now: I like my resolutions like I like my awkward man-hugs. Well-meaning initially and…not drawn out?

I’m not sure where I’m going with that. This is why we don’t do resolutions pieces any more. That, and there’s always someone making a computer monitor joke. Anyone making a joke about 4:3 aspect ratios really needs to take a long, hard look at where their lives went wrong.

Anyway, that’s my job description fulfilled until there’s another big news story about governments that I have to roll my eyes at. Let’s talk books. I’ve been reading ‘Machine Of Death’, a charming tome about the future and our death. It’s a collection of short stories all wrapped around the same premise - that a machine exists that can tell you the manner in which you are going to die. Not when. Not where. Not even specifically how - a diagnosis of OLD AGE could be passing away peacefully at the age of eighty, or it could mean being bludgeoned to death by a pensioner in a bus stop queue.

It’s a great premise. It’s a great premise because of the many things people wish they knew in life - the lottery numbers, the difference between the two flavours of coffee on offer in Starbucks - the manner in which they would die must surely be on a lot of people’s lists. It also turns out to be a good way to bring out interesting ideas in writers. Everything from medical dramas to high school frustrations; from the absurdity of EXHAUSTION FROM SEX WITH A MINOR as a prediction to the unsettling forecast of DESPAIR as the cause of death.

The poor sod whose coffin I stood next to earlier this week, reading a poem out, would’ve had a pretty sorry prediction. AGGRESSIVE INFECTION FROM HEROIN OVERUSE or something similar.

I suppose we desire to know how we’ll die because we think we might be able to avert it or prevent it. The story’s crux is that we cannot. Knowing our fate doesn’t give us the power to change it, and the happiest stories in the book revolve around people who accept that rather than panicking over what might become of them.

I don’t like funerals, but I’ve had a steady stream of them over the last few years. Certainly, family ones became annual events, but there have been departmental ones, and a friend’s too. The chap who was laid to rest this week had been sitting at my father’s funeral not so long ago, reminiscing with me about life and how unfair it was that someone should die at that age. Irony is something that is rarely lost on the universe, I guess.

Many of the stories in ‘Machine of Death’ reference groups that either protest against the machine, or vehemently refuse to use them or be tested in any way. They declare that “life is for living” and knowledge of their death would only curse them mentally. I imagine a lot of people have that feeling when reading the book; that they wouldn’t use such a machine if it existed, no matter how darkly interesting it might be.

Which kind of takes me back around to the opening, and how I said I didn’t want to talk resolutions. A lot of people seem to obsess over them at this time of year, which is why we get that familiar host of commentary on them. I imagine most of the Felix readership didn’t make them but feel they should have done; that perhaps another year has passed without any obvious self-improvement or dream-achieving.

Our illustrious comment editor said that she hoped we might have some positive messages for the start of the year. I’m not big on them generally, so here’s my contribution, seeing as it’s 2011 and all: self–improvement can start whenever, and your dreams will still be achievable in ten years time. Kiss goodbye to resolutions for another few months, and go and enjoy being alive. Laugh at people buying sandwiches in Pret. Order a round of tap water for everyone in the Union bar. And for Christ’s sake, stop worrying. Plenty of time to worry about death and old age another day.

Next week - fuck you all, I hate you.