Mr. Wrong: Once you Gain the Ability to Appreciate Nothing it is Something Quite Unlike Anything

By By Joe MacLeod

City Paper

Jan 06, 2015 11:28 AM

Woweeee! This is absolutely one of my favemost times of year right now, seriously. Because it is Nothing! I mean, Your Results May Vary, but personally and for me, right now at this time of year after The Holidays, and The End of the Year, and The Beginning of the Year, it’s wide open, man! Nothing!

Now there is no Holiday to prepare for or spend money on or willfully Ignore! Now there is no Family Obligation on any specific date! Now there is Zero stuff to do beyond showing up for a meal! Or a card game! Or some Simulcast at the track! Ordering a pizza will have the preparation, anticipation, and deadline magnitude equal that of any National Holiday! It's the Most Nothing Time of the Year!

Look, here's how it breaks down for me, I have it memorized frontways and backward, just for the next week for example, check it out:

Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday.

That's it! That's the whole Week in Nothing, and then next Monday? The one after This Monday? You know what's going on? Monday! All day! That's what's going on Monday, it's crazy! I can't wait for all the Nothing! It's like a whole other-nother type of Non-Holiday Holiday!

This Nothing Time of Year, for me, it is a dark velvety vast endless Void of blissful eternal Nothingness, but not like being asleep and/or unconscious, it is a Conscious Vacuum filled with the Awareness that here is Nothing! Surrounded by Nothing, swimming in Nothing, swaddled in so much Nothing! It’s more like being asleep and awake at the same time, and you don’t even have to look at the teevee! Un/Consciousness! It’s just out there, on the Calendar, so much Nothing to fly over and under and through and beyond, to not-Choose Your Own Non-Adventure and then fill it in with all the Nothing you can eat!

I sincerely hope you are experiencing Nothing right now in the fullest sense of the way I celebrate Nothing, and I hope your Own Personal Nothing is nothing you ever hoped it would be! Or something! And more! And less!

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Hey, let's do Nothing together and not plan it and not put it on a calendar or anything, we can all just Nothing So Hard in our own space-time continuum! Ready, set, Nothing!

Wow, that was great. OK, I hate to interrupt all the Nothing with Something, and this might be nothing, but this is about people who seem to have the worst kind of Nothing in their skulls while they are operating a Motor Vehicle. The other day I was driving around in my car, minding my own business, and I rolled up to an intersection and stopped at the big fat line painted on the street, which is called the "stop line." Here is a definition of that term from the State Highway Administration of Maryland:

The idea is there is a stop line and when you properly stop your roll, you leave room for pedestrians and sometimes for vehicles that have a large turning radius. How many times have you been second or third in line at a red light, and there’s an oncoming bus or giant truck trying to turn through the intersection, and suddenly there’s a bunch of backup lights in your face and people inside their cars are swivelling their heads looking around trying to back up and people are confused and there’s honking and drivers freaking the fuck out because hey why are you backing up what the hell is going on, and eventually errbody inches back a li’l bit, li’l bit, li’l bit, and the oncoming gigantor bus or truck is moving towards you, a li’l bit, li’l bit, li’l bit, and the front of that giant vehicle swings wa-aaaaaaay over and you think somebody’s gonna get the front of their car ripped off but then the leviathan conveyance slides past you, and you’re like, “why the fuck did that happen? Why can’t people stop in the correct spot so we don’t have to do that shit?” I’m not gonna lie, sometimes I roll past the stop line and wonder why pedestrians are walking super close to the front of my car, and I realize it’s because my ride is crowding or occupying the crosswalk. I have been on the other side of this interaction, and you’re like, “fuck, I either gotta walk with my ass half out into oncoming traffic, or walk around the back of this inconsiderate motorist who just parked their fucking car in the middle of my crosswalk, jeez, thanks 1 Percenter, us Little People need all the exercise we can get, thanks for the opportunity for me to hike all the way around your stupid Car of Privilege, jackass.” Thank you.

Don't forget, please to be making a list of your own personal and highly subjective Top Tens of 2014 and ship 'em to me at the below email address. You might win a prize, which might be better than nothing.

Email: wrongcolumn@gmail.com
Tweet: @MRWRONGCOLUMN

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