Burning With Optimism's Flames

It's New Year's Eve. Like most holidays and occasions of note, I always anticipate NYE with unbridled optimism. That's my problem, really - I am doomed to be the eternal optimist, and therefore doomed to an inevitable anticlimax. I never see it coming. In the case of NYE, I always envision it as the big happy party with the countdown and the big kiss at midnight with the pretty woman while streamers descend in their myriad colors around our heads, and yet come midnight I'm sat watching a DVD while everyone around me sleeps, all having conked out at about 9:45.
Same goes for Christmas - I always approach it with that childlike giddiness and then right after the presents are opened it becomes more like the Bataan death march through tons of cooking and cleanup and trash removal and everyone sitting around watching bloody football on MY bloody TV and sleeping. Again with the sleeping. And not leaving, either. Just sitting around waiting for the next lot of grub to come up. And don't even get me started on Easter, 4th of July, Labor Day, Arbor Day, Whit Sunday etc.

I am inexplicably optimistic about the coming year. 2010 is going to be my year! Heck yeah! I rule!... whatever. We'll see. I'm a Sagittarius, which is generally supposed to be the most optimistic sign, if you believe in horriblescopes. Whatever the reason for my unparalleled inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome, let's not get mired in pop psychology and mysticism, and instead, do what we do best. Seek out a song whose message is somewhat apropos. I have selected the very wonderful XTC's "Burning With Optimism's Flames". I love XTC, not least because of Andy Partridge's lyrical genius. In this particular song, listen for the lines "I can't stop this grinning/So assume I'm winning/Threw pessimism in the air, it's spinning/Crashing to the floor and nevermore will it lure me away/With sweets and shiny things just like a magpie". 
Well, it's seven minutes to the big moment when Ryan Seacrest's balls drop -I mean, the ball drops in Times Square on Ryan Seacrest's New Year's Rockin' Eve, so whaddya say we post this puppy to the Web, the last one of 2009. *sniff* Oh, I'm getting all misty. Happy New Year! It will be the best ever!