The New Year

Gutentag, meinen Freunden

Gaspard and I have decided to check in with you and discuss a few things. We would first like to commemorate the one year anniversary of the founding of The Rakish Life. On January 12th, 2009 (or New Years Eve of 2008, depending on your choice of calendar*) Gaspard and I first introduced ourselves to you. So, Happy Birthday - to us! Since our first entry, our year has been a blur of constant writing and editing. We have posted at a blistering pace - on average once every 18 days, but often taking breaks of months at a time to restore our constitutions - and have veritably flayed our already delicate nervous systems (Note: it is still unclear as to whether the nerves originate in the brain or in the heart; refer to the post on Health). The demands of this high paced technological lifestyle put us under too much undue strain. Which brings us to our next topic of conversation - New Year's Resolutions. With the new year rapidly approaching, tomorrow being the First of Ianuarius 2010, Gaspard and I have taken time to reflect on the past year and set resolutions for the upcoming one.

The importance of sticking to these cannot be stressed enough. Just last year, We resolved to work as little as possible. However, we failed miserably. As you well know, early in the month of September (September 23 by your Gregorian reckoning), we opened the depths of our knowledge, both esoteric and practical, to fathoming by all and sundry. The sheer volume of mail, by internet and by post, that we received almost immediately after extending this courtesy was the final shock. The toil required to answer even a tenth of these letters would in all probability have killed us. So, we elected to flee, taking only those letters that smelled of particularly intoxicating perfumes.

Consulting our medical encyclopaediae, we realized that our usual regimen of wine and friction would be insufficient; the only thing that could save us was the Cure. So, we immediately took ship (read: stowed away) to Europe and made our way to Baden-Baden. Parsifal was on in the Festspielhaus when we arrived, and everything looked like it would be all right. However, Gaspard lost all of our money playing baccarat in the casino, and we were forced to flee north to the Rheingau. Things looked bleak. However, on our first day in Wiesbaden, Gaspard redeemed himself by saving an aging matron from drowning in a natatorium. As it turned out, Frau Philippsthal has been a resident of Wiesbaden for fifteen years, having been using the spa cure to break a crippling laudanum addiction. Unfortunately, she also abets this dependence by secretly ordering three dozen phials of laudanum a month direct from Ludwigshafen. In return for saving her life, she allowed Gaspard to stay in her quarters for as long as he liked. Thankfully, the woman's perpetual opiate daze allowed both of us to come and go as we liked, so long as we never appeared before her at the same time. Despite our widely divergent appearances and facial hair styles, our lotophagian host was never able to tell that we were two completely different people.

This trying ordeal, the cause of which was over-expenditure of effort on our part, has led us to resolve to work even less than the year before. Because this blog is where the bulk of our energies are expended, expect to hear from us quarterly.

Although working less is of primary importance, the more resolutions we set, the fewer we can break, so here are a few more:

- I have resolved to stop frequenting houses of easy virtue, while due to an acute case of Yellow Fever, Gaspard has resolved to double his visits.

- We have resolved to stop patronizing our local Polish deli for reasons that will be kept between Stanislaw and ourselves.

- We have resolved to finish our Discourse of the Superiority of Man

- Gaspard has resolved to finish his Triptych depicting the Life of St. Hilarion, the commission for which was paid by the Archdiocese of New York over 3 years ago. He has also resolved to learn how to paint.

- I resolve to cure the Laudanum addiction that I picked up while in Wiesbaden.

- We both resolve to stop eating fattening ethnic foods, which is a shame because I really like spaghetti.

- Scratch that, we both resolve to stop eating.

- As a gesture of uncharacteristic sympathy in These Trying Economic Times, we resolve to stop swindling the rich and instead to focus our efforts on the super rich and ultra rich.

- Gaspard resolves not to pick up women at Sunday Mass, and will instead wait until he sees them in the vestibule after Mass ends. I will restrict my efforts to weekday Mass.




*While we can appreciate the accomplishments of Pope Gregory XIII, most specifically his updates to the Index of Forbidden Books and his passionate anti-Protestant foreign policies, Gaspard and I bitterly oppose the Gregorian calendar which not only cuts the year short by 13 days, but also favors the landholding class by adding almost a fortnight of rent per year! Instead we favor the intricacies and leap year errors of the classic Julian calendar.