Happy New Year! Happy Reformed Gregorian Calendar 2013!

Click image to enlarge.

 

Someone -- an authentically talented visual artist -- complimented this, or got a giggle out of it, when Vleeptron first wished everybody a Happy New Year with it. 

 

So here it is again, and here's another Reformed Gregorian Calendar New Year again. And here are Vleeptron's very best and fondest wishes to all of you, and to all you love.

 

The original idea was to create a Happy New Year greeting card with no cliches. No exhausted old man in a long white beard shuffling off to make way for a newborn baby in a diaper/nappy. Vleeptron wanted a new, original cliche. So Vleeptron reached for the Einstein-Minkowski Light Cone -- the shape of Past, Present and Future, a consequence of the universe's speed limit for electromagnetic radiation (one form of which is light). When you're Here and Now, the inside of the Cone contains everything you could possibily ever perceive in the Universe, everything that was, everything that is, everything that will be.

 

To the distressing extent that Luck has anything to do with what's about to happen to all of us in the coming year, Vleeptron wishes everyone who sees this the Very Best Luck, the Very Best Year, sprinkled all over with Pleasant Surprises.

And my favorite magic spell: 

Banish Misfortune!

 

Tuesday 1 January 2013 begins in a few hours, and because the Earth revolves and is carved (awkwardly and semi-arbitrarily) into Time Zones, the whole hoopla begins (according to Wikipedia) here:

 

===============

 

The central Pacific Ocean island nation of Kiribati claims that its easternmost landmass, uninhabited Caroline Island, is the first to usher in the New Year.

 

===============

 

And eventually it will hit you, wherever you may be.

 

Oh -- just a tip about Something Wonderful coming in 2013. 

 

The buzz in the Comet Community (a very high-class bunch, with plenty of amateur members) is that Earth is going to see a spectacular comet

 

C/2012 S1 (ISON)

 

with teases that it will be the Comet of your Lifetime, will rival the full moon in the night sky, and even be visible during the day. Whatever show ISON puts on should begin around November, so you have plenty of time to plan your ISON party.

 

********

 

Traditionally at the Big Moment, everybody will sing a Scots song whose lyrics (by Robert Burns) begin

 

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind

 

The Vleeptron Dude gets sadder and sadder as time goes by and people I loved and liked and admired and got a bang out of drift away.

 

I'll be thinking of every one of you when the world sings Auld Lang Syne, and I wish to hell you'd all drop me a line and let me know sup with you. I take all the blame for all the drifting.