It’s been five months since the 2011 Skeet of the Union, but it feels like a greater period of time has passed. While the 2011 edition was a long rambling mess, it lacked an agenda. It felt too overly personal for my own liking as I was still trying to put the pieces back together. In that time span, things, as noted many times before, have started to come together and the puzzle is like 72% complete. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that I’m obsessive compulsive, but I think breaking out of a routine took more out of me than expected. In those five months, a new routine has been established. It’s a little more free flowing, a little less anxious. It can bend, but hopefully won’t break. 

As we continue to roll into 2012, a agenda, a goal needs to established. Not necessarily a personal goal. I have those and they’re written down on paper and live in a folder that has a giant grease stain because I put a sandwich from Rinaldi’s on it. My personal goals are really simple: get a dog and create a plan to flee the country if Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich are elected president (what if they’re on the same ticket? Holy smokers!) We need to find some great goal that will unite us the same way President Obama seemed to unite us back in 2008 and early 2009. Obviously, the economic downturn and Obama’s inability to cut through the bullshit impeded that great sense of unity. We can still get it back though, right? It’s possible to have that great feeling that we’re all apart of something great? Or are we going to get sidetracked and find new ways to complain about Lana Del Rey and Whitney Cummings or the next despicable media darling/punching bag?

It all seems to move in cycles. Once we learned that Whitney Cummings’ show was moving from the holiest day for comedy nerds, Thursday night to Wednesday night and “30 Rock” would return, we took the pilars to Lana Del Rey. Sure, I made my fair share of jabs at the two, but I learned that it was futile.  Lana Del Rey didn’t offend or upset me any way. Well, in the midst of hype surrounding “Video Games,” I started to follow her on Twitter, but her account got hacked and she sent out some spam direct messages. I had to get up and check my phone (at the time, I had direct messages set to go to my phone like text messages) and I was more upset about that than any of her music or performances. She indirectly made me get up and walk into another room; the nerve of her. Sure, she seemed a little corpse like in some You Tube videos of her live performances and she looked like a Kristen Wiig character, but it never bothered me. Or never bothered me enough to constantly write about her and have some opinion on her. She’s a singer that can’t really sing and she doesn’t have an ass. That describes a lot of singers so we can move on or just let the people that like her like her without any feelings of guilt or attached irony. 

What does it matter any way? People may not necessarily be mad at Lana Del Rey, but it feels that to me. It’s misplaced frustration. Be upset with the guys who smoke weed and freestyle rap and throw a football that inadvertently hits your car in the parking lot. Be upset with whatever your version of a goofy white guy rapping, “knockin’ on heaven’s door,” that throws like a girl. 

A thing we should consider for 2012 is a buzz waiting period. In California, a person has to wait ten days before he or she (let’s be honest, it’s going to be a he) before he can own a gun. Let’s establish some rule for taste makers in all aspects of popular culture and society have to wait and sleep on a decision before declaring that such and such thing is buzz worthy. In a post Empire world, everyone wants to be the first. Yet in this race to be the first, a lot of things that gain a lot of buzz and quickly popular fade away just as quickly. Remember the group, the Black Kids? You’ve seen This Had Oscar Buzz, right? Buzz gets established too quickly for things that don’t deserve buzz or excitement. That’s why we need to have this waiting period. Publicists will naturally hate this concept, but we need this waiting period or at least, get people on conference calls to discuss things. It’ll be worth our time and save the careers of so many people. A buzz waiting period. 

Along with “Teen Mom 2,” I recently became obsessed with Instagram. Over the last few weeks, I’ve discovered a treasure trove of cool dog centric photo streams. The stream that this photo comes from belongs to pug that lives in Japan and primarily goes to Starbucks or hangs out with other cool dogs. I love it. It’s like having a dog of your own without the financial burden and mess. I’ve also noticed there’s a cool baby photo stream as well and it’s great because once again, the financial burden isn’t on me. I’m not responsible for clothing this cool child, but thank god somebody else is. 

The further I went down the Instagram rabbit hole, I noticed a trend or at least the evil side of the app. Of course, I’m projecting a lot here, but it seems as if a lot of conceited people are posting photos of themselves to further inflate their ego. There’s nothing wrong with being proud and confident in your own skin. It’s a good thing. Not to sound like a Christina Aguilarry song, but we’re all beautiful and we’re all superstars. It’s just that some people don’t necessarily need that extra boost of confidence. We shouldn’t feed into the ego of the guy with the killer abs that spent entirely too much time and effort in creating that dramatic shot of myself in the bathroom mirror (look at me being the one spending entirely complaining about this practice). That guy and that girl do not need the extra help and they need their own photo application. 

Everything on the internet runs the risk of being “MySpace”-ified, but it can be avoided. It’s going to happen sooner or later. Although, what’s worse: gentrification or MySpace-fication? 

It’s been mentioned before and perhaps does not bear repeating, but I am seriously going to pursue this podcasting this calendar year. While I have a idea/possible format/title in my head, I am generally open to the idea of calling it, “The Death Knell”. I wonder if the podcast section of iTunes will resemble the garbage dump at the beginning of Wall-E in six months from now. 

I’m not necessarily downplaying this podcast thing, it’s just hard for me to get excited about people hearing my voice. I don’t like my voice, but with my ADHD, it seems like using my voice would be more effective than writing everything down because my brain can’t keep with the way I type. The eternal struggle continues despite the medicine. It just seems that I have to or at least would need to have famous people on in order to have people listen. Would anybody want to listen to me interview my father about his on line dating experiences? I’m in love with my ideas and the various things that I find funny, but it would appeal to people? A broad range of people.