2009 is lookin’ fine!

Remember those geektacular little slogans we had for our graduating years of high school?
We’re so good. We’re so great! We’re the class of ’88!

I think we like to apply that lingoliciousness to our mantras for the new year when we’re sure we’re going to kick the hiney and take the names. It’s a way of motivating through that spoken tradition humans carried through the ages on the tongues of warriors and wise ones, word wranglers and wiseguys.

Mantras are a way to connect with our inner chanters, wordy white noise, much like the army cadences that keep combat boots moving forward in unison.

I don’t know but I been told
The mess hall food looks mighty old

People love those short rhyming pairings, snowballing through time since pre-dawn to the modern age, when motivational yells, calls, bumper stickers and beliefs (If it is to be, it is up to me) bring a level of excitement to even the most mundane of tasks.

Still, there is something more gutteral and primal about the shorter yells, chants and cheers. Whether they are muttered as thighs burn, abs twitch or a hand puts the danish back into the box, one thing stands clear: We’re suckers for a good rhyme.

So, on to 2009, when a bevy of mantras folly forth from the tongues and qwerties of men and women looking for a new lease on life:

We’re looking fine in 2009! (That’s the rah rah of the ’80’s you know and love)

I’ll wine and dine in 2009. (All right, Rico Suave)

I’ll make moonshine in 2-oh-09. (anyone seen Elliot Ness?)

I won’t stop tryin’ in two-oh-niyin. (It’s that noncommittal attitude you have to love)

I make it mine in two-oh-nine. (Ride it like you stole it)

I draw the line in 2009. (Who died, put you in boots and made you Colonel Travis?)

I walk the line in 2009. (You don’t happen to know a Boy Named Sue, Do You?)

Frankenstein in 2009! (I suppose if he was running for President, or if 2009 was an election year. But really. Bolts in your neck and you scare children. Come on. That makes you like Marilyn Manson.)

8-6-7-5-3-0h-9 (What? You saw that one coming a mile away.)

What is your mantra as we move forward from making smoochyface with orange cheeto lips of iniquity and turn into the rightwous fist pumping pundits of the coming year?

Whatever it is, may you be safe and sane on this December 31, 2008 holiday!