The Year Ends With a List of Small Crimes

Sixty-two editions of this column, and here we are at the last one of the year. No sentiment. Just one more round of irresponsible instructions before the ball drops.

Spend New Year’s Eve working through someone’s painstakingly compiled hundred-best-tracks-of-2011. Accept that your laptop may not survive the ordeal. While you’re at it, try cybersex with a complete stranger—but understand that the internet has no address verification system, so you may end up delivering a digital orgasm directly to a family member or the math teacher who ruined ninth grade for you. These things happen. Also, if you’re near a dumpster: read the signage before discarding anything. Basic etiquette.

Wash your dildos. I have to keep including this. Apparently.

Find someone to properly teach you how to dance to electronic music—not swaying, not nodding, actually dancing. Do not fall in love with them. Watch a small child explain the full horror of sexist consumer culture, agree with every point, then resolve to only buy products with green packaging going forward. Change your clothes directly in front of your window. Your neighbors have had a long year too and they deserve something.

When you visit a friend’s new baby, lean over the crib and say, with genuine warmth: She’s going to grow up so fast. Before you know it she’ll be sucking dick. Then enjoy the room temperature. On the more genuinely moving end of things: find the South Korean teenager covering Adele that was everywhere recently, let it wreck you slightly, and then you’re done with Adele until at least spring. Close the year with the Nyan Cat in full ceremonial form. You’ve earned it.