INTENSITY²
Start here => Games => Topic started by: skyblue1 on December 28, 2011, 03:42:02 PM
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Happy Good Riddance Day: Time to Dredge Up Your Worst Memory of the Year and Destroy
You may not be aware, but today is an important day on our nation's calendar. It is, yes, several days after Christmas, and several days until the New Year (and the eve proceeding that year). And it is a Wednesday, a/k/a, "Hump Day." But more important than all of that is, it is Good Riddance Day, a day in which you are supposed to say goodbye to all that lingering crap and the bad memories that have been clogging up your arteries or pipes or apartment or emotions or brain. Dredge that *** up and throw it away!
To assist you in this effort, the Times Square Alliance has a mobile shredding truck (along with a dumpster and sledgehammer) parked in Broadway Plaza today, as well as stations at which you can write your worst memory and then destroy it. Nothing makes old, bad memories better than an efficient disposal method. You could also do this in the comfort of your own home. Be careful about burning things, that can go badly.
Good Riddance Day promoters promise, hopefully if not scientifically: "Whether you're bidding farewell to pink slips or parking tickets, credit cards or Valentine's Day cards, the one percent or the 99 percent, your bad memories from 2011 will be destroyed, never to be seen again. This is a chance to start fresh in 2012!"
They also note that this is not "a mass shredding or disposal event." If one of your regrets is that you never bought a shredder, get thee to an office supply store.
Corny, perhaps, but we sort of like this idea of recalling the worst memory of the year, the one you've spent all year trying to forget about and get over but never fully have, because, well, sharing awful memories and regrets is fun, and, at the very least, helps create a collaborative and healthily competitive community of misery.
As for our worst memory of the year...hm...could it be the time the New York Times sent us that terrifying spam email that wasn't actually from the New York Times at all, and didn't even promise us any real money if we wrote back? Or maybe it was the Times after all! (Times, get thee to a reply-all training facility!)
Anyway, the year's not over yet.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscar...ce_day.php (http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscar...ce_day.php)
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2011 has been a mostly good year for me. The worst I had to deal with was my uncle dying of cancer. I hope my cousin Kelley in particular is feeling better now. At least no angry Mayan calendar makers were set to kill us in 2011. :zoinks:
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New Yorkers and tourists made way for the new year by destroying their bad memories in Times Square Wednesday as part of the city's fifth-annual Good Riddance Day.
Participants could either shred or smash the things they would rather leave behind in 2011.
"Anything that you write on a piece of paper goes into this shredder and actually everything gets recycled so eventually your ex-boyfriend will turn into a paper cup or a toilet paper," said Lori Raimondo of the Times Square Alliance. "And if it's a physical object we have this here so if you want to destroy that cellphone or a chair that's just been so uncomfortable, you can come here, take this mallet. We'll give you safety goggles and you just pummel it."
Among those on hand Wednesday was Katie Selman, the winner of an online contest held by document management company Cintas. Selman says she threw away military deployment papers for her husband, wishing good riddance to long military deployments so her five kids can spend more time with their dad.
"2011 was a really tough year for us, since we actually had my husband deployed to the Middle East and my brother deployed to the Middle East," Selman said.
"It's always good when you can be home with your kids, and your wife of course, especially a beautiful woman like this you know, sitting around in a bunch of sand is no fun, it's a lot more fun being back home," said Selman's husband, U.S. Army Major Steve Selman.
In a touching moment, Robert Santoriella pulverized a container his son with cancer used when he was sick to his stomach during treatments. The boy has since improved after a bone marrow transplant from his twin brother.
"We haven't needed that in quite some time, so I smashed it to pieces today," Santoriella said.
Cintas, the company that provided the shredding machines, says it is going to pass the materials on to a paper company where they will be recycled into tissue paper, toilet paper, paper cups, and other paper products.
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Apparently National Good Riddance Day is based on a Latin American custom to burn things from the previous year in a New Year's bonfire
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I need a big fucking fire then
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It took this topic to make me look back and realize that despite some bad moments,
overall 2011 has been a very good year for me. I've learned a lot. :)
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I cant wait to say good riddance to December 21, 2012
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I cant wait to say good riddance to December 21, 2012
It will be just another day, and on December 22, 2012, life will go on. :thumbup:
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Eh, I usually have a New Year's burn-all-receipts-and-documents fire night. That sometimes covers good riddance burning too. :zoinks:
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Every day for me lately is Good Riddance Day! Forward! :pirate:
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Good riddance to my unfounded fear of confrontation! I can hold my own, and
I have my own back :pirate:
so that whatever criticism I receive, I can consider without feeling unduly threatened. 8)