(Gentlemen of this Omega-Level circle: Before we count down to the inevitable ball-dropping that lies ahead of all our lives, let us first be resolved to kick off the new year the right way: by not letting the new year kick us down where it really counts, because when after all is said and done, and this beloved touchstone of yours truly is beheld and registered, we will assuredly have the drop on fate if we each hold dear to what is most true about ourselves.)

Every man has been there before: toppled over in anguish, made nauseous from a strange throbbing tinged by an existential crisis over his safety in this chaotic world. Left prostrate, the man can’t make any sense of it, his groans the primordial questions to the universe: Why does this have to hurt? Why do I have to suffer so much for something so absurd? And as the pain gradually fades away and the man tries to move on, the questions remain unanswered, the memory lodged in the back of his mind to feel out another day. It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries for mankind—getting hit in the nuts.

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Step right up, folks! This is the end of 2012!

What an adventurous year it’s been. There’ve been thrills and chills, screams and dreams, and hoots to boot! In case you missed any of the excitement, the OL Squadron has been doing flybys of all of the year’s highlights. And if you haven’t taken the time to personally enjoy 2012, well, you’ve got one last crack at it. New Year’s Eve, the night of champagne sparkles and ethanol-gropings and cocktail shrimp catastrophes.

It’s the stuff of beauty.

Anyways, today is also Monday, and as such I present the Monday Morning Commute! During regularly-scheduled programming, this is the spot where I show you various ways I’ll be enjoying myself over the course of the week. However, with today being New Year’s, I’m going to run you through some of the bits of entertainment I’ll be chomping on in celebration of 2013’s arrival. If you’re really rowdy enough, hit up the comments section and show the OL faithful what you’ll be using for party lubricant.

C’mon, you pack of auld lang sinners!

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Caff: Okay, so Patrick didn’t write an introduction either. P-Rock is a wildly awesome writer and great friend, who spent this year dominating both the blogosphere and print world. He was kind enough to come back to the OL hood for the besties. Check out his Top 10 Films of 2012 over at Mishka while you’re indulging in his righteousness.

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Caff-Note: The Dude didn’t write an introduction, so just imagine him shouting these from a mountaintop, whilst brandishing lightning bolts and delicious esoteria. Also, props to The Dude for week after week of High 5s this year. Gods bless.

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I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.  I spent the day in my PJs playing video games and watching crappy movies, so despite me not celebrating the holiday, my ritual didn’t change.  Over the course of the day I wondered what other institutions I put aside when growing older.  A big one for me was wrestling.  I used to be a huge fan of it.  I grew up in the Attitude era.  For the uninitiated, this was like growing up a Celtics fan in the 60’s (from 1959-1969 they won 9 championships).  I would always get offended when people would say that wrestling was fake, its not.  Like ballet, it’s choreographed, but fake?  No, the athleticism is real.  Today mixed martial arts fills the void that wrestling used to occupy in my life.  So to end my pointless ramblings here are my favorite wrestlers of all time.  CAUTION, I will be using a lot of wrestling terms.  If you don’t know what they are, feel free to look them up or ask in the comments.

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It’s Christmas Eve, and you’d damn well better hope that you’ve been good this year.

Why is that? Well, I just got off the phone with Santa Claus. He’s doing well. He’s busy, of course, but things are goin’ his way. His stocks’re on the rise. He left that frumpy wife of his and snagged a lover more to his liking. And he’s decided to finally stop being so damn soft on those perennial  residents of the Naughty List. Given what St. Nick has in store for this year’s crop of bad boys and girls, coal in the stocking is going to look like a walk in the park.

If you haven’t been good for goodness’ sake, Santa Claus is going to rock you with an atomic leg-drop.

There’s no way to know  ahead of time whether you’ll be gettin’ a Furby or a beatdown from Santa. You’ll just have to wait until tomorrow morning — either you’ll wake up to open presents in your pajamas, or you’ll wake up with missing teeth and cracked ribs. But why don’t we share some ways to pass the time until then? Hell, this is the Monday Morning Commute, the very spot where we meet to discuss the various ways we’ll be entertaining ourselves.

After all, it’s easy to get bested by the ennui-daemons and work-overlords. If we don’t take the time to enjoy ourselves, we’ll die as nothing more than the miserable, boring wretches that the Man wants us to be. So let’s rebel! Our bosses don’t own our souls, and Santa may break our backs, but he can’t break our spirits!

C’mon, let’s do this!

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[WEEKEND OPEN BAR: The one-stop ramble-about-anything weekend post at OL. Comment on the topic at hand. Tell us how drunk you are. Describe a comic you bought. This is your chance to bring the party.]

We are post-apocalyptic.

The Mayan Doomsday has come and gone, and we’re all still here. Don’t give me any guff about the prophecy actually being a misunderstanding of white colonials or a co-opting at the hands of New Age dolts or the exploitation of profiteers. Last night was the end of the world and we did our best to survive.

My woman and I braced for the end by eating sushi, drinking, and watching movies.

And it would’ve been a find end. But here I am, still breathin’ and shit-talkin’ on the afternoon after the Last Night on Earth. Looking out the bay window of my third floor apartment, there’re no zombies to stave off, asteroid fragments to avoid, or swirling plague winds to justify wearing my hazmat suit. The robots haven’t raped our dogs and the aliens’re finding a better species to share omnidimensional enlightenment with. The bogeymen that knocked on our doors last night have already hopped back on the bus to return to Doomsville.

The Mayan idiot-scholars were wrong. Roland Emmerich was wrong. Hell, even the X-Files was wrong.

We’ve all survived an apocalypse. Not the first, and certainly not the last. And it feels great! But it’d be a goddamn shame to let this conflagration of hope dwindle down to the last embers. Let’s make the most of it, let’s take this sense of opportunity – even if we don’t really deserve it – and do something with it.

What’re you going to do now that you’ve survived the apocalypse?

We should all aspire to be a bit more like Indiana Jones.

What’s that? You say you don’t approve of Indy? You think he’s a poor choice for a role model? Well then, why could that be? Is it the fact that he makes murder hilarious? Or do you have some serious qualms about his freewheeling sexual ways? Oh, let me guess – you’re going to give me some malarkey about child endangerment? These’re all arguments that’ve been presented to me before, and as such I have no hesitation in brushing `em off with a Donkey Kongian nonchalance.

`Cause at the end of the day, Indiana Jones is a Nazi-battlin’ scholar who hunts down ancient artifacts.

It’s by conjuring this spirited admiration for the Jones-lifework that I approach the prospect of reviewing tonight’s featured beer. Although I’m not a philanderin’, bull-whippin’, gorgeous-as-man-can-be archaeologist like Indiana Jones, I certainly share his love of the arcane. Y’know, the stuff that’s too elusive or frightening or challenging for mass consumption. Like the Star Wars Holiday Special. As such, my reverence for the hidden truths of antiquity and inebriation and maybe even existence itself have led me to sip upon the splendor that is Verloren.

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Welcome to the very last High 5.  Yep, this is it, the final one.  Its been quite a journey we’ve taken.  I will admit, there have been ups and downs, but I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for anything.  You’re probably wondering why this is the last one huh?  Well, the apocalypse of course, December 21st.  We’ve got two days to prep.  So I figure with my swan song I might as well walk you through some likely scenarios so some of you might survive to envy the dead.

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Welcome back, friends. The Starship Omega plummeting through the Cosmos has returned, swerving out of the way of an errant cosmic calamity. We’ve finally regained cruising altitude, and a flesh-bot of your desired gender/gender combination will be along to massage your pinkish naughties soon. My name is Caffeine Powered, and I’m the Custodian and Lead Seminal Slinger aboard this Galaxy Cruise. Right here about this time, as I am ripped to the gills on a cheap Theraflu knockoff and fighting a lengthy head cold, I’m going to pontificate on what I’m enjoying this week. And so are you! That’s the whole gimmick behind this nonsense, Monday Morning Commute. More Theraflu!

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