Happy New Year! And, oh yeah, happy Monday...

Happy 2011 Y'all!  It's the first Monday in 2011, which, like all the other "First Monday's of the Year" that have occurred since time immemorial, means  it's time for one of three things:

• It's time to think about taking down the plastic reindeer display you installed on your roof in an attempt to win your block's "most tacky xmas house decoration" contest.  (You finished second to that guy with the live nativity scene for the third year in a row.)
• It's time to go to the gym for the first time since, well, for the first time this year.  That's a nice way to say it, no?
• It's time to set a tone for the upcoming 12 months.

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions.  They are usually made in either the throes of white sugar withdrawal, or during a relapse.  In either case, the person making the list can't really be held responsible for putting things like "lose 124 pounds" or "learn to speak latin" on their to-do lists.  They always end up a bit...i dunno...over ambitious?  Besides, trying to plan a year in advance in minute target goal details is stupid.

Now, that don't mean I am anti-reflection.  I just believe this is a time for generalities, not 54 point plans.  To that end, I am keen on putting my mind in a positive place for as much of 2011 as I possibly can.

This is a complete reaction to the previous 12 months.  2010 felt, on the whole, like a big pile lot negative to me.  There was alot of the usual politics of finger pointing, not to mention all the celebrity breakups (Courtney Cox no longer with that goofy Arquette guy is enough to shake anyone's belief in the good), environmental disasters, the Bruins losing four straight to the Flyers in the playoffs...the list goes on.  And that's before I even mention the toilet of a global economy we are living with right now.  U to the G to the H.  Am I wrong?

My response?  Positivity 2011.  Which, I hope, will lead to positive actions on my part, which will, hopefully begin a wee ripple effect of positivity for the people I come in contact with.  Pretty straightforward really.

My first step in this new, positive me is kind of random: I will no longer look at pictures of ruin porn.  What's ruin porn, you ask?  It's when people take pictures of abandoned, once-grand-but-now-dilapidated buildings in an attempt to highlight the beautiful decay of American cities.  City most often depicted?  Detroit.  The latest folks to do this are a couple of French photographers named Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre.  They've written a book called "The Ruins of Detroit."  If you're interested, you can see some of the pictures here.

I for one, would like to say, ENOUGH.  There is nothing more terribly negative than showing abandoned buildings in a city that, you know, is actually STILL THERE and is currently inhabited by almost A MILLION people.  It's like the people who post deadly NASCAR crashes on YouTube--it kind of feels like they are focusing on the afterbirth, and not the infant.

Plus, having spent some time in Detroit over the last 11 years (the Velogirl hails from there), I get prickly when people start circling that city like vultures, hoping to get the last  picture of a once grand structure before it is demolished for good.  Make no mistake: most of these people are not documenting this decay because they care about what happens to the buildings.  Nope, instead they drive into town, take the 1 zillionth picture of the old Detroit train station so that they can post it on their arty blog and demonstrate how daring they were to actually, you know, go to Detroit.

So, I'm done with all that noise.  And I hope those two french photographers sell lots of books and, in an unrelated incident, eat too much brie and get bad gas.  I didn't say thinking positively would be easy.

On a completely related note--here's a link to part one of the Johnny Knoxville documentary on Detroit, in which he tries to focus on the people living in the city.  Seems to be a nice alternative to looking at a pile of crumbling inanimate objects.