Maintaining good cheer in December 2012 appears particularly challenging. While holiday revelers had been taken by surprise at having to witness the drawn-out death of a beloved yellow Labrador in 2008’s “Marley & Me,” or watch abused horses perishing in the mud, their spindly legs taking a final stumble in the ooze of 2011’s “War Horse,” this year’s audiences have been provided with a veritable cornucopia of cinematic sadism.

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Well, heck, wow, gee. I've spent 11 years now writing this column. Why? Because it's interesting and challenging. Because it's a chance to learn about people. Because your stories are amazing. Because Salon has health insurance! (And is an amazing group of people.)

Random thoughts for the end of the year: Weird dates. We had 12-12-12, now we've got 12-21-12. I'll miss the weird numbers of 2012 when we go to 2013, and then we can look back to 1913!

For the new year I have a definite plan for the novel now. It's weird how long I've been talking about it -- and working on it. It started in 1995 when I started taking the N Judah from out by the beach to a temp job downtown. Money was low, we were newly married and I was trying to keep up my end of the economic bargain even though in my heart I just wanted to be a bum and write all day. So this story started taking shape in my notebook as I would ride the N Judah -- the old Boeing cars that had the single seat.

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