Time to Shine in the Oh-Nine

Each New Year’s Eve for the past few years I’ve asked my friends to come up with a slogan for the upcoming year.  Previous slogans:

• 2005: High-five in the Oh-Five.
• 2006: New tricks in the Oh-Six.
• 2007: Abigail Breslin in the Oh-Seven.   (A difficult year to rhyme.  Thank you, Little Miss Sunshine.)
• 2008: First rate in the Oh-Eight.

And here we are in 2009.  Ideas for this year’s slogan seemed to fall into two categories: hopeful or despondent.   Entries include:

• Limit the decline in the Oh-Nine.
• Brother, can you spare Oh-Nine?
• Rotting on the vine in Oh-Nine.
• Gimme what’s mine in Oh-Nine.
• Feelin’ fine in the Oh-Nine.
• Time to shine in the Oh-Nine.

My favorite from that list?  Probably “Brother can you spare Oh-Nine?”  from our resident doctor of poetry, David Higginbotham.  But I fear that choosing it as the official slogan will be setting us up for disaster.  That’s right, I consider the state of our nation so weak that even my silly slogan game is powerful enough to tip us into the abyss.  And for that reason I’m going with “Time to shine in the Oh-Nine” as this year’s slogan.

Things are dark out there.  It is time to shine.