And much like Death Cab for Cutie’s navel-gazing, flannel-clad frontman Ben Gibbard, I don’t feel any different. My height, my weight, my sour disposition, they’re all exactly the same now as they were at 11:59 p.m. last night. (And it’s a good thing, too, because I’d hate to have to update my wardrobe or start being pleasant to people just because it’s 2009.)

Or has the new year changed me already? My neighbors added a twist to their boisterous New Year’s Eve revelry last night when a family across the street spent much of the evening encouraging their children to play brass instruments outdoors, for all of us to hear. The results, which it would be generous to say were something less than musical, frequently sounded like the ignoble, pleading moans of an elephant in the throes of death. But rather than take to the porch, megaphone in hand, and bellow something like, “Hey, kid, take that trombone and shove it up your ass,” I chose instead to remain quiet.

This decision was partly influenced by the regrettable fact that I do not own a megaphone, and mostly by my belief that the kids weren’t really at fault; their parents were the ones who, without any regard for the eardrums of the rest of us, allowed this weirdly avant-garde concert to go on (and on, like Celine Dion’s heart or the Energizer Bunny) like that. I suppose I could have changed my message to, “Hey, kid, take that trombone and shove it up your parents’ asses,” but that didn’t have quite the same ring to it.