"It seems to me a crime that we should age..."

That Bernie Taupin lyric from the Elton John song "Friends" caused a bit of introspection in me to begin the new year, and as I approach age 43 with my once-mighty eyesight starting to betray me a bit, I can't help but think about this stuff.

I tuned in this year's "New Year's Rockin' Eve" broadcast tonight specifically to listen to Dick Clark speak, and I was rather disturbed over how bad Dick sounded.  I viewed last year's "NYRE" broadcast, but never turned up the volume as I was playing something far more listenable than Ashlee Simpson (or whomever) on my stereo, thus I didn't get to hear what everyone was upset about at the time—the after-effects of the stroke D.C. suffered in '05—and it made me very sad tonight to hear that he obviously hasn't improved very much since then.  His once-smooth delievery now seems almost like Morse Code, sadly, and this once-youthful man now seems SO feeble and elderly—very tragic, indeed!  Bless his heart for soldiering on and all, but man, what a drag it is to see him deteriorate like this.  I guess the lesson here is to appreciate how fully-functional you still are and hope you are able to maintain your health even into your later years.