[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Roger—
I can tell that you are really bothered by the title. Let me try to lay out my thinking on it. Normally, I try to avoid clichés like the plague. (See what I did there?) Clichés are off-putting because they signal laziness in thinking and make it hard for the reader/listener to take the speaker/writer seriously. But clichés are not radioactive. They can be useful because they often carry a smug, superior tone that can be put into the service of irony. I’m thinking of the title of Tom Robbins’ novel, Another Roadside Attraction. This clearly includes a bored yawn, even though the attraction in question turns out to be (spoiler alert!) the mummified body of Jesus Christ. I’m trying to get something like that bored yawn into my title to serve two ironic functions:
1. to signal that the whole birthday rigmarole is a mildly irksome duty that the speaker must endure for the sake of his well-meaning friends. This is reinforced by calling the activity a “ritual.”
2. at another level, to suggest that the emptiness of the activity, the decrease in the number of participants, and the taunting commemoration of a milestone that marks no real achievement seriously bother the speaker. This is reinforced by reference to “bitterness” “empty,” “withdraw,” “fading,” and the negation words mentioned in post # 36.

The reason I am vigorously defending the title is that it serves as the necessary starting point on the speaker’s short journey of self-discovery.