Saturday, December 30, 2006

2007: The Year of Self-improvement


As the New Year approaches, I really want to effect resolutions that will tangibly improve my life and make me a better person. And not run-of-the-mill promises that have become more cliché than call to action, such as "I will lose ten pounds" or "I will stop making obscene gestures at squirrels." No, I want this New Year to truly mark a turning point in my life.

Thus, my resolutions for 2007:

* Publicly, stop being so hypercritical of Alexander's strategic ineptitude at Austerlitz (privately, remain just as outspoken).

* Use more pepper.

* Sort that huge pile of coupons into those that have expired and those that haven't yet expired but are for products I don't use.

* Let it ride at the roulette table; use winnings to prevent Bachman-Turner Overdrive reunion.

* Learn the difference between a calendar and a colander (every time I try to rinse pasta, the paper turns to mush).

* Stop and smell the roses. (Note to self: Will the florist let me do this without purchasing them?)

* Teach myself pinochle, get involved in a weekly pinochle game, stop going after three weeks because they're a bunch of jackasses with no sense of wit, timing, or subtlety!

* Sit in on drums during open-mic night at a jazz club; finish comped martini before I'm thrown out.

* Send Mick Taylor a Hickory Farms gift basket for his superlative work on Sticky Fingers.

* Replace my contact lenses with a pair of monocles.

* Answer all phone calls in my Bullwinkle voice -- if the caller fails to respond in a Rocky J. Squirrel voice, the conversation wasn't meant to be.

* Stop in the shoulder and jot down any phone number and/or e-mail address in each highway billboard I pass -- those people are just trying to help.

* Get the first season of Hee Haw on DVD and fall in love all over again.

* Start conducting my daily life according to my horoscope instead of Chinese fortune cookies -- it's much cheaper and far less fattening.

* Strive for a life of unabashed opulence.

* Fill a footlocker with SpaghettiOs and move as far away from the Yellowstone supervolcano as I can.

* Finish my master's thesis on Shakespearean symbolism in "Othello," the board game.

* Don't take things so seriously.

If I can stick to these resolutions, 2007 is sure to be a very good year...

(Calendar image by Zhuo Meng.)

5 comments:

Pat said...

*Beat my personal best score in a little game I like to call "Throwing refuse across the room to the trash can because I am lazy"

Dave said...

* avoid windows

* eat less jelly

* learn to appreciate Liberace

* work on project to convert tavern ham into sustainable source of energy

Randy said...

Avoid windows? What, are you gonna mail in your bets to the OTB? Dave, you can handicap races 'til you're blue in the face -- you'll never get 'em in by post time.

Unless you spring for pricey same-day delivery.

And even then, you might have to run alongside the delivery person, yelling, "Would you hurry up, dammit?! They're entering the starting gate!"

Pat said...

*write "The Great American Novel" then throw it away. That'll show 'em

*Re-watch Small Wonder Season 1 and figure out how they made that robot child go in fast-motion like that.

Randy said...

I always thought a great idea for a show would have been The Small Wonder Years:

Fred Savage plays KEViN (Kalium-encrypted Virtual Neophyte), an awkward teenage robot trying to learn about life and girls amid the social upheaval of the 1960s. The Army wants to get its hands on KEViN so he can be sent to Vietnam and his superhuman abilities and intelligence employed to win the war. But not only is KEViN too young for the draft...he's also programmed for peace. While constantly fending off Army recruiters trying to change his date of inception and reprogram him to be a killing machine, KEViN tries to cultivate a budding relationship with Winnie, the girl down the street who's sweet on him because all the other boys her age are immature and need to do long division to figure out a simple quotient.

The show would be narrated by an obese guy who wheezes a lot to show that even robots hit the wall as they age.