new year's revolutions

It's the time of year when people tend to synchronize changes in their life with the flipping of the calendar. Since this ritual is fairly arbitrary anyway, wouldn't it be more interesting if resolutions were tied to the theme of your new calendar? You buy a calendar of national parks / you resolve to protect the environment. Mom sends you a pet calendar / you adopt a homeless animal. You get a Star Trek calendar / you promise to kiss a girl.

New Year's resolutions seldom seem dramatic, as you mostly hear people adopting the same old stand-bys of weight loss, smoking cessation, and more phone calls to parents. So if you're going to use this season to induce change, try making it something out of the ordinary, and maybe even slightly meaningful. If you're struggling, here are some suggestions:

1. Promise not to wear any item of clothing that prominently displays a corporate logo. It makes you a complete stooge to pay THEM for the privilege of doing their advertising.
   
2. Boycott watching your favorite professional sport for a year. After a season off the juice, you'll hardly miss the spoiled prima donna athletes or the dense cliche-ridden commentators. If you're a hockey fan, this is your gimme for 2005.
   
3. Turn off Fox News and cancel your subscription to Newsweek. You'd be better off getting your information from bubble gum wrappers. Better yet, start reading a legitimate news source like the New York Times or The Economist.
   
4. Vow never to use the left lane unless you are overtaking other highway traffic by at least 5 mph. Otherwise, stay the hell to the right. You'd be amazed how rewarding driving can be when you're not bunging up the works for everyone else.
   
5. Forbid yourself and others from saying "how can anyone live like that?" Take a minute and think about exactly how anyone CAN live like that. Better yet, try and live like that yourself. Or at least give away your silk underwear without bitching about it.
   
6. Move (or stay) North of the Manson-Nixon Line. It's hot and humid down here, and the water's not gonna last forever, you know. Plus all that stuff people say about Southern hospitality is bullshit. Southerners are more genteel than Yankees, but underneath those superficial manners lies the same judgmental hostility that you find anywhere else.
   
7. Refrain from sweeping judgments involving people you don't know and foreign cultures you don't understand. It's not "their" fault you've never traveled outside the state or bothered to learn another language.
   
8. Read my blog religiously. And by religiously, I mean "worship me." Donations and wild acts of contrition are appreciated.
   

PS: let me know how these work out for you, since I'm not about to follow through on any of them myself.