Be It So Resolved

I generally don't make New Year's resolutions. This is because I don't really care for New Year's as a holiday.

Don't get me wrong. I like having the day off, and I truly appreciate any day wherein the main activity is watching football. It's just that I find it a very flimsy type of holiday. Wow! We're turning a page on the calendar? Let's get drunk!

(You would think, from some of the stuff I've confessed to, that it would absolutely be my kind of holiday. Well, yeah, OK, maybe it should be. But it isn't. New Year's is amateur night. I went pro years ago, had a stellar career, retired, and was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Watching the neophytes stumble around on December 31st is just painful.)

Be that as it may - and if you have more than three on New Year's, but never more than two on any other day, it is - I have decided that this is the year I will actually make a list of resolutions. And keep every damned one of them, too.

I promise to smoke at least 7,000 cigarettes.

Yes, that's a bold one to lead off with, but I'm going to do it. I know it seems highly improbable, and I dare say that there are few of you who could do it, but I'm basically willpower personified.

I will eat at least 100 pounds of red meat.

I could have gone higher - heck, that's only about 1/10 of a cow - but the first resolution was so stunning, I'm willing to cut myself some slack on this one.

I vow to drink 100 gallons of milk, 15 gallons of cream, eat 25 pounds of refined sugar, and swallow at least 3 pounds of chocolate bon-bons.

This will not be easy, but I've got a plan. I'm going to do it gradually, meting out a bit of the task each day. Except for the bon-bons. With any luck, that part of it will be completed by January 3rd.

I will spend a minimum of 600 hours on my couch, sluglike, watching other men sweat on my television.

Actually, that sounds as though I'm going to invite guys over to exercise and then drip all over my set, but you understand what I mean. I expect to have a full 5% of this one completed by the end of the first day. Yes, it will take a gargantuan and superhuman effort on my part, especially considering that I'll have to get up every so often to light cigarettes, eat hot dogs, put cream in my coffee, and grab another bon-bon, but I have faith in myself.

Now, some of you are no doubt saying, "Good Lord! This guy is going to be dead before May!" Yes, it may seem as though I'm setting the bar a bit too high for myself, and the stress associated with completing these tasks might kill a lesser man, but I figure if you're going to make resolutions, you may as well make them worthwhile and a true test of your character. If I fail, it will be a noble failure. Anyway, I'll relieve a bit of the pressure by lowering the bar a bit on my next resolution.

I promise to flip the bird to at least 12 other drivers.

That's only one a month. I have no doubt that opportunities will abound, and, if I put my mind to it, I could probably finish this one off in a single day. But, I'll let moderation be my watchword.

I swear to, at least twice, let the laundry pile up on my bedroom floor to a minimum height of four feet.

This one seems rather easy, but the laws of physics tend to work against you. Unless you let stuff get really stiff and crusty, the pile tends to topple before reaching the required height. I'll try my best, though.

I will look at the broken air conditioner, the broken television, the fourteen empty packing boxes, and the frame leftover from the no-longer-used futon in the back bedroom, and think about throwing them out.

Even without making a resolution concerning it, I've done this one at least 100 times over the past two years. I'm sure I can make enough of an effort to do so one more time in 2009.

OK, so some of you (all of you, if you have any brains) have come to the conclusion that I'm being facetious. I can't help it. I was born that way. However, in order to make your trip here something other than a total waste, here are some resolutions that, while actually hard for me to keep, I'll really and truly give my best shot.

During the roughly 52 trips I make to the supermarket to buy groceries, I'll actually NOT buy the cookies 5 times.

Every time I hit the cookie aisle, I tell myself that I don't really need to buy any. This year, I will steel myself and NOT buy the cookies once or twice. No, wait a minute, I said 5 times, didn't I? Whew! That was a fairly rash promise, but I guess it's too late now, having declared it in a public forum and all. I guess I have to do it. 5 times it is!

I will tell myself to start getting in shape for softball season, once every week, between now and March 20th.

You do realize that the expenditure of energy involved in this mental effort will burn a bare minimum of 15 calories, right? I'm exhausted already! And I should note that this will insure that, by the time the season begins in April, I will have done more than 90% of my teammates.

Finally, I absolutely vow to write a minimum of 100 blog entries that will be of interest to nobody, utterly inane, and serve no other purpose than to entertain myself.

If you're reading this after January 1st, you can make it 99.

Soon, with more better stuff.