A resolution on resolutions

This being the New Year, it seems we’re required to propose resolutions to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. What a drag.

I agree that it’s naturally appropriate to respond to the excesses of the holidays with a good stiff shot of moderation. It just makes sense that we can’t spend the entire year eating rum balls and eggnog for breakfast, and so it’s reasonable right now to assess the wisdom of year-round splurging, especially as you approach your late fifties. But to formalize this reasoning into a strict resolution is not something I’ve ever felt comfortable doing.

However, if I must, let me put it this way: everything I’ve been doing for the last month or so I’ll stop doing, and everything I’ve stopped doing I’ll resume. As an important exception, however, I will continue running my autonomic nervous system as I always have, and I’ll persist in being unable to take to self-powered flight.

I went online this morning to see what were some of the more common resolutions being considered. According to Wikipedia, these resolutions were “sorted by the horizontal pixel dimension in ascending numerical order. It is important to realize that the use of the word ‘resolution’ in this context is misleading and inaccurate. The sizes given are pixel dimensions, and do not imply anything about the resolution of the display, which would be expressed in pixels per inch or pixels per centimeter.” Typically helpful Wikipedia.

When I looked around a little longer, I found a more useful list that cited the following as popular choices among Americans: lose weight; manage debt; save money; get a better job; get fit; eat right; get a better education; drink less alcohol; quit smoking; reduce stress; take a trip; and volunteer to help others. I think just about everybody can agree these are worthy aspirations for self-improvement. All of us are imperfect in one way or another, except for a certain savior born over 2,000 years ago who probably never smoked in the first place and already had a pretty good job. If He wanted to make some kind of resolution to improve, about all He could do would be to work on His tan. (Should I capitalize the “t” in “tan”?)

The other thing about starting these new resolutions right on the advent of the New Year is that the timing of this particular holiday isn’t at all convenient. It’s virtually impossible to begin the New Improved You right at the stroke of midnight, when drinking less alcohol is probably the last thing on what’s left of your mind. You might be considerate enough to hold your girlfriend’s hair out of her face while she vomits over the balcony railing, but that’s hardly what you’d call volunteerism. You’re still wanting to celebrate throughout the day on Jan. 1, and then even though it’s back to work for most of us today, it is a Friday and then you’ve got all that free time to be tempted on Saturday and Sunday, and now you’re out to the fifth of the month before any proper behavior can reasonably be expected to begin.

Which reminds me: whoever is in charge of such things needs to resolve to reschedule our holidays so they’re more evenly spread throughout the year. After the King holiday in the third week of January, there’s nothing until Memorial Day, a full four-and-a-half months away. The summer holidays are pretty well spaced, but you hit another dry spot of almost three months until Thanksgiving, then there’s a holiday virtually every other week. I wouldn’t be opposed to getting rid of the January New Year’s Day altogether and putting it back to the beginning of spring, where the Druid gods intended.

But I digress, and that’s something I need to work on improving.

Anyway, while I was researching this subject yesterday, I did come across something I might be able to sign off with. Access Hollywood had talked with a variety of celebrities and other prominent individuals from around the world to see what a few of their resolutions might be. A number of them struck me as a tad bizarre, but most of these are folks who have risen to the top of their professions, so it’s probably worth taking a look at this insight into some of what made them so successful. The following list includes the individual quoted and what they wanted to accomplish in 2009:

George W. Bush: To discover and settle the West Pole, using only dogsleds and shopping carts for transportation
Laura Bush: To bank the seven ball into the side pocket
Barack Obama: To attend next year’s Chick-fil-A Bowl, especially if Vanderbilt is playing
Michelle Obama: To make a smoked bacon reduction sauce
Bill Gates: To learn to play the songbah drum using a stapler
Rod Blagojavich: To drink more brackish water
Oprah Winfrey: To breathe more frequently
Will Smith: To move furniture randomly throughout the day
Warren Buffett: To wear underclothing more often
Peyton Manning: To become chief technology officer of Dr Pepper
Usain Bolt: To play Scrabble with the evil twin of Mickey Rourke
Dakota Fanning: To close on a stunning three-bedroom, two-bath townhome condominium
Michael Phelps: To have his teeth yellowed from drinking coffee
Bernie Madoff: To be run over during the live telecast of a NASCAR race
Britney Spears: To have cholesterol so high it starts leaking out her nose
J.K. Rowling: To be sentenced to 35 years in a federal penitentiary by mistake
Tiger Woods: To review a major motion picture that doesn’t exist
Judge Judy: To develop gills and swim like a fish
Brad Pitt: To eat more cologne samples from men’s magazines
Vladimir Putin: To avoid saying the words “Queen Latifah”
Tina Fey: To climb more trees
Amy Winehouse: To cozy up to a warm winter soup
Tom Cruise: To have that 6-by-8-inch mole on my lower back checked out
T-Pain: To upgrade his 401(k) to a 407(m)
Robert Mugabe: To learn arthroscopic colo-rectal surgery by correspondence course