A new year is about to start and that can only mean one thing. (Or two things if you include trying to figure out WTF “Auld Lang Syne” means…) All over the world, people are about to go to a lot of time and trouble to come up with New Year’s resolutions and then they will actually try to keep those resolutions. This is so wrong in so many ways:

• You have to list the things you don’t like about yourself and your life. 
• Even though it makes you and everyone around you miserable, you have to attempt to achieve your resolutions. 
• Eventually (often helped along by marital references to divorce attorneys, speculation about life insurance purchases, and the suspicious appearance of a long, narrow, deep new flower bed) you admit that you are a total failure and abandon your resolution.
• Then the next year, even though you’ve done all that, you have to do it again. (See #1)

New Year’s Resolutions: leading cause of cranial injury

I submit that all that work, trouble, and pain only serves to increase your stress levels and your expanded carbon footprint, leading to your death and the eventual destruction of the entire world. Personally, I think it’s healthier and more socially responsible to recycle. For example, I’ve been using the same resolutions for the past two decades. If you really want to save, you’re welcome to use mine too.

For 1994 2004  2010 2014, I resolve to:

1. Be nicer to my husband. Be nicer to my ex-husband. Be nicer to random strangers who don’t smell too bad. Be nicer to the Vice-President. After all, somebody’s got to. ”If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there’s still a 30% chance we’re going to get it wrong.”—Joe Biden, speaking to members of the House Democratic caucus who were gathered in Williamsburg, Va., for their annual retreat, Feb. 6, 2009
2. Stand up to my boss. Get a new job. Become a writer. Take my own business trips whenever my husband leaves town so the dog can’t get even with me any more. I think she was still angry with me for telling about her UPS fetish, because she waited until my husband was away to knock me down the stairs. After she removed my feet from contact with the stairs, I decided it would be a good time to learn to fly. When it became clear that this would not be a particularly successful attempt, I began to make plans for my landing. With the husband out of town, I felt it might not be a good idea to land on my head, as I might need it to find the dog and kill her. So I devised a three-part mid-air plan. Part 1: flail my arms and scream. Part 2: wrap arms around my head and land directly on my Part 3: If you think of me as the world, with my arms wrapped around the USA, Burkina Faso took a direct hit. Ouagadougou! (Sister Mary Geography was right—she always said that someday we’d need to know how to spell the capitol of Burkina F.) For days now I haven’t been able to sit on equatorial Africa, and I have a bruise you wouldn’t believe that goes clear across to Indonesia. As I lay there the dog actually had the gall to come up and lick Florida. If I could have moved, I’d have had Okinawa fire off a few missiles in her direction.
3. Get in shape to run a marathon. Get some cute workout clothes and join an extreme-zumba class at the gym. Power walk around the block while moving my arms up and down like that will do a damn thing. Power shop the Nordstrom Anniversary sale while waiting for my number to be called for a restaurant table.
4. Give up chocolate. Coffee. Candy. Skittles. (Well, the orange ones anyway…)
5. Get closer to the rest of humanity by donating time and money to work for worthy causes. Send them a check in time for the tax deduction. Get closer to my family. Get even with my family for some of the presents we received in this and past years. I thought that Santa was a few jolly old ho-ho’s short of a load when he brought us the Atomic Pinball with Arcade Sound, but there’s not too much I can do about that. But my own sisters sent my son the Talking Land Shark Slippers when he was five. Each basketball-sized slipper lived up to its promise to “…let out the suspenseful Jaws theme or a spine-tingling scream with every other playful step.” I suggested that we might want to exchange them for something more appropriate for a five year-old, like his own nuclear weapons program. But he wouldn’t dream of relinquishing the right to thill and entertain me in the predawn hours with a shark attack, “da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, AAAAIIEEEEEEE!!!” So if any of you readers are veterans of Christmas gift escalation, I would appreciate your advice for next year. I’m looking for that ideal revenge gift—loud enough to annoy every neighbor in a four-state radius, and with enough small, sharp pieces for them to step on until their children have passed puberty.
6. Oh, yeah, and I resolve to help create harmony, brotherhood, and whirled peas for everyone (except my sisters and the dog).