My New Year's Resolution

At the end of every year, countless people in this and I'm sure nearly every country on Earth make a New Year's Resolution in one form or another, even if they don't use that exact terminology. The phrase "New Year's Resolution" can be taken as an oxymoron; the old year is what's being resolved, while the New Year is just beginning. Still, as the noted semanticist Robert Plant once said, "Sometimes words have two meanings," and I guess the construction makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of it being you resolving to do something different in the year ahead. That's not necessarily a bad idea; we all have things in our lives that we should work on.

The problem comes when people set unrealistic goals for themselves. I've long since given up on the idea that I'm going to change myself quickly or drastically. I try to be happy with myself as I am and where I do find shortcomings that I wish to address, I try to do so incrementally. I figure it has a better chance of sticking that way.

So I've given up on the idea that I'm going to lose 20 pounds by December or what have you. What I do instead is identify something that is either lacking or too much in my life and just try to work on
that; I pick doable resolutions. For instance, five years ago when there was all the excitement about the new millennium heading into 2000, I realized how much I liked sparkling wine, yet I only seemed to
drink it during the holidays. I resolved to drink champagne and other bubbly all year round. Not everyday or anything, but just more often throughout the year. And, you know, it worked; ever since then, I've drank a lot more of the stuff and my life is richer.

Likewise, a couple years ago I realized that every March when the NCAA men's basketball tournament rolled around I found myself doing a lot of catch-up to try and find out about the different teams involved and which ones were likely to win. So I set out to watch more college basketball throughout the whole season. And it's worked; I've won the library pool the last two years.

This year is a little different, I think, so I'm setting my sights a little higher. When George W. Bush first took office four years ago, given the way the fellow usurped the position I'm not going to say I
entered the year with a sense of optimism about the state of the Union. Still, we didn't really know. Maybe it might be alright; it seemed unlikely, but there was some room for hope he wouldn't be that bad. This time, we know what we're in for: four more years of incompetence, smug corruption, and fake morality forced down our throats while our money is squandered, the environment pillaged and our and the world's children sacrificed for this administration's cynical folly.

So, this year I'm going to push myself. I'm going to try to be more outrageous, have more fun and do even more of what I want to do than I did last year. I'm going to party like it's 1999; not simply the mythic year that Prince talked about, but the real year when we still had it good and there was a sane presence in the White House. I had a ball in 1999.

Now, I'm sure this may seem selfish to some of you. But think about it. My idea of fun...a good bit of it anyway...really seems to irk the people on the Right, the Evangelicals and so on. All the talk we hear about "Freedom" from these guys and it's still like Jack Nicholson talked about in Easy Rider--they can't handle the real thing, just the word. So I'm living free. I'm going to laugh louder & harder (does anybody remember LAUGHTER?), I'm going to drink more...especially more FRENCH wine...and I'm going to apologize about it less. If they want to hate me for my freedom, they can knock themselves out. This is America, Bitches!!!!

I'm Ted Kane, and I approve this message.