Resolution Road

Last week, my fellow CityBeat columnists Aaryn and Ed both welcomed the New Year by personifying it and then movingly making out with it. While I am, like Ed, unable to resist the charms of the annual midnight rituals and, like Aaryn, relieved to welcome the end of the Bush era, and, like both of them, looking forward to ’09, I must admit that I’m pretty sure I didn’t make good on some of my ’08 resolutions.

I always make lots of resolutions, usually around the third week of January. Here are my ’09 resolutions (that’s right, I’m early). If some are holdovers from ’08, it’s because I forgot them. That’s why I’m writing them down this year. If you haven’t made your resolutions yet, feel free to borrow any of mine. I know that New Year’s resolutions are kind of retarded, but whatever. Here goes:

1. Stop using the adjective “retarded” so loosely. It’s not fair to retarded people, who, though sometimes oblivious, can be extremely sensitive and can’t help it if they are retarded. Also, like “douchebag,” it’s played out (I overheard a total douchebag loudly refer to someone else as a douchebag into a cell phone last week). So, no “retarded,” no “douchebag.” And absolutely no “retarded douchebag”s in ’09. And stop saying “whatever.”

2. I resolve to try liking the band TV on the Radio as much as everyone else pretends to.

3. No more Facebook apps. (This one will be easy.)

4. Change the damn wiper blades before I mistake a drop of bird shit for an asteroid and hit a tree or a bikester.

5. Drink 14 gallons of water a day. Guzzle two of those giant Sparkletts coolers-full every 5 minutes. Make all the water-consumption-obsessed ladies at my office look like cacti. I’ll drink so much water, I’ll have to install a urinal in my office.

6. Install a urinal in my office.

7. Never again be awakened at 3 a.m. by a cell phone whining that it wants to be recharged. There are good reasons to be awakened at 3 a.m., like for sex or because of the night terrors. But the very notion of a 3 a.m. phone call is very ’08, and the cell phone should just shut up. Or rather, I should remember to recharge it.

8. Never smoke weed before going to Trader Joe’s.

9. I resolve to read the last 322 pages of Gravity’s Rainbow. It was wrong in the summer of 1989 when, at Page 438, I threw a borrowed copy as hard as I could at the wall. I now recognize that it’s a masterpiece and vow to find it at a used bookstore and give it another shot.

10. Never eat anything that’s made with a color that has a number.

11. Beat all column deadlines by a mile (that one’s for the eds.)

12. Instead of hiding my face and pretending I’m yawning, I will admit it if I am crying during a movie. Not just admit it, but turn to my girlfriend, point at my tears and shout, “Real men weep!”

13. Check out more of the bands, restaurants, art, films and events endorsed by Seth, Dryw, AnnaMaria, Todd, Candice, Kinsee, Anders, Enrique, et al. I’m probably not doing anything better that night anyway.

14. Hang out in Tijuana like I used to. Why be such a ’fraidy-cat?

15. Scribble tiny elliptical comments in the memo space on my rent checks like “the science of illumitology” and “you’re next, fancy pants.”

16. No more single socks! Their long-lost partners are not coming back. Am I the only person who hoards them? In ’09, if a sock is missing her match for more than 10 days, she’s banished from the drawer. But what do you do with a lonely sock? Throw it away? Make a puppet nobody wants to put their hand in? Gotta think of something.

17. Renew zoo membership. Anders thinks it’s boring, but I’d rather watch the pygmy marmosets in the children’s zoo for a couple hours than sit through another Holocaust movie.

18. Stop putting off writing that column I’ve been threatening to write for a year and a half just because it involves schlepping.

19. Sit-ups.

20. Get an agent.

21. Refer to House Minority Leader John Boehner as John “Boner” until he and his colleagues stop saying “Democrat Party.” Slip his name into conversations often (e.g. “You know who still thinks Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that just haven’t been found yet? House Minority Leader John Boner!”)

22. Do more work for noble causes than I did last year.

23. Go on at least 40 of the hikes in Jerry Schad’s Afoot and Afield in San Diego that I haven’t before, starting with Cedar Creek Falls.

24. Research in great detail the entire Israel-Palestine conflict and then solve it. (I foresee this one carrying over to 2010, but it’s good to aim high.)

25. Finish that second novel.

26. Do my taxes early.

27. Witness more sunrises.

28. Clean out and organize the garage, and I am not kidding about this one, so if you’re one of my six or seven friends who have something stored in there, let this be your warning.

29. Save up enough money to buy a paper shredder that’d make Dick Cheney kvell and then shred all my unopened mail.

30. Love my girlfriend so much that the 500 miles, which this year is going to perhaps permanently separate us, seems like 500 yards.

31. Stop obsessing over lists.

32. I resolve to break no more than 12 of these 32 resolutions in 2009; I can always move them to the 2010 list. I think I just broke resolution No. 31. I wonder if the FD&C makes a blue No. 31? Happy New Year, reader, and best of luck.    

Write to dak@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.