The Village Idiot: Unusual resolutions for new year
I’m sick of making New Year’s resolutions only to break them weeks later. Well, days later. OK, hours later. A few minutes later. Not only that, I usually end up doing the opposite of what I resolve to do. If I resolve to lose weight, I gain it. If I resolve to exercise more, I exercise less. One year I resolved to quit smoking. Not only didn’t I quit, I made three people who didn’t smoke, start. So this year I had a brainstorm: I resolve to do the opposite of what I should do and see how that works.
One: I resolve to watch more television. I saw a newspaper story the other day that said the average viewer watches five hours of television a day. “Finally,” I thought, “I’m above average.” I think if I put my mind to it I could watch nine or 10 hours of television a day. I might have to get up earlier, but that’s the thing about New Year’s resolutions. If they were easy, everybody would be making them.
Two: I resolve to gain more weight. This one is going to be tough. Where will I ever find enough fattening, greasy, sugar-loaded food to do that? It’s not like you can just find that kind of stuff on the side of the road. You really have to dig. We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t make a little pill that will make us fat?
No, instead we have to spend hours and hours eating. Of course, to meet my first resolution of watching more television, I will have to multi-task — eat and watch television at the same time.
Three: I resolve to spend less time exercising. This will be the first one I break. Since I spend no time exercising now, simply typing these words may be the most strenuous thing I did this year. Memo to me: Get one of those programs where you talk to the computer and it types for you.
Four: To spend more time on the Internet. A lot of people wonder if being on the Internet so much is a good thing for society. So, it’s broken up a few marriages. A few hundred thousand marriages. But thanks to Internet dating, it’s now easier than ever for those people to meet and marry new people.
The Internet lets me use my time more productively. I used to spend a lot time with my family, but now I spend most of my time researching my family tree. My dead relatives are so much less annoying than my live ones. Plus, you learn about history when you learn about your family. Some people can trace their families back to the Mayflower. I can trace my family back to a Carnival Cruise in 1976. It turns out that unlike most of the Irish, we didn’t come to America because of the famine. We were asked to leave.
Five: Spend more time on the cell phone I’m a grown man with commitments and responsibilities. You’d think I would have a lot of things to say on a cell phone. I barely use it. I thought it would be handy to have in the car if I ever had a breakdown or got caught in the snow. Yet I know 15-year-old kids in high school who make and receive more phone calls in a day than the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. There are kids in college that field more phone calls than Tom Cruise’s agent. How did I ever get through high school without a cell phone? I feel like a cell phone slacker.
This year I plan to start calling people up even though I have nothing to say to them and nothing’s really changed since I talked to them yesterday. Because all I did was watch television, eat and fool around on the Internet.
Jim Mullen contributes regularly to Entertainment Weekly, where he can be reached at [email protected].