* This coming year I resolve to overlook any major disagreements I might have with anybody, and concentrate, instead, on all the petty little differences.
* I’m going to be good to my feet this winter.
I will change my socks twice a day until I run out of socks. Then I’ll borrow some from my neighbor until he runs out. By then it should be summer, and I can begin going barefoot again.
* I will not look anyone in the eye this year when I’m talking to them.
It just makes people way too uncomfortable.
* It seems that my songs make people uncomfortable also.
So I will only write songs about cars. And girls.
In bikini’s. On the beach.
Or for the more mature among us,
rides, bitches and ho’s.
* I will disregard the flooding of our skies with chem-trails, the gathering storm, if you will, choosing instead to accept the ‘weather modification’, and the poisoning of our air, soil (crops), and water as proof that our beloved government is just trying to save us all from the indignity of old age.
* I remember a song from 1968 (MacArthur Park), with lyrics that said “. . . Someone left the cake out in the rain. I don’t think that I can take it, cause it took so long to bake it, and I’ll never have that recipe again. . . . .”
I’m going to leave a cake out in the rain this year, to see if I can take it.
Just for the hell of it.
* I will no longer express my thoughts. I will not express any opinions about honesty, courage, ethics, morality, politics, religion, society, celebrities, reality shows, or social networking sites.
Fortunately, honesty, courage, ethics, morality, politics, religion, society, celebrities, reality shows, and social networking sites all speak very clearly for themselves.
* I will formally establish the Cult of Spiritual Illumination (CSI). I will be its guiding influence, and only member. Meetings will be held in my own head, in random places, and at random times.
I will donate all the profits from my seminars, workshops, and CD’s to a rehab facility for former members. I will be the only former member.
* I will not evaluate, appraise, opinionate, weigh, assess, critique, or exercise deductive reasoning in any way, about any thing.
Then I will not be judged for being judgmental.
* I will compromise every viewpoint in order to achieve a respectable, acceptable, and non-objectionable, blend of relativity.
Something we can all live with.
* (For you Pop Culture aficionados) I will make my best effort to watch the new Oprah Winfrey Network every day of the year. Us ‘regular’ people can never get enough of the kind of guidance, and balanced perspective on life, that we can now get daily from the obscenely rich, who know our struggles, and, of course, our pain.
After all, Oprah did make her own toast once, two years ago,
when her dietitian, her chef, her secretary, her maid, her butler, her chauffeur, her personal trainer, her manicurist, her beautician, her food taster, her errand boy, her masseur, psychotherapist, and all their backups, were given the morning off to go vote.
Actually, I believe she has her own toast flown in from Paris now.
But, hey, that’s beside the point.
* I will no longer encourage our culture to rise to a level of self-respect.
After all, there’s no money in that.
* I will give leaders ‘the benefit of the doubt’. That is, I will continue to doubt them and they will continue to benefit by my detachment and inaction.
* I will no longer divulge my personal secrets, and guilty pleasures.
I will only disclose yours.
And, of course, your choice of fruit.
* I will quit calling for the elimination of pretension.
That would require the elimination of politicians, celebrities, celebrity wannabe’s and, of course, ‘spiritual’ leaders.
God knows we couldn’t live without these pillars of virtue.
* I will only offer advice when it is not asked for.
People only ask for advice when they don’t really want it in the first place, and have no intention of taking it anyway.
* I will only take advice from those who admit their failures.
Only they know how they got there.
Everybody else just pretends to be successful,
since success is the main criteria by which people like to identify potential friends and associates.
* This year I will encourage social climbers to keep both feet on the ground.
Except, of course, when they’re groveling on hands and knees. Then I will encourage them to keep two hands, both knees, and the toes of each foot on the ground.
* This year I intend to let sleeping dogs lie,
rather than insisting that they sleep standing up.
Footnote: For those of you who don’t read my blogs, could you please forward a short text, or email, to let me know that you’re not reading?
Then, when calculating my readership, I can take the six billion, 890 million, 597 thousand, one hundred and twenty people currently living in the world, subtract the number of people who say they’re not reading, and be confident that everyone else I have not heard from is continuing to read every word I have to say.
I can then solicit advertising deals for my website based on that number of readers.
Disclaimer: Any resemblance of any of these comments to people who are either living or dead (myself included) is purely coincidental, and is not intended to be reminiscent of, or an indictment of, anybody that I know, or do not know.
Or anybody I used to know.
Or might one day know.
Or might never know.
In either my former life, in this life,
or the next.
Wishing a remarkable and unusual New Year to all of you.
