LUDIC LOG

New Year's Day is for lovers. Or, failing that, drunks with hangovers. It's a day for reflecting on what has gone and for contemplating what is to come. Most of all, however, it's a day for making "resolutions".

What resolutions are is hard to pin down exactly. Just as when we say "it's not the money, it's the principle of the thing", we really mean "it's the money, but I don't wish to appear crass"; just as when we say "I like you as a friend", we really mean "you're fat" -- when we say "I'm making a New Year's resolution", what we are really saying is either "I am going to set myself a bunch of incredibly unrealistic goals that will make me feel like a failure when I am unable to accomplish them" or "I am going to make a bunch of self-improvement declarations that are so vague that it will be impossible to say that I haven't met them at the end of the year". Here at Ludic Log World Command Bunker, we have always believed in setting the bar low, low, low: so low that any forward momentum can be interpreted as progress, even if it is the result of having been struck from behind by a faster-moving vehicle. We therefore endorse the latter 'incredibly vague pronouncement' type of resolution over the former 'make goals so pinpoint-specific and lofty that they will have to be frantically revised on December 28th of the coming year to avoid a nervous breakdown' type of resolution.

In that spirit, and in the spirit of past New Years, when we have made the happiness- facilitating decision to set goals that are either incredibly simple to acheive or are so nebulous that they can be met simply by thinking about them, we present our New Year's Resolutions for the Year of Not Our Lord, Thanks, I Had a Big Lunch 2004. Enjoy, and happy new year to all.

RESOLUTION 1: Make more money writing. This one is a nice little confidence-builder right out of the gate. Since writing is the only thing I really like to do, other than sleeping, it's good to start off with something that addresses the creative impulse. This one gets up a head of self-esteem straight out of the box, reminding me as it does that I actually have made some money writing already; but, by the clever technique of not specifying what the "more" is in reference to, it takes off the pressure to actually accomplish anything. In the unlikely scenario that December 2004 rolls around and I've only made, say, 38 cents writing, I can remind myself that this is "more" than I made in all of 1971.

RESOLUTION 2: Make progress on crappy novel. On the face of it, this would seem to be a reference to my current crappy novel, "Superman Punches God in the Face". I had conceived of this project being finished around February of 2004, but in all honesty, that's extremely unlikely to happen for any number of reasons, only some of which are due to my being really lazy. Luckily, I never committed that schedule to the status of a resolution, and thus can blow the deadline guilt-free, or at least as guilt-free as I ever get considering that I am neither Catholic nor Jewish. Once again, I have built in some wiggle room by not specifying exactly how the progress is to be measured (leaving open the possibility that I can meet the resolution simply by adding page numbers) or what crappy novel I am referring to (thus allowing me to meet the terms of the resolution by writing one single sentence of an entirely new crappy novel). See how simply defining your terms can lead to easily met goals and, thus, the pride of accomplishment?

RESOLUTION 3: Collaborate with others. This is something I've wanted to do for a really long time, since I have a lot of friends who are smarter and more talented than I am. In fact, I've already talked to a few friends about doing projects with them, and some of these are a tad beyond the talking stage, so it's looking pretty good so far, but the beauty of this resolution is that if it fails, I automatically get to blame it on someone else. In the government, they call this "plausible deniability". It's this kind of forward-thinking tactic that makes me wonder if people aren't all turned around on this bureaucracy thing.

RESOLUTION 4: Eat better. I'm semi-serious about this one as well. My resolutions are like jokes: they're funny, they contain a grain of truth, and yet they are laughable if approached literally. Since I weigh nearly 700 pounds, probably have diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, prostate cancer, strokes, and as much cholesterol as a Pizza Hut Meat Lover's Stuffed Crust Pizza in my finger alone, it's probably for the best that I get right with the whole diet and exercise thing, lest I die before I turn 35 (mini-resolution: turn 35, which I can meet simply by not dying: exactly the kind of resolution I love, since it's easy to accomplish, and if I don't, no one can blame me). However, since diet and exercise mean (a) eating less, (b) eating less of the things I like and (c) engaging in physical exertion as opposed to sitting in front of my desk for 16 hours at a time, whether or not I can accomplish any legitimate nutritional plan is doubtful. Therefore, I once again rely on ambiguous language: this resolution, ultimately, can be met by buying more expensive butter, or in fact by eating more (on the reasoning that, to a poor person or a starving person, eating more is the same as eating better).

RESOLUTION 5: The open resolution. I'm particularly proud of this one. I'm leaving one slot open completely so that I can fill it in ex post facto. Thus, if I meet one of my sexual goals (i.e., have sex) or financial goals (i.e., have money) or any of my other numerous goals, then I can just retroactively shove it in there and claim it was on my agenda the whole time, once again cementing my status as World's Greatest Accomplisher. Remember, folks: the key to getting things done -- at home, in the workplace or in your personal life -- is defining downward. Only by using this powerful esteem-building tool of redefining your goals DOWN (for ease of accomplishment) and IN (for vagueness and imprecision) can you get more done than you ever imagined was possible. I could write a self-help book about this, but that's a resolution for another year.