Welcome To The Mountain Times

I vow to become a better person in 2009. This may sound ambitious. Fortunately, I resolved on New Year’s Eve of 2007 to become a terrible person, so improving now will be easy.

I will be kinder to my friends and family in 2009. I will stop pretending to forget my siblings’ names. I will refrain from challenging relatives under the age of five to arm-wrestling matches and then calling them cowards if they refuse or “don’t know how.” I will no longer insist that, for my own convenience and easy remembrance, all my friends must celebrate their birthdays on the same date.

I also plan to quit smoking. First, I’ll have to start smoking, but the health benefits of quitting after a month of inhaling a pack a day will be well worth that unpleasantness. I hope I am correct in assuming that the brown-colored end of the cigarette is edible.

I vow to grow at least a foot in 2009. I vow to solve a Rubik’s Cube without peeling off the stickers. I vow to offer, on my birthday, a slice of the cake to each of the other people at the table, instead of having them watch and applaud as I consume the cake by myself. I vow to weigh no more than sixteen pounds by January 5.

I will volunteer more often, or even once, or at least to consider volunteering once. I will concede that volunteering to punch someone in the head doesn’t really qualify as “volunteer work.”

I vow to become the first person to run a mile in under 9.5 seconds. I vow to cure all major diseases with nothing but a rubber band, a tablespoon of salt, a roll of duct tape, and a spork at my disposal. I vow to throw and catch the winning touchdown in Super Bowl XLIII.

Here is a list of books I will stop pretending to have read: Virgil’s “Aeneid,” Homer’s “Iliad,” Goethe’s “Faust,” “Finnegans Wake,” “Vanity Fair,” “The Magic Mountain,” “To the Lighthouse,” “Robinson Crusoe,” and “Tristram Shandy.”

I hope to learn to enjoy more in life than just my enemies’ misfortunes. Ideally, I’ll learn to enjoy my friends’ and family members’ misfortunes as well.

I would like to see the world, largely by buying a new pair of glasses. I would like to meet new people, as well as a few aliens and androids. I would like to learn a new sport, especially if making fun of people who play Ultimate Frisbee qualifies as a sport. I would like to learn how to prepare Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. Most of my friends can do it, and it looks pretty easy.

I will finally admit that I’m often unable to locate Waldo. I will learn a foreign language, such as Spanish or Antarctican. I will win an Olympic gold medal before the year is out. I will build my own Batmobile, which I will call the Brettmobile.

I plan to run for class president at Robert Frost Elementary School in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Roughly a decade after my graduation, I finally believe I have experience needed to lead the student body into the penultimate year of the second millennium.

I will travel around the world in 80 days on a hang glider. In the boxing ring, I will take on Rocky Marciano and, forty years after his death, give him his first professional defeat. I will tug on Superman’s cape, spit into the wind, pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and mess around with Jim.

I will write columns less idiotic than this one.

It’s going to be a fun year. The only resolution I may be unable to keep is that last one.

Click here to Visit Brett's Blog