Sippican’s 2016 New Year’s Resolutions

Well, it’s officially 2016. I never know what day it is, but I generally know what year it is by Valentine’s Day at the latest. In the bad old days, when I signed checks to pay my bills in January, I’d always write the previous year’s date, scribble over it, and then wonder if it was still legal scrip for all debts public and private until it hoovered out my bank account and proved it.

It’s not 1990 anymore, so I don’t have to worry about paying my bills with checks. I don’t have any money, and can’t pay my bills, so the topic never comes up, really. I take it everyone has changed over to buying everything using their iPhone, but I can’t even pawn my Motorola Razr, never mind pay bills with it.

As I am wont to say every night when I lay my head on my pillow, “But enough about me.” Let’s get right down to it. You don’t want to hear about me. You want to hear about my New Year’s Resolutions. You want to compare and contrast your list with mine, like you learned to do in English class in the seventh grade, if you attended seventh grade before 1975, I mean. If you attended seventh grade this year, for instance, you’d only be capable of copying and pasting my list on your school-issued iPad and turning it in as your final exam. If I wrote this list in a cursive font, you’d be screwed.

  Sippican’s List of New Year’s Resolutions for 2016

• I promise to stop reading The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler and laughing uproariously 
• I promise to feed both my children this year. By February, it might be one to the other, but a promise is a promise
• I promise to stop talking in a Bavarian accent to everyone that works at
  the Walmart for no reason. Why they’re working in the Walmart for no
  reason isn’t my fault, but the Bavarian accent isn’t helping
• I promise to stop letting the air out of Tom Brady’s footballs using George Bush’s weather machine
• I promise to stop oppressing everybody by respiring
• I promise to stop punching clerks in the Home Depot who ask me if I need help. This is going to be hard for me, so I’ll do it in two tranches. By June, the girls, and by next December, everyone
• I promise to learn a second language. Besides swearing, I mean
• I promise to give America back to the Indians. They’re already here on H1-B visas, and I like curry, so this is no skin off my back, really
• I promise to quit smoking. I also promise to buy a fire extinguisher and stop trying to work on the pellet stove while it’s running
• I promise to start really eating right. Count every calorie. I’ll buy a fitness watch. One of those good ones that even counts your heartbeats when you sleep. I’ll start buying supplements, and I’ll mix them into the kale smoothies I’ll make for breakfast. I’ll get a gym membership, and hire a personal trainer. I’ll start with hardcore cardio-type stuff, but then I’ll move on to free weights and elliptical work. Then I’ll start doing Crossfit all the time, and start talking about doing Crossfit stuff all the time, to everyone I meet, children in the street, strangers on the Intertunnel, even to the clerks in Walmart, but not using a Bavarian accent anymore, of course. Or I won’t do any of that stuff, and just shovel the snow in my own driveway instead

Happy New Year to all my friends on the Intertunnel. Both of you.