My Top 50 New Year’s Resolutions

1. Quit smoking. This one is easy because I don't smoke.

2. Lose weight. Also easy because I am anorexic.

3. Kill at least one large animal. Kind of a weird resolution, I know, but I figure killing a large animal (elk, moose) is something every man should do at least once. I'm going to do it this year. The twist? I'm going to use anthrax.

4. Get the tires rotated on my car. Self-explanatory and, again, easy.

5. Make interstellar travel a reality. This one is a little more ambitious considering my limited skill set (see my earlier post: "When I Finally Build a Robot…"), but somebody's got to do it, and it might as well be me. It seems like the key is figuring out to how to get around the fact that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Once I do that, the rest should be a piece of cake.

6. Stop referring to my wife as "my little homunculus."

7. Fewer rampages.

8. Give Katie Couric a shot on the "CBS Evening News." She's been struggling in the ratings, and I certainly haven't been doing my part to help. Besides, it's very hard to jerk off to Charles Gibson.

9. Start using Axe Body Spray.

10. Go deep undercover. Even if it's not for any particular purpose. Just infiltrate some organization. Any organization at all.

11. Learn typesetting and harmonica.

12. Take more photographs of morbidly obese people at water parks.

13. Witness a murder.

14. Start collecting ivory. So beautiful and increasingly hard to collect. Prices will undoubtedly skyrocket if elephants go extinct. Kill elephants (would also take care of resolution 3).

15. Write a highly successful fictionalized memoir of my drug abuse and subsequent jail time.

16. Do everything in my power to destroy Tom Hanks.

17. Finally invent "ice cream burrito." I've been talking about this for years and haven't done anything about it. One day somebody's going to get there first and I'm going to be kicking myself.

18. Either develop scoliosis or quit talking about developing scoliosis. As far as scoliosis goes, this year is definitely "shit or get off the pot" time.

19. Give panhandling a real chance.

20. Commit grand larceny. What am I going to steal? That's easy. A backhoe.

21. Apply for every credit card that comes in the mail. Ideally, I will end up with a different credit card for every day of the year. Once I have them all, I will withdraw the maximum cash advance I can on every single one and then fake my own death.

22. Ferret out J.D. Salinger in order to tell him that I think "The Catcher in the Rye" is a really good book.

23. More cornholing.

24. Compile definitive list of "Best American fudge shops." Sell list for a hundred dollars each. Sit back and watch the money roll in.

25. Playing grabby ass isn't fun for waitresses: learn the lesson.

26. Get trademark on word "crantastic," used to describe a particularly delicious cranberry.

27. Figure out a way to get legit handicapped plates without becoming legit handicapped.

28. Give strangers more advice about how to raise their children. While I do not claim to be an expert in raising children, I do have some pretty strong opinions on the subject developed over years of doing things exactly right.

29. Stop relying on my salt lick to get my daily allowance of salt. It grosses people out and there are definitely better ways to get my iodine. Note: this may increase my chance of contracting goiter.

30. Quit showboating. It only pisses people off, especially when it's over stupid stuff (tallest person in library, etc.)

31. Don't call in bomb threats to get out of dental appointments. This is, without a doubt, one of my worst habits.

32. Stop saying "zygote" when I mean "fetus."

33. Sell some military secrets to the Chinese. This one's going to be tough as I do not have access to any military secrets, and I don't know any Chinese people. But on the plus side, I recently saw "Patton."

34. Try harder to remember that tomatoes aren't the enemy.

35. Remake my wardrobe to be more "fashion forward." That means more scuba flippers, light-up bowties, and oversized hockey jerseys. Less "Boba Fett" costumes, wax lips, and compression hose.

36. If I'm going to burn rubber tires, do it when the wind is blowing away from the nursing home next door.

37. Stop making jokes in the security line at the airport. The TSA guys don't need to come away from our encounters thinking, "That guy is hilarious."

38. Don't use charitable giving as a way to feel smug. This one's going to be hard for me because charitable giving is one of my primary ways of feeling smug, both towards the people to whom I am donating and towards the people who did not give. It's two for one smugness and it has to stop.

39. Clean out my high school locker. It's been almost twenty years, and I imagine things are getting a little rank in there.

40. Cut down on my carbon footprint by making everybody come to me instead of the other way around. Let the dead earth be on their consciences for once.

41. Learn and use cool handshakes.

42. Learn and use my children's names.

43. Pitch my idea for television show, "World's Strongest Rock Star" again. This time, pitch it as a comedy instead of as a legitimate sporting event. When executive asks, "Will anybody care how far Hootie can shot put?" answer, "Yes."

44. Give serious consideration to adopting a baby, but don't.

45. Quit disparaging wallpaper. There's a lot of great wallpapers out there and when I make generalizations about "all wallpaper," it makes me look like an idiot. I'm better than that.

46. Give up the pseudonym I use when writing my radical feminist poetry. At a certain point, I have to trust that my comedy audience will embrace my radical feminist poetry and my radical feminist poetry audience will embrace my comedy. The two do not have to be mutually exclusive.

47. Write more thank you cards, but don't draw any swastikas in them.

48. Develop a taste for fine port, talk about it a lot, and then snicker when people are ignorant about the drink. Could be a good replacement way to feel smug (see resolution 38).

49. Taste and rank every Jelly Belly flavor according to how much they taste like what they are trying to taste like. Compile into a definitive list. Sell each copy for a hundred dollars. Sit back and watch the money roll in.

50. Put up that birdhouse.