New Year’s Resolution
For years now I’ve made staunch New Year’s resolutions to lose weight, lower my cholesterol, give up eating fatty green-house increasing pig, and so on.
It became clear that resolutions did no more than cause me bursts of guilt and occasionally the pain of bacon withdrawal, but I was left no better off. Eventually I made the first resolution I would actually keep, I resolved to make no more New Year’s resolution.
However, I don’t like being left out of things, so I’ve decided to make resolutions for other people. Here are changes I would like to see people make in the next year. In order of least to greatest importance:
5. DVD Distributors: I would like you to resolve to stop jiggering our DVD experience. We put it in the player, that means we want to play it, go ahead and start, don’t make us push "play’ twice. Also, chances are very good that we obtained our DVDs legally, there’s no reason to menace us with INTERPOL and the FBI. We get it, we aren’t safe from you even in our own homes, stop rubbing it in. Finally, having already paid for the movie we shouldn’t have to watch commercials. From now on, we put the movie in the player, it plays, and if we want other gewgaws we’ll go to the menu and select "be hassled by the FBI". Frankly, if the FBI were going to grab some of us it would have happened by now.
FBI Warnings: we copied them without permission.
4. Road Designers: Stop with the roundabouts and other "traffic confusing devices". They all looked so cool in Europe, but here we drive from point A to point B, and getting stuck in a "rondule" not only increases our cost per trip, it decreases the likelihood we’ll get where we’re going. Plus, all our hookers are dizzy now: go back to the corner.
Good luck!
3. As a nation: We have to stop diddling around and organize health care for all our residents. This isn’t hard to think about. Remove from your mind that health care is like a big screen TV and only people rich enough to buy one deserve one. It is in no one’s interest to have people in our country who are sick. There is a disease among us, and it will rapidly spread if we don’t do something. No, it isn’t H1N1, or any physical ailment, though certainly keeping a large pool of the poor sick will eventually spread contagion to everyone. The illness is one of the soul; where the poor are allowed to be sick or deformed their suffering rises like a boil from the infection of greed within the body of the nation.
2. Democrats and Republicans: Since you only allow us two parties, I think you should at least be on different sides. All I see is that each of you, from your own demagoguery, increasingly close around our necks a noose that once was a boundless horizon of liberties. One is the party of no this and the other is the party of no that. Republicans worry only about dollars and Democrats worry only about appearances but between you no one represents our rights. Between you, you are building a nation of prisoners and cops, legislators and regulators. Return our freedoms to us and go about the narrow business of government, though it means two thirds of you and your camp followers will join the poor. Perhaps you can learn to telemarket.
Photo: author not known; link:
1. Everybody: Please resolve to stop being such selfish misanthropes. Try to remember that the one thing that sets our nation apart from other nations is the idea that our rights come from God, not another human. We have a dignity which resides in the person, and isn’t dependent on the whim of government. When you insist that the government take away someone’s right to do this or that, try to remember two things: first, you’re tampering with something the Creator fashioned, and second, you lose that freedom too, and your children and theirs. Christians in particular, since in my neck of the woods it’s Christians and not Muslims who want to punish everyone for everything, go back and read the words of your Master! It isn’t all about punishment, it’s about forgiveness, and the idea that you don’t have the right to judge your brothers and sisters, that right is reserved by your God. When Jesus was on Earth, He didn’t hang out with attorneys and corporate heads, He spent his time with laborers and drinkers and prostitutes (frankly, I’m more likely to run into Jesus than many of the self-righteous). For your God’s sake, stop passing laws against his children.
There you have it, five New Year’s resolutions for everyone else to follow. I know it won’t be easy, but if you set your minds to it, I think you’ll find we’ll all be better off.
Thanks everyone, smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em!
