Well, now that the hangovers have subsided and the Bowl Championship Series has officially become the most hated entity in the world, with the Taliban and the United Nations coming in at a close second, it is time for all good people to make New Years’ resolutions which they will all end up breaking in about two or three weeks or so. Or two or three days … take your pick.
But the grand part of being an American is that you don’t have to succeed, you just have to try. (At least that is what every little league coach has told his snotty-nosed collection of losers at their season’s end, right? Hence our national mentality today!) So, here are a few things that I’m going to give a shot at in 2009:
Resolution No. 1: I will stop eating fattening, tasty red meats and will begin eating health food, also known as cardboard. In this way, I will make all the PETA people happy and will live a long, healthy life. Of course the question could be asked of what good a long life is if all you ever taste is bland meals that equal ingesting sawdust? But I might as well resolve to do it now. The days are swiftly coming when these delicious animals will have more rights than we do anyway.
Resolution No. 2: I will stop complaining about politics and will just close my eyes to all the moronic and illogical decisions being made by our politicians that, truthfully, I think a group of 12-year-old kids could do a better job of. The government will always just take our money and impose ridiculous taxes and restrictions on us all in the name of “the greater good” anyway, so why gripe about it? I still live in the land of the free, so long as I keep the Internal Revenue Service happy, so I have no reason to complain.
Resolution No. 3: I will stop watching sports every day of the week (according to my wife) as I realize that these games are futile and have no ultimate bearing on my life. These players, making millions on top of millions of dollars to play a child’s game, do not care that I scrounge by, paycheck to paycheck, on a writer’s salary and they will never do anything in my best interest or in the best interest of my family. So, they do not deserve my fan loyalty or the money that I spend on tickets to sit in the team owners’ massive stadiums that could house aircraft carriers.
Resolution No. 4: I will stop focusing on how the newspaper print industry is in a proverbial tailspin that it will never pull out of. I will just smile and go about my business as though print media conglomerates and corporations are not continuing to waste massive amounts of money on printing presses and inked pages as they try to put off the inevitability of all news one day being read online only. I will stop pointing out the obvious stupidity of management trying to run a newspaper like a television studio while demanding the writing staff, which is drastically reduced at many newspapers, to do twice the amount of work for both Internet and print content. But, of course, they have to do it for the exact same pay scale that writers have always been paid to do only news print. Yeah, nothing to complain about there, right, so why bother?
Resolution No. 5: I will no longer make resolutions, such as these, that I will never be able to keep.
About Me
- Greg Hayes
- Greg worked for 10 years as an underpaid journalist, from 1999 until 2009, in the southeast region of Texas in several of its local papers. He is married to his beautiful wife, Kelly, and has two wonderful children, Olivia and Ean. They make their home in Vidor, which is actually a nice place despite what people say.
