In past years it may have been losing weight, reading that novel you wrote a fraudulent essay on, or cutting down on nicotine, caffeine and your precious cocaine. But this year? This year it will be different. And it better be because we're pretty much doomed. How do I know? Because I played Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" backward and the devil told me to tell you that you're doomed.

D O O M E D.

So what are your resolutions, if any?

1. Start a small business, designing artwork, fliers, logos, and other such images and literature for area bands who need that kind of shit but don't take in enough revenue to afford a a more established design firm. I don't know. Plans are kind of nebulous at this stage.
2. Stop eating meat forever. (Already have a three week head start on this as of tomorrow.)
3. Strive for authenticity as a human being.
4. Develop skills in chaos magic.
5. Finish building this new guitar out of old guitars that I already have.
6. Watch more movies--preferably good movies, old and new, preferably theatrically.
7. Buy a different hand sanitizer, because the one we have here is kind of funky.
8. Take out the recycling. Jesus, there's too much of it.
9. Finally get my girlfriend to read The Sandman.
10. Not lose weight, because I'm already thin. And I manscape. I'm quite a catch, really.

Well last year my resolution was to see two new countries and two new states. I ended up going to Ireland, Ecuador, Montana, Kansas and New Hampshire, so I didn't break it. This year I'll set the bar higher and try for five of each.

Clearly, Reelviewers have resolved to change their avatars. Supes was expected. But who is that other handsome man who has replaced Sam Rockwell? A young John Cusack? A Dickies model?

I don't really make resolutions but I always have general goals: watch more (better) movies, read more, get more exercise etc.

Maybe 2012 is the year I read Kafka on the Shore. Or maybe I can read some Kafka on the shore. Ideally, I'd read Kafka on the Shore on the shore. Ha! I kill me. Really. I giggled so much that I might just re-post that elsewhere for kicks. Mind you, I don't own the novel. I wants to read me some Murakami though. Have you started 1Q84? Yes, I'm talking to you. I've been watching...

My new years resolution for the past several years has been to not make any other new years resolutions. I have been very successful in keeping it.
-Jeremy

Same here! That's the only resolution i'll actually be able to keep.

Mr. Rockwell has been disappointing me lately with both his choices in film and his performances. I'm hoping for a return to form from him in the new Martin McDonagh film Seven Psychopaths. But as of right now, I felt it was time for a change.

As for my new year's resolutions, well:

-Get a fucking job
-Get my own fucking place
-Start fucking writing again (through a new blog and possibly through a screenplay idea)
-Get in better fucking shape
-Something else to do with fucking.....probably just more of it in general

I have only two and both are related to serious flaws in my character. I never realized I had said flaws before 2011 but, once I took the time and recognized some disastrous patterns, had an ephiphany of sorts. The two reasonable resolutions are

(1) Stop forcing outcomes in everything. A long time ago I figured out that I was pretty good at manipulating people and this past year I figured out, and really saw for the first time, the cost of this.

(2) Stop interacting with people that wouldn't care if I died tomorrow. Earlier last year I figured out that I didn't really have any good friendships and instead had collected an audience for what I thought was my impressive force of personality. The reality -- that I'm a bit of a know-it-all and a bully -- is both seductive and discouraging. That said, I believe there's a middle ground that I've been too scared to find.

The way things were going, it wouldn't have been long before the marriage went south with an affair or some kind of related depravity on my end. Cause I know me and... well, enough.

It's not just narcissism this time... I hope. I haven't checked in with Librarything for a while because I haven't had the urge to do any accounting or reviewing. I finished 1Q84 a while back and felt genuine ambivalence for maybe the fifth time in my life. The translation, which made for an interesting story in the NY Times, revealed something that I knew without really knowing: English translations of Japanese texts often seem to have been done by robots. This isn't the fault of the translators, maybe, but 1Q84 is lifeless while being oversalted by similes. At least ten to a page. So: artificial-feeling novel that moves at a lightning pace.

Oh -- this year I vow to be active in the JB competition the whole year

Unfortunately I agree. He's been showing up for some odd Hollywood roles lately. I suppose the villain in The Sitter might have read well on the page, but...no...forget that...that was just terrible.



Thanks. I was hoping that Vexer was a Murakami fan but this will suffice. I don't think the translation issues are limited to 1Q84 either. An Amazon review says that pretty much all of his texts have been heavily edited by the publisher. Supposedly they made a small but crucial change to the actual end of the The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Surprising that these things still happen today...

Who the hell is Murakami?

A very prolific and popular Japanese author of novels/stories that use a blend of magical realism and subplots about assassins to make points about things that leave book critics and general readers alike coming up with 1,000,000+ different interpretations. Though I'd say his work is largely romantic and more about atmosphere than allegory.

Oh OK, I don't read many novels, so i'm not familiar with too many prolific authors.

Sounds like most of my resolutions for last year and guess what? SURPRISE!!!!! I was actually able to keep most of them although not until the end of the year did things really start to come together for me.



I've kinda reached this point in my life as well; the way I figure, I'm always looking for ways to improve myself throughout the year (I actually joined a gym and began exercising regularly for the first time in more than 2 years back in October - almost the end of the year) so what's the point of putting off what I can do right now until the calendar turns and calling it a "New Year's Resolution?" I feel as though there's a lot more I can say here but honestly, I'm too tired to think straight long enough to expound further for now!

Actual resolutions I jotted in my iTouch's notepad:


"Resolutions for 2012:

Stop watching depressing films and stop reading about them.

Stop lying about things, small, big, whatever. Learn to be more straight-forward.

Lose at least 30 lbs

Start to improve your outlook

 Re-build damaged/broken friendships 

Do not try to turn friendships into relationships/flings."


It's been a tumultuous last few months for me. Besides buying a new house in NJ and moving all of my possessions yet again interstate, I've had upheaval in every aspect of my personal life, been down and out, up and down, and plain knocked out at every turn. Glad to say, it's been worth it, and Jesu, it's been a fresh breath of relief to enter 2012 with promise and deepening focus. Obviously (and, to some, predictably) my time on the forums has been cut severely, as I've been eyeballs deep in the plunge that we call the New Jersey Transit Vacuum of Hell. It's luxury enough to find a place that supports Wifi, with my long-term home computer still months and payments down the road. I'm happy to drop by and see the old regs still humming, the NBA thread enjoying the best/worst/best again season of basketball in recent memory, and even a few threads about kicking babies into open fans (No, this wasn't broached? GUeSs dAts the CrACk tAlKin'), and happier yet to see this thread, which nothing short of predictions of humanity's imminent downfall (although, Mark, the apocalypse might be more Like A Hurricane than anything) and confessions of stark honesty. In a word: Beautiful. I might just have to continue my 2011 'I'm No Trevor!' campaign in the next month or two.


And how about them Niners?

Amen on those three. For me, not you. For you, too, apparently. Though I wouldn't have been the one to point a finger demanding change.

The last one is particularly excellent as I've long made a habit of trying to be the center of various peripheral lives. I saw that Mindy Kalin had written a book titled Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and nearly shed a tear because I can still feel that adolescent rejection for no obvious (to me) reason. A friend of mine asked why I thought I had to be everyone's best friend; other people have caught on to my suffocating ways. This observation was one of the things that made me realize that I wasn't building friendships so much as collecting people I'd either one day marry or one day borrow a kidney from. Fuck, I'm starting to depress myself.

Liked the post, Phil. You probably don't need to lose 30 pounds.

Watch more TV and drink more and hope not break them lol