My New Year’s Resolutions: Stop Aging, Get Rich, Correct Pronunciations

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  1. Enjoy life.
  2. Spend more time with friends and family.
  3. Resolve the conflict between resolutions 1 and 2.
  4. Celebrate good news. Every morning ask Alexa how many airplanes landed safely at SeaTac yesterday.
  5. Correct anyone who mispronounces “longevity” as “long-gevity.” There is only one ‘g” in longevity. One cannot use it twice.
  6. When pondering if certain stocks may be overvalued, ask myself, “What would Jesus short?”
  7. Stop aging.  Eighty-two is old enough. (on the other hand…)
  8. Continue my campaign to prohibit straight white males from voting (that I initiated in 2012) by obtaining endorsements from Hulk Hogan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Elon Musk.
  9. Accept that I will never win an argument with either the IRS or my wife
  10. Identify one or more societies where I could pass for normal.
  11. Close the deal with the University of Washington to pay me $675,000 for my Name, Image and Likeness.
  12. Upon occasion, act appropriately. Consider stopping at yellow lights or even stopping at red lights.
  13. Stop reading when I encounter the word “geopolitical.”
  14. Finish reading the CliffsNotes summary of Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past.
  15. Stop listening when I hear the phrases:
    • Like we have never seen before
    • Never been anything like this in the history of the world
    • The likes of which no one has ever done before
    • Nobody would believe what we have done
    • Really something very special
    • Mexicans love me
  16. Learn where my pancreas is, what it does, signs that it is failing, and the cost/benefit calculation of seeing a pancreatologist.
  17. Enact a citizen’s arrest on anyone who pronounces the “t” in “often”
  18. Follow Kant’s categorical imperative, acting only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law, providing such actions produce a return above the S&P 500.
  19. Apply the above earnings rule to:
    • Give thy thoughts no tongue.
    • Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.
    • Take each man’s censure but reserve thy judgment. Neither a borrower, nor lender be.
    • When hearing the words “intersectional,” “housing equity,” or “Latinx,” ask if the speaker enjoys losing elections.
  20. When pursuing any of the above, preserve deniability.

Since retiring in 2000 my leading New Year’s resolution has been “spend less time with assholes.”  I have repeatedly failed at this endeavor. Therefore, my last six resolutions for 2025 are specific steps to achieve this goal:

  1. Get in with the in crowd
  2. Go where the in crowd goes
  3. Know what the in crowd knows
  4. Stop getting bugged driving up and down this same old strip
  5. Find a new place where the girls are hip
  6. Get around
Steve Clifford
Steve Clifford
Steve Clifford, the former CEO of KING Broadcasting, has written humor for Crosscut.com and the Huffington Post. He is the author of "The CEO Pay Machine."

5 COMMENTS

  1. I would like to add a few other annoying mispronunciations,
    Real not pronounced like rill as deal is not dill.
    Mascarpone does not have an “r” in the first syllable.
    And mischievous is 3 syllables not 4. Stop saying mischievEEous.

  2. It may be too late, but I would like folks to recognize the difference between “disinterested” and “uninterested.” I definitely do want a disinterested judge; I definitely do not want an uninterested judge.

  3. Sop using “virtually” as almost, just as good as, just like just like the real thing. Virtually derives from the Latin, “Truth”. It is what it is. Reality. Also, dump “Shrimp Scampi”.

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