New Year's Resolutions I'd Like to See Made

Today, the Butcher came home with a DVD player. Which is good, because he's got the Playstation up in his room now, hooked up to a TV he acquired from someplace, and nothing says uncomfortable like lying in your brother's bed, surrounded by his dirty laundry watching DVDs on the old Playstation. I don't know where the money for the DVD player came from. I don't want to know. Instead, I spent the afternoon napping (my body provides me snot, my brain provides me dreams in which Jesse James takes me out drinking. I think we can see that my brain clearly loves me better than my body does. And I try so hard to spend quality time with my body. I'm always talking about how great my tits are and keeping it covered in smooches when I can and yet... and yet... it's the old brain that keeps coming through for me.) and watching DVDs. I watched some David Cross thingy, which was funny, but... But what? Hmm. I think it was very funny. It's just that I just finished The Triplettes of Belleville which I adored so much that all else pales in comparison. Oh, to be a singleminded, sweet grandma with a dog so marvelous! Or at the least, an old woman with crazy siblings who would take in such a grandma. Shug has been getting all nostalgic (with a hint of bitter) about high school and talking a lot about how her family is still kind of waiting around for her to meet a man and settle down and pop out some kids*. I can sympathize. It's easy enough to get sidetracked waiting around for ordinary shit to happen. And easy enough to feel like, if you don't have the kind of life that everyone else has, there must be something wrong with you. Let's take my darling Kleinheider, for instance, who I now never want to meet, because I'm imagining that he's imagining that I'm some Beyonce-clone, but getting it on with both Hova and Kelly Rowland and I want just one person in the world to think that highly of me. I'd hate for him to meet me and realize that the differences between me and the more famous Aunt Bee are just not that much**. But, back to my point, which is that Kleinheider spouts some crazy nonsense, which is as follows:

I am shy, insecure, and socially inept. Hell, the people who know me don't even want to know me, not that much, so I never really have any expectations to meet. I don't know what people would be expecting meeting me. It's probably different for different people but inevitably they would be disappointed. It's not that I'm assuming their expectations would be high, but they would have some expectation and I'm not that interesting of a person. I would inevitably disappoint, I think.

Gentlemen, I am a feminist. A sick feminist who is, today, reduced to spending a lot of time whining about how crappy she feels, but a feminist nevertheless. How big a feminist? So big a feminist that my dad regularly reminds me that I've got to change my ways if I ever want a man to love me, because right now, even my own father thinks I'm too feminist for y'all. And so the fact that, yet again, I have to be the one to point some crap out to you just galls me. You have 10,000 years of patriarchal oppression under your belts and either despite that or because of that, y'all are a fucking mess. I just can't believe it. How, how am I supposed to feel good about fighting with y'all when you have no sense of your own value as people? I would like to know, either corporeally or virtually, one man with a sense of his own worth. Shoot, folks, I'm rambling now, but I think it's got to be done. I'm making New Year's Resolutions for the men. Here we go. 1. Kleinheider. You should resolve to stop it with the whole "I'm so boring and repulsive that if people were to ever meet me, it would be a race to see if they would die of boredom or clawing their eyes out at the sight of me" nonsense. I don't know, maybe you're just an open festering wound on the bottom of a disembodied foot in a jar on a shelf not even fit for a Beckett novel or horror movie, but you sell yourself short and it's bullshit. You're an incredible writer and a great thinker and, even though you're wrong, wrong, wrong all the time about almost everything, I respect the shit out of you. And so I have to tell you frankly that your self-doubt insults me. (And I know how you conservative men hate to insult women...) Do you honestly think I'd waste my time reading you if you sucked? And, for the record, I've seen a lot of middle Tennessee bloggers and we're not so cute ourselves (well, except for Brittney, but I think that goes without saying). 2. W., really, what the fuck? You should resolve to get a blog. And also cut it out with the "I'm boring and dull" crap, because, really, you're not. And also resolve to take more obnoxious and crazy girls out for drinks. If you need suggestions... well, really, then you're just not picking up on the subtle clues. 3. Wayward Boy Scout, you should resolve to be prepared. That is all. If you are not prepared the next time I see you, I'm kicking your ass. 4. The Internet. You should resolve to marry me, because you are one funny motherfucker and I love you. 5. Ryan, you should also resolve to marry me. I totally think you could take the Internet, unless he brought along the whole News2ActionCrew, and I'd love to watch a good fight over me. 6. Church Secretary, you should resolve to run for office. Not this year, because you've got the new kid and all, but soon. 7. Same goes for you, Bob Krumm. 8. Bill Hobbs, you should resolve that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I eagerly await your scathing expose on bloggers who quote the lyrics to whole songs, which clearly goes beyond fair use. 9. Steve Pick, you should resolve to become envy-inducingly famous. 10. Roger Abramson, you should resolve to read whole posts before commenting on them. 11. Huck, you are smart and funny and have a real gift for writing. Believe me, you don't have to have a degree in English to write, you just have to have tenacity and hope. You just have to not be able to stand not doing it. I know that's not that easy, but it is that simple. Resolve to write your fucking book already. 12. Sarcastro, I wish that you would resolve to stop giving a shit what people who you're clearly better than think of you. Except for me. When I tell you that you suck, I'd prefer it to remain soul-crushing. 13. The Butcher, I wish you'd resolve to want better for yourself. Aw, fuck me, boys, you depress the hell out of me. You all should want better for yourselves. This really goes beyond that bullshitty "self-esteem" nonsense into just a general accurate sense of your own worth. Do you think there are a lot of women like me just laying around all day with nothing better to do than to tell you how great you are? Because there are not. No, I'm sorry. All you have, if you don't learn to do this shit for yourselves, is me and I think we all know what a half-assed crappy job I'd do as your cheerleader. So, please, resolve to take your heads out of your asses in the coming year. *She's also still insulting my chocolate chip cookies, which are, of course, delicious. **For the record, in my imagination, Kleinheider is a very scrawny Dolf Lundgren.