I don't really get with the whole new years resolution thing. I mean, I do, but I usually drop it in a week or two. Where is my resolve? I don't know. I think I use it all playing rent, diligently, and shopping for groceries, diligently. Only once did I come close to sticking by my guns and holding down a resolution, but I just recently blew it. Here goes: At the beginning of the year 2000 I swore I would never pay for a haircut again, but toward the end of 2010 I just HAD to start trying to look like Corey Feldman in Stand By Me. The character he plays in that film shares a common bond with me, a mangled ear, and the haircut itself is so practical and makes so much sense I could not resist the temptation to follow suit. On this whim I entered a stylist's shop. I showed the lady a picture of Corey, got my mane trimmed, and broke the one promise that I had ever kept to myself for more than ten years and I'm not even sure if it was worth it because my hair just grew back anyway! 'This is why I came up with the whole idea of not paying for a haircut in the first place!' I remember thinking. Although the trim did look nice at first.So now I aim low if I even aim at all. I mean, if I can't manage to not throw my money away on something I can do perfectly well myself, how can I ever hope to hit one of those lofty New Years goals like quitting smoking or whatever? This year I've made a commitment to read Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars. Sounds easy! I mean, that's only one Caesar a month and a whole year worth of Caesar gossip to bore my friends with. Furthermore at least once a month I think I'll pull out a striking excerpt from the life of each and put it on the blog here. Perhaps you'd like to join me? I've already recruited a couple of others who thought it was a good plan. Currently I'm somewhere in the middle of the exciting life of Julius, and I can tell you already that times sure have changed. For example:
"At Gades he saw a statue of Alexander the Great in the Temple of Hercules, and was overheard to sigh impatiently: vexed, it seems, that at an age when Alexander had already conquered the whole world, he himself had done nothing in the least epoch-making. Moreover, when on the following night, much to his dismay, he had a dream of raping his own mother, the soothsayers greatly encouraged him by their interpretation of it: namely, that he was destined to conquer the earth, our Universal Mother."
WOAH!! I dunno' Jules, I'd have kept that one to myself...
Wish me luck, I might just lose it.
