I had that piece of paper five minutes ago. Did you see it? Okay … was that before or after you started the fire in the fireplace? Before … I see.

Well, I HAD a list of New Year’s resolutions all set to share with you, but apparently they have gone up in smoke. Sometimes when I ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to do something, he gets it done via the path of least resistance. Start a fire, I might say, and if he’s holding a piece of paper, whether it’s some scrap from the day before or the original Declaration of Independence, that becomes the means of ignition. (As an aside, if you’re wondering what happened to the original Declaration of Independence, well … ask Marvin.)

Hmmm … let’s see if I can repeat them from memory. Here goes.

Resolution #1: No disputes with our crazy neighbors.
Hey, look … I know they’re annoying and randomly cruel, but they live upstairs and they’re not going anywhere. The least we can do is make an effort to be more tolerant. We can start by overlooking little slights … like when they try out their new fracking rig by drilling a hole in our ceiling and injecting toxic fluid into our living room.

Resolution #2: Finish what you started, fucker.
Yeah, we need this one. After all, we still have a fresh Ned Trek episode under construction, to say nothing of our anticipated fourth album, still in the planning stages. It’s easy enough to get the ball rolling downhill. But when it comes to … uh … okay, that’s a really lousy metaphor for what I’m trying to express. We drop the ball, that’s the rub. Gotta stop that thing.

Resolution #3: Don’t. Just don’t.
Well, we weren’t going to. Not sure where you got the notion that we ever would. We’re not that kind of band, okay. So don’t even think about it.

Resolution #4: Tour more.
Okay, this is a controversial one. Not everyone wants to pile into a ramshackle interstellar vehicle and prattle off to another galaxy just to entertain shapeless blob-like creatures that have never even heard of us. You really have to love that sort of thing to do it for a living, you know? So we’re putting it out there – book away, Anti-Lincoln, and let’s see who’s serious about making some deep space magic.

Resolution #5: Keep your dumb-ass blog posts short
As much sense as this makes, I’m afraid we’ve violated it merely by penning this post. What can I say? Half of our new year’s resolutions are straw men anyhow. We can just knock this one down on our way to fulfilling the more important ones.

Resolution #6: Build more straw men
Okay, now you’re just fucking with me. I only have one answer to this, and that’s … fulfill resolution #5.