Lost Journal: New Year's Resolutions for 2000

Journal entry: January 1, 2000 (age 30)

We’ve finally closed the book on the 20^th century. This year’s resolutions are more important than usual, because they have to be Y2K-compliant. Things seemed less consequential back in ‘99. (Oops, I mean 1999 – almost broke my computer!) Here are my millennial resolutions:

Continue telling people that I’ve kept a daily journal since my conception. When asked to show it to them, say it is far too intimate to share with ANYONE.
Tell all the people who point out that 2001 is the actual first year of the millennium to get over it, and turn their focus to the effect of daylight-saving time on the centers of black holes.
Make it up to those same mathematically obsessed chronologists by congratulating them on being alive for 11/19/1999, the last time the date will contain all odd numbers until 1/1/3011.
Stop disparaging marsupials in mixed company.
Celebrate last summer’s repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act banking regulations by swapping some Lehman Brothers derivatives to buy a Chrysler, making sure to insure it with AIG. It’s about time Senator Phil Gramm and President Clinton worked together for the common good!
For my first wedding anniversary (which is today), promise my wife, Amanda, that I will go back to my premarital policy of never passing gas when she is in the room.
Help Amanda with her business plan to create Broadway musicals based on films based on musicals based on television after-school specials.
Marry Jeri Ryan, defending my bigamy by citing the futility of resisting assimilation into the Borg.
Following Stephen King’s serious car accident, start a petition to deny the nursing school application of Kathy Bates.
Use the new Napster Web site to download “Livin’ La Vida Loca” in 38 languages (especially Swedish, which is the best for dancing).
Have my midlife crisis early, loudly declaring that 30 is the new 40.
Exchange my American currency for the new “euro” currency launched earlier today by the European Union. Who doesn’t want to be paid for their goods and services with a lamb and pita treat smothered in tzatziki sauce!
Put ALL of my savings into sure-thing investment Pets.com. Evangelize the unstoppable dotcom boom by wearing Pets.com’s doglike sock puppet to all social gatherings. “Bow-wow! I’m gonna be on the Super Bowl this month!”
Mourn the recent passing of Match Game host Gene Rayburn by __________.
Wait out what will surely be a short term for Russia’s “acting president,” a right-wing KGB spy named Vladimir Putin.
Place large bets that the next Tour de France will be won by last year’s first-time winner Lance Armstrong. Then mail him a “Good Luck with the Tourney-kit” containing injectable steroids and a yellow rubber band.
Sell my new brand of cookies, called “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Nutter Nor Can I Believe It’s Not Butters.”

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Tim Mollen

Buy your copy of "Lost Journal - the Book" at www.timmollen.com.Each Lost Journal column is a journal entry written in retrospect. In other words, Mollen chooses a different day from his past, and writes about it as though it were today. The date may be last week, Halloween 1980, or the day he was born (May 4, 1969). Some of you may be asking, “But how would he have been able to write a journal entry on the day he was born?” To you he says: “Lighten up. It’s a humor column.” Mollen is a nationally syndicated columnist and actor, and he is available as a speaker on writing and humor.