Happy New Year

Again. Well I hope you get what you want and not what you deserve in 2008; here are my wishes for the year:

1. See 2009.

2. er...

3. That's it.

actually that's not quite it. I'd like to resolve the mess that is my professional, personal, artistic and spiritual life once and for all. But that brings me back to No1 so I guess I'll just bumble on.

My New Year's Resolutions:

1. Stop giving New Labour the benefit of any doubt over any aspect of legislation or ethics. I'm still saying to myself "oh well, perhaps x law won't diminish freedoms of speech, assembly, movement or the right to a fair trial or the right to know when one is breaking the law..." and I'm always wrong. Any system where you can be fined, not for smoking in defiance of a law, but for not displaying government propaganda on behalf of that law, needs to be smashed and smashed quickly.

2. Finish The Brothers Karamazov. Three times I've started this and three times I've got to page 500.

3. Stop swearing in blog posts. And "bugger", "bollocks", "crap" and "bloody" don't count as swearing.

4. Publish some decent poetry instead of the shite I have been turning out, the toe-curlingly crap stuff I've written this year.

5. Find somewhere to live.

6. Finish the Paradiso. I can't help it but on every re-reading of The Divine Comedy I get stuck mid way through the Paradiso. It's just dull.

7. Get a hair transplant. Yes, laugh. But the fact is, without hair you are nothing. And what the hell has happened to mine I don't know. It's fucked off, probably bored to tears.

8. Stop being a ****. And I don't just mean ****, oh no, I mean stop being a ****.

9. Read Hegel.

10. Consume Stella in quantities that more accurately meet government targets and sustainability requirements with regard to the diversity of relationships within my bodily community, going forward.

11. Never, ever, write in jargon. Even for work policies.