How to make enemies and not influence people

2006:
Once upon a time I used to make new year resolutions. They were usually crap and I often forgot about them within a few weeks, but I made them just the same.
But recently- i.e the last three or so years- I've been wondering: whats the point? The rebel in me thinks that making new year resolutions is not only a waste of time, but I won't stick to them anyway. More to the point, why not make a new year resolution in the middle of the year, say around June? Then you will have half a year to fulfill it anyway. The funny thing is that I am, in fact, making new year resolutions although this is happening in my subconscious and so I dont know all the full details yet. I dont get told everything you know.
Shameless is finally back on TV. One of my few TV addictions, it's one of the shows I'm fond of the most and I look forward to trying to figure out just what the hell Frank Gallagher is saying. Honestly for an entire series he wasn's sober for even half an episode and not even his family could figure out what he was talking about most of the time. I like Frank. I think he's misunderstood.
Also: The thick of it finally came to BBC one last night and it was as great as it's been made out to be. Political satire is hard to do seeing as real politics is often a satire of itself, but they did it very well. Peter Capaldi was supposed to be Alistair Campbell but he was a lot nastier than Tony Blair's former spin doctor and he was so chilling to watch. Last night Chris Langham's character thought he had received permission from the Prime Minister to announce a new policy proposal about the treasury cracking down on fraudsters but as he is dashing off to announce a press conference telling this to the press, Capaldi calls him up and tells him not to do it because the PM said 'should' and we all know what that means in politics. So he'e heading for this press conference and has to think of a good reason for calling these people now that he can't tell them what they came here for. He's also leaked the story to the media beforehand so he has to call up his contacts and tell them the story is not true. His aide gets the brilliant idea of basically holding a press conference of nothing where he scolds the press for not reporting the good news they've been doing but the Press doesnt even report that ("You had a press conference so boring that the Press didnt even mention it" someone on his staff says in awe)but then theres another twist-Capaldi's character says it seems the PM did want the proposal to be released to the world after all so he has to reverse his position yet again and tell the media it's on. But I called a press conference and didnt even mention it Langham tells him. Well, just pretend you did Capaldi replies and his eventual argument which was very complicated had such an absurd logic that you knew it would work. He's basically got to pretend that he announced the creation of a new government initiative and the press didn't notice it and according to Capaldi's argument, the press will have to pretend they heard it as well because its in their best interests. The first episode kind of left us hanging, but it was brilliant.
I read something recently by an American scientist who was talking about the constant bombardment our mind faces due to the modern lifestyle-email, TV, cellphones...etc. His idea was a very simple one: for optimal brain performance, one should periodically take out a twenty-four hour period of solitude which would mean no verbal or written communication with any other human being and just basically turn yourself into a monk periodically. Sleeping doesnt count. Imagine he says twenty-four hours of uninterrupted thinking. When was the last time you got that?