This PI's New Year's Resolutions

Yes, Dear Reader, it's amost the end of yet another year. And, hopefully, the world as we know it - but I'm not holding  my breath.

Going by how things went this year, I can only imagine that I will further embrace the cliche that my life has become: Deadbeat PI. At your service.

Perhaps I should make an active effort to be the master of my destiny?

With that in mind, here are a few of my own personal goals for the coming year.

1) Start wearing hats

And not in an 'ironic' way like some douchebag hipster. Seriously, how do you wear a hat, or anything else, ironically?

That's not a rhetorical question. How can you?

No, I mean in a cool "Mulholland Falls" kind of way. The kind of way that says, "I'm going to throw you down this fucking hillside if I don't get some cooperfuckingation."

Yep, that's the kind of hat I want.

2) Get a stripper girlfriend

PIs on the screen and page are forever beset by a damsel in distress. And with that in mind, nothing epitomises the concept of a "lady" in distress more so than a stripper.

A Stripper With a Heart of Gold.

Life will be all that more complicated complete with her. She'll nurse my wounds in her trailer. The wounds I probably got in one of the endless scrapes with her drug dealer, but hey! I did it for love. And I can always use her workplace as my office, conducting business from there and meeting clients.

What's not to understand?

In the end though, she'll leave me for a used-car salesman and this brings me to...

3) Develop an alcohol problem

Every night is a party and I'm invited!

Well, more of a wake.

Of course it's not really an alcohol problem if I'm drinking to forget. Unless I still remember.

4) Hire a Plucky Assistant

She'll be like the little sister I never had. Plucky (obviously), eager, optimistic, brimming with energy and determination.

All the things I'm not.

She'll pick me up every morning when she finds me in a drunken stupor at my desk, or after my latest fight with the Stripper Girlfriend while she's still around - or after, she'll put me up on her couch for a few days while I wallow in abject misery.

She'll be doggedly running all the errands I can't be bothered doing, checking facts at the library, or making calls. She'll stick up for me when detractors mock. She'll be the only person that believes in me.

Naturally, she'll also be hopelessly and forlornly in love with me and who could blame her?

But I'll never notice.

5) Earn an Arch Nemesis

And I mean a real Arch Nemesis, not some jumped up lickspittle with ideas above his station.

The shadowy figure plotting my destruction, the spider at the dark heart of the web of intrigue. The struggle will be legendary and only one of us will come away unscathed.

But who?

So, what are your personal goals for 2012?