Comic Book Hoarder New Year’s Resolution Time!

Let’s talk about our Comic Book Hoarder New Year’s Resolution list, shall we?  With a new calendar year, many of us make a resolution list but often don’t keep to that list.  Because we are weak, so very weak.

So I figure I’ll share my resolution list with you and then we can all share and keep each other honest and oh god, what am I, Oprah all of the sudden?

Resolution: Have a post ready to go before Tuesday afternoon so that no one takes my Wednesday spot again (like Jim did yesterday and John did last week).

Mostly because they do much cooler posts than I do and I don’t want you to forget about me!

Resolution: Get all the other regular commenters from the old place over here.

I love all of you that came over with us, or who found us after the fact, but I miss some of the rest of the folks (and I think you guys do too!).  Our pals Buttler, T, and Dean Hacker  are among the people that made the old place so much fun, and I think they’re missing out on how much fun we’re having here with all of you.  So if you guys do the twitter thing, ask them nicely to swing by here.  I know Buttler knows about us, but apparently hasn’t had a chance to stop by (everybody gets busy with stuff), but we want everyone to stop by and have fun with us here at the Atomic Junk Shop!

God, I sound like such a cheerleader!

Resolution: Get a pair of headshells that I don’t have to hold in place over my ears and don’t break on me.  May need to spend more than $10.

As Robert Stack used to say on Unsolved Mysteries: Update!  I did in fact get headshells (um, headphones for those of you that aren’t in on my inside joke…), and actually spent $5.40 for a decent little pair.  They aren’t the greatest, but they work well enough for what I need.  So yay me!

Resolution: Get a scanner so that I can actually share images from my comics and stuff easier.  Maybe a laptop.  Find out what a “router” is and what I need to do to set one up.

Yeah, I’m technologically inept.  Combine a general sense of luddite-ism with the fact that I didn’t have computer access for several of the first years of this century (so that I missed out on learning updated computer stuff one step at a time) and add in that my job doesn’t require me to know a lot about computers (although I know more than a lot of the people there, which is scary, especially since I include IT people….), and I dunno what this “wireless” stuff is.  I’m not dumb, but this kind of stuff makes me feel dumb, y’know?

Resolution: Get caught up with comics reading. Read the comics as they come out so that I stop buying way more than I’m reading.

Seems obvious, huh?  That was my resolution last year too, when Burgas was starting to post some of my pieces over at the old place.  I won’t tell you what I spent on comics in 2016 like Burgas did, partly because I still haven’t finished writing down what all I spent, but while it wasn’t as much as him, it was a lot, which is embarrassing and why I won’t share.  Especially when you consider: the number of comics I read?  Not a whole lot.  And a good portion of those were either the ones I bought for a pal or ones from the library.

Resolution: Hurry up and write up those books and comics that I got out from libraries that I still haven’t written about yet!

Yeah, I have a good amount of comics and books that I didn’t tell you about yet.  I’m hoping to catch up one of these weekends, but we’ll see how it pans out!

Resolution:  Eat healthier.  Quit soda for good this year.  Exercise, more than just moving piles of crap around.

Everyone has these kinds of resolutions, right?  Don’t eat the crap you’ve been eating, start exercising more.  And I know that the way that people actually keep to their resolution list is to make each resolution specific and doable, but I don’t roll that way.  Aim high and then crouch in a fetal position when things don’t happen automatically!  It’s what I do, because I’m not good at dealing with the real world!

But last year, without even really trying, I did keep off soda for about 7 1/2 months.  I had noticed that around this time last year, I hadn’t had any soda all year, so I decided “hell, that’s my resolution this year”.  Up until the NY State Fair, I actually kept to it, so it wasn’t until the end of August that I finally caved.  I unfortunately made up for it, but I was gaining weight regardless, so this year, cut it out again!

And yeah, too much of my exercise is just moving crap around.  I’m too out of shape, and my knees are old man already.  Must…exercise…somehow!

Resolution:  Catch up on DVDs.

I keep buying DVDs at the local big box store (in my lame defense, it IS just across the street from where I work, and it’s open 24/7), but I don’t watch stuff quickly enough.  I keep wanting to take notes and write about stuff, and I also get easily distracted by the internet and stuff.  I have TV seasons and multi-movie collections and hey, what’s that!?

Resolution: Stop falling into YouTube rabbit holes!

Like the SNL one the other week.  Or how over the past weekend, I fell into one just because I started listening to the new tracks from the Magnetic Fields over at their website, (“’74 No” is great!) off the forthcoming album 50 Song Memoir, (make clicky with that and you’ll get my Amazon Affiliate stuff) and then just kept listening to various live tracks and covers and hey, Neko Case and the New Pornographers, once I found a Kelly Hogan cover of “Papa Was a Rodeo” (she tours with Neko, don’tcha know?).  Urgh!  It won’t stop, I know, but I’ll try to avoid it.  Some.  Kinda.  Sorta.  Maybe.

Resolution: Listen through my CDs and tapes and records, write about them.

I actually have been taking some notes about the stuff that I’ve had in my CD player lately, but I haven’t gotten around to sharing yet.  I may just scrap the ones that I was going to talk about and wait until I get a new set of 5 CDs in (as that’s what my CD changer holds).  I have such a great opening line about that, too!

Resolution: Write and draw more comics.

Yes, I’ve written and drawn comics before.  Unfortunately, I was crushed in my dreams by a lack of feedback, so I haven’t done more.  Eventually I will write about what I did do (and maybe even eventually post them here.  Maybe.) and the feedback I did get.  But I want 2017 to be the year I get back into it.  More writing!  More drawing!  Research for the projects that I’m interested in doing!  Yay!  Go me!

Resolution: Catch up on the NY Times from the past year plus.  Read the articles on the 2016 presidential campaign not unlike a horror movie.  “You fools, you aren’t taking him seriously as a candidate!  The votes are coming from inside the Rust Belt!!!”

I amass the NY Times Sunday papers, but I’ve been collecting them up for over a year (I know!  I know!  I am a hoarder, DO NOT JUDGE ME!  Ahem….), and I need to go back through them.  I actually did that a couple years ago, got behind then eventually caught up.  It was interesting reading about things, knowing a bit about the events that happened in the meantime, and seeing what the “first draft of history” was.  Yeah, I get my kicks by going “oh, that was interesting how they reported that and then how it turned out”.  How I don’t have a lady friend is beyond me….

Resolution: Dig out my musical instruments and play around with them.

Yeah, I have a guitar and keyboard around.  I want to play with them.

Resolution: Promote my pal Mark Scudder more often.

Of course, my noodling on the guitar and keyboard will be nothing compared to what my good friend Mark Scudder can do.  Not only is he a talented guitarist and singer, but he’s a genius at production.  His talent needs to get more exposure (that’s… not a euphemism), and I’ll try to use my platform here to help him out.  If you like the video below, which is him laying down guitars for a sweet track of his called “Alera”, consider checking out his website and possibly his Patreon as well.  (This is the perfect post to promote him, since the album he’s working on is called ReSolution!  Oh, this sounds great with my new headshells!)

Resolution: Clean out email boxes.

Email inbox at zero?  HA!  That’s not going to happen, but I should organize my emails more.  Personal, work, and AJS related stuff.

Resolution: Clean my desk at work — yes, I’m messy there too!

I don’t know, maybe I’ll need that sheet of paper from 5 years ago that has information about stuff that we don’t use any more.  DO NOT JUDGE ME!  Yeah, I need to toss a lot of stuff.  I keep doing the ol’ “ah, I’ll look at it later on” thing, and it goes badly.  Just collects up stuff.

Resolution: Write more stuff for AJS.  Get to the point of posting something daily, if possible, hopefully by … April?  June?

Yeah, this one’s probably a pipe dream, but it’s what I’ve wanted to do for quite a while.  Even before we set up the Atomic Junk Shop, I’ve wanted to write more about the stuff I dig, so I can share it with you folks and feel like I’m not just wasting the money I spend on this stuff.  OK, that’s mostly for the ’90s stuff that I’ve bought and want to snark on eventually, but I have a ton of ideas of features and stuff that I want to do here, and I’m hoping to get my ass in gear and do them.

Resolution: Put more pictures into posts.

Yeah, I forget about that sometimes….

So that’s about it for my Resolution list.  Feel free to share some of your own, or laugh at my lofty goals, or encourage me to improve my behavior in a loving way.  Or something.