By Eric Broder

　　山西省医科大学 孙军 译注

　　Two thousand and two is going to be my breakout year. You best get out of the way, because this is not going to be pretty.

　　For a long time, I believed that "healthy, wealthy and wise" automatically followed "early to bed and early to rise." I have recently been disabused of this notion. I go to bed at 10 p.m. and wake up at 6 a.m.. Yet my finances are still deep inside the red zone, and I continue to feel crappy and stupid most of the time. The fact is, you also have to do something constructive between those remaining hours. Which is precisely the plan for this year.

　　In 2002, the waking hours will be quality time. For a change.

　　Personal appearance and diet

　　It is high time I dress for success. This office is a study in hipness, and yet I continue to wear shirts and trousers from the Ozzie Nelson<注1> collection.

　　So dig my 2002 wardrobe: black turtlenecks, black bell-bottoms, Skechers<注2> hobnailed boots, tiny, mean spectacles and a shaved head. My co-workers currently view me as a slightly out-of-it older fellow who may possibly have sustained minor brain damage. They are about to find out that I didn't! Sustain minor brain damage! I may even draw on a tattoo or pierce something.

　　As for the diet, it needs a smidgen more balance. I do eat one salad per week (slathered in creamy Italian dressing with crumbled blue cheese on the side), but my fare mainly consists of crackers, assorted cheeses, Sugardale Coneys, onion bagels, Peter Pan Creamy, ground beef, Dan-Dee Bar-B-Q potato chips and Pennysticks pretzels.<注3> (As I inventory it, this diet does appear a bit more revolting than I first thought.)

　　I hit the nadir last week with my lunch consisting of a bowl of bean soup and a MoonPie.<注4> When beans and marshmallows encounter each other in your digestive system, it makes the Browns Stadium<注5> bottle-chucking man look like a preschooler in tea party. It's an absolute debacle.

　　In 2002, I will try to eat at least two salads a week, accompany my burgers with a V8<注6> and consume a canned fruit medley at the office every other day. Voila! Every nutritional requirement fulfilled while maintaining caloric integrity. Maybe I will lose this waxy British pallor once and for all.

　　Growing personal wealth

　　Every year I ask myself the same question: When the hell am I gonna cash in?swheresis the big American payoff for yours truly?<注7>Then it came to me: I will write a book! "But you don't know anything about anything," you say. I know, but since when has that stopped anyone? Particularly a novelist.

　　That's right. I am going to write fiction—genre fiction. I am going to write a mystery set at a weekly newspaper. This way, I can work in things I am familiar with (writers, editors, newspaper production), and research things I don't know so much about (murder). But really, how much research do I have to do for that, besides watching a few old Columbos?<注8>

　　I am thinking of a story involving a demented freelance writer who begins to serial-kill editors after one misspells the freelancer's name in a byline. I will work editing and proofreading into the story as critical elements. I even had the perfect title—The Corrections. Shit.

　　But I have alternates:

　　The Editors Puked Blood

　　Copy Desk of Death

　　The Virgin Editors

　　Seeyouinhell.doc

　　I Spit on Your Edits

　　Who Moved My Clause?

　　The title is everything. Once you nail that, you are on your way. See you on Oprah.<注9>

　　The getting of wisdom

　　Who needs it if you wear outtasight<注10> clothes, mix canned Del Monte<注11> fruit cocktail into your diet and have a major book deal—I will settle for two out of three. That's wisdom right there.