Paul Rudnick

– Removing the many extraneous commas from a manuscript would make a fabulous video game.

– While you’re in the midst of writing something it’s impossible to tell if it’s any good. It is, however, entirely possible to tell if it sucks.

– If you write something awful, just claim that the North Koreans hacked it and changed everything.

– Writing is both about finding what you’re good at, and eliminating all of the far more numerous, amazing things you’re terrible at.

– Rewriting is the best, because it’s exactly what you never get to do in life.

– There is nothing more satisfying than deleting an entire unnecessary paragraph, except for deleting an entire unnecessary chapter.

– I’m sorry, but the two n’s in unnecessary are unnecessary.

The most dangerous gift you can give someone is not a loaded handgun. It’s a 3 pound plastic jug of Kirkland Milk Chocolate Almonds from Costco. This jug has a wide-mouth opening which easily accomodates a human hand. If I tried, maybe I could fit my head inside. The second most dangerous gift is a 4 pound bag of Kirkland Trail Mix. This bag contains cashews, peanuts, almonds, M&Ms and raisins. Someday my lifeless body will be found beside an empty bag and I will be smiling.

These are very small photos. In real life these products are the size of all pleasure since the beginning of time.

1. A book/play/album/movie/web series/whatever created by an artist from a tiny country no one’s ever heard of, in a language almost no one speaks,  and the artwork is almost completely unavailable in any format. This assures the listmaker that only he or she truly appreciates this work.

2. A late-career work by a grouchy avant-grade artist; this work must invoke “the terrible power of silence and the triumph of sublime incoherence.”

3. A pop bestselling work, to prove that the listmaker has a savvy connoisseur’s grasp of mass-market art/crap.

4. A fragmented, angry debut work by an earnest young artist with an invented name, a name which distances that artist from his or her rich parents.

5. A work by someone of a race different from that of the listmaker, to show not that the listmaker is a dreary liberal, but that if the listmaker ever met the artist, they’d nod at each other in mutual respect.

6. A just-reissued work by a long-neglected artist, preferably dead.

7. A hybrid, unclassifiable work involving, say, dance, tweets, stencils and 58 boxes of Lucky Charms.

8. Something which the listmaker declares screamingly, savagely, blisteringly funny, which it most likely isn’t.

9. Something created by a famous person whom the listmaker desperately wants to have sex with, or hang out with, or be.

10. The latest installment of a multi-part series which the listmaker first discovered as a child, and considers “a necessary chapter in my own story.”

In 2015 I resolve to:

– Eat more yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

– Read more first paragraphs and then stop.

– Almost finish watching a whole season of something.

– Eat more Costco trail mix.

– In the course of any tragic/disturbing/incoherent situation which grips the nation, hold off on formulating an opinion until having an opinion becomes unnecessary, because the zeitgeist has moved on.

– Do not learn to drive.

– Praise myself for becoming less kneejerk judgemental of other people.

– Attempt to at least give the false appearance of becoming less kneejerk judgemental of other people.

– Decide that being kneejerk judgemental of other people is actually a medically classifiable disorder over which I have no control. So I’m not a bad person, I’m just someone living with Kneejerk Judgement Disorder.

– Eat more chocolate pecan turtles.