Bad Punchline: 2012 Resolution

I'm not really big on resolutions for New Years because they seem sort of silly and arbitrary to me. I'm not against wanting to lose weight or quit smoking but if you require a mystical backing such as our baseless calender system in order to find the will to do something it seems unlikely that you will succeed in it. If you want to do something like lose weight or quit smoking then you should do it. On the other hand, however, while it is illogical to create resolutions I doubt that the tradition is going to stop anytime soon so I try to view it as a form of personal amusement. I think it's a little funny when other people fail theirs and it gives me a good excuse to say something bizarre to see how people react to it. So this year I have resolved to survive the End of the World. Again. I was nine years old the first time they told me the world was going to end. Evidently God is fond of big round numbers. Or I guess that was the theory. Apparently I survived the end of the world a couple times prior to then without even realizing it and in the past year I survived it twice more (all of these predicted by the same man). Due to the incredible lack of logic in betting that the world is going to end I choose to bet that the world is going to continue on. I think that this is a resolution that anyone over the age of ten can agree on. Resolve to survive the End of the World with me. Again.

Nought vs Aught

Now that we are a couple years into the second decade of the twenty-first century you may want some way to refer to the first decade of the twenty-first century in the same way that we now say 'the nineties' to refer to the decade between 1990 and 1999. I recently heard someone refer to this decade as 'the noughties' without being ironic or indicating that they were quoting someone else. I guess the theory behind this term is that 'nought' means nothing or zero and the years could be stated 00, 01, 02 and so on. However, I disagree with the term nought because of the massive amounts of confusion it would cause in verbal conversation. Nought's homophone 'naught' (which, yes, does mean more or less the same thing) would cause some confusion never mind the word 'not' or 'knot'. Then there's the fact that 'the noughties' is pronounced precisely the way you would pronounce 'the naughties' which sounds like some kind of sex act. This being said I am in favor of calling those years 'the Aughts' as it means essentially the same as nought and does not cause any confusion or bring to mind sex acts when you say it.