Here at the ass-end of a particularly crappy year, it’s a time for quiet reflection and looking — however fearfully — ahead. So, casting off our usual mantle of obstreperous nonconformity, we mindlessly jump on the bandwagon of year-end cliches and offer for your edification and delight our resolutions for 2009.

We resolve to stop referring to Rush Limbaugh as a “gas bag” and instead refer to him as a “great hulking goober of a gas bag.”
• Vow to stay out of the Mickey Rourke/Sean Penn dust-up leading up to the Oscars.
• Stop feeling sorry for Caroline Kennedy when she says “you know” more than 50 times in an interview.
• Change our profligate ways and instead learn to pinch a penny until Lincoln screams.
• Make a firm commitment to you, our readers, not to use the word “recessionista” — the newly coined term for fashion mavens in a down economy — ever.
• Stop mentioning to people who’ve never watched her show how darned cute Rachel Maddow is.
• Eradicate from our vocabulary the overworked word “maverick” and replace it instead with “angry old white guy who will do anything to win.”
• Spend even more time searching the Internets for leads for Pensito Review, and even less time earning money.
• Stop referring to Rush Limbaugh as a “gas bag” and instead refer to him as a “great hulking goober of a gas bag.”
• Stop doing business with Bernie Madoff. Really.
• Become a bank and get us some of that bailout loot. GMAC did it — why can’t First Pensito National Citi Bank of America?
• Stop lying on our MySpace page.
• Start lying on our Facebook page.
• Keep our dog on the leash more, and when we let her off, stop yelling at her in front of people as if they will think more of us for at least recognizing our dog should be on a leash to begin with.
• Try our best to ignore Sarah Palin.
• Reduce, reuse, and recycle. Especially ideas for posts.
• Take all the Tracy Chapman songs off our iPod.
• Vow that as we write our memoirs, we leave out all references to love affairs through fences, drug and alcohol arrests, being saved by wolves, and Oprah Winfrey.

Those are our resolutions. What are yours?