I also used to have a fondness for chips and soda but a few years of scant consumption cured that. It should be admitted here that my first successful tactic against consuming junk food was a holier-than-thou attitude. I quickly saw how such an attitude can become itself addictive and found new, entertaining ways to reject some of my baser attractions.

To wit, and to be witty, I took to describing the chip-chomping experience this way: once you’ve eaten a chip, the pleasant flavor and crunch are replaced by an awful aftertaste that can only be defeated by the most thorough oral cleansing or, more handily, swigging soda and chomping another chip—it’s a downward spiral that ends when you’ve up-ended the bag for crumbs and sucked the soda dry and finally resigned yourself to tasting your garbage-flavored mouth until you can find a toothbrush.

In 2008 I will use the New Year’s Resolution tradition to test the proverb “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. By trick or by treat, I will avoid each item on a privately kept (and by no means final) list of Things I’d Rather Not Like. At the end of the year, I will be free to indulge any desires which might remain. Results will be posted in 2009.