As early man noticed the progression of the seasons, he began to identify the new year—marked by the beginning of spring—as a time to rededicate himself to his most primal life goals: killing, eating, and fucking as often as possible.

Our traditional New Year’s resolutions are almost as universal: exercise more, lose weight, and do something that makes our life feel like it has a purpose greater than procreation. More often than not we fail to reaching those goals, not because of an inherent weakness in the idea of resolutions, but simply because we mostly fail at everything, no matter what time of year we start an attempt.

This week on Dethroner we’ll discuss the nature of goal setting, the best places to track your attempts, resolutions that are designed to fail (and why that’s a good thing), question the wisdom behind some common resolutions, as well as offer a clean slate onto which you can dump your ideas, plans, and dreams for 2007.

It’s a week full of hope, which we hope to share with you, until the point where our cynicism and self-doubt manifests as mockery of your own excitement. Open your dreams to us, so that we may crush them. (”Mock others’ pain to cover own more effectively” is one of our foremost goals for 2007.)

This week’s theme is: New Year’s Resolutions.

If you have a tip or a story idea for Dethroner, please feel free to send a tip or drop us a line on AIM. In addition to theme-related links, we also welcome regular submissions to Ask Dethroner and Dapper or Crapper?. Upcoming themes are available for your perusal and suggestion on our Planning Commission Wiki.