New Year's

January 2026

Cambridge- Our worst (and only) reporter was ungraciously gracious enough (whatever that means) to let us use the story of his New Year’s resolutions for our news article this month. It was either this story or the story about the round rectangle sign with blue letters painted with pink paint. Unfortunately, it turns out that the sign story was not real, so we had to go with our secondary choice. This year, Guy McDickerson decided to focus mainly on computers in his resolution planning. His resolution from last year was only 800x600, so this year he got a screen with a 1920x1081 resolution. Next, he decided to try to be more comedian- like. (We think this was a good idea.) He started by telling this joke to the first person he saw: “There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.” The person listening to the joke was obviously the latter of the two kinds of people, as he ran oƯ without saying a word. Guy ended his day by deciding to keep a journal. Of course, just any normal journal wouldn’t be enough for him; he decided to write it in ancient Sanskrit. However, when he realized that he couldn’t learn Sanskrit in five minutes, he chose to instead write in a diƯerent way, which ended up changing not only capitalization, but also punctuation and numerals. Here is the fruit of his labor:

jANUARY !< @)@^ eNTRY3 ! dEAR JOURNAL_WIAT_WHY DO I CALL YOU DEAR1/ wHAT HAVE YOU EVER DONE FOR ME1/ aNYWAYS< YOU MAY NOTICE THAT i AM HOLDING DOWN SHIFT ON MY KEYBOARD WHEN YOU SHOULD”NT < AND LETTING IT UP WHEN YOU SHOULD HOLD IT DOWN> QUITE INTERESTING< i MUST SAY1 tODAY i DECIDED TO GET A SCREEN FOR MY COMPUTER THAT IS MORE RESOLUTE> i GOT ONE THAT WAS !(@)X!)*)> tHINGS ARE SO MUCH CLEARER NOW1 aFTER THAT< I TOLD A JOKE TO A RANDOM GUY (NO< NOT ME) ON THE STREET> tHE JOKE WENT LIKE THIS; ‘tHERE ARE ))!) KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD< THOSE WHO UNDESTAND BINARY< AND THOSE WHO DON”NT> tHE FELLOW RAN OFF LIKE HE WAS SCARED FOR SOME REASON> sOME PEOPLE1 oH WELL< GUESS HE WASN”T THE HUMOROUS TYPE> tONIGHT I HAD A GREAT FIREWORK SHOW 9WHO KNEW THAT FIREWORKS WOULD EXPLODE IF YOU DROP THEM0 BUT I ENDED UP HAVING TO PAY A FINE FOR WORKING FIRE WITHOUT A LISCENSE> wITH NO LOVE< gUY mKdICKERSON

We think that McDickerson’s style is annoying and hard to read, so we advise you to write in the normal way. Happy New Year everyone, and keep those New Year’s resolutions!

Saltsphere Says: Man with foolish resolution is like a computer with a small screen.