Rick Koster offers weekly lists of ideas, notions and things that must be seen to be believed. This week: New Year's resolutions.

New Year's resolutions are as predictable as getting those cheap Workout World offers in the mail in late December. Myself? Rather than selecting resolutions to get in shape or "better" myself, I prefer to come up with more esoteric concepts. Here, then, are my five resolutions for the new year.

1. Read all three volumes of Shelby Foote's Civil War history in the original format. Not many folks realize that, as a comic linguistic exercise, Foote's first-draft manuscripts were in Persian.

2. Let the big toenail on my left foot go unclipped for all of 2014.

3. Pull off a flash mob production of "The Lion in Winter" inside the Popeye's restaurant on Colman Street in New London.

4. Find at least one variety of spider that I enjoy eating.

5. Transcribe Stravinksy's Octet for Wind Instruments so it can be performed by a person playing a comb wrapped in tissue paper.