THE BELL CURVE:With firm resolve, these resolutions will be broken

After roughly eight decades of making New Year’s resolutions and then breaking them, thereby inducing guilt rather than cleansing the soul, I have decided on a new approach to this annual psych bashing. This year, I have assembled New Year’s resolutions that I positively will not keep.

It is my hope and expectation to find soul-cleansing satisfaction in breaking all of the following resolutions.

I will accept the role of the people who run Regal Entertainment to decide what movies we should and shouldn’t see, thereby exercising a censorship designed to bring us in line with their social, political, ethical and religious views. If we find this objectionable, we can always drive into Los Angeles to watch such films — or hope they find their way to the Lido. And while we’re at it, I will stop complaining about paying five bucks for Regal’s “small” popcorn (which can actually be had at half that price at the Lido).

I will accept as a reasonable explanation for a canceled commercial flight the cryptic response “mechanical” when I ask why I have to spend hours in an airport when I should have been home. Accordingly, I will put away the suspicion that the actual reason is that not enough passengers booked the flight to make it profitable, so we were all packaged on a later flight.

I will presume the highest motives of public service in the priorities of Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor and that the collateral damage to any group of citizens from the withdrawal of public support to such activities as a job center and multiple social services involving hunger and public health are somehow necessary to the goal of enhancing public safety. And to be patient and understanding if the religious views of new City Councilwoman Wendy Leece ever get entangled in governmental issues.

I will also be patient and understanding with Time Warner, our new cable provider. Adelphia may have been pillaged by its top executives who are now in prison as a result, but at least they supplied music to us with a wide variety of choice and quality. Time Warner is high on public relations communiques but — as far as I could determine by studying their new Channel Finder — nonexistent on music. I will hope this omission may be corrected from my patient and understanding place.

I will stop raising questions about the progress of the Great Park, where the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station once stood. If the space is filled with high-ticket residential properties instead of lakes and meadows for those who can’t afford high-ticket residential to enjoy, I’ll be patient. I won’t push a head tax for Irvine residents using John Wayne, nor will I raise my voice above the roar of engines overhead to chasten local officials who let El Toro get away from them or insist as the roar grows that we don’t need another airport. Never did. Never will.

I won’t fuss at Angels General Manager Bill Stoneman for declining to enter the baseball meat market to acquire the power hitter seriously lacking in the Angels’ lineup. Having once again invested, at an inflated price, in one-sixth of a season ticket, I will not wince every time Vladimir Guerrero is purposely walked to get at a banjo hitter behind him.

Instead, I will rejoice that Stoneman protected the youthful Angel pitching staff whose members keep losing 1-0 and 2-1 games.

I will stop pointing out certain obvious ironies. For example, people who most violently protest legalized abortions are the same people who strongly support sexual abstinence rather than condoms and sex education, the best means of preventing the unwanted pregnancies which lead to abortions. Or those who would deny the use of a cell the size of a dot on this page for research that would save the lives of millions of fully developed human beings. Or those who — like our governor — will carry the flag for combating global warming from the cockpits of their SUVs that get minuscule gas mileage while spewing carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

There are more, but these will keep me occupied to the start of the baseball season when life — after the Christmas holidays — will begin again.