Well, 2013 started off on a sour note right from the beginning, or do I mean ending? You see I was counting on the world coming to an end, as predicted by Quextifizzle Fo’schizzel, my Mayan Psychic advisor.

So you can see why I hadn’t bothered to think of New Year’s resolutions for 2013. When New Year’s Eve came at the end of 2012 and me with nothing resolved for the coming year, I got desperate.

Not trusting the lyin’ Mayan, I decided to hold a séance and seek advice from The Other Side. My plan was to place wagers on longshots and cash in by betting against the odds.

The Spirit of the Past was Babe Ruth.

“So, 2013, eh?” The Babe said. “Put your money on the pubs.”

Babe’s mouth was stuffed with hot dogs so instead of pubs, I thought he said Cubs. Oh, well.

The Spirit of the Present was Dennis Rodman. “The Obamacare roll-out will go smoothly. As my good friend Kim Jong Un said ‘if you like your dictator, you can keep your dictator’!”

Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson was the Spirit of the Future. “Not a single homo here. I told them queers to go to hell!”

“This is hell,” Mussolini said. “But the trains run on time.”

Obviously the spirits didn’t help, so I decided to use my abundant skills as a professional journalist to identify things to bet on in 2013.

First was a sucker’s bet. I was sure that there would always be Twinkies …

Dang.

As you can tell from my compact, if rotund, 230-pound body I obviously work out. I like doing crunches – my favorites are Cap’n Crunch and Nestle’s Krunch.

So I was in the gym one day – not to work out, just to use the rest room – I spotted this young woman shaking her butt in a mirror. I couldn’t take my eyes off her butt until the security guards yanked my face away.

“I’m Miley,” she said.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I call it twerking,” Miley replied. “Bet on it being the next big thing.”

I didn’t know who Miley was, I figured she must be on “Jersey Shore,” because they all seemed like a bunch of twerks to me. Anyway, I was sure that butt twirking would never catch on.

The next thing I know, everyone was twerking off to Miley.

But there was one thing guaranteed to happen. Prince William and Kate were going to have a baby. I could recoup my losses by correctly guessing the name of the new royal heir. People thought it would be something stodgy, like George. But, with Blue Ivy and North West out there, I knew the young, hip royal couple would come up with a cool name.

So I bet on the baby being named Moon Unit Windsor.

Darn!

As 2013 drew to a close it looked like it was going to be a major disappointment. Looking ahead I saw promise on the horizon. Most people seem to think Hillary Clinton will win the 2016 presidential election.

Like Hillary could ever beat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. He’s the All-American boy; who could resist a man born in Canada who thinks the American president, born in Hawaii, should go back to Africa?

That’s the kind of logical thinking we need in Washington.

Just when it looked like Lady Luck was going to pass me by in 2013, my old friends at Fox News (I finally said it without smirking!) saved the day by announcing it was a proven fact that Santa Claus was white. I could sell a picture of Santa to the National Enquirer for a gazillion, billion dollars!

In Alaska, I found some elves roasting a reindeer over an open fire.

“We’ve had to eat the reindeer since Congress cut our food stamps,” one elf said.

I explained that I was looking for Santa.

“Forget the North Pole, then,” the elf said. “We only use that when we have strippers over.”

Turns out that rising fuel costs forced Santa to sell his castle and move to an igloo in Aleknagik. I was shocked when Santa opened his door.

“You’re blue!”

“You would be too if you had to spend your life living in the Arctic,” Santa explained.

Santa let me take his picture, but every time I tried the photo came out blank.

“Of course it did,” Santa laughed. “I’m a fictional character! I can appear to be any color someone imagines me to be.”

Santa said Fox News would get a lump of coal this year.

“But, I’ll make it a white lump.”

John Christian Hopkins is a member of the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island. He is the author of Carlomagno. He currently lives on he Navajo Reservation with his wife, Sararesa.