I read once in a magazine called “Motivational Science Digest” that I just made up, that the key to achieving your goals is to make them attainable. If your New Year’s resolution is to go to the gym three times a week, every week, you’ve set yourself up for failure. Life throws too many curve balls to beast out fifty-two weeks in a row. What happens when you take a vacation to South America and get kidnapped by Columbians who lock you in the back of a poultry truck for a week, and that poultry truck has no free-weights or elliptical machines? Now you’ve copped out on your resolution, and that makes you a bad person.

In order to practice what I preach, here are my realistic 2011 New Year’s resolutions.

-I will not build a fort

-I will not insert the word “diphthong” into any conversations regarding 911 conspiracy

-I will not read War & Peace in the original Russian translation

-I will not point at a Peregrine Falcon, and incorrectly identify it as a Wyvern

-I won’t cuss at any babies, even if they start it

-I will always wear clothes in public, with the exception of Aeropostale

-I will not start my own organic marshmallow cafe, with fire pits in place of tables

-I will not be hit on the head by a meteor, while driving through the Lincoln tunnel

-I will not invent anything in the field of medical technology

-I will not hunt or kill any Komodo Dragons, unless using bow and arrow

-I will not lock myself in a wine cellar and write reality TV show pilots based on Gary Busey, Sarah Palin, and Kate Goslyn being stranded on Alcatraz island with nothing but three copies of “Lord of the Flies.”

-I will not play the board game Monopoly, unless I can be the shoe or the terrier (or maybe the boat).

-I will only eat rhubarb in pie form, and even then rarely

-I will not give candy and liquor to pigeons

-I will not purposely search for David Hasslehoff videos on YouTube

-I will not eat cereal using a Cutco steak knife

-I will not use fresh coffee to help swallow vitamins

-I will not give a lecture on horticulture that’s open to the public

-I will not run as an Anarchist for political office, under the name Able Honestgood

-I will not compulsively sign into my old Friendster account and check for new messages

-I will not participate in any form of illegal cage fighting

-I will not claim to have adopted a Ukrainian child named Boris, who maintains my website