How to Completely Ruin Your New Year's Resolutions

Let’s face it– New Year’s Resolutions are made to be broken. The holidays are a time of financial, culinary, and alcoholic excess that very few can escape. The horrible hangovers, the growing waistlines, the vicious credit card bills all lead to desperate pleas for change. How do we plan to dig our way out of this year’s holiday hole? On December 31st, we collectively raise our glasses, burp, and swear to “drink less” in the coming year…

We at GearCrave, however, have decided to swear off these ineffectual resolutions once and for all. Our New Year’s Resolution is not only to stop making them, but to help others break their own useless resolutions… and to do it in style. Read on, fellow GearCravers, for our ultimate guide to shattering your own personal New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s what we’ll be covering:

1. Resolution Number One: Spend More Time with the Family
2. Resolution Number Two: Quit Drinking
3. Resolution Number Three: Get in Shape

Continue reading below for creative ways to shatter your own New Year’s resolutions!

Some polls have shown that more than 50% of American’s vow to spend more time with family and friends in the new year. If these polls are accurate, we can conclude that 50% of Americans are liars. Sure, family is wonderful– but so is getting a box at the Super Bowl with your friends. So is a fake bachelor party in Vegas. GearCrave has three killer suggetions on how to shatter your resolution to spend more time with your family this year.

1. Super Bowl XLII: Just one month in, you can crush your resolution by spending a weekend with your friends at the greatest sporting event in the world: Super Bowl 43 in Phoenix, Arizona. Try the Super Bowl’s “Fairway to Field” package for groups of two. Get your friends together, pony up a hefty $10k each, and you get the royal treatment:
   • Your choice of a 4-night stay at the Millenium Resort, the Gainey Suites Hotel, the Scottsdale Embassy Suites, or the Buttes Resort, all in the greater Phoenix area.
   • A foursome round of 18 holes at the Blackstone Private Country Club on the day of your choosing.
   • A Saturday tee off at the Grayhawk Golf Club
   • Corporate Village tickets on the 18th hole at the FBR Open tournament
   • VIP Pre- and Post-game parties at the Glendale Renaissance Hotel and Spa
   • Finally, and most importantly, South Oasis Lower Level End Zone seating at Super Bowl 43.
2. Fake Bachelor Party in Vegas: This is for the truly creative, truly shameless, and truly sneaky. Have yourself a no-holds-barred fun fest in Las Vegas with your college buddies without the pain of impending marriage. Here’s how!
   • Gather your friends, gather some cash, and plan a weekend to remember.
   • Choose the “groom”– this can be a distant friend you never see any more, a member of your group that will never marry, or no one at all.
   • Select the dates, the hotel, and the details. With a group of 12, you can put 4 to a room with two double beds AND get yourself a suite for under $150 a piece per night. (We recommend The Wynn!)
   • Once you arrive, the fun begins. The best part, everyone gets to play bachelor and trade off the “benefits”.
   • What kind of benefits can you expect? Free meals, free drinks, free lap dances, and free attention from the visiting ladies.
   • One word of advice- don’t call the strippers to your suite, just go to a strip club. The strippers that come to your room are not strippers. You do the math.
3. Space Tourism: If you really want to get away from the family, how better than to leave the planet altogether? While this technique is reserved for the truly rich (and truly patient), there is no better “other-worldly” experience available, especially one with such bragging rights.
   • The cost: $30 million USD.
   • The carrier: The Russian Space Agency. Presently, no other public or private organization is actually booking scheduled trips out of the Earth’s atmosphere.
   • The trip: You’ll be escorted by Russia’s finest cosmonauts in a 3 person crew Soyuz spacecraft.
   • The launch: Trips are fully booked until 2009, so you’ll have to wait a bit for your departure.

Resolution Number Two: Quit Drinking

At GearCrave, we don’t feel you have a problem. We don’t feel you should quit drinking, you should just drink better. Take beer for example. If you choose to drink to get drunk, that is fine by us– but its how you do it that we are concerned about. There is so much more to beer than what you find on tap at your local watering hole. In fact, we feel that you should take on an entirely new policy when choosing what to pour in your glass. Give this a try for a few months: do your best to avoid beer imported by Anheuser Busch, Miller Brewing, Heineken or others. Yes, this will severely limit your selection, but here’s how you can find some amazing international and domestic brews to fill your fridge instead.

• Find your local specialty beer store or beer and liquor supermarket. In Chicago, for example, you could visit Sam’s Wine, Binny’s Beverage Depot, and more.
• Find the warm, single bottle beer section. If you’re lucky, there should be hundreds of choices here from domestic microbrews and international beer craftsmen alike.
• Grab six individual beers from the array in front of you. You may choose by country, by type, at random or even by what label is most attractive to you. The point is, try six new beers on each visit.
• Keep a beer journal. When tasting each beer, write down the brewery, beer type, and name. Then write down some notes about what you like or don’t like about each beer.
• After four or five visits, you’ll find yourself making more intelligent choices about the beers you drink. You might take to Flemish Red Ales, English Porters, or obscure Austrian Pilsners.
• We recommend you start with those Flemish Reds and even a Lambic, like the raspberry or Frambois Lambic by Lindemans. Our personal favorite? Read about that here.
• If you’re a drinker, and consuming less is your goal in this new year, we say quitting is for quitters. Keep drinking, just do it the GearCrave way– smarter.

Resolution Number Three: Get in Shape

Okay, so you had a couple extra turkey legs over the holidays. Maybe that extra slice of pie wasn’t your best idea. But at GearCrave, we think you’re beautiful just the way you are. You wanted to lose weight this year? Humbug. We’ve got better ideas for how to spend your spare time. Want some examples? Here’s three.

1. Buy the biggest plasma television money can buy: At the recent CES conference in Las Vegas, Panasonic showed their new flagship 150″ plasma TV. That’s 12.5 feet diagonally.
   • If you’re living in a major metropolitan area, chances are 12.5 feet is bigger than your bedroom wall.
   • Put one of these in your living room and get a nice couch to match.
   • From video games to hi-def movies to sports TV packages, it wouldn’t be difficult to spend an entire weekend planted in front of this thing.
   • The good news for you GearCravers on a weight loss plan, this baby isn’t available for sale just yet.
   • Start saving your money though. Once you’ve shaved off some healthy pounds, this puppy will hit the market, and new weight will hit your scale.
2. Go Back to School, Without Leaving your Computer: Above, we mentioned a fabulous trip to Super Bowl 43. We didn’t mention that this year’s Super Bowl will be held at the University of Phoenix’s new arena and football field. You’ve likely seen University of Phoenix Online commercials on TV or their ads on Digg, Yahoo, and other web communities. In 2008, University of Phoenix Online is a strong, credible university, and their online courses are a great way of improving your career and putting together a bullet proof resume. Here’s how to get involved.
   • First, find a degree that best fits your career and where you want to take it in this new year.
   • You can choose from any standard bachelor’s degree you wish, just like any standard college you’d attend in person.
   • Next, find out what it would take to apply and receive admission to University of Phoenix.
   • Bear in mind that the most difficult part of getting an online education is that you alone are responsible for motivating yourself to do the work.
   • There is no professor breathing down your neck, no deadlines you have to meet in person, no real sense of palpable urgency that a standard education brings.
   • If you have the entrepreneurial spirit and can motivate yourself to succeed, an online education might be right for you.
   • If you have issues with procrastination and inspiration, you might just want to save your money.
   • If you meet these qualities, you owe it to yourself to learn more about this opportunity.
3. Become a Competitive Eater: yes, we’re talking about competing at state fairs and other venues where the object is to push as much food into your system as possible. Here’s how:
   • The best place to begin your adventure is at the International Federation of Competitive Eaters website.
   • Its not easy. Imagine eating 58 Johnsonville Brats in 10 minutes. That leaves very little time to breathe… But competitive eating champ Takeru Kobayashi did it…
   • The best way to start your adventure is to try it at home. Get some friends together, cook a hundred or so hot dogs, and give it a shot. Chances are, if you can’t beat your own friends out the gate, you shouldn’t get involved in competitive eating.
   • If you’ve proven yourself worthy, its time to learn the tips of the pros. Every great athlete exercises, so you need to learn how the great competitive eaters do it.
   • Mr. Kobayashi trains each day by shrinking his stomach with cardio exercises, then filling it with water and difficult-to-digest foods to stretch it back out. This ability to expand and contract gives the 130 pound Kobayashi a competitive advantage in the world of CE.
   • If you can’t beat pros like Takeru Kobayashi, try inventing a new form of competitive eating. Anything edible can be competed against, so try something new. Want to blow them out of the water? Try bringing something new to the table, like eating bugs.
   • Each year, there is about $200,000 in prize money available to competitive eaters, so you can earn a pretty extra penny if you truly have the talent.
   • Keep in mind, though, if you aren’t ready to exercise and work for it, this could all become one ugly pipe dream. And by “pipe dream”, we mean “toilet”.
   Auld Lang Syne, son. Our whole point behind this article– we at GearCrave think you’re perfect the way you are, even with your flaws. If you made a resolution this past New Year’s, expect to break it at some point. And if you’re going to break it, why not have fun doing it? Keep reading GearCrave, my friends. We’ll be sure to keep you entertained with articles like this and the countless awesome buyers guide suggestions you’ve come to love. While you’re at it, don’t forget about our RSS feed! In the mean time, leave a comment below, let us know how YOU would suggest breaking your personal resolution below.

read more | digg story