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Hope Santa brought everyone everything they asked for this year. Me? I got my bills paid. Yay. Having something a little more tangible to show for it would be swell (I'm still sorta bitter I have yet to see any sign of the Voltron action figure I asked for back in fifth grade, or the time I got a Teddy Ruxpin and couldn't get any of my old Metallica cassettes to work in it... Who would've known?), but I guess it's the intangibles that matter -like not having a debt collector showing up at my doorstep.

So anyways, that leaves us with one important holiday left for a month or so, the next one being Valentine's Day - which, needless to say, is probably a non-holiday for the majority of us card-flopping folks as it is. (Well, at least it's a non-holiday for me right now; ya got me).

I figured I'd take this time out of my hectic schedule to reflect (insert Dave Meddish pose here), and to make some New Year's Resolutions of my own. Most of them I hope to keep... Many of them are probably savage, unadulterated lies. Some of them I may even break before the end of this article.

In any case, it's not like I'm going to swear off drinking and smoking... Might as well keep them somewhat realistic, right?

Onwards:

I, Famed Internet Columnist and All Around Good Man Carl Jarrell (see, I'm lying already), promise that for 2003, I:

1) Will never post a decklist with Skirk Fire Marshal in it. Might as well throw in the Goblin Marshals; they power up the Goblin Piledrivers, am I right?

2) When given the opportunity between casting Crown of Suspicion on Wellwisher and Wirewood Elf, will make sure to Crown the Wellwisher up.

3) Will not fail to remember cards like Ascending Aven, Choking Tethers, and Mistform Wall when declaring Imagecrafter as the best blue common in Onslaught sealed, nor will I call Future Sight an unplayable rare or Snarling Undorak just a "Hill Giant."

4) Will remember that no matter how cool the decklist looks, make sure to Avoid The Plains in Extended at all costs.

5) Will not give any of my teammates any more free publicity, since the last time I did, Phil Samms Q'd for Chicago while I notched a stellar 0-2-drink performance, and then a few weeks later, he split in the finals of a PTQ for Venice.

Remember folks - when I badmouth you for sixteen pages in a tournament report, good things are bound to happen to you afterwards.

6) Will make sure to take full credit for the novel idea of playing Birds of Paradise and Llanowar Elves in a G/X deck. Not that I would've ever been smart enough to think of that myself, but should I come up with any similar groundbreaking revelations, I'll make sure to do so.

7) Will not post any Fires decks with Tradewind Riders in them, good intentions notwithstanding.

8) Sometime this next year, will do my best to make Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar's prophecy a reality.

9) Will eventually replace my admittedly horrid picture with a better one. Yes people, it's intentionally bad - you don't have to keep telling me this whenever you actually meet me.

10) Will remember to Paris a one-fetcher, two Brainstorm hand, despite everyone telling me that's a "keeper for sure."

11) Will not blatantly plug my team's website whatsoever, which may or may not be edited out by The Ferrett 'cause it contains much harsh language. (But you can email him to ask - The Ferrett)

12) Will not discuss playing Skies in a format where you can play Blue/Green madness, nor will I discuss playing Iron Phoenix in a format that is defined largely by Pernicious Deed.

13) Will learn mIRC scripting so that I may finally, in fact, be able to transmit Cancebolaids to people I dislike via DCC.

14) Will promise to not only read all of Tomi Walamies' future articles, but actually get most or all of the humor contained within.

15) Will make sure to add at least one Silklash Spider to every sideboard of every deck I build from this day forward, even Type One Academy.

16) Will make sure that when I promise the masses an 18,000-word article - *article* here implying singular and not plural - that I indeed will bite the bullet, take one for the team, and write an *article*, singular.

17) Will never entitle an article "You Got Super-Goo on your Muffin?"

18) When confronted with writer's block, will never write a filler article about New Year's Resolutions instead of something along the lines of an Extended strategy/overview article even though everyone and their third uncle has written something on everything anyways.

19) Will remember that, when porting a deck like, say, Draco-Explosion from Extended into Type Two, there may be a slight problem in that, oh, I dunno, they're two completely different formats.

20) Will eventually come to the realization that, hey... What right do I really have making fun of other people's articles and ideas? What have I really accomplished besides a handful of Top Eights in generally meaningless events? Maybe I'm not quite the player I think I am, and maybe I should be a little more respectful and work on my game some more instead of ridiculing others unnecessarily and possibly offending them...

Merry belated Christmas, make sure you're not driving Tuesday night, and as always, may the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house,

Carl J.
carl_jarrell@hotmail.com
Zeke2517 on mIRC
The King of Greyhounds