The Ridiculous Idea Of New Years Resolutions

It's almost 2016 and the time has come to make our New Years Resolutions. We all like to think that we will start the new year by giving away all our bad habits from the past twelve months. Excuse me a minute while I piss myself laughing. What amuses me is that many people actually believe that they will keep to the aforementioned resolutions. Excuse me, one more minute.

I have seriously made some resolutions in order to become healthier and make my, long suffering, wife happier. Unlike mere mortals, I will keep to these resolutions. Here is the list.

1. Stop drinking too much booze.
The "too much" bit is fairly subjective. My wife, my doctor and I all have differing ideas on the concept of "too much". My wife says I should only have one glass of wine with dinner and only an occasional Scotch. My doctor is not quite so parsimonious, suggesting two glasses of wine and one Scotch a day.
In an effort to satisfy everyone, I will agree will both of them, with a couple of exceptions regarding quantity. My resolution is to not drink more than two bottles of wine with dinner (bottle size/quantity not specified) and to limit my Scotch intake to two (bottles) a week. This resolution may have a reasonable chance of success.

2. Stop being so grumpy.
This one is a challenge, as I'm the quintessential "Grumpy Old Man", a role I am comfortable with and exceptionally good at. In a brave effort to maintain this resolution, I have attached a few, easy to follow, conditions and these are as follows. My wife must stop nagging me to do as wants and my doctor, the fat slob, must stop lecturing me on my health. I bet that I'll outlast him.
Having imposed those simple conditions, I feel that I'm on fairly safe ground.

3. Stop farting in bed.
This one will be difficult, as I only do it while I'm asleep and I'm totally unaware of it. In order to keep my lovely wife happy, I will try very hard not to continue the (imagined?) disgusting practice. Once again, I will impose a condition on my wife, to help me with this. She must reduce the amount of beans and disgusting green leaf things that she puts in my meals. This is only fair. As I've explained to her, the reason horses, cows and sheep fart so prodigiously is because they eat green, leafy stuff. Should I fail to keep this resolution, I will resort to shock tactics to vindicate myself. Unknown to her, I actually have recorded her farting in her sleep on my smart phone. Smart phone, smart thinking!

These are the main three resolutions that I've made. There are quite a few others, but they're not worth mentioning, as I have absolutely no intention keeping them.

The simple lesson in this post is to make conditions with your resolutions, so you can actually keep them longer than a week.

Here endeth the lesson and a Happy New Year to you and your family.

A (Kind Of) Welcome Guest Over Christmas

It pretty much came out of the blue. My lovely and sometimes crazy wife informed me that her(Vietnamese) nephew had just been granted a residence visa to live in Australia, five years after he originally applied. It's nice to see that our, well paid, public servants are on the ball!

In a nutshell he (Toni) will be staying with us until he can find work.  He has a masters degree in IT and is waaaay smarter than the average bear, so the work thing shouldn't be too much of a problem. He just wants to get his own house so he can bring his lovely wife and young son to join him. I kind of hope that all happens before his baby son is of a marriageable age.

Ok, I admit if the Grinch was real, it would be me, so I'm possibly not the kindest individual in this sorry world. I also enjoy living with my wonderfully offbeat wife, by ourselves, with minimal outside influence.

You are probably imagining Toni to be a short, skinny, bespectacled, buck toothed, Asian nerd. The bugger is about 185cm, good looking, no specs, no buck teeth, well mannered and very intelligent. A perfect guest, right? BUT HE IS IN MY HOUSE!!

I can no longer walk around in my underpants, swear profanely, fart when I want, pick my nose or get shit faced drunk when I feel like it. I can't sleep naked with my bedroom door left open, nor can I get away with not showering for the three days that I have off from work, each week. I have to flush the toilet, not knock over glasses of wine at the dinner table and pretend to enjoy eating rice. As for having an enjoyable, noisy sex life with my wife, (Yes, old farts still enjoy an active love life) that seems to be coming a distant memory. All in all, the whole situation is a bloody disruption!

However, as I'm very much in love with the aforementioned crazy spouse, I will bite the bullet and try to act a little civilised. I promise to believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, kindness, gentility and forbearance.....until he leaves. Then all agreements are off.

I hope you all have a Christmas. Bah! Humbug!

Christmas Myths

OK. Let's be real here. I hate Christmas for a whole lot of reasons.

First of all, lets talk about Santa. Here's a guy, who spends his time at the North Pole (Really?) controlling a large team of elves (Really? Read dwarfs. Our vertically challenged citizens) to build toys for all the kids around the world, uncontrolled by current labour laws. Sadly, most of these kids neither know about Santa nor receive anything from him. This makes Santa a liar, a con artist a slave labourer or a figment of children's imagination. The latter being a control mechanism by parents over their kids, which is totally despicable.

In addition to this, what kind of guy dresses up as Santa at department stores? Considering that kids will cry, vomit or pee over the guy in the Santa suit, what motivates this guy to do that job? Paedophelia comes to mind. Is it a part time job for Catholic priests? The Vatican, sure as Hell , won't tell.

Now, let's talk about the family Christmas dinner. Here we we have the extended family, 50% of whom hate each other, combining to celebrate something (undefined). It usually results in drunkenness, fighting, insults and renewed hatred of our relatives. God help any newly married family members, because they will be totally ignored, ostracised or criticised by those related by blood. Been there, done that!

Finally, those of us who are not able to spend Christmas with our families, due to a multitude of reasons, will be left to celebrate alone. Bring on the single malt Scotch!

Bah, humbug!