Bill Harper on the Net

Well, the party’s over (although some New Years Eve bashes may still be winding up), and it’s time to head back to work.

The biggest hurdle will be getting out of bed when the alarm goes off rather than just hitting ’snooze’ and going back to sleep. (Thank goodness I didn’t get one of those alarm clocks that run away as a Christmas present.) Once I’m up I can shower and dress pretty much on autopilot, which works really well providing I don’t grab a pair of jeans when I’m after a shirt.

Being the first day back after such a long break, I’ll be playing catch-up for a while. But if I get there by nine, I should be back to full speed by… some time on Thursday. Maybe.

First I’ll have to clear out the hundreds of emails sitting in my inbox about work-related issues I’ve spent the entire break trying to forget. I’ll probably just delete them because:

• I won’t know what they’re talking about anyway
• if I’ve forgotten about the issue, then maybe they have too, and we can drop the whole thing.

Once my inbox is empty, and my fingers have recovered from hitting ‘Delete’ a million times, it’ll be time for the main event: the Christmas Holiday Showdown.

You know the drill: you all stand around telling each other what you did over the break, and hope you don’t come across as a lazy slob. You can be one. You just can’t sound like one.

So you have two choices:

• actually do something constructive with your time — build a shed, take the family on holiday, cure cancer, etc.
• make something up.

Most people go for the second option, because it’s cheaper and you’re less likely to lose a thumb. But you do need to come up with a convincing story, which can take time. This is why people have trouble sleeping on Sunday nights — they’re too busy making up stories about what they did on the weekend.

(Hint: Having kids is a definite advantage, because you can say you took them to the beach/movies/hospital and everyone will believe you. If you don’t have any yet, talk to your partner.)

But for once I don’t have to make anything up. Not only did Lynda and I go on a cruise, I’ve got dozens of photos I can use as evidence. So for the first time in years I can get a decent night’s sleep.

Which is just as well, because I’ll need all my strength to hammer that ‘Delete’ key.

Today’s suggestion for a new law: make cinemas tell you when the actual movie starts.

Lynda and I went to see Happy Feet this afternoon. According to the paper, it started at a quarter to five, so we got there at twenty past four. (Being a kids movie, we expected hundreds of them to show up, and wanted to make sure we got a seat.)

After spending twenty-five minutes in line (and being hit several times by the two kids fighting in front of us), we finally sat down to watch the movie.

Ha! Just kidding. What we actually saw was:

• movie trivia questions, which hadn’t changed since the last time we went to the movies. (We’re getting really good now.)
• ads for local businesses (including someone with a bad Indian accent promoting “Karma Karaoke”).
• ads for the new season of “Lost” starting on TV here in February.
• ads for both the Happy Feet computer game and the Happy Feet deal at Hungry Jacks (”Collect all four!”).
• previews of other movies, which I don’t actually mind. (”Flushed Away” looks pretty good.)

Twenty minutes after sitting down, we finally got to see the movie.

(Funnily enough, the one ad we didn’t see was the “Movie Piracy - It’s A Crime” campaign. I guess they didn’t want to give the kids any ideas.)

If we’d known when the actual movie started, we could have done some shopping and just walked in during the previews. Sure, I wouldn’t know who to get in touch with for my next karaoke fix, but I could live with that.

And the verdict? I’d give it a six out of ten. Unlike the Pixar and DreamWorks movies, there isn’t much in it for the adults.

According to today’s paper, last night New Year’s Eve celebrations were pretty much incident-free, unless you count Network Ten’s coverage of the event in Sydney. So either we were all well behaved, or the local journalists were too drunk to type up their stories.

But we shouldn’t be worrying about whatever people did last night. Let’s face it: they’re paying for it today, either through massive hangovers or having to explain to the person in their bed that it was all a big mistake. And in a day or two it will all be forgotten — at least until the paternity suits start rolling in.

What we should be worried about are all the New Year’s resolutions people will be making today. Chances are someone you know will be starting a diet, giving up smoking, or finding a better job/house/partner. And if they don’t abandon the idea in the first week (”What do you mean I can’t eat chocolate?”), you’ll be suffering right along with them. And probably for a long time to come.

The worst combination of all is when they choose their New Year’s resolution while drinking on New Year’s Eve, and tell all their friends (which at that stage is pretty much everyone). Even if they realise it’s a bad idea the next day, they’ll go through with it anyway just to save face. (This is probably how most people get into politics.)

The best New Year’s resolutions are ones that take you the whole year to accomplish. That way you can tell people you’re right on track right up until New Years Eve, at which point everyone is too drunk to even remember what you were trying to do, let alone how you went.

What are my New Year’s resolutions? Well, I’ve chosen a couple of specific ones because they’re things I can either:

• accomplish pretty easily
• lie about.

The first is to finish my Diploma in Journalism. I’ve only got two subjects to go, and one of those I can probably get credit for from another course. What I do actually with it (apart from possibly scaring people) is anyone’s guess.

The second is to start conquering the hundred or so books sitting on our bookshelves, unread. I’m one of those people who buys any book that looks good, on the off-chance it won’t be available later on. (This particularly goes for trade paperbacks.) Unfortunately they come out a lot faster than I can read them, and so there’s this huge backlog of books that I’ve never even opened. The goal here is read more books than I buy. (The same goes for the half dozen video games I’ve bought but haven’t played much, including the full Half-Life series.)

I’m also re-doing my web site, though I’m not putting it down as a New Year’s resolution. No-one’s capable of getting that drunk.