i think i can safely say i dislike 75% of all traditions, roughly 75% of THOSE being the dreaded HOLIDAY traditions. but even in the muck and mire of holiday routine, i can still manage to weed out what i consider to be the worst one of all...the new year's resolution. now i would LOVE to know who in the bloody hell's idea THIS gem was...WHO thought it a good idea for people all over the world to set impossible goals for themselves the 31st of every december, only to breach those goals by the 2nd of january, proclaim themselves gi-normous failures, and proceed to sit down and inhale an entire chocolate cheesecake, 2 bottles of bushmills, 4 packs of chesterfields, and a coupla kilos of cocaine?

face it folks. you did not stop smoking last year. nor did you lose 20 pounds or cut down the drink. AND FOR FECKSAKE, YOU AIN'T GONNA THIS YEAR EITHER! so why torture yourself? REALISE how weak you are, and realise as well that's OKAY cos everyone ELSE is weak too. i have news for you. NO-ONE. KEEPS. THEIR. NEWYEAR'S. RESOLUTIONS. and if they tell you they did, they're either a) a liar or b) my brother-in-law or someone like him. my brother-in-law resolved to quit his 25-year-old 3-pack-a-day smoking habit 5 years ago...and he DID. of course, his willpower might've had something to do with the fact he was just 40 years old and was developing chronic bronchitis, which meant he'd been coughing up a lung nearly constantly for about a year and a half, and was told by his doctor he was on the fast track to cancertown. so he quit smoking and passed it off as a new year's resolution...even IF his true motives had more to do with being around in a few years to embarrass his daughters in front of their boyfriends than with holiday tradition. heh. who'd've thunk it, ceremonial hooha taking a backseat to fear of imminent demise?

however, i myself (like most of YOU, i'm guessing...or hoping), having never had such a brush with death, have NEVER kept a serious new year's resolution. in fact, the only reason i ever bothered making them at all was because, as most all of us know, no new years eve party, whether it be a family celebration, a holiday ball, or a piss-up with your friends, is complete until everyone's spilt the beans about what they're changing about themselves in the year to come. my empty resolutions started as simple things...i'll keep my room tidier, i'd say, stop being so cheeky to those in authority, stop calling my sister maeve "nermel" as it drives her potty. (i've yet to even SLIGHTLY improve on ANY of those) they naturally progressed to the more serious as i got older...i'll start going to church again, cut down drinking. (ha and double ha) and i really DID mean to observe them in the beginning, as reluctant as i was to make them in the first place. but alas, i juat haven't any will power to speak of. perhaps if my sister was put on suicide watch, someone took out a contract on my life, i developed cirrhosis of the liver, or god showed up at the foot of bed some night demanding my compliance things would be different. but the way things are, it just wasn't happening. so 2 years ago, realising the ONLY resolution i ever kept in all my years was my 1987 promise to get the braces off my teeth (more the dentist's efforts than my own) i decided to chuck it all in and just make a mockery of the whole thing.

so THIS, my friends, is a list of some resolutions i'm considering this year...