By Gregor Stronach

Holy shit… Christmas is just around the corner. The reason I’m worried about this is that despite all of the Christmas decorations that have been going up in the department stores near my place of employment, I’m yet to even consider the purchase of any form of decoration for my own house.

I’m worried – worried that the cheap fairy lights I’ll buy might cause a house fire. Worried that Pablo – dear, sweet little Pablo – might decide to attack the Christmas tree, and find herself pinned to the floor by eight tons of tinsel. And I’m worried that I might, just maybe, be about to actually give a shit about Christmas for the first time in more than twenty years…

Please also be aware that this is, in fact, the first time I've tried to use the back-end software for the site. I suggest that the people who make this software should have the company slogan: "Our back-ends make baby Jesus cry."

Anyway – I’d better get on with it – this column doesn’t write itself, and god knows I need the $7.50 I get paid for it. For stamps. To send Christmas cards.

1) Backyard parties are fraught with danger

I should have known better. Really, I should have known better. I cannot, for the life of me, attend a party in someone’s backyard without embarrassing myself to the point where I wish the ground would open up beneath me and swallow me, my fellow partygoers and even the host, down into the depths of hell to roll around in the flames with Beelzebub and Baphomet and a few other minor bad-guy deities whose names I cannot recall just now.

I’ve decided that I should probably attend some form of etiquette schooling – to stop myself from coughing beer all over people (apologies to Fab the Barrel Girl), spilling beer all over people (further apologies to Clare the Gypsy Queen), spilling beer on myself (apologies etc) or rudely demanding to be driven home at three in the morning, despite the quiet urgings of my ride home suggesting that he ‘might be getting somewhere here with this girl just here – is it OK if we stay for another few hours/days/weeks to see if something happens?’

At least this time I didn’t get into a fight on the way home – an occurrence that has repeatedly raised its ugly head in times gone by. I merely fell over in the gutter on King Street trying to hail a cab, spilling the handful of loose change that was my taxi-fare home. Because I’m classy like that.

Anyway – Fab and Clare – if you still require some form of payment for the laundry bill I’m sure I caused, email me: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

2) Christmas is awful

Apparently Christmas is a time for giving. But I, humble reader, beg to differ. Christmas is a time for dishing out elbows, knees, the occasional fist and several carefully chosen and quite horrendous expletives, preferably within earshot of old people and small children.

I am talking, of course, about the annual pilgrimage we’re forced to make to ‘the shops’ to buy ‘presents’ for the people we ‘love’. Most years it’s easy – socks and hankies for dad, something knick-knacky for mum, nothing for my sister (with the excuse that she lives overseas and everything I send gets lost in the mail) and a few awesome things for myself (because I’d budgeted to spend $700 this year, and didn’t get anywhere near that figure with the crap I bought my family).

Now, I’m not normally a good shopper – I am the reigning world champion of impulse buying, and have been known to cry for days through the onset of severe buyer’s remorse. A lawnmower (I live in a unit) was the best of last year’s idiocies.

I’m hoping that this year turns out a little different – that I might make the right decisions and not purchase things on a whim that I will never, ever get to use. If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to price a set of golf clubs and a fondue set, because I will definitely use them. I promise.

3) Big Kev est mort

I’d be lying if I said I expected Australia to react the same way that Britain has reacted to the death of George Best to the news that Big Kev, the fattest guy to ever market industrial pollutants to housewives, is dead.

No prizes for guessing that he died of a heart attack, either – by all accounts, you could hear him coming from about 400m away, his large frame creaking and his lungs wheezing as he walked. Evidently life got a little too exciting for the big guy, and his ticker just couldn’t take it.

But far be it from me to speak ill of the dead (yeah right) – but I shall hold off on bashing poor old Big Kev – all up, he did very little to piss Australia off, despite looking a little bit like Kim Beazley draped Hanson-style in the Australian flag.

One can only marvel at the size of the hole they’ll need to dig for the poor bastard, who has conclusively proven once and for all that diet and exercise are actually bad for you – after 50-odd years of living the life of a giant fat guy, Big Kev recently undertook a tilt at rebranding himself as Little Kev – an event which arguably ended his life. RIP Big Kev.

4) Public Transport is for the birds

Recent events have led me to be one of ‘those people’ who catch public transport. The recent event was a motorcycle accident which has left me permanently crippled (not really) in my right hand, with a curious anomaly occurring where the ulna (a bone in the forearm) no longer feels attached to my wrist (if I need to explain this part of the body to you, stop reading. You’re too dumb to go any further).

So yes – OH&S requirements mean that I can no longer ride any of the motorcycles we have here at work, which means I’m catching the bus.

I ask you this: Have you seen the people that catch the bus? They’re a foul and motley collection of misfits and work-a-day morons, who either stare out the window, read Harry Potter novels or stab their fellow passengers and steal their wallets.

The trip to work, which on a bike would take 17 minutes (10 if I was feeling zippy), now takes just shy of an hour. It’s heartbreaking. I no longer have time to bathe properly in the morning, nor eat breakfast, nor indulge in my new-found passion and enthusiasm for thinking about doing yoga while I sit on the couch in my underpants, smoking cigarettes and drinking strong black coffee - I’m trying to get healthy.

And so I have a dilemma – I need to figure out a way of making more time in the morning that doesn’t involve getting up any earlier than I do. If anyone has suggestions, please feel free to let me know – you can email me or simply leave a comment. Best answer wins a prize (which probably doesn’t actually exist).

5) Mussels are weird

I learnt last night that mussels are strange. I should know – I ate quite a large number of them, while under the spell of the monster that is the ‘All You Can Eat’ promotion.

I have no philosophical problem with an ‘All You Can Eat’ scenario – all you bleeding hearts that will no doubt write in to tell me that I should be thinking of the people starving in Africa before I consume twice my own bodyweight in shellfish should realise this: We live in a First World nation, and it is our duty to over-consume.

Anyway… I laboured home after a marathon waterfront effort which involved five pots of mussels and several cold, frosty beers, only to discover the mussels are actually quite filling. There may well be only the most delicate little morsel residing within their hardened exteriors, but there is a point at which the stomach quite clearly says ‘NO MORE!’, and begins to revolt.

I know what you’re thinking – that I have over-indulged and paid a dreadful price. Well, for once, this hasn’t happened. I am merely slightly queasy, particularly whenever I see or hear the word ‘mussel’. Which means I should probably stop writing about them sooner rather than later.

The scene was an intimidating one – a hot, humid and sultry Sydney evening, a gut full of beer and mussels, and one of Sydney’s tried and tested suicidal cabbies for the journey from the city to my home in the outer-inner-western suburbs. One would assume that such an evening could only end in the usual tragi-comedy for which my life has become renowned. Well, it didn’t – which is why I’m writing about it.

For once, I didn’t end up spewing in a taxi or losing my shoes/trousers/house keys/virginity on the way home. So there.

That’s it for another week, kids – be sure to tune in next time when I’ll try my darndest to keep you interested for longer than the average length of a commercial break (fat chance).

Things to remember for this week are: You lucky number is 19,323, and all Capricorns and Virgos should probably avoid driving and fizzy drinks between Wednesday and Friday.

That is all.

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