Monday Moan Returns

Well firstly I should apologise at my lack of moanage recently. You find it difficult to believe but this is by and large because I haven't had much to moan about (that and apathy, which if you've ever had it you'll know is a real drag - maybe I should moan about apathy?)

Anywho, as the first moan of the year I've gone for the obvious topic.

New Years Revolutions.

Firstly, I should tell you about mine. I have 2 NYRs:

Stop Swearing.

Replace any words I can with a similar sounding animal name.

Swearing is one of those little things that we all find ourselves doing (even though we try not to) and is infectious. If people around you swear lots you soon find yourself accidentally slipping out the odd expletive, which can quite easily turn into a torrent of curses. At work here we deal a lot with other people's problems, and fight fires when things go wrong. Subesquently many of us are almost always infuriated or exasperated by something or someone - this leads to lots of swearing as you may well imagine. I am trying my hardest not to get caught in this and stop swearing completely (I have allowed myself the luxury of 'crap' & 'arse' - if I can say it in front of my mother it's not swearing in my book). This makes me no less offensive - just more imaginative.

Animal names is a bit more of a fun one. It sounds easy at first 'oh I'm just having a giraffe' is an obvious one. Badger serves as a wonderful expletive. Instead of that's a given I like that's a gibbon. It should be a laugh, and I'm interested to see if anyone will actually notice if I talk complete twaddle for a while (yeah right - just for a while).

So what are you moaning about Dan? Get to the point man!

Well not without a further meandering into another little point of interest my good friends..

On December 31st 2006 the French went one step closer to proving the insanity and irritability that we all suspected of them. In Nantes thousands of French people gathered to protest against 2007. That's right - the French protested against the passing of time. Right up until midnight protests continued vehemently with chanting, marching and banners. At the stroke of midnight protesters initially seemed defeated and bewildered, until the cry came up from within their ranks "Say non to 2008!".

Those crazy French.

Now essentially what the French were protesting against (as far as I can see) was change. WE've changed from 2006 to 2007. To some people this is fantastic, to other people it's devastating. As far as I'm concerned it's just another day after the previous day, and a minor inconvenience that I need to get used to writing a different year everytime I write the date.

So the moan about NYRs is that I don't see why we need to make them. Up until this year my annual NYR was to not make any NYRs. This obviously failed (by defenition, see the Cretan paradox), but it was in essence a protest in itself.

You see if I had a motto it would be 'To be the best I can in everything I do' or something to that effect. As Christians this is something we should all be doing, attempting to be like Jesus all the time. If we're seriously trying this then we shouldn't need a new year as an excuse to behave ourselves, or do something that we've been meaning to do for a long time. We should already be doing that.

So where do you stand on the old NYR? Do you have any? Are you resolute throughout the year, therefore rendering NYRs unneccessary?