‘…if you leave your socks on.’

I quite honestly hate the internet sometimes.

Mainly for the collective sense of humour of its inhabitants. In days of yore, sure, you might go down the pub and trade insensitive jokes with your friends. You’d share that kind of humour in the privacy of your own lives where no-one who might get offended might hear. And the vast majority of people would candidly admit that they didn’t think that kind of humour was right or respectable even while they would quite happily join in with it with their mates. I am quite comfortable with that as a concept.

But ‘it’s not rape if…’ and Dead Baby jokes and racist humour and so on are utterly rife and exploding on the internet. And again I suppose in theory I don’t mind that so long as I’m not likely to come across it. By and large you just accept that there are some websites you’re just not going to find amusing. That’s fair enough. I’m not some kind of internet vigilante and I don’t want to be.

I don’t think photo groups on facebook are the place for that kind of thing, firstly. But again, accepted, not everything everyone says is ever going to be to my taste. But commenting after something that isn’t in any way witty or clever, but is just grim, and which has been followed by ‘I hope that doesn’t make anyone throw up’, by egging the commenter on and saying something like  ‘Are you new here 😛 ? I don’t think that’s going to make anyone throw up’ – this attitude that just being insensitive, gruesome and entirely intolerant without also being in the least bit witty is something to be defended and actually encouraged… I think that’s new. And I don’t think it’s healthy.

I don’t like that I now feel the need to point out that I’m not a total prude and it’s not like my sense of humour isn’t sometimes a bit rough and ready and that this isn’t just good-little-Christian-choirgirl-me having a bit of a rant. This is me a decent, mature human being who has been quite honestly appalled by what is deemed acceptable.

I guess it’s just that this kind of thing didn’t used to get written down, it wouldn’t reach such a wide audience, and to an extent I suppose that also means perhaps the jokes wouldn’t snowball to this level of hate-filled witless idiocy.

Traditions

I went to church at midnight on Christmas Eve (I actually near-as-darn-it (this is a church, watch your language!) ram-raided the church, actually, because what I thought was a parking space actually turned out to be the entrance. It wasn’t very well lit. My mother told me to do it. And then we realised that we were all being stared at by about half the elderly, tutting congregation. Anyway, we went to church. Carols were sung, and descants cheekily attempted by at least some of our party, although of course that sort of thing should be left to the real choir.

We did the usual – carol-singing, last-minute shopping, late-night decorating, surreally-early drinking, etc. My sister and I continued two rather more individual traditions of ours – silly knickers in lieu of stocking presents (we’re technically too old for stockings now, so instead we give each other the silliest, frilliest knickers we can find, and mum still gives us an orange, some chocolate and a book and things – thank you Mum 🙂 ), and that I would forget to buy at least something – in this case, the knickers – and have to write her a grovelling IOU instead.

I found this year’s My Favourite Christmas Advert (a post I know you’ve all been waiting for on tenterhooks). Can’t seem to find it on Image Search 😦 but it’s a photo of Hugh Laurie looking edible, next to a large image of a men’s moisturiser, with the tagline, ‘Get yourself a new man this Christmas with new Vita Lift 5 from L’Oreal’ (or something). The bit I particularly like is the small print at the bottom: ‘Hugh Laurie is not a free gift with this purchase’. It made me laugh.

Weepie moment of the year (since normally my Christmas ad is a surefire winner for this slot too), thanks to L at Patchwork Dreams, is the Military Wives’ single. I can’t help it.

This year, resolutions. I don’t know what I normally write here. Presumably the usual earnest intentions about being happier and more organised and nicer and all the rest of it.

Bother all that. This year all I want is to get to the end of the year and know how to put together a whole roast dinner. I know it’s technically simple, but the act of timing everything right so you get a perfectly cooked joint, lovely roast potatoes, vegetables, gravy and all the other trimmings, all beautifully cooked and hot at roughly the same time – it’s basically pretty daunting, especially for someone who isn’t sure she can cook.

This is because I think making New Year’s resolutions is a bit artificial. Who, really, hasn’t? We would all love to get to the 31st of December 2012 and consider that we’ve grown as people and lost that half stone we wanted to shift that the start of the year and given 15% of our earnings to charity and actually kept up that gym membership, but life doesn’t happen that way and you know it. You make massive life changes when they become necessary and not because it’s a new year; and so if I’ve made resolutions at New Year’s at all these past few years, it’s essentially been a bit half-arsed. So I thought to myself, why not resolve to do something that doesn’t make me a better, thinner, healthier person? Why not simply resolve to do something I haven’t done before, just because I can? Far more exciting than not resolving to do anything, or rather, resolving to do nothing. Resolve to do something constructively fun.

Though I suggest you avoid any invitations I might make to dinner any time soon…