It is believed by many in the “Wow, it is a slow news day…we should probably make something up” circles that today is the day most people break their new year resolutions.

5 days in to the new year?  Really?  What kind of stupid targets are they setting themselves that they fail so easily?

“I will go to the gym more”.  You cant really fail that until you actually spend enough time of the year not actually going.  I will guess by the way that the person who failed probably doesn’t have a gym membership and ate 24 Krispy Kreme doughnuts last night that they have given up the gym dream.

“I will swear less”.  Well that’s just bollocks.  Totally unatainable and stupid to even contemplate it to start with.  Why bother?  You trap your finger in the door and it falls off, you swear.  You don’t go “Well golly gosh.  Would you look at that.  Seemed to have trapped my pinky in the door there and now it is on the floor.  Well, I must get the cleaning done before I toodle off to the hospital”

“I will be less annoying to work colleagues”.  They didn’t like you before.  The clock didn’t strike midnight on new years eve and the people you worked with thought “Hey, I should give numbnuts another chance”.  There is a reason they don’t like you.  The changing of the year is not enough.  Bringing in cookies to work…it still isn’t enough.  But it is a start.

“I will use my car less and will start walking to work”.  You work 20 miles from home.  I am surprised you took this long to fail.  Plus you cant carry your box of 24 Krispy Kreme doughnuts that you plan to eat instead of going to the gym all that way…what if it rains?

“I will wear more dresses to work”.  You are a 6’4″ tall hairy bloke.  Just…Don’t.

“I will drink less alcohol”.  I have no words that can convey the dumbness in this one.  “Right, as of midnight…I am not drinking again until February”.  The bell tolls.  It is now midnight.  You raise a glass.  You fail within the first seconds of the year but don’t see the irony.

“I will have more sex this year!”.  You’re married.  Forget it.

“I will eat more healthily”.  Seriously…who does this one?  Well, who ‘promises’ themselves this one?  ‘I wont eat the poor little piggy sandwich, I will eat this salad instead’.  Again, the clock didn’t strike midnight and you became a rabbit.  It’s a stupid resolution and you are stupid for contemplating it.  You woke up all hungover on the 1st Jan.  You walked downstairs, opened the fridge and made a fry-up.  Fail.

I on the other hand set myself completely attainable targets.  These are.

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That is all.  I don’t think I will fail.  I am sure by the time the clock hits midnight on 31st Dec 2012, that one will still be standing.  This is because I generally do fail at every resolution I make so decided to go for something that I can at least try to do. Last year was “At least 50 posts on this site”. I did 24.  And that is only that high because you got 4 out of me in the last couple of weeks of December. 

My only other resolutions I considered this year were:

“To finish it still alive.”  I really don’t want to piss off fate just now so I am going to put that one on the back burner.

“Learn to speak or read the Klingon language.”   This is a completely valid one.  Not because I am some star trek geek who thinks he will be more attractive to his wife if he talks in a very angry sounding language or anything but because…well…let me explain.

We had a new guy start at the company I work for a while back.  Strange chap.  By strange I mean I just cant work out if he is shy, an axe murderer or maybe…and likely… cannot talk to humans unless they are on his PC screen and are a World of Warcraft character.  He is a little ‘Nerdy’ to say the least.  But I cannot rule out the axe murderer bit just yet because when I found myself sat at his desk, I noticed a notepad.  All written in Klingon.  True story.  It was all there.  Written in Klingon.

And you know…part of me thinks it might be a hit list.  And details of how he will take each person out.  And I got to thinking “How did this guy get through the interview?”.  So now I am thinking “also a closet Jedi”. 

“I am the person you are looking for” 

“You are the person I am looking for”

“I am going to work here”

“You are going to work here”

 And thus, he now works here.  Plotting our demise in his Klingony language.  To be fair, it may not have been Klingon.  Could of been Greek for all I know…but with his shifty eyes, refusal to talk to people…and the fact he carries a Klingon Bat’Leth (can I just confirm…I do NOT know if that should have capitals…before some Klingon wannabe starts with the “Learn how to spell you Qu’vatlh qhuy’cha’ baQa’” – again…I really have NO idea what that means).

Things that worry me:  I just did a spell check on this post and the ONLY words in “Qu’vatlh qhuy’cha’ baQa’” it didnt understand were “baQa”.  What the hell…Wordpress speaks Klingon?  The world is conspiring against me.  Set phasers to bloody hell.

Well, here we are.  2012.  The year the world ends.  Apparently.  You know, if you are some crazed whackjob that thinks a gazillion years ago some guy was too lazy to finish his calendar off and instead said to his boss “Yeah man…look…I have gone as far as I can go.  When I was on the toilet last night, Jeebus came to me and said ‘You must end your calendar in 2012′ and I asked why and he said ‘because the world will end’.  So I did it.  Because…well…when you are on the can and some gnarly dude with long hair and doesn’t shave pitches up and tells you that, I think you should listen”

His boss replied “You mean Crazy Dave…the cleaner?”

But, after talking his way out of it, he managed to get put on to a different project and so the legend of “We are all going to diiiie!” came to being.  And here we are.  Just a mere 12 months away from saying “Well, that was as apocalyptic as a wet fart in the middle of an empty field wasn’t it” when nothing happens.

So all of this end of the world thing comes from 3 simple words:  Bad.  Customer.  Service.

Had that guy done his job correctly he would have been making that calendar last another 1000 years.  No doom in our lifetime.  But instead, because that calendar making company failed, we are expecting the world to end.  And after watching the film 2012, I honestly thought my life HAD ended.  Wow…that was epic.  Epically bad.

But talking of bad customer service, just look at Harold Camping.  That nutter who said in 1994 that the world will end.  Then backtracked when nothing happened and he said “Hang on…I forgot to carry the 1 in my calculation.  Try 2011 instead”.  2011 passes “Hang on, I forgot to carry the hammer that I need to smack myself over the head with.” and instead of bringing about a hornets nest of bad stuff, he brought some mild anal itching and bad customer service.

So I thought I would tell you, the avid reader of this silly little site about a couple of customer service issues that have plagued my life to the point where I almost remembered them when writing this.

Firstly.  I bought a camera last year.  It was a pretty camera.  I bought it from a shop called Jessops.  Jessops are a big high street camera shop.  They are also the single most useless pointless unbelievably stupid dumb bunch of earth dwelling moronic single celled life forms to inhabit this little rock we live on.  2 weeks after buying that little camera, it stopped working.  Well no, it worked but the lens wouldn’t go back in to its little sleeping hole when I turned it off.  So I took it back to the shop.  “Yeah it looks like you probably have sand in the aperture” the guy in the shop….about as old as my oldest daughter (3 years old) said to me.”  “Does it?  Coz…well…it looks clean. Is clean.  And I haven’t been to the friggin beach.” “Yeah, nothing we can do”  “So you are telling me that within 2 weeks this is as useful as the space inbetween your ears?” “Yes”.  So I had an email chat with the customer services department.  I wont post my responses as I got a little “irate” after they just couldn’t understand what I was trying to tell them.  They never asked me to return it etc etc.  So what I am trying to say is this:  If you are in the UK and want a camera….PLEASE don’t go to Jessops.  Their customer service is as useful as yellow snow in a nativity play.  They say all press is good press.  It’s weird how I dont think that if I managed to get the guy in the shop to stick his head in to a vice and I press it so hard it explodes that they will call it good press.  But if they want to find out…i’ll take the time out of my day.

Moving on from my dramatic camera issue.

Just before that time of year where we all get really drunk, eat too much and bitch and moan how religion has tried to take over OUR holiday….or Christmas as we non-religious people like to call it…I bought tasty snacks in for my co-workers.  Why?  Because I am just an amazingly nice guy.  And because I couldn’t be bothered to write out cards so decided to fatten them up instead.

One of the tasty snacks was a box of Terrys Chocolate Orange Segsations.  And can I just say…tasty as it gets.  Wow…good.  But.  And this is a big but (which is similar to the thing you will get if you eat too many of them)….the box advertised more than they were giving.  What was it they were advertising Sy?  I hear you ask excitedly.  Well, here is the email I sent them explaining my woes:

They have not replied.  I am devastated.  It was weeks ago.  I will never ever ever ever EVER buy another box of those tasty chocolate orange treats again.  You know…until I see them in the shop.  SOOOOO good.  But sadly, their customer service is a goddamn disgrace.  Hang your head in shame you chocolate making nasties.  I would take a photo of the box that I bought  to show you all, but I am currently having camera issues.

But moving on to GOOD customer service.  I have reactivated my Twitter account.  By reactivated, I mean I logged back in.  Started typing stuff.  So if you feel the need to know what I ate for lunch, why I think a certain footballer should let me rip his lungs out and a whole magnitude of pointless rubbish…. twitter.com/wthd is the way forward people.  If you want to know something more exciting, I suggest you stop reading this blog.