10 Reasons why you should not have sex mid April

 (Or 10 reasons why having your birthday near Christmas sucks big time)

With December here Christmas preparations for families are in full swing. Shops that have been trying to spruik decorations and paraphernalia since October can now justify their keenness because everyone is starting to go bonkers. Shops and car parks are starting to go mental as Christmas gets closer and closer so people get more and more mental and present selection gets crappier and crappier.

I am one of the unlucky few to have my birthday close to Christmas; five days before Christmas for those playing at home. Having a birthday close to Christmas is inconvenient at best, so much so that I feel it is my duty to inform you to keep things in your pants, wear a sheath, jump up and down or whatever with the following 10 reasons why you should avoid having kids with Christmas birthdays...

1. It is hard to have a party, or at least solely for your kid. There are parties happening all around, and there already is an abundance of lollies, pies, cake, and chocolate wafer sticks kicking about, but all your friends and all their kids and all your kid’s friends will be busy. They will be doing family stuff, or end of year Christmas drinks with work, sporting clubs end of season presentation nights, etc. I had my 21st birthday in April just so I could make sure my friends were available to come. I know if they were my real friends they would come hell or high water, but I did not want them to have to decide between me and their family.
2. There will be birthday presents wrapped in Christmas paper. I know its only paper, and you have heaps lying around and it is so cheap, but you don’t it for the other kids. Make a damn effort. The same goes for relatives who are sending birthday and Christmas cards with cash; send two cards. Sounds simple, but people don’t because everyone is busy. See number 1 for the main reason.
3. You will get relatives and friends who say that this is the Christmas and birthday present. Even if one of the presents does equal two presents, it is still not good enough in the eyes of you and/or child. You will have no control over this because times are tough in many places in the world, people are cheap and everything is going bonkers. See number 1.
4. They will watch other kids throughout the year having a day off for their birthday. If you are the kinds of parents who will let your kids stay home from school on their birthday, consider having all of your children stay home, or send them all to school. If the date is only sometimes falling in the holidays, do it all the same anyway.
5. I never had a birthday at school, this may sound grand to those who never got a day off and never had parents like those from number 4, but I never had a class sing happy birthday to me. I never got to be the happy show off kid who thought they could get away with more because it was their birthday. And you get more cake!
6. Nobody really knows or says happy birthday. They are somewhat distracted by saying Merry Christmas (so at least someone is getting a happy birthday). Milestones are forgotten because there is simply no one around. You should have seen number 1 by now. Facebook is helping people to remember, but a wall post is not the same, we want human contact.
7. Your child has to wait an entire year to celebrate something. And then what happens? Number 1, that’s what.
8. Try to book a table in somewhere; it’s either shut or full of Christmas parties.
9. T'is the season to sit around in airports or slow moving traffic. I live away from my parents, so if they or I want to see them for my birthday, someone has to travel. The planes are always full and there are always dickheads in caravans or camper vans doing 40 km/h (25mph) under the speed limit. Relatives will be risking their lives travelling to see your child, what if something was to happen to them? How would that sit on your child’s conscience?
10. And every shop you go into persists with Christmas carols. Not related to having a birthday, but it just shits me in general.

By all means, go forth and practise as much as you want in April, and just to be safe March, but the best thing you can do is pop them out in October or wait until January. These things may seem trivial to you, but they make a difference on the day.

10 Reasons to stop swearing

A study in the UK has shown that people who swear have the capacity to endure pain for longer. After putting 64 volunteers’ hands in freezing cold water Dr Richard Stephens from the University of Keele in Staffordshire England, found that with swearing they could handle the pain for a longer period of time. It sounded like a little bit of a stretch to me; I was swearing throughout the entire article and it did not lessen the pain once.

My girlfriend has commented a few times on the frequency of my swearing and after watching the video of the ultra marathon I did recently, I can see why. It was a good 20mins of gratuitous f and s bombs. Granted that I was pretty buggered at the time, but it is not an excuse, but more so the point – have I lost the ability to communicate?

I did swear growing up, but my swearing problem developed from a long period of working away in a swearing dense environment. Even the women I worked with at the time would drop a c bomb without blinking – sometimes people were c’s that rhymed with punts, and there is no way around it. The time has come to fix it, so here are 10 reasons to stop swearing.

1. It lowers the effectiveness of the curse. If I call you a dickhead, I want people to say “Whoa, that guy must be a dickhead” and not “meh, he says that about everybody”.
   
   
2. It does make you more of a Bogan. Do you want to admire the view of an empty Commodore shell from the couch on the front veranda? Enough said.
   
   
3. Swearing does make you sound more aggressive. As a guy with a smart mouth and a history of broken noses, I do not need any more reasons for drunks to hit me.
   
   
4. Cheap laughs will only fill your soul so much. Think of something clever to say; people will not always be shocked like four-year-olds when someone utters a rude comment. Stick to fart jokes for that result.
   
   
5. Swearing limits your ability to describe things; I understand that you are tired/frustrated/overworked/drunk/post coitus but is that any reason to describe it “fucked”?
   
   
6. Professionalism aside, it will do your career a world of good to limit swearing. Unless you are a writer for People magazine for example.
   
   
7. Swearing proves that you are down to earth and not stuck up, but gratuitous swearing shows a lack of respect for the people around you. Everybody deserves your respect until proved otherwise and you may have just proved otherwise to everybody in the room.
   
   
8. In making you approachable swearing does help a fraction, but the relationship is not linear; the more you swear does not make you more approachable. Unless you are trying to attract police offices with capsicum spray. If you break your leg, drop a couple, if you stump your toe, toughen up.
   
   
9. Swearing will limit the time you will be around children. Not in a weird do-you-want-to-see-the-puppy-in-my-van kind of way, but in limiting the time other parents would let their kid’s hangout with your kids. A young child has moved in next door to me, with his mother obviously, but I would not let a child go to his house to play, not with us cursing Bogans sitting on a couch on the veranda next door.
   
   
10. It will stop the boffins doing bullshit research and start spending their grants on things that matter. I'm pretty sure that cancer thing is still kicking around.