Christmas office party - the silly season

After weeks of silence, I had this brilliant idea. The clouds disappeared, the sky was blue and goddamm. There it was. A bolt from that blue. A thought to pass on to you about Christmas parties now 'tis the season to make merry.

Even though we are thrust into the middle of economic gloom, (thank you US friends for your clever work) the party continues. A few companies have abandoned the Christmas party but most have not.

What the hell. Did not Nero fiddle on whist Rome burned?

But Sydney Daily Telegraph reporter, Joe Hildibrand, beat me to it. Curse his reporter hide! He got there first and stole my great idea.

But I gotta admit, Hildibrand makes me laugh. I promote him to him to "cool guy" status even though he is the enemy and thiever of great ideas. So read his utterances and enjoy.

Joe Hildebrand Friday, November 21, 2008 Sydney Daily Telegraph

"LIKE any good Catholic, the two main driving forces in my life are guilt and regret.
Psychologists agree that these are vital motivators for a happy and successful
future. If one cannot bask in the twin glories of angst and remorse then what
point life?

Of course to fully harness the benefits one must consistently @#$% things up.
Fortunately I have a natural talent for this but for others not so gifted
there is the Christmas party season.

Obviously all parties have a healthy scope for disgraceful behaviour, however Christmas parties raise the benchmark just that little bit higher.
For example it is not enough simply to throw up and pass out in the toilets; one must throw up and pass out in the wrong toilets.

Likewise a sexual indiscretion cannot be limited to mere infidelity or public exposure if it is to qualify as a genuine water cooler conversation.
It has to involve odd numbers, office equipment and a perversity that eclipses conventional bestiality - such as, for example, an unusual application of a potplant.

Then the next morning when you wake up in someone else’s bed/someone else’s flowerbed/Morocco you have to scratch your head and wait for the horror of the previous night to be gradually unlocked by a painful combination of memory recall and eyewitnesses.

Once this panorama of agony has been fully visited upon you I want you to consider this very important fact: You have a mother who sacrificed everything for you.

I now refer you to the opening sentence again.

The other dangerous thing is that the Christmas party season seems to start earlier and earlier each year, to the point where I haven’t stopped drinking since January.

In fact it just so happens I was at a Christmas party this week, which is lucky given that Christmas parties are the subject of this column.

It was held at a very fancy Italian restaurant that had a whole pig laid out on the table in the middle of the room, although after a while someone told Kim
Kardashian it was time to go home.

The party was also furnished with a range of boutique beers, so as to reassure the various media and lobbyist types who were there to convince themselves they were “connoisseurs’’ and not “alcoholics’’.
I myself commented approvingly on the texture of some 27 beers before wandering out into the street muttering something about infrastructure.

It is here that events are, shall we say, hotly contested by historians.
It may be that I ended up in a ridiculously poncy piano bar drinking a $12.50 beer. It may be that the beer was $7.50 and I dropped $5 on the ground.
It may be that Darrin said he didn’t care whether the beer was $12.50 or $7.50 he sure as hell wasn’t going to be buying one and could we all please go to Gilligan’s.

And there was also the rain. The more it rained, the more we had to stay and the more we had to stay, the more we had to drink - of course I don’t remember actually doing this, I just know it is a fundamental law of physics.

What I also know is that after I woke up and started talking to people throughout the morning everyone was looking at me with a mixture of anger and disgust - which is not unusual in itself but very rare when I am wearing pants.

I immediately rang Darrin to find out if there was something I may have done to have upset anyone and while it was difficult to make out what he was saying over the third chorus of On A Night Like This, I did clearly hear him use the words “absolutely everything’’ and “thanks for the appletini, Gomez’’.

Suddenly my memories of the previous night flashed before my eyes. Unfortunately this comprised only a series of European beer brands such as Peroni, Hahn and Melbourne Bitter.
I then toyed with the possibility that when I was telling various guests about my driving passions in public policy making I may have mixed up the words “infrastructure’’ and “paedophilia’’.

At any rate, it is clear that the transgression extended the capacity of even the most comprehensive group email list and so I offer all of you* this: I’m sorry.

*Except, for legal reasons, the stolen generations."