The reason we make promises on the eve of a New Year has nothing to do with the hope and hidden promise of what is to come. It is based on the fact that at any other time of the year no one would be gullible enough to do something so idiotic. Were you over-stuffed with Christmas joy or fill to the brim with ale, eager to make an impression or convinced change was necessary? Was it at the bestling dinner table or whispered in the sanctuary of the bedroom? As everyone else shuffled out of 1998, as they congratulated you and patted you on the back, they were oblivious to the little black cloud of misery you've tied to your head. Since that groundbreaking foolishness you've been searching for something to release you - here it is. The three areas you must address in order to break the promise: personal, emotional, legal.

Personal: To make a resolution suggests that there is something about you that is wrong, vulgar unattractive, odious, belligerent, crass, objectionable and yet, somehow, redeemable. You are placed in the unenviable position of admitting to a character flaw or personality trait that you can rectify. It's never enough to say that you'll fix it, it has to be seen to be fixed. For a resolution to be complete it must be witnessed. And there's the problem: we're obsessed with magnanimous gestures and god-like goals we can never hope to achieve. I vow to be more attractive, or more popular, or dress to the left. In 1999 I promise to eat less dog food, not chase the elderly, be pleasant when I can be bothered. If we allow our evil nature to dominate, then the resolution would be a thing of self-destructive joy. I promise to be hedonistic, obsessive, to gamble, to drink excessively, to smoke until my cancerous colon is ripped from my body. When you realise your objective was unattainable, you're ready for the next step.

Emotional: We rarely, if ever, change to suit ourselves; we do it to accommodate others. There's a tenet you can live your life by that ensures the peer pressure involved in making a resolution becomes a thing of the past. It's a simple and dignified mantra that you can chant in front of a mirror or, if the need arises, it can be spoken aloud - "I'm OK, you're stuffed!" Once you have decided to solve the dilemma of your resolution, by bringing it to a premature end, you may need the support of your family and friends. If you can't break a promise to those closest to you, who can you break a promise to

It's different to stand up and proudly proclaim that you're weak and you lied, at the same time once it's done, it's done. The onus then falls on whoever cares to accept it or not. If they do, the do is ripe to make other confessions; I assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, the Marconi scandal was my fault, I encouraged Bourke and Wills on their fateful trip. While they're stunned into silence, you cold take the opportunity to mention all the failed resolutions from years gone by.

Legal: No court in the land could prosecute you for having failed to deliver on a new year's resolution, so legally speaking you're in the clear. (Unless your resolution contravenes the law - e.g.: to break out of prison before March.) If it ever makes it to the courthouse there are dozens of reasons why your promise would be considered invalid. You were adversely affected by the altruism of the evening and rendered momentarily insane. You were swept along with the mob mentality of a group of bare-arsed, trumpet blowing revellers. You were face down in a mass of someone else's stomach lining with a yard glass fused to your lips as you threw up your resolution.

In the end you can't change who you are. The sun and moon are chained to their course and birds flock together: there is no escape. It's time to accept that you're a deceitful pile of bacteria-ridden skin held together by ear wax and bad breath. If you were capable of being a better person, you would be ready. So this year, resolve never to make another resolution

They say you're only as good as your word, but then they're the ones smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

We've been content to be the "forgotten continent", allowing a trickle of fortunate foreigners to savour the splendour of the lucky country. We've only ever made the international gossip columns with stories of dingoes, babies and tennis heroes. Our isolation has allowed us to develop an independent spirit, a larrikin nature but, most importantly, it has allowed us to be overlooked. Yet overnight Australia has become the world's oyster. Sydney is the place to be at the end of the century (according to Oprah).

This awareness began when Sydney was selected as the site for the 2000 Olympic Games. It may well become the darkest day in Australia's history. For most of us, the staging of the Games is secondary to that momentous moment when an envelope was opened, a syllable was lost and the Games were ours. As a nation we felt the ticker-tape break on our collective chest. We were winners and we were guilty of every vulgar emotion that accompanies victory - pride, self-righteousness and, in some circles, arrogance. The little Aussie battler had won a major international competition and was instantly transformed into the little Aussie prick.

The years rolled on and the sweet taste of victory corroded into acidic bile. Thus, in these days of Olympic ennui, the advertising world has been called upon to remind us of the wonder of winning. They're attempting to drum up a patriotic fervour to send us over the top for Howard and country with stirring images and an uplifting song.

In the song - a piece of anthemic codswallop - there's an irksome reference that could leave you unsettled in your Jason Recliner. As the melody reaches a crescendo, we are referred to as the "chosen people". Admittedly, poetic license was taken with this line. It's a romantic notion to be considered the chosen people, to prevail against the odds and in a real sense we were "chosen" over Beijing and Manchester*. However, if we're being totally honest it wasn't really a choice of Sophiesque proportions. And besides, if we go around singing out loud that we're the chosen people, it may cause more problems than it's worth.

There are several minority groups, nations and organisations who would claim they are the true chosen people. These chosen people have God on their side (whichever God it is) while we, at best, have the Olympic committee. If we are to retain our national character we must act now.

We have two options open to us.

The first is to purposely stuff up the Games. We could put razor blades on the vaulting horse, grease up the Graeco-Roman wrestlers, fill the dive pool with foam. Or we could just let people complain about the contaminated water and lack of toilet facilities.

The second option is the more compelling - give the Games back. How magnanimous and inspirational would it be if we returned that slightly soiled Olympic flag? If, in an unparalleled act of generosity, we offered the Games to our rivals? Socially speaking, China is coming along in leaps and bounds, and with global warming Manchester is getting a bit of sun.

Come 2000, do we really want millions of pesky foreigners taking guided tours through our until-recently-untouched wilderness? Do we want our wonderful secret of sun and surf, deserts and snow-covered peaks, to be beamed to billions of homes around the world? It will only create an atmosphere of jealousy.

To call ourselves "the chosen people" is symptomatic of the way our perception of self is being altered. We are moving from the uncultured anti-hero slob, to the pesto-and-rocket- loving aesthete; from the underdog, to Der Uber Hound. If truth be known, most Australians only wanted to win the Games to beat Ol' Blighty and that other evil empire; putting them on is too much bother.

If the Games are about anything it's the slightly flawed concept that we all get together in friendship to compete against each other. In 1956 the world allowed us to slip back into obscurity - it's doubtful we will be so fortunate after 2000. it may be time for the chosen people to make a choice.

* Manchester: A savagely depressed city where it constantly rains. Beijing: The only international record China held was for human rights abuses. It's doubtful synchronised tank movement could become an Olympic event.

As a growing number of our literary giants and giantesses are accused of plagiarism, as every second song you hear has the melody of a golden oldie, when contemporary films are identical copies of classic movies, we're forced to accept the notion we're running out of the big concepts. For centuries humanity has tirelessly reworked ageless themes, but it's becoming increasingly apparent our imagination has a finite capacity for original thought. These days, everywhere you look, everyone is copying everyone else. This need not be a bad thing. In recent years the quality of the copy has surpassed the original as it's often more accessible and brings with it a multitude of other enviable characteristics. There is no need to maintain this nonsense that a copy is inferior. A plastic rubber plant has all the appeal of the real thing, paper flowers will never die and watching Grease and Happy Days was far superior to living through the unmitigated boredom of the 1950s.

My own understanding and love of the reproduction comes from personal experience. When I was a child, my family possessed a tea towel emblazoned with Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. This everyday domestic rag possessed all the magnificence of the Milanese portrait but, unlike the original, it was also functional. We were even lucky enough to have a slight ghosting effect due to a printing fault. In our kitchen the Mona Lisa was a tangible beauty, not a pompous leering mystery behind six inches of bulletproof glass.

Years later, when I saw the masterpiece, I was unprepared for how truly dull it was. It certainly could not match the personality of our much-loved tea towel. Where were the years of grease and peanut oil that gave her olive skin a jaundiced glow? Where was the triangular scorch mark that removed her left shoulder? And where was the delicate tear that made her appear the victim of failed facial reconstruction? I left the overcrowded Louvre depressed and elated. In every respect the tea towel interpretation of Da Vinci's creation, kept safely in a kitchen drawer, was superior.

In regards to the Mona Lisa, Duchamp's version ("She has a hot arse") surpasses the original and our tea towel I exceeds that of Duchamp's, Art has always been plagued by plagiarism: Da Vinci pinched from Giotto, Rembrandt ripped off Mantegna and Picasso stole any idea that wasn't nailed down. Even Paul Cezzane's self portrait is said to be a copy of an impression of someone else. The act of borrowing is not limited to the art world, it occurs from the boardroom to the tearoom, in every field of research and in every area of study. Perhaps the driving force behind any original idea is the hope that it'll be copied.

When we realise the entire world is engaged in this task we must ask what's so good about originality? We can delude ourselves, but the majority of us were born to copy, it's in the very fabric of our being. Our bodies are constantly replacing tissue and blood and replicating cells, when we reproduce we give birth to tiny versions of ourselves. As we grow and mature, we do so by imitating the actions of others. The title we give to this activity is learning, but in actual fact it's just copying. Our entire education system is based on this act and the winner is the one who copies the best.

The hypocrisy here is if we're caught doing what comes naturally we're branded with the stigma of "cheat". We must re-evaluate this system because there are not enough unique thinkers to go around. We should remove the stigma, celebrate the copy, and accept that mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery. Let the rest of the world spend money and time searching for original ideas and when they find them, we'll do what we've always done, we'll rip them off.

We must not feel too negative about these thoughts, after all, they're nothing new. Most of what is written here is taken verbatim from other articles. I have copied, pilfered quotations and stolen entire paragraphs and who cares? After all, as someone who I can't be bothered naming once said, if you steal from one author it's plagiarism, if you steal from many it's research. We should stop this senseless struggle for the new and accept the supremacy of the copy, the hybrid, the reproduction. It's only human to want to reproduce: we are in the end just a copy made in the almighty image of someone else.

I have had the opportunity to stay in various cities across this wide land and experience the jarring noises of each: a Perth hotel was remodelled as I tried to sleep; in Melbourne the house next door was demolished; in Sydney roads were reshaped; in Brisbane a car alarm sounded for three days. (Conversely, in Canberra I begged for a little sound, yet it maintained its eerie silence).

The only joy my ears received over this break was the comparative quiet of air travel. If you ignore the turbo-charged lawn-mower moaning of the jet engines, the teething babes and the hysterical claustrophobics then it's almost restful. The best aspect of flying is that it's difficult to make repairs while in mid-air. It's a relatively safe bet there'll be no maintenance crews hammering away at 40,000 feet as you begin the traumatic post-film slumber. On the ground it's a different story. Is there any airport in this country that isn't being rebuilt? As you leave the airport, any road that it isn't being replaced? As you reach the city, any block that isn't undergoing transformation? And when you arrive at the sanctuary of your home there is invariably some prat* next door renovating.

It may be the unfortunate side effect of those damnable home improvement programmes: 7am Saturday - every idiot with a hammer drill wants to use it to create a fashionable, painted pine toy box, or pine tool rack, or a much needed pine toothbrush holder. Out come the rusted circular saws and sanders, their atonal squealing melding with the annoying currawongs to compose a distorted symphony to the dawn.

Then there's the restless traffic, the unoiled buses, the non-muffled motorbikes, the untrained busking jazz band, the malfunctioning washing machine, the burn of the fluoros - the list is endless.

It's considered economically beneficial for the wheels of industry to turn, but must they turn so loudly? The reworking of the world has become so frenetic 'round my neck of the woods that from one day to the next I cannot recognise the place where I live. We must start to catalogue what was because it won't be there for long. A building is torn down, another one thrown up. There's always a barrier, or a new fence, or some hideous council approved sculpture blocking the door. The only thing these changes have in common is that they make noise, lots of it.

The cumulative effect of this is frightening; high tension wires look more relaxed than most of us. We live in a state of extreme agitation. We need the soothing sound of an authority figure screaming, "Shut up, all of you, just shut up!" But who would hear them above the clamour?

We have almost forgotten what silence sounds like (knock on wood). We exist in a world where construction, road works, renovation, fire alarms and burst water pipes are an ever present threat. We're the victims of a continuous aural assault. And I've come to the conclusion that these sounds are intentional.

I've become so obsessed by this paranoid thought that the workmen and workwomen are no longer just working outside - they've infiltrated my head, At night I can hear jackhammers chewing through the soft, grey concrete of my left hemisphere, widening the grand longitudinal canal. Urgent and much needed repairs are being made to my cerebellum. Cracked water mains have flooded the marshlands of my memory. Everything is pushing in on me. Perhaps it is merely cyclical, these things often are, I will wait patiently for the gentle return of silence.

Sunday morning and the electrician has failed to fix the faulty alarm ...

(* I used the word "prat" because this is a family magazine and I was not permitted to use the more abrasive, yet technically correct, term -"****".)