Basic advice and information if you are planning a party: - Don't have one. You'll be regretting it for the rest of your life, as every day you'll find another piece of rubbish or a stain you hadn't seen before. - Keep control of the music. Don't let the alcoholic headbanger of the party take over or you'll have wall to wall heavy metal all evening as he gets completely pissed and lies in the garden, still banging his head on the garden path to the Slayer album someone was irresponsible enough to bring along. - Make sure no-one strays from the garden into the house. Grass is easier to clean than carpet, and is considerably cheaper, even if you do have to mow it. - Don't let any electrical engineering students do the lighting. You could end up electrocuting ten people and blacking-out the state. - If you're going to have a barbecue, make sure there's someone sober around who knows how to try to work it. Try not to let any intoxicated persons near the gas supply or the matches. - Do not let people who can't cook, cook. - When using party sparklers, do not wave them at passing aircraft, particularly when in the vicinity of an airport. - Always have a conversation starter ready for the dreaded and inevitable lull during the early stages of the party when everyone sits around talking quietly. Experts have identified a condition known as Sudden Party Global Quietness, whereby everyone suddenly and unexpectedly stops talking at once, leaving only the loud music and the quiet headbanging from the garden as the only sounds in the otherwise silent darkness. - Try to prevent lights exploding. - Do not, under any account, let in people that you don't know. Subject all entrants to interrogation, search and "identify the host" procedures. - Try not to let the aforementioned alcoholic headbanger bring along his baseball bat. - Try not to let the aforementioned alcoholic headbanger and his baseball bat get into arguments with other guests, no matter how trivial or insignificant these arguments might seem to be at first glance. - Do not encourage those possessing baseball bats to go clubbing. - Have someone ready to turn the electricity off at the fusebox to plunge the house into darkness and silence the moment there is any hint of the constabulary being in the immediate vicinity. And hope they don't hear a hundred people screaming "What happened to the lights?", "I can't see a thing!" and "Whoever that is, get your hand off me!" - Keep your pets safe out of harm's way. They will probably agree with this. - Purchase plenty of provisions in advance so that people don't have to get lost somewhere in suburbia for hours in search of an open bottle shop. - To deal with the neigbours, either buy them a family pack of earplugs or invite them to get sloshed with everyone else. Relative levels of festivity: Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike. Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning Christmas tree. The piano is missing. You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog. Egg nog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first sylable comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where the "nog" comes from. To make eggnog, you will need rum, whisky, wine gin and if they are in season, eggs.... If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year. What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ... If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ... Police: Good evening, are you the host? Host: No. Police: We've been getting complaints about this party. Host: About the drugs? Police: No. Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns? Police: No, the noise. Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise? The neighbors? Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could ask the host to quiet things down? Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind down.