Most new year resolutions are already on the carpet with the last few pine needles. If yours are intact but wavering, a quick detour through the web will have you back to abstinence and boring the pants off your friends in no time.
From the thoroughly practical like www.how-to-keep-your-new-years-resolution.com to a helpful list of resolutions you couldn't break if you tried, (see http://hoopla.com/index60.html) helping hands are not in short supply. The question is, what do they ask in return?
Smoking: top of most people's resolution list (mine included) is to quit smoking. www.ash.org.uk provides the most comprehensive guide to kicking online, including reams of news on the twisted legislative and political issues and a variety of programmes to help you off the evil-but-legal weed. As human support is usually the best for fighting addictions, there are also links to Quitline (0800 169 0 169) and other smokeless fuel. For a slightly droller incentive, check out www.chickenhead.com/truth for a reminder of how cigarettes were peddled to us in the 40s and 50s. When you hear slogans like "Pleasure helps your disposition. And for more pleasure - have a Camel!" you have to wonder who was more reprehensible: Rock Hudson for saying it, Dad for believing it, or Blair for still taking tax from it.
Weight: particularly popular at this time of year when turkey leftovers have conspired to turn us into makeshift Michelin men. www.uk.weightwatchers.com offers the same mix of collective responsibility and relentless product placement that attracts followers to more than 6,000 meetings a week in the UK alone. If you can bear the fattist rhetoric ("Become a Leader and show thousands of people how much better life can be when you've lost weight") there is a surprising amount of information here. For a more independent perspective, Yahoo keeps most of the latest news, case studies and product information together in one place.
Take up something new: why go through the ordeal of giving something up when you could take something up instead. For the adventurous www.explore.com offers crash courses in extreme sports such as snowboarding, biking and climbing in locations as far afield as the jungles of Laos and the unintentionally hilarious Crested Butte.
Clean and sober: if outdoor pursuits sound too physical, remember the start of the year is also the start of spring cleaning, so head to www.howtocleananything.com for the ultimate in stain-removal advice. Those who believe cleanliness begins at homepage could try www.spamcop.com, which boasts an arsenal of ideas to stop random advertisers, porn merchants and virus spreaders from targeting your system. If you've never been hit by a computer virus this might sound like a pretty lame resolution; if you have, you'll already know that an unsullied inbox is the new virginity, and well worth hanging on to.
Making more money: like it or not, steadily increasing wealth is the only objective marker for progress we have and motivates many resolutions. There are only two obvious routes to greater prosperity - making more of what you've already got, or grabbing an armful of someone else's. For the former, there is the excellent www.saveafortune.net, crammed with money-saving ideas and a few bargain basement shopping links. True capitalists will head straight to www.barclays-stockbrokers.co.uk , still the best share-dealing site, menu-driven to the point of simplicity and with a maximum £40 commission per transaction. Remember, though, for every penny you make, some poor sucker who bet on the Nasdaq is probably losing. Which should make you feel guilty enough to consider...
Self improvement: making money is child's play compared with being an all- round better person. Those who feel they have Christianity sussed but lack the resolve for Islam tend to turn to Eastern religions which are well catered for online. www.sikhs.org offers an illuminating background to Sikhism, while www.hindunet.org has a strangely commercialised view of the world's biggest faith (I especially enjoyed the free mobile phone offer from www.mobilehindu.com?) and www.buddhanet.net has the full lowdown on the great enlightened one. All include listings for support groups in the UK should you decide to follow your new path with more than your mouse.
Of course, most roads to spiritual oneness begin with shedding some of the wealth you accumulated in the previous section (perhaps by an online donation to www.oxfam.com). If that seems too extreme, there's always the web's most aggressive cyber-evangelists, www.scientology.org, whose unique balance between pure capitalism and pure science fiction is best illustrated by their own words -"the most effective and practical path to spiritual improvement of any religion this world has seen".
Which reminds me, I really have to stop exaggerating.
