An anonymous letter I received in the post this morning at my job (it had a stamp and everything):

"I don't mind your feminist articles in the paper but do we have to look at that ugly mug shot of yours. Looks like a lesbian without doubt. Seen better heads on cocks. Also have seen more cocks on TV lately than tits let alone fannies."

As much as this has done nothing to ease my own genuine self-consciousness about my quite bad headshot - and I feel like the author kind of lost his way towards the end of the letter - I must thank him/her for the wonderful phrase "seen better heads on cocks", which I plan to use liberally in conversation.

That Girl

You know That Girl. She's the one who laughs at what she's reading on her laptop and waits for you to ask her what's so funny. When you don't ask she tells you anyway. She laughs quietly at her own jokes and very loudly at everyone else's. She has an opinion on everything anyone else is talking about and wants to share it. If you don't react she assumes you haven't heard her and repeats herself. So you learn to react. Without making eye contact. That Girl inserts herself into conversations that have nothing to do with her. Sometimes she assumes she knows what other people are talking about. Often she is wrong. That Girl cannot read the social cues that would tell her what other people think about her behaviour. Sometimes it is hard to tell if That Girl is stupid or just a bit lonely. That Girl would probably describe herself as having a really good sense of humour. That Girl is delusional.

Summer Daze

I've never been a huge fan of the beach. But faaaaawk this photo from 1918 makes it look fun.

Top Five named Alannah Hill clothing items, as voted by me

1. The Long Sad Day cardigan
2. He Talks to Stars top
3. I'm Slipping Under cardigan
4. Melancholy Love belt
5. He's Having an Affair! cardigan

(If you have no idea what I'm talking about you can check out the Alannah Hill website, but only if you buy me something pretty).

Buttons Are Hard, or Scenes From A Cafe

Him: Your button's come undone.
Me: Oh, it's, um... supposed to be that way.
Him: Oh.
Me: Should I... do it up?
Him: No, it's fine.

Lindsay did it

Just in case I am ever found with a stiletto heel through my heart, a single hair belonging to Alexander Skarsgaard, Scott Speedman or Javier Bardem resting on my chest, and no apparent motive or suspect for my untimely death... dear readers, please direct the police to this blog.

Well,

What did you do with your weekend?

Ok so...

... I swear I'm going to stop posting links to articles on The Hairpin, put on my shoes and go to dinner already but first I have to say that this made me laugh quite a bit. Also GOD how I do love Scott Speedman.

Ex Schmex

I once went out with a guy* who had been - and, over the course of our romance I kinda increasingly got the impression almost certainly still was - half in love with his "best friend", a cool redhead indie pixie-type who was maybe mostly gay but had also sort of gone out with this guy for awhile. I don't know. It was a super weird relationship (theirs, not ours) that involved getting matching black cat tattoos (both of them), having said tattoo removed (him), accusing the other person of... rape? (her). Yeah that's right: just the usual, the ol' casual rape charge between friends. Who hasn't been there? Anyway, I can't say I ever wanted to sit down and shoot the shit with this girl. Or any of my (short list of) boyfriends' ex-girlfriends. But this charming article courtesy of The Hairpin actually makes it sound like a pretty great idea.

*Fun fact: this guy is now going out with a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend (Perth, eh?) who seems perfectly nice and normal, thus putting an end to my theory he just had really shitty taste in women.

Slut

Have you ever been called a slut? I haven't. At least - and this is a big "at least" - not to my face. But I know I've called at least one other girl a slut, albeit not to her face. I feel bad about that, not because she ever knew about it (and for the record, Lisa, I still hate your guts) but because I strongly believe that "slut" is an ugly hate-filled, shaming and generally gross word to use as an insult*. I had a neat reminder of why I feel this way today when I stumbled over this great Tomato Nation essay, written by the wonderful Sars more than a decade ago. This is the gist of it -

"Slut" is for liking it. "Slut" is for wanting it. "Slut" is for going after it. Men hunt, women gather; men chase, women wait. Look it up, slut. "Slut" is for kissing boys with tongue. "Slut" is for kissing lots of different boys with tongue. "Slut" is for craving kissing lots of different boys with tongue. That's not right, you know. It says so in the Bible, and in social hygiene films. "Slut" is for loving sex. "Slut" is for needing sex.

- but you can read the whole thing here. And you should.

N.B: Has occurred to me that a friend of mine who sometimes reads this blog has a wife called Lisa. Jeepers. Hopefully this goes without saying, Young Ant, but the Lisa referred to above is not your charming wife. That is all.

* Using the word "slut" it in a sex-positive way, however, doesn't bother me in the slightest. And for my money using it among friends is Game On: I called Lindsay a slut just the other day via text message and her reply ("filthy slut to you, sirah!) did rather make me laugh.

Probably

Every now and again I am filled with the urge to move back to London, where I spent a very enjoyable 18 months of my life many a year ago. The thing that stops me is the realisation, slowly acquired, that moving to another country does not mean I get to leave behind all the things about my life I don't particularly care for. Which is to say that Kate in London is basically Kate in Perth, just...  in a different city. (Albeit an awesome city. God I love London.) I mention this now because this wonderful photo, courtesy of The Sartorialist, makes me want to pack my bags and move to Paris immediately. Instead I have to take several deep breaths and remind myself that moving to Paris will not turn me into a willowy, alabaster-skinned hottie with a great skirt and a mad set of pins. Probably.

Things I not-so-secretly like about being sick

1. Getting to use the phrase "keep my fluids up".
2. Watching trashy TV. Obvs.
3. Day-dreaming about getting super skinny, thanks to complete lack of appetite. I choose to ignore the licorice I sent Andy to the shops to acquire and plan to eat en masse upon his return.
4. Feeling sorry for myself. Sooky, sooky wah wah.

Things I think but do not say to the girl sitting next to me

Holy shit you are chewing your gum so loudly that, despite the fact there are half a dozen people around us typing, and noise coming from the TV I can still hear every fucking snap of that piece of gum being chewed and pummelled by your mouth. YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG.

Pros and cons

Pro: I've just rediscovered the very charming and somewhat inspirational website, What I Wore Today, whose owner essentially puts together a different outfit every day and takes a photo of it. I think maybe she's not supposed to wear the same combination of stuff more than once but I'm not sure. Anyway, it's very cute and interesting to see how she puts stuff together in a way you wouldn't necessarily expect.

Con: As a result of getting a little, uh, over-inspired by aforementioned blogger's ability to mix patterns I am currently wearing a floral blue dress, stripey pink cardigan and belt and some, um, pretty cracked out stockings and heels. By which I mean: I LOOK INSANE.

Thoughts I had while watching the truly awful, terrible, please-God-make-it-stop movie, Trojan War

1. Oh dear this movie is so quintessential eighties it's almost charming to look at her hairstyle and what he's wearing and how... ohdearlordno this movie was made in 1997?
2. Seriously? I can't move on. 1997? What is he wearing? Is that a jacket or a house coat. There are no words.
3. Oh, shit, he's the love interest? Jesus wept. I came of age in the nineties and... no. Just no.
4. Although Jennifer Love Hewitt was kind of cute back in the day, no?
5. So, is this movie sort of... racist?
6. Do girls actually refer to their boobs as "breasts"? Like, has anyone has in real life EVER said the words "my supple breasts?" Enquiring minds want to know.
7. Just to confirm: this guy? It's definitely THIS GUY, right? Because he looks like he's 12.
8. Oh, fuck, apparently he's six years older than me. Now I don't know what to think.
9. Yeah this movie is definitely mildly to moderately racist in a way that makes me imagine the writers sitting around a desk saying aloud "Mexicans, eh? Amiright?"
10. Big case of the Donna Martins going on here. Dear writers (monkeys?), it's not enough to have people say what an awesome guy whatshisface is: you actually need to show us SOME evidence of this fact. It's the same way everyone on 90210 used to talk about how gorgeous Donna was when the evidence, um, did not entirely support that theory.
11. Aw that's so sweet. What is more romantic than the dude you're crushing on finally realising (once you put on a slutty dress, obvs) that he'd rather share a chaste peck with you in the moonlight than nail the blonde hottie in someone else's toilet while a third party throws up in the toilet? Besides, you know, EVERYTHING.
12. I've wasted my life.

There are moments

"There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself: 'Do trousers matter?'"

"The mood will pass, sir."

(PG Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters)

Things I should never do again

Drink two big glasses of red and look at the RSPCA's Adopt a Pet website. I'M SORRY KITTIES I WANT YOU ALL.

Apropos of nothing

Every now and again I am reminded, simultaneously, of the reasons why I a) adore the lovely Nick Lezard as much as I do, and b) implied, or maybe actually said, so many years ago on our first acquaintance that he was a smug fucking cock. This column expresses that duality of emotions very well indeed. It's also rather amusing. Which is nice.

The worst people in the world #32

People who don't acknowledge you when you hold the fucking door open for them. Seriously, jerks, I'm not asking for much, I don't even need a verbal "thanks" but a head nod, a smile and some eye contact... two seconds of goddamn recognition that, yes, I am standing there with the door in my hand FOR YOUR FUCKING BENEFIT YOU DOZY FUCKING COW would not go astray. And, yes, two random bitches for whom I held the door today, I am speaking to you.

He didn't even offer to buy me a drink

I've been thinking about boobs lately thanks to two weird incidents. In the first, some dude at a bar told me I had nice tits. Then today I learned, from the guy who is doing my old job, that a former contact of mine had said something to him about my boobs.

Hmm. 

Now, before I go on, I must at least try and convince you, readers, that I'm not trying to pull off a humble brag here by dressing up compliments about my boobs as my Cross To Bear. I think my boobs are perfectly lovely, I'm awfully fond of them, and as far as I'm concerned they deserve all the compliments they get... which are not actually all that frequent actually, although this may or may not be because I spend much of my time jaunting about with McPhee, whose own rack is, to put it politely, extremely impressive. Bitch has got a great set of cans, is all I'm saying.

But I digress.

The thing that got me thinking was my reaction to the two incidents. The one at the bar, although it made me kinda embarassed and a bit uncomfortable, didn't particularly bother me. The dude was drunk and I was at a crowded bar surrounded by friends so I didn't feel intimidated. I think I smiled, muttered "uh, thanks" and promptly turned bright red.

The second incident, in contrast, really did bother me and make me feel downright... uncomfortable. The work contact in question wasn't a friend of mine - I'd probably only met him once or twice - and I'd never even come close to flirting with him because... ew. But for whatever reason, upon meeting my replacement for the first time and in a professional situation this guy felt completely comfortable talking about my boobs. As far as he knew my replacement, in addition to being a colleague, could also have been my best friend, my boyfriend or my brother. I can only imagine how said colleague, who is lovely and far too sweet for this shit, reacted at the time. Nervous laughter, presumably.

I'm really not sure what point I'm trying to make here: that I feel more comfortable with guys being kinda sleazy to my face than behind my back? Not, um, exactly. That it's strange and kinda fucked up that some dudes think it's perfectly normal to discuss a woman's boobs with one of her colleagues without fear of recrimination just because he's talking to another dude? I... don't know. Maybe. All I know is that my boobs and I feel vaguely hurt and sad and weirded out by the whole thing. Also I'm maybe now going to have to start about investing in a whole bunch of high-necked jumpers and bulky scarves to pad out my work uniform. Boo. Hiss.

N.B: It goes without saying that the woman above, the super cute Kelly Brook, is not me. Nor do my boobs resemble hers. But in a world where most of the women I see in magazines or whatever are super skinny with either no boobs or fake boobs it's sometimes awfully nice to see a hottie cruising around in a dress with a natural pair of big boobs. Um, nice tits, Kelly, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Things that may have helped me enjoy the film Magic Mike more than I did...

... ALL THE BOOZE.

(N.B: Although I will say it was good, clean, schlocky fun)

I can't do that, Dave

Please note that for some reason my computer or, more likely, Blogspot is messing with me so that parts of some of my blog posts get randomly sort of... highlighted in white for no good reason. Like the post below. I'm sort of half arsedly trying to figure out what's wrong but for now just, um, ignore it with my apologies. I would consider bitching about what an outrage this is but since I'm paying exactly fuck all for the service it seems a trifle rich.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Andrew Garfield

I received an interesting message from my friend Jayne the other day, reading simply: Is Andrew Garfield  in the Venn Diagram? I vote yes.

Jayne and I, you see, have very different taste in boys. She likes them fit and muscular enough to (I'm editorialising now) throw her around like a rag doll, should circumstances permit. I prefer them scruffy and skinny enough to disappear when they turn sideways. Still every now and again the stars align and the circles of our respective Venn diagrams overlap, most notably in the case of Swedish hottie Alexander Skarsgaard.

But... Andrew Garfield? This I hadn't expected. I'd noticed him, idly, in The Social Network and thought he was cute but other than being vaguely aware he was going out with the seems-so-charming Emma Stone I hadn't thought about him since.  Then blammo he wandered onscreen in The Amazing Spider Man and I was smitten. (Meanwhile let me point out that The Amazing Spider Man is not a great movie. I was coaxed in against my will and it was, you know, fine and perfectly okay but all that was good about that movie can be laid at the feet of Andrew Garfield who was, it must be said, too good for the material. )


Did you ever have that thing where you had a crush on someone and your friends just Did Not Get It. You'd be babbling on about his smile or what he'd said to you ("hey, you dropped your pen") and they'd be all "him, really?" That's Andrew Garfield. Looking at the photo of him I've put in above the thing is... I don't particularly fancy him. He's got good bone structure, sure, but his eyes are maybe on the small side, his nose is semi-goblinesque and his hair looks FUCKING INSANE. 

But that is the secret of Andrew Garfield: he is greater than the sum of his parts. Walking and talking around onscreen he is adorable and charming, subtly sexy without trying to hard and simultaneously, I don't know... goofy? If I have an achilles heel when it comes to boys it's all about the smile. I am a sucker for a killer grin and Andrew Garfield has one of the best smiles I've seen in quite the long time. (As an aside why am I still referring to him by his full name instead of just Andrew or Garfield? Andrew Garfield, Andrew Garfield, Andrew Garfield, somebody stop me).

The only time when my lust faltered during the movie's 136 minutes (seriously, Hollywood, action movies should not be longer than 2 hours and this trend is getting fucking insane please stop, I could have cut half an hour out of this movie with my eyes closed) was when Andrew Garfield (I can't stop now) took off his shirt to reveal he was, in fact, quite insanely buff. Put it back on, I hissed in my mind and, to my delight, he eventually obliged. Somewhere in another cinema, on another day and in another part of town I like to imagine Jayne was begging him to take it back off.

All of which is a very long-winded way of saying that Andrew Garfield is a pretty decent actor, a certified Kate-approved hottie and most definitely belongs smack back in the centre of the Kate and Jayne Venn Diagram of Lust.

I'm as jumpy as a puppet on a spring

I've never been able to get into Proust - I suppose I'm a bit too stupid - but in some respects this song is my madeleine back to my youth, watching my parents getting ready to go out.

Insert your own jeans vs genes joke here

Today has been a shitty day. I am laid low, frustrated, melancholy and terribly, terribly bored. So what a delight to get some good news in the form of (ultra-unverified, I'm not kidding: the original source of this yarn was the Daily Mail) suggestions skinny jeans are destroying men's sperm count. I say good news because, much as I feel for anyone who wants to have children and is unable to do so, I love a good pair of skinny jeans on an equally skinny chap with about as much enthusiasm as I generally dislike children*. The only possible downside of this snippet of news that I can see is that skinny boys may abandon their skinny jeans for fear of missing out on the chance to pass their skinny genes on to the next generation. THAT would be a true tragedy.


*Children directly related to me being the one and only exception. They're... fine.

Overheard in the office, Thursday

"Hmmm... hmmm... okay, yes, I don't think we'd be interested in doing a story on that. No... no, I'm sorry we're just not interested in a story about your husband being in love with a Dutch backpacker."

Spy me to the moon

A distinctly odd interview this week from Jules Oliver, wife to celeb chef Jamie, in which she admitted she regularly snoops on her husbands emails, text messages and twitter to make sure he's not screwing around.

Putting aside the question of why anyone would publicly confess to a practice that, although I guess it's maybe not uncommon, makes you look hopelessly insecure this is a subject on which I Have Views That Require Airing. So, you know, fairly warned be thee, say I.

I did once snoop on a partner's emails many many years ago. At the time it felt semi-justified because I was looking for details about the strumpet bitch drug-addict probably-perfectly-nice girl he'd been quietly romancing on the side. Afterwards, when my need to Find All Of The Details had worn off I just felt lame and a bit pathetic. And, like so many snoopers before and after me, I didn't find anything that did me any good. (Actually I didn't find anything at all. Very frustrating, I assure you.)

My real problem with snooping, however, is that it robs your partner of the ability to have a private life and perpetuates the ludicrous idea that you should share everything with your partner, do everything with your partner and tell your partner everything. Sex columnist Dan Savage got it right when he said, so many columns ago I can't be bothered looking it up, that it's a relationship, not a deposition.

However good a relationship is, unless you are the most motherfucking boring person on the planet there are thoughts, ideas or desires you will have that you won't tell your partner about. And in my experience the easiest way to become a dull person and a worse partner is to surrender your personality at the door and forget to have a life outside your partner that not only makes you a more rounded person but at the very least gives you something to talk about when you're together. People who don't appear to have friends that aren't also friends with their partner make me very sad, is what I guess I'm saying, just as I get super depressed when friends appear unable to catch up for so much as a coffee or a drink or a movie without bringing their partner along for the ride ("Oh it's... Bob... again. What a surprise.")

In any seriously long term relationship there are - at least God I hope I'm not alone on this one - times when you just... don't like your partner very much. Times when you hate them a little bit maybe. Certainly there are times when you are so bored with them you could jump out the window for something to do. In a successful relationship (ie: one that lasts for a long time, I guess, and ideally ends with one of you dropping dead), these times are outweighed by the comparatively good times. In an unsuccessful relationship the bits that shit you outweigh the pleasures and comforts.These shitty times, the times when you are bored or frustrated or angry in your relationship, are the times when you need, most of all, to have a life outside your relationship. Otherwise you will very likely wind up wanting to pursue another relationship altogether.

In my current and past relationships there have been times when I bitched about my partners to friends, pondered leaving them aloud and flirted with people who were not them. Were these behaviourss particularly respectful to my partners at the time? Well, no, not really. Were they necessary? For me, yes, I really think they were. Or are.

Similarly I assume that both my current and past partners have, at various times, said things about me to their friends ("her boobs are shit") or said things not about me to other girls ("your boobs are amazing") that might crush me if I knew about them. But the important thing here - the point I'm trying to make - is that they don't crush me because I don't know about them. And, as far as I'm concerned, I really don't need to.

Give me success or take this desire away from me. One of the two.

This article about auditioning for the Boston Symphony Orchestra is long. Maybe too long. But it's worth it for the last line.

Because I am very mature...

... I definitely did not giggle to myself when I read Tony Abbott's comments about it being Un-Christian to "use the back door". For God's sake nobody let him google the term "saddlebacking".

Things I remember from a night on the turps that I maybe wish I didn't:

1. An argument with a colleague about whether The Go-Betweens were a great Australian band. I remember him saying "I'm sick of this Richard Kingsmill crap..." I don't remember what I said back but I'm sure it was incredibly rational and well argued.

2. Reading out smutty bits from Timothy Conigrave's wonderful autobiography Holding The Man on McPhee's couch.

3. The balloon! The steak knife! It wasn't my idea, I definitely remember that.

What does the worst hangover of recent memory feel like?

It feels like a churning stomach. It feels like a pounding behind your eyes that doesn't go away. It feels like embarrassment for not properly remembering all the conversations you had the night before. It feels like anxiety at what you might have said or done. It feels like relief for not doing what you'd feared. It feels like a waste of a Sunday.

How to break a journalist's heart: a reader's guide

"I read your story in the paper today. Well, I didn't read it all but I got the gist."

Token Smokin' Hottie: Fabian Cancellara

First of all, a quiet word of reassurance to Andy Schleck, lest he be sweating, to assure him that he remains my guilty cycling crush and if he was riding in this year's Tour de France this post would be about him. Awkward looking he may be, super skinny he certainly is and if you were to suggest that his nose is kind of big and his ears sort of... stick out, you wouldn't be exactly WRONG. Nevertheless I love the Schleckmeister to pieces and wish to assure all concerned that what follows does not diminish that love...

All that said Fabian Cancellara is kind of a hot piece of cycling arse, isn't he? Come on. Look at that face. Those muscles. That face. Can we get a close up on the face?

Cancellara always had a certain something-something but this year it seems like he's slimmed down a bit and, skinny boys being my kryponite, I have sat up and taken notice. Will this slimmed down frame be enough to make Cancellara (already awesome on the time-trialling) into a mountain climber to beat the likes of Wiggins or Evans? Seems highly doubtful - he's still pretty big for a climber - which I'm hoping will prompt him to lose even more weight by this time next year, thus exposing even more of the Cancellara cheekbones I have come to know and love and get those hip bones... yeah, yeah, okay, I know, I may... have some problems.

Cancellara appeals to me in the same way the likes of Roger Federer appeals to me: both men are awesome at what they do, which is always hot, and both have a certain rough European handsomness that is very appealing. Is it racist to fancy someone because they look kinda foreign? Let's say... no.

In some respects Cancellara embodies the very essence of what it is to be a token smokin' hottie: having no knowledge of his personality or temperament I fancy him purely on the strength of some solid bone structure, a cute smiles and a body that... well, I tend to think I'm not really into boys' bodies, per se, but in this case I'll make an exception. I could go on. I mean I really Could Go On but sadly the Tour de France is starting and I have... business to attend to.

Words I had to edit around or cut out of stories today

1. fuckwit
2. fucked
3. fuck
4. fucking

It was kind of a good day.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Paul Keating

I have two pictures hanging in my living room but the one that faces me when I curl up in 'my' corner of the couch is of Paul Keating. I'm looking at him right now. He's youngish in this photo, maybe in his thirties, speaking into a radio microphone, a big pair of earphones half on, half off his head. He looks, I'll be honest, readers, fucking amazing.

Keating. Oh KEATING. I love him so much. I could not love him more. And so of course, I live in constant hope/fear I'll be told to interview him for work and in the process make an absolute tit of myself. Kind of like the time I had to interview my nerdy crush Niall Ferguson (shut up) and blushed so hard the entire way through I could feel the heat radiating off my cheeks

The thing a lot of people who love Keating love about him is his wit, his put downs, and I'm no exception (if you need a refresher you can get a taste here).

But Keating's gift for barbs means some people (*cough* Andy *cough*) are critical of my Keating love and accuse him of being a big fat bully.

To which I say: have you read Keating's infamous 1992 Redfern speech? I mean have you READ it? Keating may have bullied other pollies in his time and tolerated exactly zero fools but I don't think that a man who can deliver a speech like that can be called cruel. What's that you say? You want to read an extract of this speech I'm talking about? Oh, well, okay if you insist.

"... As I said, it might help us if we non-Aboriginal Australians imagined ourselves dispossessed of land we had lived on for fifty thousand years - and then imagined ourselves told that it had never been ours. Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it was worthless. Imagine if we had resisted this settlement, suffered and died in the defence of our land, and then were told in history books that we had given up without a fight. Imagine if non-Aboriginal Australians had served their country in peace and war and were then ignored in history books. Imagine if our feats on sporting fields had inspired admiration and patriotism and yet did nothing to diminish prejudice... There is one thing today we cannot imagine. We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resilience maintained a culture here through fifty thousand years or more, through cataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived two centuries of dispossession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modern Australian nation. We cannot imagine that. We cannot imagine that we will fail."

I mean, come on. Come ON. That speech was made 20 years ago and have you ever heard a politician make a better one?

There seems to be a general kind of idea, perpetuated through dopey magazine articles and the like, that personality is more important for women fancying men than it is for men fancying women. Most of the time I think this is bullshit because I am as superficial as any boy I know. But at times I have to concur that personality can, just a little bit, outweigh other considerations. You see Current Day Keating is not a dreamboat. I'm not blind: dude is getting old and kinda... jowly. Even Young Keating, although undeniably slicky and kind of handsome, was not really physically my type. But would I, given the opportunity, throw it all away for a simply FILTHY weekend in a white sheeted hotel room with our former Prime Minister and an open mini-bar? Weeeeell, the answer to that question is between me and my diary, readers, but I can say this: I would give it a bloody long hard think.

“In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you've had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.” (Douglas Adams)

Methods for dealing with anxiety over starting what is kind of (but not exactly) a new job:

1. Ignore. Deny. Repress.
2. Spend your Sunday morning trying to get some work done ahead of time so you look super prepared. Realise your work is shit and you have no idea what you're doing. Freak out even more.
3. Um, drink?

Rock it

When I first heard about a Japanese-built robot that beats humans at rock, paper, scissors every time I thought it sounded a) kinda cool and b) like the first sign of a coming apocalypse in which artificially intelligent robots enslave us all (I for one welcome our new robot overlords...). Turns out the robot is just a big fat cheater.