Hear thee, hear thee, I am a douche.

In the spirit of going in for really easy targets today, this piece over at BeliefNet is worth a read. Either a mind-boggling Wtf?! or a brilliant piece of satire, its hypothesis is one guaranteed to offend pretty much everyone: homosexuality shouldn't be legitimised because then all men will turn gay. Why? Because boys are better at sex than girls.

Don't believe me? It's backed up by history, fool! Read on:

"The social history behind this piece is clear: once they've experienced sex with other men, Catullus tells us, men are unsatisfied with what their new wives provide them."

Outrageous! Somehow he manages to infuriate me not only as a reasonably-non-douchy-person but as a woman. The only thing that saves this article from turning me into a white hot ball of rage is the slightly hilarious assumption behind it. The writer clearly thinks he could be having the time of his life if only he were allowed to fuck his best friend Frank, instead of just punching him on the shoulder every so often and occassionally put a wig on him while he sleeps. In his mind, once the barriers come down the whole world is going to turn into a sweaty, heaving mass where construction workers, businessmen and baptist ministers alike are more or less just heaving themselves at each other. But no! He must fight the impulse for the sake of the womenfolk.

The whole thing also has a delightfully prudish flavour, despite the subject matter:

"At the risk of getting too explicit, I leave it the reader's basic grasp of anatomy to figure out why in ancient Rome a man who found pleasure in a woman, could also find pleasure in a man, while the record shows that a heterosexual woman rarely found sexual satisfaction in the company of another woman."

Wait, I'm confused. Could you please act that bit out for me? I have a carrot here - why don't I let Frank hold the doughnut...

Everybody wants something.

Sure, sure examples of "hilarious" sign typos, usually taking the piss out of our Asian neighbours, are a dime a dozen. And, yes they are kind of the comedy equivalent of laughing at pratfalls. But at the same time they are capable of rare moment of great hilarity.

This one, for instance, cracks me up. I'm sure there's a sensible explantion, like a simple mistranslation. But in my mind, it involves a guy poring over the translation in a factory. It's a Friday night, all the other workers have finished and are heading down to their local for a drink. The saucy girl from the front desk, on whom our late-working-worker has a crush, is going to be there, and he doesn't want to be late. He looks at his watch, then at the sign, then at his impatient colleagues. Shrugging on his jacket with one hand, he scrawls a barely legible "something" with the other, chucks it on the pile and heads for the door.

The next day when the translation lobs up on the desk of the guys who are carving it onto the sign they look at the translation and then at each other.

"What do you reckon?"

"I don't speak English."

"I forgot."

"Well does it make sense?"

"Ummm, it's not UNtrue."

"Let's get lunch."

“I sat with the telephone receiver in my hand and I looked at hate like an ugly and foolish man whom one does not want to know. I dialled her number. I must have caught her before she had time to leave the telephone and said: ‘Sarah,tomorrow’s all right, I’d forgotten something. Same place. Same time.' And sitting there, my fingers on the quiet instrument, with something to look forward to, I thought to myself: I remember. This is what hope feels like.” (Graham Greene, The End of the Affair)

Things I learned about Australia…

...From looking at this dress, which is the outfit Miss Universe Australia Rachael Finch will be wearing at the international competition. (Incidentally, the dress, which is slightly hilariously called “Sunset Over the Opera House”, is apparently intended to be representative of Australia. Cough cough)

1. When a pigeon shits on an Australian’s head, we don’t shriek, run home and wash our hair. We kill the pigeon and glue it to our fucking head.
2. We not only enjoy fake boobs, we particularly like them when they perch atop a griddle-like torso. That’s what we in Oz call “natural beauty”.
3. We are deeply, DEEPLY colourblind

Things I have learned in the past few weeks, while trying to do some proper work on The Crappy Novel That Dare Not Speak Its Name:

1. I have no self-discipline. Leave me alone in the house with a laptop and within 20 minutes I’ll probably be watching re-runs of The Thick of It.
2. I am incapable of NOT simply ripping off the style of book I am reading when it comes to writing my own. For this reason, biographies or books I don’t mind ripping off are the only sort I can stomach right now. Should TCNTDNSIN bear a passing resemblance to the life and times of Patricia Highsmith, who am I to judge…
3. I have spent more time mentally imagining myself mosying around the house in the bathrobe as a full time writer, following my incredible success (fuck off, I only tell you these things because I have no shame) than actually writing to make said success possible. By, shall we say a fair margin.

I suppose we all have our little cross to bear

What a terrible thing it is to be white, straight and middle-class sometimes.

No, really. I mean the guilt alone is killing me. I'm so (comparatively) privileged and out-of-touch with anything approaching a common man or woman that I pretty much assume I'm liable to offend everyone in my immediate vicinity at any given moment. I used the word "eskimo" the other day and spent the next five minutes wondering if the person behind the counter, to whom I had spoken, was now convinced I was racist scum and/or planned to spit in my coffee anyway, just to be on the safe side. It's like a comedy of manners but without the comedy bit.

Anyway, a friend of mine used the word "queer" the other day to refer to a friend who - no shit - was gay. I looked at my feet. "Is that, er allowed?"

"What do you mean?"

"'Queer'. Do you not have to be part of the gay community to be able to reclaim the word?"

"What are you talking about?"

"It's like the n-word-"

"It's not like the n-word."

"It is! Black people are allowed to use the n-word and that's it. We're not black so we can't get onboard: that's the law."

"You're crazy."

Am I crazy? I might be crazy.

Either way the whole thing reminds me of a test we did in first year psych at uni (which I think I've blogged about before) where we had to look at photos of people and guess what ethnicity they were. Being me, I agonised over it, the idea being that I'd prove how right-on I was by identifying Woman Number 3 down to her country of origin instead of offering a vague "Middle Eastern-Indiany maybe?"

To boil it down, the study found that racist people took longer to guess ethnicity than non-racist people because they were so obsessed with race. Shit.

I think there's probably a lesson in there for me somewhere. Perhaps that lesson is that I'm actually, albeit subconscioulsy, a racist, classist homophobe who has deluded herself into thinking she has little-l liberal values. Which actually, now I come to think about it, would explain why I don't really like black people. Or jews. Oh and gays? Don't even get me motherflipping STARTED.

Overhead in my office. Tuesday, 2.54pm

Random journo: (on the phone):"...well he called me a cuntface..."

Or something like that

A friend of mine has just fallen in love. How sweet, you might think. How lovely.

Well, yes, but also how fucking insufferable.

There’s a strong parallel to be drawn, I think, between people in the first flush of love and people who have just broken up with someone. Both of them corner you for long conversations entitled This Is Why It Was The Right Thing To Dump Them/You Do Think I Did The Right Thing, Right? and This Is It This Time/I’m Just So Happy, respectively. Neither of them can think, or talk, of anything else and both of them bring out exactly the same reaction in me, though I hate to admit it: they bring me doooown.

Because to a person in a long-term, albeit very nice, relationship the only thing worse than counselling someone through a break-up is listening to them rattle on about the new objective of their affection. The first makes you think Oh God That Could Be Me – the second is much more depressing because you get to think Oh Great That Will Probably Never Be Me Again.

The pain is particularly great in this case because I first met this friend several weeks after he had been booted out of the family home. Which is to say he was miserable, bitter and willing to tell me, quite often, that it didn’t matter how much I thought I loved someone – stay with anyone for long enough and within 20 years you’ll be fighting like two rats in a sack.

Like a non-paedo version of Humbert Humbert my friend’s message was not so much Never Grow Up but Never Fall in Love. It is a line I find myself increasingly keen to bring up now that his heart has started to flutter and cynicism has turned to sunshine and rainbows.

What do you SAY to someone who has fallen in love? “That’s awfully nice”? “I’m very happy for you”? “Let’s all hope it doesn’t end in tears this time around, eh”? What about a plea not to mention a new love until it has soured, maybe just a little?

The sad truth is that I think I prefer ever-so-slightly-unhappy people to very-happy-all-the-time people. Which says, I’m sure, a lot more about me than it does about any of my friends and is, frankly, fairly descpicable. Then again, love means never having to say you’re sorry, right? Right?

Words fail me

A certain friend and colleague of mine found herself in Broome a few weeks ago (along with half of the population of Perth, if my circle of friends is anything to go by). Gallivanting on the beach, clad in a bikini and accompanied by her boyfriend’s niece, said friend spied what everyone else in Broome would soon be busily spying too: Orlando Bloom.

What to do next, given that my friend had both eyes and class? (Well, sort of.) What I mean is that although she certainly had an eye for Orlando she also had some misgivings about draping herself across his chiselled torso (this isn’t my hyperbole: she told me, honest) for a photo.

The solution presented itself in the form of the 4-year-old boyfriend’s niece. Dragging the poor child across they gazed up into Orlando’s startlingly well structured, almost elf-like, face (now this definitely isn’t my hyperbole: he was in the movie and EVERYTHING). Would you, she asked the almost ethereal-in-his-good-looks-especially-with-those-cheekbones-and-the-eye-crinkles (ok, now I’ve just lost it) Orlando, very politely, mind having a photo with my, er, daughter?

Apparently the Fjf###@%fkjldfljdkffbhgm-ing Orlando was a peach and happily chatted to the lucky little toddler bitch while my friend snapped the photo.

A nice story. Which becomes even nicer if you open this week’s OK magazine and turn to page four or so, where a certain “fan" and her "baby” have been snapped posing with Mr B. Oh hilare, I believe my sides have split.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Sam Worthington

I’m really not into muscles. They don’t do it for me on any level. Give me a boy who disappears when he turns sideways and I’ll go a bit weak at the knees. Show me a hip bone protruding above a pair of too-big pants and I’ll begin to pant. This is pretty sick stuff, obviously, and it will come as no surprise to me regular readers (Mum, Dad) but I have always have had a thing for skinny boys.

By contrast, show me a body builder and I throw up a little bit in my mouth. Deliver unto me a finely chiselled specimen with C-cup pecs and I’ll assume he beats his wife and fucks yours.

And yet every so often someone slips past my guard who defies everything I like in a boy. Most of the time I don’t even realise that it’s happening until it’s too late. An idly fancy turns to fancying and before you know it I’m googling someone who looks like he could throw me around like a rag doll, daydreaming about bunched thigh muscles and abs you could cut your fingers on. There’s no rational explanation for this: I call it The Sam Worthington Effect.

NOTE: Yes I did just see finally see Terminator 4 and yes I do find the entire ridiculous plot more believable than *SPOILER* the fact we are being asked to believe that, apparently in 2018, a LONE DOCTOR is capable of doing a motherfucking HEART TRANSPLANT on her husband in the middle of a FUCKING DESERT under a bit of shadecloth. Fuck you, writers, and your figurative dump on our collective chests.

A new low?

Meanwhile a supposed friend, has just sent me a photo of myself, wearing sunglasses (at night) in a pub, drinking wine with a straw. Oh dear.

Emery board

I’m sorry I’ve been a slack blogger this week, I think it’s because I’m bored.

Silly, really, because you would think all this boredom might motivate me to do something but, oh no, it’s quite the opposite.

I liken it to the way a friend of mine talks about the shithole that is, or was, his bedroom. Booted out of the family home, said friend was so depressed he couldn’t be arsed picking up after himself and rather let the bedroom in his new, crappier, home turn to shit. I asked him (yonks ago) why he didn’t get a cat or pretty things up. He said he didn’t want to let himself think the new digs could be permanent. But, of course, the grottier his bedroom got, the worse he felt and the less he did, making the room even grottier.

For me, it’s the same with boredom. When I’m bored and a bit down, nothing, absolutely nothing, interests me. I’m like a petulant child screaming that she wants something, but with no idea what (Sweet? Toy? Nap?) it is that she wants. Just that she wants it immediately.

For my friend it has simply been a matter of bagging a new job and shagging his way around London. For me, neither option is a)viable and b)that appealing.

I tell you this now, readers, because I am a little concerned. I have booked in a haircut for tomorrow afternoon. I need a haircut - my fringe has grown so long I now resemble a slightly dim sheepdog – but I can’t escape a slightly nagging suspicion that having a haircut in my present mood is a mistake. I’m restless, I’m a bit meh, I want something to change. All of which translates, I fear, into a buzz-cut. Or a bob. Or going blonde.

Old friends may recall an ill-advised decision of mine, in my teenage years, to tell my hairdresser to just do whatever she wanted. What she wanted, apparently, was an ear-grazing bob accompanied by a short, blunt fringe that made me look almost exactly like a surprised hedgehog. I went home, locked myself in the bathroom and cut off my hair with a pair of scissors until it was about an inch long all over. Don’t feel sorry for me, feel sorry for Mum: she paid for the haircut.

And now… and now… I can feel the dreaded phrase sliding, once more, towards the tip of the tongue. In the noble tradition of bored teenagers, dumped girlfriends and gormless dullards alike, my lips are preparing to sound out the dreaded phrase: “Go ahead - whatever you want.”

"What the effing crap? That angel guy just felt me up!"

This is random but somehow incredibly amusing. Thanks to Joey for the tip-off:

The little Jerboa that could

There is no way to disguise this as anything other than a 'cute animal pictures post', which is lame, I know. But look at the expression on that little Jerboa's face: just look at the concentration etched all over his or her tiny little face. You can almost hear the little guy/lady whispering "I think I can, I think I can..." Go you magnificent rodent bastard, go!

Form an orderly queue, girls

I try to steer clear of commenting on anything serious on here. Mostly because I don’t know anything about anything and also because I assume my small readership would prefer to stare gormlessly at semi-naked shots of Milo Ventimiglia than here my talk about… you know, anything.

But this story really got up my nose today, and it’s not entirely because my blood sugar is dangerously low and I have this weird unexplained gash on my knee…

HOME & Away actor Lincoln Lewis's mum said she wouldn't want the girl featuring in a sex tape with her son as a daugher-in-law. Jacqui Lewis was interviewed by Nova 969 Sydney and asked about whether she felt disappointed as a mother after the sex tape came to light last night, Perth Now reports:
"I am glad he is not with that girl anymore," Ms Lewis told the Nova drive show team of Ryan, Monty and Wippa.

"I don't want that as a daughter-in -law.

"She must have said she was willing to do it.

"As a female I wouldn't be doing any of that. We keep things. Have a look at Monica Lewinski, she kept the dress."

It’s not that I don’t think sex tapes are both pretty tacky and completely icky but really – is it the 1950s? By which I mean, is some poor boob of a girl really expected to be the one to keep her legs together while her lovable son is just Being A Boy. Ugh, give me a break, Mrs Lewis. Your real concern should be the fact that your son apparently thinks it is appropiate to make a sex tape and then SHOW THE FOOTAGE TO HIS CAST MATES. Or the sad but undeniable fact that his face resembles a sad condom wearing a dyed Raggedy Andy wig. The sight of his wet pink tongue, flopping like a soft cock across his lips makes me want to cry. Or retch. Or both.

Things that probably feel worse than returning to work after a two week holiday:

a) Stacking it so badly while running across the road that your knee resembles an open pot pie.
b) Discovering that your partner of 20 years is actually a long-lost brother.
c) Death. Or, rather, the bit right before you actually die.

Two-volume novel

The sun's gone dim, and
The moon's turned black;
For I loved him, and
He didn't love back.

(Dorothy Parker)

Let me be honest with you...

Look, I could try to come up with a reason for posting this photo. I could make Milo Ventimiglia my latest token smokin' hottie, maybe I could talk about how I'm rewatching the first series of Heroes and remembering how outrageously good it is. But we're all grown-ups now and we know what's going on here: Milo is twelve kinds of hot and I want to have all kinds of babies with him. Until that dream becomes a reality, however, I think some ogling is on the cards.

Thoughts I had while cleaning up my friend's hideous bloody leg wound today*:

1. Ew.
2. This is brilliant: I'm like a World War One nurse over here with my swabs and water and bandages. I mop brows! I plump pillows!
3. Wait, is that blood?

* (Sorry Jerm)

Definition of WTF Shopper's Remorse

Realising you have acquired a pair of WHITE TRACKSUIT PANTS. Um, I swear, it was just really cold in the shops...

Do you expect me, to let you go?

I have been doing a shameless amount of random net perusing this week, procrastinating as ever. This bad habit hasn't got any more writing done but it has thrown up a few beautiful websites I could never have dreamed of. I'd like to introduce you all to World Net Daily and particularly to occasional columnist Jill Stanek.

Apparently Jill is quite well known in certain circles, though I'd never heard of her, so perhaps it's best if I let her words speak for herself and quote from a lovely piece she wrote this year, thoughtfully titled "Italian Abortion Mafia". Let's read on.

"One of the best scenes in the Godfather movie trilogy was in Godfather II, when Kay Corleone (Diane Keaton) told her husband Michael (Al Pacino) she was taking their two children and leaving him. The dialogue:

Michael: Kay, what do you want from me? Do you expect me to let you go? Do you expect me to let you take my children from me? Don't you know me? Don't you know that's an impossibility, that that could never happen, that I'd use all my power to keep something like that from ever happening? Don't you know that? Kay, now in time you'll feel differently. You'll be glad I stopped you now. I know that. I know you blame me for losing the baby. Yes. I know what that meant to you. I'll make it up to you, Kay. I swear I'll make it up to you. I'll … I'm gonna change. I'll change. I've learned that I have the strength to change. And you'll forget about this miscarriage, and we'll have another child, and we'll go on, you and I, we'll go on."

God that is a great scene isn't it? Film critic Antonia Quirke has a lovely take on that line in her wonderful book, Madame Depardieu and the Beautiful Strangers when she describes Pacino's voice as an oboe ("do you expect me, to let you go?"). I really do love that scene. Gosh Jill and I have so much in common. I can tell we're going to be BFF's. More, please...

"Kay: Oh … oh, Michael, Michael, you are blind. It wasn't a miscarriage. It was an abortion, an abortion, Michael! Just like our marriage is an abortion, something that's unholy and evil. I didn't want your son, Michael! I wouldn't bring another one of your sons into this world! It was an abortion, Michael. It was a son, a son, and I had it killed, because this must all end. I know now that it's over. I knew it then. There would be no way, Michael, no way you could ever forgive me, not with this Sicilian thing that's been going on for 2,000 years. …

SLAP.

Michael: You won't take my family!

Kay: I will!

Michael: You won't take my family!

And she doesn't.

That spontaneous slap was the reaction of a real man who a woman had just told she aborted his baby. Compare that to the modern day cowardly male response, "It's your choice. Whatever you decide, I'll support you."

Jill? Jill? I, um, I mean I'm sure you're getting around to making a very good point I'm just not sure exactly how you...

"It was this fierce devotion to family that strangely endeared us to the Corleone men despite their otherwise heinous behavior. In fact, Mafiosos aside, the Italian culture has always evoked thoughts of large, loving families."

Oh. I see: domestic violence is aces. Of course. It all makes sense now.

"Friends do not let friends do crack"

No sooner do I post about ex-boyfriends than one of them sends me this - just about the best argument in favor of staying friends with your exes that I can think of.

New ways I have found to procrastinate after taking 2 weeks off to "get some proper writing done":

1. Spending an hour meandering through Ikea, browsing bath mats.
2. Buying a 'writing table' from Ikea.
3. Looking for screwdriver in order to assemble the table, then getting distracted and cleaning out the kitchen cupboard instead.
4. Assembling table, then trying to find a use for the leftover screws.
5. Eating a plate of cheese because there is nothing else to eat in the fridge.
6. Rewatching Wonder Boys and wondering if there is ANY CHANCE Robert Downey Junior and Tobey Maguuire ever had sex in real life.
7. Googling "Robert Downey Junior" + "ho-yay".
8. Having a cold shower.

Hmmm

SPOTTED: In the 'classics' section of JB Hi Fi's Osborne Park store, nestling alongside How To Marry a Millionaire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: Pierce Brosnan is 007 in... The World is Not Enough. Riiiiight.

Ex factor

An ex-boyfriend got in touch recently. Always nice that. Ex boyfriends, eh: they crop up just when you least expect them to.

Actually, in this case it WAS nice: he is a very sweet guy, an incredibly good-natured person and someone I have been keen to track down for awhile now. Ever since, in fact, it occurred to me that I had treated him appallingly. It would be nice, I have thought many times over the years, to be able to apologise properly for being so young and so dumb. Not an easy thing to launch into, those apologies, and in this case I haven’t got around to it yet.

But the whole thing has got me thinking about how ridiculously easy it is to stuff people about, particularly when you’re young. I never intended to be cruel to this guy or callous with his affections or any of the stuff I did. At the time I didn’t even realise how mean I was. When he told me, a few months after the break-up, how hurt he was that I’d ignored (read: forgotten) his birthday, I thought ‘what’s he complaining about?’ Only years later, by which time I’d had my own heart trampled on a bit, did I consider how gut-wrenching that sort of thing might have been.

Because it’s the little things that count. Most of us have been (I assume) rejected in one way or another, whether it’s being dumped or just coming to the realisation that someone you fancy like mad doesn’t even know your name. Reasonable, rational people can accept, eventually, that somebody doesn’t want to be with them anymore or doesn’t want to go out with them in the first place but it’s the little things – letting your birthday go by unremarked, having no idea what you’re up, never returning calls or texts or emails, even when they’re BARELY stalkerish in nature, cough, cough – that can be absolutely soul-crushing in their perfect illustration of the reality that this person, about whom you think constantly, doesn’t give a toss about you.

Of course things could always be worse. I mean, your partner could be off having creepy group sex surrounded by wanking men. For example.

Indigestion

It is a sad truth that business lunches are only enjoyed by those who do not have to have them very often. As a luxury, a long, wet treat in a Friday celebratory sort of way or an occasional blow-out with people you like, they can be lovely. For someone who is asked to attend several in a week and, occasionally, two in one day, they are about as much fun as making conversation in an elevator with two strangers, one of whom has just farted.

First there is the joviality over the wine. Shall we have some? Only if you want ho ho ho twist my rubber arm he he he. Red or white? One bottle or two? The possibilities are endless. The back-and-forth nauseating. Then because you, unlike everyone else at the table, have to go back to work to file a story, you get to spend the next two hours nursing a glass of increasingly warm white, while the person next to you works up to asking if his niece could possibly do work experience at the paper next month.

If you’re very lucky your lunch is at a restaurant and the food may be quite good. If you’re very unlucky you are eating at a hotel and the food will be sufficiently awful that you spend the entire meal rearranging bits of rubbery polenta beneath your napkin to give the appearance of having just enjoyed a good nosh.

Either way it doesn’t matter too much because you will have about ten free seconds to stuff your face in between answering questions and/or feigning interest in whatever wretched business venture it is that has dragged you out to the Duxton at 1pm on a Tuesday. Waiters who have been clambering to take your plate away since before they set it down pounce the moment you release your grip on the silverware, leaving you the choice of grasping at the plate like a greedy pig or listening to your stomach rumbling throughout the rest of the meal.

Worst of all is the conversation, which usually teeters somewhere between patronising (“you HAVE heard of the Gorgon project?”) and opaque (“…better regulation of CFDs which is, of course, really a matter for the OICDJFKWKFJ@#FJ”), almost invariably with a generous slathering of Boring As Fuck (“…”).

Getting out of there requires a certain amount of luck. By which I mean: good luck getting out of there before everyone at the table has finished two coffees and a small plate of file chewy caramels inexplicably deposited beside you. Even when you do manage to get up out of your chair you’re faced with the inevitable exchange of business cards, during which you a)consider amending all the ‘sixes’ on your card to eights just to avoid ever talking to any of these people ever again, and b) realise you have been calling “Matthew” “Michael” for the past two hours.

Back on the street you either return to face a parking ticket on the company car or spend ten minutes wobbling in heels to attract the attention of a taxi driver. Pray you didn’t choose the latter because, if so, enjoy the fifteen minute ride, during which he tells you exactly what he thinks of your publication, then asks for your opinion on his share portfolio while you feign deafness and wonder idly if he plans to rape and murder you in an alley.

In the office you return with a page of scribbled notes, half covered by a mustard stain, only to be told that the boss isn’t interested in the story anyway and wants you to do something else immediately, by which he means have it filed ten minutes ago.

It’s enough to make you sick to your stomach.

An open letter to my neighbours,

I love you guys. No, really, I do. I mean, I love that when I ran into one of you in the street this morning, even though we were DIRECTLY OUTSIDE OUR RESPECTIVE HOUSES we felt happy to pretend not to see one another. This isn’t sarcasm: I love that. I love that you guys want as little to do with us as we do with you. I love that your children have never banged on the door to sell us chocolates to raise money for their… swim team or whatever. I love that you have never invited as over for a ‘getting to know you’ drink and probably never will. I love the giant wall you have built between our houses, which only serves to emphasis how little we want to do with one another. All of this is just aces.

There’s only one small thing I don’t love and I hate to bring it up but it’s the gap. You know what I mean, the two metre fucking gap between the new giant wall and the shitty old fence. Yes, that gap you have inefficiently covered with a bit of metal railing. The one that lets us see into your backyard and, presumably, allows you to see into ours. The gap that permits your beagle to stare at me as I perform the naked run to the washing line, wheezing through his whiskers. I’m not a fan. I like my privacy. I like my backyard to be mine. I like my walls.

Lest we forget: good fences make good neighbours.

Love,
Me

No, seriously: call me

I have been accused, once or twice, of only talking about or linking to columnists that I quite fancy. It is, of course, an outrageous accusation. Like any sensible person I respond to logical arguments, comedic timing and other rational stuff. To suggest that I am motivated by the thought that, say, Charlie Brooker may one day be indulging in some self-googling, read of my love for him and say to himself “my God she really GETS me doesn’t she? Pop her on the first plane to my pants” is simply outrageous.

Even so, for the purposes of full disclosure as I prepare to link to another Guardian columnist, let me say for the record that I do actually, against the odds, quite fancy David Mitchell in a posh and cuddly sort of a way, but that my reasons for posting the following is that he perfectly enunciates my view on the fucking bores who whine about getting pinged by a speed camera and for no other reason. (Though, David, if you’re reading this: call me):

“Good news for the Treasury at last! It was reported on Tuesday that it receives more than £88m a year in speeding fines. That's almost enough to pension off one incompetent bank chief every three days. All right, it may not go very far in terms of buying up toxic debt or building Olympic stadiums, but it's a start.

And it isn't borrowed against all our futures, wheedled out of the private sector in some incomprehensible "partnership" or just made up by the Bank of England. It's real money paid directly into the public purse by people who've broken the law. Hooray!

Sometimes though, just when you expect a happy consensus, people surprise you. Apparently, the criminals who break the speed limit don't like the punishments they receive. Then again, the criminals who break the murder laws don't particularly like the punishments they receive either, but they don't form quite such a strident lobby…”

You can read the rest HERE.

This wasn't in the brochure

A quick exercise for anyone who knows me well.

Think of my personality, think of the kind of things I like doing and see if you can guess how I might choose to spend a four day holiday?

Got it? Right, now, hands up who said came up with Walking Holiday? Fuck off, you’re out of here.

And yet, that’s just what I’ll be doing come this Saturday. Don’t. Ask. Me. Why.

It was the lure of the campfire that did it. I bloody joined Brownies as a kid to get the campfire experience and had to learn the hard way that “camping” for the Brownies involves sleeping overnight in a big hall. Wiiiild. Only when I accompanied my brother and Scout-leader father on Scout camp (shut up) did I learn the true joy of damper on sticks, spotlight in the woods and getting gang-raped by 20 sexually-starved 15-year-olds with whom I was sharing a dorm… no wait, that last part might not have happened.

Anyway, once again I’ve allowed my love for a good campfire to get the better of me. In my head it’s all mulled wine, marshmallows and drunkenly trying to remember the words to “Vincent” for a sing-along. In reality it’s sludging through the bush for 20kms to collapse in a heap at the end of the day and spent the entire night peeling ticks off my legs and the legs of my friends. When sleep beckons I retire to a 2/3 man tent inhabited by 3 people where, if I hum quietly to myself I might not hear the deadly chirp of killer insects just outside the fly.

And yet… I’m quite looking forward to it. And it’s not JUST the campfire, honest: it’s the flipping preparation. There are meals to be planned! Bags to be packed! Checklists to be checked! There is an Akubra hat to borrow off someone, sneakers with which I will reacquaint myself and a pair of waist-high blue shorts to ease myself into!

Best of all there is all the joy to be had of telling friends about this trip and seeing their faces pucker up with confusion… disbelief and, finally, concern for my well-being. And so they should be concerned: If I’m not eaten by a wild koala it’ll be a bloody miracle. Readers, should I not return, please, tell the people my story.

The three craziest things my yoga instructor said tonight:

1. "And then you just relax the neck and harden the throat."
2. "See with your ears, not with your eyes."
3. "Think your shins towards the roof and your thighs towards the floor."

Eh, what?

When did the word cunt become so acceptable?

It might sound like an odd question for me, of all people, to ask but really when DID liberal use of the word "cunt" become so acceptable? Five years ago I don't think it had ever passed my lips. These days every third word begins with a c and rhymes with... um... bunt?

I ask this now, not because I am disturbed by my own foul mouth but because I've just finished reading The Time Traveller's Wife. I've been putting off reading this book for just about as long as it's been in existence for the obvious reason that it has Book Club written all over it. Sure, I'm a terrible snob but there is something about Blook Club Books of The Kite Runner/The Lovely Bones/any Jodi Picoult novel ever written that fill me with a quiet despair. They have issues! They provoke discussion! They make me want to drill a hole in the heads of my enemies and friends!

However, this weekend I found myself with a lazy Sunday, I was on the hunt for a book and I picked this one up. This post isn't intended to be a book review but I was impressed by how engaging it was, even if I did think the prose was pretty av and it could have lost 50 pages with no tears shed. Still it did keep me turning the pages, which is kind of the point, I guess.

But the thing that stood out was the use of the c-bomb. Twenty pages in it was all "his tongue on her cunt" this and "his cock inside her" that. Ooh er. I practically clutched my pearls. I mean I know scads of middle-aged women who have loved and recommended this book, including my boyfriend's mother, who loaned me her copy. I would never in a million years think of using the c-word in front of her yet here it was: proof she presumably didn't have a problem with it. That it was no longer enough to raise an eyebrow let alone provoke a tch tch.

While this is all well and good for the foul mouthed among us, the problem is that when best-selling middle-of-the-road novels start to throw "cunt" and "cock" around witch such incredible enthusiasm where are the rest of us to go? Do we revert back to "penis" and "vagina" as cutting edge insults? Scream "you fucking labia!!" out the window at the dicksnap who just cut us off?

I'm genuinely not quite sure. One day, I suspect, words like cunt and cock and fuck will become as bereft of all impact as the words golly, gosh and crumbs! do now. Will this be the high point or the low point of our civilisation? I don't know: what do you vaginas think?

I think...

... I want to bottle what this girl has and douse myself in it every day.

Cats no less liquid than their shadows, offer no angles to the wind

It was about 20 years ago that my brother, my sister and I went down to the Shenton Park cat haven with one thing on our minds. Mum and Dad - presumably sick of our whining and having extracted a promise that of COURSE we would clean up after the wee pussies - had caved in to our catty demands. On the shopping list: two adorable kittens.

The first one was easy: the cutest little Russian Blue puff of grey fur and blue eyes you've ever seen. We called him Templeton and his pastimes, we would soon learn, included walking us kids to the bus stop in the morning and being groomed. Impossibly good-natured, beautiful and affectionate he was the sort of cat that even cat-haters could not help loving. His companion, our second cat, would spend hours licking his fur, their little paws all tangled up together in apparent bliss.

Which brings me to Tikki.

For the second kitten we were,inexplicably, determined to choose a ginger one (I still have no idea why). Crouched down with our heads against the bars, watching a handful of ginger kittens gambolling about like demented pixies, we nearly missed the scrap of black and white fur high above our heads: the tiniest kitten you've ever seen halfway up the side of the cage and heading for the roof. Only her little cries (loosely translated as What The Fuck Have I Done?) made us look up to see her gamely clinging on with three paws, while the fourth scrambled for a toehold.

20ish years later Tikki has seen off Templeton and his short-lived (and, I’m sorry to say it, generally unpopular) replacement, Squeak. She has patiently tolerated the arrival of two poodles in the house, the trauma of moving out with me to a strange home, for which she became the protector against the neighbourhood cats who liked to nip in through the cat-flap whenever they damn well felt like it. She has earned her reputation as an escape artist by an as-yet-unexplained ability to get out of locked rooms, grown plump and lazy and earned the grudging respect of the household's two dogs, via a series of perfectly-timed nose smacks.

At least, that was the state of affairs up until a year or so ago. Now she shows every sign of, Martin Amis is fond of saying, growing old painfully. She is rail thin - I can feel practically every bone of her body when I stroke her - and her limbs are stiff. Her coat is still shiny in most places but there are now rough patches where she can no longer reach to clean properly. For a cat whose favourite pastime has always been lying down, she now takes what feels like a freaking eon to even sit down, and twice as long to get up again.

For all these reasons we’ve decided to have her put down tomorrow. And given that I’ve been expecting it for months I’m quite amazed at how sad I feel about it. I’ve lost grandparents before, and pets, but never anybody who has been in my life for as long as Tikki has. Now - predictably too late, of course - I feel incredibly guilty for not lavishing more attention on her, not visiting her more now that she is living with my parents and for all the bitching I did about the long stretch spent cleaning up after her in the months and months where she lost control of the more disgusting of her bodily functions. More than anything else I will miss her dreadfully.

NOTE: Apologies for the sap factor. Next time: some jokes.

I would like to go on the record right now...

...as having said that THIS is a fucking terrible idea.

Oh...no

NOTE: Thanks to Alley Cat for ending the dream...

Kate is...

As is this the case in my relationships with many people in this world, my relationship with that most cheeky of scoundrels, facebook, is a complex one.

Being a cynic, a party pooper and a general wet blankety type I want to make fun of both it and the people who use it. I want to mock those chronicle his or her every silent fart or cheeky nose pick. I would, if I could, crib terribly off Dorothy Parker to rubbish the wanky profile pics of others. I'd like to savage it as a sign of everything that has gone wrong with our corrupt and decadant society. And yet I'm slightly hamstrung by the fact that I love it.

Honestly, I don't mean to be a gusher but I love everything about it. I love being offered a little glimpse into what other people are up to at any precise moment; I love being able to tell others what I'm up to and have them volley something back; most of all, perhaps, I love being able to cyber stalk those who would rather I left them well enough alone.

I mention this because I was listening to someone bag out facebook the other day as a substitute for human contact. Blah blah blah, she said, why can't people just pick up the phone and call each other. I offered something equally banal as a defence. Blah blah blah, I said, it's just a nice way to stay in touch with people you son't necessarily have time to see or catch up with someone you might never otherwise catch up with.

Nonesense, she said, getting (on my tits a bit by now), with all this new technology nobody has ever made a PROPER new friend through it. So I dealt the trump card by telling her the story of how I did just that some time ago. That shut the bitch up, let me tell you.

I didn't go on but I could have. Because I can think of more than one other person I now consider a friend with whom I would probably never have become friends if not for facebook or this blog or some such. So, nyah, stick it up your face random girl I talked to the other day and let's all have a technology love-in.

Except for the freaks who enjoy twitter. What's up with THAT, eh?

In my dreams...

...this is what Andy will be like in 30 years.

No comment

This isn't really my post to make so I will merely point you in the general direction of The Worst of Perth:

How much of a pussy does it make me...

... if I wussed out on my (free) fringe trim at Maurice Meade entirely because Mr Maurice Meade himself was sitting on the waiting room couch as I was about to go in? Oh fuck that's pretty bad, right?

Has anybody been to Planet in Mt Lawley lately?

Because I don't want to alarm you but Russell Brand's freaking doppleganger is now working there.

L-O-V-E is spelt J-C-V-D

Let’s make one thing very clear: Jean-Claude Van Damme is no David Hasselhoff. And I mean that as the hightest possible compliment.

The comparison is there to be made: both The Hoff and JCVD have a sort of kitchy appeal. Both have enjoyed (or in JCVD's case is just beginning to enjoy) something of a comeback by taking the piss out of their own respective images.

And yet, while merely typing the words "The Hoff" fills me with a nameless terror, tapping out "JCVD" fills me with nothing so much as a burning desire to be thrown about like a rag doll.

Have you read The Hoff’s biography? I have. (Actually, Lindsay, I still have your copy. Apologies.) For those who haven’t read it, let me tell you right now that it begins with The Hoff single-handedly waking a boy from a coma. Yeeeeeeah I’m not even joking. For me that incident right there pretty much sums up both the book and the man: fucking preposterous.

Compare that, then, to JCVD’s brilliant turn in his latest movie, aptly titled JCVD, in which he manages to be both an incredibly sad and extremely amusing a caricature of himself, even while delivering the most comically timed roundhouse kick you’ve ever seen.

Yes, reader, you can see where this is going: I am madly in love. With JCVD.

It’s not just the movie – that was merely the beginning of the romance: the bit where you fancy the pants off someone but aren’t really sure if you actually LIKE them very much.

But the love between JCVD and I has moved past superficiality and onto something incredibly profound and - gosh dare I say it - DEEPLY spiritually. And it’s entirely because I bloody caved to the inevitable and joined Twitter.

Now, before you get all Oh Kate You're Terrible, I must insist that I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon purely for work purposes. Honest. And although my opinion on the whole thing still remains undecided, JCDV's presence has made it all worthwhile. Because, my God, the man can twit.

Sidestepping the fact that half his tweets are in French and I don't speak a lick of it (although actually I rather like those ones too, for which I invent my own saucy translations) the rest are pure gold. They range from the comedic (“Let’s all blame Steven Seagal for Mondays”) to the curious (“if you talk to the liquid soap while you clean the dishes it will be less concentrated”) and all the ones where you kinda suspect he is almost certainly on seven different types of crack ("The bee that leaves the hive can't make honey, but is free to become aware of the world around").

I laughed, I swooned, I said What The Fuck?

The only thing I did not do is go back and rewatch Wrong Bet. Because, while JCVD may be awesome, that movie is... not. Seriously, I'm not ending on a joke: just do yourself a favour and don't see that movie. Ever.

Overheard in my office (I'm pretty sure that's what Shakespeare meant)

(PEON): Thursday, 11.10am: "All the world's a football"

Gosh will you look at the time...

... is it 1969 already?

Oh dear

News just in for women's bodies, and the men who love them: apparently the curvy silhouette is back in style. Forget twiglets and drainpipe jeans that bag around the thigh - from here on out it's going to be all about plump tits, swollen hips and a rump you can park your bike on. Right? Right? Er... right?

Well perhaps we should step back a little and consider our source material for this semi-outrageous claim. The Times this week became the first (but sadly not the last) of the UK broadsheets to make the 'curvy is back' call... for this month at least. And while all this is very good in theory, particularly for those of us who are not only blessed with an excessive amount of soft corners but have just polished of an embarrassing quantity of Cadbury Creme Eggs, I think some scepticism is in order.

Mostly because the "evidence" The Times uses to justify this (alleged) return of the rounded arse is Kate Moss. In particular, the photo of Kate Moss shown above.

"Women rejoice [the Times says], Kate Moss has gone curvy."

To which I say: you have got to be freaking kidding me. I mean, I like Kate Moss, I envy Kate Moss, I even sort of fancy Kate Moss. But when I look at Kate Moss, the word that springs to mind is most certainly not "curvy". And when I look at the photo above I still do not think of the word "curvy". I might think "there is a skinny girl who looks like she's just had a big meal". But even that's pushing it a bit.

I do realise that "skinny still in" does not exactly a story make but Come On. Can we not try a little harder? I can stare at Scarlett Johansen's tits and believe for a moment that T&A is back in vogue, and I could, frankly, look at pictures of that saucy redhead from Mad Men for DAYS and believe anything she wanted me to, but Kate Moss? I could still build an entire outfit for her twiglet frame from the wrappings of the easter eggs I have just consumed. And while I have eaten quite a few easter eggs I have not, I assure you, eaten THAT many.

I suppose I'm supposed to be a cynic about this kind of thing...

... but I love Easter. I mean, it's such a brilliantly useless holiday... based around CONFECTIONARY, of all things. What's not to love?

Christmas frequently makes me feel a smidgen guilty. I love the food, the booze, the generally festive atmosphere and, of course, the presents, but all of the above inevitably leads onto guilt about Those Less Fortune etc. Tin rattlers corner me on the street and in desperation I make a monthly pledge I probably can't afford but will never get around to cancelling. Ho Frickin' Ho.

Birthdays don't count because, although you get spoilt rotten if you're lucky, you don't actually get any time off work and nobody other than yourself (and hopefully your loved ones) gives a shit.

But easter.. Easter! I mean CHILDHOOD easter was good enough, what with the treasure hunting for eggs, weekends at the beach house and the end - dear god the end - of Lent. Adult easter is even better, given I no longer care a fig for the religious stuff. On the downside, I no longer dream about the easter egg haul with quite such enthusiasm (I would but I'm not sure anyone buys them for me anymore) but the pleasure of a)having a rare Friday off work, and b)gorging on Cadbury Cream Eggs I have purchased myself, makes up for it.

Best of all everyone's in a vaguely good mood for very little reason. It's a long weekend! We can eat chocolate openly in the street! Let's CELEBRATE! All of which makes up for the dispiriting fact that the pubs will be closed tomorrow rather well I think.

I'm sorry I've been a bad blogger...

... but I do have an excuse. Honestly. You see, I'm a lazy, fucking cunt.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Today's meeting did not go at all well, actually.

Things I have learned from being in court all week

The Federal Court is conspiring to keep me sober - hence no decent place to get a drink within walking distance of the court at 1.30pm on a weekday unless you're brave enough to go the hotel bar route and risk looking like a hooker on the job.

Things I have learned from a week spent catching taxis to court and having awkward taxi driver conversations

Ray Charles once guest-starred in several episodes of 1990s (fucking awful) sitcom The Nanny.

(Don't ask me how it came up).

Token Smokin' Hottie: Alex Dimitriades

Oh yeah okay, let's get this out of the way first: so he was in Deuce Bigalo 2: European Gigalo - I've forgiven him for throwing away his talent on that (I assume) giant piece of shit, why can't you? Because Dimitriades is not just the best piece of Greek-Australian arse out there, as evidenced by the above photo, he is TALENTED.

If you've never seen his tour de force in the highly underrated film Head On then you might not know what I mean but there's a moment in that great saucepot of an Australian movie where he's looking across, sort of smirking really, at another character in a kitchen and in that stupid little ten second moment everything you need to know about him, his character and the entire fucking film is written on his face. Watch it: it's so brilliant you barely even notice halfway into the movie that he's said about four lines of dialogue in total.

But talented or talent-free doesn't really matter when you consider just how genuinely Good Looking he is. In theory I tend to think that I don't go in for conventional good looks in a massive way but if you look up conventional good looks in the dictionary you get a photo of Alex Dimitriades. He's a walking, talking stereotype of Talk, Dark and Handsome. He is not just TD and H he is nice looking. He is not just nice looking but cute. Not just cut but My God Yes he is sex on legs and yes, thanks for asking, I do fancy him like mad.

Yet somehow he also has a weird next door vibe that makes you feel a little bit like he's your older brother's incredibly hot friend. You know: the one who always took time to chit chat to you and gave you a hell of a lot of free pot for no reason at all, making you feel just a smidgen older and smarter than you were and (frustratingly) never took advantage of your youth and and innocent even though you were BEGGING FOR IT. Um, yes, where was I? Alex Dimitriades? Good times.

Overheard in my inbox (you know who you are)

Me: What've you been up to?
Him: Oh the usual. Drinking too much, trying to convince people to have sex with me.

Which is worse...

a) That I watched the movie version of the rather decent book Atonement last night and DIDN'T want to punch long time nemesis Keira Fuckface Knightley in her stupid face?

Or...

b) That I thought the note Fuckface's dishy love interest James McEvoy sent her ("In my dreams I kiss your cunt. Your sweet wet cunt") was not just rather amusing but actually quite hot?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Because I am nothing if not a woman of the people, by the people and for the people I have put up a few new links on the right hand side to some quite brilliant columnists and websites I have just stumbled across, and which you have probably all known about for years. Selfish cunts. Far be it for me to get all up in your face about it but you could do worse than start with If you like it so much why don't you go live there, which features the best/worst comments from the BBC website's Have Your Say section: the sort of home for BNP voters and Sun readers you've hoped never existed. Read, it now, thank me later.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Marlon Brando

I saw both Apocalypse Now and A Streetcar Named Desire for the first time in the same month.

What a terrible tragedy for a teenager. And what cruelty for my parents or teachers, or whoever was responsible, to let me!

It nearly didn’t happen: I was only watching Apocalypse Now because a boy I fancied had told me to and, being a bit dim, I managed to get a bit lost as to what was actually going on after about twenty minutes. Martin Sheen had a breakdown making that movie? I nearly had a breakdown flipping watching it. But I stayed the course and eventually I got to see Marlon Brando as Kurtz, fucking about in the forest. He looked insane. Not Marlon-Brando-playing-Kurtz-as-insane but INSANE insane, as in an-insane-Marlon-Brando-playing-Kurtz-as-insane.

I might have called him a genius, if I hadn’t been so busy thinking about that boy, but a token smokin’ hottie? I think not.

And then I saw A Streetcar Named Desire in which, of course, Brando is the impossibly ripped and utterly smoking Stanley, all tight t-shirted and simmering rage. Domestic violence never looked so hot: I would have let him backhand me into the kitchen cupboards twice before breakfast.

Except of course this Brando wasn’t real. Or, rather, I had seen into the future and knew where beautiful fucked up ol’ Stanley was going to end up: bald, fat and mad in a jungle. Not a bad analogy for life, maybe, but not something an impressionable young teenager should have to think about.

Naturally this depressed me, somewhat, and I found the movie tough to watch for that reason. But recently it occurred to me, rather belatedly you might think, that Marlon Brando is so unbelievably hot as Stanley precisely because of this contrast with how his life turned out. Stanley the character is constantly about two seconds away from Losing His Shit just as Brando, playing Stanley, is about twenty years away from losing his.

As a counter point, take Paul Newman. Also improbably delicious as a youth and a rarity among young hotties in that he aged both well and (apparently) happily. Even as he jowled his way into his sixties you could still, sort of, imagine going there and he was still capable of turning out a genuinely great performance in something like The Road to Perdition. And all this without (supposedly) fucking around on the side. There was a man who had his shit together.

By comparison Brando gives the impression of having lurched from one crisis to a next. Turning up to the set of Apocalypse Now massively overweight and underprepared. Turning up at all for shit like the Superman movies and the godawful Island of Doctor Moreau, in which his eyes read plainly Kill Me Now for the entirety of the film. Somewhere in there managing to both sire eleven children with about six different women and (allegedly) snog Laurence Oliver in Vivien Leigh’s pool. Niiiice.

If you were going to marry one of the two you’d have to back Newman. He’d give you a foot rub as you lay on the couch watching Lost In Austen and talk intelligently about… I don’t know, something, while he did the Times crossword. Marry Brando and you’re more likely to spend your nights cowering behind a locked door while he screams that you’ve ruined his fucking life you stupid fucking bitch.

But token smokin’ hottie status is not about getting married or picking someone to nip down to the IGA for you on a Saturday morning when you're hungover and require a diet coke immediately. It is about shameless deliciousness, guilty pleasures involving cheese-grater torsos and a few other things I’d go into in more detail about if my parents didn’t occassionally read this blog. And in that respect Brando ticks all the boxes: a tragic figure, maybe, and certainly a bit unhinged. But then, I’d argue, the best of us are. And his face could make a stone weep.

Downsides to trying to make three parties in one night:

1. You spend half the night in a car, drunkenly squinting at a road map and saying "Is this Ord Street?"

2. You either need to do a costume change en route or risk looking alternately ridiculously overdressed and underdressed.

3. You only recall the next day why it's a bad idea to go from champagne to suspicious (though delicious) rum punch to some fancy berrylicious cocktail and then back to champagne.

On a scale of 1 to 10...

... How bad is it that last night's destruction of a giant hideous foot blister is just about the most fun I've had all week?

It was the best of times, it was the... blurst of times?

A very bookish friend of mine recently made what I thought was a shocking admission: he had never ever finished a single E.M Forster novel.

I gaped. I tch tched in my throat. I delivered my overused but underrated How Can You Never Have Read Maurice When It’s the Loveliest Novel Ever Written speech. And, of course, a large part of my brain thought: Thank Fuck. Because if said literary friend hadn’t got around to touching Forster in 40-odd years perhaps I could now admit that I’d never read more than about five pages of Dickens. Or finished anything by Dostoevsky. Or even TRIED to read Henry James. Or – no, no, stop, you’re giving away too much, Kate.

So this survey out last week for World Book Day, which found that 65 per cent of respondents admitted to lying about which novels they’d read to impress others pleased me even more. In the interests of full disclosure I should say now that, while I don’t think I’ve ever outright lied about having read something I have not, I have certainly let my silence do the lying for me on more than one occasion. You know what I mean:

SOMEONE I FANCY: Blah Blah Blah… the Golden Bowl. Right?
ME: Um, yes.
SOMEONE I FANCY: It’s so different to Henry James’ early work, too. Don’t you think?
ME: Um, yes?
SOMEONE I FANCY: Blah Blah Blah.
ME: What, sorry?
SOMEONE I FANCY: I said and what did you think of the last page of Crime and Punishment?
ME: …
SOMEONE I FANCY: Why have you just taken your top off?

Most of us do this sort of thing to some degree: it’s just another version of smoothing down those rough edges for those we want to impress, regardless of whether it’s impressing them into bed or something a bit more platonic. I have, for instance, frequently answered my phone while lying on the couch, watching The Biggest Loser and eating crisps off my belly. But when the person on the other end asks what I’m up to I do some editorialising: suddenly I’m listening to Wagner and reading Tolstoy in front of that roaring fire I don’t actually own. If those video telephones I always see in sci fi movies ever make it to market I’ll be fucked.

Naturally brilliant Guardian columnist and (fingers crossed) my future husband Charlie Brooker says it all much better than me:

“Of course, whenever two people meet, literary fibs are just the tip of the iceberg. As potential partners initially circle one another, a full 98% of their conversation consists of out-and-out falsehood. The remaining 26% is wild exaggeration. It's an unnecessary game of bluff in which you both claim to be into the same bands, hold the same political viewpoints, harbour the same dark secrets and so on. Assuming it works and the pair of you get together, the rest of the relationship consists of either a) both of you slowly discovering what the other one's actually like, or b) one of you grimly maintaining the fiction that, hey, you're really into Bruce Springsteen, fell-walking or sex parties too, until the facade finally crumbles or you die of sheer despair.”

And, of course – as Brooker points out a bit later – the silver lining here is that if you’re busy wanking on about any of the books which this particular survey found to be the most lied-about reads (including 1984, Ulysses and Midnight’s Children), then chances are the person you’re banging on to about it hasn’t read them either. In fact He/She probably didn’t even notice when you referred to Mr Darcy as “Mr Firth”. You’re totally home free.

At Planet Books with Alley Cat last night, 11.30pmish

ME (Putting my Samuel Beckett purchase on the counter with some hope I might actually get around to reading it): Just this please.
COUNTER SMARTARSE: "Just" this? It IS Beckett, you know.

What jew think?

I hate the term "politically correct". I don't mean that I hate political correctness, per se, I just hate it when people use the term as some kind of messed up shorthand to justify their abhorrent bigoted views. For instance, if I ever hear the phrase "it's political correctness gone mad" again, heads will roll. All this aside, however it did occur to me yesterday that political correctness may, in fact, have gone mad in my particular cubicle of the world.

It started with a pretty banal story I was writing about gold jewellery sales. I'd been interviewing a ton of people, my shorthand was completely shot and somewhere in there I started abbreviating the word 'jewellery' to 'jew'. Which all seemed fine...until I found myself writing the following phrases all over my notepad: "bad jew", cheap jew" and, best of all, simply "jew" with a giant downwards-heading arrow.

All of which still seems ok until you notice that the rest of my 'shorthand' looks like a bunch of merry squiggles. Viewed without the surrounding context of, you know, other words, my notebook resembles nothing so much as the work of Joseph Goebbels or that scene from The Shining. All Work and No Play May Make Kate An Antisemite.

A ridiculous thing to worry about, of course. For a start who the hell is going to be rifling through my notebooks?? And even if they did I'd like to think someone might give me the benefit of the doubt and at least try to decipher my shitty teeline...And yet I hesitated only a few moments before picking up my pen to slip in the crucial "ELLERY" wherever I could. What can I say? It's political correctness gone... well, you know.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Scott Speedman

There was a certain point in the 1990s at which millions of woman and men around the world simultaneously fell in love. Gasps were expelled, glasses were dropped, television sets were turned up a little louder. Hands, if you'll forgive me getting a bit filthy, were probably stuffed down pants.

The show was Felicity and the hot piece of buttery crumpet was Scott Speedman.

Knowing much more about Felicity than I really should, I happen to know that Speedy was not initially cast in the role of "Ben" - the saucyepot love interest/stalkee for the eponymous heroine. The role originally went to another actor (the one who ended up playing "Noel" for those tragics who have also seen the show) before the producers met Speedy. Once they did, of course, they couldn't help themselves. Who could? Because he is Scott Fucking Speedman.

Never has a man been better at mumbling through his lines, barely opening his lips to let syllables out. Never has a man so accurately conveyed simultaneously both a simmering undercurrent of rage and confusion and serene fuckability without saying a thing. Never have I wept so hard with gratitude when he lopped off a headful of bog curls (see above) to reveal a scalp as smoking hot as the rest of him. Oh shit and did I mention his character was in the swim team for a whole season, meaning he spent about 80 per cent of his onscreen time without his shirt? Because... yeah. That happened.

But more than that (wait - did I just dismiss Speedy's cheese grater torso with a simple "more than that"?) he just seems so... charming. Even when he'd let you down time and time and time again you just KNOW you'd fall for him all over again as soon as he rocked up at your house with a cheaparse bottle of red: all dimples and excuses. Nobody could sound quite so sincere when he explained very cutely that he only put his cigarettes out on your tits because he just loves you so much, baby.

But, please, excuse me, I'm afraid my Felicity series 4 DVD has just arrived and I have, um, some work to do.

A depressing thought: there is currently ONE job going for a WA journalist according to Seek.com...

... and that's the fucking job I've been offered and don't want. Brilliant.

"If you can slash in my bed (I thought) don't tell me you can't suck my cock." (Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers)

I do...

I’ve been reading a lot of bridal magazines lately. And although a few months ago I might have classified even one bridal magazine per lifetime as “a lot” – or, dare I say, “one too many” - these days “a lot” is actually… well, a lot. Enough to wallpaper the pantry masquerading as my study, for instance. Twice.

I have not gone mad. The reason for this newfound hobby is simple: a dear friend of mine is getting married and has asked me to be her bridesmaid. And before I go on with my cruelty and anti-marriage shite, please, allow a brief disclaimer to say that I am ecstatic that she and her fiancee are tying the knot and quietly stoked to be involved on the day. Anyway...

It’s been a weird experience, reading these magazines. Having never really paid attention to bridal magazines in the past 26 years I’ve paid even less attention to the wedding photos inside them, containing one nauseating image of people I don’t know after another, rictus grins and spray tan smeared all over their faces in more or less equal quantity. So I’ve never appreciated before just how chillingly depressing they are. Sort of like porn. Because, just like porn, after awhile they all start to look exactly the same. And by the time you get to the money shot (in my mind it’s a toss up between the inevitably vomituous ‘misty gaze’ or the poncy one where they cut the cake), as with porn you can’t help but feel a little bit, well, deflated.

My distaste for this sort of thing is not motivated entirely by my distate for marriage. While I may not be exactly the marrying kind I don’t actually HATE the idea behind it - a big booze-with your friends and family and presents besides – nor those who choose to do it. But faced with page of smiling couple after page of smiling couple it only take to about page 30 or so before you can’t help doing the maths. I don’t keep up to date with divorce statistics but I assume they still sit pretty close to fifty per cent. Which means you can draw a line through the centre of any given page and… well, you know.

Now I know that magazines exist to sell readers idolised versions of themselves. For women’s magazines this is a sort of vision of what you could be if you ate nothing but rice cakes and cocaine all day. But while there are plenty of people prepared to slag off the fashion glossies that depict prepubuscent thirteen-year-olds writhing around on catwalks, beaches or the thighs of Armani-clad models, where are the people complaining about the particular brand of false hope dished out by bridal magazines?

Fuck calling for “real women” (somewhere between a size ten and the half of the two fat ladies that is still alive, I gather) to be included in bathing suit spreads, why is nobody calling to have images of real marriage included in bridal mags?

The answer is, of course, obvious. It’s the same reason you don’t get to see flaccid cocks and post coital STD clinic appointments in a porno or Dawn French in Cosmo.

But that doesn’t make it right.

Even a single photo of a sexless, running-to-fat couple sitting in dinner table silence would be sufficient to lower the marital expectations of the average reader, if not lead them to re-think this whole marriage malarky altogether. Get those damned statistics down, maybe.

A pre-emptive apology to everyone who will be at tonight's quiz night...

... I know that I can be a little competitive. And I'm sorry about your face.

Overheard Herdsman Drive, Friday 8.45am

Tradie screaming out the (open) door of his truck...: "It's Friday! Have a good weekend you f*cking f*ggot!"

Three things to say when you've just seen a show on someone elses dime and not liked it very much...

1. "The set design and lighting was amazing."
2. "I can honestly say I've never seen anything like that before."
4. "Is that your phone?"

Wait, pralines have "slutty wares"?

Late last year I had a lot on my mind. So much on my mind, in fact, that for a couple of weeks my insides were so knotted up with anxiety that I abandoned my usual motto of ‘gluttony for all, especially me’ and ate bugger all. A toasted cheese and satay tofu sandwich sidled up to me and I gave it a polite thanks but no thanks. Chocolate coated pralines threw their slutty wares in my face and I turned away. Hot chips sat by the phone, weeping into their salty deliciousness thinking “why won’t she call?” As a result I lost a bit of weight and then had to put up with everyone telling me I’d lost a bit of weight (Oh who am I kidding with this “put up” malarky – I loved it, just like you do).

Anyway, a couple of months (and any lost weight regained) later my brain has exploded in confusion with the knowledge that apparently worrying makes people fat. Frick. I’m very concerned.

Now, before I go on you might want to consider two pieces of information: firstly that this ‘news’ comes from some random university I’ve not heard of in Quebec (apologies to Universite Laval in Quebec but you’re not exactly Harvard, eh?) and secondly that I only heard this information secondhand via David Mitchell’s reliably-hilarious column for The Observer. Meaning that from Quebec’s mouth to my ears has been a long journey via several keyboards (probably), a dodgy French website (allegedly) and a frisky game of Chinese whispers (now I’m just guessing). Plus I haven’t had lunch yet so my blood sugar is dangerously low.

Disclaimer over, even so, if there’s a single grain of truth to this it is incredibly disturbing. Because surely we all know that the one good thing about times of stress or mental breakdown is that we look damn good doing it. Sure your boyfriend’s left you, you’ve lost your job and you’re throwing up every time the phone rings but my god are those ribs I see?

I direct you back briefly to Mitchell’s snappy analysis which contains this gem of truth:

“Grateful as I am to the scientists and researchers who have provided us with this annoying information, I’m unclear as to what they want us to do with it.”

Exactly. The problem here is obvious: this news, if true, is worrying. Worrying makes you fat. Getting fat makes you worry. You worry about worrying. You get fatter. You worry even more about your thighs rubbing together when you walk. Soon enough kind-hearted beachgoers are trying to roll you back into the ocean. There’s no escape: you’re trapped in this horrible fatty cycle forever. Unless, of course, you can chill the fuck out, put your feet up and Stop Worrying. Which is easier said than done when you’re a 300 pound fretter drifting out to sea.

Dude, come ON

You've never heard of a gun? Pills? Get with the program.

If only...

ON HER: Adorably chic and sexy. You want to fuck her in the street* and then take her home to get married in a simple garden ceremony.

ON ME: You think I am a boy.

*As a quick aside: Is it just me or is this blog getting filthier? Thoughts, please.

Q: What's the difference between hard and light?

A: You can go to sleep with a light on.

He was born like this, he had no choice, he was born with the gift of a golden voice: introducing my latest Token Smokin Hottie: Leonard Cohen

I am not into older men. I have never really been into older men. Indeed, if anything, I tend the other way. Like many of the boys, or indeed men, I know, I tend toward the lusciously young: the peach-skinned youths with soft cheeks and smooth chests who I run into at train stations and parties, rather than the contour-lined faces of men I meet through work or at dinner parties, sitting on the other side of a vegetable lasagne (cooked largely for my benefit: meaning I must go back for seconds even though I don't actually fancy eggplant that much and I'm really, really full) telling me about their investment properties.

No, no, fuck those guys - I may be 26 and technically Getting On In Years but Jesus I love their young skinny counterpart as much for the way they look in tight pants as for the way they DON'T ask for my opinion on, well, anything.

And yet. Tonight I discovered the exception: freaking Leonard Cohen. Because MY GOD. I mean the man is in his 70s. He is grey haired and jowled and, yet, when dear Lindsay leant across to me tonight and murmured into my ear: "his voice is sex" I could not disagree. It does strange things to me, this voice. He is dreamy. He is sex. I would still, and yes it pains me to admit it, go there.

The tragedy is that this great love has robbed me of the ability to be amusing about my crush. All I can say is that I would actually quite like to sleep with Leonard Cohen. That's not a joke - that's just, you know, reality. So, um you know, while I would like to have an open discussion about why it is that society deems men to generally get more sexually attractive as they get older than women and whether this is complete guff or rooted in some sort of clever evolutionary drive, all I REALLY want is to urge someone with any sort of connection to Mr Cohen to give me a call. That's right: sex has offically replaced semantics. This is what growing up feels like, fuckers. Now, give me a call...

Mr Noxy: A love story

I have been accused in the past of being a chronic unromantic. Accused unfairly, I think I should add.

I have issues, I've been told with an (alleged) inability to express genuine emotion, even in cases where it is there. Supposedly I am so terrified by commitment and so repulsed by the dullness of long-term love that I regularly belittle romance, both my own and other people's. These are simply wild, wild rumours. Because while, yes, I have been known to respond with a polite "thankyou" to declarations of love I do feel that rumours my heart died somewhere around the summer of 2004 have been exaggerated.

Because suddenly I find myself madly in love. Consumed by it even. I literally cannot stop thinking about this hot new piece of arse in my life without feeling my heart catch a little. I wake and think of him. I lie in bed at night and wish for his presence. In somewhere under a decade of relationships nobody has ever given me so much and asked for so little in return.

So... details, details. Well technically his name is Zolpidem but I like to call him Stilnox or Noxy, for short. He likes that.

You'd just love him, too, if you met him. I mean nobody potentiates gamma-aminobutyric acid like him and the way he binds to it? Phwoar. Don't even get me started. Of course crtics or puritans might suggest I've moved too fast, having jumped into bed with him already but... you know, fuck it. Waiting does nobody any favours and I've just had the best two nights (sleep) of my life.

And sure, as in any relationship there are some downsides. Like say, ooh I don't know, potentially er hallucinations, delusions and impaired judgement and reasoning. There's also a risk of sleepwalking, night terrors and apparently that thing where you get up and eat everything in the fridge without waking up (which actually sounds kind of awesome to me but what do I know?). Then again, what new relationship comes without risk? In a point-by-point comparson with the ex who once forced me to drunkenly scale the rickety wooden trellice outside his house in a bid to avoid his parents one night, I think Noxy comes out on top on all points. Plus he lasts for seven hours. Phew, I'm just saying.

I'm calling it

I have absolutely no idea what this movie is about but it's going to be the best movie ever.

In other news...

... my (sleep deprived, jet-lagged) body may or may not have developed an immunity to sleeping tablets. Fucking brilliant.