Friday... fun?

Because it's Friday and time for an existential crisis here is a brilliant scene from one of my favourite movies, Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters. To give it some context the character Mickey (played by Allen) has recently found out he doesn't have cancer, having thought for awhile that he might. At first he's ecstatic but then later he decides he wants to kill himself because he's decided that life is meaningless. He explains it thusly...

Mickey: No, I'm not dying now, but you know, when I ran out of the hospital I was thrilled because they told me I'm going to be all right. I'm running down the street and it hits me: All right, so I'm not going to go today, but eventually I'm going to be in that position.
Gail: You're just realising this now?
Mickey: No I don't realise it now. I know it all the time but I manage to stick it in the back of my mind because it's a very horrible thing to think about.
Gail: Yeah. What?
Mickey: Can I tell you something? Can I tell you a secret?
Gail: Yes please.
Mickey: A week ago, I bought a rifle.
Gail: No.
Mickey: I went into a store. I bought a rifle. I was gonna... You know, if they told me that I had a tumor, I was going to kill myself. The only thing that mighta stopped me, might've is my parents would be devastated. I would, I would had to shoot them, also, first. And then, I have an aunt and uncle, I would have... you know it would have been a bloodbath.
Gail: Tch, well, you know, eventually it is going to happen to all of us.
Mickey: Yes, but doesn't that ruin everything for you? That makes everything... you know it takes the pleasure out of everything. I mean, you're gonna die, I'm gonna die, the audience is gonna die, the network's gonna - the sponsor. Everything!
Gail: I know, I know, and your hampster.
Mickey: Yes!

For what it's worth he doesn't kill himself. Which is partly why this film is not only one of my favourites films ever but one of the most reassuring films of all time. Forget about reading philsophy or self-help books: for my money Woody Allen does it better.

Faultless logic

Token Smokin' Hottie: Jon Hamm

If you're a regular Mad Men viewer you might recall that Jon Hamm usually spends his time looking like this:

Yum. Lately, however, with Mad Men on a break and not coming back until 2012 Jon has been spending his time looking like this:

I WANT to say he's still a hot piece of arse but... no. Just no. I mean I'd still go there, obviously, but I might consider dimming the lights. And having a few drinks. During.

The moral of the story? Men of the world: how you groom yourself and dress yourself does effect the amount of pussy you can expect to acquire. Please take this onboard.

This is either brilliant or very depressing

So here's a fun fact. Today I learnt how to tell which of my many FASCINATING blog posts over the years have been the most viewed. The winner? This one! Apparently I'm not the only one with a big fat crush.

Sweet Valley High

When I was a youngster my sister was really into the Sweet Valley High series of books. I wanted to read them - the covers alone looked AMAZING - but my Mum said they were too old for me and forced me to read the totally ball-bag spin off, Sweet Valley Twins instead. Lame.

Actually, all that happened was that I snuck the SVH books out of my sister's room and read them in my bedroom, starting with the brilliantly awesome Double Love. Because, yes, I loved a pretty wild and crazy life. In hindsight, I really don't know what Mum was so worried about: Sweet Valley is the lamest, whitest, most genital-free town EVER. Seriously, Elizabeth the 'good twin' is held up to be some kind of perfect perfection despite the fact that she dresses like a grandmother, can't open her mouth without patronising someone and has a weirdly sexless relationship with her beige (probably gay) boyfriend Todd. Admittedly Jessica is... kind of a sociopath, actually, but at least the books acknowledge that she's a selfish tramp, even if she usually manages to come good by the end of most of the books.

Anyway, to celebrate(?) the release of Sweet Valley High Confidential (a book that picks up where the original series left off OMFG), I feel obliged to point you to The Dairi Burger, which has re-read all the SVH books and recapped them for your viewing pleasure.

It's pretty fucking funny. For example, from Deceptions:

Scene 2: Enid Rollins’ pathetic fucking non-Spanish tiled house.

ENID ROLLINS: (answering the phone): Hello?

EW: Enid, omg! What am I going to do? This is SUCH a disaster!

ER: Ok, I’ve cleared my schedule. I’ve canceled visiting my dying grandmother to talk to you.

EW: Oh my gaaaawd! Nicholas is like totally in love with me! And he’s so rich and good-looking! But I am supposed to be in love with my good-looking boyfriend Todd! Two guys are in love with me! Life is SO HARD!

ER: Wow, that IS a huge problem. I mean, forget that I have a drunk father, I once almost killed a kid, and I was born with frizzy brown hair, how can you stand to be you! [puts a gun to her head]

Almost makes me want to track them down for the joy of re-reading them myself. Almost.

My heart is just BREAKING for Chris Brown

I mean can't a dude beat the shit out of his girlfriend's face and not have people ask him about said violent beating two years later? Stay strong, Chris, violent spouses around the world are standing strong behind you on this one.

I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

I don't know how closely everyone has been following this story out of Sydney showing footage of a fat older kid being bullied by a younger boy. For anyone who hasn't seen it the older kid is being picked on and hit, picked on and hit until he retaliates by picking up his bully and dumping him on the ground. I've been fascinated by the story, in part because it's pretty tough to know how to feel about it.

On the one hand, I genuinely don't think that violence is ever the answer but only breeds more violence blah blah blah. If the younger kid had been badly hurt, which he could easily have been, we'd all be talking about the case in a very different way and the older kid's life would be even more fucked. I know kids who were bullied but I also know kids who were the bullies, and they're not evil people who deserved to die - they were just little shits who didn't know any better and were probably being bullied themselves. I'm sure there are plenty of childhood bullies who didn't come good but the people I know did.

On the other hand I can't help being a little bit delighted by the story, like a lot of other people apparently. I could pretty much watch the footage of the bullied kid picking up his tormentor all day because somehow this little incident seems to have become a flashpoint for something much bigger. It's pretty tough to have any sympathy for the younger boy when you hear the older one talk about how he contemplated suicide as a result of all the teasing that he seems to have suffered for most of his school life. Similarly it's tough not to feel admiration for the victim because he so obviously just took it and took it and took it until he... didn't take it anymore.

For some reason it makes me think of the brilliant film, Network, and its protagonist's mantra: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore".

It's a pretty shitty lesson for kids to learn but I'm betting that the older kid's situation at school will improve as a result of this incident, in a way that years of asking for help from his parents and teachers has not.

I would love to see someone revisit this story in five years time to talk to both boys about how it shaped their lives, as I'm sure it will.

Best Coverline Ever on the current edition of Australian Vogue

Do Women Really Like Sex?

Things that Do and Do Not Feel Good After Finishing a Brutal Workout at the Gym

DOES FEEL GOOD: The sense that I am getting my fitness back ("back"? Really?) and could maybe run away from a very slow, possibly wounded, predator.

DOES NOT FEEL GOOD: Walking into the (otherwise empty) change room to find a (male) cleaner mopping the floor. Am I seriously expected to take my clothes off in front of this guy or do I just pretend to be super interested in my little locker and the two pairs of shoes within it? Enquiring minds want to know.

Pemberton, I love you, but you're bringing me down

To Pemberton where I spent my weekend watching a load of very skinny boys ride past me very fast on very expensive bikes. To my slight surprise it was great fun (and not only the bit where I got to legitimately spend a day staring at one of my favourite things in the world: skinny boys). It has, however, put me off my One Day plans to watch a stage of the Tour de France because, without the commentators to explain what's happening, it is, to put it mildly, fucking hard to work out what's going on.

My spectator chum, Marnie, and I spent several hours curled up on a handy park bench in what we thought would be an advantageous spot to watch the race. We were half way up a big hill so we got to see the riders dying on their arses on the way up and then moving scary fast on the way down. In between the laps when we saw nobody I re-read Madame Bovary and she read something on her e-reader, shivering in the freezing cold. (And damnit if don't now kinda want an e-reader, having spent so long railing against them).

Anyway, it was all fine when the riders went off in their respective groups at the start but by the time they came around for Lap 2 we had no idea whether the lone riders were completely shit stragglers or amazing riders who had pulled off a one-man breakaway. Should we have clapped or averted our gazes politely? We chose the latter. Adding to the, er, fun, was that several riders got completely lost and would ride by at random times, looking confused. To top it all we managed to miss the finish and didn't realise the race was over until someone cycled up to tell us so. Brilliant.

The best/worst bit of the weekend, though, was our motel - which I won't name here lest I manage to defame ten types of hell out of them.

Clearly I am a massive snob - I must be, I've never stayed in a motel. But the weirdness started with the man at reception ("Just don't leave any sugar out, or the ants will come") and ended with the cleaning lady who performed her duties while wheeling a wheelbarrow. No, I don't know either. Adding insult to injury was that when we went out for breakfast at the Lavender Farm (exactly like it sounds) the next day we discovered they rent out some darling wee cottages with a view of the lake and, yes, the lavender. Opportunity missed.

I guess what I'm saying is that I am already planning my return trip to Pemberton for the Pemberton Classic road race next year. But this time I plan to book ahead at the Lavender Farm. And possibly bring some binoculars. Those skinny boys are worthy of a close up.

A Roasting

A slightly grim article from the Courier Mail about women getting shitter at doing "female" things like roasting an oven, vaccuming and - presumably - taking a beating from one's husband without reporting his sorry arse to the cops. Because the year is 1950.

But I paraphrase. Let's go to the primary source:

BASIC "female" skills are becoming endangered with fewer young women able to iron a shirt, cook a roast chicken or hem a skirt.

Just as more modern men are unable to complete traditional male tasks, new research shows Generation Y women can't do the chores their mothers and grandmothers did daily. Only 51 per cent of women aged under 30 can cook a roast compared with 82 per cent of baby boomers.

Baking lamingtons is a dying art with 20 per cent of Gen Y capable of whipping up the Aussie classic, down from 45 per cent for previous generations

The thing is, as a Gen Y woman myself I have some concerns with the phrase "able to", as in "fewer young women are able to...". Handed a cookbook and a raw chicken I think most Gen Y women would, in fact, be "able to" roast said chicken, even if they haven't done so before. (I'm not a great cook and I can do it, so how hard can it really be?) I think what the survey was probably asking is whether the women would be able to roast a chicken off their own bat, implying that they'd done it so many times it would be a cinch.

Similarly I can bake a good cake or tray of muffins but I've not the slightest idea how to make a lamington. Mostly because I find them to be ultra weak sauce on my list of tasty treats.

But, wait, it's not all bad. Don't sterilise us en masse just yet.

But Gen Y women are taking on other skills.

As well as working full or part-time, they are doing tasks previously done by men.

More than 70 per cent of women under 30 say they often take out the bins, 77 per cent mow the lawn and 70 per cent claim they wash the car.

Phew. Close one.

Fuck me, I'm in love

Could somebody pretty please put me out of my misery and buy me this bag?

Things I think but do not say to people at the gym:

1. Please put on some pants.
2. Please, please stop talking. I cannot run on this treadmill and chat about the state of the education system.
3. Seriously, the pants.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Vincent Cassel

I went to see Black Swan the other week and the moment Vincent Cassel came on screen the two biddies behind me started crapping on to each other in the way that, in my experience, Women Of A Certain Age seem to feel they have the right to do.

"Now WHERE do we know him from?" one said to the other, not making any attempt to keep her voice down.

"Oh he is SO familiar," the other one said.

I wanted to turn around and tell them to shut the fuck up - I'd just forked out 15 bucks - but of course I didn't.

It's not just that I hate people who talk during a movie, although I really really do. I think maybe it's more that I can't fucking stand people who talk during a movie when Vincent Cassel is on screen.

Interviews with Cassel always seem to refer to him as an "unlikely" sex symbol to which I think Hmm, Really? He seems like a kinda likely sex symbol to me. I mean, firstly the man is French which is, honestly, pretty hot. Yes it's a big fat cliche to find the accent hot it just is. Secondly he's married to Monica Bellucci, one of the most blazingly scorchingly smoking hot women who has ever graced the silver screen so obviously he's got something going on in the looks department.

And yet, of course, I can see what they mean. He shouldn't be hot. His nose is too big. His face is... kinda cragged. It's sort of difficult to believe he's hiding a smoking hot body under his clothes. Yet somehow he comes off sexy, like a hot professor and semi-dangerous, not like he's going to cut a bitch but like maybe he might be willing to put his hand up your skirt at a party before you've been properly introduced.

Oddly enough he hasn't been mentioned all that much in the reviews of Black Swan that I've read but I think he deserves a lot more credit. Part of the reason that Black Swan works in spite of the fact that it's kind of nuts over the top and ridiculous is that it's also pretty sexy. And the sexiest thing about it? Well, the boys will disagree, but my vote goes to Cassel, even though his character is a bit... um... well I guess...look, I'm trying not to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it, but he borders on the side of being kind of a sexual harasser, is all I'm saying.

And yet, perversely, he makes it look good.

The thing I hate today...

Facebook bores. I don't mean people who update their status' All The Time (because I am almost one of them) nor people who leave utterly inance status updates about their children/pets/accomplishments. I mean people who like to brag that they have either never used Facebook or used to use it but don't anymore as though they believe it makes them a better kind of person than the rest of us. You're not better and nobody cares*.




* Because one of my favourite people in the world is NOT on Facebook I should point out here that my problem isn't with people who don't use Facebook but only with those who think they deserve a medal for it.

Mia culpa

Sorry for being an insanely slack blogger lately. I haven't had much time off, so I can't blame the holidays. Really it comes down to the fact that I have been a bit down in the dumps work-wise and have been trying to avoid bitching about it. Which is clearly what I'm doing right now. So apologies. Again.

Next week: some jokes!

Christmas, 2011

At least I now know what I'll be getting for Christmas NEXT year.

White Out

I really wish more Australian boys would get onboard the white look for summer.

The other week I found myself all but following some random guy into the city. It's not as creepy as it sounds: we were just walking the same way for about 15 minutes and - yes - I could have gone another route but I preferred to follow him because I was completely entranced, even though I could basically barely make out his face. The reason - it occured to me after about two blocks - was that he was wearing all white: a loose white shirt and a pair of quite delightful white pants, worn with what looked like a really simple pair of thongs. Better yet he was carrying absolutely nothing - no bag, not texting away - and gave off a vibe of being about as carefree as a boy can be on a warm summer day.

In short, he looked amazing and so much cooler (in, I guess, both senses of the word) than the Aussie muppets who run around in boardies and thongs all summer long. I'm just putting it out there in the hope that it will catch on and I can take full credit but I reckon this is The Look for boys this summer. So come on male reader(s): buy your white clothes now, thank me later. Oh, and for GOD'S SAKE please send me a photo.

Scenes from a Bon Jovi concert

ME (To the person next to me): Is he... not wearing a shirt under his leather jacket?
RANDOM GIRL IN FRONT OF ME (Turning around): HE NEVER WEARS A SHIRT! HOW HOT IS HE!!
ME (Nervous smile. Long pause): I bet he gets really sweaty.

Cute boys and cats

So I saw someone else linking to this site, Cute Boys With Cats, and my immediate thought was that I have not entirely normal taste and the chances that I would find these boys cute was slim to none. Then I realised the truth: any boy looks 100 per cent cuter with a cat on his lap/arm/face. True story.

Brilliant

Do you remember that scene in High Fidelity (both the book and the film) where the main character meets up with an ex-girlfriend, the one he has put on a pedastal for years and year, only to discover that she's awful. That's the word he uses: "She's AWFUL." Still hot (played in the film by Catherine Zeta Jones) but pretentious, boring and completely self-obsessed.

Turns out, I've had a very similar experience. I recently met up with someone from my school days (nobody, I should note, who reads this blog). In the old days this guy was the object of half the school's desire. He was beautiful, super smart and seemed like he had all the answers. I mooned over him for a good wasted year or two, too blind to realise he was probably actually a bit of a wanker.

Then I met up with him again, through pure chance that thrust us together for a few days. He was still gorgeous, still apparently very smart. And he was awful. Just AWFUL. I don't want to transcribe any of the things he did or said here, just in case he stumbles onto this blog and recognises himself, but it was bad. He was pretentious, completely self-obsessed to the point where he couldn't talk about anything else, and utterly deluded about his place in the world.

I loved it.

I loved being able to subtly take the piss out of him without him appearing to realise it. I loved having some of my friends ask me who this wanker was. I loved completely blowing him off towards the end because I just Could Not Be Arsed Dealing With Him.

The whole experience made me wish I had gone to my 10 Year School Reunion earlier this year. Would have been great fun.

Quotable Quotes: an oldie but a goodie for a very grim Tuesday

“I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and one that is broken, sad as a woman who is growing old.” (Jean Rhys)

Yeah apparently her parents let her out of the house like this. A lot.

This one is just for the saddos like me who harbour a deep and abiding love for the following things:

1. The TV series Gossip Girl.
2. The TV series Project Runway and, more specifically, the delightful Tim Gunn.

I have apparently been living under some kind of rock. How else to explain the fact that I missed Mr Gunn utterly unloading on Gossip Girl's least talented, most annoying actress: Taylor Momsen, who plays "Jenny" in the series. You know Momsen: the 16-year-old who dresses like a 38-year-old meth-addicted hooker whose rent was due yesterday.

Gunn recently filmed a guest spot on Gossip Girl (which was, I admit, kinda painful to watch) and apparently found Momsen something of a douche:

"What a diva!" he told E! News. "She was pathetic, she couldn't remember her lines, and she didn't even have that many. I thought to myself 'why are we all being held hostage by this brat?'"

Gunn said that Momsen's constant Blackberry use was the main problem and the director told him it happened "day in, day out, my life." He said that if he was a regular on the show he would give her some advice.

"I'd say, 'You know young lady, there are hundreds of thousands of girls who are just as attractive and even smarter than you. Why are you acting like this show is a huge burden on you?'" he told E! "She was on her phone during every break, I wanted to tell her, 'If you weren't on your BlackBerry, you can retain this stuff.'"

You can read the rest here.

Like I say this is seriously old news (I'm talking September) but I couldn't resist because I love it. I love it so much that I want to beg Gunn to shadow me in my daily life, taking potshots at all the people who get up my nose and doing so in charming, well-clad way.

I don't know what you're talking about...

... everything in my life is just going PERFECTLY. Honest.

High points and low points from a weekend of festivities:

LOW: Realising, several hours into the night, that doing my makeup in the back of a moving taxi and without a mirror had yielded results there were more "streaky racoon" than "stunning temptress".

HIGH: Discovering that I still know the lyrics from that Butterly Effect song that was really big years and years ago. Come on, you know the one.

LOW: Hour-long car ride to a family-do The Morning After with a stinking hangover.

HIGH Having one of those magical taxi experiences when you are walking towards a (packed) taxi rank and pass by one with its light on, which immediately pulls over for you. Double points for not having a creepy driver with a rapist vibe!

LOW Thinking I looked pretty good right up until the point I walked out of the bathroom stall to find one of the hottest girls I have ever seen in my entire life admiring her arse in the mirror. Fuck, if I had an arse like that I'd never stray far from the mirror either.

For the recently dumped

I don't usually link to the lovely Nick Lezard's column, because there's already a link sitting on the right-hand-side of this blog and I figure you can click on it any old time you like. That much said, his latest column is a charmer and worth your time, particularly for the recently dumped.

An open letter to the prick who tried to steal my car,

Dear Hoodlum,

First of all, congratulations on your fine choice of automobile. Most people look at my car and see a shitty and somewhat-dented hatchback. You looked at it and saw what I see: a sweet ride that runs like a dream, asks little for little in the way of maintenance and never breaks down in a crisis. Granted, neither the air-conditioning or heating are what they used to be (ie: functional) but the windows roll down easily and the radio is in excellent working order at least 95 per cent of the time.

And yet.

I don't mean to be cruel but if you're not able to successfully steal an unattended 1986 Ford Laser with one broken lock perhaps you should, dare I say it, look into a new line of work. Yes, I agree, you did manage to prise the little metal casing off from the ignition but it would appear that - judging by the fact I still have my car - the operation went somewhat pear shaped right about then. What went wrong? Was it that the ignition lock proved more complex than you had imagined or was it simply that you failed to come prepared with a suitable array of tools at your disposal?

Worse still, you showed a complete lack of initiative. The backseat of my car contained a box stuffed with a delightful array of trashy novels - inclduing the complete Sookie Stackhouse series, which is a rolickingly good read - but you left them untouched. The front seat contained a bag of Felicity DVDs (all four seasons), which you also left behind. Is it that you don't care for American 90s college dramas starring Keri Russell or is it that you're simply unable to think on your feet and take advantage of a situation?

In closing, while I share your fondness for my beloved vehicle I feel obliged to strongly recommend that you give up the car-stealing business, as it is a trade in which you show very little skill or willingness to learn. If you're not prepared to put in the yard hards and acquire some suitable tools or training I'm afraid I see very little future for you in this business.

Also, while it pains me to be cruel to a fello Laser Hatchback enthusiast I must also warn you that if I ever find you trying to steal my baby again I'll run you down in the fucking street.

Best Wishes etc.

Cocks of the Week

I did want to write something about what went on in Northam yesterday. But I fear my profanity may frighten the little ones.

The Pumpkin Incident

Halloween, as everyone knows, is an excuse for girls to dress like sluts and not get called sluts. It's a wonderful thing. I typed "as everyone knows" but this is, perhaps, inaccurate. It would have been more accurate to say "as everyone finds out one day". For me that day was about 15 years ago at a Halloween party when I was on the cusp of my teenage years.

The Halloween party was being thrown by a neighbourhood friend of mine who was a year or two older than me and much, much more mature. I, for instance, did not then know that Halloween was an excuse to doll myself up in something black, skin-tight and as revealing as was logistically possible.

Hence my decision to dress up as a pumpkin.

The costume was a simple: I stuffed a lurid oversized orange t-shirt with an old bed sheet, cinched it in at the waist with a belt and poked my scrawny pre-pubsecent legs into a pair of green leggings. A green ice-cream container, jammed onto my head, completed the winning ensemble. Sadly no photos of the event survive to this day but I looked, I can only presume, like an obese 8-year-old with jaundice. My Mum said I looked great.

I realised I had made a mistake only when I arrived at the party to discover two things:

1. There were boys at this party.
2. Almost every single other girl at the party was dressed as a slutty witch.

This was not like any of the parties I had attended to date, where parents oversaw wholesome party games involving balloons, everyone was included and the worst that could happen was a bad red creaming soda spill. Here, girls giggled together in groups, ignoring plates of sausage rolls, flicking their hair and flashing glances towards the groups of boys who frankly looked as bemused as I did.

These girls were not like the girls I knew: their hair was shiny and styled, their barely blossoming boobs pointed skyward with the aid of push-up bras and their red lips and black eyes revealed that they, unlike I, had known the touch of a make-up brush. To me, waddling across the room in my pumpkin finery, they appeared not like girls at all but minature women.

Needless to say they terrified me.

Even so I did not actually flee the scene until someone decided that a game of Spin The Bottle was just what the balmy spring evening called for. In vain I looked for a parental figure to intervene and suggest a rousing game of Pass the Parcel, or perhaps just a round of cold showers, instead. But my friends parents simply smiled indulgently and disappeared to another part of house, upping the volume on Hey, Hey It's Saturday to drown out the sound of teenage hormones zinging through the air. Silently I fumed at their idea of responsible parenting, thinking to myself that if one or all of their daughters wound up impregnated by a douchebag called "Stevo" by their 16th birthday they would have nobody to blame but themselves.

Then - and only then - did I flee.

Which all goes to explain what happened this weekend when I donned a short black dress, threw on some slap and plaited my hair to attend a Halloween party. What the hell was I supposed to be exactly? I was calling it 'Slutty Wednesday Adams'.

Naturally my costume was put to absolute shame by many of the others, particularly the brave fellow who dresed as a triffid from John Wyndham's charming novel, Day of the Triffids. Unsurprisingly, however, I blended in perfectly well among the gaggle of other women. Lo here a sexy spy (short Stella McCartney-for-Target black dress, big blonde hair, legs up to her armpits), yonder there a Saucy Catwoman (skin-tight leggings, come-fuck-me boots and a token pair of cat ears).

And, hey, it only took me 15-odd years to learn that lesson.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Riccardo Scamarcio

I KNOW that Italian men cannot possibly be as universally hot as the world of cinema would have me believe.

And yet if they all looked like Riccardo Scamarcio I'd be on a plane right now.

The problem with Scamarcio is that he doesn't look like he's all that in a still photo: he's one of those token smokin' hotties who really has to be seen on the screen to be appreciated. I came up against him in the film Loose Cannons* last night. It was a pretty so-so film made less endurable by the fact that I was sitting with the world's most annoying people on either side of me (on the left: two shrieking nutbars, on the right: the world's loudest and most disgusting popcorn eater ever. Plus there was a guy behind me who kept scratching himself for a good 5 minutes at a time. Weird. ).

And yet, although the film was not that great and in spite of the fact that it also featured the sublime Giorgio Marchesi I could not take my eyes off Scamarcio. He has - to steal an expression from my friend Nick - gravitas. In spades. It's not just the way he moves, although there is something there: it's his face. He has one of those faces you feel you could just look at for hours and hours. Not everyone has a face like that: James Franco, who is one of the most attractive people I can think of, does not. Benicio Del Toro, who isn't conventionally all that great, does. Orlando Bloom - again in theory very pretty - doesn't. Marlon Brandon did.

Scamarcio also, bizarely, has the ability to look about 16-years-old at one moment and 35 in the next. That might sound like an insult but given that he is 31 in real life I mean it as a compliment. There were moments in the film when he was romping around in bathers that I thought 'how YOUNG is this kid?' and then other moments when he was squinting into the sun, all linen shirt and pressed trousers, when I thought I'd got him wrong entirely.

Either way, I'm glad he's not 16 because a)that would make me feel a bit weird writing this because fancying a teenager seems a bit wring; and b)he's not at risk of growing out of his teenage beauty into a pudgy, bloaty 20-something. Stay gold Scamarcio, stay gold...



* As an off-topic aside I would like to express my frustration at the fact that this uneven Italian movie (starts well but goes nowhere fast) rates higher than two of my favourite films: Ladyhawke and Fletch, according to the Internet Movie Database. This is pro-European snobbery of the worst kind.

Paint it Black: Worst 5 moments experienced while painting my apartment this week

1. Trying to distinguish between 18 different shades of off-white with names like "eggshell", "ocean caps" and "chilled breeze". Lengthy exposure to those little paint cards is more paranoia-inducing than a tray of hash muffins: you start thinking am I crazy or are they all just kinda fucking off-white?

2. Accidentally painting over the light switch. Yeah doesn't seem like a big deal now but at the time I think I may actually have wept.

3. The fifth trip to Bunnings and the knowing stares from the guys in the paint department. Oh those knowing stares...

4. Getting a massage on the second day of painting and hearing the masseuse say "um, you have a lot of paint on you" in much the same tone you or I might use to inform someone "I think you have leprosy - your left hand just fell off in my soup".

5. The fumes. People, I can't emphasise this enough: when you start to giggle at nothing in particular and you're halfway up a ladder, having painted for 5 hours straight, you are already high as a kite from the fumes. Crack a window, open a door: do not breathe in.

Breathe Deeply

One of the best bits of relationship advice I ever got was from my dear and wise friend Lindsay. If you're going to do something a bit messed up, she said, then cover your tracks.

The beauty of this piece of advice - which sounds utterly obvious but really isn't always - is that it can be applied to a great number of situations. If, for instance (and obviously I'm talking PURELY hypothetically here) you are going to have a fucking BREAKDOWN about the growing suspicion that your girlfriend's enthusiasm for the relationship might be waning, it is a good idea to have said breakdown in the privacy of your own bedroom instead of, say, on the university campus in front of a whole bunch of curious people very pointedly Not Staring At The Car Crash But Actually Very Obviously Staring At the Car Crash.

Similarly, if you're going to read your sister's diary you should remember where you got the diary from in the first place and replace it, not casually leave it open on the desk to the part where your sister was (over)analysing the two minute conversation she had with Beautiful James by the stairs and wondering whether what he meant by "see you in History" was something closer to "the combination of your glasses, braces and orthodics enchants me - take me now, by the D-block lockers".

Which brings me to my friend. Let's call him... Wooster.

Before I go on, a brief disclaimer. Wooster would like it to be known that he is NOT a habitual sniffer of womens dirty underwear. Nevertheless, the facts are these:

1. Wooster did retrieve a pair of his girlfriend's dirty knickers from her laundry basket.
2. He did sniff them.
3. He did leave the knickers on the bed.
4. He was caught.
5. He is now in trouble with his girlfriend.

Leaving aside your views on knicker huffing (for the record I think it ranks fairly tamely on a spectrum of kink that includes pegging and scat) what's important to recognise is that Wooster ran into his current troubles because he forgot The Lindsay Principle: if you're going to do something a bit messed up then cover your tracks.

Here's how it could have played out.

1. Wooster did retrieve a pair of his girlfriend's knickers from her laundry basket.
2. He did sniff them.
3. He did not leave the knickers on the bed.
4. His girlfriend never needed to trouble her pretty little head about it.
5. Wooster did get to have sex with his girlfriend again.

But accidents happen. I should know: I once dyed my dear friend Ali's hair ginger. So sometimes 'covering your tracks' doesn't cut it. You did something a bit messed up and now you need to deal with it.

Or do you? Have you met my friend denial?

I met denial back in primary school when, for reasons that still remain slightly unclear to me, I at some point decided that to turn up at school IN MY PAJAMAS AND DRESSING GOWN was not a terrible idea. It's not quite as bad as it sounds: our school was having its annual musical and my Mum was driving to school to pick up my sister, who had been doing backstage work... or something. Anyway, I went along for the ride and only decided to get out of the car on a whim... for some reason. Obviously I immediately ran into a huge number of my classmates who, strangely enough, did not spontaneously forget this fact by the following day. Never overburdened by popularity I was unwilling to make the jump to fully fledged social outcast. And so I lied. Or rather I denied. It went something like this.

CLASSMATE: Why were you at school in your dressing gown?

ME: (Casually eating an apple as though to demonstrate just how ludicrous such a suggestion is) I wasn't.

CLASSMATE: But I saw you.

ME: (Chewing ponderously) No you didn't.

CLASSMATE: Yeah I did. So did other people.

ME: (Now starting to run out of apple) No they didn't.

CLASSMATE: We all did.

ME: I think not.

I wasn't entirely successful. (Marlon Brando I was not - I was more like... Tom Brando). But as a strategy the idea that you could simply deny something, just will it out of existence, was very appealing and I never forgot it (just as I assume certain classmates never forgot the sight of me in my Noel Coward dressing gown and pajama pants racing across the carpark, the over-long cord of my dressing gown trailing behind me to give the impression I was enjoying a spot of nighttime kite flying).

With this in mind, let's take another quick look back at how Wooster might have fared had he failed on The Lindsay Principle but remembered to deny, deny, deny.

1. Wooster did retrieve a pair of his girlfriend's knickers from her laundry basket.
2. He did sniff them.
3. He did leave the knickers on the bed.
4. He was caught.
5. The following scene ensued.

GIRLFRIEND: Wooster, uh why is there a pair of knickers on my bed?

WOOSTER: (Also eating an apple in the misguided belief that it makes him appear nonchalant) I don't know.

GIRLFRIEND: I put them in the laundry this morning.

WOOSTER: (Smacking his lips) Oh really?

GIRLFRIEND: Yes really. Did you take them out?

WOOSTER: No.

GIRLFRIEND: So how did they get on the bed?

WOOSTER: (Chewing a bit faster) I don't know.

GIRLFRIEND: Well, if I didn't do it then who else do you think took them out of the laundry and put them on the bed? On your side of the bed? Any thoughts?

WOOSTER: (Taking increasingly big bites of the apple) Nope.

GIRLFRIEND: I know it was you!

WOOSTER: (Mouth full of apple) Fjkdfkjdfkljf

GIRLFRIEND: What?

WOOSTER (Mouth really very very full of apple): dfskjsdflkjdsf

GIRLFRIEND: WHAT?!

WOOSTER: (Barely intelligible among all the apple) I'm... choking.

Because this is the second great piece of relationship advice everyone should know: that when you paint yourself into a corner and there is absolutely no other way out, having tried but failed to deploy The Lindsay Principle and a generous serve of denial, it is perfectly acceptable to fake a near death experience, provided that you at no point allow an ambulance to be called. We're calling this The Wooster Principle and I hope for all of your sakes, dear readers, that you never need to use it.



POSTSCRIPT: My charming boyfriend would like me to point out to those who know us that "Wooster" is not him. I do so gladly, though I may say he is welcome to sniff my knickers if he cares to. I also add that, although this story is real, Wooster is not his real name, though it would be a good one.

Happy drinking: 8 Perth Pubs in 3 hours

Let me say first, that this binge is For Work*. The fact that I'm blogging about it is just for fun and possibly to pass onto my doctor when my liver ultimately explodes.

11.37am: Waiting for my pick-up, thinking that 11.37am seems like a very early time to start drinking. This realisation is, I think, a good thing, because it clearly proves I am not an alcoholic.

1.50pm: Bartender at MUST bar in Beaufort Street is impossibly dreamy. Looks like some sort of Spanish prince, speaks like an English public school boy. Also knows what he is talking about. Feel like a prick for leaving half my wine but important to conserve stamina.

1.55pm: Despite efforts to preserve stamina am feeling distinctly squiffy. Wish had eaten more than chocolate croissant today.

2.14pm: Hotel Northbridge still most depressing pub in Perth. Good to know. Oh and sorry to nice dude with a ponytail at Briabane. The wine was delicious - I was just in a hurry.

2.50pm: Asking bartenders for alcohol content in wine = a new low. There is simply no good explanation for doing so. Honeyuckle accented win at the Merchant on Beaufort Street FTW.

3.30pm: Blerg! Good bread at The Suite, I must say. Guy behind the bar super suspicious about what we are doing here though. Like the look of Lindsay's prosecco but my... whatever is quite delicious.

3.40pm: Chocolate brownie!

5.29pm: Drinking in the afternoon is awesome and all but the evening booze blues is the worst.

8pm: Snoozed in car for half hour, make small talk at book launch, half asleep on the couch already. Result.



* Actually for someone else's work but it's practically the same thing.

Death of a friendship: Overheard in the David Jones change room

GIRL 1: Do you want to try on this red dress?

GIRL 2: Which one?

GIRL 1: The shortish red one.

GIRL 2: I don't think it'll fit. What size is it?

GIRL 1: 8

GIRL 2: I can't fit into a size 8.

GIRL 1: Oh. Really?

GIRL 2: Did you try it on?

GIRL 1: Yeah. It was too big.

It is a truth that really ought to be universally acknowledged...

... that a man could get away with murder in a dressing gown this fine.

An open letter to the New Oxford American Dictionary,

I am reliably informed that your latest edition will be including a slew of new and 'exciting' additions. These include - but are not limited to - bromance, BFF (best friends forever), little black dress, tramp stamp (I'm really not sure if that's one word or two) and unfriend.

What the fuck, dictionary?

Are you trying to say that if I'm playing scrabble and put down BFF on a triple word score that I deserve the points? For shame - I would deserve nothing.

Watching this kind of shit make it into the dictionary doesn't make the dictionary cool. The dictionary is already cool to those of us whose idea of a good time is playing the game 'dictionary' on a Saturday night (don't be a judger: it's awesome) and impossibly dull to pretty much everyone else.

Finding the 'word' "BFF" in the dictionary sandwiched between, I don't know, "bezel" (a sloping face or edge of a chisel or other cutting tool) and "bhang" (an Indian hemp plant, apparently) makes me want to weep. It's like being forced to watch your highly-respected English tutor try to break dance at an end-of-year university function.

I hope to see you pull your socks up and purge some of this shit next year. You know the stuff I'm talking about: when I look up the word "cougar" I only want to see a definition with the words "big cat" in it.

Regards,

All work and no blog make Kate a dull girl

I've been told twice in two days that I should be writing on here again and I agree. I miss this stupid blog and the opportunity to vent when I'm not being paid to do so and don't have to take things seriously and, you know, pretend I can spell. Coming back is always hard, though. It's like trying to end a fight with someone: once the first couple of words are out and you've had a post-fight conversation it's ok but being the one to apologise or break the cold shoulder thing you've got going on is a real bitch.

So, to jump back in via the wussiest of means, I thought I'd make a list of a few of the things I've learned since the last time I posted. Bear in my mind reader(s) that I am a moron and thus much of what appears below is stuff you've known since you were old enough to see your face in the bathroom mirror without the aid of a stool.

Realisation One: Never start a sentence "All I'm saying is…" when you're having an argument. This phrase doesn't end fights - it starts them. All I'm saying is that if you don't believe me, you're a dick.

Realisation Two: It's okay to half-arse it at work sometimes. Wait, allow me to clarify: should anyone from work be reading this then, obviously, it goes without saying that this half-arse stuff isn't something I would do PERSONALLY. I am, of course, speaking hypothetically. But, really, the odd bout of not earning your wage can be a wonderful thing.

Realisation Three: You shouldn't keep a sharpened axe in the fireplace. Sure, it was there when you moved in but now it just looks creepy.

Realisation Four:There's nothing wrong with popping a (metaphorical) pan on the (metaphorical) back-burner with a low flame, just in case. You'd go fucking MAD if you didn't.

Realisation Five: Despite some apparent concerns (if concern is the right word, which I don't think it is) from a family member during my teenage years, I must be the straightest girl in the world, based on the amount of time I fritter away thinking about boys. Boys, boys, boys. Yeah, they're not bad.

Realisation Six: It's possible to change your mind about very fundamental things. I mean, five years ago I would never have conceded that Mark Ruffalo is a stone cold fox. And yet...

Realisation Seven: Seriously, the axe? It's got to go.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Ian Somerhalder

I'm not saying I have kidnapped Ian Somerhalder and hidden him in the crawl space where I can get lost in his eyes whenever I damn well please. But I am saying that if Somerhalder disappears in the immediate future this conversation never happened...

Lolcats are giving everyone a bad name

What's that you say Alezander Skarsgaard...?

...I've been a bad, bad girl for not blogging more often and you're going to punish me? Um.... go for it?

I never thought I was a particularly acquisitive person and yet...

... if I do not acquire this dress I may die.

I received an interesting email today...

Dear Employer!

Why thankyou. I mean, I don't actually have any 'employees' so I'm not sure you can call me an employer but I appreciate the fact you obviously consider me a high-powered business-type-person.

We are glad to inform you of beginning staff recruitment for the position of the Financial Agent in Australia. We are looking for the best candidates meeting the demands of our clients. The number of vacancies for this position is limited, that's why the recruitment takes place on a competition basis.

Yes, but perhaps I should repeat myself: I don't actually...

We select the best employees and, probably, you are the one whom we are looking for!

Me?! I won! Are you... sure? I mean I'm flattered of course.

You should clearly conform to the requirements of our Company:

Clearly

Interpersonal skills

Check

Conversational English knowledge

You know it.

PC user.

I'm using one right now.

Responsible approach to work

...sure

Salary - from EUR 2500.

A month? A week? A day? An...hour?

Zdravstvujte! My rady soobwit' Vam, ob otkrytii nabora sotrudnikov na post Finansovogo Agenta v Australia. Nasha rol' najti, luchshih kandidatov, udovletvorjajuwih potrebnosti nashih klientov. Kolichestvo mest na dannuju dolzhnost' ogranichenno, pojetomu nabor vedetsja na konkursnoj osnove, my otbiraem luchshih sotrudnikov i vozmozhno vy tot,kogo my iwem! Vy dolzhny chetko sootvetstvovat' trebovanijam nashej
kompanii:
Kommunikabel'nost'
Znanie razgovornogo anglijskogo jazyka
Vladenie komp'juterom na urovne pol'zovatelja.
Otvetstvennyj podhod k rabote
Zarabotnaja plata ot 2500 evro.
Za bolee podrobnoj informaciej obrawajtes' na e-mail: job@glltd.net

Yes, thankyou. I had it cut the other day.

You know how it is...

... sometimes you think you've done well to overcome your short fuse and hot temper by not saying anything. Other times you find yourself wishing you actually had told so-and-so he was being a fucking prick. Which he was, FYI.

Goodbye Wisdom

As many of you probably know, I had my wisdom teeth yanked out on Wednesday. The actual surgery part was considerably more terrifying than I'd expected, pathetically enough, but the recovery has been quite delightful. Yes, my throat is weirdly sore. Yes, my jaw is aching like a mo-fo and YES I might be hooked on Panadeine Forte but what price that feeling you get waking up on a Friday morning and knowing you don't have to get out of bed, eh? Eh? If somebody could drop off a bottle of wine and a straw I would be SORTED.

Douche of the Day: Nancy Elliot

Nancy Elliot, if you're lucky enough not to be familiar with her, is a US politician who recently made some truly insightful and intelligent remarks about why same sex marriage legislation in the state of New Hampshire should be scrapped:

“We’re talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wiggling it around in excrement. And you have to think… would I allow that to be done to me?”

I think that stick up your arse is probably doing the job nicely, Nancy.

Thoughts I had while cleaning out the pantry...

... why the fuck do I have three giant bags of nearly full sugar?

I am beginning to worry...

... that I am getting old enough to be a little bit obsessed with youth. I don't think I'm quite at the Death in Venice or Lolita stage of obsession but let's just say that if I saw this Parisian boy strolling the streets of Perth I would stalk ten types of hell out of him. And possibly lure him back to my place with a bag of sweets.

NOTE: Pic comes from The Sartorialist without permission.

Thanks, but I couldn't possibly...

... I'm afraid I had a naked model in my bath for breakfast, so....

Token Smokin' Hottie: Michael Dorman

I have been a very lazy and thoughtless blogger lately, for a whole variety of reasons. For starters, as most of you know, I have been busily attempting to become a home owner. Apartment owner. Whatever. For another I have been doing a bit of travelling, mostly for work. Finally I have been rather uninspired and uninspiring lately, completely bogged down and generally Bored As Fuck with both the writing I am required to do for my job and the writing I do for free.

Nevertheless, to mark my return to more regular (I hope) blogging, let’s take it back to what this site is really all about: Token Smokin’ Hotties and the women and men who love them (okay that category may only include me but I'm sure there are a few fellow pervs among my slender readership).

Specifically let’s talk about Michael Dorman, of whose existence I was entirely unaware until last night when he cropped up in the Aussie vampire film, Daybreakers.

To answer your first question, no Daybreakers isn’t great: it started really well and looks consistently great but it gets pretty nuts towards the end and the gore factor goes from mild to extreme, um, very quickly. I for one could have done with seeing fewer heads being pulled off bodies.

However, Michael Dorman – who plays the brother of the main character, who in turn is played by Ethan Hawke – is so blindingly delicious that I would heartily recommend the movie to anyone who likes-that-sort-of-thing and has a bit of spare cash, merely that they might drink in the beautiful liquid pools of Dorman's eyes.

He’s so hot, indeed, that I started to get ANGRY every time the camera cut away from him to Ethan “face like a scrunched up towel” Hawke - a decent actor I once swooned over but who is now increasingly beginning to resemble a goblin with a wasting disease.

He’s so hot that he looks good with a gun, this Dorman - even to a stooge like me who usually finds men with guns about as hot as a pap smear. In fact, fuck it, Dorman's so hot he kind of made me wish that I was a gun that he could swing about and slide down the back of his pants, holster and load then cock and …. *long pause while Kate regroups and reconsiders her NRA membership*… I’m sorry, aaand I’m back.

Anyway, the bitch is smoking hot, that’s all I’m saying, and he can act too, which is a plus but not a requisite for the Token Smokin' Hotties of this world. His American accent certainly shat all over that of Sam Neil and Claudia Karvan (who I actually like but who I thought was fucking dreadful in this). Somebody get this guy an awesome script and a hit movie that we might see more of him. And I mean that literally.

Belated thoughts on Dubai #1

Dubai TV is so fucking awesome I can't even explain it. I spent 10 minutes (being driven from the airport to the cruise ship) in the back of one of those cars with a TV in the headrest and saw a dude high-kick three other dudes in the head while his girlfriend got literally stabbed in the back. The weirdest thing was that the whole show/movie(?) was shot in a weird way that made it look kinda exactly like a car commercial. A violent, awesome car commercial. Then, on my cruise ship TV there was this one channel that showed simply a close up of a man, lying in bed, his eyes open and his hand reaching towards a bell on the bedside table. I'm 99.9 per cent sure that channel was just stuffed up and had frozen but what if it wasn't??

Where would we be without it?

I should have mentioned it earlier but...

... I'm in the Middle East for work. No, no not war reporting and flak jackets: this is travel writing of the cruise ship variety which, I think we can all agree, is just as worthwhile and important.

I've never actually seen Brit show Strictly Come Dancing...

... but if this story that Jarvis Cocker wants to take part is true I swear I will download every mothercussing episode there is.

Sorry for the lack of posts...

... I have been spending my time spending money I don't have by buying a freaking apartment. Um, yeah, so THAT happened.

Addiction's a bitch

At first it was just a recreational thing: I definitely only used it on special occasions when I was going somewhere fancy.

Later on, I started using when I was feeling flat and needed a little pick-me-up. Nothing serious: just once a week, mostly on the weekends. It made me feel great.

Within a year I was hooked and using it most mornings before work because, well, I just felt better.

Yes, dear, reader, at the fag end of 2009 I regret to inform you that I am hooked on my bloody hair dryer.

UPDATE: I must have tempted fate because I've broken the fucking hair dryer. Broken-into-three-pieces broken. Balls!

Uncomfortable realisations during a recent phone call:

1. The caller believes his wife is trying to kill his 6-year-old son.
2. He has chosen, for reasons unknown, to share this information with me.
3. He shares the (moderately unusual) name of a man who was sent to Graylands Hospital in the late 1990s for blugeoning and stabbing two men to death.
4. He knows my name and where I work.

Concerns I have about wearing my newly acquired bathing suit on my completely awesome and swanky Dubai cruise next month:

1. Seafolly cites the standard boob cup size for its bathers as a B/C.
2. You can't actually see my nipples but, um, if I move too suddenly you might.
3. Strange men may start tucking $1 bills into my arse if I do.

Christmas: a seasonal tally.

PRO: The tree. God knows I do my best to kill any living thing passed into my possession but there is nothing like a proper Christmas tree, lit with Christmas lights and glowing in the corner of your living room.

CON: Having so many parties/dinners/drinks on that you have to miss catching up with several of your favourite people in the world because you are too drunk/sunburnt/close to lapsing into an coma to make it.

PRO: Gluttony. More cream with your pudding, sir? A little lard spooned gently onto your buttered bread? Why, don't mind if I do...

CON: The two-week hangover that extends from the first office Christmas party to the pain of waking up on the first day of the new year.

PRO: Buying presents. Receiving presents. Spending money I don't have! Debt! Consumerism! Capitalism! No, that's not irony: I just fucking love presents.

CON: Post-Christmas blues. Or what in my house we call 'discovering you have killed the Christmas tree'.

PRO: The way it legitimises alcoholism. No hour is too early for a champagne at Christmas time, no table too well-covered for another bottle of wine to be set down upon it.

The verdict: Christmas wins.

Call me a bleeding heart pussy...

...but for some reason the fact that the fucking BBC is seriously asking its readers Whether Gay People Should Be Executed strikes me as fairly fucked.

How is it that as a 27-year-old "professional" my fridge contains the following...

- jar of crushed garlic x1
- bottle of wine x2 (white)
- bottle of beer x3 (random leftovers from an old party I think)
- butter
- tomato x1 (I'm quite proud of that, though it is wrinkly)
- tupperware container of old, long-deceased pasta sauce x1
- thyroxine pills container x1
- salad dressing bottle x5 (!)
- hollandaise sauce jar x1

I mean, that's pretty sad, right?

Strictly for Gossip Girl fans...

... this is quite hilarious.

No, no, no, no, no. I am sticking my head in the sand...

... and refusing to believe any evidence that the upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie may blow. I mean, can a movie that looks like it satisfies so many of my secret fantasies (Robert Downey Junior in shirtless bare knuckle boxing, Sherlock Holmes!, Robert Downey Junior in shirtless bare knuckle boxing, opium!, Robert Downey Junior in shirtless bare knuckle boxing) REALLY be shit? Computer says no.

my island home

I've been on holiday for the past week and a half. Not a proper holiday - I mean, I'm not tapping this out at the edge of a deep blue pool, sipping mojitos with my spare hand while a pool attendant named Juan offers to re-tie my bikini bottoms. I'm on a Kate holiday, which means a lot of long lunches, sprawling on the back lawn with a book and Buffy marathons, interspersed with bouts of crippling anxiety that I'm wasting my life.

It's been fun, though, if only because it has reinforced my growing awareness that I'm not cut out for office life. It's not that I dislike taking orders (I don't) or thing I possess enough Get Up and Go to work for myself (I definitely don't): I have just come to regard the daily grind as all a bit much, actually. Why, it occurred to me the other day as I lay on the couch, wondering just how and why Buffy went so very much to shit towards the end of its run. does anyone have to work? Can't we all just, you know, Get Along?

I mentioned this theory to Boyfriend Andy who, as usual, was all too ready to prick my new-found sense of joy and excitement. Because he is kind he refrained from observing that I was talking out of my arse and that, without work, not only would there be no couch to lie on, no house to live in and no wine to consume but also no Buffy to watch while I did all of these things. No, instead, he asked me, quite nicely, if I planned to collect corn.

"Someone has to collect the corn, Kate," he said. His words were slightly opaque but he made, I felt, a fairly good point. Someone did have to collect the bloody corn. And my rubbish. And make that beautiful Alannah Hill hat, quite possibly under undesirable conditions in a foreign country somewhere.

Still, call me an old optimist but I can't help believing there lies a middle ground somewhere between Extreme and Profound Despair at The Need to Get Up Every Morning and scrabbling for corn in a field somewhere. Today, for instance, I went to The Queens for lunch. Sitting in the sun, my book propped up beside my salad and wine, it occurred to me that the place was PACKED. It was positively heaving, albeit with the kind of cretins with whom I wouldn't want to share a city, let alone a pub: boofheads with their collars up, slappers who wouldn't shut up about ohmigodhowmuchidranklastnight and some dick whose tendency to laugh uproariously in my ear may have rendered me slightly deaf.

And yet it was 1pm on a Thursday: don't these people have jobs to go to? Money to make and spend? Very possibly they are all on very long lunch breaks, have started their Christmas holidays early or work nights.

And yet. Was it not also possible that they had, instead, discovered an alternative - a way to skirt that whole 'need money to buy food/shelter etc' thing? Could they have found a way to, in short, fuck the fucking corn? I have reason to believe to and, damnit, I'm not leaving my long boozy Queens lunch until I get to the bottom of it.

Lies told by the saleswoman at Country Road today

1. I'm a very private person...
2. ... but I give great advice.
3. The thing about that is you can just wear it anywhere.

Big boobs

Pros: The obvious ones.

Cons: Slogan t-shirts tend to be a tricky area. Wearing my newly-acquired Worst of Perth Perth: the Bunbury of the North shirt to the getting-harder-every-week Paddy Maguires quiz night the other day, for instance, it occured to me that you would pretty much have to crawl into my belly button to be able to read the punchline. Plus whenever someone says "nice shirt" you immediately suspect them of leering at your tits, despite the fact you are wearing an item of clothing more or less imploring them to do just that.

An open letter:

To the girl walking down The Terrace today wearing hotpants, a beret and a giant Nikon camera slung around her neck like she thinks she's fucking Henri Cartier-Bresson,

Honey, no.

Best Regards

Question

Is 27 too old to be:

a)allowing your car to run out of petrol
b)calling your Dad to help you deal with situation a)?

Oh dear

The older one gets the older everything else in general feels and the harder it becomes to believe that one is learning anything or is capable of being surprised by anything anymore.

So I was heartwarmed (and, obviously, slightly flummoxed) by news from a very close 30-something friend that she had just learned how to use Eftpos cards. This week. Yes, this very smart and well-educated friend found herself in the supermarket line when she realised she'd forgotten her credit card. Recalling that she had left it at home, she called her husband and asked him to bring it down. He, sensibly, asked why she didn't just put it on her bank card. It was then (over his hysterical laughter I assume) that said friend learned one's bank card cannot be used simply at ATM machines but to pay for goods and services at a wide variety of locations.

One can only dream that such a delightful surprise lurks around the corner for all of us.

Question

If a colleague is in danger of driving me to insanity could it be termed self defence if I repeatedly stapled him or her in the head?

Theoretically

On Saturday I bought what I believe to be the single most expensive item of clothing I have ever bought: a beautiful red Alannah Hill dress that I cannot find a picture of (ie: it is neither of the AH dresses pictured above, which are also very cute)

It was more expensive than any pair of shoes I own, more expensive than the handful of very pretty silk dresses hanging in my closet and more expensive even than the so-ridiculously-expensive-I-won't-even-tell-you-how-much-but-it-was-worth-it seamed silk stockings I acquired back when I decided to turn myself into a 1950s-style floozy.

Before I made this latest and greatest of acquisitions I sat down with The Boyfriend to discuss over lunch at the Belgian Beer Cafe, as a sensible Girlfriend sometimes does when she wants to pre-emptively ease her guilt. I showed him change room photos of me in the dress, discussed the NUMEROUS places I could wear it and whined for a bit about how it had been aaaages since I bought anything (grateful he hadn't been home when the amazon.com boxes arrived). Andy, being equal parts charming and disinterested shrugged his shoulders, said I could do what I wanted with my own money and then sweetly asked if I could go and order him some hot chips from the bar.

The only bit Andy didn't get, as he explained to me while dunking chips into aoli (god they do it well at the BBC), is why I was so excited about my impending acquisition. To Andy, clothes are just clothes: some of them look better than others but they are still just clothes. To me, as I explained while stuffing my gob with chips, every new outfit - particularly a radically new outfit unlike anything you already own - is a new chance to reinvent yourself.

This is not a new realisation of mine.

Many years ago a (now ex) boyfriend convinced me to buy an adorable 1920s-style bucket hat. The hat was beautiful but not, strictly speaking, very practical. I was not, I told the boyfriend apologetically, really A Hat Person. Wisely he responded with the observation that if I bought the hat I would become a hat person. In essence, if I bought it (the hat), it (the hat-implied lifestyle) would come.

He was right and he was wrong but the thought has stuck with me ever since.

This dress, for instance, gives me a little glimmer of hope that I could yet become one of the Alannah Hill girls depicted in the ads: hair bouffed, lipsticked smile genuine, spending my days faffing about on a garden swing or looking like I'm about to have tea with the Mad Hatter. Instead of, say, spending 10 hours in front of a computer five to six days a week, typing until my eyes glaze and my wrists start to throb.

Get Back on the Horse

The phrase 'get back on the horse' has always had a certain piquancy for me. Except piquancy isn't the right world at all. What I mean to say is that it Pisses Me Off.

It's been said to me (and others) a few times over the years, usually in times of personal distress, and every time I want to say that’s shit. Instead I smile, nod and waste for the next platitude to be rolled out so I can ignore that one too.

The thing about this particular phrase is that it doesn’t even make sense. Supposedly it comes from the adage ‘you have to get back on the horse that threw you’. Brilliant idea. You’ve been hurt once doing a particular activity so instead of abandoning said activity you’re supposed to give it another crack and hope, in the face of reason, things will turn out differently this time. What next? ‘Put your hand back in the fire?'

When I was 10-years-old or so I had my first bad fall from a horse. And if only I had ignored popular opinion about these sort of things and stayed on the ground it would have done me a lot of good.

The whole thing was stupid and pretty much my own fault: at my weekly riding lesson I'd insisted on going around the paddock just one more time. Almost immediately I lost control of the pony (a beautifully-natured palomino called Bindi, who would later be sold by my teacher to the riding school at Claremont Showgrounds, where, in a move that intensely depressed at the time, she was given a new name).

Of course it's easy to romanticise lost loves and, with hindsight, I can see that Bindi had her problems - she suffered from delusions of grandeur, for a start. She must have. Because when I lost control and she could no longer feel the pressure of my hands on the reins she decided she quite fancied trying to jump the four foot high electric fence that edged one side of the paddock. I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn’t. Bindi brought down the fence, which burnt into both her lovely little legs and my exposed pre-adolescently-soft arms. I was so entangled in the wire of the fence that when my teacher picked me up from the ground she got an electric charge off my hands. I stood up to learn that the seat of my jodhpurs had been torn off.

Once she had established I was more or less okay my teacher sent her son to the stables to bring back another horse, Crackington, for me to ride back (Bindi having retired to a distant corner of the paddock, from where she and I regarded each other with mutual suspicion.) Crackington was the pride of my teacher’s stable – a beautiful chocolate brown block of a horse too tall, lovely and valuable for any of us who attended the weekly lessons to ride before now. My teacher's son led Crackington back and I was helped onto his enormous 17-hands-high back.

I slipped the reins along Crackington’s neck and over his head so my teacher could take them, happy to cede control now that I could feel my left arm beginning to throb, resting my hands on his withers, which shifted under me as he followed my teacher forward.

Later I would conclude that one of the strands of the electric fence must have touched the frog of Crackington’s hoof - that soft little triangle of flesh that groomers know to avoid, the closest a horse will ever get to a fingertip. Otherwise it’s tough to imagine what would make 17-hands of dark brown muscle lose his shit as thoroughly as Crackington did then, ridding me of all my romantic notions about him as he reared and I slid out of the saddle.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

I walked the long walk back from the bottom paddock to the stableyard, my ten-year-old arse hanging out the hole in my jodhpurs, the burns on my arm stinging like a bitch, blood on my right hand and cheek from I-didn’t-know-where.

Hee

This made me laugh.

Flying sigh

I know that I give a lot of grief to people who can't behave themselves on planes. But there is a reason for this. The way that we behave in airplanes is indicative of the way we behave in real life. Actually being in a plane is a lot like life: it's a bit boring, sometimes entertaining and definitely best spent a little bit tipsy. Having recently returned from an interstate trip that brought me into close proximity with a wide variety of douchebag fellow passengers, I propose said douche's can be divided into one of four categories.

The Chatterbox

Hey are you leaving home or coming home? Me too. I've been in Cairns for a fortnight, great weather but I'm exhausted. Why is your meal so early? Oh why are you vegetarian? Are you going to try to sleep? Me too but I never can. What do you think about- No. Just not. Just shut the fuck up. This thing I'm doing with my hands and my eyes? It's called reading, not listening.

The Aisle Sleeper

Self explanatory for anyone who has ever faced the choice of straddling the bulging belly of an aisle-sleeping fatty fat fat fat who has left his tray table down and festooned with his SHIT, just in order to get out of a window seat, or shaking a complete stranger awake.

The Selfish Cunt

The most wide-ranging of the categories. This may be as simple as the dick who is rude to the flight attendants or the dick brain who treats the empty seat between the two of you as his own personal kingdom. Take your feet off the seats, dude, or I will stab you with this plastic fork.

Me

The perfect passenger. Obviously.