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

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

It was kind of a good day.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Paul Keating

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rock it

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

Kinkery Fuckery

I've never understood girls who get upset by their partner's interest in porn but I do have friends who feel that way, for whatever weird and stupid reason (sorry chums but it really is pretty weird and stupid) and it does seem like there are people out there who think that porn is gross and wrong and represents the decay of society when seriously they should be more worried about shit like the viewing figures for Being Lara Bingle. So I kinda enjoyed this column at The Punch about how soft porn for women like 50 Shades of Grey is dismissed as harmless and/or liberating while porn for straight dudes involving tits and cunts is depraved and wrong and just a little bit icky. Also the author of the above article, Stephen Harrington, is a bit of a dish, no? I'm just saying.

Lessons? (Warning: contains spoilers for the movie Take This Waltz)

Lessons I Feel I Was Supposed to Learn From The Movie Take This Waltz

1. Don't fancy people who are not your husband.
2. If you must fancy people who are not your husband try not to live near them.
3. If you must live within fucking distance of people who are not your husband you should probably leave said husband so you can fuck your fanciable neighbour.
4. If you follow step 3 you will be unhappy. Probably.

Lessons I Actually Learned From The Movie Take This Waltz

1. If you fall for a hot, pretentious stranger you cannot avoid then you should probably seriously consider having sex with fanciable neighbour to get it out of your system and never, ever tell your plump, adorable husband about it. I'm just saying. Could've saved everyone some drama.

I don't want to turn this into fucking poetry corner or anything but is there anything better than Langston Hughes on form?

What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?
(Langston Hughes)

I say this as someone who likes most of what Aaron Sorkin has done and loves some of it...

... but The Newsroom is not good. It might even be quite bad. This makes me sad.

The weirdest thing someone said to me when I told them I was switching jobs at work

"Yeah I never really thought you were right for [the job I've been doing for the last four and a half years]... I don't mean that in a negative way."

I'm Comic Sans, Asshole

There are moments in life that I am filled with a deep sense of gratitude for some of the people in my life. Receiving this morning's email from the wonderful Belle, containing simply a link to this -

"You don’t like that your coworker used me on that note about stealing her yogurt from the break room fridge? You don’t like that I’m all over your sister-in-law’s blog? You don’t like that I’m on the sign for that new Thai place? You think I’m pedestrian and tacky? Guess the fuck what, Picasso. We don’t all have seventy-three weights of stick-up-my-ass Helvetica sitting on our seventeen-inch MacBook Pros. Sorry the entire world can’t all be done in stark Eurotrash Swiss type. Sorry some people like to have fun. Sorry I’m standing in the way of your minimalist Bauhaus-esque fascist snoozefest. Maybe sometime you should take off your black turtleneck, stop compulsively adjusting your Tumblr theme, and lighten the fuck up for once."

- and a subject line that read "One for your Helvetica necklace" was one of those times.

Depressing emails from my boss I have received today

Great yarn about [a company I cover] in [a rival newspaper] today.

I think I might be a moron

At the very least I'm starting to forget what words mean. Or maybe I never knew. I just googled the word "dictum" because I wanted to use it in a work story and realised I wasn't sure if I was using it right. Moron. Same deal yesterday when I described someone in a story as "avuncular". The longer I stared at the word the less and less certain I was that I actually knew what it meant. Perhaps the conspiracy theorists are right: excessive diet coke consumption is eating away at my brain. I'm even more of a moron because now I'm sitting here thinking how much happier I would be trying to write this STUPID work story with a diet coke at my elbow. If I open up my front door to find an ice-cold diet coke on the step I think I might actually start believing in God.

UPDATE: No diet coke. Atheism remains intact. Probably all for the best.

This Les Miserables trailer would be perfect...

... if only they'd used another song, like "One Day More" maybe or my own weak spot, "Bring Him Home" because now I'm now concerned that my deep distaste for both Anne Hathaway and the character Fantine (seriously, just - SPOILER - die already) is going to ruin this movie, which I really really really want to love. That much said I'd be lying if I said I wasn't almost paralysed by excitement.

Symptom Recital

(A belated  nod to my beloved Dorothy Parker on

the 45th anniversary of her death earlier this month.)

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the simplest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick. I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore:
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men.
I'm due to fall in love again.

(DP)

Ignoring logistics I just feel like it would be really, really cold for both parties

I know it’s the done thing to rag on glossy women’s magazines about how terribly superficial they are, how boring, how pandering to gender stereotypes and how I absolutely never so much as glance in their direction at the newsagent because I’m too busy reading the fucking New Yorker and teaching myself Spanish, but the truth is that I have always loved a good magazine.

As I mentioned on this blog only too recently, I had my first Proper Journalist Job on a women's magazine and it was the kind of wonderful experience that has given me lifelong appreciation of the work that goes into the magazines I still read if not routinely then at least on a semi-regular basis. Coupled with that, I grew up reading Dolly and Girlfriend before graduating to Cosmo (and ultimately onto my current mish-mash crop of In-Style, Marie Claire and Madison, the latter being one of those magazines I always think is going to be better than it is, although I digress) and I believe those magazines were helpful to a shy young girl with no tits who genuinely didn't know why her classmates snickered when someone asked for a "rubber".

Nevertheless, I have to concede that in a lifetime of reading magazines I have come across some fairly crazy fucking shit which, I have to believe, the journos threw in on deadline because they were desperate or just really wanted to get out of the office to go to their friend's party because that dude they have a crush on said he'd totally be there.

Sadly, I have long-since thrown out all of my old magazines. So God bless Jezebel, which has reprinted this article on Cosmo's 44 Most Ridiculous Sex Tips, which - and I can't stress this enough, readers - should not be tried at home.

Here's just a sample of what I'm talking about but the whole thing is extremely amusing and you can read it here.

On handjobs: 

"Hold his penis in one hand and lightly slap it with the other... you can tap it back and forth like you're volleying a tennis ball and lightly pinch the skin on his shaft and testicles. Many women make the mistake of being too gentle."Second opinion: make the mistake of being too gentle. At least until you ask.

On blowjobs: 

"Chew a small piece of mango... then take him in your mouth. You can use whatever fruit you have, just don't try anything too acidic, as it can burn him."Non-acidic fruit won't burn... but it will probably feel just as weird and pulpy as it sounds. 

On tits: 

"Receive a butterfly kiss... of your breasts. To do: he bats his eyelids against the supersensitive underside of your breasts."He might have to insert his head into your chest cavity, forehead up, but give it a shot. 

On a whole bunch of random shit: 

"Take a few of your favorite erotically appealing flavor combinations, like peanut butter and honey or whipped cream and chocolate sauce, and mix up yummy treats all over his body."There's a variation on this mainstay of the Cosmo canon in almost every issue. Successfully incorporating food into sex - based on my life experiences and casual surveys - is not a real thing. It's sticky, wrecks the sheets, and, if done frequently, will give you Type II diabetes. 

"Keep a spray bottle filled with ice water next to the bed, and give each other a strategic spritz to extend the encounter... Aim for the nerve-packed, thin-skinned areas on each other's body, such as the nipples."On an unrelated note, this is also a great way to train your cat not to pee on the rug. 

"Record your voice on your cell the next time you have a solo session. Then, send him the audio file in the middle of the day, with just the text, 'Wanna hear me do this tonight?'"In the middle of the day. Best time. Right when he's at work. No way that could go wrong.

Boys, if you think we're making this shit up you have no idea. I remember when I was still reading Cosmo, it would have been in the late nineties, and every single fucking sealed sex section ever must have had this one tip where you were supposed to put a shitload of ice in your mouth for an eeeextra special blowjob that would blow your partner's mind or something. Even then, as inexperienced, ignorant and far from being called up to give a blowjob anytime soon as I was, I think I knew that was a really terrible fucking idea.

Questions I had after one of the cartoonists at work drew my picture to commemorate my new haircut (yeah it was a quiet day):

1. Are my boobs that big?

2. Are my hips that round?

3. Is my skirt that short?

4. Is possible said cartoonist is just kind of a perv?

Riddle me this

How is it I can buy a pair of flat shoes that are perfectly cute for $10 but my stockings - which are nude fishnets and therefore consist of basically zero material - cost $25? Enquiring minds want to know.

Fuck You,

Fuck you random guy who sent me that email. You know which one I'm talking about: the one where you started off politely with a "You don't know me but..." before segueing into your stupid hypothetical question about my views on the role of a journalist (the fuuuuu....?) because you needed to know "how professional [I am]".

Seriously: fuck you and no I shall not reply to you. I shall not, Sir! I have started a reply email several times since receiving yours but each time I find myself unable to come up with something remotely civil to write back. "Do you want to try rewriting this email without the implied insult?" Is about the closest I've come and even then I have to stop myself from adding a vitriolic PS that's basically just me mashing the keyboard at random.

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions but I wouldn't be quite so pissed off if I didn't strongly suspect that at least some of your shitty attitude stems from the fact that I'm a girl writing about a very male-dominated industry.

Probably I also wouldn't be quite so shitty if your shitty email didn't remind me so much of a conversation I had maybe a year ago with some other dickhead on the phone. Bear in mind this was the first time I'd ever spoken to this douche who - like you, I suspect - was a random member of the public wanting me to write about a dodgy company in which he was an investor. It went something like this:

Him: (Blah, blah, blah)... Tell me, do you understand the concept of internal rate of return.

Me: Yes.

Him: What do you understand by it?

Me: (Pause) Why are you asking me this?

Him: I just want to know that you know what you're talking about.

Me: (Silence).

What. The. Fuck. Seriously: what the fuck?! When I go into the doctor about that weird lump on my earlobe (um, seriously, it's actually starting to freak me out a bit) do I start our session by asking if he or she knows the proper name for my funny bone? No. No I do not. Because I am not a psycho.

Just because I have tits and got kinda crappy marks in my Applicable Maths TEE exam 11 years ago (although, hah, you have know way of knowing that so suck it!) please do not assume that I'm not good at my job. I mean, I'm no scientician but I'm pretty sure the addition of a cock would not necessarily improve my ability to perform the tasks I am paid to.

But it's been a long, rough week. I've had stress and disappointment at work and in my personal life. I've stumbled across unpaid bills I'd forgotten existed and I've just realised I made a big mistake on last year's tax return. Generally I feel like a confused little pony that's been ridden hard and put away wet. As a result, perhaps I've judged you too hastily and inaccurately. Certainly I apologise in advance if any of the sweeping conclusions I've made about your reasons for writing that shitty email were incorrect and you're in fact a right-on feminist kind of a guy whose reasonable comments have been misinterpreted by my tired old brain. But, on reflection, I really, really doubt it so, honestly, fuck you again.

Regards etc