Dear Sam Rockwell

Please marry me and allow me to have 200 of your children. That is all.

Hats off

Even if I have never bored you with the story of The Time I Spent an Insane Amount of Money (for me, at the time) On a Fancy Hat you will understand, I hope, why this round-up of some of the world's best hats has sort of charmed me. Except for the Bieber and Lady Gaga. Ugh they're just the worst, no?

Conversations with my physio

Him: So then turn 180 degress.

Me: Uh huh.

Him: That's not 180 degrees.

Me: Oh yes I-

Him: That's 90 degrees.

My current obsession

Is the Man Repeller blog. You know MR: she blogs about the kind of clothes women love that men find a big fat snooze. And even though I find many - MANY - of her clothing choices to be... unfortunate I still love her with a fierceness that makes zero sense.

The Dream Boat

For anyone who hasn't already read this New York Times article written by a journalist who made a perilous boat trip from Indonesia to Australia, alongside a boatload of refugees, it is basically essential reading. I had avoided it for a little while because I knew it would make me sad and now yeah... that.

Thoughts I had while watching Thor 2

1. Chris Hemsworth's body is... too much. And not in a good "woah he's too much" kind of a way but in a THERE IS TOO MUCH OF IT kind of a way.

2. I don't know enough about physics to know whether any of what's going on makes any sense at all.

3. Asgard really needs to spend a little bit less of its time and money on the elaborate architecture and the robes and a little bit more on its defensive capabilities. Maybe don't leave the task of defending the entire city up to, say, ONE GUY.

4. I want to see a spin-off featuring just Kat Dennings and the dorky/cute intern where they solve mysteries and drive around in that shit-heap of a red Volvo.

5. Related: I could also watch stuff falling through wormholes in and out of various worlds with comedic results more or less forever. I'm simple that way.

"Just ask this scientician"

Fabulous Fashionistas

Like many people (I assume) I don't look forward to getting old. It's not so much about getting soft(er) corners and wrinkles so much as the feeling that the older I get the more my options narrow and the more boring those options become. So I can highly recommend this incredibly charming UK documentary (albeit with a slightly shit name), which follows some unconventional older women and has genuinely made me think - at least for a moment or two - well that doesn't seem so bad...

Overheard in my lounge room

Me: Do you mind if I watch an episode of Seinfeld?
Him: Can we watch the one with the funniness?
Me: The funny episode... of Seinfeld?

Things I did this evening:

Just this, basically.

Harken to this

In which Sam DB articulates some of the reasons I too love a bit of Dan Savage.

The Bridge

This one comes via the wonderful Lindsay and has kept me lying in bed this morning, watching it, when I should be sweating it out at the gym or doing a load of washing or something. The documentary looks at the phenomenon of people who kill themselves (or try to) by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge and it is sad and fascinating.



Note: If you wound up at this page because you googled "suicide" or "how to kill yourself" and you're in a very bad place then you should a) call someone: Lifeline is a good place to start if you're in Australia - a friend or family member will do; b) believe me when I say I have done a pros and cons list many times and decided suicide is Not The Answer and c) read this because it is one of the best arguments for living I guess that I've read.

“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.” (Graham Green, The End of the Affair)

Star Flaws

If being able to watch this Star Wars blooper reel isn't exactly what the internet was made for then I don't know what is. Watching the storm troopers struggling to get through a hole in the wall has, well, I'm a sad person because it's made my day.

Words...

... cannot describe how much I enjoyed this article by Annabel Crabb on women on TV and make-up. If you like this little taster - 

"How did we get to the point, as an evolutionary species, where a woman who is intending to appear on television must first have her face coloured in by another human being, working intently at very close range, sometimes for up to 90 minutes? The experience itself is one of the most intimate encounters one can have - outside the medical, massage and cottaging fields - with a person one is not actually dating"

- then you will too.

Summer Reading Suggestions (even though it's not really summer)

I've been reading a fair bit lately and while there have been some books I've not enjoyed it feels like, for a change, I've enjoyed rather a lot of the books that have come my way - a pleasant surprise. So although it's technically not exactly summer it's close enough that you should all be thinking about books to curl up with in the Christmas holidays. These, for what they're worth, are my recommendations.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
The plot to this sounds like the kind of thing that would normally make me retch: a young woman goes to work for a quadriplegic who wants to die and tries to liven up his life. There's a good reason I have never read Tuesday's With Morrie, you know - sentimentality is tedious. But this is a gorgeous book and I devoured it.

Big Brother by Lionel Shriver
The premise of this book is that the protagonist goes to the airport to pick up her brother and finds out, to her horror, that he has gained hundreds of pounds since she saw him last. The book that follows from that premise is fascinating for anyone who is interested in the relationship between people and food and society and weight. I make it sound boring but it's a cracking read and - for my money - Shriver's best since the wonderful The Post Birthday World.

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
This book stood out to me because someone had likened it to Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn's insanely addictive thriller that would be on this list except everyone's been talking about it for so long that I assume you've probably either read it or deliberately avoided it. It's not really like Gone Girl except that it requires a mystery to be solved and I don't think it's as cleverly put together but the story, which follows a mother's efforts to discover why her daughter threw herself off a building, is nonetheless compelling.

Night Film by Marisha Pesel
I had high hopes for this novel about a disgraced journalist who starts to investigate a prominent film director in the wake of the suicide of the director's daughter. Pesel's first book, Special Topics in Calamity Physics, had a lot of promise but fell a bit short of being a great book and I figured that this time around she probably had her shit together. Sadly, this contained some of the same shortcomings and it's not the great novel it could have been. Still, I would recommend for anyone planning on lounging by the pool with a cocktail in the foreseeable future.

Tampa by Alissa Nutting
This is one of those books that will probably wind up on book club lists and appal some people. It's been billed as Lolita told from a female perspective (a female teacher who likes to sleep with 14 year old boys) but, to be frank, that's an oversell: it's well written but nowhere near as funny and audacious and poetic as that book. But it is a slightly filthy romp that I tore through in an afternoon and think you could too.

The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
It seems like cheating to include two novels by Moyes but reading Me Before You made me want to explore her back catalogue and this was the one I started with. The book is packaged very much as chick lit but if it falls into that category then it's one of the best examples of the genre. It's not a Great Novel and history will probably forget it but it completely entranced and charmed me while I was reading it and that's not something I can say about too many books.

The Dinner by Herman Koch
I'm a bit out of date with this one, since I think everyone was sort of talking about it a year or so ago, which was around about when I read it. For some reason, though, I've been thinking about it again lately, which is always a sign that a book has stayed with you. Despite being set in The Netherlands the set up - a couple go out for dinner to talk about... what? - is familiar enough to draw you in and the ultimate reveal is... well. Yikes. I loved it.

60,000

That's the word count milestone I've finally cracked on my Terrible Novel. Unfortunately the novel is still terrible but fuck it: I told myself I would finish it, regardless of how much I inevitably grew to hate it and I'm sticking to that game plan. I don't even hate it that much. Not all the time anyway. To conclude: yay me.

Things that suck about being sick on my holidays

1. I'm sick on my holidays.

2. The cash I had earmarked for something indulgent like a manicure or a haircut has been spent on cold meds and anti-inflammatory drugs.

3. I feel faintly blerg all the time but don't feel like I can justify staying in bed because I should be doing All The Things.

4. My pockets and bags are filled with tissues in various states of use.

5. I'm sick on my goddamn holidays.

Movies I am currently watching to cheer me up a little bit after Atonement

1. Celeste and Jesse Forever. Actually it's a little bit depressing too but it's funny and cute and I think my Andy Samberg crush is back with a vengeance.