Songs to which you cannot listen and be sad

Belle and Sebastian: "I'm a Cuckoo"

It's no secret that I love love me some Belle and Sebastian in a way that is largely unaffected by some of their, er, more questionable output. My love for B&S can't be compared to the way I feel about other, newer, almost certainly "better" bands because it's tied up with a lot of nostalgic memories and this song is no exception. For my money it is a near perfect example of what B&S do really well and rivals some of my other B&S favourites. Also, I'm a real sucker for cute dudes who run, so this film clip hits all my buttons.

Talking Heads: "And She Was"

It's embarrassing to include a song that once appeared - I believe - in Look Who's Talking, but this is pretty fucking good. Objectively I don't think it's the band's best song but Jesus it makes me want to dance around just a little bit every time I hear it.

DJ Fresh: "Gold Dust"

This is by no means my usual taste in music this is just one of those songs that can't HELP but cheer you up. If I'm getting ready for a night out but kind of, you know, not really in the mood, this is the song that I crank up. Plus, those two girls with the afros and the pulled up socks are fairly damn rad (yeah, that's right RAD - I'm bringing it back).

The Crew Cuts: "Sh Boom"

When I was much, MUCH younger (honestly, can't put enough emphasis on the "much") I had a huge, long-running crush on an older boy. Being pretty dopey I used to spend/waste a lot of time daydreaming about this bit of buttery bit of crumpet but because I was, as I may have mentioned, somewhat young at the time, instead of daydreaming about having hot, sweaty, monkey sex with said crumpet I daydreamed about the day when we'd get married and... dance to this song at the wedding. That may not have quite worked out as planned but I still really love this song. Plus, I should mention that it makes a truly inspired appearance in one of my favourite guilty pleasure movies of all time, Clue (seriously, that movie is gold and if you don't agree you should watch this and reconsider), so what's not to like?

Noah and the Whale: "5 Years Time"

Kind of the same deal as with Talking Heads: I don't think this is Noah and the Whale's best song or anything but it's the one that make me feel happy/want to run away with Charlie Fink. Although, to be fair, most things in life make me want to run away with Charlie Fink. (Just ignore this stupid excuse for a video, for some reason the official video won't embed and I'm not tech-savvy enough to figure out a way around it).

Tell someone who cares, Sweetheart...

Have you seen these ads for the Advertising Standards Bureau? I love how they've used a photo of what appears to be the prissiest little priss who ever prissed, like even the people behind said Advertising Standards Bureau think that anyone who can be bothered to complain about an ad is kind of a drag.

Look at me

You'd think that after two decades of wearing glasses, an eye exam would no longer freak me out. I have sat in that cool black chair too many times to count, alternately fumbling my way through that teensy tiny bottom line of text that I can barely see (sometimes, I'm ashamed to say, actually CHEATING: I mean really what's the point there exactly?) and judging the respective sharpness of two images that look, half the time, very very similar to me. I have gone through half a dozen pairs of glasses: the Harry Potteresque look in my early years, tragically long before Harry Potter existed; the giant blue monstrosities in late primary school for which I will never forgive my mother (she claims they were my choice - I demand proof); more recently a neat pair of black ones that I still like, even though I may well look back on them with abject horror in another decade or so. The point is, I've been wearing glasses and having dudes look at my eyes for a very long time.

And yet, both the prospect and the reality of said eye exam still freak me the fuck out. Given the choice I'd rather have a freaking pap smear and pay a licensed professional to get up close and personal with my good China (sorry for the visual, squeamish boys) than subject myself to another eye exam in the immediate future. Nevertheless, that's exactly what I did today and did facing up to my fear help cure me of it? No. No it did not.

It started badly enough when the optometrist (or was she an opthamologist? I don't know, let's just call her Ms O) asked me a simple yes-no question and I responded with a nervous 5 minute unasked for ramble of response beginning with the day I was fitted with my first pair of specs to the moment where I had walked in the door two minutes earlier. Naturally, being the kind of person who blushes when nervous/uncomfortable/embarrassed/self-conscious/running late/embarrassingly early/addressing someone on whom I have a crush/addressing someone on whom I don't have a crush/addressing shop assistants/I could go on, I was already by this stage an unappealing shade of dusky pink. And as anyone else who blushes as much as I do will know, just knowing that you're blushing makes you blush ten times worse.

Then the tests began and LORD do I hate the tests. The thing is... I never think that I can read the letters properly - I always assume that while I'm confidently reading "E... C.... H..." off the eye chart, the person monitoring my responses is snickering to him or herself and mocking my crappy vision. As a result I have developed a bad and really really pointless/actually quite destructive habit of remembering the letters when I see them with my good eye and sort of... recalling them when asked to read the same string of letters with my bad eye. I know, I know: I'm only screwing myself but my fear of having slightly-too-weak lenses is weaker than my fear of getting the answers wrong. This explains many things, including why I am a nerd and have always been a teacher's pet.

Those of you who have had an eye test before knows what comes next: a series of tests in which you're asked to distinguish between two images and say which is clearer. The nature of the image changes but this test goes on for approximately 300 years so that by the time it's finished you're desperately shouting "uh 2... no I mean 1... can I see 2 again?" If you've ever seen the episode of Arrested Development where Michael Cera's character George Michael (not the singer/songwriter) gets glasses then it's basically exactly like that.

It ended eventually, of course, and I celebrated by getting the hell out of there. I felt pretty good and having done the thing I'd been putting off for years, happily ignoring the reality that I could, in fact, see better without my glasses and the implication that CLEARLY my eyes had changed in recent years. But I was also disappointed in myself for being so lame and nervous, for blushing and sweating and stumbling over my words - most of all for pathetically trying to impress Ms O just like I did as a kid and I was more focused on getting the right answers than getting glasses that might actually help me to see the whiteboard.

Either way, I thought I deserved a little something something for my efforts so I went out with the intention of buying myself a book and returned with a celebratory (if highly unnecessary) Alannah Hill cardigan. Yes it is adorable, yes it was sort of an indulgent purchase I can't really afford right now and yes I did blush when the sales girl made a cute comment about my cute earrings. Sometimes I worry about myself.

Possibly the most joyous moment of my weekend:

When (alleged trash-hating) Boyfriend Andy defended the integrity of 2006 teen rom-com John Tucker Must Die with these immortal words: "Honey, you can't really start picking it apart."

Not mother?

No Ruprecht, she's not our mother.

This isn't supposed to be a depressing post, honest

I think that one of the terrifying things about growing up is the day you realise that life doesn't have meaning: that, unlike a novel or a film or even a bloody good computer game, there's no purpose you're put on this world to achieve and nothing left behind when you go except what gets burnt up at the crematorium.

This isn't to say that your life has to be filled with despair and depression: it's still possible to have fun even if you know you're know part of someone else's greater plan. But it's still a sobering realisation that if you want to find purpose in your daily life you're going to have to work hard to put it there yourself. Some people find meaning through having kids, creating art or helping others. Some people just do their best not to think about it and muddle on doing whatever feels good, which I think is actually not a bad strategy. (Of course if you believe in religion, which you shouldn't because it's all shit, you may well disagree with all the points made above).

It's a subject I think about quite a bit, which is why I was delighted to see it covered by Sydney Morning Herald columnist Sam de Brito in recent column, a column he claims a friend said was the closest thing to a suicide note the SMH had ever published.

"Man, I'm gonna be glad to put this year behind me; wipe it off like a putrid paste I've pushed into the porcelain. And flush. If you read this blog regularly, you've probably discerned it's been a cracker of a 12 months for me, in which my relationship dissolved and I lost daily contact with my child..."

Regular readers might have noticed I've suddenly started banging on about de Brito, of whose work I am a longtime fan, far more than usual. The reason for this is that de Brito has been going through something of a crisis over the past nine-odd months after splitting up with the mother of his child. This has presumably been a pile of shit for him but it has also thrown up some really interesting - if sometimes depressing-as-fuck columns - for the rest of us to read.

A case in point: the column linked to above is effectively a plea to readers for some suggestions about how he can get some purpose back in his life.

"I care about very little except my daughter now, and my life feels increasingly like a misty vale, pierced every couple of days by the sunlight of her visits.
Everything else? I can take it or leave it. Now, some people might say I was depressed, but I've been this way, deep down, for the better part of 10 years, and I've still found direction, meandering as it usually was.

"Now? I truly don't give a f---, except to pile up cash to provide for my daughter's education and future... Don't go telling me to "see someone" - I've done that. And no, I'm not bloody suicidal. I've taken the friggin' pills, I've talked to the shrinks and you know what? It boils down to the same question for me - what's the point?

"They all say the same thing - every book and counsellor and concerned friend and guru says the same friggin' thing: we are the architect of our own salvation, you have to give your life its own meaning. And that's where I've lost the thread, for now. Yes, the point is my daughter, but that's 19½ hours a week.
There's got to be more than that."

For once the comments left behind by readers are every bit as interesting as the column itself and well worth a read for anyone feeling a bit directionless and lacklustre of late.

The uncomfortable conversation with the woman giving me a facial that preceded me spending an obscene amount of money on various ointments and gunk

Her: So what's your skincare routine?
Me: When you say 'routine'?
Her: Do you cleanse, exfoliate, moisturise?
Me: I.. moisturise. I wear sunscreen-moisturiser during the day.
Her: Good. Anything else?
Me: Uh. I soap.
Her: (Silence).
Me: I... use soap.
Her: Right. Now, you're going to feel a slight itching sensation...

Things I plan to do on my Holiday in Perth but probably will definitely not do on my Holiday in Perth

1. Start/finish The Great Australian Novel.
2. Start/finish cleaning my car.
3. Read books to improve my mind, as opposed to loafing around with David Nicholls and copies of Vogue.
4. Renew my gym membership.
5. Get out of my pajamas.

Charming, much?

In other news

Some people don't deserve to fuck nerds.

Things that are more exciting than this blog when I haven't written anything all week

1. Anything.
2. See above.

An Open Letter to the Hipster Couple Who (Unapologetically) Scared the Shit Out of Me On Beaufort Street Today,

You're not in a fucking BELLE AND SEBASTIAN FILM CLIP, you stupid dicks. I wasn't charmed by your boyfriend's stupid hat as he sped past, not by your girlfriend's stupid ankle socks and three-sizes-too-big cardigan as she nearly side-swiped me. If you can't or won't ride on the road maybe you should SLOW THE FUCK DOWN.

What My Boss Probably Meant When He Told Me I Looked "like a party girl" At Work Today

1. Your dress makes you look like a slut.
2. Your heels make you look like a slut.
3. Are you a slut?

WeirdER, I mean

So I can't say I've ever been super tempted to have a threesome. But if this utterly adorable Swedish hipster couple were up for it... I don't know, I think I'd probably give it a whirl. Of course then I'd be forced to steal her amazing bag, his jumper and that awesome suitcase too and then things might get, you know, weird.

"I bought him a bottle of baby oil, which I could tell got used a few times, but then it just sat on the counter with the level never changing..."

It's easy to get down on our spouses and the state of our relationships sometimes. Spend enough time with anyone and they'll get on your nerves. Go out with someone long enough and, sooner or later, you'll be sitting across from them at the dinner table thinking "I hate you so much right now" and wondering whether you should jam the fork into their eye or your own. That's why I plan on keeping a copy of this letter, which featured in Dan Savage's Savage Love column this week, around for a very long time to remind myself that things could be worse. Like a lot lot lot worse.

Questions I have after reading Miranda Devine's gross column for the Daily Telegraph this week:

She wrote: You only had to see the burning streets of London last week to see the manifestation of a fatherless society.

I ask: How do you know they don't have fathers?

She wrote: Fatherless families in underprivileged boroughs of London are the norm.

I ask: No, seriously. How do you know?

She wrote: It is politically incorrect to say so, but the ideal situation for a child is to be brought up in an intact family with a father and a mother.

I ask: Why?

She wrote: Marriage is not just a private relationship: it is a social good.

I ask: Why?

She wrote: blah blah blah

I ask: HOW DOES THIS SHIT GET PUBLISHED???

Love will... tear us apart?

It's no secret around here that I am a big fan of sex advice columnist Dan Savage. I started reading his column a year or so ago and while I probably started reading it for the fetishists and the weirdos I stayed for the funny but thoughtful advice: a particular kind of advice that I've never read anywhere else. Since then I have devoured his books, raced through about five years of archived columns and I listen to his podcast every week. I'm hooked. I've also expanded my vocabulary to include words like pegging and santorum. I'll let those around me decide if that's a good or a bad thing.

Anyway, the lovely Mike recently returned from a US jaunt with a copy of the New York Times Magazine under his arm. The cover story was by reporter Mark Oppenheimer, titled "Married, With Infidelities". It's a really interesting read that kicks off with a bit of rehashing over the Anthony Weiner case but then gets into some seriously interesting stuff on marriage, monogamy and why can't all admit a bit more often that actually monogamy is really bloody hard work sometimes. It quotes Savage a lot - Oppenheimer is clearly also a fan - and without some of the snidey commentary that sometimes happens with mainstream journos write about Savage. It also points out sometime that I think a lot of Savage critics maybe don't think about: that despite being gay and only monogamish, Savage is also kinda... conservative and believes in marriage, couples staying together for the sake of the kids and lots of other things you might not expect.

The article was so interesting that I started to retype some quotes from the magazine before realising I could use my mad interweb skills to track the online version down here. Here is a taste:

Savage believes monogamy is right for many couples. But he believes that our discourse about it, and about sexuality more generally, is dishonest. Some people need more than one partner, he writes, just as some people need flirting, others need to be whipped, others need lovers of both sexes. We can’t help our urges, and we should not lie to our partners about them. In some marriages, talking honestly about our needs will forestall or obviate affairs; in other marriages, the conversation may lead to an affair, but with permission. In both cases, honesty is the best policy.

“I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy,” Savage told me, “when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted.”

It's really interesting stuff regardless of whether you're married, unmarried, having sex with lots of people or only thinking about how nice it would be to have sex with lots of people.

Venn Digram Monday

Dear True Blood,

It's not you, it's me. No, that's a lie: it's not me, it's you. It's so freaking you - what are you doing to yourself? Once upon a time, not all that long ago, I positively pined for you, daydreamed about you when you weren't around and a mere five minutes in your presence was enough to make me blush. Now I find myself reluctant to spend much time together and distracted when we do.

Where did it all go wrong?

Things started off so well. As a big fan of the Charlaine Harris novels on which you are based, I was thrilled with the direction in which season one seemed to be going. The world I saw onscreen was the world of the books, more or less, but with enough changes to keep things interesting. Sookie was charmingly ditzy, Bill was pompous but hot and Eric - once he got his hair cut, anyway - was, of course, a smoking piece of arse who got all the best lines.

Then there were pleasant surprises along the way: Jason Stackhouse, kind of a superfluous character in the book, managed to be sexy and stupid and funny all at the same time in the hands of Ryan Kwanten and his involvement with the religious nutjobs in season two was a delight. Lafayette, who dies early on in the first book, stuck around for some good comic relief and Sam, who bores me to tears on the page, turned out to have a certain somethin'-somethin' going on.

At your best it felt like you had something new and interesting and genuine to say about desire - desire for sex, power, immortality, meaning, love - and when you were good you were very very good.

Things started going off the rails somewhere about the second half of season two and I think we all know where the blame lies: the clusterfuck that was the fucking maenad storyline. What the FUCK? God was that bitch ever annoying. Admittedly I was pretty zoned out by the time the series finale rolled around but I woke up long enough to emit at least a half-hearted cheer when Sam finally took care of that shit, albeit approximately 300 episodes too late.

But the pain continued because by now you simply had TOO MANY CHARACTERS and instead of deciding to, say, throw the likes of Tara, Andy, Arlene, Sam's moronic brother Tommy and the entire population of Hotshot off a cliff and call it a day, you felt like you had to continue to GIVE THEM STORYLINES. Welcome to Snoozetown, population me.

Things really started to come undone for me this season, which I had been anticipating because of the subject matter. The Eric amnesia storyline in the books, although inherently silly, is also incredibly hot. One minute Eric's running down the road naked, the next he's nailing Sookie in the shower and - unlike you, dear True Blood - the books didn't feel the need to paint it as this lovely and bewdiful romance, at least not in the early stages. Once again, it's really all about the desire of two hot people to Have Hot Monkey Sex, not sit around mooning at each other about how rare and beautiful their love is. (That much said, it would be rude of me not to say that I do appreciate the Alexander Skarsgaard nudity).

In closing, I don't know if I can keep doing this. Every week I think that things will get better and go back to the way it used to be and every week you find a new way to disappoint you. I don't want it to end like this, I want to believe that we can still find a way to get through this rough patch and be happy again. I'm just not sure that's ever going to happen. Don't call me for awhile - I need to be alone.

K

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it?

Plans for a remake of eighties classic DirtyDancing appear to be inexplicably still steaming away, much to my confusion and mild concern.

But don't worry, fellow, DD fans, I'm sure the remake is in safe hands, the kind of hands that will deliver a better-than-the-original remake as was the case with, say, the brilliant Dirty Rotten Scoundrels or the charming Ocean's 11. Or at least they'll manage a so-so job along the lines of The Birdcage, The Thomas Crowne Affair or The Italian Job.

Or... maybe not, considering it's apparently been placed in the hands of High School Musical director Kenny Ortega. Zac Efron, presumably, is busy working on his lifts. No, wait, Beiber, I'm tipping Beiber to be the new Swayze. (In related news, I'm also tipping a swathe of mass suicides among children-of-the-eighties.)

In the wake of this devastating news (and coming so soon on the travesty that was The Karate Kid) I've come up with my list of the Top Five Eighties Movies I Never Want To See Remade In My Lifetime.

1. The Princess Bride. A true gem of a film that you either love or... haven't seen. In my mind an all-but perfect film that works not only in spite of its flaws (see: the slightly shoddy special effects. Rodents of unusual size anyone?) but because of them. My only hope is that studio execs realise that the film is now SO well known and loved by many that any new actors pushed into the familiar roles would seem like imposters.

2. Ladyhawke. Try and explain this film to anyone who hasn't seen it ("there's a dude who's sometimes a wolf and then Michelle Pfeiffer is, at other times, a bird...") and you sound nuts. Okay, the plot IS nuts and the film only works because of the brilliant casting and actors who seriously commit to material that could be, in lesser hands, slightly giggle-worthy. See Matthew Broderick's charm, Rutger Hauer's smoldering intensity and Pfeiffer's general, you know, hotness.

3. Bladerunner. Because no, just no.

4. Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I keep expecting this one to happen. I'm sure that in a studio office somewhere it has been pitched and wisely rejected. Sure, at the moment it seems ridiculous that anyone else could step into Matthew Broderick's shoes and try to recapture the pure joy of the original but I swear it's only a matter of time. And ten bucks says they use CCI to fake the crowds in the parade scene...

5. Heathers. Luckily I really can't see this one flying in a post-Columbine world ("Wait, they wanna do WHAT?") but you never know. No, you don't, Heather, you never know...

Spotted

I think many of us have probably, at some point in our lives, locked eyes with or shared a smile with a hottie on public transport or walking down the street and thought I wonder...

If you're on a bus or a train then having someone cute to stare at during an otherwise-boring trip makes the time go faster, which is nice. Plus you can always daydream that he or she has become entranced by your beauty and/or impressed by that copy of Crime and Punishment you're pretending to read. As someone who never gets hit on by charming boys in public places (I'm pretty sure that having someone scream "nice tits" out of a car window doesn't count) I find the idea of people who meet at bus stops, street corners or whatever and run off and be happy together utterly endearing.

So perhaps this story courtesy of Perth Now should make me happier than it does. If you can't be bothered clicking the link, the gist is that a British man who spotted "the girl of his dreams" on a Perth bus appealed in last week's Sunday Times to try and find his wench and now some girl has come forward, saying it might be her.

IT was the chance encounter on a crowded Perth bus that could turn into a great WA love story. Not only has British man Chris Barnes located the "girl of his dreams" but she's single and happy to be friends, at least on Facebook. After launching his search for a brunette who caught his eye on the 400 bus to Scarborough, student Vivienne Smith, 20, has come forward, believing she could be the one.

Heartwarming stuff I'm so sure but there are a few things that concern me about this story.

1. Anyone who thinks that they have found the girl/boy of his/her dreams based purely on seeing someone at a distance is potentially a little bit cracked. Looks matter and all - and I can't imagine falling for someone with a lovely personality if I didn't also want to jump them just a little bit - but, come on. Just because someone looks hot does not mean that he or she is not a dick/nazi/mouth breather. Maybe a quick conversation before you declare undying love, eh?

2. The girl involved claims that she "instantly recognised" the description the guy had used when she read the article. How did the guy describe her, you might ask?. He said: "The Glendalough girl was just such a beautiful creature." Maybe I just have low self esteem but unless you're Heidi Klum I think that anyone who reads the words "beautiful creature" and thinks "that's SO me" has some... problems.

3. So this girl has come forward but neither she - nor the guy - is quite sure if she is the right girl or not, even after pictures have been exchanged. She mentions that she looks different now because she's had her hair extensions taken out (hmmm) and at no point mentioned if she even noticed him on the bus. For his part he says he is "pretty sure" that the girl in the photo "could well be" the same girl and hopes to make it back to WA, uh, maybe later this year. Wow. I mean, just WOW. That's love, right there. If these two crazy kids can't make it work then I don't know what the world is coming to.

Make it Work

It's back: reality TV show extraordinaire and one of my all-time favourite guilty pleasures, Project Runway, has returned to our screens. I know it's the done thing to be all snoot-snooty about reality TV but, as far as I'm concerned, Project Runway is The Shit.

Much of the credit has to be laid at the feet of the judges and in particular, I suppose, Heidi Klum, who fronts the show and does her best to anchor it. The thing to understand about Heidi is that she likes to wear very very short dresses. I mean, okay, maybe that's not The Thing but that's definitely A Thing you should remember about her. Do not try to make Heidi cover up her legs or suggest she should wear something that covers The Good China or you will regreat it. No, the other thing about Heidi is that she just seems like she's having a great time. While her fellow judges fret and frown Heidi constantly seems like she's just back in town after spending a week having cocktails and hot monkey sex with Seal on a beach somewhere. Even when she's ripping into someone she keeps that beautiful smile on her face and that twinkle in her eye. Plus, you know, she's really pretty. How does she do that?

Nina Garcia is also a hot piece of arse but in a different way. She's very glossy, very serious and can basically shoot laser beams out of her eyes/cut a bitch. If you want to impress someone it's probably Nina because unlike Heidi she's not half cut on pre-show cocktails and unlike Michael Kors she hasn't spent the past hour coming up with cutting one-liners. Nina actually seems to care about the clothes. In many ways this means she has the most boring, least rewarding role on the show but the net result is that she plays a great straight woman to a) Heidi's hilarity b) The Madness of Michael Kors.

Because Michael Kors. Oh. My. God. Never let it said that the man is not talented because, yes, he's a hugely successful designer. But on Project Runway Kors shines not just like a man whose love of fake tan has reached dangerous levels (although, seriously) but like a man who has just come off his meds. This is a man who is not afraid to stick the boot in when he doesn't like what the designers have served up. The following are things Kors has actually said on the show about designs created by designers who are standing right in front of him.

“She looks like a Pole dancer in Dubai”

“She looks like an Amish Cocktail Waitress”

“She looks like a transvestite flamenco dancer at a funeral”

“She looks like her ass is in her front.”

“She looks like Barefoot Appalachain Lil’ Abner Barbie.”

But it's not all about the judges. The thing that makes Project Runway good and the reason that I watch it is that the contestants actually have talent. I mean oodles and oodles of talent. The things they can do with a bedsheet or a bunch of plastic cups and some thread are truly mind-boggling and some of the clothes they produce in about 24 hours are staggeringly beautiful. Yes, others manage to churn out some Red Hot Messes but that, naturally, is part of the appeal. Unlike some famewhores I can mention the vast majority of designers also appear to be there to, you know, become better designers or to have a shot at their own line, as opposed to a burning desire to Become Famous. Accordingly the editors do, thank Christ, do their best to avoid endearing backstories until the last few episodes and concentrate on the competition and the clothes, which are bloody exciting enough thankyou very much.

And acting as a bridge between the judges and the contestants, mugging for the cameras and weeping when his favourites depart is the loveable Tim Gunn, mentor/voice of reason to the contestants and silver fox, if you like that sort of thing. I know I said earlier that Heidi does her best to anchor the show but forget that, it's Tim who really holds it all together with his nods to the viewing audience and the blend of devastatingly criticism and wishful-thinking praise he doles out to the contestants. Although he appears onscreen Tim somehow manages to be that best of all things: the snide friend, sitting on our couch and drinking wine, saying what a bitch that Gretchen is and how he hopes Wendy Pepper dies in a freak yachting accident. Grab us another glass, Tim, and microwave me some popcorn while you're at it - the show's about to start.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Bradley Cooper

Honestly, I'm as shocked as you are. I'm not supposed to fancy Bradley Cooper, I know that. I like skinny boys and he has muscles. His jaw is square and I like pointy chins. His skin is golden and for the most part I like pale boys, unelss we're talking Gael Garcia Bernal. And the hair? The hair is too much. I guess what I'm trying to say it that BC is... he's just too... look, I don't know how to say this but he is just too damn handsome, okay? And yet...

I fancy him.

I don't know how this happened but I do know when it happened: while I was watching The Hangover II. The film was... not great but BC almost managed to carry it off, such was the force of his charisma. When he smiled his smarmy-yet-dopey smile I swooned just a little bit. When he (er, spoiler?) got shot I suggested quietly that perhaps he should take off his shirt. Dude has gravitas.

Then I saw Limitless which, again, is not a fantastic bit of filmaking (but is, I think, a fairly enjoyable romp). Once again I was entranced by BC, who plays the lead role, alternately between a loser writer and a smarmy rich git. Sure, I swooned over him as a loser writer but I even fancied him when he was being a dick and driving sports cars super fast! Also for the first time it occurred to me that he's actually a pretty good actor. And the eyes! My god he has pretty eyes.

So now I don't know what to think - my world has been turned upside down and I'm left feeling alone and confused. I don't know who I am, what I stand for and what to believe in anymore. But I do know one thing: I fancy the pants off Bradley Cooper. And so should you.

Lady Solitude

I've always enjoyed being on my own and I don't understand people who don't. It's something I miss since I've moved in with Boyfriend Andy: because I leave the house in the morning before him and generally return to it after he is already home I don't have much time to myself. Even if I'm sitting on the couch, with BA in another room, I'm aware of him, wondering what he's doing, thinking about what we should do with the rest of our night.

Which may be why this excellent essay by William Dersiewicz, called The End of Solitude, interests me so much. Dersiewicz's essay is, more or less, an argument on the benefits of solitude. A much shorter, much more readable version of Walden maybe, but factoring in the influence of the internet and television age.

"If six hours of television a day creates the aptitude for boredom, the inability to sit still, a hundred text messages a day creates the aptitude for loneliness, the inability to be by yourself. Some degree of boredom and loneliness is to be expected, especially among young people, given the way our human environment has been attenuated. But technology amplifies those tendencies. You could call your schoolmates when I was a teenager, but you couldn't call them 100 times a day. You could get together with your friends when I was in college, but you couldn't always get together with them when you wanted to, for the simple reason that you couldn't always find them. If boredom is the great emotion of the TV generation, loneliness is the great emotion of the Web generation. We lost the ability to be still, our capacity for idleness. They have lost the ability to be alone, their capacity for solitude."

You can read the rest if you follow the link above. I should also mention that I stumbled onto the essay thanks to Sam De Brito's latest column for the Sydney Morning Herald, which you can find by clicking on the links on the right hand side of the page.

The sun'll come out tomorrow

I was having an awfully shit time at work recently. After more than three years doing the same job I was bored and my motivation was at an all-time low. I mentioned this to my boss (in slightly more delicate terms than I've used above) and he suggested something very simple and, in hindsight, very obvious.

"Book some holidays," he said. "You need something to look forward to."

He was right and not just about work. I know the healthy thing is supposed to be to live in the moment and neither linger in the past or obsess about the future. But the problem with this theory, for me at least, is that without anticipation I'd go mad.

I refer you to the late great Alfred Hitchcock (and as an aside: MAN does Rear Window still hold up as amazing movie), who said: "There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it."

Somehow everything is better tomorrow: In Tomorrowland I'll somehow be more successful, smarter, prettier and come into a large sum of money donated by a dead rich relative I never knew I had. That cardigan I ordered from ASOS will arrive and be awesome, that party next month will be better than all the other parties I've ever been to.

It's not really about cardigans, obviously, but if I didn't think I had something to look forward to I wouldn't be able to get out of bed in the morning.

The downside is that sometimes this kind of attitude translates into a complete failure to enjoy the good times when they arrive. The cardigan/party/holiday comes and I'm already anticipating the cardigan unravelling, the next day hangover or my return to work. Or I'll be in the middle of my Good Time, whatever it is, and start to wonder: am I having enough fun? Is this as good as I thought it'd be? What will I do next?

Tomorrow I fly out to Broome for the week for a much-anticipated family holiday: my first in years and years. But what should I be happy about? The fact that I'm sitting on my couch right now, sipping a tasty Rose and watching the Tour de France with narry a care in the world? Or should I be happy because I'm already anticipating the plane touching down in Broome tomorrow, wondering what my room will look like and if the Staircase to the Moon is really that awesome?

These are questions to which I have no answer. But I do know this: I am not going to think about bad it's going to feel when it's over. I am not going to think about how bad it's going to feel when it's over. I'm not going to... well, I think you get the idea.

I'm on holiday

Normal service should resume in, er, a week or so. Until then I give you smoking hottness of one Monica Belluci, just to make up for all those Token Smokin' Hotties my male readers have had to put up with over the years.

Hot Air

I'm so sick of talking about the carbon tax. It's getting to the point where I'm dreading social situations because I'm scared that someone's going to ask me about it and I'm going to implode. It's not that I don't care about the issue, it's that I can no longer quite bear to read page upon page about it every morning or - worse - listen to some of the morons who call into talkback radio bleat on about things they don't understand. I think the final straw was watching footage on the news tonight of Julia Gillard being heckled at a shopping centre. Forget about the issues, I couldn't take my eyes off the hideous lime green jumper her heckler was wearing. And the hair! Don't get me started.

That much said this article about the carbon tax, passed on by Dave, made me laugh, which is a first. I'm particularly fond of the phrase "a dozen retards trying to fuck a doorknob". Nice.

This is apropos of nothing but...

This is the worst bit of advice I've ever fucking heard from a sex columnist. Try googling "cuckholding" you moron. I can only wonder what the wonderful Dan Savage would make of it. Bah!

It wasn't enough

I was driving around town yesterday running some errands when I started crying. It started with a sniffle and a bit of redness around the eyes. It ended with me absolutely BAWLING. No I wasn't having a mental breakdown, I was cryng because I was listening to The Moth podcast on my iPhone. For those of you who aren't familiar with The Moth it's a group run by some people who are interested in 'the art of storytelling' so they hold nights on which people - sometimes randoms, sometimes famous people - get onstage in front of a crowd to tell stories on a variety of topics: sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes just weird. In this case the podcast I was listening to was by a woman called Charlene Strong. I don't want to spoil it by going into any detail on what she was talking about but if you're interested you can click here to listen to it and you really really should. Don't cry!

Cute Wednesday

Sometimes I like to use this blog to expolore some controversial or contentious topics. At other times I just like to post youtube clips of an insanely cute Boston Terrier having its belly rubbed.

Nice to meet you, I'm a total dickhead

First impressions count.

Earlier this week a guy I have worked with in the same office for years - but have never previously spoken to - was a rude c*nt to me for absolutely no reason and over something that had absolutely nothing to do with me. It's too complicated/boring to explain here but basically he fucked something up and then gave me attitude for not immediately fixing the problem for him without being asked.

He must have seen the What The Fuuuck expression on my face because he came over to my desk later and apologised. But if someone asked me today what I thought of him I'd say - despite the fact that I've always admired his work and despite his apparently genuine apology - that he seems like a prick.

Is he a prick? I have no idea. A prick probably wouldn't have apologised but because this was the first proper interaction I've ever had with him it's coloured how I see him in a very particular way.

This is terrifying, really, when you consider how many first impressions we must all make on people all the time. I like to think I'm generally a nice and reasonably friendly person but when I'm in a foul mood or am having an awful day, then no doubt I too can act in an unpleasant way. To me it seems fair enough if somebody I know well enough thinks I'm rude or a dickhead or a moron because, hey, that's their perrogative and maybe I am. But the idea that someone might think badly of me based on one stupid interaction, when maybe I was just really tired or sick or just had a fight with my boyfriend, is a little depressing.

On the flipside, it's worth remembering that while first impressions count, they don't have to last forever. once upon a time I met a guy at a friend's place who thought I was (he told me later) both way too loud and dressed unappealing like a tomboy. Nine years later that poor sucker is my boyfriend.

Quiz nights: the best and the worst

THE BEST: When you know the answer.

THE WORST: When everyone else in your team also knows the answer and you wind up shaming yourself by saying it really loudly, just to prove you know it too.

THE BEST: When you know the answer to a kind of obscure question.

THE WORST: When it turns out that answer you "knew" was actually wrong and the answer your teammate suggested, which you mocked, was right.

THE BEST: Learning kind of cool - if trivial - facts.

THE WORST: When the questions relate to something you couldn't give two shits about, such as the AFL. I mean, sure it might be nice to be able to list the teams in order of where they're placed on the ladder but wouldn't you rather know which world city drinks the most booze per head of population?

Venn Diagram Wednesday

This is water

I've been finding it hard to come up with blog topics lately. I'm not sure why. Probably it's just because, although I actually have loads of shit going on, very little of it is stuff that I can blog about. So instead I've reprinted here (an edited version of) a speech delivered by American essayist and novelist David Foster Wallace, widely regarded as a genius, who killed himself a little under three years ago. He delivered this speech to a graduating class at Kenyon College, Ohio and it's interesting stuff, much better than anything I could write here but with lots of ideas I agree with. I wish someone had busted out this stuff at MY graduation.

"There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

If you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude - but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. So let's get concrete ...

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute centre of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute centre of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real - you get the idea. But please don't worry that I'm getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called "virtues". This is not a matter of virtue - it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centred, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

By way of example, let's say it's an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired, and you're stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early because you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home - you haven't had time to shop this week, because of your challenging job - and so now, after work, you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the workday, and the traffic's very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store's hideously, fluorescently lit, and infused with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it's pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can't just get in and quickly out: you have to wander all over the huge, overlit store's crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to manoeuvre your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough checkout lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can't take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.

Anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and pay for your food, and wait to get your cheque or card authenticated by a machine, and then get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death, and then you have to take your creepy flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and try to load the bags in your car in such a way that everything doesn't fall out of the bags and roll around in the trunk on the way home, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive rush-hour traffic, etc, etc.

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is: I've worked really hard all day and I'm starved and tired and I can't even get home to eat and unwind because of all these stupid goddamn people.

Or if I'm in a more socially conscious form of my default setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUVs and Hummers and V12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful, selfish, 40-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just 20 stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam, and I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and disgusting we all are, and how it all just sucks ...

If I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do - except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities. The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: it's not impossible that some of these people in SUVs have been in horrible car accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive; or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a much bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am - it is actually I who am in his way.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line - maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible - it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important - if you want to operate on your default setting - then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars - compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: the only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some intangible set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things - if they are where you tap real meaning in life - then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already - it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power - you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart - you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

The insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" - the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water.""

"You can't respect somebody who kisses your arse."

I'm not going to talk about why Ferris Bueller's Day Off is not just an awesomely engaging and funny movie but a brilliant guide for how to live your life (although if you're interested, read this). All I know is that it's impossible to watch this parade scene and not feel just a teensy tiny bit happier.

"Maybe someday, maybe not": the immortal lines of Dylan McKay

Look, either you were young enough and sad enough to fall madly in love with Dylan McKay in the seminal 90s teen drama Beverly Hills: 90210 or you were not.

If you were not then there's really nothing I can say that convince you that Luke Perry's portray of Dylan as 90210's disaffected rich bad boy made teen girls around the globe go week at the knees. I mean, I was one of those girls and looking at Perry's craggy face and remembering how he used to have this impossibly lame answerphone message ("This is Dylan, you know the drill... *beep*") even I have the decency to be embarassed.

That much said Hello Giggles has come up with a list of the Top Ten Best Things Dylan McKay Has Ever Said and it's almost enough to rekindle my love for the pretentious bastard.

Here's just a little taster of some of the bon mots he has to offer.

Brenda: “You want to take a walk on the beach or something?”
Dylan: “Yeah and check out the HOMELESS PEOPLE that would be GREAT.

Oh, Dylan, even when you're being a dick to some girl you're supposed to like you still know when to mix in a bit of social commentary to keep shit real.

Pros and cons: the literary clutch

Pro: These clutch bags made up to look like famous books, by France's Olympia Le-Tan, may be the single cutest thing I have ever seen in my life.

Con: They will, however, make you look like you're simply carrying around a hardcover book to dinners, parties and the like. Which is to say that you will look like the world's biggest wanker.

Pro: But they're so purty. Plus Lolita is genuinely an awesome book and Moby Dick is... well I hear good things.

Con: 950 euros apiece. Which is quite a lot of money to have people think you might be a pretentious tosser.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Charlie Fink

It's a cliche to say that dudes start bands in order to get laid. And yet I can only imagine that it's working wonders for Charlie Fink, lead singer of delightful British band Noah and the Whale.

Sure it doesn't hurt that he's already got a certain something something with the hair, the eyes and a cheeky smile. (Of the denim shirt he is attempting to rock in the above photo I will not speak). It doubly doesn't hurt that both Charlie and the rest of the band seem completely fucking adorable, as evidenced by this delightful interview. ((Yes I am a complete sucker for anyone who professes to love the film Rushmore as much as I do but it's more than that: there is pretty much nothing sexier than a dude who can be spontaneously funny. Seriously, I think I'm in love with the entire band, particularly his super hot brother Doug who has sadly since left the band to save lives or something.)

But, really what it comes down to is that I've been listening to quite a bit of Noah and the Whale lately and I would give just about anything to be able to do what they do. And yet if it was a choice between waking up one day with a big fat bundle of musical talent or getting to spend a filthy weekend with Charlie, several bottles of wine and a big fuck off bed I can't say for sure I would do the right thing. I mean, seriously, getting to touch the hair alone would be totally worth it.

Personal information I now know about the woman who waxes my Good China after one 20 minute appointment

1. She has never been to Bali
2. She never wants to go to Bali
3. She is happily coupled-up with an older man who is not very fit
4. She and her partner enjoy 4WD holidays in WA.
5. She and her partner have twice (twice?!) had to be rescued while on 4WD holidays in WA
6. She does not have kids
7. She could not recognise an expression of pure agony on a fellow human being's face to save her life.

Weiner

I am, I have been told, a bit of a flirt. It is, I guess, kinda true although I prefer to characterise it as just being a big, big fan of boys.

Perhaps for this reason* I have taken a lot of interest in the media circus surrounding the hilariously-named Congressman Weiner who has, as it turns out, been taking photos of his junk and sending them to women who are not his wife. Classy guy. But one of the things that none of the commentators can seem to agree on is whether Weiner, who claims he never met any of the women face-to-face but 'met' them online, was technically cheating on his wife or not.

The Washington Post has a great article on this very issue, which looks at the tricky subject of the "e-ffair" and Weiner in particular. It also makes some good points about how easy it is in the modern day to fire to use technology to do something stupid that will later come back and bite you in the arse. A (coupled-up) friend of mine ran up against this very issue recently when, while drunkenly Facebook chatting with a colleague who had a crush on him got a bit carried away and wrote something along the lines of "I want to fuck you" before presumably passing out. The way he tells it he woke up the next morning horrified. But I meander from my point. To the Post...

"It was wrong, and it would have been wrong 20 years ago, and it would have been wrong 200 years before that. In previous millenniums, if a married caveman had carved a picture of his junk onto a bone and thrown it into another woman’s cave, that would have been similarly wrong. Private-part self-portraiture: gross in every eon.

"But 20 years ago, Weiner would have had to load his Nikon with film before pointing it at his crotch. He would have had to take this film to the Fotomat, wait 24 hours before picking it up, find an envelope, lick a stamp. In every preceding era, there were built-in checkpoints, moments in which one could ask oneself, “Is this a good idea? Does she want to see my dog in a sweater? Am I a congressman? Should that influence my decision?”"

You get the gist but the whole article is great and you can read it here.



* (AlthoughI hope I don't have to mention that my flirty behavious has never yet triggered me to take a photo of the good china to send to randoms).

Nerd Appeal

It was suggested to me recently that I should write a post about The Appeal of the Nerd. Having pretty much exclusively gone out with nerds in my 28 years I thought that was a cracker of an idea but when I sat down to write the post I found I didn't know what to say. Why are nerds so appealing? What is it about a kinda dorky looking guy, ideally skinny and bespectacled, that makes me go a bit red around the edges? Why did I spend the first season of The OC lusting after Seth Cohen (before he became insanely annoying by about episode 1 of season 2)? I had no fucking idea.

Then I met Carol. Carol is not, I hasten to clarify, a nerd. Carol is a girl I happened to be sat next to at a recent work dinner. And after 10 minutes of talking to her I wanted to open my throat with the butter knife.

There was nothing ostensibly wrong with Carol: she was chatty and friendly enough. But she was also impossibly dull. Regardless of the topic - and we weren't talking about fucking peace in the Middle East - she had absolutely nothing of interest to say. She was also, from her long blonde hair and skinny body to her big boobs, pretty conventionally attractive (even if, in my opinion, a bit of a Monet).

Rightly or wrongly it occured to me, listening to the way she interacted with the people around us, that Carol had probably been hot her whole life and, as a result, had never bothered to develop much in the way of a personality, beyond a gormless smile and an ability to say "I totally agree" a lot.

This - it occured to me in something of a Lightbulb Moment - goes some way to explaining the nerd appeal. I wholeheartedly believe that people who aren't gorgeous and popular as kids and teenagers make for more interesting adults. (Yes I might be a little bit biased but shut up, this is my blog). Those of us who have had to struggle to fit have naturally had to work harder at making friends, being interesting, making people laugh. We had to do more than simply show up to make people like us.

Nerds take that a step further by also being smart. I don't mean just that they can fix your computer/phone/TV (although, seriously, thanks for that Andy). I mean they know things that you don't. They have read books you haven't, seen movies you haven't and ideally played computer games you never even knew existed. They have views on things, even if those things are on the utterly dorky side.

Then there is the vulnerability thing. Because, based on my experience, no matter how cute or successful a person may become in later life, nobody who has struggled through his or her early years entirely loses that sensitivity to what others think about them and their place in the world. And is there anything more appealing than a red hot cutie with low self esteem? No. No, there is not.

Tits! On a fashion magazine!

Truth be told I'm often a little bit bored by the whole Plus Size debate. While I do think there are too many messages out there in the fashion world that very, very skinny is the only way for a girl to be desirable, I also think that by the time most of us get to a certain age we realise that actually plenty of boys still want to shag us even with our soft corners and excessively-generous tits and we stop worrying about it so much.

That much said this photo of the cover of Italian Vogue, passed on by the sumptuous Jayne, is a nice reminder of how good - and rare - it feels to see a girl who isn't model skinny made up to look super hot and sexy.

The only downside is that regardless of what I do to myself I know I will never ever look like that girl in the middle who, to my mind, is a dead ringer for a young Sophia Loren. At least when I stare at whippet thin models I can tell myself "I could look like that if I got really sick for a few months". With this girl... no, short of having a new face it's just not going to happen.

Token Smokin' Hottie: Michael Fassbender

What is wrong with me?

Once upon a time I knew what I liked and that was skinny boys, the scrawnier the better. Give me a jutting hipbone, a concave chest and, just for funsies, a pair of Buddy Holly glasses, and I'd be happy.

But, like the Pulp song goes, something changed. Obviously I still like skinny boys: they are still the ones that made me turn in the street and go a little bit weak in the knees when they serve me at Epic Espresso (oh yeah skinny barista with the adorable smile, you know who you are). But somewhere along the line I appear to have developed a taste for, um, I don't quite know how to say this... muscles.

No, I don't know how it happened either.

Anyway, the latest object of my lust is Michael Fassbender, the German-Irish hottie smoking up screens in X-Men: First Class. I first saw Fassbender in the delightful Inglorious Basterds but while he was fantastic in the role it didn't really occur to me that he was hot until his turn in X-Men. Obviously it helps that he gets to play a young Magneto: easily one of the cooler dudes in the X-Men universe. It also helps that he has sizzling chemistry with the quietly scrumptious James McAvoy (who plays a young Charles Xavier) to the point where I was actively waiting for an onscreen snog. But what also helps is, let me be frank, Fassbender's fairly sick body which is constantly lurking there beneath his clothes - out of sight but never out of mind.

Watching the movie I found McAvoy - on whom I have long nursed a quiet crush - boyishly charming. But it was Fassbender I was always watching onscreen, bemoaning the lack of shirtless scenes and wondering how a man with shoulders that broad could possibly have such narrow hips. Only time will tell whether I still find him hot in Jane Eyre as - of course - Mr Rochester, where presumably there are very few opportunities for him remove his clothes. Tragically.

Just in case anyone has the sheer cheek to be happy on a fucking shitty day like today

"Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad."
(Jean Rhys, Good Morning, Midnight)