There's not a lot of good news coming out of... well... anywhere today.

I'm spending today doing little jobs that have been annoying me for a long time, and as a result of this, I've had a lot of time to check the internet every half hour for an update on Mumbai, Thailand, aeroplane crashes, and the other, actual, news items that have replaced "MADONNA'S DIVORCE SHOCK".

Days like today bring out the worst in the media (for example a description on CNN of the "scene of mayhem", over a picture of a woman on a mobile phone, or, say, an article in The Age online today with - I presume - a copy editor's comments all through it) and it brings out the worst in people (some of the comments being posted on websites today are sickening). So there is a lot to be repulsed by.

And there is no antidote to it, and nor should there be. Things like this happen all the time and we don't know about most of it because there weren't four Australians involved. The power of the media is amazing, though, isn't it, because it does ink a few images onto your mind, and you carry them with you, while you post letters and write emails and do the odd jobs you were supposed to do months ago.

You carry them with you and you think about how one thing stands between you and these horrible events: dumb luck.

I hope these things end soon, and I hope I have the commitment to keep myself informed through news outlets like The Real News during the times when my local and national newspapers are obsessing about a chef from England who swears a lot and may or may not have been shagging somebody who is not his wife.

As a writer, regardless of how much you actually write about politics, it's generally a good idea to know what's going on in the world and know what you think about it. Even if you write kids's books or comedy skits or instruction manuals. If you know how to use language and make observations, you're making choices all the time. Choices are decisions. Decisions are based on beliefs or desires or circumstances. Beliefs, desires and circumstances are what politics are all about.

As the entire world now knows, America has a new President-elect.

And now we try to figure out what that means, what it changes, and in what ways it is good, bad, interesting or hilarious.There are jokes going around about how, once again, a black man has been given America's worst job, cleaning up after white people. There are tongue-in-cheek predictions he'll paint the white house black. There are exciting campaign photographs that bring a lump to the throat of the most cynical and the least interested. At the very least, the crowd numbers are impressive.

Now, nobody in the universe completely understands the US election process. Basically: lots of people voted for Obama, including some old people and many young people. CNN did a graph - they've got a graph for everything - showing how as the voters got older, they were less likely to vote for Obama. Somewhere around 66% of young voters voted for him, which is, to use a technical term, totally unheard of.

Something particularly difficult to understand about the American voting process is the concept that more than one thing is being decided at the one time. For instance, if you were voting in California, yesterday, you voted on - among other things - Proposition 8. The result of the Proposition 8 vote is why a lot of people who would be happy in America today, are not. The same goes for Florida and Arizona apparently, although you wouldn't know it from media reports. It's a shame that on a day that will be remembered for bringing different races and creeds together in a spirit of multicultural understanding, it's feeling to some like another battle: between race and sexuality.

All of this is interesting, even if men in suits talking about politics bore the pants off you, because there are a whole lot of young Americans for whom the pants - at least at the moment - are not bored anywhere at all. And all the way over here, in Australia, it feels like we've got a new President.

9 years ago, when I was on exchange in America, Noam Chomsky spoke passionately at my college (Boston College) about the role America had as the world's policeman. This was before 9/11 and before the war. It was a week after the Timorese voted for their independence, with murderous results, which is why we were discussing the world policeman thing.

I put my hand up and asked Chomsky why America As World Policeman wasn't the same as American Imperialism. Since then, I've learned the subtle differences by vurtue of the fact that my worst fears have been demonstrated time and time again. Several times, I've wished the rest of the world could vote in the American election. I think it changes lots of things. Not "just politics" but lots of things.

The day after John Howard was voted out in Australia, I heard the word "multiculturalism" being used on television by an elected official. I was shocked. Previously, the word rendered any subsequent argument obsolete. I actually have to admit to being a bit embarrassed to hear it being used. It had become such a dirty word, such a softie-left-bleeding-heart thing to say, that I wanted the speaker (I can't remember who it was) to qualify it, lest the argument be dismissed. Of course, there was no qualification, and it seems silly now. It's subtle, but language changes because of politics, and vice versa. In fact, language, the right to use it, and the right to be a writer, are all elements of society that people in less liberal societies cannot afford to take for granted. I think it's good to remember that.

By the way, in case those aren't enough links for you: be grateful your job doesn't extend to every aspect of your private life, as this guy's does. Yeesh. All the best to those kids, that's all I can say.

All the information you need to know about the American election: go here.

By the way, you can comment on posts for this site by registering apparently. Give it a burl!

My word, what a difference a day makes.

Highlights from my election night:

1. My friend Tim, who had vowed with a friend of his that if John Howard lost the election they would "dance naked in the streets" lived up to his promise in Fitzroy, a moment I mercilessly missed but which fills my heart with glee.

2. Popping in on Trades Hall on the way to the cinematography awards and noting the studious edge-of-seat dedication to the ABC broadcast, such that people were asked to "shoosh" and applause was greeting Antony Green's early results before even 1% of the votes were in. Meanwhile, on the stage, people were setting up for what I imagine turned into a massive party but which (when I was there at about 5pm) was reserved and respectful, cautious and calm.

3. Receiving text updates at the cinematography awards and sprinting from table to table to spread the love.

4. The moment when a cinematographer bounded up on stage unannounced, wearing a Kevin 07 T shirt and bowing as though perhaps he was responsible for the Ruddslide.

5. Thinking everyone was hilarious and texting almost everyone I'd ever met to tell them that I loved them. I do apologise.

It is quite, quite strange, for someone who has lived for so long in a country run by people who use words like "non-citizen" and "necessary intervention" and who consider a concern for the environment to be "biased" and "unbalanced", to hear the language change overnight.

I know it's rhetorical, I know it's only language, and I'm not convinced any of it will necessarily translate into policy, but it's a fascinating study in the power of language to change what they refer to in The Castle as "the vibe".

My favourite bit of the election coverage (and I didn't see much of it because I was at the awards) was the bit where Bob Brown was asked by Kerry O'Brien something along the lines of:

"You don't seriously expect the new Labor government to change their minds on the pulp mill do you?"

A grinning Bob Brown didn't miss a beat: "Oh yes I do Kerry".

Bring on the Senate, I say.

This could get interesting...

I have been missing from these pages over the past few days because I have been getting a lot of work done. The reasons for this are:

1. I have a scary deadline. An actual one. Written into a contract.

2. The year twelve exams have finished and hence there are not trillions of hysterically amused, breathlessly begossiped eighteen-year-olds answering obnoxiously ringing phones and looking daggers at me for asking them to keep it down. Also apparently not so many people in the over twenty age group wear clippy-noise-making heels or have ring tones that wolf whistle loudly, causing a ripple of untold hilarity through the studiously unstudious masses.

I'm sorry. I know it's a generalisation, but honestly, the difference between then and now (grey haired and bespectacled family history nerds and people using free internet and doing PhDs) is quite remarkable. I'm not saying I'd be interested in hanging with the family history nerds at a party, but (and this is where the year twelves have been tragically misled) the library is not a party and therefore I am on the side of the boring studious folk. You can tell this because I give lectures on this point repetitively in the manner of one of my parents discussing loud restaurants, the existence of mobile phones, or P plate drivers on freeways.

3. I am trying the early rising thing again. Today I was at gym at half seven. Next week, if history is anything to go by, I will contract hooping cough, gout, a peg leg or similar.

4. I am trying to get a lot of work done before the weekend. Why? Because after the weekend, Australia will either be run by a conservative white man or it will be run by a conservative white man. If it continues to be run by the racist lying rodent who currently holds the title of conservative white man running the country, I will be leaving to live on Mars. So I'm trying to get my affairs in order in case that becomes the sad reality. In the event of the other conservative white man becoming the leader, I will be looking to my friend Mister Senate, which as all the year twelves "studying" in the library know, is a check and/or balance and/or platform for loonies and people like Brian Harradine to flirt with the electorate and then do what they were going to do in the first place. If nothing changes and/or things get worse or somehow similarly depressing, I am hoping a foxy fast-talking superhero will arrive to save the day, possibly with the liberal distribution of bubble wrap.

Sadly this weekend I am only voting once, due to my friends having sorted out their own political opinions since the early days when I used to receive three or four calls asking who to vote for. Don't worry, I explained the choices as objectively as I could. It wasn't my fault they were "bored" and wanted to know "what to write in the box and hurry up I'm next in line". Gone are the days those guys call. I like to think it's because I educated them about politics but I know the real reason is that most of them are teachers or health professionals who know how to vote because their jobs are on the line. Either way, I leave my phone on each time I vote but nobody ever texts me any questions. Mostly just statements, none of which I will repeat here.

Anyway, I'm going to make the most of the pre-election silence in this library and also in my brain. Until then, vote well, vote often, see you on the other side.

Lately, I have been swooning. In the real sense of the word. I fainted. Twice in as many days.

Never having fainted in my life before, and in the absence of having just met Johnny Depp or being told by Mister Darcy that he ardently admires me, I decided this was a habit in need of further investigation.

So I went to a Victorian public hospital. Wow.

Turns out, there's a nursing dispute. Turns out, Victorian nurses are paid less than any other nurses in the country. Significantly. Which is no wonder. They barely do anything to help the community. Check it out, here are some edited highlights of what went down during the thirteen hours I was in emergency at the hospital:

1. Two hallucinating, violent, screaming, presumably ice-affected patients had to be subdued. Their abusive, terrifying screams could be heard throughout the corridors. The staff looked exhausted.

2. An elderly man with renal failure and a tumour sat alone waiting until his tummy was empty enough for further tests. He was looked after by a nurse who had to excuse himself several times because nobody else was available to resuscitate other patients. Despite this, he and the old man had a few in-jokes by the end of the night and I felt less bad for him being there alone.

3. A woman who had chased her attacker down a dark alleyway was being followed everywhere by two policewomen who asked questions about what kind of needle her attacker used to stab her with. The woman was worried, shaking, and also possibly a little bit stoned. When describing chasing the man down the street, she got the giggles. My boyfriend is going to think I'm such an idiot, she said.

4. A student whose mother had flown over from China to support her during her exams was desperate for something for her tonsilitis. She was already on antibiotics. It needs to go away, she explained, because of my exams. She had waited for nine hours to see a doctor. She was so stressed she couldn't sit down.

5. A guy had fallen up the stairs with a broken leg in a cast. He described it as excruciatingly painful. The male nurse had to shave him in order to access the leg. It was embarrassing, so the nurse offered to shave a smiley face and the patient said he'd probably prefer Batman. The nurse had to rush off to find a heart monitor, but he agreed that the patient was definitely a batman kind of guy.

6. A woman, disembarking a tram, had broken her foot. Her friend, who there to support her and who was studying law, read about the Nuremberg trials in the waiting room. A woman with kidney problems groaned. Nuremberg "puts things in perspective", said the law girl, unconvincingly.

7. At almost six in the morning, a girl who has been moaning in pain has to face up to a needle. The nurse gets her to relax. Genuinely terrified, she begs him not to inject her. He talks her down. She relaxes. She feels better. He changes shifts, informing the next nurse of every single detail of the patients in their care.

8. Back in the waiting room, when I was looking worse, the triage nurse brought me a glass of milk and a pain killer and tucked my hair behind my ear. She apologised for the wait and told me how far up the queue I was. She was verbally abused by several people. She was wearing a badge saying Fund Nursing Properly.

Today, after sleeping off the night I had without sleep the night before, I wrote a letter to my local member, the health minister, and the Premier. Victorian nurses are the lowest paid in the country. The nurse I mention here has a three year postgrad degree and is paid less than a first year nurse in NSW who has never been in a hospital. Without proper ratios and incentives for nurses, hospitals will have to run like the one I was at the other night - in total lock-down, no ambulances allowed in, with people being treated in chairs, in areas not designated for treatment.

People who are sick are desperate, sometimes angry, sometimes terrified, sometimes weeping, sometimes violent. Nurses are doing real work with real consequences and from my brief window into the system today, they're doing it bloody well.

Of course, if I had the money or the inclination, I could have paid a whole lot of money and gone to a private hospital, where I would have been out in mere hours, rather than an entire night. Because that makes sense.

If you care, go here.

If you work at St Vincent's, thank you.

Now, I know this is supposed to be the "Standing There Productions Diary", about writing and filming and artists residencies (see below) and producing theatre shows and applying for funding and wishing there was more money for the arts and so on. I realise I'm not supposed to be writing here about anything that might be perceived as political, because politics is boring and the free MX newspapers have it right when they put massacres and droughts and so on in a tiny column on the right hand side of page five, called Boring But Important.

But it's only in privileged countries like Australia that the link between writing and politics isn't tragically obvious. You probably saw that in the past month in Burma, a Japanese journalist was shot dead in broad daylight, on camera. In Russia, probably the two most high profile anti-government journalists have been mysteriously murdered, one of them drinking a cup of poisoned tea in London, one of them shot in the lift to her apartment a year ago on Sunday (eerily also President Vladamir Putin's birthday).

Also, if you think it's only boring political writers who get in trouble, and that people like me who write shows for the comedy festival are taking ourselves a bit too seriously by aligning ourselves with the likes of those above, consider this guy, a comedian in Burma who has been arrested - which means there are grave concerns for his safety - for supporting a peaceful protest held by monks. He wasn't performing his work because he is not allowed to.

If you want to find out more about these writers and many more, go here.

Here's what I think. I'll keep it short. Boring But Important.

The Australian Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, he's the guy with the ears and the persecuted and simultaneously self-righteous face, has said that he has information on how "Africans" (it's a pretty big place) aren't fitting into Australian communities. He isn't going to show us that information or tell us exactly where he got it. He just has it. Trust him.

So, if he can't show us the information he has been given, can he tell us about it in a vague and frightening way? NO WORRIES!

Concerns exist, according to Kevin, in these areas: gangs are forming, altercations are occurring at nightclubs, conflicts are happening within families, young men are drinking in parks, and organisations are arguing about who receives favoured treatment. You know what that sounds like to me? Sounds like Australian sport.

Gangs are forming (much like they did - whatever version of the facts you believe - in this NRL incident we all remember). Altercations are happening at nightclubs (let's see, try here, here, here, and here), conflicts within families (erm, here we go), young men drinking beer in parks (hmmm, lemme see - oh and there's this of course).

So, yes, those Africans really are behaving badly, aren't they. All of this was raised after an Sudanese boy was beaten to death by a couple of (apparently not African) boys.

The problem is, with a country like ours where you're allowed to say what you like, that people in power can say (or refuse to say) what they like, too. It's a shame the only thing we have to go on here is insinuation and rumour.

What I can say is that it's just SUCH a good thing the opposition is doing such a great job OPPOSING the government's stance on things like:

- Health (Rudd was questioned about the similar opposition/government health plans. His retort? Great minds think alike).

- The pulp mill (opposition supports it)

- Immigration (opposition agrees with government)

- The citizenship test (opposition agrees with government)

It's a shame that having a robust democracy where you can say what you think doesn't mean that anyone in a position of power anywhere has any vision whatsoever.

Boring but important, guys. Boring but important.