You may have noticed (all two of you) that I have been missing for a while from these pages, after the rather dramatic declaration that I was collapsing for no reason and had spent the night in hospital.

Well, look, I'm a dramatist. It's what I do.

It is true that I've spent the past week or so falling over, stumbling sideways into walls, breaking glasses, dropping things almost constantly, and swooning like a drunk, legally blind, seasick toddler. But that's just how I roll. The doctors think I have a "mystery virus", which should come as no surprise to anybody who knows me, since if I get sick, I really do make the most of it (see "dramatist", above). It is also apparently what doctors say when they don't know what the hell's wrong with you. When lawyers don't know what to do, they delay the case. Which is why...

In case I do not have a virus, the doctors have recommended that I wear a heart monitor for the day. As a result, I currently look like a rather relaxed individual with a bomb strapped to my chest. The heart monitor traces my heartbeats, so I have been instructed to do all the ordinary things I would do in a day. I am therefore wondering whether the heartbeats increase when I watch "cockatoo dancing to Justin Timberlake" on youtube, or when I receive alarming emails from Rita about how much work I have to do by Friday. I have to keep a journal of any unusual activities which might raise my heart beat, so I'm wondering if "going for a walk" is more important than "swearing at commercial radio". It strikes me, from listening to radio for an hour this arvo while I was walking around trying to make myself faint so that the heart monitor could record my heart beats as I did so, that commercial radio is (as my grandfather would say) chewing gum for the mind. Every now and then (amongst the commercials) there is a news break, which starts off with a featured commercial land then launches into thunderous music followed by a chirpy pre-pubescent lady on crack singing, "News Britney might be getting access to her kids and a soldier returns to Australia a hero. A little heavy on the ring-road, Monash chokas city-bound and it's eighteen degrees in Cheltenham".

Why have news breaks?

Honestly.

Anyway, as you can see, I've had a bit of time to think about these things and it seems to me that one should wear a heart monitor all the time, in order to know what to avoid. There are several people I am very glad I didn't run across in the street, for instance. And I'm really quite glad I didn't go and see Saw III.

Hoping this finds you well, and thanks for your concern. For those of you who didn't express concern, get yourselves a heart monitor and SEE IF YOURS IS WORKING AT ALL etc.

PS I just got "trick or treated". In Australia. By Australian children dressed in Disney costumes no doubt made in China.

I'm officially old and grumpy. That's probably what the heart monitor print-out will say. "You're old and grumpy. Get over it".

Today, I am feeling poorly.

I have, karma-style, brought this on myself by pointing and laughing at my beloved, who contracted an illness called "croup", usually only contracted by babies. Although it is true that he is a lot younger than I am, he is not THAT much younger than I am, so I was finding it amusing that he had a sickness reserved, appropriately, for infants. Was he also suffering nappy rash? Did he want his dummy? etc. Hilarious.

Then, I started sneezing and coughing, wanting to tear out my burning tonsils, attempting to throw off a rampant fever, and desiring simply to lie down until the winds of time swept me into another dimension. Not so hilarious, as it turns out. More hideous, really, than hilarious, when you think about it. Still, there is some conjecture over whether or not I have the same illness as my manfriend (let's call him Babyface) which thus renders croup hilarious again, since hilarity is, as we all know from Australia's Funniest Home Videos, in the eye of the beholder.

If anyone out there has ever tried to write while suffering from a fever, you will know that it is quite a bizarre state to create anything in (apart from, frankly, mucus). I often try to write or plan creative projects when I'm lying in bed with a fever because, not being a drug taker, I rarely get the opportunity to read over my own writing later and think, "What the hell was I thinking? Who wrote this? I don't remember writing this. I don't remember anything! You guys! Are you having me on?" etc. It really is quite loopy what goes through your fevered mind.

Now I want to read this book, but the problem with being sick is that as soon as you're not sick any more, it's the most boring topic on earth.

In fact, clinical tests prove that the five most boring things on earth to discuss are:

Illness (unless it's fantastic like the girl whose spider bite turned out to be a nest of baby spiders on her face)

Other people's dreams (fascinating to you, boring to everyone else)

Stories about pets (I refer here to stories that do not have plots - the mere fact that an animal is in the story somehow meaning that the story can be about how an animal exists, wags its tail, has fussy eating habits, sleeps, has a name etc. Animal stories are only interesting if your animal has saved somebody's life, played an instrument, been involved in a crime of some sort, or (like the lizard in the newspaper recently) eaten a toy version of itself and then excreted it, causing its child owner to exclaim that it is having a baby out of its bottom).

Office procedures (Apparently, discussions relating to the most appropriate method of filing or archiving are always long, no matter who you work for, and they usually involve two very opinionated polar opposite positions, about neither of which anybody else cares).

and

Traffic (As much as it might pain you at the time, someone overtaking you from the inside lane will bore the pants off someone at the barbecue you arrive late at. Unless you actually have an accident, become involved in fisticuffs, or accidentally flick the bird at mother theresa, it's boring. It just is.)

Do you know how I know this? Because I worked on the phones at a radio station. Do you know the top two topics people want to talk about on talkback radio? Traffic, and pets. Dreams comes in at number three, closely followed by children, sob stories (illness comes in here, so does debt) and weather. The only one of these that doesn't make it onto talkback radio is office procedures.

Maybe I should start my own show.

Today I went to my day job and tonight I'm working with Christina, whose show "Semi Rural" is on at the Comedy Festival at the exact same time as ours. I'm helping her out in the next few weeks at the same time as directing "For We Are Young And Free" for Standing There Productions and organising the brilliantly-timed Law Week for Victoria Law Foundation, where I work.

Sometimes I wonder whether I'd be able to survive without nineteen concurrent deadlines. That's a theory I doubt I'm going to test any time soon.

Meanwhile, trips on public transport become the only moments I get to myself.

Melbourne has one of those daily rags that you can get at train stations for free. Ours is called MX. When I worked in commercial radio, I used to read MX from cover to cover with the frenzied excitement of an addict, searching desperately for some material.

And doesn't it deliver?

Today, it actually uses the phrase "paleolithic hottie" to describe the reconstructed face of a 14,000 year old skull.

Other highlights include:

The story of a zoo worker who dressed in an unconvincing orangutan costume in order to stage a fake escape scenario. Needless to say that when he was shot by another zoo keeper with a fake gun, the kiddies were horrified and fled from the scene.

The description of Richard Griffiths attempting to escape the Harry Potter crowds through a tiny box office window is pretty hilarious if you know how big Richard Griffiths is.

And finally, I enjoyed the following passage:

Children on a youth club trip in Northern Ireland ignored repeated warnings to behave as bedtime approached last Wednesday. So their leaders decided to teach them a lesson. they packed the youngsters into a minibus, drove them into the middle of nowhere and told them to find their own way back to base. The punishment backfired badly when the youngsters, aged 12 to 14, became hopelessly lost and the leaders were unable to go back to find them because the minbus broke down.

(Description of furious parents follows). Got to love MX.

It's the worst fire season in the history of Victoria at the moment. We went to Lakes Entrance on the weekend and we had to get the train back through the smoke. It was eerie, cruising through the brown, flat, smokey, empty land. Melbourne was clogged with smoke when we got home. Anyone who doesn't believe in global warming is:
a) entitled to their own opinion
b) a complete tool
and in my opinion there is a right answer.
Anyhoo, in Standing There Productions news, we are as busy as little bees with a plan or two for some new projects, none of which we can announce at this stage because they're "in development" - the least exciting stage for a project to be in, for everyone other than the writer.

And here's the "IF I STILL WORKED IN COMMERCIAL RADIO" story for this week here for your enjoyment.

I have a sore frisbee arm.

Hurrah!

Best feeling in the world is the particular kind of exhausted you feel after chucking a frisbee at the beach for an hour and only stopping because it's dark and you left your glow-in-the-dark frisbee at home.

Now, of course, I am back to reality.

On a serious note... this weekend, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who criticised her government and reported bravely on matters such as the war in Chechnya and the Beslan school disaster (on the way to which she was poisoned) was gunned down in the lift outside her apartment. She spoke at the Sydney Writers' Festival earlier this year (I didn't see her speak). Here are some of the other journalists who have been murdered in Russia in recent years, and these two journalists, from one of my favourite international radio stations, were killed in their tent this weekend as well. They had been researching for a documentary. All of this makes 2006 the most deadly year for journalists on record, apparently. Previously, 2005 was the most deadly year on record, and before that, it was 2004.

So when I talk about how crap Australian journalism is, it's not because I don't respect journalists. It's because I do. People are risking their lives because they recognise that media is a very powerful tool, and they are being murdered because of it. And today's Melbourne Age online stories? Brad and Angelina have a bodyguard who punched someone, Princess Mary is coming to visit, the MCG is ready for a terrorist attack on the basis of a rumour in a British newspaper, and there's a story called Sex Behind the Engagement Ring, which is the most viewed article of the day, and which is actually just lifted from the Telegraph.

I would like to think that Australia, being a "free" country, has greater opportunity for investigative journalism. Perhaps not.

Dave Eggers (culturally aware frisbee playing writer = dream boy) has written a book about Sudan, which you can read about here. Eggers wrote one of my favourite books and is responsible for many impressive things since then, such as the above website, this website, and this very cool dvd magazine.

Anyway, Sudan.

He doesn't do anything by halves. Read the interview.

Meanwhile, I'm getting away again this weekend. I saw Jet of Blood last night, which is Artaud, who I remember studying and whose biography goes some way towards explaining his artistic approach, which is refreshingly insane and experiencing a bit of a renaissance at the moment.

Also, thanks to the always sensible Dave Barry website, here is today's What I Would Be Talking About If I Still Worked In Commercial Radio link.

Because you should always finish the week on a light story that really only yahoo would print on the internet, right?

Okay, want to seriously turn your head inside out?

Check out this radio piece about romantic love as a construct of capitalism. This is seriously interesting radio, whatever you think of it. It took the guy who produced it three years to make. It took me about the length of time it takes to clean a particularly messy bedroom, to listen to it. But in my Radio National geekiness, I loved (whatever that means) listening to it.

Also, I would like to thank the internet for ruining the perfectly good thing I originally wrote here. Bastard.