Hello again.

The most exciting news from my little world at the moment is that I have myself a new printer, which does a couple of things my old printer did not do, the most of important of which is that it prints things out for me.

I know! How novel.

So that means I've been writing more things, on account of how I can print them out. Now I have no excuse for not getting to that next phase and redrafting everything within an inch of its life. I have also been reading the book that I purchased in order to avoid reading Crime and Punishment , which means I now have to read Crime and Punishment , which I am sure will be excellent, but there's something about reading classic literature that makes me kind of dread the experience (having said that, I have enjoyed almost every "classic" work of literature I've read, pretty much without exception, so what all of this says about me I'm not sure. Possibly that I'm an idiot).

By the way, I would like to congratulate the second sentence in that last paragraph for its recent nomination in the Longest Sentence of the Year Awards. Richly deserved.

The book I've just finished, Blue Water , by A. Manette Ansay, was so different from Read This and Tell Me What It Says (her short story collection), and Vinegar Hill (the only other novel of hers that I've read) that I almost wondered if she was a different A. Manette Ansay from the one who came to our Boston College writing class and spoke gruffly about what made her a writer. I had thought then that she was a hero for the writer who just writes because she always wanted to. She didn't seem to be trying to match her work to a structural formula, and was quite happy to write about the tiny details and skip the big themes of life and death and love and whether or not forgiveness is possible in a small town (all of which are covered in this recent book). In fact, I think I had transformed Ansay - in my head - into a casually misanthropic, accidentally cutting-edge "fringe" writer. But, since being selected for Oprah's Book Club (having her print circulation multiply many tens of times over), she could hardly match that description and still be selling as many books as she is.

It's funny how an author can be mistaken for a genre. You read one book and you expect them all to be the same. I often find this confusing myself, when I write. I write something quite unlike something I've written before (which is necessary for my own sanity) and I find myself missing the "old" writing - trying to crowbar some of it in between the cracks of the new stuff. 'Tis a merry dance, this writing caper. I don't know why everyone isn't doing it.

Also, isn't behooved an excellent word?

Definition according to dictionary.com: to be necessary or proper for. eg: "It behooves you at least to try".

I think that last sentence alone - "it behooves you at least to try" - could form the sturdy basis for a character. Probably a British one.

Geraldine: But Boris, it just isn't possible. I mean, I've -

Boris: Oh for heavens sakes Geraldine. It behooves you at least to try.

(Boris storms out, in the direction of the Parlour room. Geraldine looks bereft and stares blankly through the bay windows).

This weekend, after seeing Oliver Twist , I promised myself I would read more "classic" novels, at which point I purchased a distinctly non-classical novel from the new releases section, Blue Water , which I am now half way through. To make up for the obvious disregard I have for my own conviction in these matters, I then purchased the appropriately titled Crime and Punishment , which was six dollars and which had on the back cover "the most readable of the classics". Shut up, I am at least trying.

I saw four movies this weekend, including The Chumscrubber , a movie they're saying is quite like American Beauty mixed with Donnie Darko and as a result it's derivative and boring, but I liked it. It had a sense of humour about itself - a rare thing in films about "young people" being "disenfranchised". I also could ignore its slight misjudgment of things at times because of the acting, which I thought was excellent. That Billy Elliot, I tells ya, he's orright (also, Glenn Close was brilliant, and CJ Cregg from The West Wing should probably be in most films). I took it as a satirical movie - not just a satire on contemporary America (which I agree is getting kind of boring), but a comment on films like the ones it's being compared to. Perhaps I was being too generous, for once, although I doubt that.

******
I visited my Grandmother. She said, out of nowhere, "What are you proudest of?"

My Grandma is a modern-day Shakespeare character. She speaks in simple, considered prose. She looks at you directly. She asks questions that could unravel a kingdom in a day. Then she offers you a cup of tea with a shortbread.

******
I also saw In The Shadow of the Palms this weekend. It's a documentary about Iraq before, during and after the first attacks by the USA. If you would like to know what Iraq is actually like, and how people live there, and precisely how ignorant the media is enabling us (in the west) to be, then check it out. I think I thought of Iraq as just this kind of empty desert with blood and anger and death. The filmmaker, Wayne Coles-Janess, an Australian, has just used footage to make an overall picture, really. No "plot", no cohesive "message", except that Iraq is a country just like where you live, except someone started dropping bombs on it and all the Christians and the Muslims and the pro-Saddam and the anti-Saddam Iraqis were suddenly rushing from crumbling building to crumbling building to haul people out of the rubble. It makes you realise that, as the brilliant chain-smoking school teacher in the film says, "We are under the control of liars". The politicians, all of them, were leading people into a war that the people had no control over but that would change them forever. It's obvious, but it's horrible. Watch the footage of the bombs dropping. Nothing precise or targeted about it.

Actually, I recommend, to really feel the full force of how ridiculous the world is, that you go and see this movie alone, as I did, and then emerge to see a huge TV screen broadcasting photographs of Nicole Kidman's marriage to Keith Urban.

*****
Later on Sunday, I stood in a shop that sells nuts from the counter. They're served hot and in a paper bag. I was waiting for the guy in front of me to order some cashews. His five or six year old son was with him. Their conversation was lovely:

Kid looks slightly perplexed. Peers in at nuts.
- Dad?
- Yep (slightly pre-occupied with nuts)
- Is salt a chemical?
- Ah, no. No, I don't think so. Not a chemical, exactly.
- What happens when it dries up?
- Salt?
- Yeah.
- I guess it gets dry and crystalised. You know, if you took all the water out of the sea, it would just be salt left. Crystalised salt, I guess.
- Yes... What's it for?
- Some people say it makes food taste better. But you can't have too much because it's not good for you.
- (Kid looks at salted cashew nuts for a bit)
- (Dad watches kid watching nuts) Speaks to kid again:
- Do you know what salt tastes like?
- Yes.
- It's kind of bitter, isn't it?
- Yes.

Kid and Dad leave. I tried to get a picture in my head of the kid so that one day I can send him a congratulations letter when he wins the nobel prize in twenty years. Was seriously five. Maybe six, if you squint.

*****

Then last night I saw Richard E Grant's film, Wah-Wah , which was brilliantly performed. As usual, I couldn't cope with the romanticisation or the melodrama that the film sometimes tipped into, but maybe it was necessary in this case.

In keeping with the sublime/ridiculous dichotomy of today, check this out - a most amusing and very brief article about the presents George Bush has been receiving from people since he became president. Yes the presents. The gifts. What would you get President Bush for his birthday? Nothing? (Tony Blair) A gun? (it's on the list) A whip? (same) Booze? (that one makes me laugh).

*******

Lastly, I found out today that the line in the Bright Eyes song I have been listening to in the car in fact refers to the protagonist having a "head full of pesticides" rather than to his having a "head full of pasta sauce". This disappoints me, as I had very much empathised with his position in regard to the pasta sauce. Life is full of disappointments such as these. Go here and check out a website full of them.

Today I saw a headline in the papers that appeared to say "Government Provides Free Porn" but which actually when I looked closer I saw went for two lines rather than one and so on further inspection turned out to say "Government Provides Free Porn Filters".

If ever the people in layout should have a say over the sub-editors who write the headlines, it's moments like that don't you think? I've got a headline somewhere that I cut out of The Herald Sun one time that just says "INSERT HEADLINE HERE". You just know someone got fired for that one.

So anyway I saw Polanski's Oliver Twist last night. I said yesterday that I haven't read many classics. That is sadly true. Of the classics I have read, however, most of them have been Dickens. I've read Oliver Twist at least once (meaning once - and another time when I was "studying" it), I've seen the non-musical film version and the musical film version, and let's not forget that I played the role of the Artful Dodger in the grade six play (the only interpretation of the role I'm aware of that has included a top hat combined with a ponytail). So, in terms of knowing the story of Oliver Twist inside out, I'm probably only a fraction less well informed than the probably countless thousands who are currently writing a thesis on it. HOWEVER I did enjoy this interpretation. Ben Kingsley is really quite brilliant as Fagin, who is the key to the whole thing in my opinion - and the rest of the casting was pretty spot on. Dodger, though, should really have had a ponytail.

Then I went to Readings with the intention of buying a classic Russian novel or a Thomas Hardy or even a D H Lawrence. Needless to say I did nothing of the sort. I am now the proud new owner of the new A. Manette Ansay book. Manette Ansay spoke to my writing class when I was studying at Boston College and she was such a breath of fresh air amongst some of the more conservative influences (which were probably better for me than I thought they were at the time). Her website is here. I've never forgotten the class she spoke in and I've found it really hard to find her writing anywhere in Australia. Her book of short stories, Read This and Tell Me What It Says is just so damn good. The title short story is a corker. I'm looking forward to a weekend of reading punctuated by cups of tea. My favourite.

Writing's not hard.

Who said writing was hard? What idiot said that? Writing's excellent fun. As if you'd do anything else. Having fun with the writing today, which is typical because it's back to my other work tomorrow. Oh well. Round we go again.

Ironic that the person who showed me the following link is a producer, but Rita is a good producer and this story is about a bad producer. Producers are kind of like witches in that way. Some are wicked and some are nice and look after Judy Garland and help her get to the Emerald City when her house falls on their wicked counterparts. Anyway go here for a story about Richard E. Grant's producer, which I must admit I haven't listened to yet but I'm willing to bet it's worth a listen. Richard E. Grant, for those of you who don't know, is my boyfriend. Or to put it another way, we've never met but I quite liked him in a movie I saw once.

Now, in more important news.

Tim Stitz, who is leaving us on Monday to go to acting school in America, organised a trivia night last night to raise money for his plight. It was a most hilarious evening, and if you haven't seen Stitzy's Chinese Grandmother character, you reeeally have been missing out. The quiz itself was impossibly difficult for those of us who are ignorant in a range of areas, which I thought was rather unfair. Where were the questions like "Describe in general terms one of the articles you've read in the newspaper this week" or "Provide a Marxist critique of The O.C". What's with the yes/no answer bias at these things?

Anyway my friend Jeremy won the raffle. My other friend, Honor, won two tickets to the theatre. And what did I win? Well, I didn't win anything, but Stew won a myotherapy session with a hilarious friend of mine, and I paid for the raffle ticket that won it. So anyway that will be excellent when I get around to booking it.

So well done Timmeh. It was an excellent night although trivia depresses me because people think I read a lot and know about Literature. I know nothing. I hereby resolve to read one of the classics next. It's about time I got serious about this reading business.

Either that or I'm going to read this other (much breezier) book that I've had my eye on, and I'm going to not read the classics EVER and then tonight I will go and see Polanski's Oliver Twist and I will get all the Jane Austen books out on DVD and I will listen to an audio tape of Nabakov.

Writing is hard. It just is.

Maybe for some people it isn't. But for me, it's like being locked inside my own head and realising it isn't any different from the last time I was in there. Also, there's not enough room to move. And there aren't any windows.

Last night I finished Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman. Pretty funny book. He talks about writing actually. He's trying to decipher a paper written by a sociologist. It's complicated. He says:

'So I stopped - at random - and read the next sentence very carefully. I can't remember it precisely, but it was very close to this: "The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels." I went back and forth over it, and translated. You know what it means? "People read".'

I love the downright contempt he has for the arts.

Although, that's not entirely fair. He does desire to use art in order to translate science to people:

'I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world... It's analogous to the feeling one has in religion that has to do with a god that controls everything in the whole universe: there's a generality aspect that you feel when you think about how things that appear so different and behave so differently are all run "behind the scenes" by the same organisation, the same physical laws. It's an appreciation of the mathematical beauty of nature, of how she works inside: a realisation that the phenomena we see result from the complexity of the inner workings between atoms; a feeling of how dramatic and wonderful it is.'

See? Told you he liked science.

Those atoms. They're beautiful things.

That's it from me. I've got to get out of this room.

I've been writing today. I haven't been writing anything good, but I've been typing things called words into things called sentences. Which is a start.

Also I read a bit more of Mr Feynman last night. He's a strange man but an excellent read.

More importantly, however, I am quite devastated to learn that Richard E Grant has been in the country and I have not taken up the opportunity to convince him to marry me.

I just about passed out the first time I saw him in Withnail and I. I could not believe any one person could be so entirely hilarious. The bit where Uncle Monty comes in and scares the crap out of him and he utters a line I cannot repeat here, I think is right up there among the funniest moments in film. As is cake and ale. As is the bit on the stairs where Paul McGhan asks him if he wants a cup of tea and he turns the word "no" into the most insulting thing in the English language. As is the bit where he's calling out the window at the school girls.

And yes, I have edited those highlights down.

Just think. He could have been mine.

Why did nobody tell me he was in the country?

You're all fired.

For reasons too humourous to mention, it was a public holiday yesterday. Which makes this last weekend a long weekend, which makes this week four days long.

So I took today off.

I've finished reading Tourism, which I had to finish on account of I started it.

Favourite bit: the bit where he tried scones, because it made me hungry...?

Then I read a book I thought I had already read, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, which it turns out I hadn't read and which made me cry. See here for a review and description.

Favourite bit: the bit where he pretends he's in space and "All I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where the molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which stops you being anaemic was made in a star".

... I love that bit because it describes so many different things and alludes to so many others and also it's about something really simple. Imagine getting the infinite universe, molecules, time, space, and the inside machinations of the human being all into the one paragraph.

Smart arse.

On Friday night, I went to see the new Pixar film, Cars, which (even though traditionally I'm a Pixar fan) I was sure I was not going to enjoy. Not only is it a movie about cars, called "Cars", starring a racing car and not starring a socially responsible environmental message or a commentary on how stupid racing car driving is (!), but even worse, it's animated cars! So, you know, little cars with huge eyes and expressive windscreen wipers and stuff. BORING! Also, clearly this is a targeted grab for merchandising bucks from small children annoying their exhausted parents.

Anyway, needless to say I laughed until I was snorting like a piglet.

Favourite bit: a hardened old four-wheel-drive teaches a bunch of SUVs from the city how to drive off-road. Also, I find it genuinely hilarious when bits fall off people's faces when they're shocked. It's an old Pixar trick, but my Lordy does it make me laugh.

But the highlight of my weekend was definitely the Belle and Sebastian gig on Saturday night. It was unspeakably good. Anyone who can get the expression "you couldn't act your way out of a wet paper bag" into a song is a friend of mine. Also, by God they're good musicians. For real fans (ie massive nerds) go here for hours of procrastinatorial fun.

Favourite bit: whole thing just brilliant. Cannot possibly pick one song because would be unfair to other songs. Who have feelings.

Lastly, I watched the soccer/football/frenzy of excitement last night as well.

Favourite bit: the bit where I found out that one of the Aussie blokes, Scott Chipperfield, used to be a bus driver who played soccer for "The Wollongong Wolves". Now he's running around on a soccer field in Germany, jumping onto piles of other blokes in celebration whenever someone gets a goal. The best part is, fans in the know have apparently been chanting "Hail to the Bus Driver" from the sidelines. Excellent work.

As a result of the above, I now want to be: a child again, a member of Belle and Sebastian, a soccer player, a voice in a Pixar film, possibly a bus driver, and a scientist (I've also been reading Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman).

You'll notice "writer" is not in there. It's a tad slow, the writing. Just a little bit slow.

There'll be a breaktrhough any moment, I'm sure.