There are some things in life, i have no intention of ever being a part of... and it's become pretty clear this week how many of these things there actually are, after the MANIA surrounding the last Harry Potter. And thus, a list:

Things I hate and will never get involved in:

Harry Potter - books and/or movies
I hate this shit, i dont even really know what it is other than a kid who does spells or something. I imagine it to be a bit like Sabrina the Teenage Witch (which i also hate). I hate the word 'Hogwarts' - what is that?! Sounds like quite a bad STD.

Twilight - books and/or movies
This also extends to True Blood. I will never have anything to do with any vampire shows. I never watched Buffy, and I'll never watch these; they are shit.

I also have no interest in Game of Thrones. I dont understand it, therefore I dont like it.

Any cartoon move
Shrek, Nemo, that horse movie, Penguins, Ice Age. The more people go on about how great they are, the more sure you can be that i will never watch any of them.

Masterchef, the Block, the Renovators, Design team
Any of these 'reality' shows currently being whored. I will never watch any of those either.

Can of Worms
Stupid man's Q and A. I will never watch it. I include in this category that horrible show called My Generation or something. The show is vetoed on the grounds of Josh Thomas (insipid), Amanda Kellar (boring) and Charlie Pickering who is an actual idiot. This also extends to the 7pm project. Carrie Bickmore is also on the list of TEDIOUS individuals with nothing to say - this leads me to Rove and any Rove-related production. I hate them all.

So in conculstion (for now):
No wizzards, dragons, witches, vampires... no vampire porm, no medievil knights, no 'reality tv' with bogan contestants which is just one giant advert. Nothing to do with Rove, Shaun Micalif or anyone related to them. No cartoons. No Family Guy, Southpark, American Dad. No Shrek, Nemo, Ice Age. But mostly, no wizzards or vampires.

Harry Potter; i shit on your face.

Yeah.

Did you know, Internet, that i am a travel agent? I dont know if you do know that, i havent spoken about work (or anything really) for a while.

ANYWAY, some times my job is pretty fun... though most of the time, it's a total pain in the arse with not all that much of a reward. People working in Safeway earn more than most of us. You see, we get to do all the boring bits for people... and then they get to go off and do all the good stuff. The greatest irony of all is perhaps how unfortunate it is that people who love travel soooo much, actually can't afford to go anywhere ever again, once they start working in the travel industry.

Everyone thinks... ohhh, you're a travel agent, you must get heaps of free holidays... Hmm, not quite. Occasionally you will win an incentive, and get a free holiday... but because we work on commission, the time you take off to go on said holiday, ends up costing you more than you physically spend. You end up missing the majority of the month you're away and therefore, dont make budget and wont get a bonus that month.

So, it's easy to get a but cynical about the old job... a bit jaded and perhaps even bitter. This may surprise you, but people are MEAN when they're going on holidays! They're mean about money, they speak to you like shit and threaten 'legal action' (my favourite) when you tell them they can't do something they want to. Nothing is ever their fault. They complain. They want compensation. And it really takes the fun out of everything...

Oh, so you want to go do your working visa in the UK?
Oh, so you want to backpack around Europe?
Oh, so Cambodia changed your life?
Oh, so you're going to Vegas to party?
Oh, so you're going to price beat me? On what, a Virgin Blue flight to Cairns?
Oh, you're going to go work on the ski fields in Canada?
Oh, you want a package to Phuket?
Oh, BALI?
Oh, you want a ski package in Queenstown?
Oh, you're doing the Inca trail?
Oh, you want to go to NYC on NYE?
Oh, you're going to Carnivale?
Oh, a full moon party!
Oh, you want to go from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh?
Oh, you're a student going back to Delhi? You want it what...? Cheap?!
Oh, BANGKOK!
Oh, LA!
Oh, LONDON!
Oh, BUENOS AIRIES!

OH!!!!!!!!! HAVE ANY OF YOU EVER HAD AN ORIGINAL IDEA EVER?!

I'm yet to meet anyone who's not passionate about travel. Everyone wants to go somewhere, it'd have to be pretty rare for someone to go somewhere, hate it and never leave home again... But, like anything good... when you're around it all the time, it gets a bit shit.

HOWEVER! Every now and again, I get a glimmer of the passion I once had for the whole deal. I get a little bit excited about a destination... I realise I dont know it all, haven't heard it all before and something really tickles my fancy. And today, it was Africa.

I don't even like animals, but the thought of going on one of those 4 wheel drive trucks and camping in that Ngorongoro crater thing, and seeing the rhinos and elephants and zebras and giraffes n shit got me all keen. I looked up flights, worked out how I was gonna get there and where i was gonna go.

3 weeks teaching English in Tanzania, a week or two at an orphanage in Mozambique, a trip to Cape Town, a safari, see the colourful Masai Mara, hear the animals at night, as i live amongst them, see the pink flamingos things and just be in awe of nature. Witness a cheetah chase down an antelope, see a baby elephant following its family along, hear an elephant trumpet, watch a giraffe gallop with its buckled legs... and at the end, 5 days in Zanzibar. It was going to be great!

Then I got a call, and it was some fuckwit who'd missed his flight yesterday... and i was back to being bitter again.

I'm moving! A-fucking-gain.

When Dot and I lived together, we did so for 2.5 years. That's quite a while. Since moving from that house, I have moved nine times... in 3.5 years. And tomorrow, makes number 10!

Fucking ridiculous.

I'm gonna miss this little flat, it's only really just started to feel like home. For the first six months, I didnt even really bother to unpack... I finally did unpack and about a month later, got a call from my estate agent saying that the landlord was selling the property. Yaaaaay for Marsy.

So here's the stats, for Normanby St Prahran.

Dangerous drunken wobbles on the third floor balcony x2
Blokes (official count) x3
Saturday nights in since moving here x6
Episodes of the original 90210 watched since living here x82
Heard the neighbours fucking x14
Saw the dude across the way sitting naked on his (white) couch, lights on x6
Times I've see aforementioned dude having a pull x2
Caught the tram home drunk and missed the stop x4
Parties x1
Houseguests x4
Burned dinners x17
Cold showers x3
Spiders x1
Mice x0
Murdered house-plants x1
Number of times i've left the oven on overnight x22
Months with only channel 10 available x4

I think that's about it. Better luck next time, eh...

Went out last night with a chick i know who can only really be described as an ABSOLUTE IMBECILE.

I don't know how she's come to be a constant character in my life; but she has... What are you meant to do if someone rings you up on a Tuesday to ask you to go out on Saturday night? There's only so many excuses you can come up with!

Anyway, so i had to go. This chick has no conversation at all... she's no real interests and certainly no intelligence... so spending time with her is always thoroughly tedious and inevitably, the conversation always seems to end up being about sex. Which is fine i guess, i like to make rude jokes as much as the next person. But she goes on. and on. and on. about such shit and like, i get it! I had sex once, i know how it's done and at this late stage, it really is... quite boring.

It's like people who go out and while they're supposed be be having fun, they're just sitting around talking about how fucked up they got and how much fun they had last time. It's retarded. Get fucked up now! Have fun now!

Last night there was a new dude in the mix, he was a mincing little queen and i didn't like him. Not cause he was a mincing queen, just because he was a sly little fucker. So between him and Miss Piggy, all they spoke about was sex; or more specifically, bum sex. The ups, downs, ins and outs, of bum sex. In great detail.

DO I CARE.

Anyway, the jewel in the crown of Saturday night had to be when Miss Piggy told us about the one time she'd had bum sex, and how her boyfriend at the time was hung like a donkey and that's why it was the first and last time she'd ever done it. She didn't want to do it, but they'd been going out and year and he was pestering her to do it. So she agreed when he said he'd buy her a new pair of trainers. TRAINERS!

She had pimped her arse out for a pair of shoes, and she was actually telling us about this.

I despair.

Worst Saturday night ever.

Had a coversation with Lisa tonight, my now 7 year old god daughter.

Her - I'm going to be a nurse when i grow up

Me - That's great sweetheart, you need to be good a maths...

Her - I'm good at maths!

Me - Well good for you

Her - What are you going to be?

Me - Well i'm already a grown up... so I'm doing it. This is it.

Her - *pauses*...

Her - So... *processing*... nothing?


Thanks kid, you can fuck off now.

Last week i decided i had the hotts for someone... but it was weird, cause he wasn't hott. He looked like a bird.

So i was a bit surprised by these sudden feelings; i thought i was more shallow than that...

Anyway, that didn't last long and this week i'm over it. There was a small window of opportunity for birdman, and he missed it.

Back to status quo.

Hi internet. I've been thinking again...

Ever since i was about... 20, i reckon... i wanted a baby. The husband was only ever the means to the ultimate end of baby. However, as more and more of my friends sink futher into what they call life, with their mortgages, husbands, babies (now multiple!) and all that, i am thinking this path in life just aint for me. No shit.

Thing is right, i go out. Like, all the time... and that's what i like doing... coming and going, doing whatever i like. I go out, have fun, get wasted, talk shit... that's it. To the extent where whenever i have some sort of obligation or something, i get really shitty. Dont wanna go.

Imagine have an obligation every day of the week to some... parasite. No thanks.

So this new revelation is a bit of a concern, cause for the last 10 years it's been like i was working towards something. Not sure how exactly i was working towards it, just marking time really till it was ok for me to start to breed. Either i got so old i had to just go for it, got knocked up accidentally or the most unlikely of all scenarios; i actually found a husband for real. But since ive decided breeding is a bit of a crap idea... now what?

Just continue to shop, booze, piss money away, fuck arse around... and before you know it, i'm one of those old hag bitches hanging around bars trying to pick up married men. Hmmm. Is this it now i've removed the idea of what i thought i was put on this earth to do?

So i'm concerned.

It's the constitution. It's MABO. It's just... the vibe.

Went to the dentist a couple of weeks ago, for what I thought was going to be a simple cut and polish, ya know. Dude is a new dentist (for me). Had an unfortunate incident with my last dentist over, well... not paying the bill in a timely fashion. So seeing as this guy had been our family dentist for 20 years or something, he just thought he'd ring my dad up and ask him to pay for me. Even though i was 26. And not living at home. And not having seen or spoken to my dad for 2 years. Good one, dentist - could have just sent me a threat of legal action letter and I'd have paid.

ANYWAY, new dentist. Turns out you don't just go and get your teeth cleaned; you need to do things in order.

1. Go for assessment - real dentist looks and records what's going on in the gob. 'Fillings in 5M, 3I... small chip on 8U... Discolouration on 7D, 4Q and 8P' he dictates to the nurse... 'Are you a smoker?' he asks me - redundant question I would have thought. None the less, I try to respond to his enquiry as best I can, considering his blue-gloved hand is stretching my mouth wider than it's ever been stretched before. Response is something vague like 'I used to be', but he knows. He knows the truth.

So all this takes about 20 mins of poking around and talking in code, until he finally takes his blue-gloved hand out of my mouth and addresses me; 'You need a filling'. Not surprising, but still terrifying. 'Oh' I say, feigning bewilderment in a how could this beeeeee kind of way, 'but nothing hurts', I continue.

He picks up his little mirror on the end of a stick, pulls down the mirror from the roof and asks me to open wide again. 'Look!' he says 'You could drive a bus through there!'.

I am mortified.

Okay, thinks I... this doesn't hurt, I've kinda known there must be a filling coming for a while, I'm just gonna risk it, see how long I can go before it really hurts and I really have to pay it attention. It's going to cost money, it's going to hurt. I'm just leave it and see what happens, who knows, it might even fix itself!

Then dentist dude pipes up again... 'I'm getting the vibe off you'...
'Vibe?' Questions I.

This is not the first time someone has got an indescribable 'vibe' off me. Once I lived in a share house and we had a new housemate move in one evening, Italian chap, quite all right... anyway, I got up in the morning and he'd cleared out after only one night. The landlord later rang to let me know it was because he didn't like my vibe. I've never quite understood this.

Anyway, 'Vibe?' Questions I...
'I am getting the vibe off you that you're not going to come back' he says in quite an accusing manner, i thought...

New Dentist is on to me.

'Uh, no, i'm totally coming back!' I begin to over compensate...
'Tell you what, we don't usually do this... but I can do the filling now if you like' he says to me.

My heart begins to thump. I break into a cold sweat.

'Uh uh uh, no, I can't... I have to get back to work! I have to be home for dinner! I have to drive, you're going to need to sedate me....*nervous laugh*! The over compensation continues.


So I didn't get the filling done, and now I've ruined this dentist too and he thinks I'm a raving lunatic. Instead, I decided to make ANOTHER appointment (only another $133) to get the teeth cleaned, but I've promised myself that this filling will be done before i'm 30! BEFORE!*





* I have 39 days to get my shit together

Okay, I'm starting the year as I mean to go on. (Yesterday, the official first day of the year, doesn't count; I was hung like a dog and when I eventually tried to go to sleep I was sort of half dreaming (hallucinating?) that my head was really small and shrinking - SCARY). Anyway, today has been far more productive.

I cleaned my tip of a flat, what can i say; I am possibly the least tidy person you know. I am one of the world's great dumpers. So, first goal for the new year...

Keep nice house.

On that topic, I was given a Filofax for Christmas (it's pink), so I just filled in everyone's birthdays in there as well as all the January stuff I have just been trying not to forget about until now. (V busy, FYI).

A bit of organisation, please.

So those are the two main things. They might sound simple, but they are two of the things that get left behind sometimes.

Late last year after a couple of regretable incidents, I decided to go off the booze, fags and give up the party for a month, replacing it all with healthy living and gym time. It wasn't massively successful (in that i didn't lose 20kgs in a month), though it was a lot easier than i thought it was going to be. That said, ever since that month ended, I have been on turbo. Boozing and gutsing with no restraint, partying like it's 1999... which has been fun, but it's leading to a couple of issues. So number three...

Take it easy on the booze.

Other things I'm half interested in and would like to get done this year:

Become certified diver
Sort photos and get interesting ones printed
Finish acquiring furniture for flat and stop using boxes as coffee table
Plan wicked 3oth b'day
Take better care of finances
Reach peak physical fitness (just a little one for last)

Wish me luck!