I will update you on the Sydney Writers' Festival soon, once I have finished watching this guy on youtube over and over and over again.

Check. It. Out.

He was at the Sydney Writers' Festival. He no longer is. Neither am I. This is a tragedy whose sharp, pointy, bitey edges are currently being sanded down by youtube, two cds, and a beautiful book.

Go here for more of him.

This morning, the checkout lady in Piedemontes looked at me and burst into tears.

Quite quickly, she went from speaking Italian to the woman in the queue in front of me, to looking at me and getting all choked up and apologising into a tissue.

Now I'm worried about her and I want to take her one of the seven dollar bunches of Piedemontes roses. What happened? Did I remind her of someone? She was sixty or something and her manager was a seventeen-year-old in a tie. Did he look a little bit smug? I couldn't quite tell.

This one goes out to the checkout lady...

Oh Piedes checkout lady
You spoke in different tongues
You were clever with the register
And very good with sums

You smiled at your customers
You didn't think you'd cry
And when you did I got a shock
And now I wonder why.

What was it that made you sad?
Somebody at work?
Was it some obnoxious little prick,
Some Piedemontes jerk?

You turned the little lightbox off
That says "Register Three"
You put the closed sign on the bench
And all because of me

I'm sorry that I made you cry
I hope you're feeling better
If you'd like some jerk to cop it
I can write a nasty letter

I think perhaps it isn't that
I think it's something bad
So I hope you feel less lonely
And I hope you feel less sad

And I hope you have a donut
(You can get them free upstairs)
And in the chocolate lolly aisle
You stock some nice eclairs

There's nothing good on telly
But have a bath, it's total heaven
Meanwhile I promise next time
I'll stick to register seven.

Our poetry slam (not so much a slam at this point, more of a gentle open mic night in a smoky bar) is garnering some interesting responses.

See the comments below for our latest addition - a poem about bad poetry. I feel the need to respond to said poem, being as I am an ex student of poetry and sharing similar feelings about self-importance disguised as tortured verse. So, here is my contribution to the debate so far:

The Rhymer has written a poem
It's a poem on writing bad verse
Its tone is sincere and heartfelt
And just a little bit terse

Which reflects my own opinions
On the poems my classmates made
When I went to poetry classes
And a spade wasn't called a spade

A spade was called a metaphor
For yearning and love unrequited
So when they offered fiction class
I became extremely excited

But I know I shouldn't critique:
My poetry is really amateur
But so long as you rhyme occasionally
Who cares about iambic pentameter?

The Rhymer lives in Canada
Where Spring is the dawning season
Winter creeps away to Melbourne
For some ungodly reason

So thanks to The Rhymer for writing
And thanks for the winter verse
Judging from some of our entries
Things could get a lot worse

Poetry from the pen of someone who knows about my computer skills and who doesn't know Nick from a bar of soap but who hasn't let that stop him, let me introduce our next poem in the poetry-slam.

'Twas an Internet Butler named Nick,
Went abroad on account of his dick,
Who had promised he'd find,
Women who'd blow his mind,
'Cos his accent was Aussie and thick.

But his mates at home were all dark,
Especially our friend Lorin Clarke,
Her few skills in I.T,
Could not be called mighty,
And relied on Nick's trustworthy spark.

But on the eve of this comedy fest,
Let's remember how much we've been blessed,
We'd not have this site,
Nor poems this shite,
If it weren't for Nick's generous bequest.

(Now, Nick, there is slim possibility this is libellous. I know some very good lawyers but I must say I kind of like any poet who refers to me as "dark". So many layers of meaning).

Big kudos to our new Mystery poet. See you at the Comedy Festival, you bawdy wordsmith.

A couple of diary entries ago, I declared that if someone could write a rhyming couplet about the comedy festival and the fact that the Internet Butler, our friend Nick, has gone overseas... I would give them comedy festival tickets.

Since then, the following submissions have been received:

We're sad for Nick, our funny friend
Whose time with us is soon to end.

... which is so good I can imagine studying it for year twelve English... And then there's the pitch-perfect and painstainkly true:

Comedy is funny but won't stop us grieving
For Nick our friend, who is leaving.

Now, I understand that a lot of you don't know what a rhyming couplet is, and a lot of you don't know Nick and a lot of you have never heard of the Comedy Festival. However, everyone can write poems.

Write me some and ye shall be rewarded.

If you don't want to be acknowledged, just go to the Contact Us page. I promise I won't tell.

Bad poetry is not encouraged but will be patiently tolerated and nurtured at the highest possible standard by our staff. In other words, bring on the poetry: good, bad or otherwise.

Last night I got heckled at a comedy gig.

No, I wasn't on stage. I was in the audience. Yianni was on stage. He's the one who heckled me.

I love working with comedians.

To be fair, I kind of had it coming. I'm working on my reputation as a hard-arse director who doesn't let anyone get away with anything. Except for a public heckling. He's allowed to get away with that because he has to have an outlet for the pent up rage and frustration of being subjected to my forensic precision day after day in the pursuit of a better final product.

I like to think of Yianni as a ballerina and me as the artistic director with the big stick and the limp from that injury years ago that put an end to my brilliant career in dance.

But there’s no need to tell Yianni that, if you see him.

Now, if life were a Shakespeare play at the moment, it would definitely be a tragicomedy. All this face-achingly ridiculous comedy that I’m going to night after night at various different venues around Melbourne, juxtaposed against a couple of really quite tragic events. Namely the departure of Nick Jaffe, the brilliantly named (it was him, not me) Internet Butler for Standing There Productions.

Nick, who we originally knew through Stewart, our Director of Photography, from Art School, volunteered to help out on our film, I Could Be Anybody. Turned out, he was nearly everybody. I can’t remember what credit we ended up giving him, but there wasn’t a credit that said “nearly everything”, so we just short-changed him completely.

Anyway. Nick is leaving us to live in Germany. We’re trying not to take it personally. I went to his going away party the other night and someone accidentally burned a hole in my neck with a cigarette. A lasting scar to remind me of the metaphorical hole left in Standing There Productions now that Nick can only provide his Internet Butlering service from overseas.

Nick, we will miss you. Probably more than we’ll give you credit for. As usual.

As for the other “tragedies” in life at the moment, well they’ve been eclipsed now. I can’t remember them. Probably just things like me wearing brown with black. But needless to say Shakespeare would find a way of weaving it all in to the Comedy Festival/Nick leaving subplots in a way that was both poignant and naughty.

But I’m not Shakespeare. So, in summary: comedy is funny and it’s sad that Nick is leaving. Turn it into a rhyming couplet and I’ll get you a free ticket to the Comedy Festival.