If you ever need inspiration for writing, the media during the Christmas season provideth.

Not only are there TV shows on during prime time that didn't quite work the first time they were aired (very good lessons, all of them) but the newspapers run stories like P-plater caught drunk with bathtub and Paris Hilton's Parents Enjoy Watching Her Sex Tape.

There are also people writing actually quite interesting things, although hardly any of these people are Australian, unfortunately. For instance, this, which is essentially a gossip column about Freud, and of course it is riddled with hilaaaarious freudian references and double meanings, but Freud is more interesting to me personally than a front page story about a country singer arriving at an airport (see here).

Also, anyone who has read Patrick Suskind's Perfume and is interested to hear it is being made into a film: read this.

I wish I could read more. In the meantime, I will read what little I can, watch bad TV, listen to good music, and wait for inspiration.

But inspiration, like everything else in my schedule at the moment, has a due date. The deadline for inspiration is the third of Jan. If I'm not writing on the third of Jan, I am firing myself.

It's official. I've been warned.