Sometimes, the Melbourne Film Festival lets you down. Of course it does. If it didn't, it would be peopled entirely by the same demographic. This is not the case. Sometimes it's a comedy film and there's a comedy crowd. Sometimes it's a religious film and it's full of people wearing tiny gold icons under their windcheaters. Sometimes it's a music documentary and there are people in heavy metal t shirts wandering in with popcorn.

But it doesn't let ME down often, because it's fairly hard to let me down. It's fairly difficult for me not to find even the bits that I don't find interesting kind of... interesting... on account of the fact that someone else is finding them interesting.

Anyhoo. So there's this friend of mine. I spend each festival thinking, "Oh, she would have LOVED that film! That film was MADE for her!"

Then she calls me up and says, "Can I trail along to one of your films?" and I say "Oh, you're going to WET YOUR PANTS this film will be SO GOOD".

Anyway, last year she came to three. Two of them were terrible. I only saw two truly terrible films last year. One of them was so badly projected we got our money back. The third film? Ace. Unreal. Really excellent.

Which is why I thought it would be safe to assume I could "let her trail along" tonight to see a film about... well, now, that would be telling.

It was a film that should be shown to anyone who thinks they're creative, because it's an interesting eight minute film. It went for two hours. It's a film that teaches people that you should always edit more than you think you should out of whatever it is you're creating.

My friend is beginning to think she is cursed.

Otherwise today I saw Eagle vs Shark, a New Zealand film, which was gorgeous and hilarious and which is on again on August 12. Funny as hell.

The last film I saw today was about Alexander Litvinenko, I am SURE I am spelling that wrong but I'm too tired to even use google... Anyway I have written here previously about him and I've always been fascinated by his story and the connections between Putin and the secret service/death squads/terrorism within Russia. Anyway, wow. Writers and people who say things about politics that people in power don't like can get themselves into some serious trouble in some countries.

Good to remember when you're complaining about deadlines. Which I will hereby refrain from doing. Good night.

Here it is, folks. My first official backdown. My first genuine complaint about the State Library, previously listed as one of my Favourite Places On Earth.

WHO THINKS IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO TUNE A PIANO IN A LIBRARY WITHIN EARSHOT OF THE PEOPLE STUDYING IN THE DESIGNATED QUIET ROOM (many of whom have left) FOR A PERIOD OF (so far) AN HOUR AND A HALF BY PLAYING ONE NOTE OVER AND OVER AND HITTING THAT EXACT SPOT IN YOUR BRAIN THAT IS TRYING TO CONCENTRATE.

I think I have officially lost the last quiet, untouchable, peaceful writing haven left on this earth. So long as there is the possibility I will EVER have to endure this TORTURE again, it is, officially, dead to me now.

WHY IS THERE A PIANO IN A LIBRARY ANYWAY?

Oh, please, make it stop.

PS. Any friends who are cheeky enough or members of my family reading this can feel free not to use the word "melodramatic" in relation to any or all of the above, for fear of me imposing stringent sanctions in the future.

PPS. The piano tuner has moved from a middle C to a high C. This is both a relief and a sign that we may be putting up with this for another hour. The dude at the desk across from me has officially discarded his laptop in favour of a skateboarding magazine.

Things you see when you wander through your old university to get a fragment of a beer bottle removed from your bike wheel and to use the library:

1. Religious groups, everywhere. When did this happen? What brought this on? The answer is probably VSU, but I do not recall even the POTENTIAL for people with T shirts tucked into their jeans to talk loudly about Christ outside the library back in my day.

2. A couple breaking up on the "break up" bench nobody otherwise sits on outside what used to be the law library.
Him: What, and you can't understand why I'm angry?
Her: Yes, I understand. I told you I understand. You don't see how your behaviour effects people when you drink.
Him: I can, but I was angry.
Her: No, because if you could see, you'd stop doing it.
Him: Oh my God. (Spins around to see if there's an audience. Discovers there is, in the form of a protest)...

3. ... The "protest" consists of a crowd of (I'm not exaggerating) six people with a megaphone and a banner saying "Stop The Melbourne Model". Someone shouts through a megaphone, "Wake up, People!" A dude wearing boat shoes sails past on a scooter eating a free sausage from the commerce BBQ and looks disgusted. Some things never change.

4. Meanwhile, a pizza is being delivered to someone on the other side of campus by the pizza shop, which has purchased (from our clever friend at unibicycles) huge three-wheeler bikes with which to transport pizza anywhere across campus.

5. The library is equally full of people researching the psychological consequences of genocide and people looking at facebook while drinking coffee they have snuck into the library under their jackets.

6. It's my grandma's birthday so I call her from the downstairs phone I always used to call her from. She recognises the background noise almost immediately.

Now I'm back online researching the Australian political system, the more broad-brush details of which I seem to have forgotten since studying it at the above esteemed institution. Tonight, off to the film festival to enter other worlds. Ones I've never been a part of.

I often wonder what the tax department must think of me. Over the past two weeks, I have purchased the following tax deductable work-related items:

1 Book about literary women, which I've already read but some bastard borrowed it and never gave it back and it's a cracker. Ten bucks on the Readings bargain table, it's extremely well written by someone who used to write for The New Yorker and I can't remember what it's called but I recommend it if you want to know about Ayn Rand or Gertrude Stein in a way that makes you feel like you went to school with them.

1 CD of Maya Angelou reading I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (cos she speaks good).

1 Dawson's Creek DVD (for listening to the infernal but sometimes funny dialogue and attempting not to shout through everything Katie Holmes says).

1 Degrassi Junior High DVD (for listening to the dialogue, checking how clunky the "themes" are, and revisiting my early crush on Joey Jeremiah).

1 Flight of the Navigator DVD (oh my childhood self wriggles with delight).

1 Full pass to the Melbourne International Film Festival, including tickets to a documentary about the American health system and a female revenge fantasy comedy horror.

1 uni-ball fine liner (green).

1 ticket to "Knocked Up" (shut up, I needed a break from the highbrow intellectualism not reflected anywhere in this list).

1 ticket to "Blades of Glory" (again, it was a weekend break - what are you, the thought police?).

And some costs brought about by an upcoming trip for the law talking job.

So, a Will Ferrell film and the Romanian goat herding documentaries of MIFF... together at last. My kind of universe.

In other news: I finished my book, Vernon God Little, which of course everyone else in the known universe has already read. Guess what, world? I liked it, too! Really well written, funny as hell, smart and thought-wrangling. I do like a thought wrangle.

He's won the booker prize and now he's been praised by me. DPC Pierre must be pinching himself.

Having checked out the wikipedia page on the book, I am even more proud of finishing it on account of the fact that 35% of all Britons polled who read it did not finish it. Slackers.

Oh, the other thing I claimed on tax: expensive internet. Better go and use it to do some actual work.

Bit of a heads up, to those of you living in Melbourne...

It's raining outside. Or, in my case, it's raining inside.

Weather is always such a conversation in Melbourne, due to its erratic nature, and I must confess to having had a rather less productive day than usual on account of it. Riding your bike to the library is not such a delicious prospect when staying home in front of the heater is an option. You can still write, right? Right. And I will, when I get these other nine million things done.

My bike looks inviting, as always, but the prospect of riding home in the sleet, with wet handlebars, a wet bike seat, and drenched hair is a little unappealing, even for me (someone who does not normally have any objections to unattractive public displays such as going out for lunch in a tracksuit).

So, it's an inside day. I'm glad I'm not a postie.

Each year, my head explodes when the Melbourne International Film Festival Guide comes out. It really does literally explode, clear off my shoulders.

And today is the day.

THANK YOU to whoever at the film festival listened to the requests for everything to be listed on the same page. I know I, for one, filled out hundreds of individual response slips with responses like PLEASE LIST THINGS PROPERLY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD written on them in red pen. Last year, it was like a computer game. It was like a quest. It was a feat of mental gymnastics just to get to the movie in time.

If you look closely at this photo, you can see "PLEASE FIX FESTIVAL PROGRAMME" written in red pen. This is one of the forty-seven versions of the same request that I wrote (literally - I saw forty-seven films and I filled in a form for each of them). Like so:

Which brings me to the problem with having a full festival pass: it enables you to go to everything. And yes, if you go to twenty films over 19 days, you have justified the $300 ticket, BUT...

If someone says "Buy this credit card for three hundred bucks - now, go to your favourite shop. The credit card is unlimited."

What are you going to do?

You're going to go completely bezerk and buy as much stuff as you can. You'll be buying things in a size 24 JUST IN CASE YOU MEET SOMEONE who is a size 24.

So, you want to see EVERYTHING (with a few exceptions, the sight of which fill you with enormous relief) because you CAN.

Greed, I suppose, is what I'm describing. Film greed. One very time-consuming sin.

Let the games begin....

Yesterday I donated blood.

Not having a regular income, I have decided that donating something I DO HAVE is probably as good an idea as any, and so with the blood.

Do you know what they say to you when you donate blood? They say, "Thank you for saving three lives".

Then they give you a milkshake and a party pie.

How good is that?

I get to feel a sense of achievement while lying back in my lunch break reading Paris Hilton's jail diaries from a dreadful magazine I would normally scorn. I wonder if reading Paris Hilton's jail diaries actually effects the blood I'm donating. Whoopsie. Next time I will take a book.

Donate blood - I tell you, it's the lazy person's way of saving the world: go here if you've never done it.

Anthony Lane on the Transformers movie: oh yes.

Also, I note with interest and a certain degree of horror that The New Yorker now has fiction podcasts, where you can listen to stories being read while you're supposed to be writing them yourself. Go here if you need to lose even more time than the internet already demands of you.

Favourite bits from Anthony Lane so far:

"There are two types of Transformers: the Autobots, who are fine, upstanding citizens in pretty colors, and the Decepticons, most of whom are mean, vengeful, and beige."

... because I very much enjoy the use of beige as an insult.

And also:

As a passerby exclaims in the midst of the film, “This is easily a hundred times cooler than ‘Armageddon’!” To be proud of your achievement is one thing, but to plant film critics inside your movie and review it favorably as you go along: that takes genius.

... almost makes me want to see the film. Almost.

And he links Transformers to Werner Hertzog, which is no mean feat, just quietly.

Not that, and I hasten to add this before someone else does, I have seen either film or have a right to an opinion about them. Still. Never stopped me yet.

So I was riding my bike into the sunset the other day (literally, straight into the sunset - I know what those flat earth guys were on about - sometimes it feels like you're going to ride straight over) and I remembered something.

I remembered the main difference between riding a bike and driving a car or walking. It's not the lactic acid in your thighs. It's not the lack of a dashboard and a glovebox or an ipod and an umbrella.

I was riding my bike into the sunset and I looked up and I remembered! The greatest thing about riding a bicycle is that you CAN look up. You can look up and take in the whole sky and the entire 180 degree view of the universe and you won't have an accident or fall over or crane your neck peering through half an inch of windscreen.

It's an unreal thing to be able to do. There really is no other way to travel, at least not for the truly self-righteous such as myself. "Yes, everyone," I think as I ride along, "I am getting excercise AND helping the environment AND getting from A to B, all for a few hundred bucks I otherwise would have spent on petrol, thus promoting the oil market and continuing the divisive global resource war which the government today admitted was the reason we are at war in Iraq! Huzzah! What are you fools doing in your four wheeled horror boxes? You can't even see the sunset, you complacent boxed-up morons!"

Bear in mind, until a week or so ago, I myself was a boxed-up moron of the highest order.

Thank you again to the prince among men who sold me my freedom at a bargain price. Want some? Go here.

Meanwhile, I'm counting down the days to the film festival, to and from which I will of course cycle. Presuming my joy extends that far into winter, which is a noble presumption indeed.

I'm in the library. I'm going to go and do some work so I can meet my appointment with this evening's sunset. Hooroo!