Doesn't everything and everyone just sometimes conspire to add up to the most infuriating collection of circumstances in the universe, ever invented?

You know what I was saying about writers reading?

You know how I was saying writers should read?

Writers should not read Ian McEwan. At least not if they're me.

Just thought I should provide that small caveat to my wholesome advice. As Nick Hornby says, if you don't like a book, do yourself and everyone else a favour and stop reading it, because there is no "right" or "wrong" when reading. You're always right. It's the pure selfish joy of reading. You get to put the book down.

By the way, for the record: the book is Saturday, and what I don't like is long, slow description of a man stumbling numbling through a right wing perspective he just feels wash over him like instinct. McEwan is smarter than that and should stop pretending he's not actually representing a more considered perspective. I didn't like this when Flannagan did it with the terrorist book and I don't like it when Helen Garner does it. Smart writers making their characters stupid and innocent thereby depriving them of the eloquence to defend the perspective they are invented to represent. It seems to be to be weak or dishonest. I think I'll go back to the young adult fiction. Immediately.

I am on a health kick. A serious health kick. I haven't had pasta for a month. A MONTH! For those of you who don't know me, the only thing I eat more than pasta is twinings earl grey tea, which, should I decide to stop consuming that as well as pasta, would be under the control of administrators and making serious-faced announcement in news conferences about closing factories worldwide within a week.

I am on a health kick because I used to:

1. Ride my bike everywhere.

2. Walk everywhere else.

3. Go to gym at least four nights a week.

4. Throw a frisbee at least once a week right through summer.

5. Play mixed soccer with my hilarious friends every Sunday.

6. Be vegetarian and therefore eat very well due to the constant (sometimes infuriated) concern of others that I might die of scurvy/iron deficiency/B12 poisoning/grout or similar. Use of pasta in vegetarian diet = necessary for survival.

Given the insanity of the above routine, I slowed down somewhat at some point. I now:

1. Walk everywhere and once read somewhere that it's great exercise ergo it justifies the consumption of vast quantities of pasta and Cascade Green beer (it's sustainable! it's organic! it probabaly cures cancer!).

2. Have Foxtel.

3. Donate to my local gym so that other people can enjoy it in luxurious privacy.

4. Have become so particular about how I throw a frisbee that I don't like playing with people who aren't my Dad or my sister, both of whom have, you know, lives.

5. Think back on the soccer playing days with longing, even though I am no longer speaking to half the players on the team (there is no i in team, but watch out for freaks, is all I'm saying). The other half? The good half? Well, turns out, they have, you know, lives (in Paris, mostly, I'm looking at YOU MELANIE HOWLETT).

6. Am no longer vegetarian. This is not something I am proud of. Also, it is not something I monitored very well. Thus on top of my well-considered vegetarian diet I added meat. So basically I went: meat goes well with pasta. How delightful!

Anyway. So. The health kick begins.

On Monday, Stew and I went to what is known, disturbingly, as a "pump class", wherein we were both rendered incapable of movement except in short increments similar in appearance to slow motion replays of the Olympic Walking events. This physical disability was a condition, cruelly, only curable by doing more exercise. We are, therefore, on an exercise bender, fending off the inevitable crippled exhaustion of an unfitness hangover, which should probably kick in some time during the weekend. At which point I plan to have a Cascade Green beer. No, they do not sponsor this website, although they should feel welcome to.

So what does this have to do with writing? And Standing There Productions? Well, everything actually, since you can't write without a clear head. You can't write if you're distracted or you broke up with someone or you've got a hangover or your foot hurts. You have to be clear and sharp. Which is why I'm doing the health kick in the first place.

It was a great idea. And I do feel kind of zingy. Trouble is, I keep dropping off to sleep. And I can't move. Healthy body, healthy mind might be a maxim backed up by science, but what they forgot to tell me is: health kick to the body = roundhouse kick to the head. A roundhouse kick is a gym term, by the way, like "clean and jerk", which I personally think should be used in other contexts (see earlier discussion of soccer team).

I sit in the State Library, I feel the muscles that did not know they existed before this morning's swim, and I hope the healthy body comes soon because the healthy mind is kind of missing the lazy and relaxed peace of knowing it remains superior.

Speaking of which, it's going to this tonight at the State Library. Poetry me up, world!

As a writer, regardless of how much you actually write about politics, it's generally a good idea to know what's going on in the world and know what you think about it. Even if you write kids's books or comedy skits or instruction manuals. If you know how to use language and make observations, you're making choices all the time. Choices are decisions. Decisions are based on beliefs or desires or circumstances. Beliefs, desires and circumstances are what politics are all about.

As the entire world now knows, America has a new President-elect.

And now we try to figure out what that means, what it changes, and in what ways it is good, bad, interesting or hilarious.There are jokes going around about how, once again, a black man has been given America's worst job, cleaning up after white people. There are tongue-in-cheek predictions he'll paint the white house black. There are exciting campaign photographs that bring a lump to the throat of the most cynical and the least interested. At the very least, the crowd numbers are impressive.

Now, nobody in the universe completely understands the US election process. Basically: lots of people voted for Obama, including some old people and many young people. CNN did a graph - they've got a graph for everything - showing how as the voters got older, they were less likely to vote for Obama. Somewhere around 66% of young voters voted for him, which is, to use a technical term, totally unheard of.

Something particularly difficult to understand about the American voting process is the concept that more than one thing is being decided at the one time. For instance, if you were voting in California, yesterday, you voted on - among other things - Proposition 8. The result of the Proposition 8 vote is why a lot of people who would be happy in America today, are not. The same goes for Florida and Arizona apparently, although you wouldn't know it from media reports. It's a shame that on a day that will be remembered for bringing different races and creeds together in a spirit of multicultural understanding, it's feeling to some like another battle: between race and sexuality.

All of this is interesting, even if men in suits talking about politics bore the pants off you, because there are a whole lot of young Americans for whom the pants - at least at the moment - are not bored anywhere at all. And all the way over here, in Australia, it feels like we've got a new President.

9 years ago, when I was on exchange in America, Noam Chomsky spoke passionately at my college (Boston College) about the role America had as the world's policeman. This was before 9/11 and before the war. It was a week after the Timorese voted for their independence, with murderous results, which is why we were discussing the world policeman thing.

I put my hand up and asked Chomsky why America As World Policeman wasn't the same as American Imperialism. Since then, I've learned the subtle differences by virtue of the fact that my worst fears have been demonstrated time and time again. Several times, I've wished the rest of the world could vote in the American election. I think it changes lots of things. Not "just politics" but lots of things.

The day after John Howard was voted out in Australia, I heard the word "multiculturalism" being used on television by an elected official. I was shocked. Previously, the word rendered any subsequent argument obsolete. I actually have to admit to being a bit embarrassed to hear it being used. It had become such a dirty word, such a softie-left-bleeding-heart thing to say, that I wanted the speaker (I can't remember who it was) to qualify it, lest the argument be dismissed. Of course, there was no qualification, and it seems silly now. It's subtle, but language changes because of politics, and vice versa. In fact, language, the right to use it, and the right to be a writer, are all elements of society that people in less liberal societies cannot afford to take for granted. I think it's good to remember that.

By the way, in case those aren't enough links for you: be grateful your job doesn't extend to every aspect of your private life, as this guy's does. Yeesh. All the best to those kids, that's all I can say.