Today, I am feeling poorly.

I have, karma-style, brought this on myself by pointing and laughing at my beloved, who contracted an illness called "croup", usually only contracted by babies. Although it is true that he is a lot younger than I am, he is not THAT much younger than I am, so I was finding it amusing that he had a sickness reserved, appropriately, for infants. Was he also suffering nappy rash? Did he want his dummy? etc. Hilarious.

Then, I started sneezing and coughing, wanting to tear out my burning tonsils, attempting to throw off a rampant fever, and desiring simply to lie down until the winds of time swept me into another dimension. Not so hilarious, as it turns out. More hideous, really, than hilarious, when you think about it. Still, there is some conjecture over whether or not I have the same illness as my manfriend (let's call him Babyface) which thus renders croup hilarious again, since hilarity is, as we all know from Australia's Funniest Home Videos, in the eye of the beholder.

If anyone out there has ever tried to write while suffering from a fever, you will know that it is quite a bizarre state to create anything in (apart from, frankly, mucus). I often try to write or plan creative projects when I'm lying in bed with a fever because, not being a drug taker, I rarely get the opportunity to read over my own writing later and think, "What the hell was I thinking? Who wrote this? I don't remember writing this. I don't remember anything! You guys! Are you having me on?" etc. It really is quite loopy what goes through your fevered mind.

Now I want to read this book, but the problem with being sick is that as soon as you're not sick any more, it's the most boring topic on earth.

In fact, clinical tests prove that the five most boring things on earth to discuss are:

Illness (unless it's fantastic like the girl whose spider bite turned out to be a nest of baby spiders on her face)

Other people's dreams (fascinating to you, boring to everyone else)

Stories about pets (I refer here to stories that do not have plots - the mere fact that an animal is in the story somehow meaning that the story can be about how an animal exists, wags its tail, has fussy eating habits, sleeps, has a name etc. Animal stories are only interesting if your animal has saved somebody's life, played an instrument, been involved in a crime of some sort, or (like the lizard in the newspaper recently) eaten a toy version of itself and then excreted it, causing its child owner to exclaim that it is having a baby out of its bottom).

Office procedures (Apparently, discussions relating to the most appropriate method of filing or archiving are always long, no matter who you work for, and they usually involve two very opinionated polar opposite positions, about neither of which anybody else cares).

and

Traffic (As much as it might pain you at the time, someone overtaking you from the inside lane will bore the pants off someone at the barbecue you arrive late at. Unless you actually have an accident, become involved in fisticuffs, or accidentally flick the bird at mother theresa, it's boring. It just is.)

Do you know how I know this? Because I worked on the phones at a radio station. Do you know the top two topics people want to talk about on talkback radio? Traffic, and pets. Dreams comes in at number three, closely followed by children, sob stories (illness comes in here, so does debt) and weather. The only one of these that doesn't make it onto talkback radio is office procedures.

Maybe I should start my own show.

So I did it.

I bought a laptop.

As predicted, the captain of The Nerd Herd had high hopes this morning that I would be coming home with a very expensive mega-laptop that can edit films, shoot them, do the on-set catering, special effects, stunts, legals and so forth.

The battle was over before it began, however, due to the fact that the aforementioned mega-laptops are made out of babies' skin or hen's teeth or woven on a loom or something, and so they're producing them extremely slowly, with the result that there's a four month nerding-list, which you can sign up to with the happy pay-off that you are then relieved of thousands of dollars you probably didn't need anyway.

Sadly, I do not fit into this category. I couldn't afford the one I did end up buying, but it was the cheapest option for what I need it to do. Here is a picture of it, alongside a review that quotes Jean Cocteau and uses the expression "sartorial flourish" to describe what is essentially a word processor.

The Nerd Herd will be furious to hear me say this, because the thing about macs is, they're not "just a word processor". They're a sartorial flourish in a world of artless, faceless technology. They're a way of life. They're why we have opposable thumbs. They're not just imacs or ipods. They're an iLifestyle.

Representing, it could be argued, iPoverty. That specific sort of poverty that comes about through the purchase of a mac product.

Still, at least I have a laptop now, which I hope the Captain of the Nerd Herd is enjoying while he very kindly lends me his.

....

All of the above is, of course, completely irrelevant in the scheme of the universe. As much as I detest several rather central elements of Australia's political climate (and our stance on Burma is not exactly shaking my conviction in this regard), it must really set the tone from "disempowering and frustrating" to "terrifying" when your own government opens fire with automatic weapons on an assembly of monks. Go here if you want your name on something the Chinese will probably ignore, but in the absence of having to risk your life to make your point, you might as well make your point. (I must admit I am not familiar with this organisation so I might find out later that it's a front for an anti-earl-grey-tea organisation or something, but until then I reckon it's worth writing my name down).

Enjoy your weekend.

I guess I brought it on myself, writing a play in which Paris Hilton is an intellectually rigorous thinker obsessed with the big ethical questions and the larger political inequities of international capitalism. Thank you to everyone who has pointed out this article, wherein Paris heads inevitably towards the Paris I dreamed of all those months ago.

Somehow, it seems different when she does it in real life. Possibly because she has not yet used to word "poststructural".

In other news, tomorrow I have to buy myself a new laptop, to replace my broken one: a task I cannot afford and do not have the expertise to carry out alone. This is where my bevvy of nerds comes in handy. I have a herd of nerds. A nerd herd. They are as follows:

1. Stewart, who is currently suffering from a baby disease known as "croup", which, according to Wikipedia, involves a "barking cough" or a "seal-like bark". My sister, who is of a more literary bent, described the cough as "positively Dickensian", which is also true, although he has ignored my suggestions that he lean over a steaming hot tub of water and inhale the steam by candlelight and possibly with the assistance of a strange old man who turns out to be his benefactor.

It must be noted that I, too, suffered from a baby disease at one point (that being slap-face) and that I both sympathise and reserve to right to make outrageously insensitive jokes, on account of having "been there". Much like those who went to 'Nam.

2. Nerd #2 is my old Friend Ablain, who is the reason I passed "Info Tech" in High School, and who gets text messages like "how big is a hundred meg?" when Stewart is at the movies.

3. The sub-nerds. A bloke at my work. A friend called NAME REPLACED FOR LEGAL REASONS who is very handy for REASONS REPLACED FOR LEGAL REASONS. Others, seas of them, you know who you are.

But the problem with nerds is: they never agree. They are knowledgeable and hence obsessive and loyal to their favourite products/shops/software. If you say, "Mac or PC?" in a room full of nerds, you should probably equip yourself with some fairly sturdy weaponry more or less immediately (nerds are usually ninjas).

So tommorrow I expect I will take Stew along, or else keep him on speed dial so he can yelp his seal-like bark into the ear of the supplier who will no doubt see us both coming and wheel out the most expensive thing anyone has ever heard of, and assure Stew (who will assure me) that I would be insane to go for anything less than this futuristic spacecraft, with these add-ons and this extra three year expensive warrantee, which will lapse three days before the thing break downs for good.

Then, of course, I will require "time to think about it" and will ask the rest of the Nerd Herd, who will give me twenty-seven conflicting and equally frightening hypothetical problems with my original position, which will result in a nerd stand-off reminiscent of the "Final Cut Pro" wars of 2006 (don't get me started).

And some people just go to the shops and come back with a laptop.

There are some things that were just delicious when you were a kid, but seem to require effort in these adult years. Cycling in the rain is one of them.

Today, I cycled through the rain on my way home and it was gorgeous.

Cycling in the wind is utterly complain-worthy. Hair in your face, noise in your ears, gale force pushing you wherever it wants you. Anyone who has tried riding a bike up a hill and into the wind has probably gone on to have a bad day in the office if my experience is anything to go by. But cycling in the rain is bracing, exhilarating, fresh, damp. It's like going for a surf in a storm. In your clothes. On a bike.

Mind you, I don't recommend you do it on a busy road. Nobody sees you. Find a bike path in Carlton.

Don't have a bike? Let my friend at Unibicycles pick out one for you: www.unibicycles.com.au

Aaaanyhoo, ringing commercial endorsements aside, bike rides are exercise, and at the end of them, it helps to be fitfully rewarded. At the end of my bike ride, I went for a coffee. I needed to write a few things down before I got on with the writing I had to do, so I ordered a coffee and stared out the window with my pen in my hand.

Rain was bringing people inside. Mothers with small squaking people in prams. Blokes in hard hats. A child with a parent who could have been a grandparent, or a grandparent who could have been a parent. Then, behind me, suddenly, a table full of women. Groups of women, and this is a generalisation, but by God they can talk. Put a group of women together at a table with a cup of coffee and the prospect of rain outside and watch and learn. It's like listening to a Caryl Churchill play.

This brings me once more to my attempt (again) to justify my bad habit (shared with many writers) of eavesdropping in public places around people I don't know. People I do know don't interest me quite so much, because eavesdropping on people you know is usually not very surprising, or else it is terribly surprising, and either way I'm not particularly comfortable gaining such information via covert surveillance when (presumably) I could just have a conversation with said acquaintance and be done with it. Eavesdropping on people I don't know, however, feels like a lesson in writing, in narrative, in the formation of an argument. The lack of context (who ARE these people?) is a useful lesson in storytelling. Sometimes, I find myself madly scribbling things down as I hear them. Expressions, opinions, interruptions.

Today, I heard:

- He left a note, apparently.

- A note?

- On the kitchen table.

- Wow.

(Coffee machine)

- Gone home to live with her parents.

(Coffee machine)

- Unpaid leave, isn't she?

- Yeah, I knew that.

(Coffee machine)

- Position becomes available, I've told them I'm interested in...

- What did they say?

- They can't promise me anything but they'll keep it in mind.

- Hang on, I don't get it. He left the note asking her to move out, she got the note, she moved out. The last time she came in to work was... When did they...?

(Group realisation):

- Aaaaahhh!

This is the moment when, at the next table, I feel like turning around and saying WHAT? WHAT, AH? AH WHAT? WHEN DID THEY WHAT?

But that's the beauty of it. I know nothing. I know nobody. I just listen to bits of something and pick out which voice is interested in a new job (character motivation), which voice is friends with the girl in question (alliances within the story), which voice doesn't know anything but wants to be friends with the others (character status), and which part of the table is silent (silent characters are usually the powerful ones). As I leave the cafe I try to get a picture of these women in my heads, but by now they're talking about something else, and the two men at the table within earshot are loudly talking about whether the Brownlow medalist will reconcile with his father, so I can't hear anything anyway.

Then I ride my bike home in the rain, wondering about someone's partner leaving a note in their kitchen. All in a day's work.

There's a certain trend I'm not enjoying at the moment, when it comes to writing. I'm not enjoying the fashionable films or books we're supposed to find "important" because they're about people who fail to communicate.

During the Melbourne International Film Festival, maybe two thirds of the films I saw were about husbands failing to communicate with wives, parents failing to communicate with children, murderers throttling people because of secrets unuttered.

Then I decided maybe the problem was that this trend is permeating film. I bought a few books. I read "The Memory Keeper's Daughter" and "We Need To Talk About Kevin", the first of which is about a family whose lack of truthful communication makes them numb and angry strangers, and the second of which is about a family whose lack of truthful communication makes them numb and angry strangers.

Reading each book, watching every film, I was always hanging out for the ending. There has to be a pay-off, I thought. There has to be a reason for all this repressed miscommunication being rammed down our throats. Surely the interesting thing isn't the lack of communication itself? Surely there's more to this writing than "people shouldn't keep secrets" or "people don't talk to each other anymore in this soulless society" or some similar indictment on the contemporary world?

But apparently emotionally stunted repression with predictably dichotomous results is so hot right now.

I'm bored by it. Bring on the talking. Bring on Aaron Sorkin's novel-writing career. Dickens Does Post 9/11. Somebody SAY SOMETHING, for crying out loud.

Just a few words of warning. If someone comes to your house and asks with kind eyes whether they can use your house as a filming location, tell them the house is chock full of asbestos, cough thickly, and slam the door.

Location Managers on films are always gorgeous, divine, lovely people. They're the sort of people you see in kids' story books, picking potatoes in the fields and helping children into brightly coloured gumboots so they can jump into puddles and enjoy the simple joys of splashing. If location managers want to film something in your house, or your front garden, they will do anything. They will learn your birthday, your mother's name, the number of points by which your team won on the weekend. They will get your kids tickets to the movies. They will offer to pay you, to put you up in a "flash hotel". They will peer deep into your eyes with their gorgeous open faces, faces that speak of kindness and hot chocolate by the fire, faces that indicate that it doesn't matter what your answer is, they will always share a deep understanding with you, about the important things in life.

Close. The. Door. Do not be fooled. Look away! LOOK AWAY, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SACRED.

You see, on Friday, we filmed in my house. Us. Standing There Productions. We used my house as a location.

For all intents and purposes, I was the location manager. I was the one who convinced me it would be a good idea. I was the one who looked deep into my own eyes and shared a moment with myself. What could possibly be slightly annoying or inconvenient about using my own house to film in? After all, the filming schedule is only four hours, it will hardly take ANY time, and it requires NO SET UP.

Well, I wish I could post a photograph here of the dire state of affairs in what used to be my home office, but I can't find my camera. I can't find anything, except several hundred kilometres of gaffa tape, half a dozen discarded light bulbs, multicoloured gells and cords and spots on the wall to mark eye-lines (one of which is fashioned from an old birthday card) and an assortment of props. There is a pair of waterproof pants, too, which I do believe belong to our cinematographer, but which were not necessary while filming inside, so they have been discarded, thoughtfully, on the work desk. That's right next to the lamp from my bedroom which has been removed from there and installed here instead, with a trillion watt globe in it such that turning it on will instantly blind you, whereupon you will trip over the pile of old scripts we removed from within shot on set and stored, in a large wonky pile, on the floor.

I am also, for all intents and purposes, the Standing There Productions OH&S officer. Obviously, I'm fired.

But as you can see, I brought this on myself. YOU can avoid it.

When I was helping to write the coffee table book "20 Years Of Neighbours" (no, really), I discovered something mildly astonishing. From memory, it goes like this: if you want to buy a house in Pin Oak Court in Vermont South (where Neighbours is shot), you have to sign a contract with Grundies. Among other things, the contract specifies that you will notify them of any changes to the physical appearance of your property. There was a famous time when one of the residents in Pin Oak Court wanted to buy a new letterbox. What happened on Neighbours that week? Well, Susan Kennedy went out and bought a new letterbox, didn't she.

Of course, those guys are paid a fee. I'm not. Mind you, I don't have to answer the door to giggling groups of Neighbours fans asking if Harold is home, or British backpackers shagging in the backyard.

Don't do it, peeps. Unless there's a chance you can get in on the film set catering. In which case: open the throttle.

PS. Check out this hilarious article, as if you needed any more convincing.

PPS. When I was a kid, I thought "for all intents and purposes" was "for all intense and purposes", so I am never one hundred percent confident using the phrase. I also thought there was a story book called "Alison Wonderland", about Mr and Mrs Wonderland's little girl, Alice. Just saying. Hope I got it right this time.

Standing There Productions has had some frustrating times over the four years we've existed.

We've had people saying to us, "If you put someone famous in it, we might consider it". We've had long responses and brief, sharp: "Not interested, thanks". Rita and Stewart and I can pick out the word "Unfortunately" on a page from a standing start.

So it's pretty exciting on those occasions when something good happens.

We've been pretty thrilled this year when good things have happened to us (the development funding from the Australian Children's Television Foundation and the award nomination for our festival show for starters) and to other people (Robin Geradts-Gill winning his script award, Rachel, Rita and Nick's film being funded)... but I have to admit, there is something pretty special about seeing Rita Walsh personally being recognised for her hard work and talent.

Rita was funded by Film Victoria today to do what is called an "attachment" with producer Jan Chapman (who works with Jane Campion, at the moment on a film called Bright Star). An attachment is kind of like an apprenticeship. It's a fly on the wall kind of thing. Rita, as we all know, does not sleep. She has worked on all sorts of projects, from Kath and Kim to our short film, but this is an opportunity to get right into the industry at the top level and to learn a lot. It's a new step for Rits, and although IT IS IN SYDNEY AND THIS MEANS TWO OF MY CLOSEST FRIENDS HAVE DESERTED ME FOR A CITY WITH POKIES, I couldn't be more pleased that she has an adventure ahead of her, and that people other than me think she's capable of making the most of an exciting opportunity.

Although she does laugh like a guinea pig.