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....

For "research purposes", I am currently reading about Dawsons Creek.

I never watched Dawsons Creek, but may I now commend it for utilising the insult, "sexist toad" in the primetime market.

That is all.

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.

Saw Harry Potter tonight. Me and five trillion other people squashed into too many hours worth of epic.

Did you know that epic does not mean long?

No. Epic means: noting or pertaining to a long poetic composition, usually centered upon a hero, in which a series of great achievements or events is narrated in elevated style.

Nowhere in there does it say epic needs to involve between two to three hours of facial grimacing.

I don't mean to knock the film, or the kids in it, or, you know, fun in general, but MY GOD there was a lot of pomp and not a great deal of circumstance in the last few movies I saw described as "epic".

Please stop with the epic. It makes my eyes tired.

There is bike riding to be done.

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.

Recently, due to various factors beyond my control, I have missed two deadlines.

There is something about the feeling of having missed a deadline which is a little bit like the Gwyneth Paltrow movie, Sliding Doors. All you have to do is slightly tweak the wikipedia plot description and you've got a version of my life every time I miss an opportunity that could have been something great, and could have been a complete disappointment. Like so:

Lorin's life splits into two parallel universes which run in tandem. In one universe, Lorin manages to get her proposal/application/script in on time, and in the other she misses it. In the former, her application isn't successful anyway and she finds out that someone she went to university with is staging a three part opera using sock puppets and a glockenspiel instead; she promptly flees the scene, and meets (and falls in love with) an entirely new concept she hasn't thought of yet. In the latter universe, she carries on oblivious in a miserable and constant struggle to coexist with The Guilt that constantly plagues her on account of missing her deadline.

Towards the end of both scenarios, she discovers she is pregnant with her respective partner's baby.

Okay, well, apart from that last bit. I don't have respective partners. But all that other stuff, that's totally how it is, man.

Imagine the life I could be leading. Imagine the life you could be leading. What are you doing just sitting there? Come ON! Get on with it!

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!