In the sport of Sydney v Melbourne, which is very popular down in the bottom right hand corner of this country, I have usually abstained.

Well, that's not entirely true. I have usually said that Sydney people are interested in money and Melbourne people are interested in culture. I've said that Sydney is expensive and Melbourne is cheap. I've said the food is better, the art is better, the bands are better, the pubs are better, the boys are better, the girls are better, and the people, well, they're just better in Melbourne. Melbourne's better. That's basically been the idea behind my otherwise very neutral position of abstinence from the debate.

HOWEVER.

Not only did I recently have a very lovely time in Sydney with several engaging and hilarious Sydneysiders, where I enjoyed the benefits of a culturally diverse, intellectually challenging, absurdly cheap writers' festival, but today I picked up the newspaper in Melbourne and I read an article comparing the Melbourne Writers' Festival to the Sydney Writers' Festival.

When I finished reading the article, I put the newspaper down and I attempted to regulate my breathing. I attempted not to pass out from shock. I attempted to come to grips with this thought going through my head:

Wow. Maybe Sydney IS better than Melbourne.

The article is here.

Basically, the Melbourne Writers' Festival people say (and I HOPE you were misquoted):

1. We want the Melbourne festival to be as successful as the Sydney one
2. We want the funding to enable that
3. The reason the Sydney festival works is that most of the events are free
4. We wouldn't make the Melbourne festival free

.... which begs the question: huh?...

No, the Melbourne folk are saying they want the money to make the festival bigger, but they don't want the events to be free because that "devalues" the festival and it means the same small group of wankers who go every year because they can afford it might be overcrowded by the masses of other dudes who might go along because... well... because the EVENTS ARE FREE.

Anyway.

I'm moving to Sydney. Honestly. Who thinks like that.

Devalues?

I tell you what. I flew to Sydney this year AND last year to go to the Sydney Writers' Festival because the flights are cheap and the events are free. When it's not free, it's ten bucks, or fifteen. The most I paid was $35 to see Richard E Grant in the Opera House and he wasn't even close to the best thing I saw. The best thing I saw was ten bucks.

I know Sydney has more money for funding, but COME ON, Melbourne. Lift your game. I've been to Sydney two years in a row and the Melbourne Writers' Festival only once. It was too expensive and it was full of people who used to teach me English at university.

So, after reading that tiny article in the paper, Sydney v Melbourne is actually looking like a contest for the first time in living memory. If it weren't for the pokies in the pubs, I might just pack up and go.

Although, there's no Morrocan Soup Bar in Sydney. Is there?

I will update you on the Sydney Writers' Festival soon, once I have finished watching this guy on youtube over and over and over again.

Check. It. Out.

He was at the Sydney Writers' Festival. He no longer is. Neither am I. This is a tragedy whose sharp, pointy, bitey edges are currently being sanded down by youtube, two cds, and a beautiful book.

Go here for more of him.

Melanie Howlett, Standing There Captain of Industry, double-dared me to do this.

Not exactly bungee jumping but shoosh. I was double-dared to go to literary festival. In my opinion, that makes me hardcore.

So, when I went to the Sydney Writers' Festival, I decided I was going to engage in book fidelity from then on. I was to read one book, finish it, and read the next. Excuses were only excuses, I said, and if I could read the entire Anne of Green Gables series from start to finish as a kid, how come I can't read like that now? What kind of a person am I?

Then I read Nick Hornby's opening chapter in The Complete Polysylabic Spree, which says that if you're finding a book boring then the book is boring. Nothing wrong with you. Something wrong with the book. Which makes me feel a whole lot better about Dostoevsky.

Since not finishing Crime and Punishment, my reading pattern has degenerated into the following shambles:

* Half way through an article in The New Yorker about Christopher Hitchens.
* One chapter into "Down and Dirty Pictures", which I started because it's the first in a series that includes "Easy Riders Raging Bulls".
* One chapter into Easy Riders Raging Bulls, which I put down so I could read Down and Dirty Pictures first.
* Half way through John Banville book (The Sea) which I was really enjoying reading but then took away with me for a weekend and never unpacked my bag.
* Half way through Saturday by Ian McEwan, which travelled with me for most of my weekend trips, tram rides to work, and I think to Sydney before I started reading it. Good book, turns out.
* Dave Eggers short stories. About four stories in.
* Love in a Time of Cholera, which I'm pretty sure everyone expects me to have read and which I have never attempted although now I am at least relocated geographically from the opening scene.
* I have read the blurb of, and been to the launch of, a book by a friend of mine, which is sitting on the bedside table (the book, not the friend, thank goodness because the book is making me guilty enough).
* Started Bleak House (previously having "studied" it, never having read it) (enjoyed it on TV so started it again). It is enormous, though, and from the same "Classics" library as the Crime and Punishment book I was reading, so yes, I am judging a book by its cover.
* A huge pile of plays by playwrights from all over the place, some of which are now confused in my head because I dip in and out so often.
* Certain pages in several editions of Granta, which are in my bathroom and which are very distracting when one is doing one's teeth.

... so Dostoevsky has a lot to answer for. He has turned me into a reading basket case again.

Things were going so well.

Oh well. Maybe I need to read something silly in order to remind me that reading is fun so that I might be able to then read something laborious and meaningful and feel better about the fact that I don't read enough.

Yay!

I have a sore frisbee arm.

Hurrah!

Best feeling in the world is the particular kind of exhausted you feel after chucking a frisbee at the beach for an hour and only stopping because it's dark and you left your glow-in-the-dark frisbee at home.

Now, of course, I am back to reality.

On a serious note... this weekend, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who criticised her government and reported bravely on matters such as the war in Chechnya and the Beslan school disaster (on the way to which she was poisoned) was gunned down in the lift outside her apartment. She spoke at the Sydney Writers' Festival earlier this year (I didn't see her speak). Here are some of the other journalists who have been murdered in Russia in recent years, and these two journalists, from one of my favourite international radio stations, were killed in their tent this weekend as well. They had been researching for a documentary. All of this makes 2006 the most deadly year for journalists on record, apparently. Previously, 2005 was the most deadly year on record, and before that, it was 2004.

So when I talk about how crap Australian journalism is, it's not because I don't respect journalists. It's because I do. People are risking their lives because they recognise that media is a very powerful tool, and they are being murdered because of it. And today's Melbourne Age online stories? Brad and Angelina have a bodyguard who punched someone, Princess Mary is coming to visit, the MCG is ready for a terrorist attack on the basis of a rumour in a British newspaper, and there's a story called Sex Behind the Engagement Ring, which is the most viewed article of the day, and which is actually just lifted from the Telegraph.

I would like to think that Australia, being a "free" country, has greater opportunity for investigative journalism. Perhaps not.

I'm back in Melbourne today after being more or less stolen and forced to have a week long holiday, very much contrary to my original intentions.

Stew's instructions for packing were: you'll need to wear very warm clothes but take your bathers because it will be hot.

For a control freak like me, that's about as infuriating as packing instructions get.

Anyway, so in the past week I've been to the top of Mount Wellington in Tasmania (wear warm clothes), Manly beach (take your bathers), the Sydney (Art) Biennale (take your black skivvy) and Newcastle (take a camera).

And the answer is yes, I am definitely pretentious enough to tell everyone that I went to the Sydney Writers' Festival, the Melbourne Film Festival, the Sydney Biennale and the Melbourne Writers' Festival, all in a row. I suspect there was a craft festival somewhere in Tasmania or a cheese forum in Newcastle that I can take credit for as well. I really am culturally enriched, if a little pasty around the gills.

The biennale was a bit hit and miss actually. "Zones of Contact" not really the most inspiring theme, however ambitious. Having said that, some of it was excellent. The curator's tour, though, which we had planned our whole day around, was cancelled due to the fact that "he decided it wasn't worth coming". Inspiring words.

By the way, I've cheated on Crime and Punishment. I just couldn't cope with it anymore. Instead, I read the following while on my mystery birthday holiday:

- The History Boys, by Alan Bennett, one of my favourite playwrights.

- An Article in The New Yorker about Wikipedia (it's fascinating and it's here for any fellow nerds who might be interested)

- The start of The Sea, by John Banville.

Excellent holiday. Only one verdict really. Stew's hired.

I've been writing, which means everything else in my life is in disarray.

I did manage to get to the theatre on the weekend to see a play that reminded me why I never go and see mainstream theatre. Thirtysomething dollars to see a tortured metaphor and some heavy symbolism flogged to death on a very expensive and very contrived set. I don't like saying bad things about theatre, but my Lordy, that show I saw at Black Lung for ten bucks a few months back (which is what inspired me to get out more to see shows) really was the best theatre I've seen in ages. They have a new show on at the moment. Check it out here. Miles more interesting than anything you'll be overcharged for in the CBD.

Anyway then I checked out an exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, which I couldn't hear any of because the acoustics were so bad. Seriously. You can stand as close as like to the little TV screens and all you hear is screaming and wailing from the other room. So you think, "I might go into the other room", and you go into the other room and all you hear is talking and shouting from the exhibition you just came from because you couldn't hear it. Generally, though, it looked like it was probably quite good. I like the more political art that's out there at the moment. It's a good sign. Or, well, it's a sign. What it means for the future of the depressing things it's critiquing, I'm not sure. But at least someone is noticing.

Speaking of depressing things and critiquing, I'm also five chapters into Crime and Punishment , which is like saying you're a hundred metres into a marathon, but I'm enjoying it very much. Which is a good thing because I also purchased another book on the weekend. John Banville's The Sea , which he read from at the Sydney Writers' Festival and which was lovely, or maybe his accent was lovely and he was reading Spot Goes To School , I probably wouldn't have noticed. The task is not to start it before I finish the Russian. Yeesh.

And last night I saw the film version of Everything is Illuminated , by Jonathan Safran Foer, one of my faves. I enjoyed the film, actually, more than I thought I would. It must be hard to make a film from such a beatifully constructed first person narrative that relies so heavily on the voice of the person - or people - telling the story. If you get it on DVD, check out the deleted scenes. Sometimes I think the DVD menu should divide the deleted scenes into "DELETED FOR A REASON" and "OUT FOR REASONS OF LENGTH, DEBATE WITH PRODUCERS, RESULT OF AUDIENCE POLLS ETC". Most of the deleted scenes on DVDs would fall squarely into the first of these categories. I would go so far as to say that most of them would fall into the WHAT WERE WE THINKING menu as well, but that's unfair. I'm being a bit unfair today.

Perhaps this is why. On my way to gym this morning, a sign on the side of a Church. You know those ones with the messages? The well-considered, often topical, questions of faith they put up outside Churches?

Go past the one in North Fitzroy and witness the following blunt threat:

GOD EXISTS. OTHERWISE EXISTENCE IS MEANINGLESS.

Er... okay.