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.

It's interesting to me how human beings (by which I mean me) rationalise what happens to them. It's also interesting that other people offer their own spin on things.

This is what random people have said to me over the last three weeks of having a broken wrist (answers in brackets):

"Well at least it wasn't your leg" (Okaaaay, but see, If it was my leg, I would be in pain and discomfort with my feet up and two good hands to type with. That suits me better than pain, discomfort, and inability to do anything at all that I enjoy or am usually paid for).

"What happened to the other guy? huhuhugahahaaasnort" (You want me to show you?)

"I guess someone must be telling you to have a break" (Really? Who? What a jerk!)

"Can I sign your arm?" (have we met?)

...etc...

Anyway, as you can see, I am fast running out of ways to see this arm-in-a-sling thing as an advantage and I now hope that somehow the plaster cast will come off and the bones will heal and I will have a very well-funded idea for an ongoing pay TV series, will win a trip to hang out on set with the cast and crew of Studio 60, or will marry into money. Immediately please.

So I admit to being a bit of an Aaron Sorkin nerd, and I am currently watching The West Wing, Sportsnight, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip concurrently (alternating episodes).

Seriously though, you absolutely have to watch this (scroll down to watch the clips).

It's a show about making television, which of course makes me squeal like a pig at a child's birthday party, and it's been reviewed here. For the more nerdy among us (pick me! pick me!) there is also a blog. Oh yes there is.

If you're wondering why all the talk about TV, it's because life has consisted mostly of staring at a computer screen this weekend. Went to the beach and wrote a whole lot of stuff that I've since deleted. Yay for progress.

Aaaanyway, I have now returned home to play with my friends, most of whom are called Tim.

None of them is this Tim, though, which is something I'm hoping to change. One can never have too many Tims at a dinner party, I find. So, more Tims and also I find there are insufficient people called Snuffy in my life at the present time as well. Let's everyone see what we can do about that.

My boyfriend's back. Yay internet. How I missed you.

Since not having the internet at home, I have done the following:

1. Cleaned (nay, scrubbed) the bathroom.
2. Cleaned and organised and recategorised everything in my bedroom/office.
3. Done the gardening.
4. Carefully followed the instructions on the hard rubbish collection notice, rather than sneaking out on the night before the collection and stuffing unauthorised materials into other people's neatly presented bundles of twigs and broken desk chairs.
5. Read half of John Banville's book and finished Alan Bennett's.
6. Enjoyed the sunshine, including a rather comical attempt at swimming laps this afternoon (was there ever a Mr Bean episode involving an effort on his part to get fit? If not, there should have been. So much potential in lane ropes, sullen pool attendants, surprising changeroom encounters etc).
7. Almost entirely finished a first draft of something.

Of course, my social life and knowledge of the outside world have both rather collapsed, but it could be said that the former of these wasn't particularly robust to begin with, and the latter was bordering on obsessive. It is therefore with every good intention that I hereby declare I shall only use the internet when I need it.

Possibly doing a YouTube search of "funny animals" qualifies. Perhaps it doesn't. I'll be the judge of that.

Well the Film Festival opened on Wednesday night with the hilarious "black tie" requirements (as always) being almost completely ignored by the Melbourne crowd, especially the people I was there with (who had nailed the "black" part of the dress code but needed some help with the more formal aspect symbolised by the tie).

I very much enjoy an industry event where somehow, despite all the best attempts of the organisers, a bunch of interesting people have managed to lie their way in. In other words, my friends were there, which is brilliant and which means I still haven't quite recovered.

Last night I saw The Hawk is Dying , which stars Paul Giamatti from Sideways , Michelle Williams (Jen from Dawsons Creek ), one or other of the Culkin brothers, and an extremely manhandled hawk. I then saw a Hungarian film called Taxidermia , which was genuinely insane and involved a bloke who stuffs animals, a couple who eat competitively for their country (a brilliant satire on sport actually), a guy who has sex on a dead pig, and rather a lot of projectile vomiting (welcome to the topsy turvy world of MIFF). Then we saw Thank You For Smoking , alongside a short film by the guys who made it, who did a Q&A session afterwards.

My recommendation so far is Thank You For Smoking , with the caveat that it's being released soon anyway so don't waste your MIFF time unless you have too much of it (erhem). But it's very funny and it's well-written, which are two elements I rather enjoy in a film that's supposed to be funny and well-written. The short film they made, In God We Trust , was great fun too - yay for finding people early in their careers!

I've just realised the young soapie drama theme here. So far, Seth from The OC (Thank You For Smoking ) , and Joey and Jen from Dawsons Creek (Katie Holmes, Thank You For Smoking and Michelle Williams, The Hawk Is Dying ) have all been in MIFF films. Perhaps Standing There Productions' next film should have a Neighbours star in it, preferably engaging in recreational drug use or down and dirty sex, or playing someone with "difficulties", to up the street cred. Mental note.

Tonight, Melanie Howlett, Standing There Captain of Industry, is in town to enjoy The Way I Spent The End of The World and the Sarah Silverman docco with me this evening, before an action-packed weekend of too many films and not enough time to do my homework.

Yeep. See you Monday.

So it's that time of year again. I cannot imagine how I'm going to find time to celebrate my birthday (AUGUST ELEVENTH) what with one thing and seventeen billion others being crammed in between here and December.

First of all, the Melbourne International Film Festival opens on Wednesday and I'm going to the opening night film, and then, every day after that, to between two to five films, in a row, at a time, between Thursday and two days after my birthday (WHICH IS AUGUST ELEVENTH).

Just for practice, I went to the movies on Saturday night, where I found myself at the end of the longest queue I have ever seen at the Nova in Carlton, which I am happy to say was the queue for an Australian film. The film was Jindabyne , which I really enjoyed (I love the Paul Kelly song and I seem to remember studying the short story and not wanting to tear it to shreds, which is high praise of course, and there were some great performances in the film). There's an Aboriginal woman who, just near the end of the film, is quite, quite brilliant. Her use of pockets is lovely.

Er, also, without being at all unprofessional about it, my friend Simon is in this film and he's ace. And if I didn't already think he was ace, I would probably still think he was ace (he does this thing in this scene at the pub which I am going to have to buy the DVD for, just in order to press pause on the exact, teensy, tiny, little moment where he gets it right). Fascinatingly, his birthday is just after my birthday, or just before, I can't remember which, but in any case it somewhere around the vicinity of my birthday (AUGUST ELEVENTH), which of course is also an important reason to go and see Jindabyne.

Anyway, Crime and Punishment is still tormenting me but I am no further into it despite reading it for what feels like nine months. Hopefully I will be finished by my birthday which is on AUGUST ELEVENTH in case there was some lack of clarity surrounding that issue.

So Bleak House (Sunday nights, ABC, after the nature show omigod how cool are Sundays) has been the light house in the dark fog that is Crime and Punishment - goodness the Dickensian intrigue is almost too much to stand! The possibility that everyone is related to everybody else and that fortunes could change in the slip of a gene pool is just tantalising. Makes me think I should have read the book. Oh well. Who has time for that?

... Which is the logic behind the fact that I have also started listening to Mao's Last Dancer as an audio book while I attempt to tidy my bedroom/wake up in the mornings/establish some kind of existence for myself in the pre-coffee hours of the day. So far it's really great, although it's confusing when you watch Bleak House , read Crime and Punishment and listen to Mao's Last Dancer all in the same half a day on the weekend. By the end of it you feel like a Chinese woman with bound feet and a fortune that may or may not be yours who has just murdered someone. Yeesh.

So, August eleven, did we get that down? Birthday songs, poems, odes, and arias will be gratefully received between now and August 12th (although those on August 12th will be accepted with some degree of haughty disdain). iPods will also be accepted, as will apple crumble, frisbees, warm knitted gloves, or brightly coloured wigs.

Also, she doesn't read blogs, but get well Grandma.

Okay, so on a scale of one to a billion, how good is this Bleak House business on the ABC on Sunday nights?

Whoever wrote that must know what they're doing.

After watching Planet Earth with David Attenborough and not knowing whether I'm on the side of the snow leopard (who has to eat, you know) or the startled, dancing rock elk with the unwieldy horns and the slippy-slippy down the slope kind of lifestyle, I sit in front of Dickens, riveted and yet slightly distracted by the central question of what the hell is going on?

Unbearably good television. Especially if you like your television to be smarter than you are. Dickens and Sorkin being excellent examples. And, obviously, Everybody Loves Raymond was smarter than I was, because I just did not understand a single thing about that show.

Anyway, so this weekend I did not spend in the usual manner. I did not see a film or a play (not even a terrible one that I can spend the rest of the week complaining about). I read some of Crime and Punishment , but apart from that, I did nothing of interest in a cultural sense whatsoever.

Instead, I cashed in on the fact that Nerissa, one of the many friends of mine who found themselves cast in I Could Be Anybody , works at the Werribee Zoo.

So, in answer to the question "What did you do at work this week?" Nerissa is able to answer:

"I'm designing an enclosure for a critically endangered species of bandicoot".

In response to which I am able to say: "Er. Good. Well... I wrote... well actually... no... I didn't write... I started to write... this thing... for... Never mind. Are there any positions going in, you know, the canteen or something at the zoo at the moment?"

I often find other people's jobs interesting, but this one was an excellent one to be a beneficiary of. We drove around in a Safari jeep and made friends with all sorts of people, including a fairly grumpy hippo whose party trick was to poo through his rotating tail, so as to fan his excrement as far and wide as possible. Territorial, mainly, although arguably quite artistic too.

In conclusion, a hippo pooing through a rotating tail is approximately fifty times more interesting than mainstream theatre in Melbourne, and works on many levels metaphorically, too.

Give them an arts grant. And a festival. Please.