So if you want to look important in a meeting because you're trying to convince a reality TV crew not to shoot outside in the laneway you're holding a breakfast of 400 people in...

Get your friend to bring a takeaway cup of coffee into the room and nod shyly at you, like unto an important CEO type person.

Works a charm.

I've heard.

(As you can see, day job going well. Writing... well... Happy Australia Day!).

Stressed out writer to lady in coffee shop: How much is a cup of coffee?

WRITER SIFTS THROUGH SILVER COINS.

Lady in coffee shop: three dollars.

Stressed out writer: Oooh yay I think I have enough.

Lady in coffee shop: How much do you have?

Stressed out writer: I have three dollars thirty. But that’s okay because I think I get paid tomorrow.

Lady in coffee shop: That's all you have left in the world?

Stressed out writer: Oh, no, don't worry. No, I'm okay.

LADY IN COFFEE SHOP CLOSES MOUTH, GOES BEHIND COFFEE MACHINE, MAKES COFFEE.

EMERGES WITH BIGGEST COFFEE IN KNOWN UNIVERSE.

Lady in coffee shop: I made you a big one.

Stressed out writer: Oh, wow, you're lovely.

Lady in coffee shop: You keep the coins. You might want to get a tram.

STRESSED OUT WRITER LEAVES FEELING A MIXTURE OF GRATITUDE AND EMBARRASSMENT THAT COFFEE LADY THINKS SHE IS ON LAST LEGS AND ONLY CHANCE OF HOPE IS A TRAM TO SOMEWHERE ELSE.

WRITER HOPES LADY IN COFFEE SHOP IS DELUDED, NOT WRITER.

WRITER DRINKS COFFEE.

WRITER AS HIGH AS A KITE FOR THREE HOURS.

WRITER FINDS OUT IT'S NEXT WEEK SHE GETS PAID, NOT THIS WEEK. WRITER IS VERY GRATEFUL FOR TRAM MONEY.

Hello everybody and welcome to the most fun month of the year. January in Melbourne is extra grouse because of the following mathematical equations:

1. Weather + park = frisbee
2. Daylight savings + best friends in world coming home for Christmas = more daylight hours for hilarity
3. New year + weather = fitness regime
4. Feeling of pride at fitness regime + weather = justification of consumption of icecream or (”it’s good for you”) gelati
5. Complete lack of desire to go inside and do work + all the above + new movie releases = fun times

Using the above equations, please provide a clear solution to the following problems:

1. Deadlines (x 3)
________________
Best month of year - hours spent wishing the state library was a surf beach = ?

2. Deadlines + The Guilt + The Fear (to the power of twelve) minus Being A Bad Friend = ?

3. Missing out on seeing best friends in world who are only in Melbourne for three weeks (x 3) - amount work done = ?

4. Amount of time spent on fitness regime - amount of work not done in those hours = justification of lack of fitness. True/False.

5. Occasional reward of new release movie + (”it’s healthy”) gelati - fitness regime = white, stressed, fatty + The Guilt. True/False.

You do the maths.

It's not going well.

Getting up in the morning like a normal person is not going well.

Yesterday, I arose at seven in the morning, had a coffee down the road, rode my bicycle into the city, lay in the sun while reading in preparation and waiting for the library to open, went into the library, and promptly failed to have an idea.

For an entire day.

Not one, solitary idea.

Or, not a good one, at least.

I worked hard, don't get me wrong, but to ABSOLUTELY NO AVAIL.

If I was my boss, I'd fire myself.

Hang on...

Check this out.

It might just be the pointless new layout of The Age online today but my God the news is odd. What with this article about a giant lego man coming "from the direction of England" and being "later placed behind a drinks stall" (huh?), a woman with the pencil in her brain (see below) and the fact that Geelong is apparently just like Baghdad, you would think there was nothing important to discuss.

Like, I dunno, this or this teensy little story here.

Giant Lego man. Got to love the dudes who thought they'd chuck that into the sea and see what happened.

According to Wikipedia, a theatre director "is a principal in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a play by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production".

Which is obviously a very helpful description when someone asks you, "What exactly does a director do?", which is a question I get asked surprisingly often.

I say surprisingly often because, to me, people should be asking what writers do. Writers are the the ones who spend a lot of their time deleting and redrafting and reading things and getting distracted and researching a completely redundant potential plot line and then cleaning out the entire fridge and organsing all their New Yorker magazines in chronological order with the fiction editions in a special section to the right of the...

Never mind.

Anyway. Wikipedia also divides theatre directors into types. The dictator, the negotiator, the creative artist and the confrontationalist.

They all sound like wankers to me. None of which helps me answer "What exactly does a director do?"

Anyway, fat lot of good the internet is. I looked up acting and I got this:

“Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.”

Well anyone who has been on stage in August knows that isn't true.

I am now up to the stage in re-writing my show from memory where I am sure it was funnier. I'm sure it was better. And more clever. And in fact brilliant. I'm sure it had a strangely genius quality about it.

But we'll never know.

Stupid exploding hard drive.

Also, according to the newspaper this morning, I am getting dumber. Having been vegetarian for twelve years, I am now a very shame-faced meat eater, against my finest political and ethical convictions. Now I find out I'm actually making myself more stupid. This might explain my script.