I'm in the library again on a Friday with about four other people - yay for the reliability of lazy people!

I am sitting next to a rather alarming oversized rubbish bin labeled as follows:

"DISASTER BIN (for emergency use only)."

I am hoping its location is a coincidence. I am also hoping it doesn't need to come out on the weekend. Fingers crossed.

Also, I voted today. I know, I know, jumping the gun does mean I don't get the heady anthropological experience of standing in line with my fellow human beings smelling sausages and sneering at the Family First candidates. HOWEVER I did get to vote in a venue called The Comedy Theatre, which is an experience I found rather appropriate, given the state of things. Check this out.

Voting, as we all know, feels like the only thing any of us can do to change anything, and even then some of us are a bit skeptical that it will change anything other than which people are saying the same things on the TV over and over again without actually addressing any of the questions they're being asked. But voting today I remembered that it's a powerful thing, voting and then walking away down the street with not a care in the world. In some countries, people are killed for less.

Favourite bit of the ballot: the Senate paper on which you can vote either above the line for the WHAT WOMEN WANT party, or below the line for their candidates. It looks like this:

WHAT WOMEN WANT
__________________

LOVE

THOMPSON

... I don't know who Thompson is but I'm disappointed they couldn't find a candidate called CUP OF TEA or A BIT OF HELP AROUND THE HOUSE or something. Anyway shut up carry on. I'm getting nervous, can you tell?

I have been missing from these pages over the past few days because I have been getting a lot of work done. The reasons for this are:

1. I have a scary deadline. An actual one. Written into a contract.

2. The year twelve exams have finished and hence there are not trillions of hysterically amused, breathlessly begossiped eighteen-year-olds answering obnoxiously ringing phones and looking daggers at me for asking them to keep it down. Also apparently not so many people in the over twenty age group wear clippy-noise-making heels or have ring tones that wolf whistle loudly, causing a ripple of untold hilarity through the studiously unstudious masses.

I'm sorry. I know it's a generalisation, but honestly, the difference between then and now (grey haired and bespectacled family history nerds and people using free internet and doing PhDs) is quite remarkable. I'm not saying I'd be interested in hanging with the family history nerds at a party, but (and this is where the year twelves have been tragically misled) the library is not a party and therefore I am on the side of the boring studious folk. You can tell this because I give lectures on this point repetitively in the manner of one of my parents discussing loud restaurants, the existence of mobile phones, or P plate drivers on freeways.

3. I am trying the early rising thing again. Today I was at gym at half seven. Next week, if history is anything to go by, I will contract hooping cough, gout, a peg leg or similar.

4. I am trying to get a lot of work done before the weekend. Why? Because after the weekend, Australia will either be run by a conservative white man or it will be run by a conservative white man. If it continues to be run by the racist lying rodent who currently holds the title of conservative white man running the country, I will be leaving to live on Mars. So I'm trying to get my affairs in order in case that becomes the sad reality. In the event of the other conservative white man becoming the leader, I will be looking to my friend Mister Senate, which as all the year twelves "studying" in the library know, is a check and/or balance and/or platform for loonies and people like Brian Harradine to flirt with the electorate and then do what they were going to do in the first place. If nothing changes and/or things get worse or somehow similarly depressing, I am hoping a foxy fast-talking superhero will arrive to save the day, possibly with the liberal distribution of bubble wrap.

Sadly this weekend I am only voting once, due to my friends having sorted out their own political opinions since the early days when I used to receive three or four calls asking who to vote for. Don't worry, I explained the choices as objectively as I could. It wasn't my fault they were "bored" and wanted to know "what to write in the box and hurry up I'm next in line". Gone are the days those guys call. I like to think it's because I educated them about politics but I know the real reason is that most of them are teachers or health professionals who know how to vote because their jobs are on the line. Either way, I leave my phone on each time I vote but nobody ever texts me any questions. Mostly just statements, none of which I will repeat here.

Anyway, I'm going to make the most of the pre-election silence in this library and also in my brain. Until then, vote well, vote often, see you on the other side.

The thing about writing (as I do) in contemporary settings dealing with contemporary themes and issues is that sometimes elections happen or society changes and suddenly you're not as clever as you thought you were.

Last year, after writing a play in which Paris Hilton was recast as an intellectual, I had a major panic one night at about four in the morning that something terrible might befall Paris Hilton in the week leading up to our comedy festival show. Making light of Paris Hilton's intellectual choices might suddenly be uncool, cruel, depressing and pointless. Likewise, a play about an Australian girl seeking asylum in another country on account of the undemocratic actions of her government might seem ludicrous were it not justifiable in reference to the reality that has befallen us in recent years. Not a great deal of this is apparently set to change any time soon, but writing is a very specific form of expression and unless you work completely in metaphor or set your play in the sixteenth century, you do find yourself having to do the occasional rewrite.

Hence I object to the placement of a major political event in between the conception of our comedy festival show and the comedy festival itself. I don't really want to drag the federal election campaign out any more than it already has been, but could we just pop it all on hold until July do you think?

No? Well I do hope you like the show I am writing called LIFE ON ANOTHER PLANET IN A TIME OTHER THAN THIS ONE. Should be easy enough - I'm just not entirely sure it's going to be a thigh slapping or particularly relevant piece of theatre. Election in July. Come on, you know you want to.

Those of you who saw our show at this year's Melbourne International Comedy Festival might be interested to see that the American army 'deserters' who attempted to seek asylum in Canada because they believed the Iraq War was illegal have been turned away. Read this.

Looks like it's time for a rewrite - either by Canada or by me. You go first Canada. No, you go. No, no, I insist.

Have a nice weekend.

Yesterday, I donated blood. I know I've said it before, but donating blood is a truly rewarding experience (self-satisfaction is right up there, free milkshakes, free food, trashy reading material, and you save three lives!). For those of us who have time (rather than money) it's the closest we'll come to philanthropy.

Anyway, so I turn up and I get talking to this nurse.

NURSE: So what are you working on then?

SELF SATISFIED BLOOD DONATING PHILANTHROPIST: We're developing a kids' TV show at the moment. [YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I LOVE SAYING THIS BTW]

NURSE: Oh great. Kids' TV is great.

SSBDP: You think so?

NURSE: Oh yes, when I was a kid, I used to love....

.... Now, at this point, the person usually says: Degrassi Junior High, Inspector Gadget, Punky Brewster or (if they're five years younger than I am) You Can't Do That On Television or Round The Twist...

NURSE: a British show, you might not have heard of it, it was called Press Gang.

SSBDP: Might not have heard of it? That is still among my top ten favourite shows ever made!

NURSE: Oh really? Yeah. I loved it so much that I made my mum ring up the ABC and they gave her the number of the BBC and so she called the BBC and I sent them a fan letter.

SSBDP: *Respectful silence*

NURSE: It was great actually, they sent me a signed photograph of the whole cast and I got one each from Lynda and Spike. Remember them?

REMEMBER THEM? I have the entire series on DVD and I have a backup series for when someone's borrowing the boxed set with the extras DVD!

REMEMBER THEM? I studied them! YOU HAVE A SIGNED PHOTO OF THE WHOLE CAST? YOU HAVE AN INDIVIDUAL PORTRAIT OF LYNDA AND SPIKE WITH SIGNATURES????

It was all I could do not to send my blood pressure so high with excitement that I couldn't donate.

Honestly, one of the biggest dilemmas of my TV watching teenagehood was who I was in love with more: Lynda or Spike? I still can't decide.

The nurse's favourite episode was the one where she blamed herself for the suicide and the double episode with the clown. Both classic episodes and favoured among fans (myself included) although I really enjoyed the episode where Lynda had the hiccups and the one where Colin crashed a funeral dressed as a rabbit. Each to their own.

Anyway, there's another reason to donate blood. I wonder if brain surgeons go in and she says "Oh I love brain surgery. What's your favourite bit of the brain? I think mine's the frontal lobe".

I wonder if blood is more useful if it's pleased.

PS to donate blood, go to www.donateblood.com.au

I went to lunch with a friend of mine on Monday and he taught me a new word. Progrestination. It's when you procrastinate (for example) from writing your script by paying a bill, posting a vital legal document, or doing something else that actually helps you progress further in your life generally.

Of course, the problem with the concept of progrestination is that we can justify almost anything we do as "progress in life generally" such that reading about Lindsay Lohan in the free commuter newspaper is "research", watching animals dancing to Justin Timberlake on YouTube is "multimedia work", and having drinks with a friend is "useful" rather than just enjoyable.

For some of us, the internet provides the perfect opportunity for progrestination. All those emails you haven't replied to, all those outstanding errands - they all need to be done, and GUESS WHAT? Most of them can be done without leaving your desk! Huzzah! All I can say is that I'm very glad I haven't been lured yet by eBay. And shuttup, please don't tell me how easy it is. My combined hatred of shopping and fashion and love of wasting time on the internet and having crap I don't need delivered to my house makes me a prime target. I really don't need to know.

I say all this because I was contacted on these pages and notified of this site, the use of which can definitely be classified as progrestination, and which claims to be a whole new way of using the internet.

The possibility of discovering a "whole new way of using the internet" is so exciting and consequently potentially destructive to me as a writer (apparently Dave Eggers doesn't have internet in his house) that I haven't spent the hours there that I intend to. Check it out, though, it is an interesting project with the potential for great things.

Speaking of internet connections... Our Artist in Residency at Bundanon documents arrived in the mail this week, just after I hungrily read through an article on Arthur Boyd's new biography in the weekend paper. For those of you not keeping up with the news (SHAME), Standing There Productions are headed to NSW next August to participate in an Artist Residency in the Boyd's Bundanon property near Shoalhaven.

The residency looks totally gorgeous, inspiring, and I must learn to play the piano so we can make use of the baby grand in our loungeroom. On a more sober note, the documents warn of the following potential problems:

- mosquito bites
- sting rays
- snakes
- sun
- getting lost on bushwalks
- rain
- flood
- fire
- intermittent broadband connection
- no television reception

Of course, for us, these last two potential disasters loom large over the other insignificant problems mentioned. An excellent but terrifying result (and in fact our primary desire) is that we will have nothing to do other than our actual work - surrounded, as it turns out, by a beautiful atmosphere, deadly animals and a world teetering on the brink of natural disaster.

Personally, I can't wait. My screen saver is already a sublime photograph of Bundanon, and any time I think I might be too much of an information age junkie, I figure that for a month next year I'm going to be enjoying simpler pleasures. And I'm definitely taking bushwalking shoes and sunscreen.

By the way, the friend I went to lunch with also had one of these so I'm probably mixing in the wrong circles if I want to avoid technology. Bring on Bundanon!

I know I've been absent from these pages for a couple of days but this has just inspired me to make myself known: CHECK IT OUT.