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!

Last week for me was tax week.

Tax week for me means finding all my officeworks receipts, my movie tickets, my half-torn theatre stubs and my dvd receipts and promising myself that next year I'm going to be more organised.

Anyway, so next year I'm going to be heaps more organised.

In the meantime though, I'm going to pause and reflect on HOW MUCH STUFF I see, read, eat (sadly not tax deductable) and do not throw out like a sensible person would (including boxes from dvd players that i no longer own, notes from people I can't remember in classes I swear I never went to, wrapping paper - seas of the stuff - and of course theatre programmes).

I don't think I have ever EVER had a moment where, pausing in the middle of something very important, I have thought to myself, "Now. Where is that theatre programme from that play I saw in 1998 at the Malthouse. I simply must find that programme immediately, for there is no possible way I can continue on into the future without it".

I don't think that has ever happened. Now that I have discarded several of these programmes during my tax time tidy up, however, I have no doubt that over the next few weeks I will in fact undergo the above experience and find my programme collection wanting.

Nevetheless. All this purchasing got me to thinking. I thought:

1. I have a lot of stuff.
2. A lot of people don't have any stuff.
3. I should give a whole lot of my stuff to people who need it (for instance, the two giant stuffed toys that someone-whose-name-most-people-will-guess won in a country fair and decided to bestow upon me by way of the beginnings of a collection).
4. I should drive my car less. I pay too much money in petrol and I am not helping the environment, despite the carbon offset thing where there are trees planted for me every time I drive anywhere (also purchased for me by person-whose-name-most-people-will-guess).
5. THEREFORE perhaps on the way to the brotherhood of st lawrence in order to give away stuff, I should purchase more stuff, in the shape of a bike.
6. Perhaps I should purchase a very excellent bike from my truly most favourite shop in the world (here), from one of my favourite people, who makes me laugh and updates me on campus news.
7. Perhaps I should then ride it around like a child with a new toy.
8. Perhaps this renders my "I should own less" mentality somewhat redundant.
9. Perhaps it is even more so if I am too lazy to ride home from my parents' place and I put the bike in the back of the carbon-offset car and drive it home to mine.
10. Perhaps these things can be over analysed and I should be simply grateful that I now have an excellent excuse to wear all my glow in the dark clothing again (it's been too long).

So yay for riding your bike!

In terms of consumption by way of books and cinema THIS financial year, I am currently reading DBC Pierre's book Vernon God Little, about twelve centuries after it was cool to do so. It is, as most people have already said, a very good read. I am, however, NOT seeing the Transformers movie, despite the legion of nerds who surround me, trembling with excitement at the prospect.

So far, that's one mark in the "CONSUMER ADDICTION" column (consumption of book) and one mark in the ABSTAINING FROM PURCHASING UNNECESSARY THINGS" column. Of course, as with all record-keeping, this is not a true reflection of the way things work. The truth is, abstaining from the Transformers movie is hardly a sacrifice, since I am bored to death at the very thought of it, and the book, although living in my bookshelf, technically belongs to someone else.

This is why tax time is confusing. Reality plays a very small and self-conscious role, and I end up with an empty wallet, a slightly more organised office, and a brand spanking new bike. How on earth did that happen?