Every now and then I gets to wondering: exactly what percentage of the world is made up of those of us purporting to be in "the arts"?

Purporting to be in the arts being the only prerequisite for being in the arts, I would suggest the percentage of artists (and bear in mind I can't count due to the fact that I'm in the arts) is a figure that would reach into the... manys.

This is simultaneously inspiring and a little humbling (bordering, if I'm honest, on depressing) when everyone you know and everyone they know is in pre-production, post-production, novelisation, and/or development.

But here's why I mention this: I detect interlopers.

At this point I would like to address those of you who have had steady jobs for the past five years. You know, jobs with suits and business cards and salary packages and after work drinks. Now, I know times are tough. I know that. I read the papers. I know some of you are losing your jobs. I know some of you have been given a nice package and told to come back later and it must be scary and some of you have kids and houses and the Beast That Dare Not Speak Its Name in the arts world: adult responsibilities, and that sucks for all of you.

Having said that, could I please beg of you: do not join the arts world. Please. I know it looks fun. I know it's swanning about with Moleskenes and coffees and looking frenzied just before deadlines. I know it doesn't involve staff meetings and that must appeal, I realise that, I've been to staff meetings myself.

However, know this: there are too many of us. Far too many. Someone pointed at a celebrant at the wedding I was at last week and told me she was a casting director, the woman next to her was an actor, the man next to her was a cartoonist, and the one in the striped suit was a director. The one in the striped suit, for future reference, is usually the director. But I digress.

I like my artist friends but I also like the other ones. The ones whose jobs I don't understand. The ones whose lives I peer into with wide eyed astonishment: you MAKE YOUR OWN PASTA? You went to WHERE on your holiday? You like Packed to the Rafters? I like those friends and their mysterious salmon-pink-shirted cufflinked high-heeled world. It's their world but I like to watch it and learn from it.

But there are enough of us. Look around you. Artists are everywhere. We serve you drinks, we thank you for calling and ask if you have any other banking needs, we read Russian novels on public transport. I know it's tempting to take that leap of faith to join us but please... I beg you... don't make me the majority. My marginalised nobody-understands don't-patronise-me attitude is the only thing I have.

Please don't take that away from me.

Well, another year, another Oscars snub. Why Standing There Productions is not choking back tears and thanking the church in East Brunwsick for letting us use their urn I cannot understand.

Obviously the Academy just doesn't recognise quality.

Pfft.

Standing There Productions has a thousand deadlines at the moment so we're less exciting than, say, cabbage, although rumour is rife that we might all be in the State again soon, which will be good for Melbourne's coffee-based economy.

In the meantime, if you like reading, or if you like lists, go here. It's addictive.

I doubt there's anyone who isn't aware of the Victorian bushfires at the moment.

In fact, there's so much being said about them now, four days after they started, that media coverage is creeping away from reportage into, well, a story on its own.

Still, most of us know people directly affected by this, and most of us want to do or say something, but most of us feel completely ill-equipped and useless and don't want to presume to speak words that others have the misfortune of being the rightful authors of.

So I'll turn the words over to the people who know what they're talking about and know how to help.

Most people have already given money to the appeal but if you haven't and you would like to, go here.

If you don't have money, you can donate blood.

If you don't have money or blood, you can donate old phone chargers.

You can help transport injured wildlife.

You can now donate stuff, rather than money here.

Like a bit of a jig?

Near Myrtleford?

Got a spare room?

Want to keep up on these updates? Go here.

So look, we're getting a bit hysterical over here about the heat. Apparently, tomorrow is the worst day in history, and it HASN'T EVEN HAPPENED YET. Worst day in history! That includes last week when I totally missed out on tickets to an Ani Difranco concert. It includes the time my hard drive exploded. It includes the time I tried to prove how cool I was at my new school by winning a swimming race and only realised AT THE END that I had been doing the wrong stroke for 400 metres. Yeesh. Tomorrow is going to be BAD!

It is times like these when one is best suited to consider perspectives other than the perspective from which one swelters.

Here are some perspectives I am quite pleased to consider:

1. Chris Buchannan's perspective. Chris Buchannan, who played Robin, the press secretary in Greatness Thrust Upon Them, our comedy festival show last year, is in a musical at the moment. That musical is called, almost obscenely, Zanna Don't. They had me at highlarious bastardisation of well-known pop culture reference. Seriously though, Chris is brilliant. I'm seeing it next week.

2. Nick Jaffe's perspective. Standing There long-time friend and collaborator Nick Jaffe had his goodbye drinks last night. He's the ridiculously adventurous one who sails solo in a tiny boat, around the world, in the big, big ocean. Good luck Nick! You'll be missed. Again.

3. My friend. Goes by the name of Scottish Phil. This is in order to distinguish him from all other Phils in the world. The great thing about the name Scottish Phil? Scottish Phil lives in America. Scottish Phil emailed me in response to my complaints of heat. Apparently it's NEGATIVE 20 DEGREES CELCIUS where he lives, with ten inches of snow. Ten inches! My eyebrows would be peering over the top.

4. My other friend. Goes by the name Boss Of Everything. I'm not even kidding. Of everything. She's currently the boss of what my childhood next door neighbour used to call Horse Piddle. The Royal Women's Horse Piddle. What with her being royal and all. She's having, and I've thought about this and I think it works, an extraordinarily ordinary time. I hope she gets better. Right after the worst day in history, which would be well spent in Horse Piddle, since it has what my sister and I used to call coolth.

5. Robin Geradts-Gill. He works with us on lots of stuff and is generally quite the contemporary gentleman. His band, The Little Stevies, are launching their album. Keep an eye out for it. Their single, Sunshower, which was shot by our very own Stewart Thorn, is here.

6. People who are not me. Last night, I went to a Leonard Cohen concert. This is code for: tomorrow might be the worst day in history but yesterday was pretty close to the best. L Cohen reminded his audience last night (me and four or five thousand others) that we are, simply put, lucky. Through no genius of our own, we live in a peaceful country, we listen to music, we watch film, we read, we run about on sporting fields and attach enormous importance to it, we think what we want to think and sometimes we say it, and we're allowed to, and that's extremely lucky. I'm going to try and get through the worst day in history, with that in mind.

So you know how I said it was hot?

About an hour ago, there was a refreshing cool breeze of NINE TRILLION DEGREES as opposed to the previous nine thousand trillion.

It is seriously the kind of weather that makes you burst into tears in a crowded tram. Not that I did that. But it was touch and go.

If you study Literature at some point in your life you will discover this: existentialism is a movement in literature most ably demonstrated by a book called, in English, The Outsider. You will, if you study Literature, learn this maybe 12 or 13 times. You cannot, apparently, know it enough.

In one of the 12 or 13 essays I wrote about The Outsider, in one of which I seem to recall I claimed that existentialism was a state of being usually only experienced by male protagonists in rich white countries (I did an arts degree) I focused on a segment in the book where the protagonist shoots somebody. In this segment of the book, pretty much the entire point of the narrative so I hope you enjoyed the spoiler, our protagonist pulls the trigger because of a number of factors, none of which has to do with morality. It's noisy, he's uncomfortable, and most of all: it's hot.

As we enter our second day of record hot temperatures in Melbourne today (the hottest in over 100 years) it strikes me that an unexamined element in The Outsider is that it's actually an ecological horror novel before its time. Heat killed a man dead. Heat can do that.

Heat stops trains - anyone 5ks out of Melbourne knows that. It also stops brains. Dear everyone I have to submit something to this week: please be thankful I haven't killed anyone and let me off the hook. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to stick my head in the freezer.