Last year on all my feedback forms for the Melbourne International Film Festival, I wrote how much I adored the experience, and I also wrote, in huge block letters across the bottom of the form YOUR BOOKING PROCESS IS IMPOSSIBLE AND YOUR PROGRAM IS INFURIATING.

Having spent the last hour (my lunch hour) online, and having spent my Monday lunch hour with two copies of the MIFF guide spread out on the office lunch table, I can honestly say that this booking procedure has become an epic journey akin to the book I'm reading, the aptly titled Crime and Punishment . Many things have happened to me during my journey - I have made friends (very nice girl on the end of the MIFF phone), I've made enemies (Stewart was in the room when I was attempting to book the other day, and I'm not sure we're on speaking terms quite yet) and I've learned many things about the struggle of mankind along the way.

The main thing I've learned? If you're booking tickets for MIFF, I advise you to physically walk into the Forum office, stand in a queue and list the films you want to see, without worrying how you're holding everyone up, and make sure you look over the shoulder of the young funky kid who types them in. I learn this every year, but that doesn't stop me hoping that one day, somewhere, someone will take note of my crooked scrawl on the feedback form: BOOKING TICKETS FOR YOUR FESTIVAL FEELS LIKE PUNISHMENT AND COULD POTENTIALLY INCITE CRIME. MUCH LIKE THE NOVEL CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN MANY WAYS, ALTHOUGH WITH TRACES OF ROGER HARGRAVES' WORK (MR GRUMPY AND LITTLE MISS FURIOUS COME TO MIND).

I remain hopeful that this feedback will one day change the world. These films had better be good.

So I'm beginning to wish this Raskolnikov bloke had just hung around at home and not been able to find his axe.

Longest book in the world.

Another story they will probably base a film on here. Actually, a film about being arrested for procrastinating is very firmly in the realm of horror for me. Or biography.

Anyway, Lord it's cold. I'm going to bed to finish this Crime and Punishment caper. Or, you know, to finish the next billion pages and still not be anywhere near the end.

I know he's a genius and all but he would never get funding in this country - I can imagine the notes. "Where's this going exactly? What's the "message"? Describe the "arc". Also, "what's the market, exactly?"

"We suggest you get an editor".

I'm thinking I should move to one of those European countries where they pay you A WAGE to write, no matter what they think of your writing. Sure, I'll have to learn another language and work out how to write eloquently in it, but surely that's the sort of thing you just pick up, right?

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.

I was talking to Tommy today, who is booking a flight overseas.

I'm not sure if I'm imagining things or if there are an awful lot of people going overseas at the moment.

I started wondering where I could go, without destablising myself financially, that would be the perfect holiday.

I was thinking of a place that I'd read about. It was on the tip of my tongue. I knew it - I could picture it - and I knew I'd always wanted to be there. I knew it would make me feel that perfect mixture of cosy and also excited by the endless possibilities presenting themselves.

I got frustrated by not being able to bring it immediately to mind. I thought, "come ON... where am I thinking of?"

I realised as I was getting the lift up to the Victoria Law Foundation that I was in fact thinking of The Faraway Tree.

Bugger. See here for a dry description of a place I briefly suspected I might be able to book a flight to.

Dear all my friends,

I miss you. I really do. Sometimes, I'll be making myself a procrastinatorial cup of tea and I'll think of something you said once and I'll laugh. Just me and the kettle. Laughing and thinking about the good times.

I haven't spoken to you in ages. I feel bad about that, both because I hope you don't think I don't like you, and also because I would really quite like to be having a fabulous time somewhere in a warm bar with you and your nearest and dearest friends, with a glass of something or a cup of something in my hand.

But I know you will forgive me, because you have forgiven me before. I have done this before. I do this all the time. This is a pattern. An abusive, selfish pattern. I am just like those men who promise their girlfriends they are definitely leaving their wives just as soon as the time is right.

Except that I'm not. I adore my friends. There is no disloyalty here. It's just like Gloria Steinem said, though, "Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else".

Yes, once again I have used a quote I found on the internet to back up my morally questionable behaviour. But what else do I have? I don't go outside, I don't speak to anyone. My current best friend is the guy at the corner of my street who makes me coffee and asks me where I'm up to in Crime and Punishment (we're having a race).

But, sadly, Gloria Steinem offers me as good an explanation as any. When I try to write something, which I'm trying to do at the moment, I am lost. I am lost to the world of fashion (hence my faux-velvet pants with the fake drawstring and what can only be described as a ladder over the right bum cheek), I am lost to the world of nightlife (movies and books are as exciting as my evenings get) and I am lost to the world of you, my friends.

Probably what I'm writing is terrible. Probably I will emerge around the end of the film festival with a flu and a desperate desire to have a conversation about something other than my work. Probably I will wonder why I disappeared for so long.

You, meanwhile, are (in no particular order) about to have a baby, about to get married, about to go overseas, just back from overseas, overseas, newly single, annoyingly in love, freshly employed, hating work, moving house, starring in a movie, having a sex-toy party, having a birthday party, having a going-away party, moving to New York (smartarse - you'd better send me prizes), and (I can only presume) saving up lots of money for my birthday on August the eleventh.

Just saying.

Love,

Lorin.

Instead of taking nineteen days off for the Melbourne International Film Festival, I feel I should take around thirty days off, merely in order to understand how to read their programme and book the films in the first place.

Here's what you do: the films are in sections. You read about them in their sections.

Fair enough so far.

BUT... you get to the bottom of the description of the film and you think "That sounds interesting" and you look for more details. BUT NO! The session times are elsewhere. So. You find the session times for the films. You think, "Well I'm free at seven on the Friday. I wonder what that film is about?" You look for the page number of the description of the film. It's on another page. THE PAGE NUMBER IS ON ANOTHER PAGE. In alphabetical order of the names of the films. In impossibly tiny print. It's midnight. You've been looking at this godforsaken thing for the last three hours. You wonder if maybe you shouldn't just get the box set of The West Wing and sit down with that for three weeks. Seriously, I've done law exams that were less stressful.

I've said my piece. Your programme sucks.

Having said that, I am gagging for the festival and am so far seeing the following films (click on the links for info):

Grbavica

The Hawk Is Dying

Thank You For Smoking


Summer 04

The Way I Spent The End Of The World

Taxidermia

Crimson Gold

Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic

A Scanner Darkly

You're Gonna Miss Me

Em 4 Jay (this one is made in Victoria)

That covers the first three days. It took me almost two days to organise. No kidding.

Remind me to get a flu shot.

PS. Apparently it has been established that Popcorn is in fact a food group, which is excellent news and now all I have to do is figure out how to get orange juice or Earl Grey tea on a drip.