As I jet off to sunnier climes (like I need them at the moment) and a family Christmas, I leave you with a politically correct Aussie Christmas message:

Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all...

A N D

A fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2001, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make Australia great, (not to imply that Australia is necessarily greater than any other country), and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.

Have a cool Yule, folks. I've had a wonderful year, and I hope you have too. All my best wishes for a fantastic holiday.

Well, Lizz, I probably was awake at 4:30. And 5. And every half-hour before or thereafter. I slept like a log with termites last night. Half the heat (but only half, because I am a Big Tough Queenslander ^(TM) and I spit on your feeble attempts at heat. I spit, I say! Hah!) and half the fact that A was hogging more than his fair share of bed. Honestly, all I ask is a third, at least. It's a Queen-size too. Greedy twerp.

Anyway, because of this, and my stubbornness in insisting that I would sleep - or at least try to - I wasn't online and amusing you. Apologies. I'll try to do better in the future, Mistress.

And speaking of mistresses, the ever-ingenious Robbie Rocket-pants spotted and cleverly purchased for me the Preaching to the Perverted soundtrack. It has dance tracks with sound-bites from the movie. Now I can play music that has a dominatrix orgasming over the top. How many people can boast that?

I hate Christmas shopping.

Except when I've finished mine.

Actually, I quite like browsing through stress-packed department stores. Frazzled mothers with whinging children. Some shelves empty and others full of everything but what the price tag underneath says should be there. Finding the perfect gift amidst 34 bug-eyed Power Puff dolls.

But at the same time it fills me with fatigue. And the desire to crush the larynx of the puling child behind me. To glare at mothers whose bad mothering is brought on by hours of those emotions. To strangle the put-upon staff with the spooling tapes of dinky carols.

Yup, it's the season to be fucking jolly all right. So get to it. Now!

What's the go with idealist porn teen? What the hell are these people doing? I ask you.

Me: Yeah, you can play for now. Then when G^j comes -
A: Ambush her. Cut her up into little pieces.

Me: Set fire to her.
A: And dance around the funeral pyre. Playing the violin!

Me: Hang on, I thought you played the clarinet.
A: So?

Me: Maybe I should take care of the violin part.

As always, Lizz has an ability to instigate highly cathartic experiences.

Like I said, inconsiderate morons annoy me, whether they be in the next wing or on the internet.
People who gather just to bitch annoy me.
All form and no substance annoys me.
'Kewliez' annoys me. 'Coolth' doesn't.
Mediocrity annoys me more than just about anything.
Oh, and that stupid messy drawing stuff annoys the hell out of me too, Lizz.

Get thee behind me, teenage drunken drama students. You are the spawn of the Devil and you will be first against the wall come the Revolution. Actually, fuck that, the wall is too good for you. You will be summarily drowned in casks of cheap and vinegary white wine. Except for those special few who have really annoyed me, and you will be forced to listen to Country music until your brain seeps out your ears. Hah!

They have earned my righteous wrath by being obnoxious little twits. I mean, I understand that the adrenaline high that you get on when you finish a performance. DOUG knows I've experienced it often enough myself. But that's no reason to leap around making noise and generally being fuckwits until the sodding hour of 3am, at which point the poor frazzled duty-girl calls me up to help her out because three girls are annoyed at being told to shut the fuck up and are stalking her.

Never underestimate the menace I can summon when woken in the wee hours of the morning. Nor the impact of being told off by someone who actually knows your name (since I checked them all in and most of them are highly memorable). Nor how willing I am to flay the life out of you if you backchat me at aforementioned hour and in those circumstances.

You don't pull that sort of shit on me, bitch.

But now they've gone, praise be to Allah. Sod off, you little twerps, and if you never come back, I won't be sorry.

Oh yeah, this is the sort of search I'm talking about. I remember, way back in first year, doing this search with J². I wonder if these people got the same sort of weird links we got. Including the Purple Monkey Dishwasher University. Don't ask, I don't know either.

From the depths of Dee's room comes a sulfurous string of expletives, interspersed with such words as "Netscape", "tables" and "HTML". The artist wishes to thank those nice kind people who pointed out the flaw to her. Hopefully it is now fixed. If not, please advise. Danke very much.

I don't have a huge heap of experience myself when it comes to touching naked men, however, I have enough to know that just about any way will do, as long as you don't grab and twist. But that should be bloody obvious. Naked men usually aren't in any position to be picky about such things, and would just like to be touched. Please?

Note to the male readers who will take righteous offence at this: this search was obviously being conducted by a teenage girl worrying about going that next step with her boyfriend. I think you'll agree that any teenage boy whose girlfriend is going that extra step is just happy to be being touched. Just thank your lucky stars that more teenage girls don't understand the huge power they hold over their male compatriots. Life would be very, very unpleasant if they did.

Finally I feel human again. Barely. Note to self: the full-body mosh is best attempted only by professionals or at least those who have limbered up before hand. Further note: a Long Island Iced Tea does not a limber-up make.

It was the college's summer Christmas barnight last night. It went off like the proverbial amphibious creature in a sock. I believe I had more fun than I ever have at a college bar night. Probably because the summer scholars are, on the whole, more intelligent and less fuckwit-laden than the college population. I served at bar for the first shift, learning how to make both a Quick Fuck and a Cock-sucking Cowboy in the process. I made about twenty of the latter.

Then, in my last bar-wench act, I made the aforementioned highly alcoholic drink (the Iced Tea, that is), one for me and one for J², who was looking more gay than usual. J¹ was smoking a cigar when I made it out to them, so I got permission from his sister to slap him. Bubbles had picked up the night before, so was consolidating her gains. We are very proud of her. The guy seems to be nice (and oh-so-cute), but he has unfortunate taste in friends, choosing as his companion the most loud-mouthed sleaze present this summer. Makes no sense to me.

Ian Thorpe porn?? Now, if this involved Grant Hackett, rather than the other one, I'd suspect Shauny. Anyway, my apologies to whoever came looking for that unlikely thing. I've got lots of porn, but none involved swimmers. Fancy a dominatrix instead? Have two, they're small.

Aforementioned and promised new design. Not 640x480 friendly, but I've expressed my disdain for that resolution previously. I had fun making this. I know it's big, sorry. I think the colours might need some tweaking. I'll do that a bit later, I think. For now, just let me know what you think, please. I love feedback.

Remember the last bandwagon I jumped on? Well, I have a new addition to it. Specifically: "What sound do you love?" That boyish, gleeful giggle James Hetfield emits at the end of "- Human" on S&M. I live for that sound; it's so full of pure delighted enjoyment in what he's doing. I fall a little in love with him every time I hear it.

Tomato sauce is the condiment of the devil.

If there is anyone out there who, like me, has devoured Austen by the volume but never yet encountered Vanity Fair, I recommend you rectify that mistake. It's an eye-opener. It includes everything that you know should have been a part of Austen's world, but that she conveniently forgot to mention. All the dirt, the smut, the disgrace. It's fantastic. Read it.

In news just in, a student at the Australian National University has brutally murdered the entire internet support staff of that institution, strangling them with her ethernet cable. According to inside sources, the girl turned psychotic after having her mu* connection disrupted five times in half an hour. When asked for a comment, the murderess, whose name has not been made public, screeched: "Let this be a warning to you all!"

"Puritanism: the haunting feeling that someone, somewhere, may be happy." ~ HL Mencken

Contrary to popular belief, I have not fallen off the edge of the planet. I have had many things to say, but I just haven't said them. I was going to write about duty and boredom, but then I decided sleep was better. I was going to quote extensively from the letter I wrote to the dearly departed Mandy as a part of her Christmas parcel, but then I had to post it. It was long and rambly (from me? never!).

I will, however, mention that when I squish mosquitoes (mozzies, not skeeters, wrong continent) I am entranced by the little mosquito print they leave on my palms. It looks like a tiny, delicate, deformed tattoo, and I wish I could scan it into the computer, reproduce it for eternity. I'd make it the centre of a design and commemorate the beauty of a mozzie's death.

Speaking of which, a new design is in the works. Boredom's good for that sort of thing.

Warning: this entry is long and rambling, in keeping with my current hap-hazard state of being. I would handcuff you to the chair and make you read, but the restraining implements are somewhere in a box I haven't unpacked yet, along with the porn and the chicken crimpies.

Last night I was stuck with a dinner that was cow or young cow. Not liking cow, I suggested a trip out for sustenance, and thus the Trip was born. J¹, K^y, Bubbles and I piled into a little red car called Caesar (after the number plater - CZR).

First, to Ijong Street. Bubbles remarks that it's amazing how ex-ressies are referred to in college. Fred and other past residents move into a place in Smith Street. Immediately, that house is known not as "Fred's House" or even "103 Smith Street" but just as "Smith Street". We're going to Smith Street. He's moving into the garage in Smith Street. Have you seen the new curtains in Smith Street? Well, we go to Ijong Street, to the house where J² now resides with a bevy of young maidens. Well, they're younger than him, anyway. Bubbles leaps in through the living room windows and almost lands on a small rat that has a part-time job as a dog. We come in through the door, like the sad and sorry mundanities that we are. A tour of the house followed, admiring the newly acquired furniture of the girls, and the lingerie that K^r had sent J² because she bought it in Sydney and didn't want to take it home to the parents. A beautiful corset. I am officially jealous. J² played us the goth-punk-dance remix of Theophilus Thistler, the one that the girls don't appreciate. We discussed R's intense TMBG fetish. The rat-dog got excited. We left.

Thence to the glorious student Mecca that is Supabarn. J¹ gets a trolley and I know this is going to be an epic shop. We all have newly acquired fridges to fill, you see. These things happen when the usual suspects leave college for the holidays and can't take their hefty appliances with them. We tear up and down the soft-drink aisle. Bubbles hunts down tinsel. The eventual pile of Tim Tams is impressive. Thank heaven for Indulgence Packs. We surged through the checkouts, K^y's peaches looking decidedly out of place amidst the chocolate, caffienated carbonated beverages and chips. Hail the conquering heroes as we pile back into the little red car, Bubbles and I playing cheerleaders in the back seat.

Next stop, Maccas, for the original purpose of the entire crusade. We wait in the drive-thru queue, listening to fake Latino dance music and swapping amusing Christmas gift stories. I tell the one about when my father gave himself a bottle of gin, gift-wrapped and tagged: "To Me from Himself." We wonder about the purpose of the second window in the drive-thru, but can't figure that it has any use at all. We eventually decide it must be for an exotic dancer to keep the patrons amused. I decide that this is a good career move, and something I would like to do. Everyone is very supportive of this decision. We get the food and leave.

Home, James, not sparing the horses. A stately progression to J¹'s new room - complete with double bed and a TV that's nearly as big. I eat. We discuss the relative merits of XXXX and Extra Dry (beer, for the uninitiated). G^j forces us to watch the last half of Hocus Pocus. We show tremendous restraint in not killing her. We make suitably MST3k comments for the duration. Finally being free of the silly movie, we launch ourselves into Turok: Rage Wars. Three hours later, I'm still playing and it's midnight. Enough, already. I leave them to the end of Boomerang (top contender for the worst movie ever made, in my opinion) and come back to my room. Jump online to see what's up. RP for another four hours, interrupted by A, completely off his face.

And that, my friends, is why I'm so tired today.

Left so entirely to my own devices, I find myself spinning quite nauseatingly in neutral. Writing X-men fan fiction; is there a less noble pursuit? I don't think anyone need dwell on the insanity that emerges when you combine writing that sort of nonsense with reading Vanity Fair, evoking strains of Jane Austen. Can you picture Scott "Cyclops" Summers as Mr Bingley? Wolverine as Darcy? Or varients thereof, but I'm sure you get the idea.

No two days of this job have been the same. Thus far. No doubt everything will become teeth-grindingly dull all too soon. Yesterday I was rushed off my feet. Today I have had a florist's delivery and a minor crisis in the form of a need to send Chinese-language emails. The one is simplicity itself, the other is a buck that has been passed.

Dee's easy ways to gain film-buff cred:

• City of Lost Children was a good effort, but a little insipid in places.
  
• Being John Malkavich started strong but trailed off into meaningless babble.
  
• Nothing compares to Lost Highway, nor should anything try because that was some majorly Fucked Up Shit^(TM).

This is harking back to the halcyon days of my first year of university, when I never went to bed before two and suffered not at all for it. Only problem is it was more like four last night, and I am suffering mightily. I'm not used to this any more. A year of decent sleep has made me soft.

I have a referral from this page. Hah, I wish!

Mmm... I do wish.

I'm a little concerned that I appear to be bleeding without anything actually hurting. Isn't pain supposed to alert me to things like this? Maybe my body's finally gone on strike in protest over that small matter of a permanent diet of garlic bread and milk.

I have had an epiphany. It has to do with luggage, specifically, designer air-hostess little bags with wheels and a handle. I'm sure you know the ones. Pertaining to luggage as it does, it's not particularly interesting.

My list of least favourite things to do today, in no particular order:

1. Be rushed off my feet checking in highly talented child performers who make me feel like a bit of a failure.
   
2. De-sex an elephant.
   
3. Scrub out a mouldy fridge with paper towels.
   
4. Have the Bat-phone (work duty mobile phone) screen die on me so I can't read a thing.

One of these things actually didn't have to be done today. Guess which.

I now have a double room. I feel so special. A big queen-sized bed with a matress so soft it's like a water bed without involving H2O in any way. This could take some getting used to. Especially since my old bed used to win prizes for being the hardest in college. But I loved it. Slept like a baby on it. And it kept everyone else off the damn thing.

Yeah, sure Shauny. You're little Miss Innocent. How could I have so maligned your character? (Oh, and incidentally, when I was rifling through your archives to find these damning declarations, I also found this link, which I somehow missed the first time round, but which is an absolutely fascinating and spectacularly accurate treatise on the "grotty romance" (as N and I call them). Brilliant!)

Oh my... swoon city. Just got back from seeing Bootmen - or even better: try here. Damn, this movie was fun. Crap story, of course, and the performances were frankly shocking. But it so beautifully showcased the exquisitely successful mating ritual that is dancing. Jeans-clad Aussies, young, built, sweaty from dancing...

I think I need a cold shower.

What was most amusing about watching it, though, was that G^j who I was watching it with has danced with half the cast. "That big guy," she says, "Nigel, he dropped me, the bastard. I mean, literally dropped me. I've still got the bruise, I'm absolutely certain."

The whole thing was worth it for Adam Garcia's grand entrance on the back of a truck. Ooooh.

Back to that cold shower. Damn, I'm as bad as Shauny! Heh... :-)

Random shopping for trivia competition prizes. I am so in my element. To whit:

• 1 voucher for the approximate value of your average CD single from our delightfully friendly local independent music and comic shop - I am beholden and loyal to this place - http://www.impactrecords.com.au/.
  
• Several tickets for free rides on the Canberra Carousel.
  
• 1 big bottle of bubble blowing stuff complete with blower.
  
• Barbie colouring-in book and eight crayons (thanks for the inspiration, Mel).
  
• One trashy paperback romance with actual illustrations and Indians in it.

Did we do good or did we do good?

And speaking of Mel, I'm holding out for the voice of God to sound like Michael Wincott. But I'm guessing she's got it right.

All right, this is the most worthy search I've seen in a long time: how to have sex in the shower. Because, you know, you can't just ad lib these delicate matters. Come to think of it, how is this instructing going to work. You'd both have to memorise the complete instructions, because you couldn't very well print out the directions and take them into the shower with you. They'd get soggy and the ink would run. I suppose you could put it in one of those plastic sheet things and then it wouldn't get wet. You could stick it to the wall in an easily seen spot so that you could check from time to time to make sure you're doing it right. But that would really make your guests puzzled, I'm sure.

PS: If you absolutely have to know, I recommend this list of handy tips. Especially pay attention to the last one. That means you, Faye and Tim!

Signs to tell me that the generation gap between me and the people two years younger has bitten again:

1. Who were the Bangles?
   
2. Who was She-Ra?
   
3. What was the Labyrinth?
   
4. Nirvana? Oh yeah, that little band that did that Teen Spirit song. Yeah, they were kinda cool.

My computer plays Hearts with the strangest patterns, sometimes. Yesterday, nothing A or I could do would stop them thrashing us in a multitude of cunning or just plain lucky ways. But today, I saw one of the computer players actually lead the King of Spades while the Queen was still out there, and then obviously not go for the full haul.

I'm discussing the intricacies of a computerised card game on my blog. Damn, I need to get a life.

Chaos averted: J¹, now being in charge of the college's IT issues, decided to clean out the internet connections, assuring us that he would leave connected those that were still in use.

He stuffed up.

But never fear, I grabbed him very quickly and made him plug in my connection again. At knife-point. Then I was able to breathe easily, and do mundane things like eat breakfast.

Yes, my name is Diana and I'm internet-dependent.

Far, far too late, while listening to A's "Who Cares A Lot?", I realised how gorgeously luscious the lead singer of Faith No More is. This is like when I realised at their farewell concert that Crowded House were a really good band. My musical timing is atrocious.

So maybe this whole having A back in college thing wasn't all just a bundle of fairy floss, but then again, I never thought it would be. After a year of him being out of college, he's back under my nose, under my feet, 24/7. He lives 10 metres away. That personal space and time I relished has vanished, especially on the weekends. I used to spend every minute that he was here with him, because eventually he'd leave and I could get on with the other things. But now he doesn't leave, so the time when he's here isn't sacrosanct.

The problems we used to have all suddenly phase into comprehensibility when I spell it all out like this.

I don't like this at all, and I like it even less because of that fact.

Jett makes me stop, and think, and ache. I always feel so quietly privileged to have been given a story like this. Thank you.

You've all heard me talking about R before, I'm sure. He's one of my oldest friends, and we have an unusual but interesting relationship, where we swap insults, weird ideas and sexual innuendo as fast as our whacked-out minds can produce the stuff. Well, my dearly beloved R has gone to the States for the summer (or, rather, the winter, as he will be experiencing it), and he's producing an online travel diary, hosted by the anarchical institution that is the Croquet Club. If you're interested in reading about his zany hi-jinks, you're in luck, because you can. Just don't tell him I sent you.