Kerry, you are a genius. "You accidentally saved it as something else." Indeed.

I found it.

Would you believe it was saved in a different directory entirely (DOUG knows how it got there) and called "notchapter3"? I mean, I know my computer is possessed, but this is just scary.

Excuse me while I pet, stroke and hiss my pleasure all over things in a most smeagol-like way.

I think the word I'm looking for is FUCK.

It's time to hand in my work for novel class, and I have three shiny, polished chapters.

Or rather, I have two and a half. Because I know I thoroughly reworked the end of chapter three following feedback from the class, but it's not there. It's the old chapter three, staring at me.

I don't understand. I don't fucking understand. How is this fucking possible?? I remember so vividly working so fucking hard on it and getting it all just fucking perfect but I don't remember vividly enough to redo it and fuck.

What the fuck is my "boo"?

And for the purposes of this particular quiz, I think we can assume that it does not refer to my miniature giant space hamster. (Go for the eyes!)


Ashley - Your real name should be Ashley. People with the name Ashley are usually the biggest posers in the entire world. They have no minds of their own and cling on to any and all trend(s) that come along.


What should your name be?
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Ashley! Oh Ashley! (Excuse me while I fall over laughing.)

Thinly-disguised navel-gazing through a veil of rugby (aka: the game they play in heaven).

"And, of course, Johnny Wilkinson didn't miss," my mother grumbled on the phone after the English slaughtered Australia. "If he misses, it's an occasion to send telegrams to everyone you know. The bugger'd kick his own grandmother over the crossbar if there was three points in it."

My mother has few fanatacisms. Liquorice all-sorts (before Coeliac put them beyond her reach). Simulation pinball. And rugby union. One of the dominant memories of my childhood is being woken in the middle of the night by my mother slapping the arm of her chair and screaming "Go you good thing!" at whatever international rugby match they were watching. My father is of Welsh descent. My mother is a practising Christian, but rugby is the household god.

Last night I discovered how much I am truly the offspring of my parents. England vs Samoa. It promised to be a tight one, but half of the Samoa squad hadn't been released by their clubs (boo, hiss) and hence it was going to be an uphill battle. I tend to cheer for England in the cricket, but the Male and I had decided we were obviously going to have to support Samoa when we saw what proportion of the crowd was decked out in white-and-red, singing "God Save The Queen".

England won. They deserved to win. They were the better team; a solid forward pack that just pushed the Samoans around, and rock-solid set-plays that took their toll. But where they played rugby from the head, the Samoans played from the gut, with flair and finesse and the sort of brilliant fire that makes watching football the sort of experience that snatches the breath from your throat. From an explosive start, they led for most of the game, being beaten down and sneaking back.

I screamed myself hoarse. I shouted: "Go you good thing!" And I experienced the wonder that is a stadium full of English supporters singing "Swing Low Sweet Chariot".

Oh, and Johnny Wilkinson was having an utterly shit night. He got about two from seven. So consider this several telegrams.

This is the sound of hysterical laughter.

I just got called by ASIO in the middle of my desktop publishing class.

('s all good, Johnny-boy.)

Why I love my Male, reason #lots:

"i'm having lunch on friday with the girls (i steadfastly refuse to call them the angels) (possibly because there are four of them, possibly because it would be tacky, but most likely because that would make me bill murray) (and i'm not going down that role unless i get one of those plasma-nebulising cannon things) (and sigourney weaver, because she is a useful thing to have around) (although everyone around her always dies of aliens) to which you are obviously invited."

"So what you're basically saying is that submarines are drowned camels."

The Joys of Living in High-Rise Revealed!

Me: Hey, whoa, yo, check it out! Ack-shawn in the offices next door!
The Male: (scurrying over to join me by the window) Where, where?

We watch in silence for a moment.

Me: Or maybe they're dancing.
Him: Or she's crying.
Me: I think they're snogging.

More silence.

Me: This isn't nearly as interesting as I thought it would be.
Him: We should be taping this.
Me: Cake?

The rugby last night was an epic struggle of warcries - "Let's go Canada, let's go *thud-thud*" vs the two-toned "Waaaa-aaales". Wales had all the flair (which the Male rightly understood as "tendency to break the rules"), but Canada had all the pretty. To whit: their number 8 pushes all the right Dee buttons, being tall, lanky, and possessed of gorgeous dark locks. Moreover, the two young, fitt, (male) Canadian supporters sitting just to our left who had daubed the maple-leaf flag on their naked torsos were the sort of thing to make a girl reconsider her allegiances.

We moidered the bums. I lost my voice screaming. It feels good.

When the subconscious attacks...

Turning the corner into Lonsdale, I found myself behind a generic mincing business-girlie. She was wearing shoes of the usual high fashion, the ones with the pointy toes and heels. Except the heels on these were only about half an inch, so the pinching in to the tiny little stiletto heel was utterly ridiculous.

"What stupid bloody shoes," I mentally sneered.

A block later, just as I was about to turn into Swanston, we got jostled in merging pedestrians, and I - in my big clod-hopping boots - trod on the back of her heel. And snapped her strap.

I did my best innocent bunny frozen in headlights impersonation, apologised profusely, continuously, vehemently. And then I ran away.

Obviously my subconscious is even more nasty than I am. Or maybe my boots are the fashion police. I am the Law!

Even as I type, I am sipping at a glass of watered wine. Thus proving I am both a gentile and a drunkard.

But I'm a goy lush with tickets to the Rugby World Cup, motherfuckers. So nyah nyah. Wales vs Canada and England vs Samoa. Good seats, too. I am delirious with Welsh-descended, rugby-loving joy.

It's like everything's conspiring to make me think about Jesus. I am not a Christian, though I was raised as one. Sometimes I wonder if I am too equipped with spiritual knowledge to reliably fake atheism.

Some fellow with a name like a Bond villain (Saramago?) once wrote a Nobel-Prize-winning novel about Christ. My novel teacher has been blathering about it. He recommends it. The novel "humanises" the figure. Makes him more everyman. Makes him a victim of forces, helpless. He has an affair with Magdalene (so it's really, y'know, innovative). He doesn't know how he does the things he does.

The very idea makes my hackles rise. The actual execution of the concept makes me growl. It seems to take everything that is actually interesting, Christian or beautifully magical about the Jesus figure, and wrench it asunder. Drag it all down to a mundane mud-scratching level. I guess I see the point. But I don't see that there is anything in this "new version" remotely as interesting or imaginative as the original. And given that, what is the point of insulting, demeaning, degrading, de-valuing the religion of millions? It seems like cheap, shoddy, sell-out showmanship.

And I feel like some sort of conservative knee-jerk curmudgeon. huh?

The second element of the conspiracy is, obviously, the baptism of the Godthing which took place this weekend just concluded in Goulburn. Keynote participation in Christian ritual like that will obviously require careful soul-searching and line-walking by a little syncretist like I. Though I had difficulty with being asked if I "turned to Christ", I have no trouble at all with swearing to raise the child to abhor evil (actually, it was phrased "to fight evil", which makes me think i'm supposed to train the child to be a caped crusader) and shine divine light. I'm good with that.

Taking communion was also something of a twinge, but the minister (who was the child's grandfather as well) fixed me with a stern eye and said: "Those who embrace the Lord take communion." So I scuttled up to that bench and partook.

It's not like I disbelieve. It's hard to explain. I tried, when the minister inquired after my "religious history". On paper, I sound like a filthy lapsed Protestant. I find I cannot put into words the way in which I live with faith without sounding challenging or evangelical. Since both run counter to my faith, I shut up, and let people see what they will.

They will anyway, after all.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Never have so many been so cool, with so little point.

Non-Winston-perverting: The characters were amazingly cool, even the American import (who functioned as a multi-leveled and quite well-done symbol) but the plot was utter shite. Well, not utter shite. Just so damn standard, you wonder if they just didn't bother changing the template.

What a waste. Because the characters were really all that and a bag of chips. With chicken salt. Febulous.

I had a dream that I was remaking Gangs of New York so that it would actually be good.

Then I woke up and the phone was ringing and the boss was saying that the window at the store was busted and everyone else was off sick. I checked, but I actually was awake.

Last night, we went to an amateur production of Oedipus (a boy who really loved his mother). Thanks to half a bottle of wine and the poor acting and staging there were quite unseemly giggles coming from our section of the theatre in the final scene. I don't think Oedipus ranting at his daughters about how fucking awful their lives are going to be now is really supposed to be comedic, but all I could think was: "Gee, thanks Dad. And by the way, EW!"

I am wearing two gloves on my right hand. I hate chilblains.