We all know I love Melbourne more than is sensible for an inaminate object too large to hug, right? That's why I can say the following.

Melbourne's weather is fucked.

I'm not talking about the winter because we've all had enough of cold, blah, chilblains, blah, cold. I'm talking about summer.

In my admittedly very limited experience - so someone with longer residency feel free to tell me to shut up and pull my head in - Melbourne doesn't know how to do a summer properly. It's either hot as the furnaces of hell with no relieving features except corporate air-conditioning, or it's overcast, drizzly and doing its best early-spring impression.

In short, the city is bollocksing up the whole season.

I say this, of course, typing from Gladstone in Queensland, where it's bright and sunny but a nice pleasant thirty degrees with a gorgeous sea breeze. I'm utterly comfortable. A few days ago it was raining all over the place... and a nice pleasant twenty-six degrees. A bit further back at Christmas it was getting rather warm at around thirty-three or -five, but it was still perfectly bearable.

Conclusion: Melbourne's weather stinks. I suppose there has to be something wrong with the place. Other than AFL.

Ahem. Once was sufficient.

Time I talked about a movie. Watched Entrapment last night. Was that movie always that spectacularly crap or was it just the intervention of advertisements?

Speaking of movies... that one about small people, jewellery and prodigal royalty was quite good. (No, I didn't faint. But it was a near thing.)

Is there any polite way of saying: "Hey, your name is the one I always use as my fake name when I'm randomly chatted up by psychos!"

...no, probably not.

Christmas is...

...getting the Marilyn Manson album as a present and spending the rest of the day mentally singing: "Are you motherfuckers ready?"

This post brought to you by abuse of the ellipsis and guilt over the fact that I haven't posted in a week.

Christmas is...

...moshing around the kitchen to ultra-loud NIN while baking chocolate cookies.

I am my own special breed of domestic.

I'm also out of here tomorrow for the family celebration in Brisbane, including my RotK geekgasm. Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope it glows.

Phone: *rings*
Bosslady: Can you work tomorrow?
Dee's brain: And you're going to do your Christmas shopping when??
Dee: Yeah, sure!

I'm such a whore for capitalism.

Was Mystic River all that and a bag of lightly-salted potato crisps?

Not quite.

It's good, don't get me wrong. It's great. There's the faintest, most subtle of subplots running through it with the women that is pure gold. But in the main story there are moments of very clumsy, clunky, rough-edges storytelling that probably wouldn't be so horribly noticable if the rest of the movie wasn't so smooth and brilliant.

So, yeah, excellence on film. But if it wins Best Film, I'm going to be very annoyed, and not just because I worship at the altar of Peter Jackson.

I've trimmed my fingernails, my claw-like thumbs and the cocaine-related little fingernail. Now my fingers look short and stubby.

I also went to see Master and Commander, and it was utterly fabulous. That may be just because I'm a little ship geek and they used the term "larboard", which gave me a thrill. And that Crowe bloke was really damn good.

Face it, it's all just about me. Narcissism is alive and well and living at Blogger.

The number one reason for working in a bookstore is efficiency.

1. Remove the whole "get paid, walk to bookstore, hand over money" stage by just taking pay in form of books.
1a. This also reduces wear and tear on currency as it doesn't even change hands.
2. Don't even bother pricing the book if you're just going to take it home anyway.
3. "Browsing" time doubles as "working" time.

I think I have a blood clot in my left elbow from not moving and my socks stick.

Actually, I know my socks stink.

There's a sparrow living in the bookshop.

I noticed it today when it was scared off the 2-for-$1 table by an avid rummager. It fluttered away and scrabbled onto a shelf.

It's small and very still - not hoppy-skippy-perky like other sparrows. At first I thought it was terrified, but it doesn't seem to be. Not any more than the usual low-grade fear with which life proceeds, at least.

It has trouble flying, judging heights and distances, and it's not very good at landing. It flew in after a little jaunt outside this afternoon, and missed the new release shelves only to bump into the bunting around one of the tables. It fluttered and slithered and hid underneath it. It's nice and cool and dark in there. Good for sparrows.

Di told me then about how it gets in the way in the morning, when she has to roll out the tables for display outside.

We don't feed it, or look after it. I think it just likes having a space away from the other birds.

I know how it feels.

In the kitchen, the Male wrestles with the fell Olivebread Beast, in a bowl roughly big enough to play football in. Though not, obviously, while the olivebread is in it.

He calls for me. "Oregano!" he shrieks. He omits the "Stat!" but it's there anyway.

I like the world better when I'm not hungover and forced to work.

(What do you think comes of an hour-and-a-half of bottomless wine glass? I'd like to point out that it was not me who dropped the aforementioned wine glass, by the way.)