I always gag a little when someone begins an apologetic post by saying 'I've been a bad blogger.' It rather implies that readers have been breathlessly waiting for your next sparkling bon mots, which, unless you're some veritable god of the internetz, like Kottke*, or my god of the internetz, no. Either way, I feel bad for not posting for a while, not because I think people are particularly invested in the regularity of my posting, more because generating post ideas is deeply embedded into my mental firmware. There are just so many things I could have written about. Like how I went away to a small, charming, corrugated house on the coast with a foreign man and ate a lot and watched a lot of Battlestar Galactica and Nip Tuck, and came back relaxed and sunburnt. Or how I got all after school special on this kid at the beach, who was cutting his forearm with a sea shell for some reason. Or how one night, while cooking dinner, Jessie turned to me and spontaneously quoted my entire wanky email signature at me. Or the exchange I had with a sparrow trapped in a building the other day, further proving that I will always look crazy in public.

But, no, I haven't summoned the energy to do anything with any of that. For once in my rather plebeian life I've had things to do, and I've been doing them with vigour, and I am glad. That does mean that when I have discretionary internet time I've preferred to spend it on my bourgeois porn of choice, currently Danish hardwood furniture. Please note that I expect crass comments on the following terms: wood, hardwood, hard, mid-century, and teak.

But now I'm breaking radio silence to talk about my new jeans. They are fine new jeans, especially considering the foul mood I was in when I bought them. I was in the worst kind of shopping mood, the kind where you're just grouchily ticking something off an overwhelming to-do list. All of my jeans decided to die in the arse (... hee) at the same time, and I hate buying jeans so very, very much. You have to try on a million different pairs, usually in some kind of big box streetwear retailer, and the lights are horrible and fluorescent and the music is irritating and you find yourself swearing off refined sugar after staring at your pillowy pale thighs in the changing room mirror over and over and over.

This jean buying experience, however, was rather painless. A kind-eyed sales assistant caught my eye as I sulkily rifled through the racks and listened patiently to my polemic about the right kind of jeans. They have to be high, I said, but not too high, and tight, but not spray-on tight, and dark. She immediately found me exactly what I needed. They are high, and dark, and very tight, yet somehow quite comfortable, and they do nice things to my arse. And I was happy.

Until I put them on this morning. Turns out my new every day jeans take a good fifteen minutes of cursing to put on. Once on they are deceptively comfortable, like the tardis, but I don't really understand how they managed to construct a pair of pants that positively require a can of WD-40 to put on yet feel roomy and comfortable once you get there.

Sigh.

Perhaps I should have gone with the sparrow anecdote.

* as an aside, I actually had to google Kottke because I had a brain fart and couldn't remember if it was .com or .org, and also gagged at the subheading of the first result. 'Get into the world of Jason Kottke, a freelance web designer and learn about design, food, weblogs, and living in New York City.' I don't necessarily have anything against the Kottke, more because I don't really read him, but, honestly, get your hand off it, sunshine. It feels like every second google ad laden, money making blog out there in bourgeois internet land is about design, food, other blogs and living in New York City.

One cold and blustery night I was walking along Lygon St looking like an animated bowling pin, with my big coat zipped to my chin, the hood pulled over my eyes, hunched against the wind. Something soft and powdery hit the pavement near my feet and burst open. It was a bag of flour. I turned to see a car full of men with unfortunate haircuts speed away. One leaned out the window, highlights drifting in the wind.

'FUCK YOU, CUNT!'

I was puzzled. Being a good middle class girl my first thought was 'who, me? But you don't even know me! I'm not a cunt. I don't deserve a drive-by antiquing.' My second thought was 'by Angela Davis' mighty fro YOU SHALL NOT OPPRESS ME!' I mean, honestly, what kind of retarded polo shirt wearing, stupid haircut having, neckless choad would try to rob some strange woman of her dignity by throwing flour at her from a moving vehicle?

Anyway, what do you think? Am I just being a bit humourless here?

Charlie Brookers, 'My Super Sweet Sixteen' and 'America's Next Top Model' all in one video. I could cry with happiness, I could.

Speaking of tears, you must watch Rich's video recap of ANTM for reals. I made a foreign man watch this the other night attempt to make him truly understand who I am as a person. The foreign man kept asking me who Tyra Banks was, and I thought he was asking what exactly ANTM is, and I kept breathlessly explaining that ANTM was the reason television was invented, and they have bitches crying and blank-faced mall rats with sequins glued all over their faces and Miss Jay Alexander and, best of all, TYRA, and to know ANTM is to love ANTM and, by extension, to know and love me. Then I slowly realised that the foreign man, who is American no less, truly didn't know who Tyra Banks is, and I've got to say I was rather horrified.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there. Just get some of that beautiful regalness into you.

I started going to the gym, and learning how to weight train, when I was a teenager. I was a very antagonistic teenager, and if I was going to go to the gym then, by gum, I wanted to do what none of my peers were doing, which is why I was drawn to the free weights room. I wanted none of your girly classes and complaints about bulking up; I wanted to lift heavy shit, and I wanted to be belligerent about it. Moreover, to begin with I didn't even bother to train my legs. Girls were concerned with their legs, I thought. I wanted to pump my guns like a dude.

I mention this to give an idea of what my exercise philosophy has long been. I became a bit less set in my ways after drinking the strength and flexibility koolaid at ANU, but still. Still I sneered at the ladies trotting off to their Les Mills yoga classes, mats tucked under their arms. Still I snorted at claims you could 'lengthen' muscles,* apparently in opposition to nasty, 'bulking' weight training. Still I scowled at stretching of any kind, which is possibly why I'm about as elastic as [please to insert clever, chortle-inducing simile about flexibility here, as apparently I'm just not up to it this morning. For reals, her is a list of similes I have considered using: 'about as elastic as Jim Waley on a cold morning/Paula Abdul's boobs/Tyra Banks' weave.' Aren't you now glad I used a little restraint and left it up to you, the reader?]

Aside from my rather ornery disposition towards exercise, which has left me strong but inflexible, I'm also rather the anxious person. In the past month or so it's become clear to me that living in a perpetual state of tensed, cringing anxiety is no longer cute, and something must be done. As I am not the type to sit still for any length of time meditation was out, I decided to give yoga a red hot go. And, you know what? It's not so bad.

I found an agreeable studio in the city that is so very feminine one ovulates immediately upon entry, rather confusing the male clients. There are stacks of new, imported ladymags in the waiting area and Aesop products in the bathroom. The instructor is robust, blonde and freckled, and sounds like a BBC foreign correspondant. Best of all, I've learned that yoga is actually rather obscene. You're often told to grasp great handfuls of buttock flesh and pull them out of the way, and I defy anyone not to giggle at the term 'downward dog.' Goodness knows I appreciate any group activity where, at the beginning, you're repeatedly asked to tell the group if you're menstruating or not.

So, in conclusion, I am a pill. Ladyish fitness activities are most satisfying in their own way, especially when a handsome British woman instructs you to manipulate your own buttocks.

* however, I reiterate, you cannot make muscles longer. It just doesn't happen. Stop saying you make muscles longer, pilates. It truly does hurt me on the inside.

Come back from the overseas bearing a stack of those speckled American 'Secret World of Alex Mack' notebooks I'm so obsessed with, the penis bone of a fox in a charmingly labelled test tube, and photographs of yourself on a mobility scooter at Disneyland.

As an aside, I photographed these on a fresh copy of Harper's that had just arrived in the mail. The same person bought me a subscription for my birthday. Now that's the way to get, as the kids say, mad pussy.

The polar bear and the husky are playing! They are friends! For the love of little fishes you must watch this slideshow about the bear and husky playing together!

Scene: A university-related trivia event. RACHAEL goes to ask her friend something. Her friend is with someone RACHAEL swears she's met before.

THE FRIEND
Rachael, meet Girl.

RACHAEL
I think we've met before.

GIRL
Really? I don't remember you.

RACHAEL
No, I swear we have.

THE FRIEND
Well, you are both enrolled at the same university.

RACHAEL
(well-natured chuckle)
Oh, I suppose that must be it.

GIRL
Yeah. Right. Maybe.

RACHAEL and GIRL and THE FRIEND return to their respective tables to battle it out for trivia supremacy. While workshopping various team names with her team mates through word association (i.e., one person says a word, then the other free-associates to come up with a suitable name. For instance, if one says 'pants' the other says something like 'dirty') RACHAEL has an uncharacteristic lapse of memory, which is to say she actually remembers where she met GIRL. Anticipating a mild but friendly exchange RACHAEL wanders over to GIRL's table.

RACHAEL
Hey, I know where we met now.

GIRL
Oh, right.

RACHAEL
We met at that bar that time. You know. That time. And you were giving someone advice about their relationship.

GIRL
I don't remember that.

RACHAEL
Oh. Okay.

GIRL
I don't remember you.

RACHAEL
Oh. It's just, like, I don't ever remember anything, like, ever.

GIRL
...

RACHAEL
Serious. I have a memory like a goldfish. So this is kind of uncharacteristic for me.

GIRL
...

RACHAEL
Okay. Right. Well. I'll go sit down then, shall I?

GIRL
Yeah. You do that.

RACHAEL returns to her table, ears burning, where she comforts herself with cheap, metallic tasting red wine. Eventually people run out of beer and she volunteers to get more from the kitchen. The floor is tiled and wet, and RACHAEL is wearing endearingly zebra striped but impractical shoes. She promptly falls arse over tit. Looking up, she realises the kitchen is directly in front of GIRL's table full of tight pants wearing hipsters.

RACHAEL
Oh, for fuck's.

Postscript: We won the shit out of some trivia that night, so it's all good.

Anyone who is around me for more than five seconds knows that I am positively evangelical about sunscreen. This may be because I suffered the kind of industrial strength acne in my teenage years that required not one, but two courses of Roaccutane, leaving my skin painfully photosensitve, or it may be because I'm abalone pale, but I do not fathom how anyone could just 'not wear' sunscreen. Sun damaged skin looks horrible, blotchy, red and angry, and I go to many lengths to avoid it. The first thing I do after I shower is coat myself thoroughly in the stuff, the Cancer Council's Everyday lotion on everything below my shoulders, Olay's light SPF 30 on everything above, and even then I feel guilty if I don't reapply throughotu the day. The sun will fuck up your skin for reals, and I just can't understand why anyone wouldn't take a few seconds to protect themselves. Yet still. Still. I see my friends take their beautiful, young, not-yet-ruined skin out with naked, with no micronised titanium or avobenzone to shield themselves from the big ball of radiation in the sky, and it breaks my overly-controlling heart, it really does.

So you can understand that, when I read Natalie Angier's article on skin I felt oddly vindicated.

As I survey the sharp tan lines and flaking faces that surround me, I see that I am hardly alone. When it comes to how we treat our birthday suits, it seems, we are like 2-year-olds: more concerned with the wrapping and ribbons than with the present itself. We spend billions of dollars a year on makeup and skin-care products, yet we’re slipshod about the one measure that dermatologists emphasize is essential for the long-term health, strength and bounce of our skin: guarding it against ultraviolet radiation.

That means applying full-spectrum sunscreen every day of the year, and by the gob, not the gossamer, and reapplying it later even if you’re in a bad mood and don’t feel like it. It also means skipping the tanning salons, forever decoupling the words “fit” and “tanned,” and retreating from the fiercest light of midday, back to a shady oasis, where you can contemplate the complexity, multidexterity and deep beauty of the organ called skin.