I haven't been awake past 10pm since this photo was taken in 2009.

#1 You start thinking about contents insurance.

You don’t own anything apart from a bicycle, a Nintendo 64, and the electric frying pan with the melted handle that your mother gave you when you moved out of home.

But still.

Maybe you should insure that junk, because it’s better than having nothing, right?

It’s not.

#2 Your personal comfort becomes more valuable to you than looking good.

You decide that you were stylish enough when you were younger and now it’s time to be warm and have free movement of your limbs when you go out.

I assume so, anyway.

I was never stylish at any age.

I wore hand me downs.

From my brother.

#3 Your hangovers become brutal.

They used to set in as a gentle headache, then ease off after a strong coffee and 4 hash browns.

Now they break down your door at 7am and smash you in the face with all the force of a date rapist.

#4 It becomes harder to keep the weight off.

You used to eat like a 12 year old boy, but you had an arse like one too.

Now you have an arse like Jack Osbourne.

Before cocaine.

#5 When you buy cereal, you choose the ones that promise to lower your cholesterol.

Whatever that is.

#6 You start getting along better with your parents.

You realise they’re not so bad.

You stop planning ways to spend your inheritance because you don’t want them to die so much anymore.

#7 When someone offers you free drugs, you say no because you have work in the morning.

Just kidding.

I would never do that.

This post is for Aleisha McCormack. She asked me to write about my hobbies, because I am a glamourous blogger who works in advertising and lives in the big city. It took a lot of reflection over quite a few weeks, but I’ve finally put together a comprehensive list:

• peeling other people’s sunburnt skin
• drinking
• licking the salt off rice crackers
• putting things in the bin
• reading books about shipwrecks
• loling
• getting up during the night to make sure the stove is turned off

I think that’s all. Sometimes I also write limericks using rude words. I guess I’m just a fun/crazy gal!

• told me I was adopted.
• punched me repeatedly.
• headbutted me when he broke his arm and couldn’t punch me.
• used my skipping ropes to tie nooses and “hanged” my dolls from the curtain rod in my room, so that when I walked home from school and approached the house, I saw a mass suicide happening in my bedroom window.
  
• told me that I was retarded and had been inside a mental institution for my entire life. Mum and Dad were the “doctors”, my teachers and friends were “nurses” and “orderlies” or other people hired to amuse me and keep me company so I could live a “normal life.” I was so out of touch with reality that I had no idea.
  
• slapped me repeatedly.
  
• pooped in the bathtub because he knew it would uspet me. I got so scared that I jumped out and ran naked through the house, then slipped on the lino and smashed my head against a ceramic step, resulting in a wound requiring three stitches.
  
• pinched me repeatedly.
  
• held me down on the couch and farted in my face.
  
• cut all the hair off my dolls. Then cut off their arms and legs.
• told me that Taz, our first family dog who I only remembered vaguely, had to be put down because I cried whenever she came near me. In fact, the dog just barked too much and gave the neighbours the shits.
  
• sang this song constantly, often late at night, until I was driven to borderline insanity.
  
• kicked me repeatedly.
• called me a “fudge packer”, “back door stabber” and various other derogatory terms for homosexuals. I had no idea what they meant until late highschool.
  
• forced various things into my mouth, including cat food, dirt, and batteries.
  
• told Mum that I broke the neighbour’s windscreen, after he had thrown a brick at their car.
  
• gave me a noogie every time I walked past.
  
• told me that my high hairline/large forehead was actually premature baldness.
  
• told me that Stripe, the stray cat we found who was very violent and frequently attacked my bare legs, was nowhere to be seen. I would emerge from the bathroom, where I had been hiding, to find Stripe waiting outside the door, claws ready.
  
• gave me a wet willy every time I walked past.
• told me that Santa Claus was not real on Christmas morning, 1989. I was three years old.
  

What did your brothers and sisters do to torture you? Or what did you do to them, you sick bastard?

• put my cat underneath an upside-down washing basket and placed phone books on top.

• climbed over the backyard fence and squirted tomato sauce on the neighbour’s washing.

• head-butted another kid on my first day of Play Group and told him to “shut the hell up” when he started crying.

• stole money from my dad’s bottom drawer nearly every day to buy Zooper Doopers and carob buds from the canteen.

• put fairy wings on my younger cousin and told her she was a fly, then sprayed her with Mortein.

• wrote my mum hate-mail.

• lured a friend who was terrified of dogs into the back paddock and then let the dogs out of their enclosure and listened to her scream.

• lured same friend into the shed and told her I was going to bludgeon her to death with a hammer, then admitted I was just kidding after she started crying.

• picked pieces of cat poo out of the kitty litter tray and put them in the neighbour’s letter box.

• asked my mum what a condom was in front of her bible study group, then asked “DOES THAT MEAN YOU CAN HAVE SEX AND YOU WON’T GET PREGNANT?”

• cheated on the 1997 Maths Olympiad and accepted a trophy at an all-student assembly and had my picture in the paper for it.

• stuck a highlighter up my brother’s cat’s bum to “check his temperature.”

• cut pictures of diseased penises out of my dad’s medical journals and pasted them in my kindergarten homework book while learning about the letter P.

Last weekend, the Sydney Morning Herald website published Angus & Robertson’s list of Top 100 Books of All Time. The list was compiled based on the votes of 26,000 readers and confirms my long-standing suspicion that people are morons.

Here’s my own little list.

Top 10 Reasons Why the Top 100 Books List is About as Definitive as a Cowpat:

1. The Harry Potter series stole first place. Has the world gone mad?

2. My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult scored 5th. This is one of those books I stupidly read simply because every idiot around me went on and on about how wonderful it was and claimed that it changed their miserable lives. So I read it, and then I tore out every page and wiped my arse with it. The plot of My Sister’s Keeper is based entirely on a single ethical dilemma: is it right to take an organ from one child (against their will) in order to ensure the survival of its sibling? After debating this throughout the whole goddamn book, and including many tedious courtroom scenes filled with ridiculously inappropriate behaviour from the characters, Picoult neatly sidesteps the issue altogether by killing the protagonist in a car accident and leaving all her organs up for grabs. I almost expected to turn to the last page and read, “And then they all woke up and realised it was just a dream!” Fuck you, Jodi Picoult, you wasted four hours of my life and I want them back. I could have used that time to read something better, like the phone book.

3. Rolling in at number 8 was Tim Winton’s Breath. Don’t get me wrong, I totally heart Tim Winton. I would probably have sex with him based on his writing ability alone, and Winton is about as attractive as a dog’s bum. But Breath just didn’t cut it for me. The plot was shaky, the characters confusing, and the ending unsatisfying. The one thing Breath proves is that even if your idea is shitty, you can get by on superb writing skills alone.

4. April Fool’s Day by Bryce Courtney slides in at number 25. Again, I love a bit of Bryce, but April Fool’s Day is hardly his best work. What about The Potato Factory, Jessica or Four Fires? They piss all over a (sometimes) whiney account of Courtney’s son’s death, punctuated by uncensored rants against the public health system. On the bright side, you’ll never shower without a raincoat again.

5. In 27th place is In My Skin by Kate Holden. In My Skin is a great read, but mainly for shock factor. Every bored housewife loves reading about a high class heroin-addict whore. Who cares if she can write? She’s exciting. Idiots.

6. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is ranked 29th. After The Kite Runner, I was expecting big things from Hosseini. Unfortunately, A Thousand Splendid Suns is about as engaging as a brick wall. I didn’t even finish the fucking thing.

7. In 32nd place is Atonement by Ian McEwan. What the deuce is wrong with people? Atonement the book sucked even harder than the movie! McEwan seems to have taken a leaf out of Picoult’s book too for the ending – after labouring through three hundred pages of meaningless romantic crap, you find out that none of it ever really happened in the first place.

8. Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist comes in at 57th. Oh god, now I’m really angry. The Alchemist is another book I read because everyone in the world recommended it to me. I thought it was a load of horse shit. This is by far the most boring, meaningless, mind-numbing novel I’ve read in the last year. Through Santiago’s journey, we are supposed to realise that no matter how unattainable our dreams seem, if we just have the courage and determination to pursue them, we will succeed. This, my friends, is why so many losers try out for Australian Idol and cry when they don’t make it through. The reality is you will probably never achieve your dream – that’s why it’s called a dream.

9. At number 89 is Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. WHY THE FUCK IS THIS SO FAR DOWN THE LIST? Sedaris is a goddamn genius. He’s the Einstein of the twenty-first century. In fact, I think SMH’s list should have consisted solely of Sedaris’ work.

10. This is not a list of the Top 100 Books of All Time. It’s a list of the Top 100 Commercialised Crap Published During the Last Fifteen Years With Some Token Austen, Bronte and Dickens Thrown In to Create an Impression of False Credibility.

• Glandular fever
• Pneumonia
• Cancer of the brain
• Arthritis
• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
• Epilepsy
• Appendicitis
• Broken ankle
• Leukemia
• HIV
• Anaemia
• Receding hairline
• SARS
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Emphysema
• Alcoholism
• Insomnia
• Heart murmur

1. City Rail (aka “Shitty Rail”)
2. Weight loss patches
3. Applicator tampons
4. Every single Harry Potter movie
5. Valley Girl work-pants
6. Limp Bizkit
7. My childhood friend’s pledge to never ditch me for a boy
8. God
9. University
10. Three mobile
11. South Africa
12. The stray dog I took in and nursed back to health, who then attacked a family friend and had to be put down. Good one, Rocky.
13. Lindsay Lohan, although she is still totally fit and I want to sex her
14. L-shaped nose rings
15. Acupuncture
16. Nylon underwear
17. Flu shots
18. Hillsbus
19. LG
20. Ciaran Leahy of late night Hotel CBD fame. If you don’t know what Facebook is (“Face what?”) you are too old to date me. I wonder whether this will come up the next time he googles hisself, if he knows how to. I do not want to sex
21. Trellini’s
22. Canned corn (beetle included)
23. $4k worth of orthodontic work
24. Berocca
25. Fitness First
26. Recovery Magazine
27. My body
28. The St John’s Ambulance staff at Livid 2004. Thanks for leaving me unconscious on the ground while my 90-pound girlfriend dragged me out of the mosh.
29. Merrick & Rosso
30. Alanis Morissette
31. The heating in my ’89 Corolla
32. The seatbelts in my ’89 Corolla
33. The speakers in my ’89 Corolla
34. The clutch in my ’89 Corolla
35. My brother’s friend, “Donkey”, who was too fat and broke the driver’s seat of my ’89 Corolla
36. Hair removal cream
37. Proactiv
38. Everyone I’ve ever dated
39. Augusten Burroughs – I still love you though and I would sex you if you were not gay
40. ILS. Why does your second album suck so hard?
41. Excel
42. Psyllium husks
43. Limewire
44. Every recipe I have ever tried to follow
45. Daniel Johns – how could you get married to somebody who was not me? Let’s sex.
46. E-Tax
47. My gag reflex…huh??
48. The Sex & The City film
49. Florence. Why are all the shops closed on Sunday? Some people are a $2,000 flight away and only have one day to spend in the city.
50. Yamaha
51. Johnson’s holiday skin. If that shit works, I’ll eat my own head.
52. Bar Bellino – what happened to your coffee??
53. Bleach
54. Jose Gonzales – remember what city your concert is at, champ.
55. Garlic
56. Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Scar Serum
57. 96.9
58. Sydney Community College
59. Stingoes
60. Nerves
61. Many, many cigarette lighters
62. The weather
63. Google desktop
64. People who can pay for their own drugs next time
65. Ezibuy
66. My $30 alcohol breath tester
67. Spell check
68. Dr King
69. Caffeine
70. Broken guitar strings