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My father-in-law buys the Sunday Herald-Sun every week. I’m serious. With no explanation whatsoever he plonks it down in the lounge room every Sunday after he comes back home from drinking coffee at one of those cafes and disappears back to his room to watch Sunday TV shows; all this while I’m either asleep or trying to keep track of The Simpsons plotlines on Fox 8, usually +2. Because of this I am normally guilty of flicking through said paper whilst wondering aloud why the thickest paper of the week takes the least time to read.

I'm about to launch into US politics and media, but bear with me, because it's relevant to us. Shit runs downhill, and when America gives us a Global Financial Crisis, we all suffer. When they start a war, we inevitably follow, and the whole world reaps the whirlwind. What's happening in the US is scary, because, unless we wake up to ourselves, we'll follow down the same track.

When I was in London in the early nineties the temp agency I was working for accidently sent me to a job at the top end of Merrill Lynch, the last bastion of upper class debs and old Etonians. It was interesting enough, in an anthropological way, and while they were all very nice to me they did tend to regard me as some kind of bizarre zoo exhibit. Colonial? Unilingual? Only 4 cousins? Staying in London on the weekends? Merciful heavens!

There is a fundamental law in particle physics that a system can't be observed without being altered. That is, the act of observing something changes it. It's a simple but incredibly important notion. For us to see something happening, light has to hit it and reflect back. Our eyes pick up the light and our brains sort it out and tell us we've seen it. That's fine with a galaxy, or a pendulum, or a pint of beer, or most of the things we look at in the name of science. However, when the things we are looking at get very small, it becomes a problem.

I’ve read you since I was a kid; I’m forty now, so of course I’ve changed, but so has the world.

In the past couple of years I’ve started to devour online media, and you, from being my starting-point, have slipped to becoming an occasional click for sports news (though the little paper and many others do it so much better) and the weather.

Last week I was surprised and horrified to discover that roughly half the people I know haven’t even heard of Crikey, and that a fair proportion of people who do know it hadn’t looked it for months. These are informed, interested and shouty people who love a good debate and rarely accept anything at face value. They’re getting their information from the ABC, The Age or The Australian at best, and commercial TV stations or the Herald Sun at worst.

Sandilands is rapidly becoming more of a focus for my rage than Andrew Bolt, which is an amazing achievement considering I don’t listen to Sandilands and I do go out of my way to read Bolt (just to maintain the anger, not for any other reason – please!).

I don’t watch morning TV, and there’s a couple of good reasons for that.

Firstly, because it’s SHIT, secondly because I have too much to do, thirdly because I listen to Radio National (actual journalism) and, most importantly, because it’s SHIT.

I guess you probably know that.

So, ok, well, how are we supposed to feel about it?

His music was ok, I danced to his songs in the 80s’, but let’s face it, anyone who danced in the 80s would have danced to Michael Jackson at some point, so I don’t think that qualifies me as a fan.

The proliferation of groups and pages on Facebook and Yahoo and other various forums, bleating about how hard done by this lowlife is, has utterly astounded me.

I’m also disappointed in the fact that he is the only one that has been outed publicly for the group sex controversy and there are at least eleven other participants who have not had the spotlight pointed at them as well.

Don’t eat the yellow snow. Don’t lick frost on ski-lifts. Be polite to the crazy man with the gun (well maybe that one doesn’t really afford you the opportunity to learn, but you get the point by now, surely).

Pretty early on in my career, I learnt that it’s not a good idea to leave yourself logged onto a computer in a common area of the office. I learnt this when a particularly grumpy, in fact downright fucking scary, manager called me into his office.

(credit to Digital Art Science for image idea)

You wouldn’t actually ring a friend and say “I like banana bread”, or “I’m washing the dog” would you? I can tell you quite honestly that if it was me you called with this news, no matter how dear a friend you are, you’d get “You boring twat” and a hang-up.

Does this mean though, that there is a totally level playing field for everyone with a high speed connection?

I have to admit to yet another weird quirk – I know, I know…how many can one person have (ask my husband – he may be able to answer that).

I LOVE The Saturday Age. When I say “love”, I mean it in the slightly unnerving ‘hug it and squeeze it and lick the plastic home delivery wrap and stroke it and gaze at it like a long-lost treasure and maybe speak to it in hushed, conspiratorial tones’ kind of way. I love it like a bought one.

So, we’re all watching the news and reading the papers, moved and horrified by the inferno that engulfed our state. Everyone wants to do something and everyone wants to help.

Entertainment that doesn’t offend.

Some of you may have read my little sputter of outrage in the October issue about the ABC axing the Religion Report, the Media Report and several other shows from Radio National. We heard about it a day or two before we had to publish and didn’t have time to get a full rant together, but what more appropriate place to put it than here in the Entertainment Issue?

Let’s make a couple of things perfectly clear …

Now let’s get something straight from the start – I’ve got nothing against the sitcom itself. Hell, some of the best comedies of all time have been flung from the womb of situation comedy: Fawlty Towers, Yes, Minister/Prime Minister, The Young Ones.

Facebook is like a long dark strip of road with street lights and under every umbrella of light, a figure stands shouting, just positively screaming to be seen, heard, noticed.

My mission for you this issue, dear readers, has been to self-improve myself through self-help books. Can I lead An Intelligent Life, Survive my Family, Make Intimate Connections with my Venusian Wife, Develop 7 Habits and therefore become a Highly Effective Person, and avoid becoming a Toxic Parent? Did all my relationships until now (perfection) Break Up because they were Broken, or because I was Just Not That Into Her? Can I find the Wealth Within, or become a Little Bit Calm?

In case you didn’t realize, we were recently graced with a visit from the great spirit medium John Edward, of Crossing Over With … fame. Last month he did some shows at the Arts Centre, made some people cry, reunited grieving family members with thin air, and generally did the same shtick that mystics and charlatans have been doing since before the creation of the written word.