10mg and a bit of shush!
Eat, Pray, Glove!
This website and all the writing on it will be the final bastion of non-AI-published articles. I give it five years before Eat, Pray, Glove is all that’s left, assuming I’m also left. In 2030 you’ll be able to write 1000-word comedic journal by pouring your earwax in your Google Home and downloading the ColludeMe app ($11.99/mth with ads that promote only the Lindsay Lohan Kabbalah church/yoga studio) to translate your brain matter into content that achieves your desired Substack open-rate benchmark – or your blood money back.
It’s hard to remind myself to be grateful for all the good writing out there, even when right in front of me. I joined the chorus cast of Breaking: The Musical for all the Sydney shows which was the most fun I’ve had since that Titanic explorer billionaire sub imploded. Only a real person like Steph Broadbridge, not AI, could write the lyrics “I wanna have street cred, just like Milli Vanilli / I want my dance moves to be so black that I’m played by Chris Lilley”.
And now, here’s John Glover with the weather.
Eat!
Consumables that don’t perish.
I somehow made it 70% through 2015’s Fantastic Four before I turned it off. Sunk-cost fallacy would mean most people just see it through, but not me – I’m. A. QUITTER. It’s astonishing to see a $120 million budget given to a script that never made it to a second draft. I guarantee you this movie was written by an Amazon customer service chatbot.
There’s a new joke-free Tina Fey and Steve Carell show on Netflix I watched all of called The Four Seasons. The premise is cute: a friendship group in their 50s, comprising of three couples, take vacations together over the course of a year, once per season. I wish you could’ve witnessed the aggressively sharp “WHAT” I grunted out when the final episode’s credits began with text on screen: “It’s official! Another season is coming.”
Wake up babe, new national anthem just dropped! I’m not normally one for embracing people who got famous on TikTok due to my fatal tall poppy syndrome but Go-Jo’s Milkshake Man is the most fun I had out of all the Eurovision songs this year. He’s like if Napoleon Dynamite came from money. The fact it was Australia’s entry doesn’t even sway me; the cunt looks eastern European as fuck.
Pray!
Wishful thinking with no follow-through. It’s called manifesting!
As a kid I used to say “I feel like I’m getting a cold” about once a day. Kids nowadays say things like “skibidi toilet” and “my dad turns the WiFi off when I visit, what a skibidi toilet cunt!” Is this anything?
My GP asked me during an unrelated visit if I have any allergies. I said “not that I’m aware of, but I do sneeze constantly and I’m always carrying tissues in my pocket.” He retorted “yeah, that’s not normal.” What a blight on my character. I’m positive I’m older than him – sure, he’s a doctor, but I remember 9/11. The fuck do you know.
But he’s right, it’s not normal to sneeze as much as I do. If you’ve never had a camera up your nose, I can’t recommend it less. I’ve spent the last eight years believing I have deviated septum (which is Latin for “cunted nostrils”) after the North Shore’s answer to Dr. Mengele shoved his 1cm-thick tubing camera up my schnoz, tap dancing against my soft tissue in a method I assume he reserved only for patients deemed worthy of his homophobia.
To give you an idea of how bad my day-to-day allergies are: my GP couldn’t even fit the camera up there the other week. My nasal tissue is that swollen. I genuinely have a tight nussy. I won’t be hearing jokes about it.
Turns out you can just get an allergy skin-prick test if you ask nicely. Basically, a student doctor from USYD will aggressively dig 27 pointy, plastic “needles” into your skin that contain liquid samples from nature’s greatest foes, then you learn you have an extreme reaction to dustmites over 2x as big as the regular reaction. However it looks worse than it is; the hardest part is counting to 27.
They say life begins again at 30, and I 100% agree. What they don’t tell you is that “life” is equal parts fun and boring. Sure, I found more confidence overall, got better at sex, brush my teeth less, the fun stuff. But part of being over 30 is upturning all the rocks that hide your physical schemas and asking “what the fuck’s that about”.
For 30 days straight, plus or minus the four days I forgot, I’ve been pouring a lukewarm solution of sterile water and liquid medicine into each nostril and out the other. It’s not pretty – here’s three TikToks to prove it.
Somehow that was one of the easier treatment methods. If you can help it, don’t be allergic to dustmites. They’re like Jojo Siwa: they’re everywhere and they keep returning! I spent the last month doing the nasal flush, two nasal sprays per day and worst of all, vacuuming my room and washing my sheets. If I could maintain a hygiene schedule, I would be a completely different person. I wouldn’t even be visiting the GP. I would be a GP.
Glove!
A personal reality from a real person.
I have nothing unique to say about depression since Hannah Gadsby entered the game, but here goes.
Most of my 2024 was spent in an emotional turmoil I can only describe as Sylvia Plathian. I’d have put my head in the oven but this place is a rental. It’s so embarrassing being over 30 and not being able to follow through on plunging a knife far enough into your wrists. I could never 13 Reasons Why myself cos quite frankly, I’m lazy first, stubborn second, ambitious third.
Anti-depressants were taboo until The Wombats wrote Anti-D, then they jumped the shark and became cringe. Too on the nose to be fun anymore. There was a period of time where being on anti-depressants was embarrassing, then it became weird if you were just raw-doggin’ your synapses. Now it’s gone full circle: it’s cringe to talk about being on anti-depressants, but everyone’s silently on them.
I sat on a Lexapro prescription for two months before I decided to fill it. I wasn’t sure it would be the smartest move for my body but wanted it on hand for a rainy day. Then, on a sunny summer’s day in Sydney, I was thrown under the bus by a woman at work – the gay man’s natural enemy – so I stormed to the pharmacy opposite the office, scoffed an Escitalopram, and sat back down at my desk, determined. Nothing motivates me to be better more than proving someone wrong.
This is the third time in my life I’ve been on anti-depressants, after separate stints at ages 14 and 21. Once from heartbreak, once from existential crisis beating down a simmering rage and relentless emptiness. I’ll let you decide which age was which, cos I genuinely am not sure which way is less humiliating.
Are you wondering whether anti-depressants could work for you? Skip the trip to the doctor who stopped bulk-billing in 2021 and take my FREE test by answering the below three questions:
Is your sadness crippling your day-to-day functionality?
Could you use a nap every day or two?
Do you hate having erections?
If you answered ‘YES’ to all three, congratulations, you’re a perfect candidate for Lexapro!
They should invent an anti-depressant that lets you stay horny. It’s true that sexual liberation happens again at 30. Just when I got good at sex, I no longer want it. I’m what Shia LeBouef is to acting.
The catch-22 with anti-depressants is you have no idea if they’re actually working. Did I need to heal by giving the medication time, or was time going to be the salve after all? How much of depression is due to environmental factors vs innate chemical imbalances? I could have all the whatever-the-opposite-of-serotonin-is in the world, but a quick $250,000 would clear that right up.
I’d also settle for stronger friendships, a job where I am respected, creative fulfilment, a ceasefire in Palestine, self-actualisation, or to have my cat allergy revoked so I could get a pet. But for now, I’ll settle for 10mg and a bit of shush.
Before you go…
Is this the second year in a row where Friday the 13th has fallen in Pride Month? I’ll be performing at the Kweens of Comedy pride show on Oxford St. Ugh now I’m sad again that I don’t have a black cat. ☹
Now get off my e-lawn!