Health food bloggers need to say “bliss” less and “piss” more.

I like cooking tasty, healthy food. This is because I want people to say “she could be a bikini model, but she’s using her brain instead” behind my back, but I also hate celery. If I’m going to put something in my mouth, there has to be something in it for me (*winks). And that something should be some kind of vague nutrition. But swallowing is much more likely if what I’m putting into my mouth tastes good.

I’m not against protein balls or cauliflower rice or even kale chips. I love them all. I just wish the health food culture wasn’t so … wanky. I know there’s a market for inspiration, but I just want to get through an almond-based recipe without having to endure words like “nourish”, “bliss”, “wholesome” or “clean”. What I really want is a good Aussie accent explaining to me how to activate my almonds “without burning the arse out of it”. I don’t have a problem with photos of artfully-stacked slices packaged in rustic twine and baking paper, I just want people to stop trying to enlighten followers with their recipes. Because it’s food guys. It gets eaten, sprayed with bile and ends up in rough clumps in the toilet. Calm down. Stop trying to change my life.

And because Alf Stewart is yet to host a clean eating cooking show, I’m going to attempt to fill the gap. So I’m sharing a recipe with you to kick off the #cuntstryingtobehealthy movement. I don’t have a name for this stuff, but for the sake of labelling, I’ll call it Pretentious Slice.

I know this recipe wouldn’t qualify as “clean”. It has two kinds of sugar and butter. But it uses oats instead of flower, has fruit and is packed with fibre (I think). And because flour is satan and I care about your colon, I reckon it’s better for you than a doughnut. If it’s more nutritious than a doughnut, it’s healthy.

Alright. Here we go.

The first thing you’re going to want is a decent food processor. No healthy eater is complete without one. Because a blender just isn’t going to get your cashew aioli to the right consistency (another recipe for another time). Most of us closet health food eaters have some form of informercial equivalent; mine is a Ninja. It’s great for margaritas.

So step one is getting a cup of All Bran and one and a half cups of oats into whatever you usually make your bliss balls in.

Then you’re going to want this stuff called Fibre Booster. I don’t know exactly what’s in it, but it looks like some kind of fertiliser and that’s what you want if you’re trying to shit your way skinny. It has a purple label, if that helps. I put in one scoop with the quarter cup measurement and then like half of that … so like one sixth of a cup? I don’t know man, only you know your colon and what kind of scraping it needs. Listen to your heart.

Pulse that shit in a food processor until it’s as close to a flour as your imagination will let to believe. Because no matter how fabulous your nutribullet is, nothing is going to make fibre as fine as that delightfully bleached, pulverised white flour. You’re going to have to make sacrifices if you want to have a sculpted bod. Don’t kid yourself. It’s going to be grainy. It’s like when people say things like “cauliflower chicken nuggets” and pretend they taste the same as McNuggs. There’s no way white, bulbous broccoli is going to taste exactly the same as chicken offcuts dipped in batter and fried in week-old oil. And that’s ok. But stop lying to yourself.

Ok, now because you’re added a fuckoad of what I can only assume is powdered bark to the mix, you’re going to need sugar. Get one third of a cup of raw sugar (yes, raw because you didn’t’ think we could get through a recipe of pretentious slice without the word “raw”, did you?) probably about one heaped third of a cup of brown sugar.

Then chuck in about a teaspoon each of nutmeg, mixed spice and cinnamon, and about two teaspoons of ground ginger, or even more. This is a mix a throw in with almost any sweet thing I make, and it never fails to impress my family. They look at me like I’m a bloody genius and it’s all thanks to knowing where the Masterfoods stand is in the supermarket. I actually don’t measure it, I generally just shake the bottles until my internal rage is reduced from a boil to a simmer. Depending on the day or whether or not you’re being paid 17 per cent less than your male counter parts, this could vary significantly. Best to use the measurements for your first go…

Also, you’re going to want to add about two or free teaspoons of baking soda about now. Don’t worry about this stuff rising too much, because it’s kind of like cooking with sand – there’s only so much you can make it rise. Also, add about a teaspoon of salt here. The salt is the real star of this slice. It’s like a salted ginger slice, which makes me sound like one of those trendy foodie people. Don’t limit your tastebuds to the fads that trickle down to the McCafe display case from Masterchef. I’m breaking barriers here. Join me!

Now blend all this together. There’s no time limit here, just as long as it takes to irritate any person within a 15 metre radius of you and your food processor.

Now you add the wet stuff. I’m going with a bit of coconut oil – gees I don’t know like a third of a cup – a drizzle of olive oil and one or two heap tablepoons of butter. You could probably do it all with coconut oil, but you’d be a fuckwit. Butter is life. Butter is everything. Butter is divinity.

Then blend.

Have a look at the mess you’ve made in the processor. If it’s still powdery, add more of your favourite oily ingredient. You want it to get to the point of resembling a dough, if that dough was made with a wooden table put through a mulcher.

Once you’re pleased with this grainy goo, squish it into a lined baking tray. You can roll it out, but you’re going to need to put a layer of baking paper on top and beneath the dough, because that stuff is clingier than your Year Eight boyfriend. If I’m being precise, I’ll roll it out between the baking paper and peel the top layer off and throw the bottom layer into the baking tin, which saves mucking around with transferring it. Too easy campeasy.

But because this is Pretentious Slice we’re making, I recommend going for the rustic look, which will garner more likes on Insty. Sprinkle some rolled oats into the lined baking tin, throw in the mixture and knead it roughly. Then press it as evenly as you can into the tin. Put the tin in a moderate over for about 10 or 15 minutes, or until the mixture changes colour and starts to rise slightly.

Take it out and dump a whole bag of frozen berries on top. I prefer straight up strawberries but I’m not the boss of you so you can chuck on what you like. I’m not going to know about it. But I will say that the fruit works best if it was frozen first, because it breaks down better. Because the cells have already been frozen, they completely die in the arse once they’re heated, which makes for a nice gooey texture that you usually have to get slowly simmering the fresh fruit like a sucker. And you’re not a sucker.

Drizzle on some honey for sweetness and to keep the vegans away, then throw it back into the oven for another 10 or 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven then wait to cool before eating so you don’t burn your little tongue on the gooey innards of the fruit. But considering you’re going to be taking photos of the slice from various angles, on different wooden boards and with multiple combinations of fresh flowers, half-drunk cups of tea and linen towels, that shit will probably be ice cold before you even think of enjoying it/ruining it for photos forever by putting it in your mouth.

This slice is best enjoyed with a cup of tea while deliberating over which hashtags to use.

When all else fails, over share.

I’m cold. It’s late. I am still suffering from the allergic reactions my face pulled after being exposed to the decade old dust disturbed by my little sister cleaning her room. So I didn’t have a polish post prepped and read of dissemination by the masses (shout to “the masses”, otherwise known as Christina, Phoebe and my relatives!).

It’s four degrees at the moment. Thinking is hard. So I did what anyone would do: I goggled the answer to my problem, which was questions. I searched for ten questions through Google, or more correctly, I searched for “dten questions”. And this list came up. And because I like asking the questions no one cares about, I’m going to give you the answers only I care about.

What are you grateful for? Right now? Polar fleece. Definitely polar fleece. And insulation.

What are you proudest of? I’m really proud of my pelvic floor.

The other night I had a dream in which I was weeing. We’ve all had those dreams. Those are the dreams where one minute you’re in a pool of tepid water or sitting on a toilet and the next instant you’ve been transported back to your bedroom, damp, confused and soaked in shame. They’re the equivalent of your brain pulling the chair from underneath you or pricking holes in your condoms – a huge fuck you from your sub conscious to your consciousness, and your mattress. Those dreams are dangerous.

I now know what being a grown up means. Being a grown up means having a dream you are weeing on a carpet and waking up bone dry. That’s success. Bladder control is the true mark of accomplishment.

Because once you master the balloon of literal piss inside you, you can master the balloons of figurative piss inside you. You can control that urge to roll your eyes at wankers. You can control your desire to throw a gym ball at unsuspecting person. You can control the voice in your head screaming at the fastfood worker who blatantly disregards the golden rule of traying up: drinks first, burgers second and fries third (it keeps your fries piing hot and it’s not that hard).

What’s been the happiest moment of your life so far? For some reason, that time I won a family pass to see The Power Puff Girls Movie premiered in the big smoke – otherwise known as Brisbane – from Girlfriend magazine came to mind. I know I’m tired, but if this is the cherry on top, my life must be a shit sundae.

What’s been the hardest moment of your life, and how did you get through it? Being confronted with the fact that forcing my family to drive to fucking Chermside to see a cartoon may just be my happiest moment. I’m getting through it by telling myself that I’m really knackered and therefore can’t be thinking straight. Surely I’ve had happier moments, I’m just to dog tired to think of them.

What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life? If it’s flooded, forget it.

How would you describe yourself as a child? Were you happy? I used to come home from school, not talk to anyone, make myself some Heinz spaghetti on toast and go sit outside with magazines and milk. So I would describe myself as concerning, I guess. I think my happiness levels depended on where I was up to in finishing my purposeless carb loading – I was a spaghetti tin half empty kind of gal.

Who has been kindest to you? I’m going to have to go with a blanket “family” answer on this one. But before you think I’m one of those wankers with my last name tattooed across my back, let me explain a few points:

Mum saved a hunk of roast lamb and GRAVY MADE FROM PAN JUICES for more than two days for me so I could have a sandwich over the weekend.

Dad let me take the rest of their packet of sultanas home. And he loves putting those wrinkly little bastards on his morning porridge.

When my oldest sister and I go out for dinner, she pays for our main meals and lets my pay for the ice cream afterwards.

My second oldest sister bought me a chai latte today and used to assure me in high school that she would drive me to get an abortion should I ever need one.

My little sister lets me steal an odd chippie off her plate at dinner when I ask Mum not to give me any, so my svelte body can look ultra glamorous.

Yes, most kindness is revolved around food. But it’s painful having to share a burrito so someone offering me that privilege is very highly esteemed in my books.

How do you want to be remembered? There’s a picture of me in college dressed in a poncho, fringe dripping with sweat and beer, trying to squeeze a goon sack into a tiny over the should bag. I think that sums me up pretty accurately.

If your great great grandchildren could listen to this years from now: is there any wisdom you’d want to pass on to them? What would you want them to know? There’ll always be money in onions. I can’t say this with any certainty or authority, but I like the way it sounds.

If you could honor one person in your life — living or dead — by listening to their story, who would that be, what would you ask them and why? The woman who played Grandma Yetta. God bless her soul.

I’m getting tired of words not meaning what I think they mean.

I don’t know if this is me saying I don’t like lingo or me saying I don’t like myself for not knowing the lingo. I think it’s a little bit of both to be honest.

I’ve always been a fan of slang and how the meaning of certain words evolves over time with frequency and tone of use. But usually I’m on the front foot of those evolutions. I was there when “bulk” stopped being used exclusively as a prefix to “billing”. I was there when “keen” was the equivalent of “I just grew several penises and each one of them is erect at the prospect of joining your proposed Maccas run”. I was contributing to the cutting down of long words to one syllable or “syllb”. I was there for it all!

But now I’m out of the loop, and words are different to me. Words that used to mean one thing now confuse me. “Dank” is a pretty good example. Right now it’s being thrown around a lot, and it seems to have varying uses. Back in my day, which was only like five years ago, dank was absolutely a bad thing. For something to be described as “dank” meant for it to be grotty, shabby, unpleasant and just all around shit. I viewed it as a mix between “rank” and “damp”. So by that logic, one would use it in a sentence to describe an old, soiled mattress. Maybe a flanno left on the floor of a recovery party, soaked in food dye and beer, drenched in poor decision making. Hell, you could even use “dank” to describe a cave full of wet but warm dogs.

But now it’s being used to describe remixes and memes. Now, for the love of all things holy please do not ask me to define the word “meme” for you. Memes are like the meat in sausage rolls – everyone loves them and eats them right up, but no one can say with exact certainty what they are. They’re like funny pictures, mostly with accompanying text that are shared around the many corners of the vast World Wide Web we love so much. In the final throws (A.K.A. about a month out) of the federal election, everyone is banging on about “dank memes” that are going about as political propaganda, albeit shitty propaganda.

And despite all the hard work dedicated media minders do, sometimes politicians think they can own this whole social media game. They think it’s in their best interests if they handle their Twitter handles and put the “I” in their insty posts. It’s a real win for us, The Voters, because we get an understanding of the person behind the politician. The posts they make up themselves can be absolute gold. This is because most politicians running in this election are daggy old dads (I can say this because out of 10 candidates running in my electorate, not one of them is a woman). Case and point? Behold our Deputy Prime Minister:

Now, fest your eyes on some of the weird, completely dad-like posts he obviously made without the assistance of a trusted adult, like he was Ralph Wiggans and Lisa Simpson in a state costume contest:

You see, the thing about daggy old dads is that they don’t fully grasp this whole young people thing. If you make it to their ages, you can probably expect to develop some weird quirks, bank up a horrible repertoire of odd, and sometimes slightly racist, sayings and a general disconnect from the generations below you. My dad is a classic example. One time I caught him intensely reading The Many Uses of Vinegar recipe book like it was a novel while wearing his Akubra and belt with a pocket knife on it. Another time he asked my sign writer uncle to make him a stick for the back of his ute to tell other drivers to “stop sniffing my arse”. He thought it was both smart and hilarious. We [his offspring, general humanity] were mortified. Thankfully, this sticker was never fixed to his vehicle, but I feel like it is representative of the kind of political claptrap flying around the internet. I Googled “dank memes political Australia” and this is what came up:

So by looking at this garbage, one would assume that “dank” still meant bad. But the other day I was listening to the radio and heard a producer talking about how he spend his time making “dank tunes”. From memory, the sample of his work I heard on my commute was reasonably not shit. In fact I would have to say that this fellow had a track record of dropping bangers (not the sausage kind, the “this song is very enjoyable and encourages me to dance” kind; I at least understand that one). So in this sense, I would have to assume that “dank” not only meant “not shit” but also “quite fantastic” and “inspired gregarious dance moves”.

So where does this all leave me, a person unsure of whether it is an insult or a compliment? How do I prove myself to be “with it” when the definition of “it” keeps changing? I can only assume it is like the word “sick”. That word is usually used to explain a general state of being unwell, and sometimes is a euphamisim for vomit (e.g. “he was sick all over the back seat” or “the pile of sick in the corner of the room did little to dull the passions of the two 19-year-old drunkards”). As such, the word is often used in place of “gross” or “disgusting”, as in “this pantsuit is sick, I can’t be seen in it or I won’t get a date to the formz”. It is sometimes used to describe a deranged person; “sick puppy” is my favourite example of that. But when used as “sik”, the word sounds the same but takes on a whole new meaning. “Sik beatz”, “sik singlet” and straight up (language warning!) “sik cunt” are all massive compliments. In fact, that last one is probably the highest honour that can be bestowed on any Australian. “Sik” is the kind of “good” that is usually paired with a surfie hand gesture and even an outstretched tongue. It’s exclusively a young people term.

So maybe that’s the case with “dank”. Maybe “dank” is the new “sik”. Maybe the word can have multiple meanings; many other words do after all. Maybe I’ll be able to be with “it”, even if they change what “it” is. Even if what I’m with isn’t “it”. But I have to say that right now, what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me.

I made a cake with stevia and I feel like I betrayed my entire being.

It was a rainy weekend and I was doing some soul searching. It was a busy week beforehand and I needed to take time to reconnect with my spirit. I needed to reset my mindset and tune into me. I needed to peel back the layers of the great croissant that is my soul. I needed to take a step back and remember what was important to me and what I wanted out of life.

It took hours of laying down, but eventually the skies in my clouded mind dispersed and I could see clearly. I knew what I needed to do. I had plenty of oranges and a plastic bag for full of dreams. I had goals. I had ambitions. I aspired eat the entirety of something with a mini fork.

But there were competing forces at play. The eternal tussle between wanting to eat so much crap you practically sweat gravy and wanting to have the kind of rig that gives other people self-esteem issues is ever present in my mind. It’s a hell of a fight. Sometimes the ravenous wreck comes out on top, and sometimes I’m able to stay on the path of smug nutrition, because nothing motivates you to keep fit quite like the possibility of completely unhinging the mental stability of people you don’t know with your pert arse.

Of course, there are also times when you try to compromise. You can see the value in treating yourself to something tasty but also have the foresight to know you don’t ever want a weedy intern nurse to struggle under the weight of your fat apron should your crippling obesity hospitalise you.

This citrusy circle of shame was one of those compromises. I decided to make an orange and almond cake, and bought the necessary almond meal (which may as well be the ground bones of Jesus Christ himself it was that expensive, by the way) while on a long walk. Sure, the walk was just something for me to do to justify bathing for the second time that day but I still didn’t want to undo my activity. So as I trudged home with the dust of the rich in the plastic shopping bag I made a promise to myself.

I promised myself I could eat an entire family-sized dessert as long as I could pretend it was healthy. I’ve made this promise before. Mostly it’s pie or crumble related. I use ground oats instead of flour in my bases and olive oil spread instead of butter and I tell myself it’s an acceptable move to gorge myself on an entire industrial-sized pie in the space of 48 hours. So I was feeling pretty confident about my plan to replace the sugar content in the cake with stevia.

I’d heard nothing but praise for this plant-based sweetener. Everything from “just as sweet as a sugar” and “probably not as poisonous as most sweeteners” filled me with an unshakeable confidence. Not only was this cake going to taste fantastic, but because this powder of dreams was plant-based and the other ingredients were two whole oranges (yep, you used the whole fruity sphere), almonds, eggs and good intentions, it was going to be a health extravaganza.

Oh, how wrong I was. Once the hours-long process of preparing and cooking the cake was completed, I raised the confection to my mouth and had to swallow my pride. The stevia was far from the powdery dream I had expected.

Instead it tasted like I had replaced the sugar with the salt gathered from evaporated urine left out in the sun. It tasted like someone was angry with me. It tasted like citrusy hate. And it had done this all to myself.

All I wanted to do was to simply consume more the recommended daily intake of sugar and happiness. Instead, I had spent two hours crafting physical misery, and it wasn’t even moist! I just wanted a treat that wouldn’t make my hate myself completely but in doing so I had created tea anti-cake.

The only thing left to do was to hide my sins in a layer of unplanned icing. I combined the three superfoods of butter, icing sugar and cream cheese to create a delicious sludge of sinnery. I was sure it would cover the aftertaste of the stevia, which I read is a problem the world over. Apparently it is a great sweetener, but it leaves a dreadful taste WHICH IS COMPLETELY SENSELESS. What is the point of using a sweetener to replace sugar if it has an awful taste?! WHO ARE YOU MONSTERS?!

Unfortunately the great icing distraction didn’t work, and I was now with a horrible tasting cake that was drowning in calories. It was a disaster. No person should be subjected to that kind of shit. No one deserves it. So I did the only decent thing I could do.

I took it to work the next day.

I’m getting tired of people my age banging on about wine.

For some reason, every bastard is bloody obsessed with wine, and not the fun champagne rip-off kind. It’s the kind of wine that’s room temperature with no hint of carbonation. My generation’s fixation on it is inescabable. Every second meme you see about female-type people in their 20s has a wine component. “Everyone’s getting married and I’m just here with my wine” or “Tonight I’m going to Netflix and chill … with my wine” or the slightly more honest “look how different I am from other girls because I don’t care about uncool stuff like love or having children or being responsible with my money and like to drink wine, and aren’t I so self aware and hilarious and, let’s just say it, quirky for pointing it out? Hahahah… YOU SHOULD TOTALLY LOVE ME I’M SUCH A FUCKING CATCH! PLEASE VALIDATE MY MISERY BY LIKING MY PICTURE”.

Well here’s a truth bomb for your turnt fam squad goals. Wine actually tastes awful. I don’t care how juvenile it makes me look; I don’t care about being a traitor to my cynical generation of hermits. I’m just going to say it: most wines are yucky. Maybe I’m wrong. But maybe most wines taste like a mix of that water you find in olive jars blended with equal parts of distain and haughtiness, with overtones of liquid whiteout. Maybe I like the look of holding a wine glass, but don’t exactly enjoy the feeling of having my tastebuds scraped off with a blunt potato peeler.

I just want wines to taste the way I thought they would when I was watching the two kinds on Disney’s Sleeping Beauty get absolutely blotto to celebrate forcing their children into an unwanted marriage. It was a red variety, and looked hearty but sweet. My innocent mind imagined the two crown-wearing arseholes were drinking a nectary, plumy fruit drink. Of course, I was a pup of a child and didn’t understand that there would be other reasons to drink something other than the sweet taste.

You might say I lived a sheltered life growing up in my quaint country town where almost everyone knew your name and you could play multiple rounds of Spotlight up your street without fear of being stuffed into an unmarked van. Say what you like, but I did have a vague idea of what “getting high” meant. In fact, I knew it first hand. Sometimes my friends and I would get together in little clumps and spin around and around really fast to laugh at how incapacitated we were immediately after the stopped twirling. It turned out that was a gateway activity that led to more dangerous highs, like rolling down hills. Needless to say, I understood the notion of doing something silly for the good feels afterwards.

But the idea of putting something into your mouth that wasn’t nice tasting just because it made you feel good was completely out of my capacity of thought. The only not nice tasting thing you would put into you mouth to feel good (eventually, anyway) I knew of was medicine and it didn’t look like either of the two men on my family’s slightly green television set were suffering from any cold or flu symptoms. This was a time when my favourite food was hot chip and chicken sandwiches (let’s be honest, it’s still one of my top five meals) and I would consume the small amount of vegetables on my plate by swallowing them whole and washing them down with big gulps of milk, like an Echinacea tablet. When it came to matters of the mouth, it was all about taste, so it never crossed my mind that these irresponsible parents would be drinking anything other than zingy grape juice.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of wine. I love the glasses with the stall stems, I love the fact that it’s premixed, negating the need for a Lido mix-in and I love the look of sophisticated judgement that radiates from drinkers. I love it all. But if wine were a man and all those traits about them were reasons to love him, the taste would have to equate to his membership of the Shooters and Fishers Party or him supporting the Canterbury Bulldogs in the NRL. It’s something you try to put up with for a while and try to focus on all the other good things about him, but ultimately you decide you just can’t accept it inside you. Sometimes you might be in a pinch and need to get a quick buzz so you brace yourself and drink it quickly, but you can’t do it to yourself every weekend. It’s something you want to get over and done with which leaves a bad taste in your mouth and is best down while holding your nose.

That is not what I wanted wine to be. I wanted to be like a young, taut Courtney Cox in Cougartown pounding the grape like a tank. I wanted to be like the bitchy aunties you see at most weddings, tearing apart the bride’s whoreish dress over several bottle of sav blanc. Hell, I’d settle for the fat emperor man who drinks wine with a loose cannon donkey in Disney’s Fantasia. But it tastes awful. That’s not to say I wouldn’t drink it for the … health benefits. A friend and I would go to every single one of our brother college’s formal dinners in uni just because of the unlimited access to wine guests were privy to. I liked being drunk, and at that time I didn’t mind the looks of disgust I got as I mixed lemonade into my glass of red (like a shandy, only more shameful!) and happily bastardised a “good wine” with sugar while Kerry O’Brien addressed the room.

But I can’t do that now. Now I have to give off some kind of air of sophistication, and for some reason that means drinking room temperature horse piss and pretending to like it. Year 9 Dannielle would be horrified, but I do conform to the norm at times. I like to join the crowd, because then there’s plenty of people around to see when I do something cool. And I reckon there may be a few closet scrubbers like me who want to look classy, but can’t stomach a merlot. So here’s a tip. And you can trust my absolute sincerity on this one because heavens knows I haven’t got the reach to attract offers to write sponsored posts. The answer is Banrock Station’s Crimson Cabernet.

If you think it doesn’t sound like an actual type of wine, you’re probably right, but that’s the beauty of it.; it’s not a “proper wine”. A little while ago, my sister and I walked into a bottle shop and asked the assistant to recommend “a wine that looks like wine for people who don’t like wine”. This unnamed changed our lives. He presented us with a wine-shaped bottle of red liquid, which promised to be sweet, fruity and lightly spritzed. Sure, it’s a nectary drop, it’s probably about as thick as a piece of steak and most people to see my drinking it scrunch up their nose in disgust, but it’s everything seven-year-old me thought wine would be.

My sister made it the “house red” at her wedding and everyone hated her for it. Cheers!

I’m trying to offload my furniture, and I’m getting really sick of people not falling over themselves to buy my used items.

I’ve placed adverts which I thought were informative yet enticing descriptions of my old wares to tempt buyers to scramble for the privilege to own my unwanted gear. Most recently, I’ve put an ad on a website we’ll call “slumspree” for an old desk and an office chair. The desk came into my possession after I moved into an old college friend’s room. He didn’t seem to want to deal with the hassle of selling it and I couldn’t be arsed to get rid of it, so it stayed. The office chair was a gift I received from my old workplace after my boss’ wife’s work upgraded their chairs and gifted their old seats to us – like a game musical chairs except way less tense. The furnished multiple rooms nicely and have done their jobs of holding both myself and my stationery off the floor. But I’m downsizing and they have to go. Unfortunately, the word bait I used for buyers hasn’t attracted a single nibble.

Sure, “used” doesn’t sound overly enticing. But the items I try to sell are quality goods. It’s not a pair of stretched out, crusty knickers I’ve put up for sale. These things may be well loved, but they’re not total garbage.

Add this with the fact that I was given full marks on an assignment all about advertorial just this week (I don’t want to brag, but I’m going to because I need the validation. I don’t like my chances of getting any other gold stars in the near future so I’m going to cling to this high mark like Mark Latham clings to relevance), I’m not talking 87 per cent or 92 per cent. I’m talking about the triple-digit mark. I’ve never met my tutor face-to-face, but I imagine this learned sir is the kind of guy who has at least one tweed suit jacket and is a well-read savvy man with, as far as my baseless assumptions can tell, a cavadoodle (which means he has a good and true heart, I suspect). He wouldn’t just give me good marks if I didn’t deserve them, so I must be at least not total rubbish at floogin wares.

So I’m surpsied as to why I haven’t got a better track record with palming off my shit to other people.

Appalled, actually.

I’ve gone back through my computer files and pulled out two other ads that went on the same website, we’ll call it “dumfree” for now, and am scratching my head. The old saying “you can’t polish a turd” is an eternal truth, and while I’m not saying my items were dreadful, they weren’t brand new. So I thought that there was no point in pretending otherwise. And if I’m not going to set the bar too high, I might as well set it unremarkably low. Apparently advertising is all about building relationships with customers, and I didn’t want to be the advertising equivalent of a fuckboy. I wanted to be honest with my customers about what they were getting themselves into, but I also wanted them to like me. And I think my copy reflected that:

ADVERT FOR AN OLD ARMCHAIR

“If you’ve ever wanted to nestle yourself in the folds of a heavy smoker’s uterus, this is perhaps the closest you’re going to get without ending up having struggling actors doing terrible re-enactments of your behaviour on a late-night Channel 7 crime series. Sink into the plastic plushness of this armchair, and wonder no more what a close up of Donatella Versace’s neck looks like. Like leather but nowhere near as luxurious, this armchair covering makes you question your morals. Not because you’re picturing a calf having its skin peeled, but because you know you nestling in the sweat stains of strangers shouldn’t feel so good.

Features include: browness; authentic pleather wrinkles; sweat stains from the various relatives of mine who you don’t know but may just begin to smell like.

Bonus: Anything you find in the cushions if yours to keep. I haven’t checked what lingers in the folds of that imitation leather, so it is essentially a Lucky Dip wrapped in big, brown packaging. Who knows what treasures you could unearth!?”

ADVERT FOR AN OLD SHELF DAD SAVED FROM LANDFULL

“This excellent use of dead tree is far from a furniture abomination, but rather a technology buff’s dream. Equipped with state-of-the-art shelving technology, this piece will hold various items off the floor, nodding to the world-wide trend of using physical objects to create a barrier between household goods and the ground. A cutting edge hole has been added to this piece to maximise user versatility. Use the carefully-constructed void to thread through electrical cords, spy on your friends, or become the prankster of the year by shooting your grandmother with a Nerf Gun out of nowhere– the possibilities are endless! The shutters were engineered for multiple displaying options, as well as creating that highly sought after what-was-the-carpenter-actually-doing look. Yes, this piece is so on-trend that it needs its own hashtag.

Pounce now to become the envy of all the acquaintances you keep on social media purely to boost your self-esteem.”

I ended up dropping both pieces off at the local tip to be recycled.

Looking back, I think I can see my problem. I had neglected on very critical rule when it comes to online spruiking: include sizing. Thankfully I have learned from the mistakes of my past and tacked on some measurements to my ad before posting it.

I’ve got a bit of time left until my advert expires and I haven’t had anyone enquire about the items, but I’ve got a good feeling.