I am an accidental member of a Snapchat group and I feel like a creep.

I didn’t realise Snapchat groups were a thing, but apparently they are. It’s kind of like your standard group chat except with less memes and a slightly more narcissistic feel. It’s like adding things to your story that you only want a few people to see, so it would be perfect for virtual orgies. It’s actually not a bad idea. Snapchat groups, that is, not virtual orgies. Virtual orgies sound like a very sad way waste all your good olive oil.

I was added to one snap group, I’m quite sure, by mistake, and I don’t know how to opt out of it.

Yet I keep opening the snaps.

I can’t not. Partly because of my burning curiosity; partly because I can’t stand to have the unread notification on my Snapchat. I see the coloured box and it turns me into in irrational monster. There is some kind of primal urge inside me to uncheck the box, like there are tribal drums beating in the background of my own mind egging me on to do it (think of those scenes in the mysterious shop in The Hot Chick). I cannot rest until it has been unchecked; I cannot even breathe. My mind is in agony like it is being fried in a pot of oil; like someone is making crumbed brains out of the goo inside my head (which, with just the right amount of garlic, wouldn’t be too bad).

I know this is stupid. I know that the box being unchecked or not won’t change the course of my life. It will not strike me down with illness, nor bring me luck. It is inconsequential and pointless, yet I let it posses me.

It’s the proverbial chicken pock I just can’t ignore. It must be scratched. At all costs. Even if it means being a total creep and essentially cyber spying on people.

That notification will be my downfall.

It’s weird, because I’m totally fine with double-figure notifications on my emails, but my Snapchat is different. It’s kind of like how I was cruelly informed of the truth about Santa in Year 1 (I clock this up as one of the reasons I’ve become so cynical and sullen in my later years. This is somewhat true, but also because I needed something to blame my horrendous personality on and my childhood wasn’t traumatic enough to give me any interesting quirks. Like, have you ever considered the youths on Skins? Their lives were horrific, and they all turned out edgy and interesting). Even though I knew that Santa was just a lie parents fed their children (I blame capitalism for that one) I still believed in the Easter Bunny. Maybe I actually knew the truth but wanted to delude myself into having a normal childhood experience in a bid to turn out less like a real-life Daria. This is a possibility because I don’t remember a moment when I was informed the real truth about the Easter Bunny (or that rabbits were straight-up destroying our country and deserved a bullet between the eyes simply for having the audacity to exist). Another possibility was that I was profoundly stupid.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I can’t not open the snaps because it grinds away at my very soul if I leave them unopened. And this feels a little wrong.

Not that there’s anything juicy on there. Just a bunch of jealous much? travel shots, girls drinking wine and a few bunny face filters.

I mean, I do hope that I will be on the receiving end of a scandalous few seconds of footage that will set off a chain of Gone Girl-esque events. However, it’s generally quite mundane, and always tame. Never incriminating, never something you wouldn’t expect to see on Instagram.

But still, these people don’t know me and I don’t know them.

And my social media following isn’t big enough for anyone to bother trying to impress me. My approval means nothing. Maybe if I posted a lot of tit shots or shitloads of clean eating photos, I would be worth impressing. I mean I have breasts and I did just make a batch of sweet potato brownies (using maple syrup as a sugar substitute, no less) but that’s not really my jam in the ‘gram. Instead I prefer to post photos of emotional, attention seeking microwaves and toe rings made out of hair. This is why my approval is worthless.

This makes it feel even more unethical for me to open these snaps. But I have one, sitting there in my list unopened, like a bulging white-headed pimple waiting to be popped all over the bathroom mirror. I know I should have the self control to leave it, but I must have missed the course on will power at uni – it was probably in a 7am slot on a Monday morning.

Even now, having dedicated a good 20 minutes to writing about how irrational my need to un-purple that purple box is, I still cannot ignore it. My attempt to reason with myself via blogpost to leave the damn thing alone has failed.

The drums are sounding.

I am envisioning my blood boiling and bubbling.

The ticker in my chest is pounding.

There are wooden battleships hurtling through my bloodstream, led by dragons and an entitled blonde.

Someone has a flamethrower.

Shit is getting out of hand.

I am not strong enough to resist.

Aaaand I’ve cracked.

It was an underwhelming shot of people on the beach. I need to figure out how to get out of this group. It’s destroying my damn life and the payoff isn’t even worth it.

I realise that my Wednesday posts are usually reposts of my Clifton Courier columns, but this week’s was really only relevant to the time it was published. It was about Fat Tuesday, which was weeks ago and honestly I didn’t feel it was appropriate. Although, posting a pre-written column does make things easier on a Wednesday afternoon, so this decision presented a problem for me. 

As such, here’s a rant I just fired off about the hysteria surrounding chicken nuggets like they’re the fucking Beatles of something. It might mean nothing to you, but to me, who is on Twitter it really is.

Plus, I haven’t done anything fun lately to write about. Enjoy!

I fucking love chicken nuggets.

Chicken nuggets have made society a better place. This is a universally true statement. But I am somewhat reluctant to profess my love for breaded and mysteriously minced poultry as publically as I used to.

Because there’s an oversaturation of chicken nugget love happening at the moment, and I find myself unsure of how I feel about it.

Chicken nuggets are trending, there’s no doubt about it. If you’re a female celebrity and you want to appear relatable all you need to do is mention nuggs and several clickbait-peddling viral news sites will fart out some heart-eyed emoji littered piece about how fucking likeable that person is. Mention chicken nuggets and all of a sudden you’re part of the girl tribe. Part of the squad. Farking one of us.

And this shits me to tears. Part of this is because nuggets are so good they are a universal food that transcends race, class, gender and all the non-vego religions out there. Saying you love nuggs is like saying you breathe. Everyone does. So why do people have to tell the world about how much they love nuggs when they eat them? Making a Nuggs Not Drugs shirt is just the same as mass-producing a shirt with a feminist slogan using underpaid Bangladeshi women to weave the fabric. This nugget tokenism is just plain wrong.

As glorious as nuggets are, they’re also very common. And because of that, they’re almost sacred. You can’t pervert them just for the purpose of gaining cultural capital; it’s immoral.

You’re not special for liking chicken nuggets, you’re just human.

I would never deny that a good nugget isn’t the solidification of all the good thoughts in the world deep fried in boiling happiness, posting about them as if they are all the time ad nauseam is, well, making me sick to my stomach.

But maybe this is about something more than that. Maybe it’s my own self-important superiority complex. Maybe it’s me being pissed that everyone else is on the nugget train, and that I am merely a fellow passenger rather than the person behind the controls. Maybe it’s not my disgust with the over punctuation of odes to nuggets with unnecessary emoticons, maybe it’s my fear of being basic. Maybe I am a basic bitch, and that scares me a little.

I may not still be rocking a mega side-fringe and spinning the shit out of Bob Dylan’s greatest hits CD anymore, but it seems my teenage irkiness towards all things mainstream hasn’t died along with my soul. It seems my judgemental tendencies have followed me through the technical adulthood. I didn’t think that at 25 I’d still be worried about being “mainstream” but it looks like I am.

Because while being judgmental and being articulate about it is my very livelihood, I like to pretend I’m only judgmental in a comical sense. I like to think I’m just judgemental enough to be sharp character on whatever show I happen to be featuring in (I’d like to think it’s my own, but could be the Miranda to someone else’s Carrie and I reckon I’d be ok with that – she did go to Harvard and is a kick-arse lawyer who owns property in New York). But at the same time I like to think I’d tolerant, open-minded and benevolent enough to still be a warm, likeable person.

And if I’m sitting up here on mu sassy horse over other people banging on about a food I also like, I’m going to really have to work on myself.

Maybe I’ll stay in with a bowl of nuggets and watch Sex and the City with some wine on the weekend like the basic bitch that I am. As long as I don’t tweet about it, I’ll be right.

I’ve existed for a quarter of a century and yet the greatest thing I’ve been able to achieve in this time is being supplied with 18 kilos of dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.

It’s time to take control of my life. And I think the best way I can sum up my approach to this is with something I texted to a friend recently:

“I like my hangovers to have purpose.”

I sent it to a friend who had to put up with a whopper of a hangover at work. But I had unwittingly spurted magic out of my fingertips like I was bloody Sabrina, that teenage witch.

I never used to get too hungover. In college, I was irritatingly peppy the morning after a big night, and could back up like an absolute champion. I would bound around and get things done and generally piss off everyone with my general chipperness.

But I am no longer this person. I say this as someone who left the pub early the other night and woke up at 10.30am the next morning. I’d had plenty of sleep, I’d lined my stomach with a packet of chips (despite having given up potatoes for Lent, so there may have been a biblical element to my hangover) and even showered before bed. And yet I felt seedy in the morning and continued to regress as the afternoon dragged on.

Hangovers are suddenly not just a thing for me, they are an ordeal. And they really outstay their welcome, like those kids from school who aren’t really your friends but would always be over at your family’s house. That’s what my hangovers are like – the uninvited snot-nosed kid who takes up all your spare time and just won’t leave. It’s horrendous.

And so I’ve decided to take a stand. If I’m going to be dizzy and nauseous for an extended period of time, I want to have something to show for it.

Here are the things worth being hungover for:

Taking a drunken photo that pulls 40 plus likes on the gram

A dirty dance floor mack-on

The birth of a new personal joke

Making new friends

Being weird around a famous person

Dancing on a table

Yarning on with a golden oldie

D&M’s in a park somewhere

Getting kicked out of somewhere in spectacular fashion

Appearing in a dance circle

Having an emotional epiphany under the stars

Alcohol and night swimming (a winning combination)

Seeing an excellent band play

Being lifted on someone’s shoulders

Impressing someone with your ability to swallow liquids quickly

Frolicking in the rain

Campfire sing-alongs

Burning something in an impressive fashion

Showing off your thrust dancing

Screaming lyrics of John Farnham songs in the direction of unimpressed strangers

Nearly starting a fight over drop bears

Piercing someone’s anything

Lasting through to sunrise

Getting a tattoo

Anything to do with a camel

When you’re hungover and you didn’t tick anything off the above list, it’s hard to justify your slothiness and shame. Because at 25-years-old, I have to be able to justify my choices. I have bills to pay. Running is hard. My intelligence is already on the decline. If I’m going to spend my hard-earned dollars, pump extra kilojoules into my body and kill several dozen brain cells, I better get something out of it.

I guess the categories can be boiled down to gaining social capital and experiencing something meaningful. And meaningful doesn’t have to mean emotionally uplifting. It can be having a teary D&M but it can also refer to fire twirling. Basically, if I can tell a funny story about it, wasting your Saturday by being horizontal is kind of worth it. If I have made a new friend, dry retching over the toilet is a small price to pay. Waking up to fine you’ve managed to end up with a fabulous horse desk ornament is worth sacrificing your ability to sit upright for seven hours.

My only alcohol-related health rule used to be: only drink if you intend on getting drunk. It may sound terribly self-destructive, but the idea behind it is to avoid the unnecessary beer or two at a pub lunch when a nice soda water would have done the trick.I often found myself breaking this rule, but it is handy to keep reminding yourself of this principle.

But now I have an additional rule: you’re not a mess for getting drunk as long as you do something you can turn into a funny anecdote

I think I’m turning a corner.

I’m just going to say it: dogs aren’t that great.

Dogs have this god-like status largely due to people exaggeratedly fawning over them online (something I admittedly contribute to) and their tendency to attract bulk likes on Instagram. But they’re kind of like Jennifer Lawrence. There are a lot of great things about them, however, this “yaaass qween” bullshit hysteria idolises them to the point of abstraction. You focus on all their fantastic tendencies and forget the crappy things about them.

For J-Law it was that whole scratching her butt on the sacred Hawaiian rock formation thing. For dogs, it’s the poo situation, the smell and the fact that you have to think about someone other than yourself. They’re cute, but dogs aren’t as great as the internet would have you believe.

Now before you start writing me angry letters (please do write me a letter though – I’d love to show off to my flatmate about how popular I am with all my non-bill-related mail), I am a dog person.

At my parents’ place, I have a blue heeler, appropriately called Lady, who is just fabulous. She is emotionally distant, doesn’t need too much attention and her presence scares off potential bad guys. She’s pretty much everything I want in a life partner.

My cousins tried to get her to perform tricks when they visited recently, and she wasn’t having a bar of it. That’s just not what she’s about. She doesn’t care about impressing you, and she’s not about to go wasting her energy or looking like a twit by following your pointless commands when your affection is the only reward for such behaviour.

Instead of adhering to you silly expectations, she’ll look at you with a bored, judgemental expression conveying her distain for your lame enthusiasm. She is,in my opinion, the perfect dog.

Sure, she’ll wag her tail and go in for a cuddle when you first see her, but she isn’t demanding your affection all day long. You’ll give her a pat and hold her paw for a bit, but eventually she tires of all that emotional crap and will walk off, carrying on with her day like the independent woman that she is.

She has a sarcastic dignity about her, which I admire.

I’m writing about my dog because for my column in The Clifton Courier this week, I recounted a trial run with my flatmate’s dog living with us in our two-bedroom apartment.

You can imagine how it went. Don’t worry, you’ll read about it eventually.

But because there is a word limit I have to adhere to, there were a couple of thoughts about having an inside dog and general dog ownership that I couldn’t commit to print. So I’ve decided to air them here, because I feel they’re important – as are all of my thoughts, obviously.

I’m just going to come out with it: think there’s too much adoration that comes with having a dog around you all the time. You are heaped with all this love that you really don’t deserve and did nothing to earn. Surely that would give you an unbalanced opinion of yourself. And there’s already enough in this world that makes people think they are better than they actually are.

But it’s more than that. Like, when you’re living under the same roof as a dog their whole happiness is dependant on you. That is a lot of pressure. It’s hard enough to keep myself hovering a satisfactory level above crushing depression, and now I’m expected to make this dog’s life happy too?

That sounds exhausting. I can’t be that person. I’m only capable of producing so much pep, and I’m not going to waste it on some hairball who licks their own butt and can’t even buy me flowers as a thank you gift.

And they’re all wrapped up in you; it’s infuriating. I love being idolised, but I want my dog to have it’s own life going on, you know? Like, don’t you have your own dreams think about? Haven’t you got anything else going on in your pathetic life?! I mean, I want to be viewed as a god, but I don’t want to be pestered. Sometimes you just  want to be left to hate the world in peace, you know?

Having a creature follow you around all the time isn’t considered “company” to me. I didn’t find the constant “companionship” of the inside dog comforting. I found it to be a suffocating invasion of my space, my privacy and my precious, precious solitude.

Look, I’m not saying I’m a paranoid hermit who shuns the company of others and keeps the curtains drawn to avoid the gaze of humanity, but I need my time alone. It’s nice, even for a few minutes, to forget that there are other living creatures in the world.

And I don’t want to be made to feel guilty for that.

I feel guilty enough for practically every other aspect of my life (that pen I pocketed after finding it on the ground, buying my veggies at a major supermarket instead of an independent grocer and generally for just existing as a female person). But when you have some sad, cute little creature pawing at your door whose only wish is to bask in your presence, you feel like some kind of cruel monster for wanting to be alone. I don’t understand why anyone would willingly sign up for that.

And let’s not forget that dogs smell. I’m sorry, but they do. They stink. This makes them useful as someone to blame your farts on, but if you’re willing to put up with the stench and responsibility of having a dog in the house just to cover up for your farts you might need to see a doctor. Dogs also slobber on things – especially you. They just love licking you. Sure, that may be how they show love but it’s gross. Being loved is not worth being coated in a film of saliva (this is also applicable to bad kissers, might I add). Have some ducking self respect. 

Sure, dogs are cute. But don’t let those silly, happy faces blind you to the fact that they are clingy, codependent creatures who eat up all your attention, never pay rent and occasionally shit on your carpet.

This afternoon I decided I should write something pro woman and this is the best I could come up with.

I ended up calling in sick because I had a headache that made me feel like I slept with my head under an anvil and woke up with all the signs that my body needed to be horizontal for a few extra hours – sore throat, achey muscles and a general lethargy. So I stayed home, slept in and found myself on the couch watching Practical Magic.

I’d never seen the full movie before, and I of course loved it.

As a movie about strong, powerful women it was a fitting choice for the International Women’s Day. It had all the great things about the feminine state of being – strength in sisterhood, midnight margarita seshes, a general inclination towards chocolate, shitloads of candles, flowers and being fabulous in the face of not just haters, but she-man-woman-haters. It also had a few of the really shit things that come with being one of the womanfolk – slut shaming, domestic abuse and judgemental glares from a bullshit society.

Movies like this tend to give you a pretty empowering perspective on the condition of having a uterus, and that being able to produce life isn’t something to be ashamed about. After watching a movie like that, your head is clouded with the notion of how fierce and fabulous females can be, and the power that comes with not being laden with a dick and balls.

And yet still us magnetic forces of fantastic can still sometimes be made to feel like nothing but a walking sheath for the pork swords of the world. There are still times when we’re made to feel inferior – either consciously or subconsciously. Still, the simple notion that we’re just as good as the menfolk is distorted.

And that shits me to tears.

I’m reminded of the truthfulness of that advice urging us to carry ourselves with the confidence of a mediocre white dude. 

Maybe we (“we” being “women”, but I don’t mean to speak for all womankind – I’m writing from a first person perspective but using inclusive terms to give me the authority I like to delude myself that I have. However, if you do identify with my sentiments, by all means consider yourself as part of my “we”) find it difficult to think of ourselves as top shit. Maybe we tend to have a more realistic self esteem because there’s something about holding a urine-soaked tampon string in a particular way so you don’t accidentally  poo on it that makes you realise that you might not be the most important thing on the planet.

There’s something, shall I say, humbling about the female existence that gives us no illusions about the graphic, and at times revolting nature of the human experience. It’s easier for men to have idealised notions and consider themselves as gods, because they don’t personally encounter as many occurrences that remind them that humankind is just another filthy breed of animal.

Feminitiy is great and all – like don’t get me wrong, I do love the free and breezy skirt option on a hot day – but it is hard to boast romantic notions about the divinity of human life when you’re the wiping mucusy scraps of your uterine wall out of your arse crack. Those kinds of things remind you that life is messy. Life isn’t poetry. 

Life cannot be like Kerouac’s On The Road, nor can it be summed up in the egocentric ramblings of a rich, white Holden Caulfield. We can’t constantly maintain romantic fantasies about the despairing beauty or beautiful despair of life or whatever wankery you choose, because eventually you’re going to have to pull that tamp. And no matter how wide your vocabulary nor how deep of a thinker you may be, you can’t twist yanking a cotton wad soaked with meaty bodily fluids into that flowery fuckery of that kind of a narrative.

Peeing against a tree can be whimsical and can be done with whisky in hand – particularly if you’re a sensitive protagonist with a heart of gold. But squatting over the dirt with urine splashing back at your bottom and the warm puddle dangerously nearing your open-toed sandals is somewhat less romantic.

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with not thinking of yourself as a god. In fact, I reckon most psychologists would recommend it. It really can’t be too healthy for the old mind. But when a bunch of other bastards walk around with an inflated sense of entitlement, it makes things difficult.

And, look, I don’t have the answers here. But it is nice to feel powerful. And maybe I’m rambling because I’m feeling pretty lightheaded, but I think there’s something quietly powerful about not being repulsed by the flesh and blood of life. 

While there are a few filthy things about being a female, there’s a shitload of good things about it: that whole sisterhood thing, midnight margaritas, the chocolate, the candles, the flowers and being fabulous in the face of haters.

So I’m watching Practical Magic for the second time today. And making pancakes.

(But I’m making banana oat pancakes. Because while being female is fabulous, I imagine it would be slightly more fabulous if I looked like a young Sandra Bullock in those denim shorts.)

I’m sorry guys, I know this is another late-night, last-minute post and that’s not very professional, but I would also like to point out that writing about vomiting into a steering wheel also isn’t very professional. So bloody lower those expectations.

And I have very good reason for not having anything prepared for you, and that’s because there is a dog in my house.

She’s staying here for a week as a trial to see how she goes.

As you can imagine, this fortuitous set of circumstances has caused major distractions and so I’m not really able to put together a well-written, conclusive piece right now. I haven’t the capacity for anything other than a self-indulgent questionnaire.

Tonight’s questionnaire comes from the New Philosopher, which I bought at the airport a few months ago, read a few pages of and then abandoned for the sake of staring out the window listening to Take Me Home Country Roads (a song I used to think was only for those wanky people who pretended to be country to sing at parties to show everyone how country they were, which I found myself playing three times in a row on the train to work one day, fighting back tears).

This questionnaire was for physician, author and environmentalist, Dr Helen Caldicott. She has 21 honorary doctoral degrees, and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

I filled it out as a person employed to write stories about hippos that dive like dolphins, an avid Instagrammer and someone who collects her plastic shopping bags to recycle at Coles. I have no honorary doctoral degrees, but once won a family fun pack of Malteasers for dressing up as a single mum for International Women’s Day.

What do you doubt most?

That those girls who post about loving chicken nuggets and drinking wine are as happy as they pretend they are.

If you could change one thing about the world, what would that be?

This feels like “if you had one wish” kind of thing, which is a big responsibility to lump on a person, particularly because there’s a lot of shit in the world that needs to be changed. So I’d say that I’d make it so that Roald Dahl’s Matilda was real. I would happily pass the buck over to her, because if there was such a kind-hearted, well-read lass with telekinetic abilities, she would have stepped in by now and we wouldn’t be in this mess.

It seems responsible to delegate this task of righting the wrongs in the world, because I honestly would only wield my world-changing power for something stupid, like being able to control my hair like it was an extra limb. I mean that would be cool, but also a gross misuse of power.

What does “nature” mean to you?

Well, the first thing that came to mind for me is Human Nature, so I guess nature means C-level Australian celebrities and John Farnham duets to me.

What is your demon?

Think people care as much about the cleanliness of their ears as I do. I am slowly poking my eardrums to perforation.

What was the post important part of your education?

When I was in kindy, I have this distinct memory of a girl bitching about me to another girl, loudly accusing me of not being able to sew. At the time, they were threading macaroni on to string, an activity which this girl obviously considered “sewing”. It was then I learnt that there were always going to be haters, but mostly that putting macaroni on string was a huge fucking waste of time and resources.

What would you never do, no matter what the price?

Lick my elbow.

If you could choose, what you have for our last meal?

Hot chip sandwiches.

Your favourite word?

At the moment, probably “slag”. A timeless term with maximum impact.

 What is your motto?

Don’t be one of those fucks who have mottos.

Which thinker has had the greatest influence on your life?

Whoever was behind the decision to put the words “free leg of ham” to Beethoven’s 5^th Symphony for a Toowoomba-made ad. That has stuck with my for years.

What is a good death?

One which prompts a spike in book sales, as well as putting my ill-advised Christmas album to the top of the online charts in the fallout.

What of people accuse you of?

Being fabulous. Guilty as charged.

What is the meaning of life?

I suspect it has something to do with clubbing seals, but I have very little evidence to back that up.

And I’m yet to determine if that means violently thrashing creatures with blunt objects or taking seals to da clubz.

I guess that’s why the philosophy industry is still going so strong after all these years. I mean, there’s so much we still don’t know.