There are times when I love living in Australia, but occasionally I want to tell this country to stick it up its arse and take off.

This usually creeps into my head when you accidentally touch a cane toad or someone still uses “gay” as an insult (ah homophobic slurs: the repulsive wart-riddled pest of the mouth). They’re times when you’re incredibly grossed out when your instincts are screaming at you to pick up a golf club. But sometimes you have one of those near death experiences that make you wonder why our ancestors would choose to survive here.

And one of those moments include being surprised with a huntsman roughly the size of a Kraft cheese single crawling across the inside of my windshield while driving at 100 kilometres an hour in the darkness.

I’m talking a sizable, venomous creature being within 30 centimetres from my face. My face what I use to see pictures of dogs. It’s where I put food. I need my face. So, even though huntsman spiders aren’t typically aggressive, I reacted with a jolt. And when you’re driving a wide-set family sedan in pitch black at a great speed, that’s not good.

It’s about here where I feel the need to assert my general non-hysteria over spiders. In fact, I’ve always seen myself as one of their allies. I’ve carefully released them outdoors with the paper and cup method. I’ve moved them out of the line of fire of a life-ending stream of tap water. I have, on occasion, nodded to the corner of a room housing an eight-legged creature like one would a The Town Johnno on the street (that’s usually coupled with a “how are ya mate?” in both situations)

In fact, I don’t hate the creatures so much that I can rattle off a list of my top three fictional spiders:

Charlotte, obviously: this soothing, kind soul was introduced to me by my Year 2 teacher, who wore a cardigan draped on her shoulders and made us start the day with a rhyming prayer despite teaching in a state school. Her insistence on reading Charlotte’s Web to my class is probably why I’ve been able to summon the patience required to not burn down whole apartment buildings in arguments. It taught me things, and not just was salutations meant. In my eyes, I was the useless, wining piglet and my teacher was this figure of calm wisdom. I liked her so much I didn’t even emphasise the “CRAP” syllable in her last name. At just eight years old, that’s almost an impossible feat. And I think Charlotte had something to do with that too.

The Black Widow from A Bug’s Life: this is another no-brainer. This spider was voiced by Bonnie Hunt, who you’ll recognise as the warmly-sarcastic mother from every family comedy that never fails to make you feel loved. Even as a spider, that walking beam of sunshine radiates a nurturing sass. She tames the big dung beetle with a shoelace whip (just for show) and then tending to his “owie” with a Bandaid. There’s a shot in which you see her making small talk with an ant at a party saying “…and that’s how I became a black widow, widow” and chuckles. That’s a spider you can invite over for cake and vodka.

Miss Spider: This was another important spider in my life. A pivotal character in James and the Peach, she taught me about kindness. Her story taught me that if you’re not a little prick, you’ll likely be repaid down the track and will get to sleep in a really cool bed suspended in a hollowed-out peach. She was dark, she was mysterious, but she was loving, and Frenchly alluring in a way that makes you question your sexuality. It’s of no surprise she was voiced by the great Susan Sarandon.

Now that I’ve cleared that up, back to my story.

After making a swipe at my stowaway, it scuttled out of arm’s reach and settled off into the dark corners my sagging interior provides. By the time I reached a safe place to pull up, the little bastard had tucked himself away out of sight. So I had to keep on home, which unfortunately was about two-and-a-half hours away.

I have to admit that it was a little touch and go for a while there. Between checking to make sure the spider wasn’t laying eggs in my ear and scanning the dashboard for more threatening fauna, I could hear faint taunts from the bogan in my brain. It had stopped screaming the lyrics to Working Class Man just long enough to call me a wuss for reacting the way I did to a mere bug.

You see, I like the fact that being an Australian means you’re kind of used to creatures of almost demonic appearance which can casually end your life or, at least, leave you with a face so disfigured it looks like a team of plastic surgeons attempted rhinoplasty with their feet and steak knives. Danger is our thing. It makes us look cool to city slicking foreigners and being a classic Aussie larrikin in the face of imminent mutilation might just earn you the highest honour any Australian worth their stubby holder can achieve: an interview with Karl Stefanovic.

Perhaps this is what makes us react so casually to a gigantic spider or murderous snake. We’re probably all freaking out on the inside, but we really want to keep up the Crocodile Dundee image we’ve earned purely by being able to survive this long in this death trap. So we give a wink, make a joke and punch a shark in the back. I think we all like to see a bit of ourselves in the crazy bastard Australian characters we grew up with – from Mick Dundee to that sick puppy from Wolf Creek. We all want to be loose unit Strayans who can boot a stonefish away while wearing thongs and without spilling a single drop from the stubby in our hand.

I personally like to think of myself as the kind of batshit crazy that people both admire and use as an example to their children of what not to be when they grow up. I want to be the subject of legend and cautionary tales, like Nicole Richie with old boots and high-waisted shorts.

So the fact that I did freak out hurts more than the barbs of a jumping cactus. While no one else saw it, I know I’ve let my country down. I shamed my heavily sock-tanned father. I will never earn the respect of Karl. And because I didn’t careen into oncoming traffic, I have to live with that.

Friendship is always an inconvenience.

There. I’ve put it out there. I’ve already tackled people who hate early hot cross buns and present giving, so I’m going to move right on up to friendship and slap it so hard on its bare thigh that a welt of my open hand immediately begins to redden. Dannielle’s personal crusade against things that should be considered pleasant has set out again, riding on the noble steed of overthinking and powered by an artillery of wingeing weaponry (the arrows are tipped with general distain for happy people for added efficiency!).

That’s right, I’m pointing my blasphemous blade buttons (explanation: the pen may be mightier than the sword, but a keyboard is much more efficient and a well-timed sarcastic emoticon can cut deeper than any dagger) at one of the most sacred unions of all, more powerful than matrimony or family ties as these people don’t share bank accounts with you or may need to borrow a hunk of your liver down the track. There’s no tangible bond to this group of humanoids, who either hang around you because they genuinely like you or because they’re jealous of your Mary Kate and Ashley memorabilia collection and want to take control over your twin-themed empire when you meet your untimely end. They pass you toilet paper in public bathrooms when your stall is out, they watch you messily eat fajitas without live tweeting how long it takes you to realise you have guacamole in your eyebrow and they take care to only tag you in photos where your arms are at their skinniest.

But there’s a certain darkness to friendship that isn’t present in pre-teen Hilary Duff lyrics: the expectation that you’re a nice person back to these people.

Sure, your gleaming grin and pert butt might have won them over to begin with, but there’s only so many times you can bring up that time they pooed on their hand and didn’t notice.

The other day, the Youth of the Office were planning A Night on the Tiles, and Our Blue-Shirt-and-Black-Pant-Wearing Counterpart requested he stay on My Golden-Haired Sidekick’s couch.

Our Blue-Shirt-and-Black-Pant-Wearing Counterpart: *makes some comment about not wanting to be a hassle.

Me: Friendship is never an inconvenience!

Our Blue-Shirt-and-Black-Pant-Wearing Counterpart: *exits, sneering at my naivety.

Me: Actually, friendship is a massive inconvenience.

And I was right. Because while they may kindly feed you with vodka and help you prepare a roadie “water bottle” filled with the sickly nectar of alcoholic peach for a bus ride on a Monday morning, there’s always going to be a catch.

Take, for example, the time I went to The Cricket with My Curly-Haired Friend. She let me roll out a swag on her tiny apartment lounge room floor and warmly encouraged the guzzling of spirits before 10.30am. And everything was wonderful. We sipped at our questionably-coloured beverages on the back of a city bus and hurtled into the promise of live viewings of The Cricket.

Sure, we only sat there for less than an hour before the game was over and clearly annoyed the diehard fans with our delirious banter about wickets, but there was fun had by all (read: just us – everyone else was as serious as you could imagine people taking a Monday off work to pay actual currency to sit in a ghost town stadium would be). When the game had finished, we made plans to visit a tropical fruit themed pub and quickly broke ranks to toilet ourselves ready for the next adventure.

But it wasn’t to be.

After splitting up, My Curly-Haired Friend got lost in the parents’ room and had to be taken out to the nearby grassy area for a nap. Thankfully, I was a quick-witted enough to march her right to the nearest fast food restaurant, which we’ll call Schmack Shonnald’s. This was quite a task, as it was up a gentle slope and I was only mildly less-hydrated than she. I dumped her in a chair outside and purchased us chips, nuggets and a cheeseburger – the true golden trio.

So there we were, at roughly 1pm on a Monday morning trying to avoid the longing gazes of office employees who wished their lives were also going nowhere so they could be stinking drunk on a weekday. But then, I don’t have excellent eyesight, so there is a small chance I misread their expressions – judgement and jealousy look pretty similar when you are constantly squinting.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, my Curly-Haired Friend was leaning over the seat, occasionally dry retching between letting her saliva drain out of her mouth and on to the floor. To the untrained eye, she looked like she was dying, and I looked like a callous bitch sitting next to her completely unaffected, chomping at a cheeseburger like I hadn’t a care in the world. My lifelong companion was trying to vomit right next to me, and I wasn’t trying back her hair so it wouldn’t be matted with chucks of her half-digested breakfast. I didn’t even appear to vaguely attempt to be a decent human being by rushing to fetch her a bowl to empty her stomach into so some down-trodden teenager wasn’t forced to deal with the violent, and probably milky, excrement. It was a hot day, and that puddle of vomit would have dried and hardened like the paper mache of nightmares. And yet I didn’t intervene in any way. I simply occasionally attempted to shove a nugget in her mouth and carried on about my business.

This is not one of my behaviours that can be attributed to dry-ice cold heart (touch it and you’ll get excruciating frostbite of the fingers!). The thing is that my Curly-Haired Friend can’t actually vomit. She’s one a few Australians who won’t chuck up after a particularly long stint with her mouth around the hose of a beer bong. Not only because she is a legend, but because it’s physically impossible for her to do so.

My knowledge of her anatomical makeup stems from tit bits I was told/overheard while eavesdropping as a plucky youngster tainted by the shaky foundations of my childhood understanding of the human body. Essentially, as a baby she kept vomiting up everything and so the hospital staff, no doubt having had an absolute bloody gutful of cleaning up her breast milk vom, cut open her stomach and inverted the reflux valve thing in her stomach (in my mind, this process was somewhat similar to the tying of a balloon). The cheeky trick meant whatever does down her hatch only comes out one way, and left her with a scar that probably sparked a few rumours about a secret caesarean section at the age of 14. It’s just one of many little quirks my Curly-Haired Friend possesses.

But that’s enough about the rare and magical innards of My Curly-Haired Friend**. We’re sitting at outdoor table, with a puddle of saliva sizzling on the cement and a stack of nuggets going uneaten. Despite my assurances to her that shovelling crispy chunks of chicken essence down her throat would dilute the spirit concentrate in her gut, she wouldn’t eat past a single bite of a nugget. Like that weedy brother from Beethoven’s second limply trying to get a St Bernard puppy to drink milk off his finger, “it was no use”. So, obviously, I ate the rest of the nuggets myself. As did I with the chips. And the cheese burger. And because I had kind-heartedly called us a taxi to get her safely home, all that was waiting for me was the removal of my pants and a solid nap.

Looking back, I can say this: My Curly-Haired Friend was spot of bother that day. Because of her selfish inability to regurgitate, I was forced to drag her around. But, because of her selfish inability to regurgitate, I was also able to eat enough deep fried matter for two, and her appalling posture and slobbery lip made me look like the put together person in comparison. And that’s a beautiful thing. Friendship may be inconvenient at times, but often it’s the best kind of inconvenience there is*.

*Note: this model of friendship is built on nearly two decades of familiarity based on being forced to be by each other’s sides by comically-small class sizes and a shared enthusiasm for telephone farts and birthday faxes. Replicate it at your own risk.

** She really does have fantastic innards. She used to do this really cool belly button/umbilical chord trick which was a real hoot in Year 7.

You should always be willing to try new things, especially when those things are likely to involve day drinking.

Last week I had a whole week off, and was asked by my Curly-Haired Friend to head along to a cricket match. This sounds like a quintessentially Australian thing to do, except this little Vegemite is perhaps not as Australian as she might seem (stumbling around in a dirty koala costume on Australia Day with a XXXX Gold stubby in your hand tends to make you look pretty bloody dinky-di). You see, I have a dirty little secret:

The Cricket has never been my thing.

Sure, I have fond memories of playing deceptively-named Four Wicket Cricket (deceptively-named that the wickets weren’t wickets – my school couldn’t seem to afford four actual wickets as we had go around the lunch area and pick up all the bins and drag them on to the sports oval to be used instead of three sticks in the ground. This usually resulted in a few banana peels and empty poppers being strewn across the oval), and I have always enjoyed the small ego boost that came from Australia’s almost constant dominance over international teams, but that’s about where it stops.

My household was a very anti-cricket environment. Not only was it never watched, but it was openly mocked. My NRL mad parents would groan as their favourite television shows were cancelled because of one of those match tests, and the cricket report was the only time the news was every turned down over dinner (needless to say, my father probably learned more about his children over the summer months). My parents’ physical reactions to accidentally stumbling upon a game while channel surfing was perhaps on par with how everyone under 30 responds when The Project allows a token right-wing baby boomer on the show just so the regular presenters have someone to fight with. And just like my tendency to ramble was passed down to me by my mother, so too was my distain for The Cricket.

This distain has rarely served me well. For one, I only know the cricket players who featured on the Wheatbix ads or are a “Warnie”. This means I’m crap at Australian-themed quizzes. The other week our Reporter of the Sports was away, and I found myself faced with the prospect of writing a story about The Cricket. The idea of having me write things about The Cricket is a bit like trading pants with Charlie Sheen’s character in Two and a Half Men – it makes absolutely no sense, is borderline dangerous and is likely to result in the spreading of a severe rash. But, unlike trading slacks with perhaps the most lovable sleaze on reruns, this was something I had to do. Thankfully, I guy a play trivia with knew the captain of a local team and pre-warned him of my complete lack of knowledge about the apparent gentlemen’s game. Not that this was necessary in the end, as it probably came across when I had to ask said captain “… and wicket meant getting someone out – yeah?”. Thankfully, this captain had the patience of 1000 driving instructors and calmly explained the details. With his help and a few Google searches I ended up with a few paragraphs about an actual match. Sure, my lingo was sloppy, but I managed to string something together. And while I took my trivia mate’s assessment of the yarn as “not too bad” as a message not to ask any follow-up questions, I felt like I just scraped through Wickets 101 – which felt like a victory for me.

While bolstered by the knowledge that my understanding of The Cricket was at best “not too bad”, I still was yet to subscribe to the sport Australia Day ads made me feel like I was a soulless alien for not being obsessed with. So the request to pay actual money to sit and watch an actual game was met with a degree of scepticism on my part. Here’s a transcript of an exchange between my and my Curly-Haired Friend after she asked me to go with her to The Cricket:

Me: That would be an interesting day out for this cricket atheist.

Curly-Haired Friend: Atheist or enthusiast?

Me: Atheist. I don’t believe in it, but will happily drink to it if everyone else is. Convert me!

Curly-Haired Friend: You don’t believe in cricket?

Me: Ehh. I acknowledge its existence but nave never joined in the mass worship.

Curly-Haired Friend: Every time you say that a little Warnie dies.

At this point, it looks like I’m going to give The Cricket the flick, but here’s the plot twist: I agreed. While I may have thumbed my nose at my country for not liking The Cricket, there are a few pastimes I revel in that are inline with the forefathers of this great nation: consuming fermented barley, shouting obscenities at strangers and acting like I’m the king of the world because someone of my nationality does something noteworthy. And all of these activities can be done at a live sporting match, and in the daytime no less. I can live with not being a sporting super fan, but turn my back on day drinking? That’s just bloody unAustralian.