Definition: a food which, once consumed, is almost immediately regretted.

This is the easiest, quickest, healthy single-serve meal recipe I know. It’s my own recipe. It got me through many a lazy night when I was living on my own. It’s all store-cupboard ingredients so you can pretty much whip it up anytime.

Ingredients:
1 potato (go for a big’un, I like those pink ones)
1 small can tuna in springwater
1 small can creamed corn
1 handful of reduced-fat grated cheese
1-2 tsp dried parsley flakes

Pierce the potato 2-3 times with a fork. Wrap potato in absorbent paper towelling and put in the microwave. If your microwave has a setting for potatoes, then use that. If not, I recommend about 6 minutes on high.

While potato is cooking, mix remaining ingredients in a microwave-proof bowl. When potato is cooked, unwrap and cut in half. Scoop out some of the potato insides and mix the scooped potato with the other ingredients in the bowl. Fill the potato halves with the mixture and put the potato in the bowl. Yes there will be heaps of mixture left over, just put it on top of the potato halves.

Put the bowl containing potato and mixture in the microwave and microwave for 1 minute on high, or until cheese has melted. Serves 1.

Variations:
If you have some around, try using finely chopped fresh parsley instead of the dried stuff.

It tastes more delicious if you sprinkle cornflake crumbs on top of the mixture and put in the oven at 180 degrees C for 10 minutes. The cheese melts more nicely and it gets a nice crunchy top. But that means waiting an extra 9 minutes, so consider how hungry you are before trying this.

It’s not really “saving” if you just spend it all every day. How come the MAN decides how to spend my daylight savings? What if I want to save it all for the weekend, or put it in my superannuation fund so I have sunny days for my retirement?

And they call this a democracy. Stop stealing my sunshine, K Rudd. Stop stealing my sunshine.

I don’t know if that show is still going, but I think they should just put homeless people in the Big Brother house. That way at least they get food, shelter and a chance at winning money or a job hosting a crappy channel 10 filler show on Friday nights. And let’s face it - they can’t be any more boring than the people they usually put in the Big Brother house.

If I ever have a kid, I’m going to teach him/her to play the guitar.

This means learning to play the guitar myself first, but I’d have at least a few years before the kid is old enough to even hold a guitar, so I think I’m pretty well covered there.

The point is, if the kid ever falls down on his/her luck and ends up homeless having to beg for money, at least they can rise above the other beggars with their musical skills. Stand out from the crowd, kind of thing. Earn money through talent rather than through other people’s guilt. Of course they’d need to make sure they hang on to their guitar when all their other stuff gets taken away, but I’d tell them to make a note of that.

Actually there are a lot of times when I want to throw turtle shells at other cars. Those red shells would be really useful in peak hour traffic. Where can I get me some of those?

On the other hand I know where to get banana peels but I can’t throw them very far.

Sometimes I just want to bung on “100% Hits: The Best of 1997” and play Mariokart for a while. But I can’t because I’ve lost the CD and I only have Mariokart on the DS, which just isn’t the same.

It’s Christmas time and I’d say most of you are feeling pretty uninspired when it comes to the whole gift-giving thing. Sure you might have something nice in mind for your spouse or your Mum, but there are always those other family members that you just don’t know what to buy for.

Worry no more, I have the solution. I have here a list of gifts that EVERYBODY WANTS. Oh you laugh, but you wait till you read it. These are things that you can never have too many of. Observe.

1. Power boards. Also try extension cables. If you want to get all fancy, go for those surge-protecting ones. You will always need more power boards. Always.

2. Teaspoons. Teaspoons are slippery little bastards. They’re always going missing or getting bent or getting weird stains from being left in the coffee cup too long. Buy someone a new set of teaspoons, they’ll love you for it.

3. Hairbands. If someone has long hair, they will want hairbands. Hairbands go missing all the time, it’s ridiculous. Go for the ones with no metal bits.

4. A sharp kitchen knife. Seriously can’t get enough of these. The old ones go blunt and you never notice how blunt they are until someone buys you a new one, then you think it’s the best thing ever.

5. A pillow. Pillows get crap surprisingly fast. Have you ever seen a microscopic picture of how many dust mites build up in an old pillow? Not to mention all the sweat that gets absorbed over time. A new pillow is soft, puffy heaven.

6. Plastic containers. Get some decent ones though, like Decor, Lock and Lock or Tupperware (if you can avoid the parties). You can put anything in these babies. Go for all different sizes, the mega big and mega small ones are really cool.

7. Movie tickets. An oldie but a goodie. Make sure it’s for a cinema they actually go to though. Or even better, Gold Class movie tickets. Surely you can get vouchers for them, right?

8. A whole watermelon. Do you know how awesome watermelon is? Do you know how cool it will look wrapped under a tree? Do you know how hilarious it will be when they try to pick it up? Never gets old. Plus, delicious!

9. Really good pens. Sure, pens are easy to get, you can get them for free at conventions and stuff. But a REALLY GOOD PEN - well that’s something to be treasured. And I don’t mean those really fancy ones that come in a box and cost hundreds of dollars for some reason. I just mean those ones you get on the top shelf of the pen rack at the newsagent that write really smoothly with really bold ink. And if you get it in a really sexy shade of blue…oh yeah. Get heaps, in all colours.

10. An umbrella. Unless they live in a place where it never rains. Go for the compact ones that you can carry around everywhere. If you get enough of them, you can leave at least one in every place you’re likely to visit. Then you’ll never get rained on again.

For extra fun, combine two or more of the above gifts into one big package (e.g. Merry Christmas! Here is a power board, an umbrella and a whole watermelon). Easy!

I’ve decided to get all topical on you and push the hot button of the moment - that big internet filter we keep hearing about. The basic rundown is that the Aussie government has this brilliant new notion that if we just put a really big filter on all of Australia’s internet, Aussies will no longer be able to access “unwanted” websites.

The main “unwanted” type of website cited by the government is child pornography. I assume that the idea here is that, without a steady stream of child pornography images and videos, the Australian paedophiles will just shrivel up and die. I guess the other theory would be that, without the internet outlet for their perverted needs, they would probably just go and find their child pornography elsewhere. You know, by seeking out actual children. Not sure if that one’s been taken into consideration.

After reading some articles about starting by blocking 10,000 websites, I’m starting to wonder how much of the internet the people in charge of these decisions have actually seen. I’m *pretty sure* there are more than 10,000 frighteningly perverted websites out there. Heck, Portal of Evil finds about 5 new ones every day. Do they really think they can block the entire undesirable portion of the internet using an internet filter? This seems a little ambitious, to say the least. Are they going to start employing people to sit on the net all day searching for “unwanted” content?

I’m not so much opposed to the whole “free speech” problem here, as I am just embarassed that my country’s leaders really think this is a clever idea. This was supposed to be K Rudd’s chance to prove that he could do a better job than the Liberal party, and one of the first ideas he pushes forward is this. You might as well decide to build a big net around Australia to keep out the sharks, or to put Vaseline on all the trees to prevent the drought. It’s just a big, stupid, expensive idea.

Hopefully this will all go away soon and we can focus on the bigger issues, like the water shortage and the dismal state of Sydney’s roads and transport after the last big Labor screwup.

I recently had a dream where I was throwing a party, and the catering theme was “disappointing food”. For example, lamingtons with no sugar in the cake, and custard buns with no custard in the middle. I told my mate Dewi about this dream, and he immediately thought I was referring to those after-church morning teas catered by little old ladies. It took me a little while to realise that he was correct - after-church morning teas are always a disappointing food event.

For those of you who never had to go to church as a child, the after-church morning tea is usually held in an adjacent church hall with old wooden folding tables and plastic chairs that kids aren’t allowed to sit on. Now, I haven’t been to church in a long time, and certainly not as a kid, so I don’t know if this is how they still do it, but if the same little old ladies are alive today then they are probably the same. Imagine, if you will, that you have been up since the crack of dawn, been dragged to an early morning church service, sat through what felt like hours of boring sermon (it always feels longer if you’re a kid), then you’re taken into a church hall and there is a big table there full of plates and plates of food covered in clingwrap. You’re hungry. But the old ladies tell you you’re not allowed to have the food, the adults have it first.

So you wait for the adults to get around to eating, but they take their sweet time about it of course. After what feels like an age, you’re finally allowed to pick at the remains. However, these are the sorts of culinary delights you have on offer:

• Egg and sprout sandwiches with a hint of mayo
• Tomato sandwiches with a slight garnish of ham, smothered in margarine
• Floury scones with no jam, but margarine is available
• Slightly sour coloured water, which the ladies are calling “cordial”
• Dry fruit cake, with more fruit than cake

Now you might think “that’s really lame, what the hell are they thinking serving that crap?” But you didn’t live through a war. Back then you had to make do with what you had. This would have been a spread fit for a king.

So, getting to the point of this post, I hear there’s supposed to be some kind of recession coming up soon. It may not come to rations, but money will be short and our fancy 21st century food is going to start looking pretty pricey. So take some tips from the little old church ladies:

1. Margarine is your best friend. Put it on everything. Margarine is cheap and makes everything taste less dry!
2. If it looks good, that’s good enough. Hey, it looks like a cake on the outside, who cares if it’s 90% sultanas and orange peel? Put some margarine on top, nobody will know the difference.
3. A little bit goes a long way. What kids really like about cordial is the colour anyway. 1 part cordial to 100 parts water is enough to give it that somewhat flourescent colour. The same goes for things like sandwich fillings - just bulk it up with margarine.
4. Clingwrap does wonders for your presentation. If you scrunch it up a bit when you wrap it around the plate, it blurs the food. People usually fill in the blur with whatever their hopeful stomach is craving at the time. If the food’s really bad, you may want to smear a bit of margarine on the inside of the clingwrap for extra blur.

Just follow these simple tips and your next party during the economic crisis is sure to be a hit! Thank me later.