There was a time in my life when I used to use the 7-11 regularly. It’s now a distant memory of days when I was so much less organised. Those days when I nearly always forgot to get something from the supermarket while it was open. Of course, now the supermarkets are all open until at least midnight, so it’s almost impossible to do. Which means the 7-11 hardly gets a look in.

But the 7-11 is a special place. No matter where you go, they all look the same. Better lit than a late-night tram, the pie and hot-dog dispensers in the corner, and huge rows of fridges down the back, resembling cryogenic freeze chambers in sci-fi films.

And somehow in less shelf-space than your average shoebox, they manage to fit all the essentials of modern life. Batteries, tampons, condoms, party hats, candles, pet food… and of course more varieties of junk food than you’d find in all the vending machines at Flinders Street Station.

And let’s not forget the Slurpee machines. It’s nice to know that some scientists, somewhere, taking time off from curing diseases and solving world hunger, managed to develop a machine for self-service icy cold flavoured-gunk drinks.

7-11 prices aren’t ideal of course. For a start there’s the "We’re always open" surcharge. Then there’s the "you know we’ll have it even if no-one else does" surcharge. Maybe they ought to give us a discount for having to step carefully over all the scruffy kids with bicycles who always seem to be hanging around outside.

The thing that’s been on everybody’s lips this week has been the decision of the French government to resume nuclear bomb testing in the South-Pacific. Reaction has been swift, with at least one group starting up firebomb testing at the French embassy in Perth.

But the French Government continue to refuse to reconsider on the tests. It’s about time our government here in Australia got serious about retaliation. Foreign Minister Gareth Evans has asked nicely, and is now talking about a few sanctions and recalling the ambassador for consultations. Gareth, you gutless wonder! Stop poncing about! Declare war! That’ll catch ‘em on the hop.

No, really. We’ll send a couple of secret agents into a French port and get them to blow up a peaceful French ship. Then when they get caught, we’ll use diplomatic juggling to bring them back here to a heroes’ welcome. Well why not, it worked for them. (God knows how…)

If you wondered, the baby’s doing well. Little Isaac is settling pretty nicely into his new life. Six weeks old and he knows exactly how to get food and a cuddle: Make noise. I haven’t got the heart to tell him it doesn’t work like that throughout life. He’s growing well, though his hair still looks like a combination of Lyle Lovett and the Lenigrad Cowboys.

Baby’s diary.

Woke up. I was hungry, so I asked for my food. The foolish parents ignored this, going to the trouble of changing my perfectly good pants. And I’d just made them nice and wet, too! They wouldn’t stop changing me, no matter how much I complained. They change me before giving me my food. The nerve! I demanded to see someone in Customer Service, but to no avail.

Anyway, it was night, so after I finally ate, I decided to stay awake for a little while. They wanted me to go to sleep, but that would have interrupted my study of the ceiling. I kept asking them how old the light fittings were, but they wouldn’t answer. As soon as I get to talk to a supervisor, I’m having these parents exchanged for new ones. They just don’t seem to understand me.

It’s time to admit that I too many video tapes. Far too many. So many, in fact, that it’s too much of an effort to count them so I can tell you how many there are. It’s… it’s… somewhere around the region of… um… 300.

Yes, three hundred. <DEFENSIVE MODE> Look, I don’t know how it happened, okay? They bred! The bloody things have been appearing from nowhere for years now.

Fact is, I’ve now got so many tapes that I can’t possibly hope to watch them all before I die. Let alone finish my perennial project of cataloguing them.

Thank Christ I’m not buying any more, but reusing them. Otherwise there would come a time when we’d have to move into a bigger house purely to fit all the videos. Either that or evict the cat. As it is the videos have their own bookshelf. Which they don’t fit into. But it’s okay, it’s getting under control. I’ve been going to my regular VAA meetings. Video Addicts’ Anonymous.

"Hi, I’m Daniel, and I’m a Video Addict. I last bought a blank video tape in November 1994."

Why do some sinks in toilets have two separate taps that come out on different sides of the sink? So to wash your hands, you either have to freeze them, burn them, or move them rapidly between taps, resulting in what is very much a half-burnt, half-frozen hands situation. One could, of course, find the plug, run some water, etc, etc, but by the time you’d finished all that it would be time to go to the toilet again.

Someone will be onto a winner the moment they invent a Warm tap.

It’s strange the useless information that floats around in the brain, remaining there even though it (a) hasn’t been used for years, and (b) is entirely useless anyway. For instance, floating around in my brain, weaving its way in and out and around the first seventy-five digits of pi (don’t ask), is the fact that the average person, on average, averagely blinks every six seconds.

This fact probably isn’t actually correct. I don’t know. I don’t know where it came from, who verified it, who did the research. Could have been the Ponds Institute, I don’t know. I just know this: that every time I think that average people blink every six seconds, I try to check my own blinking to make sure it’s every six seconds. And it never works. I end up blinking much faster.