Lauren Ella The Pitfalls of Music History When I was driving home yesterday I felt a very strong urge to veer into the oncoming traffic. Why? Because three of my five most hated songs of all time were played in succession on the radio.

Lauren Ella Vomit Baby Every afternoon at approximately 3pm, I find myself standing in the coffee shop anxiously waiting for my Iced Latte` to be delivered into my greedy hands.

Lauren Ella Yoga SpiceNot too long ago I was advised to take up Yoga. In response to my immediate scoffing and dismissal, my advisor quickly reassured me that it wasn’t the "tree-hugging hippy-loving pansy-kissing bullshit" I believed it to be and that it would in fact improve my mental state.

Lauren Ella Satan I’ve mentioned in previous articles that I’m somewhat sceptical of all things supernatural and this is why the past week has been hilariously entertaining for me. The lead up to June 6^th 2006 has brought out all the freaks and weirdos who insist that Satan is going to rise up from the underworld and attack us, enabling me to mock their obvious insanity from my happy little non-believing place on the couch.

Lauren Ella Inheritance Babies Last night I happened to catch a story on A Current Affair which basically suggested that rich kids have it worse than poor kids. According to some psychologist or another, people who inherit their parent’s billion-dollar fortunes are prone to feelings of worthlessness, depression and suicide, and the rest of us who are not cursed with such prosperity should subsequently feel sorry for them. Yeah right.

Lauren Ella Bill This morning I skipped outside to my mailbox to see if the postman had left me anything nice. I reached my hand past the cobwebs, drew out an official looking piece of paper and noticed that it was from the council. It told me that someone had made a complaint about the tree in my front yard and that it violated some code that says it isn’t allowed to be hanging over my fence quite so far because it’s considered to be a pedestrian hazard. A big sarcastic "Whatever" passed through my mind.

Lauren Ella Hyper Food Remember the good old days when you could eat whatever you felt like and didn’t feel bad? When you didn’t think twice about devouring several chocolate bars after you got home from school or eating burgers and fries with your friends on the weekend? I miss those days, because it now seems that I can’t even eat a salad sandwich without wondering how many calories are in a leaf of iceberg lettuce.

Lauren Ella Hair Surgery I’ve just has a very bizarre experience. I was sitting in front of the hideously lit full length mirror at the hairdressers having my hair cut (duh) when the woman with the scissors randomly mused "you have such beautiful full lips". I smiled and batted my eyelids as I muttered a "Why, thank you so much". How nice, I thought. The only times I remember people commenting on my lips were when drunk sleazy men followed the "compliment" with blow job jokes. It’s not often that a virtual stranger gives you a compliment, especially if that virtual stranger happens to be another woman.

Lauren Ella Thanks, But No Thanks A few weeks ago I came across an ad for a job vacancy at the CSIRO, which I’m led to believe is Australia’s leading scientific research establishment.

Lauren Ella TomKatOn April 18, 2006, a 21-year-old suicide bomber killed thousands of people in Tel Aviv. Also on this day, the President of the People’s China made his first visit to the United States and thousands of Europeans were evacuated from their homes due to the flooding of the Danube River

Lauren Ella The Brown Streak One night last week I made the short trek to my local supermarket. Although this may not seem like an event worthy of too much attention, just you wait. Because not only did I return home with new shampoo and four bruised apples, but I also returned home to a full-fledged epiphany.

Lauren Ella Ready... and Action I’m all for people expressing themselves however they want to express themselves. Woe be it for me to deny anyone the right to share their profound and earth-shattering imagination with the world by attacking the products of it with my witty repartee`.

Lauren Ella Patronising Little Prick We’ve all encountered them. They were the assholes in high school who called you a Satanist because you wore black nail polish. They are the pseudo-intellectual video store guy who smirks because you choose GI Jane over some three-hour long foreign movie about the mating habits of Antarctic whales.

Lauren Ella The Great Beyond I don’t believe in aliens or ghosts or angels or any other supernatural entities. I believe that there is a decent explanation for all bizarre occurrences (aside from Lindsey Lohan having a lucrative career) and have believed so for a very long time. When The X-Files was big in the 90’s, I did not watch it and think that it was raising interesting questions about the great beyond. I watched it and thought "Mulder’s pretty hot for an old man".

Lauren Ella You Too At this very moment U2’s greatest hits are coming through my apartment wall from next door. I presume that my neighbour is depressed about the band postponing their Australian tour and considers playing the CD at full volume some kind of homage or compensation.

Lauren Ella Rolling No Where I love Mick Jagger. An evil person once said that he’s "about as sexy as a pissing toad", but I love watching his 700 year old body dance its way spastically around a stage. I find it amazing that someone who’s been doing the same thing for so many years still has enough enthusiasm and energy to continue doing it night after night and although the several million dollars he gets paid to do it might act as some kind of incentive, it’s impressive nonetheless.

Lauren Ella Let Me Down and Let Me Go I have indeed spent the last week in Sydney completing an internship at one of the Australia’s leading fashion magazines. Sound exciting, doesn’t it? Sounds glamorous and worldly, doesn’t it? Well it wasn’t. The only "experience" I got out of the experience was in how to survive immense, near-unbearable boredom.

Lauren Ella Travel Bugs Something very strange happens to people when you’re about to set off on a travelling expedition. All of a sudden, everyone you know has an opinion on anything even remotely related, everyone wants to share their past travelling experiences with you and everyone asks ridiculously pointless questions.

Lauren Ella A Date With Death I think the best part about being relatively young is the sense of immortality that comes with it. Either unjaded optimism or simple naivety allows you to believe that nothing fatally disastrous is going to happen and, although you realise that death is imminent, it seems a very long way away. But there’s nothing like a good health scare to bring your own mortality to the forefront.

Lauren Ella Oxymoronic Sport I’ve noticed a new campaign on television promoting the government’s efforts to increase the amount of exercise carried out in primary schools. I assume that the reason for this is the combination of a generation of morbidly obese children, current society’s fanatic interest in everything health related and an upcoming election.

Lauren Ella Honesty is Bogus In the past three days I’ve heard four separate people proclaim that "Honesty is always the best policy" (by "people" I mean movie people, which explains why they’re talking in clichés).

Lauren Ella The Esteem-Destroying Project For some stupid reason I decided to spend my antisocial Saturday night organising photographs. After three years of kicking a shoe box full of them out the way whenever I walked out the front door, I thought I’d be a bit Martha Stewart and get the happy snaps in order. What a completely moronic idea. I’ve never felt so vile in my life

Lauren Ella The String Woe be it for me to make any kind of comment on fashion. I’m the first to admit that I don’t understand the re-emergence of skinny-leg jeans or hippy skirts and, as such, I am not privy to any kind of fashion superiority. However, despite my unworthiness to provide commentary on the issue, there are some things that I cannot bite my tongue about.

Lauren Ella Calling Kate Moss Life’s a strange and unpredictable thing. One minute you’re sitting on your couch watching Baywatch reruns and the next minute you’re being offered a potential $500 to be a model in a photo shoot. Sound a bit too Days-of-Our-Lives to be true? Not so. It happened to me. Well, almost happened.

Lauren Ella My Cake and I I hadn’t eaten any sugar for about three and a half weeks and it was killing me. I’d be watching a movie and realise that I hadn’t paid any attention to it because I’d been fantasising about chocolate. I’d be reading a book and have to backtrack three pages because I’d been mentally lusting after cookies.

Lauren Ella The Entertainment Value of Fucked-Up Celebrities I am reluctantly admitting that I just spent the last forty minutes of my life browsing through www.awfulplasticsurgery.com. I started off with good intentions by just taking a quick squiz at the front page (Ha ha, look at Posh Spices’ fish lips. Woah, look at Tara Reid’s mutant nipples), but soon enough I was double-clicking my way down the side panel of celebrity plastic surgery disasters and found myself mentally abusing my computer because it wasn’t downloading fast enough.

Lauren Ella One Disturbing Woman Today I witnessed something truly disturbing. It’s been several hours since the incident occurred and my jaw is still dragging on the floor. It was an occasion where it would have been appropriate to yell "What the…Oh my God…Fuck…What?" at the top of my lungs, but it was so shocking that my brain couldn’t even manage to collect itself enough to send that scattered response out my mouth.

Lauren Ella My Favourite Pastime Now that my exams and other educational commitments are out of the way, I am now officially on holidays. After a rather exhausting week of cramming as much sociological knowledge into my tired brain as possible, I am now happy letting said brain do nothing.

Lauren Ella Charlie Charlie has blonde hair and big blue eyes. He smiles and giggles a lot, which makes me assume he’s a pretty friendly kid. I hate Charlie. I hope he gets typhoid.

Lauren Ella Don't Read It! I think I’ve hit a new peak in my level of self-indulgence: I just Googled myself. I actually have to admit that I’ve done this once before (my friend and I were bored and desperate for entertainment on a suburban holiday) and when links appeared to my articles we thought it was the coolest thing in the world.

Lauren Ella My Supernatural Abilities I’m very fond of lameness, which is why one of my favourite conversational topics is this: describing where you want to be in ten years time. It’s not enough to simply state your desired occupation and location of residence (that would be boring); you have to actually detail your future life as if you’re already living it.

Lauren Ella Summer Fashion Faux Pas I’ve always disliked summer for two reasons: the first is that I cope with heat about as well as an Eskimo does and the second is that I’m scared of the fashion atrocities that occur throughout the season.

Lauren Ella On The ProwlFor reasons that allude me, I’ve spent the past two days submitting job applications to various stores around the city. After discovering that a lot of places are on the look out for people to help with the "Christmas boom", I thought I may as well give it a go since I’ll have nothing else to do this summer. But I’m not even certain that I want a job. Sure the money would be handy, but am I really capable of providing good customer service? The answer to that is probably a big fat "No".

Lauren Ella A Sweet Experience This may be the most unfeminine thing I’ve ever said, but I’m not a big fan of chocolate. Sure I have the rare moment where I absolutely most definitely must ingest some chocolate even if I have to slaughter someone to get it, but I can go for months on end before this moment arrives. I’m actually more of a chips girl myself, but I rarely eat them either (due to the Pringles warning "once you pop you can’t stop" being particularly accurate for me).

Lauren Ella Death Letter I was recently watching an interview with Luke Rhinehart, author of ‘The Dice Man’, and he was discussing an idea I wish I had thought of myself. After stating that he wanted his son to play rock music at his funeral and only invite the people he likes, he said that he was going to put all the guidelines into a Death Letter that must be adhered to. I thought "Hmm, a Death Letter. What an excellent idea!

Lauren Ella Damn Parents I just returned home from the movies and am sitting here with mean squinty eyes and pursed lips. I’m not so much typing as I am physically abusing my poor innocent keyboard. Goddamn. I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the second time this week because...

Lauren Ella Non-conformist Conformists Haha! I’ve found a new breed of people to hate. I’m never at my happiest until I have some vile "type" of people to detest, so my new-found loathing of who I refer to as "non-conformist conformists" makes me smile. Actually, this hatred has been seething for quite a while now, but it wasn’t until recently that it reached its full potential. Now that it has, I am content once more.

Lauren Ella Add it to the List A weird thing happens to me when I read or see something about a mental illness: I become immediately convinced that I have it. Of course, I am prone to physical hypochondria in the first place, so the fact that it might extend into psychological hypochondria isn’t all that hard to imagine.

Lauren Ella Real Estate Semi-Fiasco The worst thing about renting rather than owning an apartment is that you’re subject to routine "maintenance inspections". Although the real estate agency claims that these inspections are "just to see if anything needs fixing", everyone knows they just want to see if you’re fucking the place up. They also want to snoop through your stuff.

Lauren Ella Parenting Yesterday afternoon, while sprawled out and half comatose on my couch, I happened to watch an episode of Dr Phil about "the best way to raise your children". What’s too strict? What’s too lenient? Is there a happy medium? Of course no conclusion was drawn (as is expected of day time pop psychology) but it made me curious nonetheless.

Lauren Ella Now A Question of Etiquette I’ve recently been confronted with a series of incidents where I’ve thought, "That is so inappropriate". I can’t decide whether this is because I’m particularly uptight or because everyone else is particularly gross.

Lauren Ella I Wish I Had A Talent

"I wish I had a talent," I said.

"You write," replied my friend.

"That doesn’t mean I’m talented at it," I said

Lauren Ella The Experience For the last five days I’ve been doing work experience at a newspaper.

Although it’s been interesting and challenging, I also believe it’s been the hardest five days I’ve ever suffered through because I don’t think I’ve ever been so stressed in my life.

Lauren Ella Chameleon Behaviour One of my pet peeves used to be human chameleons. These are people who, depending on what kind of people they’re hanging around with, change their personality accordingly.

Lauren Ella Tube Tops and Disco Balls Because my pants are growing increasingly too big for me (see last weeks ramblings) and because, for some ungodly reason, a vast majority of them don’t have belt hoops (a grand scheme against all women to make them need to buy handbags I say), I decided that I needed to invest in something that will hold them up.

Lauren Ella The Single One I’m scanning over my Sex and the City memories: there’s that episode where Miranda has to pretend she’s in a lesbian couple in order to be invited to a work related dinner, the episode where Carrie goes to stay with her friends in the Hampton’s and is constantly referred to as "the single one", and the episode where all four girls are the only non-coupled ones at a party. All of these suddenly have a familiar ring to them.

Lauren Ella Post-Obesity Traumas In the past six months I’ve lost approximately 15 kilograms (that’s about 35lbs for those of you not akin to the joys of the metric system). As you can imagine, I’m very happy about this.

Lauren Ella Look in the Mirror I hate the word "self-esteem" so much that it’s band from my vocabulary. Just like the words "journey", "emotion" and "relationship" (which are also forbidden), I consider it lame and a bit too Tony Robbins for my liking.

Lauren Ella A Lesson in Article Potential If you’re a loyal reader with a good attention span, you may have deduced something from my articles. Namely, that some weeks I struggle to find a decent topic to write about and end up blabbering on an on about insignificant things. In fact looking back over my archived articles, I’m quite embarrassed about some of the crap I’ve allowed the world to see (that recipe abomination is a prime example).

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Lauren Sassella is a young Australian writer who has recently had her poetry and essays published in various magazines, ezines and anthologies. She is currently studying Arts at university.