I’m a compulsive channel surfer. It’s really the only reason I have cable TV. Flicking through our 4 free-to-air channels isn’t nearly as much fun as clicking through a hundred of them, just so I can complain there's nothing to watch.

Every now and again, however, I stumble across a little gem on the Discovery Channel, or the History Channel, or someone botching a renovation on the Lifestyle Channel, which never fails to entertain. Not to mention the fun I have watching those poor presenters on TVSN trying to convince you that your children will probably grow up to be drug addicts if you don’t ring this 1800 number RIGHT NOW! to secure your 147 piece (including the knobs) stainless steel cookware set.

The other day I stumbled across a documentary on foetal exposure to testosterone (sounds like a hoot, I know, but it was really very interesting). Turns out there’s a theory that the more testosterone you were exposed to in the womb (regardless of gender), the better your heart and vascular system will be. The really fascinating thing is, you can tell by the difference in length between the index and ring fingers. The bigger the difference, the more testosterone you were exposed to. The more likely you are to be aggressive. The better your spatial skills.

And the more likely you are to be in touch with your inner 14 year-old-boy.

Mind you, there is a school of thought who believes the digital ratio theory is as scientifically sound as reading sheep entrails, but hey, if you look it up, there are lots of people with half the alphabet after their names who’ve felt the need to comment on it, so who am I to argue? Besides, my research into this fascinating theory is purely qualitative, anyway.

Because, guess what…  unlike most women whose index  and ring fingers are roughly the same size, I have a whopping 6mm difference between them.

Which explains so much about me. It would explain my impressively low blood pressure. It would explain why I’m so good at Tetris.

And it would explain why I like silly movies like Stormbreaker.

I had to review Stormbreaker for the ABC this week. I liked it so much I took Dace back to see it the next day. He loved it so much I had to call him Alex for two days afterwards.

If you want to hear me gushing about it on air, exposing myself to the ridicule of the entire nation, the podcast is up now.

On the bright side, I used to think I was just tragic. Now I have a medical excuse for being a geek.

And while on the subject of Dace, he slept over last night. Sat bolt upright in bed about midnight, and announced “Nana! If I go straight back to sleep I can watch my dream in reverse!” and then turned over and went straight back to sleep.

The mind boggles to think what he was exposed to in the womb.

I got to thinking today (after wondering yesterday why there are no heroes in fiction with fluid retention) about the ways it is acceptable in fiction to kill off characters … so I thought I’d make a list, which is probably symptomatic of incipient OCD, but what the hell. Everyone needs a hobby.

• Bladed Weapons of any kind. It is a given, however, that your hero will be able to take any amount of punishment up to and including being stabbed in a vital organ, while the bad guy will go down with a single cut.

• Firearms. The bigger the better. See Bladed Weapons about how many shots it takes to kill someone. It is also a given that your hero will be a better shot than your minions of evil.

• Bare Hands/Fist Fights, Martial Arts etc. Very useful, but your hero must fight honourably while your minions of evil may beat little old ladies to death. Killing someone with your bare hands is only acceptable if the reader believes your hero has killed in self-defence or is performing a community service.

• Energy weapons. Useful because they can also be set to stun and apparently nobody ever has an adverse reaction to being knocked unconscious by several thousand volts or pretty green lights. Be warned though, energy weapons should — theoretically — cauterise a wound on the way through, not make it bleed. Only useful if you don’t want buckets of blood splashing about for people to slip on and sprain something…

• Childbirth. The most popular way to remove an unwanted female character. (Thank you, Trudi)

• Plagues. Especially good for removing large swathes of the population, although rather icky if you have to describe it in detail. Incubation periods will vary, depending on the medium. Most TV plagues manifest in exactly the amount of time it takes to kill off the only person who knew the secret to synthesising the vaccine, forcing the promising underling (jaded yet brilliant outcast… whatever), to come to the rescue.

• Explosions - bombs, air raids, etc. Always a nifty way to dispose of people, either in small or large quantities. You must, however, have a digital readout counting down to zero. Failing that, having your character show a picture of his girlfriend to a buddy will alert us to the fact that he's about to be blown limb from limb. Curiously, all cute furry creatures seem to be immune from them, and will invariably stagger out of the ruins, unharmed.

• Natural disasters. Same as Explosions. You may replace the digital readout with a scientist nobody will listen to.

• Wildlife of all kinds. Snakes on a Plane. Say no more.

• Nuclear weapons. Unless you’re writing a post-apocalyptic epic, best to use this method at the end of the book… hmmm?

• TB and all other inexplicable diseases of the lungs. The severity of the cough will be directly related to how beautiful/handsome and tragic the character is. Remember Nicole Kidman’s character in Moulin Rouge singing up a storm while stopping every half hour or so to politely cough into her lacy white hanky which would come away delicately spattered with blood, so we’d all know she was dying? You get the idea.

• Zombification. A very useful tool. Removes the character but leaves you with an evil minion to wreak havoc on your heroes. Sort of what happens to people who join political parties.

• Cancer, AIDS and all other diseases. Take your pick. The severity of the symptoms will also depend on how beautiful/handsome and tragic the character is. Diseases must fall into the “acceptable” category, however. Nobody should ever die from stress incontinence. Not unless there is magic involved.

• Exsanguination. The fatal process of total blood loss. It’s what vampires and serial killers do. How much blood you have on the floor afterwards will depend on whether it was a vampire or a serial killer doing the exsanguinating.

• Native magic. This is cool but you can run into trouble and easily offend the very people who actually know how to do it, which is a very bad idea. There are documented cases of Australian Aborigines dying after the Kadaicha Man pointed a bone at them. Use sparingly and with permission.

• All other forms of magic. Anything goes. A truly inventive magical death would be where the sorcerer casts a spell on someone that makes them retain so much fluid that they fill up like a water balloon and eventually they explode in a big splash and…

OK, I know. I’m getting ridiculous. I shall stop now.

Feel free to add to the list.

I went to the doctor yesterday, partly to get the results of my bone density test (turns out I’m fine) and partly because my ankles are doing are a fairly good impersonation of tree stumps at the moment, so I thought I might inquire as to the reason why.

While sitting in the doctor's waiting room, I picked up a gossip magazine with pictures of Madonna in fishnet stockings and hot pants. I hate Madonna. Not her music. Not her lifestyle. Not her fame. Not her wealth.  Not even her legs (mine are longer). I hate her because, you see, Madonna and I are the same age. And yet she has ankles.

Why? Does she have liposuction on them? Is she constantly dehydrated? Maybe that’s why she moved to Engalnd. It’s cold in England. Perhaps she still has ankles because she lives in a cold climate…

I have ankles in winter, too. Trouble is, I live in Central Australia where we only have two seasons – winter, which lasts about six weeks, and summer, which lasts for the rest of the year.

I am not sick. I have been tested for everything short of Mad Cow Disease. Turns out I’m fine. More than fine. I have the blood pressure and pulse rate of a teenage athlete. I have the cholesterol level you’d expect to find in a Buddhist monk. My internal organs are so healthy they squeak… except for my poor asthmatic, steroid-enhanced lungs. Ironically, my asthma seems to have improved markedly since my ankles started to swell. Go figure. Apparently, I can have nice ankles, or functioning lungs. My doctor suggested I go with the lungs option. Right after she gave me the refreshingly honest diagnosis: “I have no idea what’s causing your ankles to swell up like that, Jen.”

Which brings me to the ailments you won’t ever see in fiction unless you’re a bad dude or a secondary character that doesn’t matter to the plot.

People get wounded all the time in fiction, but rarely do they get sick unless it’s a terminal disease (because they have to die) or a convenient excuse for the heroine to be home from work that day, so she can open her door in her fluffy slippers and dressing gown to the cold, but brutally handsome property developer scoping out her street …

I mean, really, when was the last time you read about a major character with fluid retention? When did a hero ever sprain an ankle that took three months on crutches to heal (I’m not including plots where he's the football hero and she’s the perky, no-nonsense nurse hired to care for him, btw).

How come Aragorn never snapped a tendon? Does nobody in the future or the past ever pull a muscle? Does it not ache to be on your feet all day provided there’s someone around wearing a sword? Did knee cartilage function better in days of old?

What about acne? Give a character pimples and you are dooming then to only two possibilities: they are petty, evil and deserve their comeuppance, or they will discover Proactiv far enough into the plot for the object of their desire to notice their real beauty, after which they can proceed to the “happily every after” bit, without a zit in sight.

You’d think, based on this, I would champion the cause of realism in fiction, wouldn’t you?

Well, I don’t.

People don’t want their heroes and heroines to suffer from everyday ailments. We want to escape. If we want to experience the mundane, irritating things about life, we can just open our eyes and look around.  When we're being entertained, we want to be taken away from it all.

There is no fluid retention over the rainbow. That’s why we’re reading fiction (whatever the genre) in the first place.

I was surfing the net yesterday, when I stumbled across an online bookstore that offered, among other things, a link to their Sci-fi section. I followed the link and came to another page, which asked the visitor to please select the sub-genre they prefered... out of a list of 51 entries.

51 sub-genres! Are they serious!

Well, yes, apparently they are. And because I'm sure you're just dying to know, here is the list, along with a brief explanation of each.

• Alien Beings  — So… would an alien edition of Hamlet read “to being or not to being…”? Just a thought.
• Alternate & Parallel Worlds — That would be stories set in the worlds where I am Mrs Pitt, yes?
• Alternate History — That would be the one where in 1970, when they were laying the telephone cables in my street, someone from Telecom said, hang the expense, let’s use the good stuff in Number 15…
• Apocalypse — The inevitable result of the next telemarketing call I get from Telstra offering me Broadband that they can’t deliver.
• Arthurian Legend — Men in protective armour going after a precious cup while women swoon… hang on, isn’t that a football final?
• Based on a Game — Please, anything but football...
• Bestiary — Also known as anthropomorphism… giving human characteristics and the power of speech to animals. You know, like in parliament…
• Bioengineering — Where they invent a vacuum cleaner that cares.
• Colonization & terraforming — Isn’t that what we’re doing to our planet ? Completely buggering up the climate to suit ourselves?
• Computers — Ah… Binary for Dummies and all other computer self-help books.
• Cyberpunk — Computers, Mohawk haircuts, and body piercings, I'm sure.
  
• Detective — It’s a crime they included this one on the list.
• Dystopia-Utopia — A Utopia is where everybody is happy. A Dystopia is where they’re not. Sort of like the difference between medication time in a mental asylum and Iraq.
• Ecology — Where the blood of your enemies… makes for really good fertilizer.
• Fairy Tales — Of course, Ms Fallon, we can connect broadband to your home…
• Galactic Empires & Space Operas — Home of all the really cool evil overlords.
• Graphic Novels & Comics — For boys who love comics but want to appear grown-up and edgy.
• Hard Science — Because it often is.
• Heroic — See Galactic Empires & Space Operas. Has a disturbing tendency to involve goat herders, prophesies and quests.
• Historical or Fictional Characters — There’s a sentence that makes sense…
• Human Comedy — Which is so much funnier than, like, rodent comedy.
• Humorous — Anything else that’s funny which doesn’t involve humans, I suppose. Like cockroaches. There’s a chortle.
• Immortality — Isn’t that where they put The Never Ending Story?
• Inspirational — The Power of Positive… what… Space Travel? Spell Casting? I dunno… (Who made up this silly list?)
• Lost Worlds — They’re always in the last place you look.
• Love & Sex  — Where you learn what it’s really like to do it in a zero-g environment, maybe?
• Magic — Ta Da! Broadband in my house!
• Messianic -Religious — Any book that inspires you to ask: Dear God, how did this get published?
• Militaristic — Space Opera with bigger guns and people who say "siryessir!" a lot
  
• Nanotechnology — One for the Little People.
• New Wave — Because Old Wave is just sooo last year…
• Parody — Plagiarism with jokes.
• Political — Where the really nasty evil overlords lurk. The ones who can orate.
• Psionic Powers — I’ll have to think about this one.
• Quest — Involves rings, ancient swords, grails and prophesies. And often a hero.
• Rites of Passage — Always starts with a teenage hero. Often ends in blood. May also involve goat herders and a quest.
• Robots, Androids, Cyborgs — Because they’re machines and that way you don’t have to deal with that pesky characterisation thingy the publishers keep insisting on.
• Saga, Myth, & Legend — Bit like the E! Channel with swords.
• Science Fantasy — Scifi that ignores the basic laws of physics. Think Star Trek.
• Shared Worlds and Franchise Universes — McScifi or McFantasy. Take your pick.
  
• Short Stories — Not so much "world building" as "room building"
  
• Social Criticism — Bad society, naughty society… you will have to be punished
• Space Travel — Only if you’ve got FTL otherwise it’s very long and very boring… and please, do not, under any circumstances, mention the effect of time dilation.
• Steam Punk  — OK, you will never convince me that some publicist didn’t just make this category up because it sounded cool…
• Superheroes — Without whom, the Lycra industry would have gone bust.
• Sword & Sorcery — Where the spell is mightier than the sword.
• Time Travel — Where you get to go back (or forward) and do it all again.
• Urban — Fantasy set in cities… you know, where parking is free and public transport runs on time… that sort of thing.
• Virtual reality — You just think you’re reading these books…
• Women in — Women in? What sort of ridiculous genre is Women in?
• Time Travel — see… I warned you…
• World of Faerie — Fairy stories for the grown-ups who’d be reading graphic novels, if only they'd put more magic and cute chicks with wings in them.

My father told me a joke once about two sheiks sitting around their palace in the days of old, discussing the best way to make eunuchs to guard the harem. One of them suggested doing the deed with a sharp knife. The other claimed it was far too messy, and the best way was to use two bricks, smashing them together and disposing of the, er, problem, as it were, in one fell swoop.

Ouch! Sheik Number One says. Doesn’t that hurt?

Only if you get your thumb caught, Sheik Number Two replied…

Which was what I found myself thinking today, as I stood there being squashed into a large flat vice (albeit one with many pretty flashing lights) while enduring my bi-annual mammogram.

My mother died of breast cancer, you see, when she was only 45, so ever since my mid-thirties I have dutifully turned up every two years for this valuable screening procedure. The idea of having certain extremities flattened into a vice every couple of years so they can be x-rayed, strikes me as being a vastly better proposition than finding out I have breast cancer when it’s too late to do anything about it.

But however valuable a diagnostic tool, a mammogram is about as much fun as a being run over by a steam roller. Not to mention it’s undignified (move your heels, dear, stick your bottom out, stretch that arm, drop that shoulder, move that chin, bend that elbow, wonderful! Now relax…). And it’s not the worst thing we humans endure for the sake of modern preventative medicine.  Let’s not even talk about the indignity of a pap smear… or my doctor who fancies herself a real comedian and makes comments like hang on, Jen, I’ll just go get my gear out of the freezer..

What I want to know is, why can’t they invent something like the bone density test, if doctors need to probe the inner workings of the human body? Had one of those lately, too, which was kinda cool, because the machine looked like something salvaged off the med-deck on the old Enterprise sets and all I had to do was lie there for five minutes while it went ca-chung, ca-chung, ca-chung over me.

Why can’t they do it in real life like they do on it TV? Nothing is ever invasive on sci-fi shows unless we need to see blood for dramatic effect.

I want to be scanned from across the room. I want to be diagnosed in the ad breaks, the cure for my exotic condition discovered, synthesised and loaded into a hypospray, all with the hour. And when injected, I expect it to undo the irreparable damage to my DNA, restore me to my prime, and leave me with nothing more than a mild headache. Oh, and the hypospray should never sting, nor should this miracle cure cause any painful side effects, either.

I mean, that would be the 24th century equivalent of getting your thumbs caught, wouldn’t it?