#5 stalk people online. a completely original concept, in know.

when no one is watching i spend oodles of time on the internet absorbed by random information about the lives of random people. some of whom i know and others who I have never met before. it is probably ok to be obsessed by the lives of friends and even acquaintances. but surely, the obsession with strangers should be considered odd but in today’s society its called networking or some other bullshit name like reconnecting.

what mumbo jumbo. in the very least its an ocd complex.

i am fascinated by the lives of people i have never met before and will go through their blogs and twitters religiously. this is more than just a passing phase. it is more than just simple procrastinating and sticky-beaking because i don’t even know how i existed before google search, facebook, twitter, and blogs.

• how could i see what demi moore looked like without her front tooth

• how was i supposed to find pictures from events within my extended social network that i was not popular enough to be invited to

• how did i kept tabs on ex-boyfriends

• how would i have reconnected with friends that i had purposely disconnected from and then find myself compulsively following there movements second by second

• how would  i have tracked the movements of my friends, acquaintances, celebrity crushes every waking moment of the day

so thank you social networking sites you have truly helped me become more social. because now i spend more time being social in the confines of my own bedroom. yep, i sit at home all night basking in the light of friendship that emanates from my 2004 powerbook. it’s glorious.

before i forget. thank you again social networking sites because before your neat little user interfaces were created, i didn’t know that my life was actually boring. i now know my life is only as interesting as the images and text that magically travel through inter-space-net from a stranger’s blog or an acquaintance’s facebook page and project into my living room.

when no-one is watching i run google searches of people I have met once or haven’t met at all but have happened across them in the social networking scene. yes, I am calling it a scene to make it sound more normal. but what is normal anyway. shut up.

#4 eat junk food in my bedroom

this is a complicated one. i can feel a migraine coming on at the mere thought of trying to explain this tasty morsel of idiosyncratic behaviour.

i get fat sometimes.

in fact sometimes i can get fat really fast. a few years ago whilst living overseas, i actually piled 15 kilograms onto my small frame in a matter of months.

of course, i never acknowledged the fact that i had begun resembling a hippopotamus that had squeezed into size 8 jeans until my charming flat mate steve – not his real name – told me quite matter-of-factly, “when you got here you were ooh [using his hands to indicate a figure eight body with his hands]. now you’re fat [using his hands to indicate a blob].

ouch.

i’m not really sure how a normal human would react after they realised that they had become fat. but i handled it the only way i knew how. i hid my junk food in my bedroom and would eat it when no one was watching.

that’s right when i’m fat and no one is watching i will eat pastries, cakes, chips, lollies and chocolate in my bedroom.

#3. steal from buffets

and you thought your opinion of me couldn’t get much lower. i’ve gone and raised the bar once again. I am a kleptomaniac suffering from narcissism and poor hygiene.

i am sure this one of the tightest things that i do when no one is watching. as tight as an emo band’s black skinny jeans. as tight as kerri-ann kennerly squeezing into lindsey lohan’s leggings. as tight as joan river’s face. you get the picture it’s pretty tight.

but before you go and judge, let me clarify something – this is not a sizzler or pizza hut buffet obsession. i steal from breakfast buffet’s at five-star hotels when on holidays. yes sir, i am very la dee dah.

it all began when my family and I were travelling through Europe on a three-month holiday. my mother would make me take food from the buffet and put in my bag because i wasn’t eating her monies worth at breakfast. she said something like, “i know you’re going to be hungry later and i am not going to stop what i am doing to find you something to eat while were out seeing the sights”. yowser.

but i learned my lesson and i learned it good. you don’t need to eat what you deem is your monies worth while seated at a buffet restaurant because you can just take some of it away with you in a doggy bag style system.

so yes, i steal things. i steal muffins, fruit and jams from buffets when no one is watching. or at least i hope no one is watching. incidentally, my mother is unabashed. she never made me put the stolen goods in my bag when no one was watching. the shame and embarrassment that results from my action is completely of my own-making.

# 2. five reasons why i pee in the shower

i pee in the shower because:

1. as a girl it’s the only time i can experience the man-joy of standing up to pee

2. it means that I don’t need to use abrasive toilet paper on my fajita

3. i care about the environment. one less flush for (wo)man, one less flush for (wo)mankind

4. george costanza does it

5. no one is watching

i know that my actions in the shower are a dirty, dirty faux pas but i don’t care. i can’t help than to pee in the shower.

# 1. check myself out

i like to check myself out when no one is watching or at least when i think no one’s watching. i’m not narcissistic in the crazy sense. i don’t have a personality disorder. i’m just vain.

its more of an obsessive compulsion than a psychological disease. i’ll try to grab a look of myself in anything that reflects. a mirror. a shop window. a car window. a bus stop shelter. a muddy puddle. but it’s more than just trying to catch a glimpse of myself in the shiny surfaces of the inanimate objects that i happen to pass on the street. it’s not something that i leave to chance.

when i spot something in the distance that may provide the opportunity to grab a good look at myself, i will walk out of my way to get to it. ok. i don’t walk to far out of my way because ultimately i’m both vain and lazy. for example, if i need to get from point a to b, i would make a detour to pass by c in order check myself out.

this scenario is repeated until i reach my destination.

of course, i always try to pretend that i am actually enamoured with what is in the shop window, car, pool of water, bus stop shelter. but too often than not, i’ve been caught out. peering with great interest in one-way reflective glass.