Jeans - You can never have too many. I'm a size 32 (ish) and I like the fairly plain, straight-legged ones. Surely nothing can go wrong with getting other people to buy me clothes?

Guppies - Of breeding age. They are the only serious answer to my axolotl food problem.

Hat - I feel the need for some kind of funky head covering. Go nuts with whatever you think will be "me".

Linen - I recently lost a housemate and a whole heap of stuff, so anything fluffy, darkish in colour that you can use to put on beds, dry your body with, etc, will be well received.

Coffee Table: For the reasons mentioned above.

Cheapish mobile phone: My expensive one died recently (damn you Optus, and your one-year warranty), so I'm back to a truly ancient Nokia which requires 5 steps to send an sms. It's killing me!

Six Feet Under DVD: Seasons 3 – 5

Ditto Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Season 7 (Part II)

Ditto Angel, Seasons 4 and 5

Ditto Battlestar Galactica Miniseries and First Season DVD set (if it's out yet?)

Apple ™ cordless mouse

A sister or brother for Jaff Jaff (these can be got quite cheaply if you pass the cost of spaying onto the new owner!)*

A handsome dude to call my very own. . . this will buy you a LOT of love. Not as much love as the dude will be getting of course, but quite a bit.

• Jaff Jaff is a cat, so when I say "sister or brother" I mean dogs or any other kind of small fluffy mammal will be turned away. No matter how cute. Sorry.

RSVP for the "V for Vendetta"-themed goodness!

Cheers,

This harks back to what I was saying that it's important when looking at these debates to examine how they're even being talked about, and at a more basic level, why the question is even being asked. Hence for example my assertion that making suitability for parenthood a criterion for either awarding or denying gay couples marital rights and/or adoption rights (and I believe these questions are quite intimately linked) is in itself a homophobic proposition, placing the burden of proof on gay parents, and in sense naturalising the idea that heterosexual parenting is somehow 'naturally' 'healthy'. Both these terms are problematic for reasons I won't go into here, but suffice to say that this view obscures if not discounting altogether the obvious fact that many straight couples abuse the privilege of parenthood. This abuse, however, is seen as an aberration from the natural way of things, which still means that straight parents are automatically good, and that courts, family services, etc, must prove that they are bad to remove children from damaging situations. Gay families, on the other hand, are asked to first of all prove their right to exist, and then argue a case for their abilities as good parents.

Part One: The Burial of the Dead.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for n hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
‘You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl,’
-Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence,
Oed’und leer das Meer.

Madam Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,
Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,
(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)
Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,
The lady of situations.
Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,
Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,
Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find
The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.
I see crowds of people, walking round in ring.
Thank you. If you see dear Mrs Equitone,
Tell her I bring the horoscope myself:
One must be so careful these days.

Unreal city,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sigh, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where St Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroje of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying” ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
You! Hypocrite lecteur!- mon semblable, -mon frere!’

So there's no excuse, really. Happy festive season to all.

(1) J.M. Coetzee's "Slow Man" (it's a novel)
(2) Franz Ferdinand's new album
(3) Salman Rushdie's new book - "Shalimar the Crown"
(4) Brett Easton Ellis's "Lunar Park" (continuing in the new novel theme)
(5) Any Eddie Izzard DVD
(6) "Planet Simpson" by Chris Turner (a really cool-sounding critical book on The Simpsons)
(7) Eric Idle's "Greedy Bastard Diary"
(8) Sundry alcoholic beverages - Little Creatures pilsener and Bailey's Irish Cream are good here.
(9) "What the Bleep Do We Know?" DVD
(10) Poetry (this one's for you, Bel)
(11) Anything you think would help someone who's moving out soon and has never lived out of home before to survive in the cold, cold world - muffin pans, cutlery, caviar dishes, whatever. I don't know . . .
(12) If anyone can find a feline IQ test somewhere, I'd be really grateful. I'm convinced my cat is gifted, and yearn for empirical evidence to back this up.
(13) Jarred Diamond's book entitled "Collapse."
(14) Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything"