Deborah Hill Cone: Inner peace is a drag - no butts about it

Kim Kardashian's anatomy seems to be the obsession du jour when we're not fretting about Isis. Photo / AP

World’s oddities quick to fill void in absence of personal drama.

This is bad. If I go to sleep on a Saturday night and have nothing to write I wake up in a puddle of dribble, with nothing in my head but anxious dreams. Nothing which would solicit another aghast: "Jesus, you really put it out there don't you?"

The problem with writing about yourself is that when the psychodrama is over, you're fresh out of sturm und drang. This week I went to a new Parnell restaurant which has fur-lined porn star booths, thought I had lost my new car but it had been towed, took my daughter to Kumon and pretended to be a tiger mother. (Mimes clawing). See? That's my life. I'm the frigging Marie Antoinette of Parnell. Nothing to see here.

So, I need a segue column to ease me back to the real world. But about what? I notice there is a disturbing polarity in our public discourse: Isis or Kim Kardashian? Putin or The Bachelor? Are things always this binary? When I went to look for something to write about, all I could find was that bloody dress that broke the internet - black and blue or white and brown?

Who would have thought you could teach empiricism using a knock-off Herve Leger bandage dress. David Hume: Humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience: "I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception."

I think maybe I am suffering from Ironic Process Theory: when our efforts to suppress certain thoughts or behaviours result ironically in them becoming more prevalent. Don't think about a polar bear, don't think about Kim Kardashian's butt or #dressgate or any other trivial but strangely prominent topic.

Pelmets are the new thing. Expect to see pelmets all over The Block next season.

Someone tried to sell organic gluten free dairy free sugar free treats when they were anything but.

"I'm telling you one million per cent he was not the same person after he ran into the metal pole," says someone about what caused Jihadi John to join Isis.

"There is nothing strange, creepy or inappropriate about John Travolta," says Scarlett Johansson.

"Men painting the exterior of our house ruined the lavender beds in the garden. They crushed them with ladders and scaffolding although they could easily have taken care to not ruin them," says Shelley Bridgeman.

"Inane blathering," says my 7-year-old son, not looking up from Spore.

But don't believe everything he says. "I hate my family and I'm leaving forever." (I would not let him buy In-App purchases. )

There is another reason I have to stop writing about myself, not only because I am like the anti-Mike Hosking. Imperfect.

Have I mentioned I have no friends? No one wants to be my friend because they think they will end up in here. "Trouble with you is your drinking buddies finish up as inspiration for your columns." "No, they don't! I'm very careful." "I bet you even write about this." "No, I won't." Oh.

So in the end, the only question is where do I stand on sending troops to Iraq? "Why does Isis post evil videos? To anger, to provoke. Sending troops gives a big Like to Isis' social media campaign." A comedian said this but I think it might be one of the more intelligent reasons not to go. As opposed to say, the self-interested Peace in Our Time Chamberlain-inane blather: "Sending troops is likely to escalate violence and pose more of a threat to us here now that we have declared ourselves the enemy." Shh, don't let on to Hitler we think he is a monster.

You can't just ignore what is going on because it makes you uncomfortable. Well, you can. But special pleading is far from persuasive. The risk of being beheaded in the street or being chucked off a building or being beaten to death by a mob because of our sexual preferences is still pretty low in this country. The "It ain't our fight" attitude of appeasers in the 1930s probably looked eminently reasonable at the time too, but rather different in hindsight.

How will this decision look 50 years from now? I don't know. But I think I would prefer to tell my children whatever we did, we did it because we thought it was morally right rather than we did it because it was expedient. When we weren't too busy being obsessed with Kim Kardashian's butt, that is.