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My airline, today.

OPRAH mania has hit the nation and it strikes me that living my life to the code of a billionaire media mogul – rather than a grimy hack – might be an interesting experiment for a day.

I could just download an Oprah iPhone app for inspiration, but instead I go to the airport newsagent and try to fumble a copy of O magazine between a couple of Herald Suns, porn mag-style.

Much of the mag reads like a spoof:

“When an accident left her son, Ned, paralysed, Ellen never thought that a mischievous capuchin monkey named Kasey would help bring her family through that dark time…”

“The wig Oprah is wearing on the September cover is just gorgeous – it makes her look younger and even more sophisticated than she already is. Thanks for prompting me to buy the magazine…”

…but Oprah really is the oracle of bite-sized wisdom, and by rifling through this epiphany-poppin’ periodical, I find the answers to all this morning’s burning questions as I attempt to fly to Sydney.

6am: I’m so tired my eyes are burrowing into my head! Can I spread this misery somehow?

Oprah frequently reminds us to “live the best life you can lead“. This means no inflicting other people with the fact that you’re tired, even though misery shared is misery halved or something. Besides, if I look tired and emotional, the Air Ways film crew will be onto me like a seagull on a chip.

8.30am: What will I do about the Air Ways film crew at the check-in? And seriously, when are they NOT loitering here waiting for someone to crack?

Oprah would literally open her arms out to a television audience, with a humbled smile. I don’t want any officials judging me too drunk to fly though, so I merely arrange a gracious look upon my countenance and avoid direct eye contact.

9.30am: My flight is cancelled without explanation or apology, what should my immediate reaction be?

Look, it’s unlikely Oprah would go outside and light up a whole pack of cigarettes, but she’d probably immediately put on 25lb instead… so potato, pot-a-to. This is okay.

10am: How should I respond to the check-in lady offering me a flight tomorrow night instead?

I drop what O mag would refer to as the “F-bomb” at this news – “the best virtue is prudence in using it. Ladies should use F-bombs sparingly, but to great effect” – but it has as much effect here as blancmange bullets on a brick wall. Oprah is a “licensed wildlife rehabililtator” so presumably she can get a Tiger to lie down and play dead better than I can.

I won’t bore you with the following few hours’ tedium, except to say that realising I have to pay another airline $300 to get me out of here could be what Oprah calls an “aha moment”, while an Oprahdite might chirrup “everything happens for a reason” at my fury at being stuck in another queue to hand over this $300.

At which point, not being a “people pleaser”, I’d defecate on their luggage.

Keeper? No.

MY rage is as perilously close to the surface as a fart in a bath; liable to pop and ruin the mood at any second.

I don’t often take it out on other people, although on the occasions I have I count myself very lucky they haven’t clobbered me back – with the exception of one high-spirited street brawl, where they did. But any inanimate objects around me get what for, and have done since I was a child – which was awkward, as I was an animatist and afterwards I’d have to go around patting and apologising to skirting boards and brutally biro-stabbed maths books.

My seething disappointment almost got me arrested at 18 when I vandalised a phone box in a lather because I couldn’t get it to work. Instead, the police asked my mother to come and get me. What does a girl have to do to get taken seriously? I’m pretty sure if I was a bloke I would have been banged up by now, and I’m pretty sure I’d crumble like a fondant fancy after just one day in jail.

My temperament’s way better in my thirties, but still, my shaking-fist-at-sky moments are bugging me, so I decide to seek out help online through a number of anger management forums.

They’re highly strung places, unsurprisingly. Logging onto the first, one guy is indulging in a thinly disguised brag about giving someone a beating the night before – lingering lovingly on every blow.

“You are retarded and an alcoholic,” comes a terse reply. “A R-E-T-A-R-D. Glad I could help.”

Jeez, I hope that respondent doesn’t step up to help me.

“The symptoms you describe sound as though they’re at the high-functioning end of autism,” says ‘Candid’ on one board after I describe my ish-ewes. Isn’t calling someone autistic the new ADD though? Gets bandied around an awful lot.

Jeff, on another board, advises me to come up with a code word that non-inanimate objects can hiss at me when I get riled up. This, he reckons, is better than the ever-inflammatory “calm down”… but I have a sneaking suspicion someone using a codeword on me might have the exact same effect. Maybe I’ll mutter a quiet prayer for the person, as 12-step help groups recommend.

For the inanimate objects problem… well, first off I’m going to try and not take things so personally – if the printer gets jammed, for example, realistically it’s not doing it just to wind me up – and secondly I’m going to stick money in a swear box for every ladypart I list at the top of my lungs. The money has to go to charity, otherwise I’d just be lining my own pockets.

Some forum posters suggest an all-natural hypoglycemic diet – basically no sugar or caffeine, and eating as close to real, untreated food as possible – which I have noticed works, but really sucks. I’ve also sent off for a rock salt crystal lamp, which floods a room with negative ions when all the positive ions from electrical appliances and looming storms (looming storms send me particularly nutso) are getting you all wound up.

There’s free anger management counselling available at Psych Resources. It’s all about listening to what your anger has to say (other than “That’d be about right, you absolute %$#ing %#$@!” and other quaint Basil Fawltyisms). There are a series of questions to help you find your “unique emotional truth”, and you can then post this truth at the end, which I do.

Keeper? Yes.

Hey – I asked people what calming code word(s) they’d come up with, and they said: “bunnies”, “puppies”, “boobies”, “take the day off work”, “easy, tiger”, “rotary engine”, “aaaagaadoodoodoo”, “you are right I am wrong”, “serenity now”… What would you suggest? Comment below. (Please.)

THERE are scads of bars in the Crown Entertainment Complex. My mission is to sit through three songs from a live act in three such bars. I’ve collected the set lists, to prove I did it.

BAR 1: Tangerine
Against the gallop and kerching of pokies, Chunky Jam are ripping through their set.
1. Proud Mary – Creedence Clearwater Revival
2. Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison
3. Superstition – Stevie Wonder

Bar 2: Atrium
This bar opens out into the games room. It’s a big joint, but weirdly I can smell Calvin Klein’s CK One all the way through it. Are they pumping it through the vents? Anyway, Stuart Wyatt is tinkling the ivories of the grand piano, in an extravagantly floral fashion.
1. Still the One – Shania Twain
2. Fame … no … I know this one … I’d Rather Be a Hammer? … Gah! Too abstract. Next!
3. It’s some kind of early ’80s theme tune … I’m picturing a horse galloping across fields, or possibly a dog … WAIT!! It’s Eternal Flame by the Bangles. Phew.

Bar 3: JJ’s
This bar’s heaps classier than it sounds, but the seat of the grand piano is vacant. Not my fault, nor my problem. Mission: accomplished.

Keeper? Actually, yes. I find it hard to resist a fountain sweeping down alongside a black marble staircase.