Take two reality pills and call me in the morning.

Swine Flu. Financial meltdown. It's been a bad year for pigs and pigs in suits. The only thing for it is a good dose of Catherine Deveny, who each week in the Age puts everything into perspective with her trademark iconoclastic wit.

Free to a Good Home includes her thoughts on gifted children and breakfast television, sexy billboards and the bill of rights. She reflects on her youngest child's first day at school, and on how to be happy in hard times.

Fearlessly funny and always provocative, Deveny is the perfect antidote to the modern world's ills.

Can anyone explain why I did this? I went to the chemist and bought this crap I put on my face to make me look younger. I put the jar on the counter. The chemist girl said, 'Is this stuff any good?' I said, 'Yeah.' She said, 'Really?' I said, 'I'm sixty.' Eyes like saucers, mouth agape, she gasped, 'OH MY GOD! Sixty! Toula! Fatima! Kelly! Come and check out this old lady. She's sixty!' So the other chemist girls scurried over and after a bit of oohing and aahing one said, 'Oh my God! Sixty? You look like you're forty-five!'

I'm forty. Chemist girls, one. Smart-arse, zero.