From the Horse's Mouth: Catherine Deveny

I live in The People's Republic of Moreland…
and have done for 18 years. It's diversity galore! Old Aussies, Greeks and Italians, huge Middle Eastern and asylum seeker populations, and now heaps of Indonesian and Malaysian folk too – as well as hippies, yuppies, students and nutters. It's an incredibly vibrant, loving melting pot of ideas and cultures. I find white suburbs like Balwyn and Kew really creepy and incredibly stunted. They give me the willies. I'm always: "Where are the brown people, the gays, the disabled, the shared households, the graffiti?" I'm pretty sure I'll die here in this house in this street. Probably gunned down by vigilantes from Balwyn and Kew. Because there are heaps of them.

I love going across the other side of the river…
but I could never live there. It's just not me. I can't find my way round; it's like I have had my internal compass removed. It's even worse when I cross the West Gate Bridge. I feel like I am in Sydney, with no GPS, and vertigo. My life has been Reservoir, Fitzroy, Brunswick. I've lived my whole life on the same page of the Melways. I just adore the inner north. I want my ashes scattered in the Merri Creek.

Commuter cycling is a revolution…
and the answer to all our problems: depression, obesity, mortgage stress, risk aversion, poverty, lack of connection with community and global warming. It's healthier and cheaper than driving, faster and safer than walking, and it feels like flying. Cyclists live longer, are richer, healthier and happier and have more sex than non-cyclists. Helmets good. Helmet laws bad.

I became involved with the first Global Atheist Convention in 2010…
we thought it would just be held in the back room of a pub! My one-woman show, God Is Bullshit, sold out in the last two Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Human nature does not change…
Technology does. Tweeting is a great way to gather info, test out ideas and let people know what you're up to. The banter is also an aggressive distraction that rewards like a pokie machine. I use it as my notebook, help desk, litmus tester and boredom buster.

Catherine appears at the Global Atheist Convention April 2012 and will have a book published by Black Inc Books in 2012.