a long and stupid rant

Nearly a week without a post. It's not that nothing has happened, because things have. I'm going to Canberra tomorrow. I've not done all the work I'm supposed to have done. All that sort of stuff. Not to mention that my parents got home on Tuesday evening (good thing I finished the last of the pot on Monday night, hey?). Interestingly, earlier that evening I scared myself by thinking about what would happen if they died.

It was more than that. I was showering before going to pick them up from the airport. I had already heard from them when they were in Melbourne so I knew they were alive so far. But what if there was a plane crash on the approach to Hobart? What would happen? I concern myself with such trivialities, often, until they become so overwhelming as to cause me to sob. Not just cry, sob. The last time I was reading encyclopaedic and purely factual articles about the holocaust. Just wikipedia. Browsing around, reading about everything that happened, and suddenly, mid-sentence, nothing particularly in-and-of-itself bad, I started to cry. It just... it just hit me. There is a perfect (and beautiful, in a way I can't explain) description of this flowing-over effect over on another blog.

While I was writing that paragraph the same thing happened. I cried.

So yeah, I think I was saying that on Tuesday I thought about all the things that would happen if there was a plane crash. I'd press through, try to see what happened. I'd organise a funeral and occupy myself with procedural matters and work. I imagined a phone call to Centrelink asking to cancel payments to people I'm not authorised to represent because they died. I wonder how they'd handle that. I even thought about getting funeral sponsorship before I realised how ridiculous the idea was. And I'd get it all done because it would be distracting and I wouldn't cry until the funeral. I would, of course, but I wouldn't break down. I'd be a pall-bearer for Gideon - front right I think - and that's when it would start. And by the end I'd be unable to move, catatonic from the grief. I'd run out of tears and snot and everything else but I'd still try to push it out.

I wondered who I'd invite to the funeral. I only know a few of Gideon's friends - how would I tell the rest? Conceivably I'd send an email to everyone in his contacts list from his account - but how weird would that be? The thing is, of course, that people my age just don't check the obituaries. They wouldn't know about the funeral.

Then of course there's that other question: who can I invite for support? Is it impolite to invite people to the funeral who didn't know the deceased just so I have a shoulder to cry on? It's probably worse if in a drug-fuelled moment of madness you've recently confessed your quickly-dying (as opposed to undying; more later) love for them. This quick-dying love (almost, but not quite, entirely unlike quick-drying glue) isn't to say that it's any less, it's just ... it's something that is more of a friendship love that I could clearly get over very quickly in any other sense. It's me saying that this will pass, as a phase.

In twelve hours I'll be in Melbourne, presumably. I haven't packed yet. The list of things I was supposed to do before leaving and hasn't started seems to be longer than it was, impossible though that is. There is one thing I have done though. Something I did yesterday, late at night, after I got home. Something that was far more important than sleep.

I have created something to give to my next love. Proper love. Something sacred and withheld. Sort of like virginity, sort of like a particular love-song. Something that is special and will be for one person only and forever associated with that person. Interestingly like virginity, and unlike most love songs, I've created this without a person to whom to give it. That makes me feel quite guilty. Here's something that's beyond important. It's unique and special and for just one person. It's perfect and I know it is. It's precisely what it should be. And there's nobody to give it to. Of the I-could-like-these-people-if-I-tried-(or-was-drunk/stoned) group, I could assign it to one of them. But it's a tad generic. There are specific things for them - or for at least 7e-1 of them. One of which I created smilingly just the other day, in fact, Monday, I believe, and haven't been able to do anything with since. I'm going back to an Annabel-style vagueness here and it's not good. Suffice it to say that I've got something and it's a perfect valentines gift for a girl I don't yet know (or don't yet know I love).

It's nearly three in the morning. I really need to be up in five hours if I'm going to even get packed - something which is probably fairly important for this going away business. But this has been nice. I enjoyed writing it, and congratulations if you managed to read it without needing a toilet break. Your bladder is truly laudable. It's nice to cry sometimes too. We all know that.

I really need to work on my endings.

i traditionally spend more time looking for a blog title than writing the entry

I'd like to talk about a few things. Firstly, while listening, and I mean really listening to Landed (Ben Folds) this morning in the car I decided that I will not have any more girlfriend angst. Things will happen or they won't and there's plenty of time and it's all fine. So no more of that angst. I reserve the right to have other angst and bouts of relapsing.

Secondly, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed today confessed to 29 separate illegal acts, including planning the September 11 bombings, the Bali bombings, the 1993 World Trade Centre bombings, bombing the Empire State Building, several US embassy bombings, the Richard Reid shoe bombing, assassination attempts on George W Bush, George H W Bush, Bill Clinton, Jed Bartlett and Pope John Paul II. He also confessed to planning bombings of Big Ben, Heathrow Airport, killing Daniel Pearl, kidnapping the Lindburgh baby, hiding Lord Lukin and killing John F Kennedy, despite not being born at the time. The only things on that list I made up were the last three (and plotting to kill Jed Bartlett, clearly). This guy has confessed to everything under the sun, having been held at Guantanamo Bay for the past year, with the two years before that spent in secret CIA detention - in a "safe but secure location", one can only presume. People only confess to everything for one of two reasons: they are taking one for the team, or they have been tortured, threatened and mentally destroyed to the point where they will sign anything you put in front of them. I have my bets on which. What perhaps disgusts me most (though really it doesn't disgust me as much as the horror they've put this guy through - beyond what he deserves even if he did all that stuff) is that they are promoting this as a big victory. Clearly he masterminded everything and now they've got him for it. And they'll kill him for it.

Let's move on though. Let's talk about a question that occurred to me. Does it matter who you kiss if you kiss someone, in terms of cheating? This occurs because I've been watching too much West Wing (and also probably too much Clerks II). Like, if you kiss someone but have no intentions towards them, is that any less cheating than kissing someone with intent? I'm curious.

Next thing is that Angie has been talking about moving out. That makes me feel like I should move out. I can't afford it now but could if I tried. Perhaps I should? I almost certainly should. Hmmm. We'll see.

Finally, think about what you're doing right now. You're reading this blog on the internet. Now think about just how much work went into making this work. Start with agriculture and move on. That is truly astounding to me, the amount that was required directly - not counting water or public transport or any of that - just to make me complaining to the whole world so easy. Astounding.