i'm totally sleeping on the floor tonight

That's primarily because my back hurts though, rather than anything else.

After a few glasses of wine I decided I would like to go out and meet a girl. Not for the reasons that spring to mind, but because I need to get better at this meeting people stuff. Alcohol helps to some degree but I shouldn't need it to meet someone. I just have this massive fear of rejection and no idea how to start a conversation. But as I was explaining to Angie just before, as you become more familiar with the thing you're afraid of failing at the less afraid you are. Because you know. And it's not the failure that kills us, it's the uncertainty.

raw beauty

If you've ever wondered why I love xkcd, then I'll show you. It's comics like projection. Hover your mouse over the comic and read that too.

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.

doned and strunk

I keep forgetting things. I used to absorb information. Now I forget things that are said even when they're really fucking important. Troublesome. I hate it. I feel like Algernon or whatever. I'm losing my goodness. My mind, which is all I have. Fuck. It could be my binge drinking and drug taking but... I dunno.

I am anxty much. Same as always.

Fuck.

have you ever,

ever felt like this? How strange things happen, when you're going round the twist.

I have that song stuck in my head. I'm pensive. Earlier I had the song "I'm a believer" stuck in my head.

I'm just in a New York state of mind.

i'm done

So my exams are finished and I handed in my essay.

Now I have nothing to do.

shrug

I actually think like this. Not properly, of course. Not those precise things. But things like that. Less of the "you probably couldn't name some of the things I've done with your daughter" and more of the "so, you lived through the sixties and you have a daughter... so you've probably had sex sometime... I wonder what that was like for you". That sort of stuff. The stuff I don't know about people but I could probably figure out.

In other news, to my great hilarity, I sat down to my criminal law exam this morning to find law girl sitting one space away from me diagonally, ironically exactly the same as always, to my left. I don't think I've ever seen the right side of her face. That's a lie, but sometimes it feels that way.

how to procrastinate

I've spent my entire day on Facebook. I've been reading about... well, I've been mostly reading sex advice. Not in a creepy way. I've been reading from groups like 50 Mistakes Women Make When Having Sex and the counter-group 50 Mistakes Men Make While Having Sex. There are many such groups - things guy should do for girls, that girls should do for guys (less sex-oriented). There are wall posts and discussions.

Something interesting however. The "50 mistakes women make" group has about 62,800 members. The largest group for "nice guys" has about 300 members. There are quire a few groups about nice guys who are never noticed, most of which have 12 - 30 members. Small cliques of guys who have become bitter because of too many girls going out with arseholes and missing them. I'm not at that stage - I'm still optimistic and naive - but I can see how I could get there.

We're evolutionarily weaker, is the problem. Nice guys almost never meet nice girls - just because it's hard to meet people being a typical shy nice guy. And then neither the girl nor the guy, in the event that the two find each other, has the courage to start anything for risk of ruining a great friendship. And so we bumble along unhappy and lusting after close friends but really quite happy with their friendship, just with this evolutionary requirement of a deeper relationship which is inevitably impossible.

So yeah, maybe I am a bit bitter...

washing up has been done!

I'm beginning to recognise that the house looks a lot better when there isn't shit strewn everywhere. Washing up done, rubbish taken out, all that.

Unfortunately it's four thirty in the afternoon and I have not yet done my essay due in at an undetermined time tomorrow. I have a feeling that it's nine in the morning but I'm not sure. I'll get it in by five and plead ignorance. Unfortunately Wednesday I have my criminal law exam at nine in the morning and I really need to do some revision before that. Double unfortunately I have my algebra exam on Thursday morning at nine and I really really need to do some revision for that too. Then I have a day off, which I will spend revising for my computational techniques exam which is at nine on Saturday morning.

Then mark my words, Saturday night, I am getting massively, massively fucked up. I deserve to lose some brain cells after all that.

regrets

Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we do things we regret. But most of the time we don't do things and that's the regret.

I'm watching my DVD of Ben Folds Live with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. And I am really upset that I didn't go to Melbourne to see him with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I considered it. Gideon and I were going to go together. It was going to cost about $500 by the time flights were included. And that was for the cheapest tickets.

It would have been worth it. Fuck, five hundred dollars is nothing. Ok, so it's about a month of my income... but I could've managed it. It would have been incredible. I love music. There is no concert I can imagine being better than Ben Folds with an orchestra. It would have been worth the money. And it's unlikely I'll ever get another opportunity to see it. Certainly not at that price. That bothers me more than can be imagined.

There are other things that bother me less. Like not seeing The White Stripes when they were here. And a number of other things I did do but shouldn't have.

Sigh.

Update: What was missed

untitled 3

Quite some time ago - perhaps years - The Lovely Clara informed me that I should read a book by Nick Earls. Not any book in particular, but I should read him. I think this was just after I read High Fidelity for the first time and she likened him to an Australian Nicky Hornby.

In Melbourne at the National Debating Championships I was at a school (Croyden College I think) and I saw a Nick Earls book on the shelf. There were several but I chose After January, his first novel. I started to read. After about half an hour I had to put it back and adjudicate and the like. At the next school I continued to read that school's copy. And when I got back to Tasmania I eventually placed an order for it through the State Library system. And it came today. I just finished it.

I think everyone should read it. It seemed at times as though I was writing it. Not in style, but... well, in experience. It's a book about a boy who's just finished school and is spending January on holiday and meets a girl. And he's nerdy and lanky and uncool and wants to get into Arts/Law. He's me in most ways - not physically, but in his analysis of situations. In everything. I don't surf but this book makes me think I should. He also watches cricket, which is unfortunate, but the point stands. He knows how I feel. Most of the book is about describing the way life works and it's exactly the way I think of things. It was brilliant. It reminded me of everything I felt in that summer 2004/2005. Indecision. Anticipation. Panic. Wonder. Everything.

The other point that comes from this book, though not directly, is about sex. Not sex per se, but sexual acts - kissing right on through (pardoning the phrase-pun). I think sex should be emotional. It should be innocent. What I don't think it should be is planned or contemplated, exercised for a purpose. I don't think it should be about satisfaction of a sexual desire. It should just happen because that's what's happening and that's what happens. It just flows. There's another line or two but they'll go in the libellus niger.

how things change

Before we begin I'd like to mention a very high pitched noise I'm hearing as a result of having plugged in my phone. I'd also like to say briefly that I bruised my toe.

When I was younger I had no sense of humour. I appreciated wit but I didn't find it funny. I would read Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams books and not laugh. Seriously. I loved and understood them, I just... I just didn't see them as funny. They were just good stories. And so it was that I didn't laugh when reading the Adrian Mole stories. I didn't see them as funny, I just saw them as a description of life. I quite liked them. They were educative. I'm still quite a fan of the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. A great book. But never one that I've seen as funny. Only some years after reading them (between when I was aged twelve and when I was aged fifteen I read them) did I read the blurb which elucidated the humour. And I see why people would find them funny. But they're not funny at all, really. They're just... real life. Or a life, at least.

Thanks to someone's blog entry I was reminded of this recently. I was specifically reminded of a time Adrian and his girlfriend break up because she won't show him one of her breasts. So he dumps her. He was fifteen by this stage, I think. (One of the reasons I found it so real is because when you're that age everything that's so humorous really is just as important as the book makes it out to be). Everybody in his class is talking about their sexual escapades and how one particular girl will have sex with anyone for four shillings and a pound of grapes (or something like that; some money and a pound of grapes). So he gets one of his friends to arrange a date with him and this girl. They go to a roller-skating rink and he wears his PE shorts because they're all he has that matches his friend's description of what people wear on dates. He takes her the pound of grapes and is unceremoniously rejected, then ridiculed for bringing grapes, since she has no idea why she'd want them.

Interestingly, I was once Adrian. Not necessarily Adrian Mole but I was called Adrian as part of an internet pseudo-relationship stalking thing that happened a few years back. Well, last year. Beginning of 2006. Crazy, crazy times. And my name was Adrian because that's what happened. And the more I think about it the more Adrianish I am. But then again other friends have said there's no Adrian to me at all. Quite possibly true too.

I'd like to move on now to a completely different topic. Conversations. I don't start them, because I don't like to be rejected. Especially on MSN. I also fear the rejection of text message or email communications where I send the last message and get no reply. It has to happen eventually but there's inevitably no "goodbye" message. So it's one of those "you hang up first" things. I'm disheartened by how often I send the last message. It could be because I always reply even when totally unnecessary but ... I don't know. It's just disappointing that I want to talk to them more than they want to talk to me. It makes me feel reliant. Like I'm being their friend and they really don't want me around. I know it's stupid - I know that, but I still feel it sometimes, to some small degree.

Sigh.

i wish i could draw

The other day, while driving, I saw the full moon, covered by translucent cloud, thus only slightly obscured, juxtaposed against the harsh light of a new street lamp. It would have been beautiful to see.

60 mm

I saw an ad last night while watching Drop Dead Gorgeous (I don't normally like mockumentaries but I laughed during that one) which was from the Cancer Council of Victoria. They noted that the risk of cancer is doubled with a waist of more than 100cm in men. Doubled relative to what? What sort of cancers? Is this correlation or causality? These are all legitimate questions.

I measured myself this morning. 106cm.

Now I will lose weight.

current music: R.E.M.

This morning (which was actually this afternoon, given I got out of bed at 2:20pm) I had a new experience. I carried my computer with me from the lounge room to the bathroom, playing music the whole way. The change is sound as the building changed was fascinating, but that wasn't just it.

I had the computer playing music while I was in the shower. It was great. I had something to listen to. As some of you may know it's one of my hobbies to draw on the steamed-up glass walls of the shower while I'm in there. I draw, I write, I scribble. And during one particular song (London Bombs by Eskimo Joe) I noticed that my scribbles were crying. It was quite soundtrack-to-my-life. The music was perfect as tears dripped from each letter. As time passed the tears dripped lower and the letters faded. Still visible but mere shadows of their former selves, resteamed by my continued shower.

It was great.

In other news, I'm not going to smoke any more pot until after exams. Maybe.

on leave

My parents and Gideon went away yesterday. So I'm alone. Home alone for more than three weeks. I have been watching DVDs and smoking pot. I was going to drink too but I never got around to it.

I'm watching Notting Hill at the moment. I love it. I just love this movie so much. I love all the Hugh Grant movies. They're not good per se, they're just... uplifting. Wonderful. And they present so many opportunities. Like a t-shirt that says "you are the most beautiful woman in the world" and on the reverse "fancy a fuck surreal-but-nice date?"

Also, I wish I had friends who would get me blind dates. Though I'm not that desperate until I'm late-20s+, but still, I think blind dates would be fun. I also think that "all that awaits me at home is a masturbating Welshman" is a very, very funny line.