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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.

i feel terrible

I just want to bitch and moan forever but, unfortunately, I don't even have the energy to do that. I wish there was something interesting I could talk about. Law Girl was in the row in front of me today. She showed her friends a Calvin and Hobbes comic. I skipped my other lecture. I don't have a car. I want food. But not food really I want... I don't even know what I want. And that's my problem.

guilty pleasures

I have several guilty pleasures. These include listening to Avril Lavigne... no, that's pretty much it.

I want to blog but there's really not a lot to blog about. I'm behind with uni, broke and hungry. The only thing that's new is I'm also sick, but that doesn't really make any difference.

moo, you bloody choir

I'm sitting in the cold on the ref steps being anxty. And it's cheering me up.

awkwardjumpstartstalling conversations

I'm not in the mood for conversation today. Or anything at all really, other than just doing nothing. Maybe eating, possibly drinking, probably watching TV and reading.

Sigh.