the dust in the corners of my mind

I have been wandering around my head for the past few hours, trippped up by the ethics of the atomic bomb and women's role in revolutions. I wanted to write something about Milan Kundera, who is never far from my thoughts, and I wanted to explain how I don't have an ethnic identity but I can feel a heritage, a stereotype, a stencil fitting over my skin and self. But all that is too hard when I have no sense of bien dans sa peau, so instead, I present a joke, from Milan Kundera

A Czech requests a visa to emigrate.
The official asks him, ''Where do you want to go?''
''It doesn't matter,'' the man replies.
He is given a globe.
''Please, choose.''
The man looks at the globe, turns it slowly and says, ''Don't you have another globe?''

Well, don't you?

(joke from here)

(to clarify, because i had a gigantic freak out on the train home - this is not a racist joke. it isn't intended as such. it is an example of what Kundera calls "the Prague spirit" which is "an extraordinary sense of the real. The common man's point of view. History seen from below. A provocative simplicity. A genius for the absurd. Humour with infinite pessimism", which he explains in that interview. Got it? Good. Now, go find me a new globe)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance House Sitter // IN THREES

So it turns out that I am a social creature. One never would have guessed it. This is something I had to hear from my brother. With only 294 words left to write on my essay on intelligentsia and state-socialism, I have realised that my thesis statement rings true for me. Just as the intelligentsia can never be separate from state-socialism, neither can I. Despite living under a democracy. Don't ruin the neatness of my intellectual epiphany.

I have been living in Leichhardt now for a month, looking after a dog and two cats. There is another five weeks to go. One of the cats, Fat Vivian, took an immediate dislike to me. The other is just a paranoid idiot. The dog eats the kitty litter, and about half an hour ago, she bit me. Hard enough to bruise, not bleed. I responded by sitting down and crying like a two year old. Unlike the two year old, my mummy couldn't come to rescue me. All that was there to comfort me was a near-complete, utterly dodgy essay and the new Wild Beasts album. Desolate and despairing, I dry heaved.

This is not quite how I imagined my year was going to be. I had plans, I had theories, I had something brilliant on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I am whinging and whining, I am moving in triplicate. I am saying "I AM I AM I AM" and spending my nights awake.

My mind races with these 'white people problems'. My mind throbs with the problem of speaking for others - I will never be a subaltern, I will never have my voice taken from me - even if it is taken, I will still have had a chance at speaking. So why should a dog bite and a dodgy essay cause me more grief than usual?

Because it is only me here. Boring little me. Little me who thinks in threes, like most people do. I read something about that the other day - I think it was AA Gill who said we speak in iambic pentameter, we think in threes. Like Roman triumvirates. Like Caesar, Pompeii, Crassus. Octavian, Antony, Lepidus. Jeremy, Claudia, Madeleine.

There are four of us in this house. A Fat Cat, a paranoid cat, a dodgy dog and me. Four, not three. That's probably why I feel so stuck in a Smiths song, devoid of Morrissey-ian humour. Why I managed to get interested briefly in Czechoslovakia, before I realised how twisted everything is, how inseparable. All I really wanted was to write about Milan Kundera turning his back on a failed socialist dream, not how they all clamoured at Novotny to give them something, anything, that tasted of pure socialism.

In class, I have a mouth that runs like a long distance runner, desperate to make noise that is heard. In class, people are confused - is she a genuine idiot, or an idiot savant? What is her deal with Kundera and Forster? In class, there is so much potential that I find slipping through my fingers. It makes me want to cry, the way I did when the dog bit me.

oh god, this is the worst thing ever. but i wanted to make some noise. any noise. white noise.

frankenstein's maddie

At the urging of the universe, I went back to university for my final undergrad year. I promptly fell into a term long argument with Henry James*, rediscovered my interest in Indo-Anglo writing**, managed my usual schtick of writing a history essay on something that 'not really historical' *** and fell in love with Eastern Europe****.

Before that I went to Vienna, where this happened.

And then I came home, where this happened.

And now? Well now I am Frankenstein's Maddie, a patchwork of tea consumption, historical generalisations and a marked distaste for Socialist-Christian-Marxists. I am reading too many things with too many words and I am thinking alot about silences. I also work at a place patronised by retirees who have nothing better to do than tell me about how my generation is an evolutionary cul-de-sac.

*based mainly on his hatred for Germany

**and the politics surrounding Indo-Anglo writing - should people write in English? What's magic realism got to do with it? Are we all colonialist pigs?!

***I'm writing a treatise (yes, a treatise) on the importance of American Jazz in WW2 Europe. It's awesome and going to send me to an early grave.

****not really a hardship, seeing as Berlin and Vienna, and now Prague are my three favourite places ever, and grumpy intellectuals like Kundera and Milosz are my role models.

lost relics

I love going through my computer to find photos of things I can barely remember doing. This is from last years Halloween, which has recently become a big thing in Australia. Chris is a Zombie, I'm Coraline. We have piñatas on our heads. I seem to recall that moments before this, I gave a red wine induced lecture about the gender politics of piñatas and then proceeded to belt the shit out of the poor orange thing, much to the horror of all the men there. Awesome night, despite the devil child on the jumping castle.

I have no idea what is happening here, but I suspect Chris was accidentally misogynistic at me. Serves him right.

donnerstag delights me

Thursday. The day Arthur Dent and my mother could never get the hang of. The day when the week starts to get better because you can see the weekend and maybe also the things you've achieved this week.

Donnerstag is Deutsch for Thursday. I know this because Lizzle gave me a diary from Germany, so I'm learning middling German. I like German, and I like the word Deutsch even more. "Like" is such a funny little word, bastardized by the Valley Girls and reclaimed by the crafty indie wannabes like me, who try really hard not to say "like" every three seconds and instead restore it to the original use, which is for similes, metaphors and approval.

......I was supposed to be writing about how I'm going to make an effort to chime in on Gala Darlings "Things I Love Thursday" this year in an effort to be more positive, but I got distracted by a little word. I love doing that.

Other things I love: Running in the rain. Reading Alan Hollinghurst and Miranda July. Listening to albums that I missed when they were being super hyped - namely Lykke Li, Laura Marling and the Arcade Fire. My new Campers shoes. Being organised with my Deutsch Diary and Bitchy Calendar. Training myself to write every day in my 365 book. Finally filing all of last year's university papers - and rereading articles on Dickinson and Gaskell. Watching Stuart: A Life Backwards. Reading Stuart: A Life Backwards. Cooking cupcakes that taste like earl grey tea and eating them with a cup of earl grey tea. Plotting cinema visits in cemeteries. Attempting to go to the moonlight cinema and getting rained on. Meeting boys dressed in haute couture drag and teaching them to walk in heels. Going for long ambles with Lottie, and having conversations with her about highly cultured things. Using the word thing. The bookplate stamp Liz gave me, and stamping people with it. Floating in our pool with Pimms and a book on skinheads. Researching weird and wonderful things to do when I'm in Vienna and Berlin and Bratislava and Dresden. Clean sheets. Leopard prints. Civets, which are a weird cat-like animal. Eating Clinkers on my veranda at one am while thinking about how weird words are. Making lists. Leaving Post-it notes about that say things like "Blog about how you never really understood Eastern European history but love it anyway". Pretending I'm a Cold War Spy. Sleeping in one day, getting up super early the next.

the first incident

(berlintakenbyme2008)

Why helloooooo 2011. How nice of you to show up, all blisteringly hot and dry. I'm sorry about my dreadful hair, runny nose and blocked ear. I have caught a cold, which is just a swell thing to have in January in Sydney.

Despite my cold, I think this year will be a good one. I'm convinced of it, in a prophetic way I usually try to avoid. But how can it not be a good year when in a few days I'll be seeing one of my favourite bands, The National? When I've got my last year of undergraduate classes? When I've got a house-sitting gig that will let me play at being an adult for a few months? When my dog is totally neurotic and gorgeous? When there is roller derby once a month? When there is new Doctor Who and John le Carre movies? When i have a job?! When i am going to Vienna, Prague, Melbourne, Surfers??

it is going to be a good year. for me and you.

just because it's over 300 years old doesn't mean it's useless

Some sanctimonious little twit wrote into the Herald a week or so ago, complaining that school hadn't taught him anything useful, just made him study Shakespeare. I wrote into the Herald, carefully illustrating how this twit was wrong. In hindsight (something I never subscribe to) I should perhaps have left out the phrase "sanctimonious little twit"

So. LIFE LESSONS SHAKESPEARE CAN TEACH YOU

- If you have three daughters, be on your guard, and trust the good one (for reference, the good one will have the least stupid sounding name)

- Try not to fall in love with your father's mortal enemy's spawn

- If you're going to bite your thumb at someone, then commit to the action for the sake of expediency.

- If you think you kissed an ass, you're probably right

- If you are one half of a set of opposite gender twins, endeavour to have similar hair cuts and body builds. it will prove to be enormously helpful in the long run

- Don't trust a forest that wasn't there the night before

- Don't trust the political predictions of witches.

- Beware the Ides of March, which, for reference, occur on March 15, every year.

- Don't trust the timing of the almost death potion. Cosmic irony dictates that you won't wake up in time.

-Henry is a perfectly acceptable name to pass down through 8 or more generations.

-If you choose to become a playwright, people won't mind if you re-write history just please your monarch.

- You can also plagiarise from Plutarch and other sources!

-And recycle your jokes and plot lines!

- You can tell if your life is a comedy if you end up married, a tragedy if you (and everyone else) ends up dead, and a history if it is long and boring.

- Naming everyone Caesar is the cause of much unnecessary confusion. Don't do it.

- If, in your closet, he comes before you with his doublet all unlaced, then he's probably not worth it.

- If there is something suspicious happening in your family, then you can get to the bottom of it by staging a dummy show that informs everyone of your suspicions.

- Fortinbras is a good dude to call in a crisis.

I'm sure there are thousands more, but I took Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama two semesters ago, so I'm rusty.

shuffled

oh gods. i have a blog, right? apparently? you'd never ever think it. it feels like i only sign on to apologise for not ever signing on. how Beckett-ian of me.

truth is, i spent so much time staring at a computer screen this semester that now i'm on break, most days, i don't even turn my computer on. it's bliss. you oughtta try it. connectivity is overrated, and Moloch is eating you alive. Ginsberg would be so crushed if he knew how much time we spent staring at a screen, guys. do you want to upset Ginsberg?

i had a strange term - it was so so so much hard work, with over 30 books to read, not to mention all the extra reading, the american lit discussion board, major essays, minor essays, essays that i didn't need to write but wrote anyway. so much writing and reading, which is what i signed up for. so i probably shouldn't complain too much.

but now summer is here in all its muggy glory. which means i am spending my days in John Le Carre novels, fighting over the sofa with Lottie (who is not allowed on the sofa, no matter what she thinks), drinking copious amounts of Pimms&Lemonade&Cucumber and steadfastly not thinking about Christmas.

what i am thinking about is 2011. which seems, so far, like it is going to be awesome. my last year of undergrad classes, a european jaunt in feb, employment, housesitting and undoubtedly more forgetting to blog.

revolutionaries

Lizzle and I just saw this:

And it was utterly wonderful.

(made in dagenham)

i am trying

I have just handed in my final essay for the term; in which I argued - very loosely - that the courtship art of conversation is the method Elizabeth Gaskell uses to educate her characters and readers in North and South. This was after an essay in which I argued - very loosely - that Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray paint pictures of dissatisfied fin-de-siecle sexual beings. Which came after I argued - very loosely - the the Whitlam Government changed my family history by handing out free education. And before that, I argued - very loosely - that sometimes Ginsberg and Dickinson freak people out because they approach poetry from a non traditional standpoint.

.........I sense a pattern that I don't want to acknowledge.

And I was going to do a long whiny post about how I have no idea what I want anymore except maybe a big bottle of Pimms and access to the British National Library and to be magically fluent in French, but instead I thought NON!

And that was about as far as I got before I got distracted by the books I have to read for tomorrow, which are kind of utterly miserable in a beautiful way. When I have started my own university, which is tentatively titled THE UNIVERSITY OF YOU'RE NOT INVITED in my daydreams, I'm going to teach a course on books that aren't utterly miserable. It will be called "Sometimes Stuff is Nice" and there will be complimentary ice cream.

#

lamest post ever?

I am supposed to be reading Washington Square by Henry James and rereading Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf for class tomorrow, but I have had a brain melt and feel I need to do some shouting about how, sometimes, I do things other than read books.

Except I can't remember any of them. This concerns me. I think I went to an open poetry night, but I'm pretty sure I spent most of the time worrying about Ginsberg and Dickinson. And I went to see Bre's band play again, but I spent most of the night trying not to embarrass myself in front of a boy and some bongo players. I failed.

I do know, that I went to Roller Derby on Saturday and had so much fun that I am considering giving up everything to be a Derby player. I would be Mad the Bad and I would be awesome. I'd have broken limbs, but they would be broken in an awesome manner.

That's what I fantasize about at present, when I don't know how to write about Kate Chopin and Oscar Wilde, or Dickinson and Ginsberg, or Elizabeth Gaskell, or how the 70s were good for women. I think "Gosh, all that would have been better with Roller Derby."

......I'm very tired, by the by.

womb-tomb of decadent closure

I recently discovered (...err, was forced to read) Emily Dickinson, Kate Chopin and Kathy Acker.

I sort of want to carry on this with "DUUUUUUUUUUDE. DUDE. SO. FREAKING. WONDERFUL." but that's not very classy or articulate.

So. Emily Dickinson. Why haven't I read you before? Why did I dismiss you as some sort of American Jane Austen prim princess when you are a masochistic, sadistic, death dancing, church hating, desirous wonder-babe? I have seen the error of my ways, and boy. I love being wrong about words. Dickinson is fantastic - she packs more into a four line poem than Wordsworth ever did. She's so quietly vicious, so uptight. Her poems are like being laced into a corset, they're like shouting in the middle of the night, they are pinpricks of perfection. She is so incredibly stealthy, you don't even notice the bodily language you're using until you read it back.

Of course, none of the boys in my American Literature class are willing to give her any credit. She was "locked away". She had no "life experience". She was "socially inept". Listen, there's a big difference between "locked away" and choosing to reject the world. There's a whole world, a new language in her work that Dickinson created that I (and you, smelly boy) could never have dreamed up. It's bodily metaphysics. And besides, Allen Ginsberg loved her, so you have her to thank for those three famous lines you know. Talk to me when you've read the rest of Howl.

Ahem. Sorry. The dismissive nature of the boys in some of my classes is beginning to get to me.

So. I am in love with Emily Dickinson's words. I have also been heavily influenced by Camille Paglia's work Sexual Persona which recasts Dickinson as a female Marquis de Sade. I cannot get enough of stuff like that.

The next woman that has recently entered my life is Kate Chopin. Another American, but from the South. We read The Awakening for Women's Lit, and the best way to describe it is the first of the unhappy married women who undergoes sexual awakening novels. Except that doesn't do it justice at all. It's a powerful novel, powerful and beautiful and warm, with New Orleans and Grand Isle so vivid you can taste the sun. Edna Pontellier, the anti-heroine, is amazing. Her politics of refusal, the way she says no and refuses to give reason, is breath taking. This book is the first fin-de-seicle/Decadent book I have ever read by a woman, and I want to know more. I want to devour all her beautiful words again and again, all that lace, all that choked breath, that female Oscar Wilde, the knowing outsider. It's naturalism, you can hear her Darwinian thinking, her Greek Decadence. I feel like I always say this, but The Awakening is one of the most perfect books I have ever read by a woman.

Kathy Acker. The third American. The pickpocket. The whore. The woman who took a look at authorship and told it to fuck off. There are no words to describe Kathy Acker and The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Herni Toulouse Lautrec apart from nightmare thievery. Like Dickinson, she's bodily. Like Chopin she's refusing. Like neither of them she's pushing her way into and through desire, to satisfaction and away from it again. It's a mindfuck, complete with Henry Kissinger. My family would all hate it. Acker cheats you, cheats you the way she was cheated. Makes you push your boundaries, says "if you're some stupid boy going through a James Dean phase, I'm going to take James Dean and make you rethink him completely without changing a fucking thing."

C'est Magnifique, these women. With their desire and their anger. I don't think I knew women wrote like that. They are so refreshing, so terrifying, so beautiful, so dangerous.

*

Nothing else happens in my life except reading at the moment. Oh, and I saw Inception twice. For the explosions.

favourites

The only reason I picked up the book in the shop was because Joseph Gordon-Levitt was looking devastating on the cover. There, I said it. I didn't expect the book to be amazing. I had no hopes for the film.

Sometimes, I really really love being wrong.

I read Mysterious Skin in one night. I remember staying up and having my throat aching the way it does when I'm tired. It was hot, Sydney being indecisive in summer, as I read about Brian Lackey and Neil McCormick. It was heartbreaking. There's not really anything uplifting about this book, except the occasional beauty in the language. It's about trying to find out who you were, and how you were that person. It's growing up in the most awful awful way. And it was all the anger, all the confusion, all the fucking hormones that I had, tied up and presented messily. It was the most believable story about aliens and being an alien I've ever read.

And then there's the film. I hate film versions of books (especially wretched Merchant Ivory). But Gregg Araki's film was exactly what I wanted. The dreamy music, the hick town, Brady Corbett as darling Brian, trying to remember the summer he was eight years old. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as cutthroatfragile Neil, who can't forget that summer. Even Michelle Tratchenberg was awesome. The whole movie captures that knife edge, when you know you're not quite grown up, but you so desperately want to be (I feel like I've been on that edge since I was about 7), when life feels hyper-real and the towns feel too small. It's confronting and gut wrenching. Mysterious Skin is unforgettable.

dotdotdot

........I'm beginning to feel like maybe I have a real life beyond a computer screen. This is disconcerting, but not unwelcome. It's a like actually experiencing something, as opposed to wanting to. Of course, this does mean that I'm in a quandary over my position as a subject or an object, but I figure as long as I'm craving macaroons and a houseboat, I'm probably a subject.

I'm currently trying to analyse an utterly stupid passage from Richardson's Pamela. It's stupid, stupid and stupid and I feel stupid about it, which is also stupid. I alienated everyone in one of my tuts by accidentally letting slip the fact that sometimes, the way everyone is so obsessed with the sixties irritates me. But I didn't really explain myself. What I meant was, we go on and on about the sixties being free, and how good it was. We don't do anything to try and make our own sixties.

So clearly now, all the boys who think they're Bob Dylan won't talk to me. Which phases me not! For I was always a Mick Jagger girl! Even though these days I find it difficult to look at him!

Besides, who needs Dylan when you have Bre&Eva?? Bre is one of the most amazing people I know, and on Wednesday she and Eva played their first open mic night at a pub in Glebe. It was intimate and wonderful. They did a cover of Aqua's "Dr Jones" which was adorable, and a song in French about Grand Theft Auto. It was so lovely to watch people have fun, and to have fun myself.

I spent today having lots of fun. I was supposed to be at a funeral, but I didn't want to spend the day being sad and angry, so I danced around to KISS and thought of funny things. And refused to be guilty, which is what I feel funerals are. A big guilt party. Well, fuck that.

And on that poignant note, I better go finish this ridiculous English paper.

.............if I ever. EVER. look like I'm going to take three English subjects at once, hit me.

not dead yet

Lurching. That is the best way to describe me at present. Lurching. Possibly creaking, like my bones are made of very precariously patched together scrap metal.

This is after two weeks of university, so the thought that the first two weeks have been good fills me with a sort of British Dread, y'know the "oh dear. things are going badly well, it can only get worse" sort of feeling. Optimism does not run strongly in my family, despite my best efforts at morning affirmations, which usually go "you are alive! congratulations, special snowflake!" before I fall back to sleep and dream of giant boots chasing me while brandishing copies of the Yellow Pages.

So. Faux-Academics, the only thing we talk about here (apart from irritations vexations and agitations). I'm currently studying a course on 18th-19th Century Literature (not quite sure how Kipling's 'Kim' ended up in that one), American Literature (which, in typical American fashion, refuses to travel linearly), Women's Literature (which rants and raves) and an history course that I have renamed "Why the 20th Century is so depressing". It's all terrible fun - I have been swamped by my readings, heading to bed at 2am after writing reams on Whitman and Margaret Cavendish (who was amazing), listening to bootlegs of Ginsberg reading his poetry rushing around campus trying to be in the right place at the right time, reading the unfortunately named Northrop Frye, who name drops more than I do. It's not quite the academic dream I had in mind, because people still don't really want to talk about it, but I wear a beret on days I forget to brush my hair and think about how awesome my brain's potential is.

I spent tonight at home, ostensibly dog sitting although in reality I was reading about some guy who once met Thomas Pynchon during the 60s and has never quite recovered. I wanted to sneer at him but that would be like sneering at myself (I only do that on Tuesdays). So instead I read Tennyson, who's not even on any of my courses, but my brain was hammering out like Ginsberg the night he met Moloch and really, I have to start going out on Saturday nights.

...I went out last Saturday night. I did! My siblings took me to see Bill Bailey, who was witty and outraged and called Julia Gillard a Dalek. He's probably right, I've never seen her use a stair case (only an elevator). He played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik on clown horns. We're playing that in our quartet at the moment. His was more orderly. The best thing about Bailey's comedy, for me, was that it's a little meandering, sort of whimsical. He doesn't swear just to make people laugh. My sides hurt the next day, in a good way.

This week I have to read Pamela by Samuel Richardson, Oroonoko by Aphra Behn, Inherent Vice by Pynchon and some ghastly article about the why colonialism fell to bits. I'm seeing Inception tomorrow afternoon, and planning on eating lots of yoghurt.

overboiled

"If you were an Archibald prize entry, you'd be a perfect portrait of middle class guilt."

Jason, like me, is extra snarky when he's not being paid attention to. I figured this out about three minutes after I met him, and he probably worked out the same about me. The problem today is that I'm trying to make my bed, listen to his griping/advice, learn the entire Camera Obscura discography and re-read Moll Flanders.

It's the latter that's causing me the most grief. I've read it before, sure, but it's the first book we're supposed to read for the ominously titled "The Novel" course, and I want to make sure I've got a decent grasp on it. The fact that the book is currently lying on the floor under my phone suggests that there is no grasping. I got distracted by Jase and his rude comment about my hypothetical Archibald painting. Surely my hair's not that bad, I responded, and would his be any better? We're both from similar backgrounds, both irritated that we're hampered by class in a supposedly classless world, and are both attracted to prints over pastels.

Australia can be surprisingly class-centric. Currently our media is fixated on our new PM, a 10pound Pom (like my grandparents?) from Wales. The words "working class background" are tossed around like some sort of exotic salad. What does it mean? What if Gillard was a toff? Isn't she a toff anyway, being our PM and all? Can we say we're a classless society when we're turning people away from our country and always talking about those wretched baby boomers, who have ruined everything? How am I supposed to feel in all of that, when I'm the picture of the problem with our generation, unemployed and unrepentant? It gets under my skin and I can't express how I feel about my spot in life, except to say that I'm worried, probably for all the wrong reasons.

When I was thinking all of this, I got so worked up that I had to sit upside down for a bit. And then when I stopped being dizzy, I tried Moll Flanders again. The problem with Defoe is that he writes in first person, and I've never fully reconciled with first person, because there's always an annoying part of me that says "this isn't you. you wouldn't be doing this." The last book I can think of that was written in the first person that really grabbed me was The Elegance of the Hedgehog (I am looking forward, in my own anxious way, to seeing the movie)....oh! and A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, which I read last week. It's a lovely little book about English summertime. But other than those two, I just don't 'get' first person. It's probably a middle class failing. I hope that my Archibald artist can capture that when they paint my portrait.

And that I can decline all telephone conversations until after midday.
x

When I'm not reading books, then I'm looking at them.

bite me.

I woke up this morning to find that I had spent the night in bed with a copy of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Considering I'm not even reading this book at present, and it was on my bookshelf when I went to bed, I'm a little concerned. Well, not really, as I knew that I was going to spend today finishing off Twilight, so my subconscious was probably trying to suggest something else. Let me be very clear. I am not reading Twilight by choice. I am reading it because it is a required book for my Women's Lit course. Boo hiss.

I knew my plan of getting all my reading done during the holidays would come back to bite me. Ahem.

When I found out Twilight was on the reading list, I wasn't that irritated, because most of my irritation was directed at the fact American Lit wanted me to re-read Beloved by Toni Morrison. Then they decided that they'd rather we read A Mercy, and all of my rage fell upon Twilight.

I feel this rage is justified. For I am not a reader of trashy novels. I get no joy out of reading works that rely heavily on dodgy punctuation and overusing the thesaurus. Vampires and werewolves are boring, as are passive-aggressive chiseled male love interests. But you've heard all of that already. The world is divided, after all, into people who love Twilight and people who loathe it. I was surprised that it was worse than I expected. The section in which Bella Swan takes her shabby copy of the Complete Austen outside to read, but then can't read because Sense & Sensibility has someone called Edward in it, and then Mansfield Park has an Edmund and it's all too much because it reminds her of nutjob Edward Cullen was just painful. The whole book is painful. Like having a tooth drilled - you're sort of numb from anesthetic but you know it's going to hurt later. And all the Wuthering Heights rubbish. Urgh. I can't even explain my repulsion for Heathcliffe and Cathy. My sister once commented (screamed from a rooftop) that the only way Wuthering Heights would be any good was if it had guns. I have to stop writing about these two books, with their wetfish females who don't like anything at all except the emotionally abusive, physically stupid male love interests and tendency to live in desolate landscapes. Bah.

There are lots of fun Twilight criticisms out there, much funnier and more astute than me. Two of my favourites are Cleolinda and Alex Reads Twilight.

xx


To something nicer: I'm also reading Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South which is waaaaaaaaaaay better than I thought it would be (and also better than the two mentioned above) . The books on the reading lists aren't really that bad, although I've already read half of them. I'm enjoying rereading them and thinking about why they've been picked for the courses I'm taking, what makes them special (or not). I hadn't been into a bookstore for months, and then all of a sudden I found myself in Abbeys and whoa. I must look like a big snob, as I'm mostly buying Oxford World Classics. This morning I went out to buy new shoes and came home with Les Grandes Meaulnes and Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky. I'm also powerless to resist literary journals like Brick and Zoetrope. In the face of Etsy's zine section, I'm like Napoleon at Waterloo.

............is that pathetic?

go on, go on

I often think about methods of repetition, and how my life goes in circles, like Lottie chasing her tail. And I think about how the days bleed into one another, making Thursday the same as Monday. And then I think about Endgame which is my favourite play ever, and how bleakly awesome the human condition is. And now, after Wednesday night when I went to the theatre and saw Ian McKellen and Roger Rees in Waiting For Godot I think about how funny the bleakness of human existence is. That's what Beckett is all about, examining why we go on, even when we can't go on, and should we go on - what's there to do if we don't go on? No, we must go on, because going on is all there is to do. One of the things that makes Beckett accessible to me is that my entire life, my mother has (perhaps unconsciously) spoken like one of his characters. He writes in a language I understand, with his jokes satisfying my immature side. Theatre, no, Art is supposed to make you think, and I will challenge anyone who comes out of a Beckett play not thinking about their existence and motivations. Especially the current Waiting For Godot production - it's mesmerising and awesome, from the heartbeats in the music, to the ridiculous Potso, to the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon, although I admit I was mildly concerned by how old and tired Rees and McKellen looked, until they started dancing. Their movements are those of tiredly cheeky old men, and there's an element of The Goon Show in Beckett, some of Spike Milligan's sadness. If you've never seen a Beckett play, run out and go to the first one you can find.

And if you've never heard The Goon Show then really, you aren't a human being. My dad played me tapes of this radio show when I was a kid, and I've never quite recovered. Libby and I used to sit around reading the scripts together, hooting with laughter. Napoleon's Piano and The Flea were two particular favourites. The show consists of the adventures of Ned Seagoon, voiced by Harry Secombe, and his encounters with Gryptype-Thynne and Count Moriarty (voiced by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan respectively). There's also the hilarious brown-paper trousers Bluebottle (Sellers) and the less-than-half-wit Eccles (Milligan). The show is surreal, absurd, ridiculous and fantastic, all in one, with bizarre plot lines that make no sense. They used to play it very early in the morning on ABC radio and when I couldn't sleep, I'd listen to it and be in a good mood all day. Now you can buy the cds. I presume it's on you-tube somewhere. Prince Charles is also a big fan. Libby and I used to try to get out of PE with the excuse that we had "The Lurgi", and blowing raspberries ala Bluebottle is common place in my household. I wish there was a radio programme like this on these days. Or just anything decent on the radio, really.

lemonworld

Oh dear. Just a scant week after term finishes, and I've already gotten my self prepped for my exam, had my birthday and a haircut, been violently ill for three days, read all the books I borrowed from the library, exhausted my dvd collection and become terribly bored.

It seems I've been terribly busy without being busy.

Part of the problem is that I am (gosh,this is pathetic) so desperate for next term to start, and also a wee bit lonely. Any attempts to make friends with people last term sort of...fizzled. I must be very scary, due to the fact that in two of my classes I was the only person who wasn't studying education. And possibly because I had to explain who Horatio Nelson was, and people don't like it when you tell them that the telescope was invented before WW1. I don't know, really, it just felt like a weird and lonely term. So I read a lot and learned a lot and thought a lot. Nothing very profound, or if it was profound, I forgot about when some wag nearly knocked me off the train on the way home. The moment they work out a safe non sweaty route from my house to university, I'll be bike riding every day. Even in the rain. That's how much I detest the late running over crowded train ride home.

Often the train is so crowded, I can't even get my book out to read. Because the books I've been reading are very thick, or have covers with naked people on, stupid classical art, like the biography of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester that I'm blearily making my way through. It's ridiculously awesome in its detail, but sort of heavy going. So I've my concession to the World Cup, a copy of Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, which is about wizards who try to play football. I don't mind admitting that I'd quite like to be the Librarian from Unseen University, even though I'm not that fond of bananas.

And that's it, really. No profound thoughts or ranting. Just one tired litle pickle of a girl who's worried that the net four weeks are going to be interminably boring.

x

not exactly

from Jezebel

"Doctor Who script writer Gareth Roberts would like for Lady Gaga to be on the show! "She is no stranger to dressing up and would be more than a match for the Doctor." (NYPost)

...........

No.

I have absolutely nothing against Lady Gaga, I'd just like her to stay away from the Doctor. As far as I'm concerned, she makes above average pop music that has been super hyped by her costume and staging. The woman is clearly very clever and aware of how fame works, but the thought of her on Doctor Who is a little cringe worthy, mostly because I'm not sure Gaga can step out of her persona, become an alien and let the Doctor save the day. It wouldn't be an episode of Doctor Who, it'd be an episode of Lady Gaga.


Hrmph