Fictionalised by a verbose egoist.

My feet hurt to the point where they're not even feet anymore, and instead are boiling-hot, razor-sharp needles of agony piercing my brain from all directions; a sadomasochistic acupuncture. Anyway, that's kinda irrelevant, at least, to you, I suppose, or something, dunno, splice. They only hurt because I walked around 5 miles today, with a bag filled with lead weights. With no hyperbole; it was as if I had sent my books to Jupiter, created an artificial container for the gravity, brought them back (boomerang), and then put them in my bag. It weighed at least as much as two suns. Maybe three. Not really sure how much the sun weighs, I'm just assuming it's a fair amount. Anyway. Yeah, then I went to Tesco Express and bought some pizza, and a 50ltr bottle of coke - which was nice. I chucked that in the back of my cart (horse-drawn) and clipped home to the rhythmic pounding of broken phalanges cracking their final crack.

Now, to presuppose you; let's assume that you're wondering why oh why I had to walk so very far this Wednesday - when, surely, isn't it re-enrolment week at university? Surely that involves a twenty minute registration sojourn, and then a pub lunch? Not quite. More like up at 7, straight lectures and introductions, reminiscence, acquaintance, and acquiescence to the new syllabus. It also involved what I would call an African Pub Lunch; in that I ate 3 chips, which tasted strangely like potatoes eaten whilst they were still growing in the ground; and got served a coke by a woman who used to be three feet taller, before she had to have a whole new torso made from skin grafts. Seriously; what was going on with those arms? I know you're not meant to judge, but... well, it was clearly a fag fire, or she fell in the deep fat fryer. And... well, if it was either of those, I have no sympathy. I've managed twenty years on this fine earth without ever having fallen into a deep fat fryer, and I've also managed five years on this fine earth without ever falling asleep whilst smoking, and causing a conflagration.

So, anyway, reintroduction, whatever, something like that. It has way too many names; and I'm pretty sure that if you looked them all up on Answers.com you'd find the last six are obsolete, and not in fact real. Fictionalised by a verbose egoist. I suppose maybe they don't like to use the same word over and over again (in the multitudinous rain of brochures they throw at you from all directions) - but, I think we'd let them off to be honest. Considering said brochures cannot have been proof-read, or if they were, were done so by either a child or an amoeba. Which would explain a lot of the lecturers at this fine institution (nominated for contributions to entrepreneurship), and why they all look as if they've evolved from homo sapiens into a regressive state of vacancy: Let's breed out the beneficial adaptations by marrying mermaids. Or something like that. Probably. Vestigial intellect (anyone for biology jokes?) Wow. Lost my train there. Sorry, that's tangential to the extreme. What was I saying? Oh yes...

So, the day of enrolment (re:) and it's filled with lots of pointless information that you retain for around 18 seconds. Which is nice. No one takes notes during the first day back; most especially not during quasi-informatics. It's pointless. Except these girls in front of me, it was great. I laughed. Three of them were furiously scribbling during a CRM (careers and research management [obligatory pseudo-subject worth a pittance]) intro., and two of the three were all serious and making sure they got everything down (which was pointless, because it was all featured in the brochures I spoke of earlier), and the other was just writing her name in really intricate street-style calligraphy. It was great. It was like: "I'm going to fit in with my friends, but I don't really want to take notes, so I'll hide my pad and write my own name instead." Who tags their own name on their own notes? Perhaps if you had a still-hand, and could squeeze it into the box at the top left of medium-ruled A4 paper (I love that box, afterthought) - but taking half a page? No, thanks. Pointless. A hospital wall? Sure. A train? Naturally. An independent bookstore? I'm there. My own paper? Erm... No. I have some standards.

So the information basically just goes in one side and out the other side - which is nice. CRM has offered some excellent opportunities in terms of plenaries, though. One on publishing, several on journalism, one on teaching, and one on EFL and teaching abroad. I'm going to attend those four; as well as one on doing further education, and MA (masters). I might also go to a few more, but you have to attend at least four to be able to pass the year (don't ask about the other 'criteria' for passing this unit). They've all got moderately successful guest-speakers, and they are all opportunities for a bit of networking, as the wanky-execs would say - depending on how affable I can make myself. I was once called a 'convivial host', but that was a description I gave to myself, so I dunno how true it is.

Few other things worth a mention from the day: a certain chain of pubs famed for their low-class clientèle, outrageously cheap beers, fights, drugs, but a stringent over-18's policy; make really rubbish chips. I hate undercooked chips. I don't really like chips to start with; they're so bland - I don't approve of a food you have to cook in salt, and then add salt to, to make it taste of anything. Chips are the gastro equivalent of the substandard excuse for humanity who goes to a michellin starred restaurant, and asks for salt on their carpaccio (was as pompous as I could make it :D). No, I really do think chips are bland, and I don't like salting my food - but I don't think of it in the way I've said I do. I'd be alone if I was that pretentious. I'm no Mr. Casaubon. Then again, I would love to talk as he does, it's so funny. Beautifully concise diction he has:

"The young man, I confess, is not otherwise an object of interest to me, nor need we, I think, discuss his future course, which it is not ours to determine beyond the limits which I have sufficiently indicated."

In case anyone is lost now. That's from Middlemarch. I didn't have to search for that, it was just there when I opened the book. It goes on like that for nine hundred pages. Sigh. Anyway. Distraction.

Moving on in the notables: spent some time with a person who I treated very badly; and the atmosphere wasn't too disagreeable - so that was nice. Good on her. More interestingly, perhaps, I think, depending, I suppose, on what you view as engaging, in terms of, say, intellectualism, or, say, titillation; I'd say, perhaps, that it's requisite to the digestion of this diatribe for your preference to lie in the former, and, though not without acknowledgement of its topical import, not, say, in the latter, which, though engaging in and of itself, is not pernicious to the issue at hand.

I should probably make that 300,000 words longer. Then I could publish it under a pseudonym: "B. Cunt" or something. Fuck Eliot anyway, she's dead. God bless knowledge of defamation laws. Knew this degree would come in handy, or something. Maybe. Dunno. You?

Anything else interesting happen to me? Got given my new tutor for the year; he's a really good guy: Interesting, engaging, friendly, and amusing - precisely what you want in terms of personal tutors. In fact, our entire department is staffed by genial people you'd actually like to know; rather than the normal snobs and arseholes. The CRM, for instance, was delivered by a witty lady, working at the behest of the course leader. Said course leader turned up at the end, and grilled a front-row student about what he wants to do with his life, why, and how. He managed to pull it off without aplomb, and instead came across like a total narcissistic prig who should probably fuck off, and try to get his jollies somewhere else - not in mocking people a third of his age. What kind of moron does that? Not like he's made a lot of his career. Oh? Course leader of a fairly pointless 10-credit unit in year 2 of university? Congratulations. You should be so proud.

New timetable makes me want to bleed all over my desk. 8 - 16 hours a week, depending on CRM attendance; placement of the French EC (extra-curricula) and my general disposition towards attendance. Irritatingly, given the fact that I'm already doing something ec, I decided to pass up the opportunity to work for The Innocence Project. Now, it's not something I want to wholly discount, because I genuinely think it's something worth doing - but it requires an obligatory and minimum 4 hours of work a week, and that's not something I can include in a year when my dissertation is starting to be talked about. It is, however, something I might consider next year - depending on how well my special exercise is coming along - or perhaps during my MA (if I get that far). Basically, IP, are a group of students who deal with miscarriages of justice - working at the bequest of prisoners, or families of prisoners (I think). The idea is popular in America, I think Ohio IP has something like 20,000 cases on its books at the moment. Obviously; our little local one, catering to 200,000 residents (of which there are only a few hundred, possibly in the thousand, people who qualify to apply for appeal), has nowhere near like these numbers. Anyway, the idea of it is that, under supervision, teams of students browse case notes, visit crime scenes, interview prisoners, etc. - and then they see if there's any incongruity within the case report, or the forensic evidence. I think at the moment they've got three cases they're hoping to put to the CCRC (Criminal Cases Review Commission).

I would definitely be up for doing something like that - because by definition no justice system is ever infallible. I think it's extremely worthwhile, and would help bolster my CV. Not going to lie; altruism is unobtainable, at least I'm not pretending to be selfless. It would be nice to help out though. But yeah, not this semester, at least. Plus the guy who runs it looked like a bit of a stick in the mud. University, after all, is about enjoying yourself and getting a decent qualification. It cannot be managed just one, without the other. Obviously, an ad hominem justification for opting-out of a decent, and helpful, piece of work, is ludicrous - but it doesn't help.

Er... Running out of things to say, I guess. Am enjoying writing today, so want to keep jabbering - though I guess people have already stopped listening/reading. You should be able to get me on audiobook; I'd be fabulous. So that was my first day: Walking, lectures, pub, fun, and games, and hate. It's all composite to a rich day, I suppose, but I'd really rather it was without the last one.

Oh, that reminds me of two things actually. I was wondering the other day (and, this is probably really common knowledge, and going to make me look like a moron) what the 'middle one' of 'former' and 'latter' is. Obviously, former refers to the first, and latter to the last - I wanted to know if there was anything to refer to the ones in-between. There is: Former and latter are only supposed to be used for descriptions of two items; where former can be synonymous with 'one, and latter with 'two'. For more than two objects, you're meant to use first, second, third, or first-named, second-named, third-named, etc.. So there we go; fairly simple information I expect, but I was ignorant nonetheless. Hopefully one of the five were too :).

The other thing I just remembered is completely and utterly unrelated to what I was just harping on about - so I might go back and reorder this in a minute, and then of course this whole sentence will be a complete waste of time because everything will already be in the right order, consciously, anyway, though not chronologically. Which reminds me of something else. There is someone in a lot of my lectures who doesn't like me, which is fine, I don't like her either. My reasoning is that she's a complete idiot. And I mean that. I don't mean "oh a bit blonde?", I mean "How is this person even functioning?" Anyway, she was asking me where I lived, and I made a comment using the words "chronologically" and "geographically"; to which she replied: "This is why I hate you." Well, that seems a tad unnecessary to me. In case anyone is wondering, I don't really talk like this in real life - but as soon as I start tapping, crap spews out. In normality, I speak fairly simply, and succinctly. Amusingly I haven't yet got to the other thing I remembered, although this boring story will act as a beautiful segue for me.

Where I was, when I heard that lovely declamation of her loathing, was in a queue for the logistical re-enrolment. The signing of paperwork, general housekeeping, and the standing in a line for ages on end achieving nothing-ness-ment. Which was great. I didn't understand the system though. To speak briefly; my university is divided into several different 'schools', within those schools are sub-divisions for each individual subject, such as 'english', within the 'School of Social, historical, and literary studies'. This 9am re-enrolment was for SSHLS (school of social...), and it was planned appallingly. You'd think that logic would dictate a staggered arrival of people, wouldn't you? Just have a few at 9, a few at 9.10, a few at 9.20, etc. You'd still be able to get through two hundred-odd people in an hour, and it would be much smoother. As it was, all 200 turned up at the same time and had to spend up to 40 minutes queuing to have their paperwork checked and validated. If anyone arrived after 9.10, they were late to the next portion of the day - an important lecture on the syllabus structure, as well as the guest speaker from IP. Dunno, just seemed stupid to me.

I decided I couldn't be bothered to rearrange this litany. And though I normally like to end on a high note, or a nice phrase, I used up all my brain at the beginning of this. So... instead I'll end like Eddie Izzard.

Bye.

Clueless.

He has no idea.

/Fail.

Tired.

"Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story" - "Lethargy is an allegory, sleep a story."

Tolstoy had nothing on me; in fact, I think retrospectively; a posthumous nod to a fellow literary genius. From War and Peace to A needless diatribe - are we all seeing the quite obvious link there? I don't want to have to spell it out for you, because it's like a million am and I'm too tired. Hopefully you see the reality of what I'm saying.

So yeah, major hating on being tired. I bet you, like me, have got a friend who says something awful like: "I woke up so refreshed this morning, I wasn't tired at all"; and, like me, I suspect every time they say that, you want to beat them resoundingly around the head with a steel pipe, slice open their dented skull, and gorge on the intellectual pestilence inside. You know you do. Crack it, mack it. Americanism ftl. I hate people who sleep well - all of those bastards who maintain the 1 in 7 people are asleep in under 10 minutes statistic. They can all fuck off. Insomnia websites can fuck off too (the irony is beyond belief) when they say: "If you haven't managed to fall asleep within 20 minutes, get up and do something." I don't think I've ever fallen asleep in under 20 minutes apart from occasions of inebriation, or post-coitus. Though when those two are mixed, I can normally fall asleep during the loving, or even ante it if I've had enough beer!

I've tried very hard to stabilise a sleep routine; hoping to create it so that I can fall straight into stage 3, and wake up during stage 1 (boring sleep patterns). If you can manage this, you sleep nice and deeply, but when you wake up, you don't have to fight to get your eyelids open. That's another thing: The human body is miraculous, an impressive testament to the ingenuity of evolution, and the disingenuous bastard that is Mssrs. Nature. She can lick. My. Balls. They give you this body; this unbelievable creation capable of thought, of movement, of running, of jumping, of contortion, of cognition, of love, of emotion - but they give you the weakest god-damn 'levator palpebrae superioris muscle' - or eye muscle to you (that's a nice truncation of this phrase, for my own superiority).

Those fuckers just will not stay open. This is how the day runs:

8.30 - 10: Wake up (between, it doesn't take that long). Eyelids glued to eyes for first twenty minutes; awful build up of that soggy shit.

2 minutes later: Plod downstairs to get a coffee. Whilst kettle boils, wash face. Eyelids half open, useful for navigating sandstorms; not great for the administering of beans to a cup.

5 minutes later: Crawl upstairs to drink coffee and read news. Eyes hurt when looking at screen, because they've been closed for the past 30 minutes of being awake. Takes a while for page to swim into focus. Eyelids drooping until coffee takes effect.

[...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Time passes~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

15.00: Tired. Need more coffee. Eyelids drooping again, having to force self to engage in mindless conversation simply to keep brain functioning, and eyelids open.

[...] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Time passes~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

20.00: Running solely on nicotine and caffeine. Eyes closed from now until bed.

02.00: In bed. Eyes closed for past 120 minutes. Dead.

Fuck eyes.

Hangovers.

I feel so rough it's quite unbelievable. Last night we did a sort of 'Hello and my name is' drinking session with a girl from the house down the road (who we know), myself, and one other of my housemates here. That's fine in and of itself, but for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to drink for 8 hours straight... finally got to about 4.15 and I was a total corpse. Woke up this morning at 10 to my hideous alarm. Snoozed it until 10.56 and then decided I'd best get up. Why?! Bacon bagel, and coffee. That's why.

Lush.

Street party in a few hours and then burritos for dinner. Win.

Moving sucks.

Honest to Jesus; name me two good things about moving house, and I'll buy you a house. Then you can move into it, 'cause you love moving so much. You abode-bastardising devotee transient; yes, that's right: You. You there with the stupid lob-sided grin, the vacant, glazed eyes; the hollow consciousness, crawling towards sentience with the removal van - you, the ennui riddled husk. There's only one good thing about moving: When you get there and everything is unpacked. And that's less good about moving, or more having moved. So... tense prevents acclaim. Sorry. Well, I'm not. Burn motherfucker. Mmm, I'm feeling particularly generous towards expletives today. T-fucking-mesis included.

So yeah, nothing good about moving really. Moving involves a bunch of things I've already written about (and thus hate). I'll briefly skirt over what they are, and why I hate them - though, as you avid followers will know, sometimes my brief diatribes turn into full-blown magnum opii (love it) - so, as always, caveat installed (bear with me), chair reclined; ass-cheeks deflated, coke at the ready. Teeth fucked. Let's go.

1) What do you use to pack!?

This is wrong and irritating on so many levels that I can't even begin to describe the multitudinous hatred I feel towards the myriad issues here. You've got to find boxes; hundreds and hundreds of boxes... and not just any boxes. They need to be of a consistent shape and size - no rhomboids please - so that you can store them safely in your car, they need to be of a decent volume but not too much - so that you can always lift them, however full they are - and they need to be sturdy - and not a lot of boxes are. Any of you remember The Simpsons episode where they go on a tour of the 'box factory'? I wish I had gone on one of those tours, split from the party, thrown caution to the wind, and pillaged the stocks of well-proportioned, amble volume, boxes. I would've been toying with the penal system, but to hell with it, I would have gone on a rampage. It would have been carnage (don't get me started on idiots misusing this word). So you find the boxes -- and by find, I mean buy. From a store that doesn't exist. Honestly. There is no box-store. You need to hunt down an office supplies shop, and then you have to buy what is effectively self-assembly cardboard. It's ultra low-budget Ikea but without the funny names. So you've bought everything. And by everything, I mean everything. You've probably ended up with an industrial-sized stapler, post-it notes (you're the kind of person who thinks insight needs to be penned and thrown on the wall), and always always always 18m of bubble wrap; even though inside of your current dwelling is nothing worth keeping anyway, and... let's be honest: If it broke on the journey, you'd probably be better off than when it was intact. So there it is.

If you're especially cavalier, you can abdicate some of the responsibility to a trusted friend or relation; but... well, they can't do it the way you want it, so it's probably safer and more worthwhile to expend the extra hours doing it yourself. After all, it is DIY. And if that kind of misanthropic mistrust of humankind hasn't whet your hate-buds enough, you can always smash convention and find random boxes around your house: The one the printer came in, the one from Ikea that says "Blumstrong" on the side, the one that might have held the Christmas (why is this suggested capitalised by Chrome?) tree... but might have held the vacuum cleaner too - either way, hilarious domesticity - or maybe even the one that's still got nik-naks in. That's the best one. The one that has various pieces of domestic miscellany inside of it - jack-to-jack wires without the necessary attachments or equipment; extension cables that stretch up to 55m (although your yard is only 18x6); an odd shoe; a bauble for the x-mas (ha, beat that spell check) tree; perhaps a drawing you did as an eleven year old; a ping-pong ball; some kind of tennis/squash/horrid sport accoutrement; various fire-prevention paraphernalia; and always, always, a spare USB lead. You might not have the port, or even a laptop, but by fuck you've got an extraneous capacity for connectivity.

So there it is. Choose your weapon, gentlemen. It's time to embark on a quest!

2) The 'quest'.

You have to pack the car/van/lorry/bicycle. That's an awful sentence. I mean that you have to pack things into. Obviously you don't pack the car into the car. That's some kind of dimensional paradox which is bound to send me into paroxysms of confusion. Moving on. Yes. Yes indeed. It's 1984, and apparently your name is Alexey Pajitnov (anyone?). Unfortunately, because your name probably isn't Alexey Pajitnov and you are thus unaccustomed to gently rotating strange shapes in order for them to make perfectly geometrical patterns; you're bound to fail. There's no guarantee of success here. That's what sucks even more. This isn't 'getting to level 60 at WoW' - that's possible, if pointless and horrendously time-consuming - there is the distinct possibility here that you won't manage it. You might find that you've got too much stuff (is the car too small, or are you too much of a materialistic whore?), or that the boxes (you cavalier!) you've used simply don't fit in the car, in any order.

I've got a tip for you, and hopefully it will allow you to pack the car quickly, and efficiently: make someone else do it. Sequester someone who understands sequential placement and impact of objects - a chess player might be quite good. If you're anything like me, you'll just stick things in, and then shove things in on top of those, until the point where you try to close the boot ends with you covered in glass and pulling a weird constipation face. If you hire someone, you'll never have to pull that puce-coloured expression... you know the one: it's as if you're trying to forcibly eject a pineapple from your rectum. So, yeah, hire someone. Pay them. Coerce them. Whatever. Make them do it. I hate emancipation.

3) There is nothing remotely quest-like about a piddling jaunt down the bypass.

Arf. Driving. Fuck that. As some (read: none) of you will remember: I don't like driving. No, "don't like" isn't strong enough... I have an insatiable desire to destroy every car ever (except my own), and drive everyone en masse off of a very tall bridge. That's what I want to do. All the wanton phallic rubbish; horrible haircuts; clapped-out-tarted-up Saxo's - I hate it; and I hate you for doing it. Stop ruining an activity that could be fun. Quit it already. So yeah, I loathe driving because of other drivers; they're abhorrent, and wasteful.

4) You invariably get lost.

It's impossible to find where you're going, even when you've been there a thousand times. If I was moving from my old house, to my old house (confusing) then I would still get lost, even though both of those houses have occupied my entire life's worth of shelter. I would still get lost. It's about 2 km between those places, too. I'd still get lost. I could use GPS, sat-nav, a 1970's A-Z of Worthing and Brighton, I could shout angrily at my passenger and berate their woeful incompetence at navigation. I'd still get lost. Taking this truthism (because it's not at all true) as demonstrable fact (which we're going to!) then you can guess how bad it was having to move 50 miles. Jesus. Logistical nightmare. Eichmann had a significantly easier job in planning and implementing the genocide of 6mil-jessers than I did choosing, planning, and driving a route. It's impossible. There is no physical way of getting from A-B without going via Q. And where's U? They're meant to be together. Dictionary lie! DICTIONARY LIE. Christ I hope we filled up with petrol. We didn't? GET ME HESS!

5) You arrive.

You've made it! Bedraggled, riddled with self-loathing, your passenger slumped dead in the co-seat - the oddly sat-nav shaped lump in their gullet still trying to move down --,... your face covered in sweat, the clothes stuck to your back, hate etched across every line of your body. Who cares! You've arrived. Congratulations. There's never any kind of celebration though, is there? Never a kind of 'new house inauguration'. I wouldn't even mind a Bushlation. At least he got something; admittedly it was derision, the hatred of millions, death threats, and shit thrown at him; but it was something. Where's the trumpets? Where's the generic silver-fox holding an over-sized cheque?! Where are the hordes of children running over the roof-tops!? Why isn't this 1940's post-WW2 Britain!?

(Sidenote: Don't you hate it when you get a little speck of something on your glasses, so you rub it, and then it's made exponentially more awful with each stroke? Fuck that. *Contacts.*)

6) Guess what?

That's right. You have to unpack. No, I'm not kidding. That 14-year-logistics-seminar you attended; the twelve-day drive; the death of your friends and family; the requisitioning of the world's supply of boxes. All of it for this. To unpack. What a horrendously beautiful irony.

Please follow these steps to ensure that you don't have fun, and that the next time you go to move, you have as hellish a time as you did on this one:

A) Make sure at least one 'industrial strength' box caves in on the way through the front door - preferably the one which doesn't contain any bubble wrap. For extra points, make sure the priceless Ming was wrapped in newspapers - the additional congrats from me are for both the stupidity of thinking newspaper would protect anything that was dropped (it's paper... seriously), and for losing your kids' inheritance.

B) Lump everything in different rooms, so that whilst you're unpacking it seems like you're making progress, but you're not.

B i) Inside each room, try to put at least 8 or more boxes. When unpacking, always take a break after each box, so that you can't notice any difference - this adds a whole level of macabre to the proceedings, and invariably leads to a contemplation on the futility of life. That's great fun. Seriously though, try it. It's the moving equivalent of when you leave the washing up for four days, and it's as if you'd opened a nationwide soup kitchen for a weekend.

C) Make sure you scrape something along one of the walls when moving in. You have to do this one; the ruined aesthetic is entirely intrinsic to making this experience indescribably painful.

D) Leave something behind. If you don't do this, you won't have to hate yourself forever. You won't have to rue the day you decided that I) Moving house, II) Going on holiday, III) Moving to uni IV) et al. would be a good idea. We cannot have a lack of rue. That would be a coq au vin sans jus. Mmm, food jokes.

E) Ask for your friends' help, and then have them let you down. This is pernicious, although it might not seem it. If you want to cultivate that perfect air of irritability and fruitless angst, you must be let down by someone you trust and who is responsible. Naturally, they're not to help you unpack - they're not qualified for that - no, they're the English Poles who are merely to provide strong-backs, and rippling muscles.

F) Struggle to park outside your new house. This is soooo useful for making you hate life. It's an exponential equation I would plot if I had the wherewithal for 'graphing'; the farther the car from the front door, the less exciting moving is, and the more enraged you become. Perhaps some kind of haunting Venn diagram is necessary at this juncture? If anyone reading this is good at maths, feel free to write in your self-penned Venn diagrams.

G) Make sure the house isn't as good as you remember it being. There is nothing more satisfying for world-hate than a crushing disappointment, and a depressing anti-climax. Try them. You can either get a venereal-diseased ridden whore to get you to climax, and then demand return cunnilingus for your orgasm; or you can move house to somewhere that becomes boring after minutes. I don't know which one you prefer; there is a vaccine for AIDS now anyway - so perhaps you're better off with plunging the crispy-clunge. I dunno.

H) Neighbours. This one gets special mention. The best way to ensure maximum antipathy to the new surroundings, is to avoid asking what kind of neighbours you're going to have - then it's a case of sitting back, relaxing, and praying that you move into a house that borders one of the following:

i) Hairdressers.

ii) Kids.

iii) Crazy animal person.

iv) Students.

v) Old people.

Do this to enable cruise-control repugnance.

I) Although you obviously haven't carried out a structural survey, do check that the walls are paper-thin (hey, maybe you can wrap your glasses up in them? They're bound to be safe).

J) Never check whether your gas/electric/water companies charge rateable prices, or metered. Also, try to get as many different amenity providers as is possible - the more bureaucracy you might have to engage with, the more hateful you can be. If you have to call any of them out in the first week because your boiler doesn't work, you get extra acclamation from the Board of Hilarity.

K) Accidentally recycle the boxes you moved in with in the first place. That way you can make the whole process cyclical :).

So yeah, I moved into my new private uni house today. It's actually really nice, and the move went without a hitch :).

Follow my advice. Never move house.

On insects.

Before I begin, thanks to everyone who is reading :). Genuinely appreciated. Especially one of you ;).

Do you see what I did with the title there? Doesn't it make me sound of pseudo-intellect? It's fabulous. Take a mundane subject to talk about, and stick "on" as a prefix, and all of a sudden you're a philosopher of the banal (which... ya know, all philosophers are). I might not be about to broach the outer limits of thought and cognitive process, but I'm going to sound damn impressive as I ramble incoherently. And, well, isn't that all we could wish for at 14.11 on a Thursday afternoon? Perhaps we could wish for something more interesting to do, but, unfortunately that is not possible at all - all of my friends have returned back to their individual universities, and I am left waiting here at home until Saturday when I can chug back along the coast to my second home. Rather looking forward to it; my room is going to be fantastic when I've kitted it out properly. Seriously: It's going to have a heaps big TV, gamecube (smaller than my ps3 ;]) and random other items of enjoyment. I'm not one for taking many personal items with me; some of my friends laden their room down with thousands of pictures of friends, and mementos from their family - bleh, it's only a few months, not like they're all going to vanish whilst I am away, eh? Well, unlikely at least. I hope... Damn.

So yeah. Insects. Entomology and all that jazz; I don't think I'd enjoy that as a profession to be honest - I think I might get a bit creeped out by the constant immersion within a world of creepy-crawlies. Yuck. Anyway, pointless. God knows what I'm talking about. Yes, insects. And why they're fucking everywhere, all the time. I swear they're breeding or something, perish the thought! Every year there seems to be more and more; or every year I'm spending more and more time burrowing in the gardens and forestry around my house. I think it's the first one. I don't remember doing much digging or foraging in the grounds (like I have grounds). As soon as the temperature rises above 2k you suddenly get swarms of everything. Why must they all move in swarms? Swarm is a horrible word; it conjures up images of inescapable horror, of being chased, and being unable to fight your way through. You never get "a swarm of love", or "a swarm of dolphins who help rescue your boat"; it's always "a swarm of flesh-eating wasps", or a "swarm of soul-sucking woodlice." Maybe. Yeah, so that's the first thing. We need to rename these 'groups' of insects. I propose several new names to allow us to talk of these 'groups' in comfort:

1) A crunchy-nut-cluster: "Oh no, a crunchy-nut cluster of raping-bees!" "Hahahaha, crunchy nut."

2) A flappy-floop-troop: "Run, it's a flappy-floop-troop of war ants." "Hahaha, flappy-floop."

3) A pile: "Watch out! There's a pile of locusts." "Haha, inertia fail."

First problem solved.

Second of all; like, why don't they all fuck off during Winter? In times of yore (which, ya know, I've lived through) as soon as it was September all of the insects would disappear and we'd all get 5 months of blissful solitude. Not anymore. I know that all bees and wasps fuck off except the queen (who gets the fun job of re-birthing the entire flappy-floop-troop come Spring) but what happens to all of the others? Is there some kind of Harry Potter-esque King-Spider hiding out in the shed, waiting for the cataracts to take hold, praying for the moment he can squirt his spider-goo all over some eggs or something? Somehow I doubt it. In fact, I know that's not true. So, I don't need to doubt it. I know it's not true. Anyway, that whole "Queen-slag" bullshit is clearly not true either: there's always a few stragglers flopping around come December. You always find wasps flying inanely round the living room when it's snowing outside. Few questions: A) How did they get in? Who has a window or door open in Winter? B) What the hell is it still alive for? C) Go away.

Ignoring the stragglers, let's take the whore-fact as fact and assume that all bees and wasps in fact die, only to be splooged out by some kind of cavernous vagina come March. Where are all the others? What about the woodlice, and the spiders, and the moths, and the other pointless creatures that serve no purpose whatsoever to any ecosystem that I'm aware of? I'm pretty sure they don't hunker down for the winter, like a bear, there's no Kibbutz of hibernating arachnids corralled at the top of the bougainvillea. At least,... not in my garden anyway. Maybe I'll check the hibiscus this year. So, reducto ad absurdum aside, let's take it as a given that all insects except wasps die come Winter. Working on that basis; where do the new crunchy-nut-clusters come from whence the sun begins to shine again? Are they sprouting up from particles in the air? Formulating cognition from quantum-physics? I don't get it. They just materialise all of a sudden, and rush to find a bin to flap around. Another thing: Get the fuck away from bins. No wonder there's litter everywhere: Any time you want to throw anything way in public, the bin is covered (and I mean covered) in a load of things you don't want anywhere near you. "Yo, just throw this Cornetto top away for me," "Yeah, sure. OH NO WAIT. It's covered in bees!!!!" I hate it.

Solution two: Stop making bins from pollen. Seriously.

Solution three: Explain to children what happens to insects for half the year.

OK, more issues, this time specifically with spiders. I don't really have a problem with spiders. In fact, I actively encourage them to sequester the entire bamboo bushes for their webs; they catch hundreds of flies between them - and those flies then never make it to my house, to be accidentally crushed underfoot, or to be swatted against a wall, leaving a blood-smear all over the wallpaper. That's great. Go spiders. But, seriously guys, learn some kind of navigation; we've got carrion-birds which can navigate by invisible and intangible magnetic forces; and yet we've got arachnids who cannot learn that 'A web across a path/Over the washing line/In a bedroom/Stretched across an entire room/The entire bath' will never, ever, ever, be allowed to stay. I've lost count of the amount of times I've gone outside and walked through a rainforest's worth of sticky web shit. I don't care what you want to do with it, just don't put it where I walk. Or if you do, the first time I walk through it and get angry, don't then go and rebuild it exactly where it was before. Are you that stupid? No. Maybe it's myth, but someone once told me that a spider can travel large distances from where you release it, in order to get back to where you captured it. So, whilst I doubt the claim of 'several miles' I can assume that they could make it back from say... the bottom of the driveway? Yes, I imagine they can. So they can do that; but they can't learn that 'Ashtray web' is never going to survive an onslaught of fag-butts, and things on fire? No, honestly. That's retarded. I know they've got tiny bodies, but there must be a brain in there somewhere.

Also, what's up with the webs? Two issues here:

1) How do they even build them in the first place? I understand the whole geometric-spyrograph-spinning of a web within a plant and whatnot; but I don't get the webs that stretch about 14 yards without any kind of suspension. There's just a bit of stringy-shit on the fence, and then one on the opposite fence. I guarantee the method is incredibly simple, but it constantly eludes me. How do they make a web going length-ways across a garden? It's probably something faggy like just walking along the ground, dragging it behind them, and then climbing up the other wall, or something. Lame.

2) What the shit is that stuff made from? If you ever want to affix a picture to your wall, but don't want to risk screws; just nip outside and walk along the garden-path. You will inevitably return covered in translucent, invisible-to-the-human-eye, spider crap all of you. Then simply place the picture on the floor (back up) and roll over it (gently). Hopefully this will remove 1/30th of the stuff that's on you, and stick it to the picture. Then simply chuck it at the wall. Like sticky-putty, but substantially more dangerous and expensive to use. I would love to know the composition of the spider-web, because it's definitely the stickiest substance known to man. Pritt-spider. As soon as you get it on your arm, it's there for good. It's the invasion equivalent of when you've got a tiny hair in your mouth/throat, and you spend sixteen days rooting around with your tongue, trying to find it. You know it's there; you can feel the tickle. Then you get it on your tongue, and you have to spend another millennia retrieving it from there with your fingers. Same problem here: You can't see the fucker, and when you do manage to lay your hands on it, it gets stuck to your hand! Damn. It's so fucking annoying. The best way to get this shit off is to burn it off, and, well, let's face it, jumping in a vat of flaming-tar probably isn't the safest thing to do - and it's probably a bit of an over-exaggeration given the circumstances.

Solution: Spiders make their webs out of red-coloured pritt-stick glue.

So yeah. Fuck insects. They piss me off.

DOWN WITH THE ECOSYSTEMS!

P.S. I feel it necessary to end on a paraphrased Eddie Izzard quote: "And what's up with bees; why are they always behind you? Are they working with your dad? He just says: 'No, just stand there. Don't move.' And the bees are like: 'Thanks, Dad!'. I'm thinking: 'No, I'm going to run away. AHHHH, BEEES. RUUUUUUUN.'"

Shit.

Oh shit, shit, shit, shit. Shit.

SHIT.

Fuck.

This is. Not good. Totally. Not good.

Fuck.

Why does it happen in the evenings? Fucking crepuscular angst. I'm like... an angry bat. Or a placid cat. That's like... the shittest superhero ever.

HALF BAT. HALF CAT.

BLIND. GREAT HEARING. AWESOME BALANCE.

Got a crime to solve that includes ropes, and quiet victims? Call BATCATMANGUY.

Meow.

I should like. Post about something. Honestly. I've got three followers now, and since the third joined up (probably coerced knowing me, I forget) I've posted nothing of even debatable merit. All I've done since then is engaged in a heated debate about the legitimacy of sexual consent laws; honestly, who thinks that they're too high, or too low? Who has insight into the development of the prefrontal cortex? I'm missing something which fills in the blanks here; I need convincing empiricism; so far all I've got is... fuck knows, possibility rhetoric. Cerebellum affected by environmental stimulus; prefrontal entirely genetic. What does that mean in any real sense? To most people; nothing. That's not good enough. Gah.

Really drunk. Horribly drunk. Have spell-checked this about nine times already. Taking ages to say anything. Miss ranting. Have had nothing interesting to rant about. Perhaps I'm in some kind of writer's self-pity mode; where everything I write is either too shit, or too pathetic. Fuck knows. I don't think I am. I don't think I'm even thinking of writing. I think I'm distracted.

Going back to uni. Hoorah. Further from what I want. Shit. Bollocks.

Mmm sequitur.

Mambo number 5!

Once, twice, thrice,...?

Ahhhh.

Promise I'll have something interesting this week. Honest.

Of interest?

I guess I'd best say something of note today, hadn't I? I wouldn't want to disappoint the myriad fans that I've built-up these past few weeks. Trust me, they're numerate. In fact, why don't I talk about these people? That'll be something to do. See if you can guess who you are.

1) This fella is somewhat of an enigma (read; not enigmatic D:); an introspective philosopher - interesting and difficult, caring and cold. Hard to ignore. Annoyingly.

2) This person is hilarious. In a disgusting way. Like... makes you want to vomit. And laugh. Whilst you vomit. And then eat your own vomit. Nice guy; nosey cunt though. I mean this in the ameliorative sense, too, unbelievably.

3) From the wrong end of the country.

4) From the wrong country.

5) Hair is too long.

6) Doesn't make any sense.

Bleh. I got bored. 6 people. That's atrocious. How am I meant to become a worldwide phenomenon? Grass-roots support is irritatingly difficult to cultivate; this is like real life farmtown, but without the servitude, laughs at the un-emancipated, and mind-numbing tedium of watching a pixelated pikey run around trying to hoe. Damn I hate facebook. Honestly, how do you make people read what you want? This blog isn't selfless, far from it; it's not catharsis, nor is it hugely enjoyable to keep up - it's time consuming and frustrating; and writing for a mini-audience has limited appeal. Don't get me wrong, I suck, and don't expect a hoard of followers to start reading this with Christian-like zealotry, but everyone has to start somewhere. I need to invent a new niche career where I can make money from doing this; paid by the idiocy. I'd be the richest man on earth. Apart from those with true love... That's what you want, isn't it ;_;.

Self-pity.