Hippothermia...

... because I'm not entirely sure how to spell hypothermia and there is no spell-check in the 'title box' for some strange reason. Also any word which makes you think of hippos has to be funny. Anything to do with hippos is by its very being hilarious. Sorry, I've just been reading a modernisation of ... Dorian Gray... and it's gotten me all'a'flutter. The language is simply spellbinding; the kind of lyricism you find so rarely in modern-novels. It has the sort of archaic lilt to the prolix which gives it a hauntingly delightful pseudo-antediluvian quality. In short it is written beautifully, but it is plotted woefully. The disparities aside, for they cannot but add, it sticks rigorously to the original; and I am loathe to enjoy the original as it's decadent to the point of profligacy. Which is great if you're fornicating heedlessly underneath in the bushes, or pouncing roughly onto your next door neighbour before roughly sodomising him; or cultivating cocktails of intoxicants to inject directly into your eyelid; or simply sitting in a padded armchair high on the scent of the opiates crumbling in your outstretched, waxen palms. For the average reader, however, that kind of hedonism is reserved solely for the embrace of hand and penis - whereas that kind of abandon is limited and finite; this seems to stretch immeasurably forward, questing with philosophical platitudes designed solely to entice the beguiled into suckling harder at the bone-dry teat of a manifest faggot. It's a thrillingly engaging story, irrespective, but one which I genuinely couldn't connect with on any level; and I have lived a fairly egocentric life. Pirouetting through drug-fuelled hazes is something I have done, but not something which with I can relate happily nor fondly. That is why the superficial reading leaves me so hollow and cold. Evidently this would mean you could rather easily level criticism after criticism at me - and it would be deserved in most senses of the word.

Excuse me. I had more to say, but I have been rudely interrupted by one of my friends who seems hell-bent on pushing home some incredibly unwelcome home-truths about a fledgling relationship I may find myself in. I might return after belittling his pessimism, but I have rather lost my train of thought. Sorry.