2004-11-25..5:29 p.m.

Seeing as I was feeling bloated and wired anyway, I decided to go with it and consume a bunch of chocolate chip cookies with copious quantities of tea. I�m in a tea kind of place. I need the soothing.

The roller-ball part of my chair keeps attaching itself to things. It sneaks over the strap of my bag, it stalks the cord of the fan, it consumes the edges of the newspaper I chucked down this morning in my hurry to make it seem like I�d been here for ages and was just running out to the shop*. If the wheely legs of this chair were human, they�d be of the trench-coat wearing flasher variety.

*which I had to anyway because this building has NOT ONE TAMPON DISPENSER IN THE WHOLE GADDAMN PLACE!
**which meant I could get a far-too-large-but-I�m-carby-so-fuck-off baguette thing to burn in the toaster for a wholly unsatisfying brekkie.

I got a new theory book in the post this morning, which totally made up for the appalling *meal*. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture by John Storey. It was on the Lit Crit syllabus in my final year of my undergrad, but being the uber-cheap genius I am I decided to photocopy only the passages I needed on 1cent copy day at the student printshop. I think I only left out about six chapters, but it still came to less than half the asking price at the campus bookshop. That class was led by the Bonge, one of the most deliciously arrogant professors I�ve ever had. He was incredibly smart, very well read and hilariously funny, don�t let anyone tell you otherwise; but he had Dad Syndrome* and could be so exactingly condescending you wanted to stuff his lecture notes down his throat through his eyeballs. The text is excellent though and I can�t find the copy I copied, so I want a new one.

*clinging to the cliffs of hep youth culture � he�d go to gigs and wax poetic about Run DMC and the street art of the late eighties. It�s fairly clear that in the late eighties he was pretty cutting edge, that he ran in radical and subversive circles, that he was on the forefront of critical cultural theory. In his own youth he cried out to his own professors to abandon their schools, challenged the theories of his student contemporaries, fought against status quo. BUT in clutching doggedly to that vision of being young and free thinking more than he�s finding a way to abandon his own theories and challenge new one�s, he�s on the verge of becoming a sad and bitter man uncomfortable with middle age, but lacking the momentum to change. It�s an inevitability of the youth to become old, very few manage to skirt it successfully (John Peel is one who very successfully combined them). I long to cry, Not me! I�ll be different! It�s us that will change things, and though I�ll fight the good fight, I know it�ll happen to me too. Ugh. How despressing.

I�m trying to read The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide. I adore his writing. I adore his mode of inquiry, his budding perception towards the plight of women. I adore the feats he achieved championing gay rights in both his fiction and in his personal life (�achieved� being relative to his having been �championing� at the turn of the last century during the Wilde controversy). But I can�t concentrate. The words just skim behind my retina and I glaze over. It�s the Deleuze hangover, I know, but it�s nonetheless frustrating.

I�m dooring at the Water Rats tonight, join me if you dare.

****meep