1. I�m wearing black socks with bright juicy strawberries embroidered on them. They�re making me feel nibbly.
2. May the Farm be with you (thank you zoo la la) I laughed so much a little but of pee threatened escape.
3. I have beetjuice fingers and a beetstained mouth as a result of my beetfilled lunch � beetroot, avocado and heaping spinach salad with olive oil drizzled toast. It was delicious. I�ve recently taken to putting olive or soya oil on my bread instead of butter, I don�t know why. I�ve also stopped drinking coffee everyday.
4. When I was little my sister and I made a fort under this massive old willow tree in our backyard where we would play House and have picnics. If it was too close to supper, my mum would refuse to let us take something out with us, so we would very elaborately pretend to pick apples from its branches and take big fleshy bites out of the air.
5. My flatmates are teaching me Spanish using ingredients lists and the recipes in the Spanish Cosmo Flatmate Irene�s sister left when she came over a couple of weeks ago. We�re also using the Cosmo �Give-Him-A-Blow-Job-And-All-Will-Be-Well� style advice column. My favourite so far is the advice to a girl who�s boyfriend who doesn�t call her the day after they have sex and Irma Kuntz, Sexology Expert, effectively tells her that she doesn�t advocate mind games, but to ignore the guy for a while and not return his calls and then take him on holiday and lock him in their hotel room so he can�t �escape�. Because that doesn�t involve mind games.
6. Once I�ve enough capital I�m going to start marketing Steak PantsTM: underwear with the latest in steak design that get sheerer the rarer you go.. O Yeah!

FIVE THING ABOUT MUSIC

1. I�m supposed to review Love is a Deserter, the new Kills EP, but after listening to it repeatedly last night I have to say it�s doing nothing for me. which rather bites because I adored Keep on Your Mean Side.
2. I bought Accumulation: None> by (Smog) on Tuesday, an outrageous extravagance at �10, and I�ve not even had a chance to listen to it yet which is killing me.
3. If you haven�t heard Jeremy Warmsley yet, you are missing out. He�s one half of the Songs in the Dark team and is fucking brilliant. His new single is soon-to-be released on Exercise1, it�s called �I Believe in the Way You Move, and I think it�s even getting air time which is fabulous because he�s a really sweet guy.
4. I�m seeing Steve tonight which is awesome! We�ve not hooked up in ages and ages because he�s been all busy and touring. They�ve been getting a lot of really good press lately too AND �Devil in the Details� was on the end credits of FAQ U a couple of weeks ago too. Tres impressive!
5. I recently discovered that my sister�s notoriously awful taste in music isn�t as awful as I feared! She has a secret yearning for Jane�s Addiction who, though I�ve not listened to in years, I went to see at the Horseshoe Tavern (or somewhere else, but definitely on Queen St. in Toronto) when I was like 16. Or it was the Rheostatics and I�m thinking of a different night, but I know I liked them when I was a teenager so Huzzah! The Sistercreature�s getting hip with the non-Celine Crapion scene!

FOUR THINGS ABOUT SMOKING

1. I once had three cigarettes in quick succession despite the fact that there were children in breathing range because I was furious with their parent/guardian who kept glaring at me sitting over my laptop trying to work and encouraging them to bang their cups on the table. The more he egged them on, the quicker I lit up. In my defence it was six days before my essays were due and I had had three hours of sleep the night before, but I still feel soooo guilty for having done that to a couple of kids who wouldn�t have been aware of what they were doing.
2. Standing on the fire escape outside my office, I like to wait for the ash to build up into a big heavy bulb before flicking it over the edge to see whether it hits the ground in a pillowy thud or breaks up and scatters back upwards in the wind.
3. When I started smoking again in my last year of my undergrad I would stash all my accessories in Nelle�s room so I wouldn�t be tempted and then, especially on Sunday afternoons after we�d been out until late late the night before when I couldn�t wait any longer, I�d burst into her room and push her out of bed so we could sit on the bridge of the fire escape that linked our house with the house next door and watch the people go by oblivious to us up above. (It was three stories up one of those big old converted mansion that managed not to get demolished in the Sixties � a time that sported some of the worst planning decision of Univille ever made.)
4. I think I want to quit, but I�m not sure what to do with that thought yet.

THREE PIECES OF RANDOM POETRY

A LA RECHERCHE DE PAUL VERLAINE

In speechless, scandalous carousals
round my love I find breasts whose
little fingertips are food like living fruit, and my nipples turn to
consciousness.

Alone in my electric orchard
your creamy insights come to mind
And my love of death
fits like a lascivious genie
into a green bottle.

FromThe Book Disease by Andi Garwood.

VEILLES REVELATIONS DE L'ETRE
souvenir d'Antonin Artaud

Nous avons fait
immonde le monde
et tout le monde
en taisant bruyamment
le sait.

from French Poems in Honour of Jean Genet by Auban LouLoup de la Porte Roudaneso

INDELIBLE, MIRACULOUS

friend, think of your breath
on a cold pane of glass
you can write your name there
with an outstretched finger

or frosted, untouched grass
in the early morning, a place

where you can dance alone
leave your footprints there

a deep pool of silver water
waits for you to make waves

the beach is clean after the storm
the tide has washed away yesterday

we all matter, we are all
indelible, miraculous, here

from Apology for Absence by Julia Darling

TWO THINGS ABOUT GROINS

1. A little Satan in the groin
2. Cliterature ONE AFTERNOON WISHING I WAS PERMITTED A LONG WORD COUNT FOR MY THESIS

I've been thinking a bit more about it (spy genre and masculine subjectivity/lack thereof in the Cold War), and I think I'd like to see how I can address bodily punishment and masochism as elements of, or possibly as repudiation of how lacks in information function ontologically in terms of masculine subjectivity.

I also want to look at the function of moles/leaks/counterspies, and what they mean in terms of determining truth.

My big problem is that I suspect I will have to remain within the Fleming/Bond mould - mostly because it's only 12000 words, so not as much room to move - but may also want to pull in Baroness Orczy, Helen MacInnes, Eric Ambler, and Len Deighton; other serial author/characters like Adam Hall/Quiller, John Buchan/Richard Hannay, Manning Cole/Thomas E Hambledon, Donald Hamilton/Matt Helm, John Edmund Gardner/Boysie Oakes; other ex-intelligence authors such as W Somerset Maughn and Compton Mckenzie... at least as frames of reference if not actual full-on analysis.

There again, I've also been looking at novels in which spying seems an offshoot of paranoia like Conrad's Secret Agent, or John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces*, which could provide some insight, or possibly none at all, but I'm enjoying them nonetheless.

As for theory, I'm tending towards Kiekegaard's Concept of Dread, Kaja Silverman's Margins of Masculinity, Slavoj Zizek's The Sublime of Ideology and Looking Awry, and Julia Kristeva's Power of Horror. Maybe some Hegel on slavery and bondage. Perhaps a little Sartre on existential plights. I don�t know.

*I ended up on the other side of Stamford Hill at 1.30am last Friday because I was so engrossed in the Confederacy. I ended up backing-tracking over a mile on foot because there were no buses. On my journey I got accosted by a very out-of-it woman who reeked of something chemical and passed a gang of Hasidic Jews in their round beaver hats vehemently discussing something in Yiddish until one of them started laughing huge belly laughs and the street rang. They all patted each other on the back after that and continued on their way.

So much to think about.

****emmms