However:

I've listened to Bruce Springsteen's "Growin' Up" twenty times today.

The girl who sits next to me in Philosophy of Language and who today whispered conspiratorally: "I love logic. I want to cuddle it" is totally my new friend.

Please let me never reach the point where I take things that are supposed to be fun- logic, pop music, comic books- so seriously I can't enjoy them. I don't want to be a joyless indie pop snob who's too cool to dance or won't listen to a band that's on Elektra. I don't want to look down on anybody who reads X-Men and I don't want to freak out over a bent cover. I don't want to be that boy in my seminar who acts so weary of philosophy and so unkind towards philosophers I don't know why he bothers.

Here is a brilliant example of people actually having fun with the things they love. I wish I could have been there.

The home stretch

Finally back in my own room after spending last night sleeping under my coat in a small room in 44 Green Street. It wasn't so bad, really- it had good scope for imagination and I gave myself a nice dinner to make up for it. I had extremely stressful dreams, though. I had hoped to sleep until Washburn was opened, but this proved impossible, so I went downtown instead and had a bagel. Then I came home and, to rid myself of four days' dirt and grime, I flossed, brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth with Listerine, took a shower, cleaned my room, and brushed my teeth again. I now feel somewhat more human. The plan is to (any minute now) spend the rest of today doing homework, because I am now in the home stretch. There are just about four more weeks before winter break, so there's no putting anything off. I have to buckle down.

Wrapped Up In Books

Have I mentioned recently that it's my birthday on Friday? Well, if you can't be self-absorbed on your weblog, where can you, I say. Today I got a present from my paternal grandparents. I suspect it's a book, although it's a little on the small side. Hopefully it's not a pocket-size New Testament or something (although I have been wishing recently that I had a Bible). My grandparents have on several occasions given me books which I have absolutely resisted reading, and I've managed to hold out for years on some occasions... and then when I eventually do read them, they become my favorite books. I'm thinking in particular of I Capture the Castle, which I wouldn't read and wouldn't read and oh my goodness what a spectacular book it turned out to be in the end. Do I learn from these experiences? Of course not. I still have a book on the shelf in Lillian's room that Grandma and Grandpa gave me maybe three years ago which I have never opened. It's probably amazing.

However, I am very much like Lillian in this respect, or rather, she is very much like me: neither of us will ever read a book we're told to read. Oh, we love reading, we consume books as though they were oxygen, but we're both terrifically lazy (sorry Lills) and don't like to read anything outside our normal realms. I've gotten better about this since coming to college, and I find it's helpful to turn it into one of my crazy rules: go to the library every fortnight and check out one Comfort/Fun read, one Required Reading, and one Wild Card. Left to our own devices, Lillian and I would just read the same couple of books ad infinitum long past the time when we'd memorized every word.

Let me try to make a list of the books I've read lately, in backwards chronological order:

• Moab is My Washpot (unfinished)
  
• Three Scientists and Their Gods (unfinished)
• Beyond the Limits of Thought (unfinished)
• The Liar
• Everything is Illuminated
• Middlesex (for the second time)

Oh bother. Further back I simply cannot remember although I'm always reading something. This gives a fair picture, though- I'm a chain reader (I like to read books that connect or lead into one another) and a repetitive reader. And I'm probably never going to finish Beyond the Limits of Thought (because it's well beyond my limits, I'm afraid) or Three Scientists and Their Gods (because it's dreadful).

Okay, well, I expect I'll be finishing Moab around Friday, and I hereby solemnly swear that if the little package from my grandparents is a book, I will have an earnest go at it. Unless it is, in fact, the Bible. Well, okay, even then.

The Liar

Stephen Fry is a thief. Not only did he steal somebody's credit cards and the pocket change of all his public school classmates, he also stole an entire character (Psmith) from P.G. Wodehouse and entire scenes from my life. Stephen Fry, stop listening in at my window, writing down what you hear, changing all the pronouns, going back in time 15 years and putting it in a novel. It's definitely not on.

Keep on plagarizing P.G. Wodehouse, though - I'm emphatically okay with that.

By post

One decided advantage to having Thanksgiving in New York this year is that, since I won't see most of my relatives until Christmas, they seem to have all sent me parcels in the mail. That, at least, is what I assume to be the explanation for the five package slips in my mailbox this afternoon. Two of them were marked as envelopes, and I was expecting a rather important envelope from my mother, so I turned those two in. Sure enough, one of them was the China info from my mum (including an exceptionally long letter, which was nice, as she normally confines herself to a sentence or two). The other was a big yellow envelope from my Aunt Carol and Uncle Bruce, which I have not opened because I am so very full of self restraint. *cough* Incidentally tonight at dinner Kendra was telling one of her long Kendra stories about her incredible hulklike rage and I was smiling and nodding and sipping my tea when out of nowhere I choked and spit a big mouthful of tea back into the mug- so unladylike. I think I may have to get myself a Sippy Cup, in accordance with a slight trend I've noticed among my housemates.

I also got a card from my Aunt Grace, which I also did not open, and the these communications are now between my records and my comic books (oh I am so cool) waiting for Friday. I think I'll pick up one package a day until then, because I've never had so many packages before and I am not likely to again- I ought to spread it out.

Thank you!

Here are some thank yous:

• Thank you, dining services, for having omelettes at breakfast this morning.
• Thank you, Associated Colleges in China, for handling all the visa stuff for me. Because I don't even know what a visa is, to be honest.
• Thank you, Chris H*rdin, for bringing your CD player and your speakers and your many, many wires, alligator clips, and mysterious circuitry items to class today to show us what happens when you take the derivative and the integral of John Coltrane.
• Thank you, LunaFest film festival, for the free Luna Bars you're giving away in the campus center.
• Thank you, Kendra, for reading Wittgenstein to me in German.
• Thank you, girl working at the circulation desk of the Mt Holyoke library, for helping me figure out your architecturally complicated building with its many many floors.

The Mt Holyoke library is vastly overrated. Everyone says it's so much nicer than ours but on the inside they look pretty much the same. However, now I can satisfy my intense Stephen Fry craving and do research for my thesis this weekend, and what more could you ask for?

You Said It

I've often said that you know things are bad when you listen to Steve Earle and really relate to every word he says, even though a lot of it is about heroin abuse. Today is one of those days. Other musicians to avoid relating to:

• Elliott Smith
• Elton John
• Lucinda Williams
• Kathleen Edwards
• Freedy Johnston
• Bob Dylan

Musicians I wish I could relate to for a change:

• All Girl Summer Fun Band
• Fred Astaire
  
• Sprites
• Anyone who sings about how life is not constantly THWARTING THEM.