>> I would be hammering you with another one of those tedious "Why am I such a loathsome fuckup?" blog entries right now, but I simply can't bear to inflict another one on you, nor do I have the mental organization needed to compose one. My brain is fucking mush right now; it's just a pile of grunting lizard responses. Every time I try to make it do something that would be good for me -- book a last-minute trip to Nice, for example -- it screams out WE FEAR CHANGE WE FEAR CHANGE and dredges up something good and awful from my recent past that makes me cringe in submission and remember why I never take risks.

So. Instead of writing a new "it's all shit" post, why don't I just have you read my very first one from November 10th, 2000. It was only the fifteenth post in the blog's history. DIDN'T TAKE LONG, EH?

You know, just about every decision I've made in the last few months was the wrong one?

>> (1.) Why didn't I buy the new White Stripes album when I saw it at Camden Market last week? It was eleven pounds, which is only a pound more than I'd pay for it on the 31st...

(2.) Why can't I make myself write fiction the way I want to?

(3.) Why does looking at my short stories from last semester give me a physical feeling of nausea and revulsion, like recalling something horribly embarassing I'd done in puberty? And if I know that they suck, why am I incapable of gut-renovating them, finding myself stuck purely in the territory of surface-polish? And are they so crappy that my application for Advanced Fiction Workshop will be rejected? I got in last year, but that was a different instructor...

(4.) How much will hostels cost in Nice and Barcelona if I just go down there this week on my spring break? Will they be megaskeevy? And am I daring enough to set foot alone in a country where I don't even remotely speak the language, i.e. Spain, or am I a tremendous pussy? (Actually, I think I know the answer to that one.)

(5.) Should I make the switch from boxers to boxer-briefs?

(6.) Will my new catch-phrase, "I'm going to swallow a grenade and tackle (insert name of thing which is pissing me off here)," bring me to the unwanted attention of law-enforcement officials?

(7.) Does anything matter?

(8.) Damn, why DIDN'T I buy that White Stripes album? It's so damn good!

Any satisfactory answers to these and other questions in the comments, please.

>> Two new Photolog entries and three new MP3s now on offer. Updating those sections doesn't tax the brain too much and creates new content that should entertain everyone for a good five minutes, so three cheers!

I'm quite far behind on a lot of important things. I need to finalize my housing arrangements for next year -- at the moment it looks like I'm just gonna try my luck at getting a single room in a cool dorm. I'm a senior and have generated enough lottery points to do it, with any luck, but who knows. I could end up in a very very shitty arrangement. I also haven't given a single thought to my class schedule next year, but I just learned that if I want to get into a Creative Writing workshop, which I have to do in order to complete my minor, then the application is due in three days. Woops. On top of all this, I haven't done anything to arrange any form of travel over spring break. Which is next week.

Procrastination is nothing new, of course, but I figured I'd just keep everyone posted (and put all the tasks I have to face down in black and white so I can stop evading them).

And I don't want to talk about it too much, but all the nonsense surrounding my abortive birthday celebration just reminded me how much I miss New York. There are certain things about being here, now, that I really love, but at the end of the day my life would probably be going a lot better if I was home in NYC. Maybe. Ah fuck who can say things like that? In any event, I can't stop thinking it and that's what's doing my head in...

>> Go Shawty, it's yah birthday...

I complain a lot on this weblog about the ways in which my life has no forward momentum. And it's true: at this time last year I was upset about my indecisiveness, my inability to keep to a regular program of self-improvement, and assorted other issues that continue to bug the shit out of me. But if I really want to sit back and take a look at what's happened to me since my last birthday, it's fairly remarkable. Two weeks after turning twenty, I met the man I would later fall in love with, and I've managed to keep that feeling -- and a relationship -- going for almost one full year. I've had a sea change in the way I look at what I'll do with my life, and while no answers to questions that change has raised appear forthcoming, at least it's got me thinking again instead of operating on auto-pilot. And I've sensed a gradual reawakening in my study and reading habits that's beginning to look less like a fling with intellectual responsibility and more like a permanent endeavour. And all three of those things are very, very pleasing indeed. So. Happy birthday to me: my life's going on.

It would take far, far too long to document all the craziness that went down in the Ten Days Thereof, so I'm not going to try, except to say that I had a fantastic time and to thank Josh, Sandra, Becky, Jeremy, my sister Cathy, Cameron, Hallah, her sister Netta (spelled properly?), and all the nameless others who crossed my path in that span of time. I do not thank Joe #2, since he ripped me off, but he's not reading anyway so WHO CARES!

The only thing I've treated myself to so far for my birthday is a hat at Topman. It's just a black baseball cap with white stitching, but it's unusual for me since I never, ever wear hats. Ever. Not counting the awesome self-parodic little Irishman's cap that my parents gave me for Christmas this year. I call this one my "Famous Actor Avoiding Public Scrutiny While Brunching On The Upper West Side" hat. If you live in New York, or occasionally glance at any celebrity magazine, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. Last night my sister treated me to dinner at Zaika, and if you live in London and have never been then GO GO GO -- it's at the top of Kensington High Street and it's the best damn Indian food I've ever had. It's the first Indian restaurant in London to get a Michelin Star, and my oh my does it deserve it. At your earliest convenience, though do beware that it's pricey. But worth it.

And I can't just let it slip by: It is my twenty-first birthday, so I actually drank alcohol. A little bit. My attitude towards it remains essentially the same -- i.e., why would anyone want to get drunk? -- but I'm experimenting with whether or not it really has anything to offer me, how to drink socially, etc. etc., so last night I had a gin & tonic and a Jack & Coke, both of which were basically acceptable. But since I'm not drinking for intoxication, it's not like they gave me pleasure that water and/or Coke wouldn't give me, and the latter beverages are certainly cheaper. So don't worry, I'm not turning into a lush anytime soon. And I still stubbornly refuse to allow beer to cross my lips, so standards remain high. That said, this is actually a vaguely significant development, so it bears noting...

OK, I need to try to frantically pull some kind of vague celebration together with the two friends of mine who are in town, so I'm off and out of the computer lab. DYFL.com should return to a vague sense of normality in the next few days, though I may be travelling in the first week of April, will keep you posted...

>> I'm officially entering The Ten Days Of Craziness. Josh comes into town tomorrow, and stays for a week, and the day he leaves my sister comes in for the weekend. Meanwhile, school continues throughout. Blargh.

There's plenty to say and no time and willpower to say it in and with, so I'll do my best to let it all stew in interesting ways while allowing my audience to shrink ever-further, but that's one of things that there is to say, after all, that I shouldn't care about an audience. But. There'll be time enough for that later.

I'm definitely ticking my way up to the top of the rollercoaster as we speak...

>> I spent this weekend walking. Walking, walking, walking. Walking everywhere. And now my legs hurt very, very badly.

I'm in another of my periodic "mad at myself" phases. This time it's because I didn't get up off my ass and go travelling this weekend. My Tuesday afternoon class was cancelled, so I had loads of time to travel in, and my Eurail pass is now valid for any fifteen days in March and April. But instead, I stayed in London like a stupid chump because I was too lazy or intimidated or something to book some hostel nights and just go somewhere.

"Intimidated," there's the word. The problem is, I fear new situations. A lot more strongly than I ever thought was the case. And obviously, being plopped smack-dab in the middle of a big fat new situation called "England" has brought that out in me pretty strongly, though I managed to submerge it for the first couple of months and tell myself I was just "adapting" when I would walk past the post office without sending a letter because I was too nervous. I mean, what the fuck is that?!? That's the first signs of truly crippling social anxiety disorder. So fuck that. This weekend I went to the post office and I walked. Everywhere. All around London. Seeing all of the neighborhoods that I had been idly putting off visiting.

I brought my camera along on my travels, but didn't take anywhere near enough pictures; I'm still developing a photographic eye and the manner required to just stop what you're doing and take a picture. It's the "stop and smell the roses" effect, you might say. I walk like a cannonball at all times; I have somewhere to go and nothing is going to stop me from getting there. That's not terribly conducive to the "Let's have a pleasant stroll" school of city-immersion, but I did what I could to reign it in Saturday and Sunday. Still, I only got a handful of pictures, probably enough for a sequel to the "Odds & Sods" entry somewhere down the line.

Anyway. I'm mad at myself, but I've taken the first baby steps towards correcting my laziness and my anxiety. Only every step hurts. Because my legs are so goddamn tired. (See, you thought that line would be all metaphorical, but it wasn't! Ha!)

More writing coming soon, I hope, since idleness makes the hit count go "boom" (and since I'm being shown up big-time by every blog around me -- Stuart's recounting his entire fucking life story, for God's sake, or at least the bits of it that shape his blog, and Caroline's got a truly magnificent piece of writing up at the moment. Even my boyfriend is linking to more stuff than I am). I've been grappling with the White Whale again -- my "Best Of 2002 Music" summary -- and a sickeningly comprehensive revised discussion of that topic may be anachronistically forthcoming. Plus I've seen some movies, read some books, thought about Life, all that nonsense. It's just time to summon up the energy for the never-ending wrestle with words that is writing about it all. Unfortunately the heady rush of the blog restart has already faded, but that doesn't mean I can't finally grow into maturity. It'll just take work. Sigh. Work.

>> So am I a snob, or not?

Classes at NYU-London have had me asking this question of myself a lot recently. It's an issue that had been lying pretty dormant in my life for the last year or so; there was a lot of it freshman year but much less once I started taking major-specific courses at NYU, courses where the people I was lumped in with shared, at the very least, a passion for literature and the knowledge that there was a theoretical, conceptual, and rhetorical plane we should all be inhabiting together when we discuss it (i.e., that there's a form to things which can be useful to talk about). My classes at NYU in London, however, are largely "anyone can have a go" affairs where business-school students take a course in, for example, The 20th Century British Novel or Modern Drama In Performance (these are hypotheticals, I swear) and are put shoulder-to-shoulder with people who've spent the last two and a half to three years studying these topics in detail with like-minded students.

And this makes me feel very, very alienated. Because I'm going to say something which generally, people aren't allowed to say, but it's something that I get reminded of almost every day of my life: I'm smart.

I'm an intelligent person. It's a fact. I have a predisposition towards understanding quote-unquote "academic" things like novelistic structure, narrative voice, all those things which a lot of people see as hazy, half-formed topics that can't really be discussed in any detail. This is the way I have always been, throughout my life. My high-school education was conducted at a so-called "school for the gifted," at which a minimum IQ-test score was required for entry, and at which I was kept together with people who shared my convictions and passions, or who at the very least were on the same plane with me in how they approached the outside world. That's an important phrase, "outside world," because as you can imagine a school like that really does shelter you from human experience. I don't want to be too terribly X-Men about it, but other people simply aren't like we were at that school. And if college has been teaching me anything, it's been that.

At NYU in New York in my literature classes, I would often find myself staying humbly quiet while somebody else said something surprising and insightful that I simply hadn't recognized. I was being challenged. Here, the only things challenging me are the professors and the texts, and the former haven't even been doing too terribly much of that, since they've got to keep things on a plane that everyone can participate on. I speak up when I can in class, possibly too much, and I say the sort of things that I want to hear people saying -- "Why are we sympathetic to Ian McKellen's character?" "Why was this scripted in such a fashion?" "Did that climactic scene really ring true, or were they just shouting at each other?" And as a result, I am -- you guessed it -- "the smart kid." I don't just have a persecution complex, either; my roommate told me that this was what one of our mutual acquaintances called me (not in a critical light, mind you, but still). It's infuriating, and it's a real problem, because I've already got enough social anxieties about talking to people, being friendly, and all the usual human interactions without believing that the other person, or group, thinks of me as something apart from them that they can't get anything enjoyable out of. At the same time, I hate thinking the same thing about other people -- that if I go and talk to them, they're not going to tell me anything interesting, entertaining, et cetera. And so I get progressively more walled-off with the passing of every day that I speak up in class, or don't talk down to anyone about the ways I think about literature.

And how petulant is all of this, anyway? Do I have a right to complain about something like this? "Oh, poor Chris, he's 'intelligent' so nobody wants to play with him. Boo fucking hoo." I'd like to state categorically that I don't think I'm better than these people, but to be completely honest, that's a prejudice I just can't shake. When I see people floundering at something I find utterly simple, it does give me a rush of superiority, it's true. Of course any one of these people is undoubtedly far better at something than I am -- mathematics, science, business practices, or what have you -- but this isn't just something literature-specific, it comes down to the basics of what you know about the world. We're all studying abroad in Europe, and yet the majority of my World Cities course didn't know where Rotterdam was. My roommate didn't recognize the European Union flag and he's taking two European politics courses. How am I supposed to react to this? How am I supposed to react when a professor gives me an A, says that's "what she would expect of (me)," and tells me I have "a good mind" when at the same time my comments are, in all likelihood, largely resented by the other people in the class?

This comes off as a pretty standard rant, and it's the kind of thing I really didn't want to write, but this has been weighing on me a lot recently. There's an immense social pressure for me to get along with my peers, but we're not peers, none of us are, and we don't want to be. God, I feel like an asshole, but there's no way around it, really. The hilarious thing is, I don't think I'm a good student, or even a particularly insightful guy. In my default state, I appear to be soaring past other students in the minds of various professors, but I've been disappointed by the rigor and the intensity with which I'm engaging the things I read. I should be doing more, I should be doing research and reading deeper and finding various theoretical approaches and drawing out real, practical knowledge that I can use to improve my writing and my study habits and my perception of artistic discourse. There are people in this world who have me beaten straight down to the ground in that regard. But I've got absolutely no motivation to do those things, because those people who have me beaten are nowhere in sight. There's no bar to chin up to except my own, and I've certainly proved to be a poor self-motivator in the past in every task I've set out for myself. I need someone to be there to keep me going and working harder, and when I don't have it, I'm lost.

You know, I'm starting to think that every time I write a blog post, I should just substitute my entire rant with the sentence "I'm a spoiled brat." That would put what I mean across ever so much quicker.

>> I'm doing my best to keep things interesting. You'll notice that there've been two new Photolog entries in the past twenty-four hours, and there's a new Mediablog post up now with several more on the way. I'm going to do what I can to keep a river of content flowing at this site now that I've poured so much energy and fanfare into its relaunch; let me know what I do right and what I do wrong.

And on a similar note, you'll see that I caved in and put Sitemeter up on the main blog page. It's only tracking hits to this central page, so I don't see which of the many crapulous artices I write are getting read or anything fun like that, but I am curious simply to see who's linking to me. Now that it's there, though, I will undoubtedly be checking it compulsively every five minutes until I once again see that it is a horrible disease and cast it far away once more. Blogging's for suckers.

Just to follow up on a previous loose end: you don't want to know how many CDs I went on to buy after that last post. Really, you don't. Suffice it to say that they were all very cheap and that they all satisfy me. (They'd better, since that was most of my music budget for the month of March.) If you're extremely hawk-eyed you may be able to pick out the new arrivals on the CD index page, but that's only for obsessives like myself. I never did get to the movies that day, but I did have a giant (if not terribly tasty) lasagna for dinner. So at least I'm eating again.

Speaking of eating again... let's talk about body image, shall we? Any period of metaphysical excitement such as the one I described earlier is always followed by a self-evaluative period. Longtime readers will know this sort of mood well -- "Why aren't I studying harder? Why don't I do things? Why am I not working out?" -- etc. etc. But now, I'm not just feeling complacent, I'm actually a little bit scared by the way I look -- I've always been a weakling but I think I might be straying into "dangerously thin" territory of the kind my mother's been blathering on and on about for years.

I need to bulk up and gain some muscle tone. Not only would it be good for my health, but it'd be good for my self-esteem as well. I'm still haunted by my awkward teenage years, when literally everyone I knew used to rag on me for having boy-tits. I was thin all through high school, but my chubby period in seventh / eighth grade remained with me in the form of my underdeveloped, yet strangely obese, pecs. It was more than a little embarassing. They're nowhere near as bad as they used to be, but I still perceive them to be there, if only because I haven't replaced them with muscle tissue yet. I'm not the most swaggering, confident guy in general, in all facets of my personality, but this whole issue has always been one of the root causes of my withdrawn nature. I just don't know if I've built up enough of a head of steam to overcome my laziness and embark on an honest-to-God physical improvement plan, such as Simon seems to have placed himself on to my whole-hearted respect and envy. Being abroad in a completely foreign environment makes it hard to establish any kind of routine, but this summer, perhaps, when I've settled in one place that I'm comfortable with...?

Anyway. All of this has been touched off by the fact that I bought a bottle of hair gel. Which is, perhaps, one of the funniest statements I've ever made on this site. But really, it's true. I'm not terribly fussy about my hair, or indeed, my physical appearance on the whole; I dress very discreetly (with the exception of my camo pants) and carry myself unimpressively. But ever since I entered the fascinating world of sexual activity (it's hard to underestimate just how naive I was to think that didn't matter to me from the age of thirteen to twenty), I've become much more interested in playing around with how I look, and much more interested in the things I dislike about how I look (though in the ways outlined above, not in any kind of neurotic way). So I bought a bottle of hair gel and did something bizarre with my hair today, and I rather like it. Then I wore one of my weirder shirts (a quasi-military thing that got me referred to as a butch lesbian back when I shaved my head), and I liked that too. Plus, I haven't shaved for several days. So essentially I'm trying to look like someone that you might actually -- gasp! -- want to have sex with, which I don't usually do.

(At this point Josh is probably getting very, very curious as to why I would do so when he's on the other side of the ocean. Don't worry baby, it's just personal discovery, I promise. ;-D)

Like a total chump, I left my USB cable at home or I could show you a picture right now... I'll try to get one up tomorrow, and you can sound off on whether it works for me or not. Superficial? Sure. But vaguely exciting, too, as are all new things. And since I normally avoid anything remotely new, I'm even more infatuated with the concept than, perhaps, I should be...

>> First, some administrative business: You all know there are some free songs waiting for you in the MP3s section, right? They're good 'uns, too, I promise.

Also: you may or may not have noticed that I've stripped all hit-tracking software off of the site, so I have no idea how many people are coming to visit or how many people even know the site is back. God knows I've driven enough readers away with the miserable irregularity of service around these parts. My point is, I've got no way of knowing who's visiting the site beyond comments, e-mail, TrackBack and the occasional stumbled-upon link on other weblogs. On the one hand, this is somewhat liberating, but on the other hand, it's a bit frustrating. If you have opinions on the subject of whether or not I should start tracking my stats again, do let me know...

I'm in a consumptive mood today. By which I do not mean I'm coughing blood into a lace hanky. I mean that I'm possessed by an overwhelming need to spend money on things. This is probably my second-most commonly experienced mood, shortly behind "Too lazy to leave bed / chair / apartment / country."

I was on my way up to campus for the usual internet nonsense when the Piccadilly train I was on started sitting in the station at Piccadilly Circus. For a long, long time. Eventually I just gave up and resolved to walk to school; Bedford Square certainly isn't too terribly far away from Piccadilly anyway. I had forgotten, however, that HMV lay between me and my destination. And about thirty minutes later, I was twelve pounds poorer and three CDs richer (You've got to admit, though, that's a pretty damn good deal! It's all synth-pop -- The PSB's Disco 2 for three pounds and New Order's Power, Corruption & Lies and Republic for four and five, respectively).

But now the dam has burst. I hunger for more. HMV's clearout sale was massively enticing, with at least a dozen other albums I could've picked up in a heartbeat (mmm, Suede... mmm, Iggy Pop...), and the double-feature of The Hours and The Pianist that Jeremy and I took in on Thursday (you'll hear about them in the Mediablog, I should think) has got me wanting to see more films before the Oscars, so I can finally be the snooty bastard who knows what all these movies are when they win or lose and can therefore be righteously outraged without being a poseur. Plus, I'm fucking starving. I haven't been eating terribly well, since my highly irregular schedule, and atrocious spending habits, make grocery shopping a pain in the ass. I really want to eat a massive pile of food today. So I think I will. I think I will do all of these things. God knows that if I go see a movie near Leicester Square, I'm not going to be able to keep myself away from HMV...

If you see me in the street, stop me. I'm supposed to be saving up for travel now that my Eurail pass is valid (March & April). I must see Dublin. But being a consumer whore just feels... sooooo... good...