I'm a star, I'm a star, I'm, I'm a STAR.
So what happened was, I was getting violently wound up by basically anything anyone said on the intertubes, and rather than hang around getting more angry and annoyed that my flat is about as hospitable as an iceberg, I took my butt to Pak and got some hairdye (pictures later) and then took my butt a little further to the British Library; where else, after all, am I guaranteed peace and quiet and the opportunity - nay, the obligation - to read a damn book without anyone saying a word?
And so it was that I passed a pleasant couple of hours in the BL, eating a muffin and reading about extended phenotypes, surrounded by a lot of people with laptops and enormous ring binders all very dilligently scowling at things and taking notes. Students ACTUALLY STUDYING, what is this madness? I'm sure they never did that at MY (admittedly extremely awful) university. Separated from the not-conducive-to-concentration environs of my bloody flat, I read a lot, made some weird and not wholly related notes in which I used the phrase "larval trauma" more times than I think anyone has ever done in the history of language (has anyone ever used that phrase?) and blah. I may/may not NaNo. My divided mind owes more to just being blazingly angry with all literate entities at the moment than it does with my lack of umpf for writing or for the story (basically I cannot get the internalised constructs of a thousand shitty wankers in my head to shut up for long enough to allow me to ENJOY ANYTHING; I wish there was some way I could UNREAD all the shit they've said and give myself breathing room).
And theeeeeeen I went to the British Library giftshop/bookshop because it is usually an excellent source of swag, kind of like most of the museum gift shops around London (V&A for jewellery and hats, Natural History Museum & Science Museum for toys and exciting useful shit, London Museum for books and t'ing...) and then somehow this turned into a SUDDEN BURST OF IMPULSIVE SELF-PROMOTION and now I have the email address of the book buyer for the shop and no idea what to say to the lady. Impressively I think I managed to switch gears from "stock my work I am honestly not an axe-murderer" to "everything I do is a terrible waste of time" and back again about five times in the course of a ten minute conversation, and then I wandered around the book shop jotting down titles and trying not to be overcome by the crushing knowledge that I'd just gone and tried to talk to someone about stocking my stupid shitty poetry while wearing a scarf indoors. NO THAT'S FINE I WAS AWARE THAT I WAS A GIANT WANKY CLICHE. O God I hate writers the MOST.
On the plus side I did get Holly's birthday present (I had been looking at Things for Holly yesterday as well but this seems much more appropriate as gifts go).
Anyway half a day alone in a library in the company of Richard Dawkins talking about stuff he knows about (teh biolols) rather than stuff he just has occasionally very embarrassing OPINIONS ON, plus the muffin and whatnot, has proven a pleasant if temporary balm on my apparently unstoppable rage. I think in future I may need to take more trips to places where I can sit and read, as my house is bad at being one of them.
And so it was that I passed a pleasant couple of hours in the BL, eating a muffin and reading about extended phenotypes, surrounded by a lot of people with laptops and enormous ring binders all very dilligently scowling at things and taking notes. Students ACTUALLY STUDYING, what is this madness? I'm sure they never did that at MY (admittedly extremely awful) university. Separated from the not-conducive-to-concentration environs of my bloody flat, I read a lot, made some weird and not wholly related notes in which I used the phrase "larval trauma" more times than I think anyone has ever done in the history of language (has anyone ever used that phrase?) and blah. I may/may not NaNo. My divided mind owes more to just being blazingly angry with all literate entities at the moment than it does with my lack of umpf for writing or for the story (basically I cannot get the internalised constructs of a thousand shitty wankers in my head to shut up for long enough to allow me to ENJOY ANYTHING; I wish there was some way I could UNREAD all the shit they've said and give myself breathing room).
And theeeeeeen I went to the British Library giftshop/bookshop because it is usually an excellent source of swag, kind of like most of the museum gift shops around London (V&A for jewellery and hats, Natural History Museum & Science Museum for toys and exciting useful shit, London Museum for books and t'ing...) and then somehow this turned into a SUDDEN BURST OF IMPULSIVE SELF-PROMOTION and now I have the email address of the book buyer for the shop and no idea what to say to the lady. Impressively I think I managed to switch gears from "stock my work I am honestly not an axe-murderer" to "everything I do is a terrible waste of time" and back again about five times in the course of a ten minute conversation, and then I wandered around the book shop jotting down titles and trying not to be overcome by the crushing knowledge that I'd just gone and tried to talk to someone about stocking my stupid shitty poetry while wearing a scarf indoors. NO THAT'S FINE I WAS AWARE THAT I WAS A GIANT WANKY CLICHE. O God I hate writers the MOST.
On the plus side I did get Holly's birthday present (I had been looking at Things for Holly yesterday as well but this seems much more appropriate as gifts go).
Anyway half a day alone in a library in the company of Richard Dawkins talking about stuff he knows about (teh biolols) rather than stuff he just has occasionally very embarrassing OPINIONS ON, plus the muffin and whatnot, has proven a pleasant if temporary balm on my apparently unstoppable rage. I think in future I may need to take more trips to places where I can sit and read, as my house is bad at being one of them.