Diary of an up and coming sociopath

After work on Friday Nikki went back home to drive her sister up to an open day. Thus I spent saturday morning communing with the inside of my eyelids having opted, as ever, to skip the whole getting up debacle.

It wasn’t an entirely wasted day though, because I took out some time between sleeping and eating to listen to the Bright Eyes album “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn” (verdict: Not bad. Definitely worth more investigation.) and read the book I bought on Friday.

One of the things I did on Friday, see, was buy Optic Nerve #9 from Foyles, which contains the first part of the story from issue #10 which I bought a few weeks ago. Because It felt absolutely dumb to be paying for something that costs like £2 with my card, I thought I’d treat myself to a new book as well. You may have noticed that I’m especially fond of doing is treating myself to new purchases just after I get paid. Still, I chose a slimline version of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis because like most people, my familiarity with the book doesn’t extend past the first line.

Anyway, I read that on Saturday, and was plenty impressed. It’s clearly the kind of text that literary types will really get their teeth into, and as an amateur interested in that sort of shite I found it incredibly gripping, as each new development allowed for more interpretation and the augmentation or contradiction of existing ideas. Plus, it’s quite a good story. A depressing one though. Which is arguably my favourite kind, because nothing cheers me up more than a horrendously bleak ending for all involved (it wasn’t bleak for everyone in this case, I guess, though maybe it was for different reasons. Oh, I dunno. The main character got utterly shafted, that’s enough to make me happy).

I had very few expectations about it when I went into the book, but coming out I’m glad to have read it. I’ve read some books that are famously excellent and been disappointed. For the record: I disliked Catcher in the Rye quite a lot the first time, mainly because I totally missed a large part of the story (and because of the colloquialisms driving me up the wall) and I’ve never been able to get even halfway into On The Road because it’s the most tedious book I’ve ever read. One day I’ll conquer it, but I’ll need a supply of legal, over the counter wake-up drugs, and possibly a pin to jab myself with.

The plan is to investigate more Kafka, anyway. Tom reckons he’ll send me The Trial when he’s done with it because he’s not finding it to his tastes, but I did find a spanish e-text of The Metamorphosis so he’s going to give that a shot.

Because I’ve been unable to report back on it, I’d just like to record that the Turkey experiment was a success. I had Turkey for literally every meal between Sunday and Thursday, but as noted, I ate out on Friday and on Saturday I ceased to trust the integrity of the meat. I’m going to have to check out how long cooked meat is good for, because the idea of throwing away perfectly edible poulty like that…it hurts.