1. Amanda Palmer has mentioned a couple of times in her blog that most of her friends from the house/commune where she lived during college are now dead. Now, I kind of assumed that they were going to be rockstar/artist lifestyle things like being stabbed by your lover in a garret, or suicide. In the same way that other high-risk groups, like soldiers, have atypical views of their own mortality, I thought that maybe this house where AFP lived might have had the whole "live fast,die young" motto going on. But in fact, every one of these people died from diseases and car crashes and things. In other words, total out-of-the blue accidents, in most cases. I cannot imagine what it would be like if in fifteen years from now all of my friends from university/school were dead. It is horrifying, especially as one of the things I learnt about myself when I moved to London was that I am not very good at making close friends from strangers. I was talking about this with some of my friends from school today and although we have all moved to different continents and countries (America, New Zealand, ... Edinburgh) we are stil very close and, hopefully, will remain so. It 's a scary thought that it is entirely possible that just through chance and the way of the world, by the time I am 30 I might not know any of these people at all.

2. Today was one of those days where we were in Tchai Ovna til 10pm. Time well-spent, I think. I must figure out how to post photos from my new cameraphone, because everything Shirley says and does can only be amplified in its floundering campness by the addition of a camera. I learnt this when gossamer_tune posted a video of  Shirley chasing a puppy. Three minutes of innocent bliss, I think. I think his limbs are at least a foot longer than a normal person's. Maybe that is where all his excess awesomeness is stored.

3. As of today, I have seen The Spirit twice. In the same cinema. In a week. It did not depreciate in comedy value, perhaps because sweetmintmojo was there this time, making loud choking noises at the part where Samuel L. Jackson makes crazy-eyes at the camera and declaims about Hercules' blood being the "missing link between magic and science". SLJ has some prime crazy-eyed speachmaking skills in that movie.

4. Last night I did get a little worried about my lowbrow tastes in entertainment, however, as when I was round at sweetmintmojo's house her parents were talking about the Harvey Milk biopic and I piped up "Oh yes, I really want to see that, and also, it has a cameo of Ryan from High School Musical!" Even their 11-year-old daughter looked at me with disgust. The thing is, I'm not going to see that film because of this, I want to see it because a) it is by all accounts an extremely good film and I am interested in US political history, and b) I have viewed Harvey Milk as a hero for quite some time. It's just that Grace's parents already know all about social inequality and history and so forth (they are a journalist and a writer/80s pop idol) and I felt I could contribute a little pop-culture knowledge to the conversation.

This kind of thing makes me miss hanging out with my old highschool friends Mairi and Flossie (with whom I will be going to see Britney this summer), because they are the only people I know who, like me, do not have "guilty pleasures". I do like some things ironically (for example: B-movies. Most students love B-movies. They go well with cheap booze, Q.E.D.) but when I like something "bad" in an unironic way, I don't go all coy and ashamed about it like most people do, and sometimes it does worry me that more intellectual people (like Grace's parents) will then view me as shallow. But I think my way is actually a lot healthier in a self-worth sense. For example, why is it that people are so hard on Britney? It is perfectly understandable if you don't like her music or you object to her non-feminist image, but it irritates me when people say, "Oh no, indie guitar rock is so much more worthy." Britney Spears is basically a showgirl with hundreds of producers, choreographers, songwriters and image consultants backing her up. Comparatively speaking, she is an opera diva while all those unknown indie rockers are the unwashed troubadours. And if they sold as many records as Britney, they would be "bad taste" as well.
 

Hmm, I seem to have got a little off track. But my basic point is: don't have guilty pleasures and you will be a much happier person, THE END.