Even by the standards of my frosty, shallow heart, the hatred I harbour for moving day can only be called "remarkable." Right up alongside my birthday, Christmas, Halloween, the day we have to put the bins out, the day I have to get a haircut, the annual saturday afternoon when I realise Liverpool won't win the league this season (this, of course, was biannual in 2009) and everyone else's birthdays too (oddly, Valentine's day I quite like). I hate packing stuff, belongings, feeling the double weight of both the materialism it suggests of one's life and also its complexity - the realisation that in fact, you are packing many of your things somewhere short of the organisation you had mentally assured yourself you would get them to. I hate the very word belong-ing, for both its first and second syllables. I don't know how I survived in those years, roughly 2004 and 2006, when 'moving day' occured no less than 6 times! Now, in 2009, even with the ambition of "packing light," the items are too many and their individual meaning too real and nauseating.

I imagine myself as Franklin Wheeler, expecting life to suddenly spring into a particular kind of order on Revolutionary Road - except I am outside the story, I know how this book ends. I am a 21st century man! able to treat such ideas of change and epiphany with all the proper cynicism. Maybe I am Franklin Wheeler, also, when I see a path to security and regularity and I allow only dim registration of the fact that it won't pass through the same post-code as adventure. I am not a romantic, so maybe I shan't let that bother me too much. I can see, however, how hard it is to keep things turning over in more ways than one. I am not April Wheeler, this I know for certain; I might even know what I want, but I could never state it.

I don't know if Revolutionary Road is written in a level way; for me, it has the feel of a spot on Man's Book About Relationships, and it makes sense to have a quote from Nick Hornby grace the back cover. It is beautifully written, it is quietly brutal. It seems not so much to have "something to say" as plenty of things to get off its chest. Its depiction of internal politics, the careful way it allows a hope to become a terror and a baby to become a gambling chip is astonishing. I remember watching Vera Drake and not really "getting it"; a typical example of a story that made sense and was well made but on top of that you're not sure quite what you're watching. From the same era, Revolutionary Road treads a terrifying psychological path and for me much more strongly indicates the need for legal and accessible abortion, without ever making me think that that is all that is needed. Finally, I can't help but admire the way that the book is written, pushing the reader ahead of itself, forcing them to get there a couple of pages ahead, but never 10. That, for me, underlines the perfect psychological inhabitation Yates has of his characters.

So, my DVD collection, such as it was, has become a redux DVD collection, and that's fine. There are airfields to be photographed (even as I bemoan the state of the planet) and hours to be logged. Even though I only saw it last about 10 days ago, I had to bring Falling Down, a beautiful film even in its silliness, possibly Schumacher's best, which concisely shows that our interaction with "real, everyday life" has little to do with mundanity. Armed with a small arsenal of deadly weapons, Bill Foster informs the world he just wants to go home. But also, so close to his destination, he ends up making a deeply human realisation, one of my favourite lines in any film.

"I'm the bad guy? How did that happen?"

And, of course, if you've never been there, we need go no further.

Man, I hate driving. I suck at it, I don't like it, I don't want to become good at it, particularly, I don't want to do it much or ever. I don't understand "car people." I don't find it even remotely conscionable where public transport options exist. I am, in the final breakdown, rather down on driving. I plan to become good enough to pass a test soon. Soon.

I can't imagine how galling it would be to fail a driving test and know I'm going to undergo the whole painful experience again, and relatively soon. For this reason, I summon all the focus I have ever had each lesson. TV and the internet means this is in short supply, and an hour and a half is tiring. I don't really care to pass first time; I just don't want to take it twice.

After that, what use will this time be? I don't know. Treading water and building rafts I guess. Ticking a box on forms, being ready to drive to the hospital in the dead of night. Damn, I hate driving.

Meanwhile I find diversion on the internet: http://deadmaneating.blogspot.com/ is fascinating.

Meanwhile the time I spent on poetry a while back makes sense and I really enjoy reading Auden, Clare and cummings to myself. What a knobber.

Meanwhile I love; The Raincoats; Kickball; We All Have Hooks For Hands; Iran; Sweet Potato; Railcars; Polvo. I don't get Vivian Girls; Blank Dogs; Supersuckers; Fleet Foxes.

Meanwhile, damnit, I still love Les Etoiles and will review the new album a week before it comes out. Get the previous album if you haven't already, it's a free download from RoR. It was one of my favourite albums of last year and deserves attention; it is fragile and heart-rendingly melancholic. I also recommend Sweet Potato's album MASH, and I think I finally "get" the demented genius of Talk Less, Say More (that's not to say it is easy to listen to)

Meanwhile, my most eminently rewatchable films are; Three Kings; Collateral; Highlander; The Edukators; Adaptations; Donnie Darko; Chinatown; Swimming With Sharks; American Psycho; Closely Observed Trains. Sideways fails the test.

September! Tell me something about September I don't already know. Soon it will be time to sleep.

Dear Fellow Shareholder,

Hordes of camwhores! I'm definitely twitching now. Well, before we set off I drank two cups and it's ok, I'm fine but I'm thinking about my button fly and I know that no sane person designed it. Man it's a long way to the cloakroom from the bottom of your house's drive. I'm not running. If traditional ways of losing weight are not for you, forget about it.

If you dream of wearing your "skinny jeans" again, forget about it.

Release your fantasies tonight. Well, ok. I made the tea so weak it's like tea-flavoured milk. It's like chewing on leaves or something. Get hard-on of one passing thought. Lot of protein anyway. Unleash lion inside you! Epicureanism! Give her amorous burst. By the time you get this e-mail, I might be dead. Well, that's the thing ain't it. Stop serving the machines of death, pouring more and more of your vitality into those ghastly treadmills. These screens are giving me a splitting headache. Exhale light jiff yet?

Start day-today! Show your true power helping small poles grow. She'll spread legs if you'll get bigger banyan.

That's the appeal of all the money I never saw the point in earning. Get your own place. I mean, are you gonna bring a chick back to this place? THIS PLACE? Dave's asleep on the sofa only half dressed. The top half. Be proud while naked! Matt and his girlfriend have turned the corridor into a wardrobe. A landfill for linen. Vulcanizer for your hot-stick! Get incredible sizing profit in pants. Got to do something about my sizing profit before I hit 25. Get a place with a garden. Believe in your loveluck! Get hose growth everyday, and do not forget.

I want to shave my eyebrows off, really do it this time. I guess I'll get sweat in my eyes. I could never shave my head but maybe my eyebrows. Maybe photoshop me first to see what it might look like. I don't want to be too much of a freak. Not Barnum-level.

So what if they don't grow back straight? Never saw the use in them, even when I was a kid and I found a use for all sorts of stuff. I still have this shitty statue of Paddington Bear that I painted, his face a thick muddy green and his coat a putrid dark blue that hasn't faded in 16 years. The same fluorescent yellow golf ball nestled in his hand - I have 50 golf balls and 20 golf clubs but I have never played golf.

Apart from some pitch'n'putt 10 years ago. You see what I mean. Stamps with Albert Sabin on them, the Silver Surfer. A mini millennium edition of the New Testament, half the size of a yoghurt pot, that means I go to church at 11.30 every Christmas Eve, and some other things. I have never thrown out a can of deodorant, I don't know if I've even ever used one up, there is no reason to know. I have about twenty 14% full cans of deodorant sat on that shelf and they just migrate further to the back year by year. A decade of underused deodorant, Christmas and birthday (not lately though, hah!) so thanks Auntie J. Underused deodorant - probably people notice. Get a watch your wrist would be proud of. Feel free to PR it.

Our generation never even knew Polio. Honestly, the idea that invisible stuff can strike you down, it's not real is it? Unless you get hit with the virtuous HIV, but that makes sense too. It's comical but we fear it like crazy, we keep track of the 1000s of things that can give you cancer but we don't stop and realise cancer's very much a part of us. Can we avoid it? Sure, but what for?

The inauguration of an online exposition of blathering I am invited to contribute to is becoming ever nearer. The domain has been set. A theme has been tentatively mooted (we intend to take it in turns to pick the topic). Participants are a-quiver.

The theme may be homosexuality.

I don't mean to drama things up from the start, but this does make me feel a bit apprehensive. There's something uncomfortable about 4 straight people sharing their thoughts, however earnest, on homosexuality and issues therein. If there's one thing we straights are meant to have learnt, over the years, from our various thought-crimes against minorities, is that we should speak for our fucking selves, and remember that's all we're doing. I'm not sure there are many things that could be said about homosexuality that fall within my remit.Anyway, that same loss of comfort could well result in some real creativity. Maybe one of us will turn out to be awkwardly closeted - I suppose we can only wait and hope. Maybe it'll be me!

I don't know what I'm going to write about, but I want to keep it to an area where I can add value, and not merely re-hash. Film, music, sport, science, probably, not all at once. I have some half-baked ideas. I would appreciate any advice for reading material.

For fun, here are the results from my music collection of typing "gay" search terms into winamp (this is typically how I start writing anything):

"Gay" returns 3 hits. These are "Totally Gay, Totally Fat" by Oxford Collapse, "There Are No Gay Cowboy's" [sic] by April Fools at Disneyland (from the seminal Jade Goody's Cancer album), and A Perfect Circle's cover of "What's Going On" (this mystified me until I realised the original artist was included in the file information.
"Lesb" returns none.
"Homo" 1. "S.S. Homo" by Audacity. I can only imagine this is meant to be ironic.
"Queer" 1. The Flaming Lips' "Pilot Can At The Queer Of God." From Transmissions, naturally.
"Fag" also returns hits for "sarcofagus" and "snuffaluffagus." With these removed, 7 tracks remain: "I'm Still Your Fag" by Broken Social Scene, and the "I'm Fucking Dead" 7" by Fag Cop, a band name presumably chosen for 2 reasons: i) irony ii) offensiveness.

Man on radio (approximately, you're going to have to trust me to give the jist fairly accurately): "It's very good that Susan Boyle went on the programme and displayed her talent, and impressed a good number of people. It really improved the image of people with learning disabilities. However, once she became famous we needed to take more care of how we treated her, and show more understanding of her condition."

( susan boyle, societal role, liberalism/utilitarianism, on the road, blah, self-indulgent shit )</div>

I try not to fall into a naturalistic fallacy. I like to think I am not that stupid. But I do know that as we stray from stable biological/sociological conformations the stress we come under doubles and redoubles. A happy society of peoples will be in harmony with their material nature - not that we can hope to understand this soon. Yet another argument against design: who would design a race of creatures that could never be made happy?

Sometimes it takes a lot to fall in love with a song.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Grinding down the same pathways day after day sets the mind, defines it and grinds it into a submission. It's hard to believe anything exists outside that. As the fibres our thoughts weave across deaden, their properties are stabilised and no branching off is possible. I've reached a point where it's impossible to conceive of any branching off taking place, ever.

( A few of my thoughts about The One AM Radio - This Too Will Pass )

And, back to "You Can Still Run," when he refers to the situation as a "tightening knot", this too is exact. With a week to go 'til exams, that is where I am, at the centre of a tightening knot. I quite fancy being one of his characters; happy in a blissful, broken, sleepy, sad way. I only fear that I lack their resolve, or their creator's wisdom.

Take pity on my examiners, not me. Right-click-view-image if you want to zoom in.

Strange numbness in my fourth finger on my left hand. Possible explanations include leprosy and numerous other things. I'm guessing it's leprosy.

Sometimes when you allow your mind to roam it will pick up a tantalising fragment of a song, a few bars, an intro or a particular turn of expression in a long-forgotten chorus. I imagine most people beat their head against the wall from time to time trying to remember when they heard that. If the expression is from a novel or a poem it's far harder to place. Films are maybe a little easier. I stress I'm talking about my own rememberances, not the snippets others recall. Often it takes ages to find these things again, sometimes we just give up (not often, for me), and ultimately the answer is rarely the source of joy that we imagine it will be.

Anyway. Lately I had such an instance and resolved it within 30 seconds. It was from Islands' album Return to the Sea. I am very pleased - this is far superior to the usual struggling.

In fact, lately I've been grasping these fragments far quicker than usual. I doubt my memory is improving, however. It is far more likely that the things I know have been streamlined, so I've discarded much of the more annoying ephemera.

I'm getting that unsettled feeling again. Everything inside me is too real - I'm being weighed down and pulled on by the fearful depth of existence, and I can't hold it back. It would be better if it were outside me, better still if it existed less. It halts me before I can reach that productive rhythm and toys with me if I try to beat it back with meditation. It's going to be over soon, but there's no way of knowing in advance if it will strengthen or diminish me. I'm awaiting an execution, but wearing my sunday best, just in case.

We've been here before, many times. There's a rich modern history with no heritage before it. There's a loathing we can acknowledge as special. There's nothing but fear, hope and their embodiments in memory. It's hard to believe we would put ourselves through this again, but impossible to imagine how we could drag ourselves out of this game. Every year we will have something to prove or to defend, every year we will be threatened again.

This is the bizarre fear that has accompanied Liverpool's ascendence in European games, and latterly in the league. There is a great deal more to lose as a contender than there is for an outsider. There is more to be afraid of, terror that glories of the past are becoming distant and diminished and that in their place remain only victories by most hated foe.

Garcia's goal was nearly 4 years ago; it doesn't feel like 4 years. Eidur Gudjohnsen's volley is there every time I close my eyes. Sometimes when I'm panicking I lower my eyelids and it goes in. It has been difficult to forget about last year, too. I don't remember the goals Chelsea scored, more the bizarre dissonance I feel, the profound fireworks that fail to go off in my head, the non-event. And most of all the loathing, unsettling, pressing sensation that was there before the game, and which I won't be able to expel for at least a fortnight.

I'm a tad concerned that before I leave this town, Nottingham will dissolve itself in a churning pool of bile, collapsing under the weight of all its own violence. Saturday nights these past few years have always been full of all the writhing, overriding passions that fill us all week long, in their least inhibited, most riveting form. But now, it seems like it's heading into meltdown, overflowing beyond the lady who turned down your advances or the chap that stood on your foot. I don't have any statistics to back this up, just a few slices of anecdotal evidence. One from last night at the Arts Organization: a chap insisted that he was going to rain death upon me, my family and the friends I was with if I looked at him again. He was maybe not this eloquent, actually. I was a little surprised.

Well, maybe our eyes had met once or twice that evening. I don't really remember his face that well, ironically. But I picked out a clue from his eyes, which were fierce, true, but also a bit scared. It seems notable to me that fierce though he was, eager that he seemed for a confrontation, he didn't want it really. He wanted a cheap submission, a simple affirmation. He was stupid but still scared. I can understand that, drawing on my experience from the last couple of months: I, too, know how it feels when you've ingested a bit too much coke.

(This makes me chuckle, as earlier in the day in "the cage" we taught a new friend with not too much english the phrase "free refills." It seemed significant at the time.)

Ah, well, we were getting ready to leave anyway. Not for the first time recently, I find myself thinking about the difference between my motivations and those of others. There's such a raft of psychological questions involved when we think about how we spend our leisure time. It seems like it should be a pure expression of who-we-want-to-be, only who-we-actually-are creeps in there. There's a strange dark attraction to a destructive night out, although to me I think this has always been largely voyeuristic.

As it happens I was drinking alcohol last night. And this morning I remembered something about alcohol, how it can interfere with your sleep and cause you to wake up too soon, all hot and resigned to a tired day. That you have to get up, because water will taste so good on your fermenting tongue and plus, you can't be comfy 'til you've visited the loo.

But without that I wouldn't have lain back in bed, awake and over-warm and played a game where you close your eyes and try to pinpoint the provenance of every sound you can hear. It's best to play this early on a warm Sunday morning with the curtains open, feeling the brightness of a clear sky on your face, and having hardly to strain at all; nothing but birdsong until 7am and tyres start to hiss past.

Last year I was meant to go see Why? on my birthday. Stupid mumps, stupid contagious diseases. Stupid rescheduled tours. I'm not bitter, I promise. I fully buy into the Harlem Shakes' mantra: This will be a better year. Y'see, I like Why? a lot, and I think Alopecia was an excellent album (although it didn't crack my top 20, which is I'm sure what the boys were aiming for when they were in the studio).

But a gig's no album, and Why? are no Sonic Youth. Check the release date on SY's next album.

Now we're the other side of midnight, the date is the 27th of March 2009.

My dissertation deadline is 27th April. 11000 words in 31 days, count them (I actually have roughly half the word count but would barely count 10% of it as finished product).

It's actually quite exciting. I basically have 2 months to make it all count, and tomorrow is day 1.

I have been sober for a long time. It suits me and I'm happy enough. I don't miss alcohol particularly, and I don't have any particular desire to go back to it. Especially because the transition back will be hugely self-referential, need explaining, maybe as much as my abstinence has provoked. But I probably will, in as healthy a manner as I can muster. Only for enjoyment's sake though. This was the aim, maybe? To remove the idea of function most of us youngsters attach to drinking?

Highsoc gig tonight: Nadja. This is going to be amazing. Doom-drone from a band that are really globally significant! One of my hopes with highsoc was to put on some gigs that really did mean something, and I think this could be one of those, alongside Grouper, Wave Machines and others. I'm preparing for it to be spectacular and loud. I'm very happy.

Many of my acquaintances have begun blogging. It's a flurry of activity which is fascinating, not least because face-communication has some unwritten rule of ironically poor spelling and grammar and stupid capitalization. So it's nice to glimpse more formal or deliberate writing styles (and inevitably judge? naha). Inevitably we will all fall by the way-side but it's a little period of interest nonetheless. I'm putting more complete 'pieces' on my Blogger account and more fleeting snatches of myself here. Who knows, maybe some bad poetry too?

A new word I have begun using: Masochismo - for those situations where we all feel we must compete for the most extreme disadvantages, workloads, physical pain. Also, Fauxk, as coined by my friend ACH, to describe "folk" music with no actual folk heritage. And sclogosphere, to describe the increasingly-meta science blogging contingent on the net. If any of these catch on, shoot me (this goes without saying).

I have had my first exposure to My Super-Sweet 16. It's the most fantastically gaudy and awful show, really. A nasty twisted core of absurd capitalism runs all the way through it. I suppose it makes me feel tired and rather distant from general 'Western culture'. Not that I've ever found myself complaining about that in the past. Is this meant to be watched wholly ironically? Or can the values presented be taken by some at face value. I don't know which idea nauseates me more.

There are a lot of reasons I love Ray Allen aka Jesus Shuttleworth. Some time before the playoffs I'll probably mention a few of them. But here's one more I can add to the list, from this article by J.A. Adande on ESPN.com:"This all started on Christmas Day, at the Celtics-Lakers game, when I walked into the visitors' locker room at Staples Center and asked Boston's Ray Allen what he'd been reading lately. (In 17 years of covering the NBA, that's the first time I've asked such a question; then again, Allen is the only player I've ever seen reading books before games.)"

There you have it. That's my Ray Ray.

Rafa has signed a contract up to 2014. 2014! How big is that number?!? If you'd asked me about the year 2014 when I was ten (1996, if it matters) I would have confidently told you it was a year that would not come to pass because by then the sun would long before have crashed into the seas and obliterated everything.

This is a pivotal point in football history. For me anyhow. Alternate history is interesting but you rarely sense the potential at the time quite so much as I think you can here. Liverpool are a team on the brink. Great in Europe, passable in the league. Financially sketchy, needing a new stadium. Only a couple of years left until the super-human axis of Gerrard and Carragher has faded. Competent in every position, world-class in, it seems, relatively few.

Rafa's a very very good manager, potentially a great one, who bemuses me more than anyone on earth. His decision-making is astonishing and totally unpredictable. He's got a very cautious approach. I'm certainly in two minds as to whether one of his Liverpool teams could ever win the league. I anticipate his teams will always punch well above their weight in Europe, which is quite something, but there's no doubt about it, we need something in the league. And it niggles that maybe we can't get that with this man - we'll always suffer those killer home draws against Stoke and West Ham.

The future of Liverpool football club could hinge on this story. If I had to make the decision, would I keep Rafael Benitez? I love Rafa. I don't have full confidence in him, but maybe I couldn't enjoy this club so much if I did. There's a perfect natural imperfection to Rafa. It might be a case of hope against hope. But I think Liverpool will win a title under Rafa (I have to believe: I don't think many players in the Premiership need titles under their belts more than Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher). Maybe it's better to believe than to know.

The title race alive? It's been on life support for a while now, and only an almighty collapse by United could let Liverpool back in now, I have to feel. But nevertheless, it was a particular joy to me to watch Liverpool score 4 at Old Trafford; I had a football match of my own at 2 (my final appearance for Biochemsoc) so I missed most of the second half. But watching the highlights last night could scarcely have made me happier.

I've seen a number of sub-par performances by players in red shirts this season, but standing high atop the lot of them has to be our overweight, under-paced, incredibly mediocre £8 million pound left-back Andreas Dossena. I'm definitely not the only one to have failed to take  a shine to Dossena. But I just feel like noting, he's scored the 4th goal in wins over Real Madrid and Manchester United within the same week. This must be pretty rare. They were also his first two goals for the club.

Particularly enjoyed the MOTD montage of Wayne Rooney having an off-day. And the praise for Sami Hyypia, who is simply exceptional. I've become inordinately fond of a number of players down the years but I think Sami is the only one who could ever rival Steve McManaman (a childhood favourite so virtually impossible to displace).

Facebook and Pitchfork both change their layouts in the same week, leaving me cursing the ever-shifting cyber-sands on which I live. Only a couple of weeks ago the way ESPN.com presented their NBA coverage was subtly altered. To be honest, in my ongoing effort to prevent the threatened dialysis of my existence into an online world and a real one, this isn't a bad thing. The disorientation might send me hurtling into the daylight, rubbing my eyes and ready to find things that matter.