Whinge whinge whinge moan complain bitch

Sodding internet explorer and it's sodding crashing, 1000 plus words down the drain. Then Blogger wouldn't let me post....after I had gone to the effort of writing one, some people, I don't know...anyway here we go again.
That's right by the way, I've stolen Tim's tactic of putting a title on each entry. Make a joke in the first line, seems like a good idea - adapt and improve, nothing new under the sun etc. So sue me.

I've decided to write something (again, sonofabitch) just to shut everyone up. Go write a diary Ben, blah blah blah, you're such a slack updater, etc...well, sue me again (I could be in for some hefty damages here. Actually I'll stop writing that, because it's a terrible Americanism anyway). I'm going to claim I don't have a computer and I'm not often near one when the muse is upon me (Arrrghhh!! Get it off! Get it off, it's digesting my eyeballs!! etc.) And I feel there are more than enough accounts of what everyone did in the weekend with each other most of the time, as Dan and I mockingly (<= this is weird) jested on Sunday (oh, but we were so cruelly incisive - how we laughed to ourselves). But never fear, come the day that my brother moves back in with his crappy old 486 or my Mum buys the computer she keeps threatening to occasionally than I will probably still update infrequently. So there.

More weeks gone past with no tangible thesis progress. This is increasingly bad. But at least I am increasingly prepared to admit that it is increasingly bad, which seems to be part of 'Ben's Patented Approach to University Work' I will elaborate.

When I was an undergraduate, a pattern emerged. In this pattern, as the weeks went past, I attendance would slowly drop off, for a number of exceptionally good reasons (morning to avoid, cricket to play, paint to watch dry, etc.). Eventually something in my brain would flag this behaviour as some kind of problem that perhaps needed rectifying.

In stage 2, I would enter self-delusion mode. OK, I would say, you've missed that lecture but you'll definitely drag yourself out of bed / away from Xanadu / over the massive and arduous journey from the UCSA to the one on Wednesday. OK, now, you may have missed that Wednesday one, but now you're going to go to every lecture for the rest of the year. And so the promises would mount, as would the number of times I was marked absent in tutorials. Picture, in your minds eye if you will, one of those exponential line graphs thingies showing a, er, correlation, probably between two, um things. (Factors? Probably. You know the ones I mean anyway, with the lines, and the twin turbo and the double overhead cam.)

Stage 3 was guilt. Now I'm definitely not Catholic, so that's not a factor. As near as I can tell, disturbingly, this was some kind of 'work ethic' creeping in subconsciously, although perhaps it was just one part of my brain felt ashamed that it was making so many promises to another part of my brain that it was failing to keep, the part that really, really wanted to learn more about post-modern Kenyan literature. Anyway, in effect I'd be out having a merry old time or sitting around in the sun or whatever, and the unprompted thought 'why aren't you at your lecture?' or 'why aren't you writing your essay?' would suddenly blare like so many Mariachi trumpeters in my head, and it was often a pretty horrible thought to be having - the closer to the exam / due date, the more horrible the thought (another of those graphs required here).
Eventually I would start having fairly regular dreams in which I missed the exam due to not finding out about it due to not being in lectures, or got an E on my essay because I wrote it on the entirely wrong book. (This is probably a nightmare of mine you should try to avoid living, Arc.) And to get over this whole problem, eventually I would be forced to go and do the damn study or essay or whatever, nornally in an all-nighter at the last minute, because any actually overdue work would have probably driven me mad. I only handed one essay in late in 4 years and I was worried about it incessantly for 24 hours. I'm really not sure how people like my brother Dan can ignore due dates so casually, as if they were not the mini-apocalypses they really are. (The 5 Horsemen: War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, and Why Do Historians Regard the Elizabethan Reign as Such a Successful One - Discuss. He was um, a Norse deity.) Thus doth conscience make cowards of us all, or at least me anyway, where a coward is one who does not have the courage to stand strong in his procrastination, never hand in his essays, flunk out of higher education, and take up a thankless (but brave, mind) career as a bridge support.

What is the point of this story you may ask? Well, there isn't one. I told you I was aping Tim in this entry.
Ha! But seriously, folks, thepoint is, that whilst out on Friday with the hanging out and the laughing and the 12 hours of drinking that HURT me, aheyaayabal, (though surprisingly little) I got pretty drunk, yes, and had a really good time in the company of all my friends, yes, but over the course of the night, the internal Voice O'Doom suddenly went DO YOUR THESIS BEN about 4 separate times.

So in theory, and going by history anyway, eventually it will grow loud enough that I will listen to it, and do something. And so there is NO CAUSE FOR CONCERN, do you hear me, everything is normal, the iceberg was there when we left port, please procede calmly to the lifeboats, it's an exercise, uh, yeah, that's right, an exercise...

In other completely unrelated matters, good to see Leland this weekend and catch up, or not as the case may be, where it relates to how his job is going anyway. It must be very weird for him in a world where the first question people ask someone they've just met is '"What do you do?", and the only truthful answer that can be given is "I can't really tell you, lest I be convicted for treason and jailed for life." I guess the upside is that it immediately cultivates an air of intrigue. I suppose he can do what we did this weekend and sort of talk around his job, i.e discussing the fact that he can't discuss his job. Which is interesting enough, although damnit, oh-so-curiosity-provoking, I want to know what garage the aliens are in and I want to know now damnit Leland. Given the minor trouble Dan and I got him in by sending a somewhat mischievous e-mail a while back though, I had better take the time to point out to whatever shadowy agency may be monitoring this website that not only did he disappointingly fail to compromise national security while down here, but he went in on to foil no less than 3 of my own revolutionary projects, and now my undersea lab / missile silo is in ruins, my orbital laser has been destroyed, and my ninja chimpanzees, after years of training, have lost the urge to kill entirely. Sigh...back to the planning stage.
Anyway I'm sure we'll hear everything in his memoirs in 50 years...but seriously, keep up the good work (and indeed, only sane course of action) Jed, of course I don't expect you to tell us anything. My problem is I suspect I'd be in jail for life in two seconds.

"Where's Ben these days?"
"Oh, he's in jail for life after he gave the cleaning lady America's nuclear launch codes on his first day."
"Right."

Booma dooma booma dooma booma doom boom - think I'm 'bout ready to quit singing.
Arr. (har har)