Leaving on a jet plane

I head off to Europe tomorrow for three weeks.

This will probably go one of two ways:

1. Horribly wrong, or
2. Horribly wrong but still fun.

Expect no blogs in the interim.

Wish me good luck.

Ps and Qs

There are the Ps, now here are the Qs:

1. When you start to fall off bar stools and struggle on the floor like a turtle on its back, is it time to quit drinking, quit drinking for the night, or should you dive straight back into your natural habitat and keep on swimming?
2. Does How to Destroy Angles’ debut represent as big a step back for Trent Reznor as I think it does, or am I just not hearing it right?
3. Did Saturn prefer his children with or without sauce?
4. When will I get back into creative writing and start outputting something more than a few half drunken sentences that deserve nothing more than burning?
5. What are the odds that when I leave for Europe in a few days, I’ll wind up having a panic attack on the plane and need sedating, because it’s just not natural for human beings to be in the air and God will surely reap his revenge for acts against nature and strike us out of the sky at any moment now, now, now, NOW?

Dear monkey that art in heaven

Please answer me my questions below. (Yeap, it’s been a while since I posed a few, so these are pretty deep):

1. Do I die when I sleep? Because, seriously, when I get up in the morning no portion of sheet is crinkled outside the exact outline of my body where I lay. I just don’t seem to move. Making the bed is just a matter of folding the corner of bedding back into place, where I’d slithered in and out.
2. Will I be mugged and / or raped and / or murdered overseas?
3. If so, will it add to or detract from the overall travel experience?
4. At what point does it occur to most human beings that humanity will never live to see the end of the earth, that we’ll probably not even make it through the next century, that long after we die, there will eventually be no planet Earth at all, that even if humanity lived so long and migrated to other planets, our entire galaxy would eventually cease to be, and that basically, in the infinitely beautiful course of ‘time’, we’re all fucked?
5. Why didn’t I branch out into other genres of music earlier?
6. When  grasses war, do elephants suffer?
7. Who is going to buy me the Moon Man Munny and when (seriously)?
8. When will I finally get around to reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky?
9. When will you finally get around to reading Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky?
10. Why am I so uncertain about things I’m reasonably certain about – is it because the consequences are too difficult and I’m therefore never so uncertain at all, but only looking for excuses?

The world ain’t so big

So, a recent equation goes something like this:

[certain events] + [certain discussions] = travelling to Europe alone

Six months ago – heck, six weeks ago – travelling overseas solo would have terrified me. But not anymore.  Foreign lands, foreign people, foreign languages, navigating international airports, avoiding pickpockets and other assorted swindlers, dealing with crowds and loneliness at the same time…

I’m still the guy who walks out of a store and is utterly confused as to which direction he was heading along a well known street before he entered said store.

But so what?

I have a strange confidence that despite my many failings I’ll be fine.

These questions need dip

Ah yes, questions time.

A little flavourless and undercooked, these Qs certainly need some dip. (Preferably involving reduced cream, Maggi soup mix, and perhaps even a stir of real Answers).

1. Why not become an anonymous traveller in a foreign country?
2. What really is the measure of success and does it fluctuate?
3. If I had to, could I take up a job as a handy man, or a mechanic?
4. What is the average length of a pop group’s life these days (measured in either singles or weeks) – one either way?
5. What’s the difference between super-advanced technology and magic?
6. Do I need to put on weight, do I need to work out?
7. Will you judge me badly if I buy Batman slippers?
8. A Batman belt?
9. How much should my job define me, and is this disproportionately less than the amount of thought and time spent on it?
10. Really – suddenly, without warning, bare necessities only (including three essential books), somewhere else, anonymous, a new land?

Europe

Around about June 2010.

Sound good?

I think so.