Listening to Cabaret Voltaire right now. Another band from the era of Joy Division and the Buzzcocks. Though they were always more "experimental", more..."industrial" in the era before "industrial" was just a subset of metal. "Industrial" back in the early Eighties--- tape loops, electronic distrortion, dark hard heavy voices, extensive sampling. I'm thinking of the Staalplaat label, of the early Nettwerk bands. Bands like Front 242 and Cassandra Complex--- a friend used to call them "Belgian Steroid Bands" after the heavy, deep Nuremberg-Rally vocals they all seemed to use. Cabaret Voltaire was a favourite group for me--- both the early experimental stuff and the later dance/electonica music.

I stopped on the way home this morning and bought more Asahi Dry and Sapporo and 33 Export beer. It seems key to have what Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo always calls "crisp Asian beer" on a summer afternoon. I do wish I could get Belle Gueule and Saigon, though.

At the coffeeshop this morning I found flyers for a club night downtown called The Industry: Goth-Industrial-EBM-Synthpop music in a deserted warehouse by the river. I may go next Friday. The first dark-dance club I ever frequented called itself The Industry, too. Long, long ago when I was a very small and black-clad little long-eared desert hedgehog. Probably the first place I ever danced to Joy Division or Cabaret Voltaire or Bauhaus.

Last night a lovely girl told me that she was going off on her fall break to spend a long weekend camping with friends. Not ever my kind of thing. I've been in tents in the woods in Missouri and western Connecticut, and that's just not an Eduardo-kun thing to do. I prefer places with room service and a Manhattan ambience. And once night falls in the woods, it's just...boring. There's nothing to do except drink and sleep. It's not even a good venue for sex with co-eds. And yet...I was a bit envious.

Not envious of camping, mind you. Just envious of her getting to go off and do something. Of course I wish she'd be with me at the Pod Hotel in Manhattan instead. But I am envious of her being able to have friends and go something that'll be a Story later.

This is a failing of mine. I remain convinced that nothing that I do is ever as good as what Others do. When a girl does things with me, I always want to have her do with me not just things for our own Stories, but do with me--- re-enact with me ---everything she's done with Others. I eat my own heart out with fear that what she's done with Others will always be better than what she's done with me. I obsess over doing the things and going the places and having the experiences that lovely girls have had, if only so that I won't have them look down on me for not having done what they've done. I obsess bitterly over the emptiness of my life. The things I've done that were of any Story value were so long ago... And the fact that I have no Stories as good as those of the girls in my life only emphasises my lack of any Value. No friends, no travels, no career, no sexual allure, no money, no future, living in a shameful place.

So, no... I don't want to go camping. But I do wish I could do something, go somewhere, have someone lovely and fun and alluring to travel with, have some sense of value and a future.

I did sit at the coffeeshop this morning and read Edmonds & Eidinow, "Wittgenstein's Poker". A fun book--- about the legendary clash between Wittgenstein and Karl Popper at a Cambridge Moral Sciences Club meeting one chilly night in 1946. I've always been a big fan of Wittgenstein. How not, after all? I did my PhD on the Habsburg Monarchy, and Wittgenstein is such a Viennese figure. And I always thought of Karl Popper as an insufferable prig.

I think I first heard about Wittgenstein via Thos. Pynchon. But I've had copies of the "Tractatus" on my shelves since high school. And I love Roy Monk's biography--- and Duffy's "The World As I Found It", a lovely biographical novel about Wittgenstein.

Die Welt ist alles was der Fall ist...

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

And in between those two points...falls the Shadow? Lies the realm of demonically-possessed severed goat's heads, the lieutenant-governor of South Dakota, and the Vile, Batrachian Manxmen...? Something like that.

Miss Ginny told me once that she had a copy of Deleuze & Guattari there on her bedside table. The "Mille Plateaux", I suppose. One day I must get her to tell me what she thought of D&G.

Crisp Asian beer, yes. A cold Asahi Dry. A good thing to have on an afternoon with thunder beginning to sound in the north.

I do wish I had a girl with whom I could dance to Joy Division right now. And dance to My Bloody Valentine and Romeo Void as well. I wish I had a voice whispering across the luminiferous aether to me this afternoon, laughing and sighing and flirting.

I really do want to read "Revolver, Dauphin" Nr. 6. I won't mention that back in the summer of the Year Seven I did pay for never-received copies of "Revolver, Dauphin" Nr. 3 & 4. I want to read the new 'zine. I do want to hear from Miss Lissy at emigree about books and ideas and music. I can't hear about her daily/academic life (let alone her love life and career/travel plans); that would only make me feel utterly and hopelessly inferior and valueless. But I miss her laugh and voice.

I really do hope that Miss Ginny is going through my HighDesertSnow tracklists at LastFM. And I do wonder sometimes if Miss WaterColorFire ever goes through my tracklists. Hers are like the Listening To lines at her old _iwenthome and emigree sites--- a good source of music recommendations. Let's remember: I always obsess over lists and bibliographies. And I do look at music tracklists and try to infer what changes in music say about lives. Miss WaterColorFire noted back in April or May that the official music of the summer of the Year Eight was Nas' "Illmatic" album. I still wonder if that implies a new ethnic taste in lovers for this summer. And I wonder, too, if here at Labour Day, she's still convinced that "Illmatic" was the summer's music.

Miss Heather at wantedwanted says that while Ian Curtis' dance style is all well and good, for true insane-epileptic dance moves, I should take lessons from her. Well, we'll have to see. She's a Toronto girl. Where would we dance in Toronto?

She Wants Revenge is playing. Just the band I want to dance to with Miss Ginny in a Savannah dive bar after we marry. Hmmm... I always hope that a lovely girl will go with me to Europe and pretend to be my Incestuous Sibling--- something to shock other expats at dance clubs in Tallinn or Barcelona. Though with Miss Ginny...hmmmm. Shall she pretend to be my Incestuous Sibling, or would it be more fun for her to whisper drunkenly to leggy co-eds on the dance floor that I was her Evil Stepfather? I must ask her about that.

The Other Melissa at kraftig_bewegt would be only too thrilled to hint to dance club girls that I was her Evil Stepfather. I do wonder what Miss Heather at wantedwanted would prefer...

Heavy rain outside right now. I wish I could be watching it with a lovely clever wicked panty-free girl in my arms. I wish I could have a life as valuable as, say, the girls I obsess over. I wish my life had the same value as the girl who told me about the camping trip or a certain girl on Morningside Heights. My fourth Sapporo right now--- I could use a hookah with mango tobacco. Or an opium pipe. Or even just a phone call from 514 or 205.