I seem to have survived another Valentine's Day, one with the potential to be a particularly painful one. Managed instead to have a good time with friends at a double birthday party (there are pictures) and later at the Slimelight. I've never really really had a very bad night at the Slime but this was a good candidate, although not for lack of good company, having arrived with the birthday boy and girl and their entourage that included londonjon and rougeno1 and running into djpsyche and a few other peeps. The one dancing room I found painfully loud (it did feel like much louder than usual, it may have been me) and didn't have ear-plugs with me so I stayed in the courtyard talking to people. Lasted about an hour and a half and left for home. Better than other possibilities for the night. Next month I'll be at Reptile. This last one.. no, I couldn't do that to myself. Funny how it works. All these things (Christmas, birthdays, etc) are arbitrary markers, this day is significative because we decide it is. And many of those days are just vehicles for the commercial juggernaut to make us buy things. And yet we need them and they often work. Except when they work in a way that makes us feel worse not better.

Sunday brought the monthly bibliogoth meeting, this time discussing 'Libra' by Don Delillo, a sort of history-fiction account of Lee Harvey Oswald's life leading to John F Kennedy's assassination. The person in the group that was the most familiar with the book hated it. I, the only person in the group that was alive at the time of the events, quite liked it although I did find the first few chapters difficult to get on with, particularly with the swarm of Federal agents that all 'looked' identical and in my mind were all like copies of the Matrix's Agent Smith. A very interesting discussion that centred more on the events that the book explores rather than the book itself.

Tags: birthdays, books, clubs, life of flav, slimelight, valentine