THIS IS A LIST #6

I cut most of my hair off and spent the weekend in the city of Porto at Primavera Sound, where I waited in a queue in the pouring rain for two and a half hours to get tickets to see Jeff Mangum at the Casa da Musica. 'Worth it' doesn't even come close to a good description because me and my sister ended up sitting a few feet away from him, cross-legged on the floor after he asked the crowd to move closer. Arguably in our rightful place. It was surreal and perfect. I got sunburnt on my arms, shoulder, and mouth (?!?!?!?!?!) and now I'm enjoying peeling away the dead skin way too much. They eat well in Porto, and they put cheese on everything, and the wine is sweet and strong. I loved the beach, too, especially the contradiction of it - pure white sand and sea surrounded by factories and industrial estates.

What else? I turned 23 on the 3rd of June and that was also surreal. It's not that I think 23 is old, just that in my head I still feel as though I'm 16. I mean, I spend every night sleeping in the bedroom of the house I grew up in. I drink in the same bars and spend time with the same friends and I feel like I'm stuck in some kind of weird time warp that is not entirely unpleasant.
Anyway, I spent most of my birthday drunk, except for when I visited the Wellcome exhibition with my friends and walked around the museum for hours and spent £65 on books, as a present to myself. The exhibition was to do with mapping the mind, and in one corner of the museum the curators had set up a video playing footage of two surgeons slicing and preparing brains. It was kind of hypnotic, I think I could have watched it all day. If you think you can stomach it, here is the video:

The brain thing is sort of macabre and I'm gonna follow that theme and say that I've also spent most of my internet time lately obsessively reading through the Websleuths forums for missing people. The cases featured are often sad, and strange, and endless - after reading through many of the threads, I eventually came to automatically expect loose ends and lost girls and clues that trail off into nowhere as the only eventual results. Reading through the forum is frustrating, and hopeful, and terribly sad, and monumentally important.

I've also been reading a lot of true crime and a lot of David Foster Wallace, and I've fallen back in love with Freaks and Geeks big time, especially the character of Mr Rosso. Like, if I was Lindsay Weir, I would have a big fat inappropriate crush on him.

I mean, what a total babe.