The subconscious mind is very cunning. You ever get that thing when your brain is singing a song, but you don't quite recognise it? And then once you do, you want to smack something for its aptness. For me personally, Marillion has always been the music of my depression. I adore Marillion, and listen to them often - This Strange Engine is the album to buy. But my subconscious mind sings it when I'm unhappy, and sometimes I'll be halfway through a bad day before I identify it, then go oh, naturally. When LM was on the point of getting married, I finally worked out that irritating ditty which had been in my head was "I'm getting married in the morning". Oh, how I still loathe that song. I've had one in my head all day, and I'm furious at my brain - not even a proper song, but a cringy confessional ballard I downloaded off Music for Maniacs. And I don't like what it's suggesting about the state of my brain.

I also fell in love at Senate House library. A Nice Young Man asked to borrow a writing impliment. I lent him a ink pen, and he expressed some surprise going "eeek, Parker!". He returned about ten minutes later, as it had run out of ink. He apologised, and quickly claimed that he hadn't drunk it. I swapped it for a pencil.

By that point, I wasn't really working any more. I'd finished reading Lucretius and started drawing a Batman comic in the margin. Senate House library is Gotham-esque, and even looking out the window I can see huge black capes sweeping about. It's 5 panels long, and I shall show you once I have a working camera again. After that, I got bored so went hunting the film section for censorship/classification books, and had an interesting plough through "Out at the Cinema", and an essay on race in L.A. Confidential, because queer and race representation are two topics which will not be on my paper next week. "Out at the Cinema" was merely a listing of all the major movies from the beginning of cinema to the present day. I made a list of the ones that sounded particularly worth seeing:

• Pandora's Box - Jack the Ripper and lesbians, what more could you want?
• Maedchen in Uniform - the first ever dodgy boarding school movie, from the 1930s!
• Suddenly last summer
• Victim - Dirk Bogarde! Dirk Bogarde!
• Querelle - dreamlike direction Rainer Warner Fassbinder, who I fell in love with in last year's topic.
• My own Private Idaho - though I've meant to see this for ages
• Pink Narcissus - just sounded Dorianesque
• The Naked Civil Servant - because I've been promising Friend 4 to watch this for years
• Maurice - and I must read it too!
• Fox and his Friends
• Sebastiane
• Cruising - Al Pacino, notable for several reasons.

The L.A. Confidential essay argued it was progressive in terms of race relations: it's the white power system that is corrupt, and ethnic groups having a hard time as a result. It also makes a very interesting point about the duality of it's characters: Bud White is a defender of women, but is quick to pick on non-white characters, while Ed Exley defends the Mexicans, and yet still turns out to be a rapist*; and Vincennes...oh, I can't remember the point they made for him. The argument was that each had their share of positive and negative behavior.

*this was the term they used, but that wasn't the construction I put on it. It did make me think for a few minutes, however, and I simply need to watch it again. You do not understand the concept "labyrinthine plot" until you have seen this film. I've seen it 5 times now, and while I could broadly explain whodunnit and why, grasping all the plot kinks is still beyond me. I think this is the first 18 I ever watched, and it still amazes me that I saw anything in it or understood it at whatever tender age. I'm positive I didn't understand half the slang and terms of racial/sexual abuse used, nor did I get homosexuality, nor prostitution at the time, which begs the question what the hell did I see in it, as that's pretty much the whole plot.

It's also bloody ace, and highly recommended. The book is even more impressively complicated, and puts you even more in awe of the adaptation. Although far too violent for me. I felt sick to my stomach at some parts of it.

When I returned to my table, I found a really neat design of paper aeroplane sitting there, with my pencil resting on top. On top of the paper plane, he had written:

"Thank you for flying to my rescue with the pen/pencil", then signed his name. He's polite, charming, knows origami and I didn't get his number? For shame!