...life kicks you in the bollocks. Most people recover. Some people go sterile;* they give up.

So for a while it feels like searing agony, but you always know that it's gonna die down sooner or later.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez always has characters that don't recover - instead they cling to the experience that changed them and never let go. The bride in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, or the woman who becomes a bitter seamstress after her disappointment with the pianola player in 100 Years of Solitude. I find those characters compelling but ultimately frustrating; how could they let days turn to weeks turn to years turn to decades like that, without moving on?

Armando Iannucci has the entire human genome taped to his wall like a freize. ATGGGTACCCTAGA, it says. He says it contains the code for human life. Well - stuff to do with what eye colour you'll have, or how long your legs. Nothing to do with higher level things like whether you'll grow up to like jazz, or whether you'll be a twat (that's mostly a result of education). In the middle of his freize, he points out a curious section - AGGTCCTATAA CCATTDONTPISSITAWAYCGTTTAACC TTGGDONTPISSITAWAYCGGDDTTDDAAGDTA. The scientists say 'don't read too much into that'.



*Kurt Vonnegut, God rest his soul, was against semi-colons. I hesitate to use them since I found that out. Now I've decided I like them. Sorry Kurt. And I like hyphens too. I also like beginning sentences with words like 'so' or 'and'. I also quite like tautology in a sentence. Makes it cute.