My advice tonight for anyone careless enough to read this journal is: don't read large volumes of literature for more than three months consecutively when you live in a house that doesn't have television, alcohol, a tyre swing, or anything else cool for distraction. Yes, books are the enemy of any carefree person.

This has been my case over the past few months. And due to this self-induced isolation with books I have been left with a cynical mind, unsociable tendencies, and many poor habits in public such as burping, scratching between my toes, and sighing heavily.
I am also left with the vague uncertainty that humanity is one big error, all life is suffering, happiness is a delusion, and that I should plead with the universe to forgive the very fact of my existence.

That is what these demons, harpies and banshees from the Hades of literature - Russian literature, Herman Hesse, Sylvia Plath (particularly dangerous - KEEP AWAY) Joseph Conrad, Jung, Ernest Hemingway and some others - have done to me, a poor defenseless 18 year old girl who, up til now, led a lazy and egotistical existence. I have been reduced to a goldfish floating in a fishbowl staring watery at a world behind glass that makes no sense.

But I am here to provide the cure for anyone who finds themselves in a similar dilemma: listen to cheap hits by Robbie Williams, Kiss, and Dolly Parton. Play Bobby McFerrin's 'Don't Worry Be Happy' twice a day. Read Terry Pratchette. Visit your nearest ocean, park, sunny field or watering hole at least once a day. Spend a whole day naked in the presence of your mother (this will excite spontaneous laughter in yourself, whereas the rest will be shocked/nauseated). Finally organise an en mass book-burning with all your friends and neighbours in the name of team spirit and world peace(of mind).

May your lives be long and prosperous!