after losing it twice in 2 days, i've just finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by mark haddon. i bought it a while back cos i saw 3 stacks of it in 1 day at borders, so i took it as a Sign. anyway, i was half-expecting it to be cult bullshit like dan brown, but this has been a pleasant surprise.

the book's primarily about this autistic kid, christopher, who likes to groan and cause scenes, and also happens to be incredibly gifted in math and physics. though that's probably quite common since autism is actually extreme alpha-male-ness, and a major trait of that is enhanced spatial reasoning. so anyway, in the course of the novel, christopher breaks up his parents and makes his mom run away with neighbour Mr Shears, then breaks up his dad who is getting it on with the estranged Mrs Shears, and finally proceeds to break up his mom and Mr Shears, so that everybody's living in separate houses and screaming at each other by the end of the book. scandal- i like! it's really almost like flowers for algernon, except christopher is consistently gifted in one area and also consistently unaware of proper social conduct, unlike charlie gordon, who is stupid most of the time but experiences a brief period of smartness. and also, christopher has a rat called toby, just like charlie, who has a mouse called algernon. how curious.

what's really freaky about the book is how mark haddon describes how the world looks like through christopher's eyes, and it makes you wonder just -how- he knows so much about being autistic. like how would you know what these kids go through anyway? it's freaky, that's what it is.

and also, i have come to the realisation that i am a truly horrible person. because when i was reading the book, one thought that struck me was "what if i have a kid and my kid turns out autistic?" and immediately i knew that i would never be the kind of patient, caring mom that the kid would need. in fact if the child cries for a prolonged period of time i would probably kill it. which is such a bastardly thing to do, especially considering you're the mother. but hey, not everybody can take this sort of crap on a regular basis, and that explains why there are so many cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, also known as cot death. it's by parents who can't stand their kids' noises, kill them, and then pretend that the child died of "natural causes". in fact there was this woman who killed 5 of her kids this way, and all the while the doctors were wondering how the hell her babies kept mysteriously dying on her, until they realised that the sound of their voices made the mom into some compulsive psychopath who smothered her kids. and this is why i really admire mothers who don't kill their kids, and even more so mothers who start cuddling their kids and singing to them and doing all that babynonsense while rocking the kid to sleep. like the baby really deserves all this special attention or something. i guess it's ok if you've got a really cute kid whose farts smell like flowers, but what happens if your kid is just some regular whining thing that drools and pees all over the place? what do you do then, huh?

and, as predicted, the first common test result we got back was for chem, cos we had chem lec first period and the teachers are like some sick machines who just churn out exam scripts. anyway the chemistry catastrophe was of gargantuan proportions, which i dont want to talk about. math was also pissing cos i lost around half my marks due to petty marking (read: messy working and/or working lacking units) and my tutor was being a royal P in the A when i went to approach her to ask for clarifications. one day when i come back to receive my A level script i'll have a field day giving her a piece of my mind. but that day will have to wait because stephanie tells me that the universities call up your tutors to ask them how you are, and i already think that some major butt-kissing is in order before anything vaguely positive falls out of mathtutor's mouth. it's even harder than squeezing water from a rock, i swear.