it's not about what the book says

my mum sent me a link to a list that i don't entirely disagree with, with a note to check the comments.

and i did.

and the Big Three? yeah. those were the most negatively influential books of all time. it doesn't matter what they were preaching, what matters is the horrors that they inspire people to do.

"peace"? "love"? i call "bullshit". you can't have peace and love when those are hinged upon everyone thinking the same.

---
sunday:

we began the first lesson well, then returned to freud. the exploration of freud's ideas on anal things wasn't pretty. i did, however, manage to drag us into the topic of schizophrenia, and that provided a fun distraction. "if the man's wiping his excrement on the walls, it's up to us to understand what he's trying to say". she told us to read a page from finnegan's wake to see what she meant, and i... i get it. i mean i don't.

fighting the poser: that guy who i thought i'd offended near the beginning of the semester? who then offended me when i tried to talk to him again? he opened his stupid mouth in class and got *everyone* going. i may be an arrogant person, and i believe things are not a part of the consensus' canon (although i'm slowly discovering that literature, at least, is ahead of a bunch of games). but i'm no more of an asshole than i have to be, and this guy makes me look good.

i'm so glad very few people take him seriously. he reminds me of psychotic american - trying to be cool and wise in the face of fact. the discussion yesterday was about experience and originality - topics that are kinda close to my heart...

that sparked a discussion after class with one of the other guys he'd offended. "you're a moron", i told the guy, "because you don't think like me. and i'm a moron too, because i don't think like you. we're all a bunch of idiots. welcome to being human."

i had lunch with pg - boy, was i hungry - and the two of us continued the previous discussion that she'd walked in on. do i ever stop talking about self?!

pg accompanied me to the student union building, and i was treated to great news - i hadn't realized that the class we held anime night in last week is ours until the end of the semester! *and* we'll get another one for the next semester ^_^

...

i arrived at work in time to help with the move upstairs. i'd forgotten about that. the flash boss called as i walked in, rendering me useless for the first ten minutes, and then it was "back to the source". when i joined the company back in 2003 we were stationed upstairs, and it's all coming back to me :)
we've already run into trouble with some of the guys who don't realize that we're actually a part of the company, but that we shall overcome. and now we can hassle useless people with feeling. maybe the QA team will actually help us when we're more than mere ghosts from across the border.

---
in the elevator with one of the girls and the boss. he drops his mug. it shatters. he bends over to pick up the pieces, holding us inside and staring at the ceiling to avoid looking at his plumber's butt... :S

---
i have a room! an office! with a desk! and a window! i've gotten one of the best seats in the house as far as our operations are concerned, and everyone's laughing because i've been stuck in the janitor's closet for so long. it's a room with a moose, though. i'm sitting with the IT guy. the one who does bugger-all? the one we don't like? it's now on *me* to make friends and get him to be helpful...

i met up with piles a couple of hours later, and we went to a reunion for my second section in the military. it was quite fun! the food was great, the conversation entertaining, the tekken frustrating (i don't remember 5's physics or moves at all)... but rock band? never played it. i was singing to metallica, and i'm good at that: only there's a weird delay, so i watched my voice through the system matching perfectly, exactly one half-beat behind even though i could hear my actual voice on time. not cool.

piles and i had "The Talk" regarding the end of my service (much like the one with tahoma on friday), and i only got home after midnight. i finally ordered new moo cards, showered, then snuck across to pg's and slid into bed.

---
yesterday:

in the morning, i slid out of bed and returned home to produce a poster for the anime evening and catch up on the class reading (didn't make it, it's not so simple to find wordsworth poems online). to make matters worse, i was reading on the bus and an annoying delay on my card reader had me closing firefox - no more readings. i had to find an access point as soon as i arrived on campus so that i could reload everything :/

the first class sucked. nobody wanted to say anything, i hadn't read everything so i didn't want to open my mouth even when i did have an opinion. we looked bad. in the meanwhile, i struck upon a winning formula and began the reading for his second class from the end.

paragraph by paragraph, i read from chapter 30 of lady audley's secret down to chapter 15. it's a great book, actually, and knowing where it was going made it quicker.

the british girl was sitting next to me in class and tried to send a mail to the group - not only did her sending fail, but it somehow transformed the screen to gibberish. amusing and disturbing - that's a serious FAIL :P

the flash boss called me up after class - not a nice conversation. things are not going smoothly :(

the girls i sat with over lunch and the other girls i sat with until the second class can't stand the giant ass from yesterday's class either - he's becoming a "thing". his behaviour (he's been rating people in the class out of ten, apparently) did remind me of a funny set of incidents from when i studied in UCT, though, and the telling was appreciated :)

---
the girls informed me that the law we were protesting has gone through: that means that the taxpaying majority who couldn't be arsed to get out of their chairs to join us will now all be paying in to keep the ultra-orthodox studying torah and hating the rest of us while not serving in the military nor believing in our right to exist.

fantastic.

nice one.

brilliant.

we need to stop playing the game if we're going to get anything done in this country. it's that simple.

---
so... fear of the muppets isn't rare? i'll be damned. i was shocked to discover that anyone could be frightened by gonzo.

---
i made a break for the supply store and bought a cheap stapler; the advertising has begun :D

the second class was all about monomania - what used to be considered a disease and is now not only expected, but demanded. they were right, in the old days. it is a disease.

our lecturer wore sunglasses - i don't think he told us why when he asked our forgiveness - and that was a bit distracting.

---
i've decided that i like prose poetry. from last week's harjo to yesterday's rukeyser, i just became a fan. we dedicated a fair amount of time to the smell of a presumably dead sphinx, then moved on to forché. i'd be damned if i wouldn't bring the idea of "dessert" out to the class.

---
while stapling up the last of the anime posters i was enlightened as to the ways of the student union - if they had called their orientation something like "orientation" and less like "leadership course" i would have gone. i would have learned how things work on campus. swak.

i bussed to work, got distracted alongside the head of our israeli division by a network problem (i now sit with the absent IT guy, so obviously i'm his second), finally got testing, then left when 9pm rolled around. i grooved and read on the bus to pg's, then we headed for the event of the evening:

tron. although there were a couple of deadspots in the movie (both the action and the music were calm and peaceful) in which i caught myself passing out, it rocked! a more than honourable sequel :)

last night was the first "normal" night pg and i have had in a while... being this busy is a bit of a strain. i've woken up late, am writing this at her place and am on my way to mayhem now. i don't like this flash project one bit, and i'm hoping to see the end of it before lunch.

[that last sentence was mostly correct. my battery ran out, so i completed this at home]