not one of those days

i slept really well last night! pg's getting good at using her elbows because she doesn't have the finger strength required to push my back back into shape, and everything's a lot more harmonious now :)

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i got into the language building's elevator this morning, heading up for coffee with a stranger, and one of the girls in my class slipped in past me. a large american with a big backpack came barging in, and the first girl was pretty much stuffed into the corner by the douche's bag...

"instead of me running after you, why don't you give me your number?" he addressed to my classmate.
"i have a boyfriend"
"oh! how embarrassing."

he walked out the elevator with me, she continued up. a couple of minutes later i walked back into the class, where she was waiting for me.

"totalwaste! why didn't you help me?!"
"excuse me? if you want help, you need to say something along the lines of 'please help me'. it all seemed fairly harmless, actually."

*then* she informs me, along with a number of other girls, that this creep has literally been chasing after every girl he sees and for long enough that they all know his name and phone number. some of the girls are terrified of him, and he apparently jumped out of the bushes one evening at one of the girls who was on her way home in the dark.

...

i don't like our sexual harassment laws. i think they're stupidly strict, unjust, and dangerously easy to abuse. having said that - i'm shocked at how none of the girls felt that the situation demanded that someone goes to the authorities and files a complaint. is he even a student?

Q: does the man make you feel uncomfortable? is he behaving inappropriately?
if the answer is yes, don't let it slide.

as i walked off, i heard one of the girls saying, authoritatively, "he's right!"

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first class was fun. the professor's been harping on, as is her wont, about anal eroticism as a drive. it wasn't until she used the word "imprint" that i began waving my arms like a madman.
"totalwaste?"
(leaping up) "i can hear angels singing! now i know what's been driving me crazy since you started talking about all of this: you talk about these drives like they're not subjective... they are VERY subjective. not only that, it is entirely possible to re-imprint. i think it's important that everyone here is at least *aware* of these facts!"

"of course it's possible to correct malformed drives - otherwise there'd be no field of psychoanalysis! now i'm assigning you, personally, some extra homework..."

buggrit :(

...

at least i got away with pointing out that orestes is a far more interesting character than hamlet. hamlet's a mental-masturbator who doesn't do what needs to be done, whereas orestes really is screwed whatever he does...

... at the beginning of the class she'd told us she was going to discuss two axes (of what, we're not certain). when there were about five minutes left the guy next to me asked her if she'd discussed the second axis. tarival (in the vain hope that i can compete, i haven't checked yet) had just asked a question, and the professor informed us that if she hadn't wasted time on that question we would've had time to cover it.

damn...

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i had a couple of strange ideas during the lesson... ghosts i and ii.

all i could think of during the second class was bill hicks: we were learning about the role and responsibilities of the reader in literature, and it was all i could do not to snigger every time the "reader" was mentioned :P

i met SxS at the gate and gave his cousins a quick tour of the center of campus, then played my part as navigator until we met up with mmf and his family for great thai lunch. it's the first time i've seen their daughter awake, and she is cute :)

a south african friend of SxS's sister was with us, and we seemed to get along in spite of my having to explain my anti-racist stance. at least i can articulate my beliefs, even if they are in the face of a johannesburg education. it's my hippie discourse versus the world again :/

the boss was sick today, so i deployed without him. it took a while (i would've made a couple of mistakes, albeit minor ones, if i hadn't been so pedantic about it), and then i spent a couple of frustrating hours getting back into the php problem i'd been working on a month or two back.

i was tired. when one of the managers needed to use my pc for something, i took the opportunity to put my head down for a few winks, but even that didn't really help...

i came home to polish the flash project and hand it over, and now i'm going to catch some z's before hitting the books early tomorrow morning.

it would be *so* much easier if i could play catch up on the weekends.