If we're all going somewhere, let's get there soon

So here's what I'm doing instead of writing my NaNo like I'm supposed to! Answering old questions from that question meme I did. Enjoy!

drworm asks the hard questions:

1. What animal would you be and why? (Not what animal would guard your dungeon, mind you... what animal best represents you. Cliche, I know.)
Well, one cannot help but admire the glorious Komodo dragon, with its cool gaze and poisonous bite...but that's definitely not me; I do not bite, and my gaze is more like that of a startled dugong than a cold-blooded lizard. Although I did want to hide in trees to avoid getting eaten when I was a child, like the young dragons do.
My father's family's totem animal is the weasel, and not just because that's my dad's nickname. We are a crafty people; we depend on our brains to get us out of tough spots, and are naturally skilled at debate, persuasion, and playing with words. I have seen many Weissermans successfully convince some poor sap to do something they didn't really want to do in the first place by making them think that it was their idea all along, somehow. This isn't quite me, either; however much of a logical, concise debater I am, I seem to lack the broad charisma that allows my father to win his cases or that assists my grandmother in selling her patrons the most expensive stationery in the store.
I would say the animal that most represents me is the stately and adorable kakapo. The kakapo have immense trouble finding mates, even during a good mating season, and only mate once every three or four years. They are unable to fly, but occasionally forget this, and will climb to the tops of trees and jump off, hitting the ground with what I imagine is a sad little "splat." (I have, on occasion, especially when I am sleep-deprived or just in a silly mood, been known to seriously forget that I cannot fly, travel in time under my own power, or contact aliens with a flashlight.) Instead of flying, they like to walk. They have few natural predators, and thus have no natural defenses; when confronted with a possible predator, they will freeze up and hope to blend in with the scenery. (I do this; just yell at me or threaten to hit me, and watch me turn into a twitching statue!) Kakapo are naturally curious, and though they live solitary lives in remote places, they have been known to enjoy the occasional company of humans.

2. Do you think Freudian psychology is still valid?
This could be an entire term paper, you know. I'll resist the urge to write pages and pages about it.
Some aspects of Freudian psychology are still valid. The idea of psychoanalysis in itself is almost universal by now, as is the idea of the conscious mind and subconscious mind (although there are many new theories of mind being explored--one of my favorites is the Jaynesian idea of the bicameral mind, which actually posits the subconscious-vs.-conscious dichotomy to be a result of a physical neurological split in the brain, rather than a purely psychological one, althugh I do still completely agree with Freudian ideas of repression). Freudian dream interpretation is also pretty universally used, and more often than not is pretty accurate, even if only as more of a Rorschach test than anything else--the way you interpret your own dream can tell you more about the way your mind works than the dream itself does.
I don't really have an opinion on his anal-oral-genital stages of development, as I'm not particularly informed about the psychology of child development. I do think that the more modern concrete-to-abstract theory of intellectual development is more applicable to most children, although this is only going by my own experience as a child (which was not a totally normal experience anyway), and not my experience interacting with other children as an adult.
I do think that some of his more famous theories, particularly those that apply to family dynamics, have become so widespread throughout the culture that they have become valid, even if they may have been rather sketchy in the first place. (For example: Did you know that during the 1950s, many child psychologists encouraged fathers to treat their little girls as semisexual objects in order to instill Electra complexes in them that would shape them into becoming perfect little specimens of womanhood? "Compliment your daughter on her cleaning and cooking skills, tell her that she is becoming as skilled at housekeeping as her mother...pay her compliments on her appearance, as you would to your wife. Your daughter needs male attention at this stage of her development; she needs to be reassured that she is attractive to men, and who better to reassure her than you, her loving father?" <-- slightly paraphrased from an old "Understanding Your Teenage Daughter" pamphlet that sits in my Psych prof's office; it's very much akin to the one Humbert Humbert read so ironically in Lolita...Nabokov really didn't have to make that much up, did he?).
I don't think that Freud's ideas of family dynamics necessarily apply to every family. No psychoanalytic theory is going to apply to every single person; that's the beauty of having so many of them.
I don't think the idea of penis envy is particularly valid as a strictly psychological theory; Freud did come up with his ideas during the Victorian period, which was a particularly sexually repressed time period, particularly for women. I've read a lot of papers arguing that penis envy in Freud's female patients was a subconscious expression of the frustration of being a woman in a time when women were essentially powerless, the phallus being a symbol of power. I also agree with you that assuming penis envy to be something that every woman goes through is particularly detrimental to latent transsexuals. And although I am aware that womb envy wasn't a strictly Freudian idea and was in fact proposed by feminists to counteract what they saw as the male chauvinism of Freud's theories, I think that it's less of a literal envy of reproductive ability than it is a subconscious expression of frustration at the very male values of repressing one's emotions in order to keep one's masculinity intact (and it's also a great excuse to be a mad scientist).

3. What is your favorite board game?
Sequence. The game board is printed with cards from a 52-card deck, in numerical sequences, doubled up so that there are two of each card somewhere on the board. Each player gets a bunch of little colored poker chips and 6 cards from two decks, dealt to them at random. You go around the table, put down a card, and put one of your chips on the corresponding space on the deck. It sounds like a nice relaxing game, but it can get seriously cutthroat, and we've been known to have marathon sessions on lazy nights.
It's a nice mix of strategy and chance, and very very simple. I don't like games of pure chance because there is no room for strategy, and I don't like games of pure strategy because after a while, each game becomes the same, without an equalizing factor like the possibility of getting dealt a bad hand.
I also like Scrabble, which is the official board game of my mom's side of the family. It appeals to my linguistic sense. The problem with playing Scrabble, particularly with my family, is that we cheat. A lot. My grandpa loves to make up words and claim that they're old slang from the army, my uncle Mike uses lots of foreign words and technical terms that aren't in the dictionary, and I have been known to make up endings to words, or just cut perfectly good words in half, and then make up elaborate definitions from them. And my little brother will just put random tiles on the board and claim that they're obscure Old English words. We seldom challenge, because Mom's family is such a bunch of geeks that half the time we're probably right about words, and it is a great dishonor to lose one's turn.

4. Favorite Discworld character? Or which do you identify with most and why?
I played Agnes Nitt for a while on a Discworld RPG, although I wasn't very good at keeping her in character. This was when I was in high school (12th grade) and very into witches. I thought the Agnes/Perdita personal dichotomy was pretty apt, although for the life of me I can't remember what it was about my personality that gave me that idea. I suspect that I really identified mostly with her hair.
Susan was the first Discworld character I ever read about, and part of the reason I started to like Discworld. I liked her self-awareness, not only as a person but as a character in the post-modern sense--remember the part in "Soul Music" where she's first contacted by the Death of Rats? She judges the situation not only on its own particulars, but she also references her knowledge of what has become a cliched literary situtation. This is only partially because of the parodical nature of Discworld. It's a realistic, reasonable reaction that is seldom written into even non-parody books. It's how I'd react, certainly.
You mentioned a while ago that I reminded you of Ponder Stibbons; "A little odd, but still able to be logical and analyze things and always trying to bring a little bit more order to the crazies they've managed to surround themselves with." I like this. It makes sense. :D
Man, now I want to go re-read all my Discworld books...and I didn't even bring any up with me.

5. Who would you choose to defend the universe and why?
Interestingly, this is the question that gave me the most trouble. All sorts of things attack the universe, and it's hard to think of a single entity that would be perfectly equipped to handle every possible kind of crisis.
Flash Gordon or Captain Kirk, for example, would do admirably in a situation where evil alien monsters are attacking perfectly innocent planets, whereas someone accustomed to the occult, like Doctor Mordid or Susan Sto-Helit, would function better if slavering shades from the Dungeon Dimensions were sucking out peoples' souls.
Also, there are different facets to the universe-saving business; if you didn't know exactly what was wrong, you'd have to get someone very clever, like the Question or Dirk Gently, to figure out what to do (although Dirk Gently would probably work better, as he can't be wrong even when he tries to be, whereas the Question is perfectly capable of getting things very wrong indeed--unless, in fact, the Girl Scouts are causing those crop circles); you'd have to get someone very good at war and strategy to work out a way to defeat them, like Ender Wiggin or one of those scientists from Isaac Asimov stories that are always figuring out simple problems to insanely complicated problems using only basic logic and bad puns; and you'd have to get someone with a lot of strength and firepower, like Superman or the Green Lantern, to actually do the work of defeating them.
This is assuming that there's actual things attacking the universe, of course; defending the very existence of the universe is a different matter--Total Reality Failures tend to be subjective in nature, and can be taken care of by a competent therapist; if it can't, then the universe probably wasn't very well-constructed to begin with anyway, and can be dismantled properly by a good philosopher or sage.
Sooo I can't possibly pick just one person to defend the universe. I'd probably have to make them form a Super Universe-Defending Team or something, and they'd squabble and yell and wouldn't get along at all.