goddamn owls

Here is what I should have done tonight:
Memorized my German vocabulary. Frau Lein says she thinks I could be getting a much better grade in the class if I only applied myself. I feel bad for letting her down.

Here is what I also could have done tonight:
Tried to work on spacematchbook. I did, I promise. I just really, really don't want to write this next scene, the one I've been not writing for three days. It isn't going to be pleasant for Douglas, and I'm worried about how to handle Spiff. I don't know what greasers do to nerds, especially when the nerds don't fight back--I did decide to make him a greaser instead of a jock-reject, because greasers seem much more lizardlike. And sexier. (With no prior knowledge of the story, Charlene blithely suggested that I have the greaser seduce the nerd. Although this wouldn't totally work for the story, it is a nice new fantasy that I will be adding to my collection.) I even checked out some S.E. Hinton books to try and figure out how to write it. S.E. Hinton never wrote about nerds, though. Sensitive romanticized greasers who coulda totally been the next Kerouac, yes.
I think Harrison was kind of divided along your average Soc/Greaser lines, although we didn't call them that, nor did most people officially acknowledge the social lines. They were still there, though. Even a nerd like me could tell that--the Chaldean kids and trailer-park kids hung out with each other, and the rich Jewish kids all hung out with each other. I could have probably been a Soc-type, being from one of the rich Jewish families (on Dad's side, anyway), but I was too completely geeky to really mix with any of them.
Little brother Brian is quite clearly going along the Greaser-type lines. He seems to be very happy about this. He's a good kid, though, and he's going that way by choice. I'm proud of him. Really am.

Anyway, what I did do:
Let Charlene copy my notes for SF class (OMG cheating) and whined to her about nothing in particular, I think. Charlene is groovy.
Bounced ideas about awkward DeLorean sex (them cars have tiny backseats, not big enough for two people--I know, I've tried) and thought-recording video cameras off drworm. As with all things, my innocent method of sharing one's fantasies with the world in full color and sound quickly turned into a thought-reading dystopia where the only method of escaping quick retribution by the paranoid State is to get so drunk that you don't have any thoughts that can be read. Hello, Nebula-winning novel!

Animated icons, free to a good home:
( Two of these )

Made stupid image macros. These are pictures with catchphrases pasted onto them that you use instead of a canned reponse such as "OMG" or "O RLY?" They are used only in cases of laziness, joking, or extreme trolling. Most of these, except for the doll, are screencaps taken from drworm's webpage. There are 15 Re-Animator, 2 "High School USA." I wanted to make some BttF ones, but couldn't find the screencaps I had in mind. I need to get a good screencapping program for free--anyone have recommendations?
Would like to remind you that these are not great works of art, they are dumb catchphrases that can be easily created in MSPaint when you're not tired enough to go to bed, too tired to do anything constructive, and just in the right frame of mind to actually find these things amusing. I'll probably wake up and go, "Shit, how immature," but right now I'm pleased with myself.

( Macros! )

& we get Danny Quayle

Have been feeling very nervous all day. Freud would say it's my subconscious trying to tell me that I have left something undone, and I'm feeling guilty about it, but I don't know what I haven't done. Thought it might have been encroaching SADD--it's been cold and dark all day, and I've barely been outside. Maybe it was precognition, because I now actually have a good reason to feel like crap.

Did register for classes for next semester.

--Modern Poetry with Ronnie Apter. Have heard good things about this prof.
--Intro to Literary Analysis with William Brevda. It was a choice between that or Dan Patterson, but his class conflicted with:
--Human Biology, which I have to take as a prerequisite for Evolutionary Psychology. Also which might help me with possible Re-A stories.
--Intro to Psychological Statistics, which is a requirement for a Psych degree,
--Abnormal Psychology with James Carroll. Was hoping for more classes with the Psych prof I have now, because she's great, but apparently she only teaches Psych 100.

Was looking through the coursebook and kept wanting to change my major so that I could take interesting classes. Anthropology! Sociology! How people work! And I'm wondering why I didn't choose one of those to go into.
It's just the way I think, I finally decide. Sociology emphasizes things like social responsibility and ethics, focusing on changing society for the better. I don't know what it is about that that doesn't appeal to me. I suppose I don't have that ideological spark that makes for a true crusader. I'd rather work to help people reconcile the system and their selves, which is what clinical psychology is, when you get down to it...and now I've argued myself into feeling like a tool of the system. Thanks a lot, brain.
It's the same with anthropology, or maybe the opposite. Once you've ascertained that people are all the same, what's the point? It's all specifics. Jewish circumcision ceremonies are the same thing as frat boy hazing, modern America is going the way of the Victorians, and all religion does is satisfy evolutionary cravings towards hierarchal societies. Nitpicking is a mistake. (Or maybe I'm just too argumentative, really--I treat everything as a debate, whether I should or not. It's my primary form of communication. It's not that I necessarily disagree or that I think the other party is stupid. I see a well-thought-out argument or a rant, and I think, "Wow, this person really knows what they're talking about. I want to make them think I know what I'm talking about, too." So I create dissenting viewpoints in order to seem intelligent, even if I do agree...it's just the result of my own feelings of intellectual inadequacy, and it makes other people mad at me, and I'm sorry...)
Psychology builds on both sociology and anthropology, but on a one-on-one basis. "Yes, we're all monkeys. That's just how things work. Have a banana. Now, what are you going to do with the specific monkey right in front of you?" Separating the individual from their environment, not as a cultural artifact or a representative of a group, but as a discrete, conscious being.
I'm sure that Prof. Tifft would say this attitude contributes to the alienation of modern society, but hell, there are some people who are going to be alienated from any society, no matter what, and there's nothing that the most well-meaning social construct can do about it.

I just realized how much I'm contradicting things I've said in earlier entries. Well, whatever, I'm still in the relativistic stage of my development and am not yet required to have firm opinions.