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3.11.09
i have a midterm for history and systems of psychology in two hours and i have not studied
the study guide says 'the wise student will take time to prepare written answers to all these study questions and then study for them. prepare carefully'
most psychologists/philosophers we've learned about have experienced severe depressions, attempted suicide, were considered 'freaks' or 'insane' by their peers, locked themselves in their rooms, felt socially isolated, were either celibate or extremely promiscuous, and rarely found 'love'
most of them took a long time to finish school, dropped out of school, or never went to school and taught themselves
edward titchener trained people called 're-agents' to do his version of introspecting which consisted of writing every thought they had, then assigning a positive or negative value to each thought based on how they remembered experiencing it. he was severely depressed. his brain is preserved in a jar at cornell university right now
john stuart mill knew several languages, advanced math, and read many 'great books' before he was ten years old. his father taught him. in his early twenties he had a nervous breakdown and didn't leave his bed for three years. he read poetry and started to feel better. he was a feminist and cared about human rights. five people went to his funeral
knowing these things makes it hard to study for a test in this class
i feel like i would get along with a lot of these early psycholo- gists
my backpack broke and i am ingesting a lot of caffeine. i sat in a cafe for awhile writing 'i am so fucked' over and over in the margins of the notes i told myself to memorize
3.21.09
i'm reading 'the end of the story' by lydia davis. in my head the main character's romantic interest physically resembles someone important in my life, and their dynamic is very similar to my last failed serious relationship. i relate to 97% of what lydia davis says, but i'm not sure if it's because we've actually had similar thoughts, or because her style of writing makes me think we've had similar thoughts. i think a little of both. reading this book gives me thoughts like 'ohhh,' 'a-ha,' and 'yes, very similar to me'
i was feeding my cats cheez-its and one cat threw up a little on my leg. now he's licking his crotch
the other night i had four cups of wine, one gin and tonic, one 'red headed slut,' and two beers. then i threw up and felt better and drank another beer. this was over the course of probably four or five hours. seeing that written down feels bad. i feel excessive. i feel compelled to say 'this doesn't happen often'
a girl aggressively hit on me that night. i was with three people. the bar was closing, so we left. outside, a crowd of people stood smoking cigarettes, probably wondering what was going to happen next
a girl standing close to the door was alone and had a worried look on her face. i was drunk enough to approach her and ask if she was okay. she asked if i could walk her home because she was 'really drunk' and nervous about walking alone. she lived three blocks away. the three people i was with said we could walk her home
the girl walked next to me and i asked about her job and housing arrangements or something. she answered my questions, then said i was 'gorgeous,' asked if i was bi, if i thought she was pretty, and if i wanted to hook up with her. i said i wasn't sure of my sexual orientation but she seemed too drunk and would probably regret most things she was saying. she kept telling me i was 'gorgeous' and that she really wanted to 'hook up' with me, and maybe more explicit things. i'm not sure what i said to her
someone in the group noticed i was uncomfortable and stopped walking. then i stopped walking. then the girl stopped walking. someone said something about going to my apartment. i felt confused and probably said 'well,' 'i mean,' 'i don't know,' and 'what do you think, what are you doing' a lot. this probably happened over a period of two minutes, but it felt like maybe ten or fifteen to me. the girl wanted to come to my apartment. i said that would be okay, but someone else had a reason why that was not okay. the girl walked away angrily. i said 'okay bye'
i was probably 75% drunk at this point. i was drunk enough to talk to strangers but sober enough to decline a sexual proposition
after the girl left, we all wanted to eat something. i said i wanted pizza. my friend val also wanted pizza. a tall guy said he hated pizza. i have met people who don't eat pizza because it contains cheese or sometimes meat, but never because they don't like the taste. i told him this in a very loud voice and said he was probably an alien. there was a period where i was mostly making exaggerated movements and saying 'WHAAAAT!' and 'oh my god' in response to things he didn't like about pizza
we started 'play-fighting.' he pushed me and i fell and skinned my knee and tops of my feet and was bleeding a lot. he picked me up and apologized sincerely. we were all laughing
other things happened. there was a car and we got lost and were going to go to a korean place and then a diner and then i forget. we ended up at a deli in my old neighborhood and bought falafel. the deli employees remembered me. they speak with thick middle eastern accents and sometimes i can't understand them. i smile and shrug at them a lot. i think we like each other. i like them, anyway
one person left and there were just three of us. we sat in my living room and ate our falafel. no one said much. i finished my falafel and went to sleep. it was around 5AM. the tall guy and val stayed awake and had a 'relationship altering talk' on my couch
it was a good night. other things happened. those were the most notable. my cat is now 'spooning' my leg
3.29.09
life without the internet
i would be moderately overweight and probably would have graduated college on time
i would talk to more people and spend less time analyzing con- versations
i would have higher self-esteem but feel less inclined to ques- tion my purpose in life
i don't know how many boyfriends i would have had, but definitely wouldn't have had one in particular
i might get pleasure out of telling myself i was addicted to something
i would write sci-fi stories about the apocalypse or cat-faced humans
maybe i would be happier if i had unlimited resources and lived something like tom clancy's life
but i don't want to be tom clancy
tom clancy probably wears a baseball hat when he has sex
people who own tom clancy books might sometimes acciden- tally see his name on a book while they're having sex
that might make them like tom clancy more
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