i've realized i no longer enjoy people with strong personalities the way i used to. recently i sat near and overheard the nonstop conversation of a person i once at least found amusing. this time i had vivid fantasies of the use to which a 2x4 could be put.

this discovery comes on the heels of another, a related epiphany that burst upon me last year: a person who doesn't dress interestingly can still be interesting. think about it! don't pretend i'm the only one who has been in the past limited by these prejudices. this is america. we love rugged individuals, loud-mouths, winners, and trendy dressers. it's who we are. it's why we watch sex and the city and gangster movies, why we love marlon brando and jack nicholson. it's why the quakers aren't cool (in case you were wondering) and why god help religious fundamentalists of all kinds, cuz god knows we won't.

hopefully this doesn't indicate a new anti-social tendency on my part. if i get too much more anti-social i'll end up kaczinskying myself into a corner. i've already mentally disengaged myself from the people who invited daniel "yet another simplistic one-sided speaker" pipes here last night and from the people who covered the advertising signs with self-indulgent, snotty posters of their own. i'm not officially the scion of any department. the only dorms i've visisted this semester outside of danawell have been parrish and worth. i'm not playing ASSassins. i didn't even participate in a sager orgy. i mean, come on -- someone out there should be staging an intervention. what does it take to get you people alarmed?

at the same time this may go down as my favorite semester. (whenever i get happy i figger it's the happiest i've ever been. it's bullshit but at least it keeps me cheerful. -- in other words, it's my religion.) well, maybe i speak too soon. seminar today we'll be reviewing my second seminar paper and i don't have excessively high hopes for it. i liked the reading for it a lot, as it turned out: mccarthy vs. murrow, evil vs. good, battling it out through television. that's my kind of social history.