Life-Changing Event

This weekend, I went to Tree House Adoption Center, accompanied by my roommates Leah and Burcu, my friend Lucas, and Lucas's girlfriend, Cari. We perused the selections: some of them friendly (Lucky), some of them mean (Tyson, the aptly-named fucker who bit my finger); some of them fat as fuck (Catzilla), some of them with their skin virtually sagging from their bones (Wrinkles); some of them beautiful and healthy (Q), some of them tail-less (Boo-Boo) and blind. But finally, I adopted a 7-month-old silver-white-and-peach little boy who loves to be cuddled and who has earmites (but those'll disappear in a couple of weeks).

Naming him was the hardest part. Everyone agreed it should be something pretentious to fit our stuffy U of C selves. I liked Jupiter, but Lucas pointed out that I should save that one for a fat-ass mofo with a big red spot. We joked about calling him Foucalt (Fucko for short) but Burcu said, "We are NOT having a cat named Fucko in our apartment!" So we proceeded to go through every author we read in Soc last year, and most of the characters in Hum: Plato, no; Aristotle, hell no; Augustine, hmm--no; Hobbes--only if he were a tiger; Marx, fuck no; Ishmael? no; Queequeg, yuck. Achilles? Agamemnon? Patroklus?

So, I liked the idea of naming him something Greek; and he is rather godly; and he'll be carrying my sun through the dark, grey Chicago winter. That said, Apollo was really the only viable option. Only problem is, I'm afraid I'll end up getting lazy and calling him, "Polly." Shudder.

Even more shudderworthy was this: I read in the folder full of cat info they gave me that many cats live for over 20 years. That means that I'm going to have Apollo until I'm...40. Shudder. Twitch. Shudder. Shudder. Convulsive twitch.

From Loreal's AIM profile:

Loreal's mom: Wow, you and Andrew are really livin' it up. Don't you guys just think you're The Crap?
Loreal's sister, in the background: Mom....it's "The Shit"

*Ba-boom -ch-!*

Today in my Phaedrus class, we were discussing the suspiciously flirtatious language between the title character and Socrates. Is there a sexual subtext between them? Is Phaedrus the beloved of Socrates? Is Socrates the lover? Or is it the other way around, or not existent at all?

A guy named Sam with a long fuzzy beard and a backwards cap abruptly raises his hand.

"Maybe," he says, "it's a Platonic friendship!"

He was lucky we didn't beat him to death with thorned sticks.

YES!

I've finally finished all my reading!

      ....for last Thursday.

One of the quirks of getting older is that you reflect on things you once took for granted and realize how extremely fucking weird they are. For example: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. To wit:

Teenage. Mutant. Ninja. Turtles.

What? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Who the hell came up with that? Mutant turtles I can perhaps understand, but not only are they mutants, they're ninjas, and the "teenage" tacked on at the beginning is just unforgivably random. And, they like pizza, and, they're named after great Italian artists of the past. What? The? Fuck?

And, as a giggly grad-schooler, every time there was an eligible older male, cartoon or otherwise, I seized upon the imagined opportunity. Therefore, I had a crush on Donatello.

I had a crush on Donatello. A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

I'm gonna go take a shower.

Actually written yesterday and left floating expectantly in cyberspace all night:

I'm exhausted, but I feel obligated to blog. I feel blogligated. That sounded better in my head.

My classes are excellent. I did end up dropping the poetry class, even though it sounded interesting; I was planning to audit it, but I got assigned to a Russian drill section at 9:30, so unfortunately that won't happen.

My Medicine and Culture class is fascinating. The professor is an anthropologist named Jean Comaroff, and her reputation as a powerhouse is widely acknowledged; there must be a hundred and fifty people enrolled, which is almost unheard of for a non-science class at my school. It's the sort of class, with the sort of material, that I always imagined I'd be encountering in college: important, timely, controversial stuff. For instance, today's readings consisted of various anthropological accounts of medicine in different cultures, and how the Western perspective of medicine as simply the way to find the most efficient, effective cure is inadequate when studying other cultures. In non-Western societies, the effectiveness of medicine is not its sole reason for existence; often, acknowledged "cures" don't work at all, and sometimes the "healer" causes more disease and illness than he actually heals.

So why do societies cling to these objectively false cures and beliefs about illness? It's an incredibly interesting question, and one reason is that medicine is a way to reinforce the patient's beliefs about his or her society; say, for example, a society believes that an illness is caused by an angry ancestor, and a shaman is called to treat the victim. If the victim dies, it is blamed on the fact that the shaman was simply not as strong as the angry ancestor (the people view it as a "battle" between the two), and the society's view of the world is strengthened rather than called into question.

*gigglesnort* Hee hee! *shoves taped glasses up nose*

Anyway. My Plato class is likewise great; my professor (who is also my concentration advisor) is scarily reminiscient of my grandmother. And my psychopathology class...well...

Today, we were discussing--guess what--societies who believe that angry ancestors cause disease. The professor, a young, slightly dykey grad student, was using this belief as an example of varying mechanisms cultures use to explain mental illness. So we're all thinking, "yeah, those dumb gimpy schmucks" when an Asian guy in the corner raises his hand.

"What about cases," he asks slowly, "where it actually is the person's dead ancestor?"

My professor looks slightly confused, and says, "Yes, well, again, that's an explanation some other cultures use for why people get sick..."

"No, I mean, there have been cases where they've proven, by hypnotizing the patient, that it really is their dead mother or sister, or whoever, that's in them causing the illness," he replies.

So, at this point, half the class has little smirks on their faces, and they're looking expectantly at the professor, waiting to see how she's going to handle this. Which she did quite graciously:

"Well, again, some people do believe that a dead relative is actually inside the person. A proponent of Western medicine, on the other hand, would say that the person is just delusional, or that the hypnotist is causing the reaction. I won't discount either one; I tend to keep an open mind about these sorts of things."

The Asian guy nods, and I scanned the classroom for reactions. People are studying their notebooks; a guy raises his eyebrows and quickly shakes his head in disbelief, as if to rid from his mind the utter silliness that he's just been witness to.

So we're then discussing psychodynamic models of illness (i.e. the patient has control over it because its part of his personality) versus biological models of illness (the patient has no control; it's extrinsic to his "true" character). And the questions fill my mind, and I make some comments but they float away quickly, but I can't say how I really feel because I'll end up looking just like the Asian guy, except for the opposite reason. I fear seeming to be a nerd-bully so much. It's not that I'm not open to my opinions being proven wrong; I'm just afraid I'll be mindlessly thought down before I even get there.

But I have hope that my professor will listen to my crazy ideas, so maybe I'll pursue that.