And so it begins

Hmm. That sounds rather ominous. Relax, it just means I am starting  the day’s blogging while waiting for the bus at school.

Didn’t mean to spook ya.

Did I mention that I whanged my knee into the door while getting into the cab last night? I whanged it alright. Really hard. It hurt like a son of a bitch.I am still not sure how I did it, but getting into an SUV is challenging when you already have one bad knee and it’s dark out.

So when I woke up this morning, it was very sore and stiff. There is no visible damage, but that happens with me sometimes. I get invisible bruising. A bruise I can clearly feel and which is sore to the touch just like a bruise, but totally invisible.

It must be related to the fact that I have the kind of veins that are hard to find when it is needle time. Blood vessels aren’t close to the surface, or somesuch.

I think the bruising is also mostly under the kneecap. I don’t  think it is too serious. It already feels better than it did this morning. I imagine it will be mostly better by the end of the weekend, if not sooner.

It is not like I move a lot on weekends anyhow.

Good news on the finance front. Turns out I only owe Kwantlen $1463. Turns out they got my federal money just fine. It’s the province that’s the problem.The federal gubmint paid Kwantlen their portion (based on my low-income status) way back in September, shortly after the loan was approved.

You would think that would be good enough for the province, but noooooooo.

Still, it’s good that it’s a smaller amount of money than I thought. Exactly how much better is unquantifiable, but one assumes it must be easier to raise less money.

Still dunno how I am going to do it. Working up the nerve to email my siblings, or at least, post about my plight directly on Facebook instead of in this indirect form.

I am having so much trouble concentrating on blogging right now. And I know why, it’s because I didn’t get enough sleep last night. I woke up at 8:30 am and could not get back to sleep. Happens every once in a while. Plus, it was cold outside and it’s toasty warm in here, so I have full on Melt going on right now. All I really want to do right now is curl up in bed and go to sleep, but I don’t have a lot of time to blog tonight as we are likely going out to eat.

So blog away I must, witless mind or no. You don’t really love something unless you do it when it’s not easy, and I love blogging. Besides, I would never leave you nice people in the lurch. I know there’s like a half dozen people who read this blog, and some of you might even enjoy iy.

And that really means a lot to me.

Oh, here’s something I forgot to include in yesterday’s entry. When I was on the bus to White Spot, a woman sat behind me and, the minute the bus was in motion, started to swear passionately under her breath.

And I am thinking “Okay, steady on, she might not be crazy. She might have just gone through a genuinely infuriating incident. Like maybe she just got dumped, or she is dealing with some extra heavy office stupidity, or something. ” Meanwhile, the hackles on my neck are rising.

I suppose the neck is the only place we have hackles.

It’s amazing how powerful these instinctual responses can be. Most of the time, we modern humans don’t have a lot of experience of our rawer instincts, like our sense of danger or basic fear. Everything in modern life tends to be nuanced, articulated, attenuated, and the result of many forces interacting within us.

But not this time. My hackles, and the icy fear rising in me, said “Crazy person, beware!”. Even though I am an actual crazy (but medicated) person myself.

I guess even crazy people don’t want to be around crazy people. At the very least, not all of a sudden like that.

It could have also been Tourette’s, which would be tragic, because then that poor woman might have been mutely wishing she could keep her mouth from saying all that crazy shit.

That didn’t occur to me at the time, though. Luckily, White Spot was the next stop, and so I didn’t have to find out how that particular little drama played out.

And I found out my Psych 1100 prof considers herself a radical behaviourist today, which is sad, because she’s so adorkable and I absolutely loathe behaviourism in all its forms.

My theory of behaviourism is that B. F. Skinner had Asperger’s Syndrome. And so do many of his adherents. It would go a long way towards explaining behaviourism’s terror of contemplating mental events, a terror that drives them to pretend that what is actually going on in people’s minds is somehow unknowable.

Bullshit. It might not be quantifiable or provable, but it’s damned well knowable and understandable. That’s why we have empathy, a scientifically verifiable brain function that lets us understand each other by feeling what the other guy feels. We are actually pretty good at understanding one another’s behaviour and emotions most of the time. Most people don’t have to guess why the man whose hair is on fire is screaming.

And then she said she thinks free will is an illusion, and there is so much wrong with that idea that I can’t even. Absolutely nothing we do makes sense without free will. Our entire understanding of the world is predicated on the notion that people choose their actions and can therefore be held accountable for them. We integrate the idea that we have made the right choices into our egos, as well as the bad ones.

What really struck home was when I said that if there is no free will, then I have no choice but to think you are wrong. That works because it makes people realize that no free will means they have no right to be annoyed at you for disagreeing with them.

I am clever like that.

Time to melt! I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.

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