My new classes

A sum-up of my new semester:

One of my professors came to class wearing a canary-yellow shirt with a white jacket and a yellow bow-tie with red polka dots, and referred to his antique collection as his children. As in: "I often talk to my children--" (Jenny, in her mind: Children? Really? Well, I guess Oscar Wilde had children also) "--and pick them up, but I use the kind of care one should always use when handling antiques." (Jenny, in her mind: Ah yes. I was right.)

Another of my professors was exactly like Ben Fong-Torres ("Craaazy") in Almost Famous, and he patronized me for saying something actually perfectly intelligent and also correct and believed by many theologian people. He asked us why we thought there weren't a bunch of depictions of the crucifixion in very early Christian art (the first one (HE SAYS but we plainly can't trust him) being from A.D. 450), and I said that crucifixion was a shameful criminal death to die and it was an embarrassment to the religion, and he said, "Hm. Good guess. But no" and explained that in fact it was because nobody in the early years of the religion cared about the crucifixion, and it only became important later on. So I think he is full of shit, and I shall drop his class if possible, even though I would love to learn about illuminated manuscripts and so forth.

My parapsychology teacher can see auras. He can see auras. I love this class. We are going to study UFO abductions and angels, and my professor can see auras. In the evening he sees them best (he says). I wanted to go find him and be like, "Um, my father is friends with a dude you work with" and then, having established my credentials, "WHAT COLOR IS MY AURA?"

And my queer theory class is perfect. It's perfect. It's the way I imagined college would be, back when I was a wee high schooler. We are reading a bunch of cool articles about all different things, and the people in the class are interesting and they answer when the professor asks questions and like say intelligent things.

Incidentally, there was a girl there and she was from England (she went to Swansea uni, but she didn't sound the least bit Welsh, and I don't know where she was from originally), and she was a Ph.D. student and very smart and oh my God, so posh. She was like terrifyingly posh, even more posh than my poshest flatmate, plum in her mouth and everything; which is funny because back in the day I wouldn't have noticed a thing (that's how British people talk), but after living with people from East London and Southend and Shropshire, I really really really noticed. Ah to be in England now that summer's here.

P.S. I miss London. Lovely London.

My schedule is extremely busy this semester, which means that I'll be doing a lot of work in the evenings and a lot of work in the mornings kind of early, and I have already turned to coffee. I made it through years and years of getting up at five-thirty for school, and never once did I drink coffee to keep myself going, because I don't like the taste, even when you mix in sugar and milk. Apparently all it took was giving me school plus a job, plus the notion that you don't have to have cream in your coffee. I drank two cups this morning at work, and I usually don't even make it through one. No cream, three sugars. My poor teeth.

In recreational news, there is a very cute movie of Northanger Abbey that was made by, I believe, the BBC earlier this year. The girl who plays Catherine is adorable and very sweet and innocent-looking, and the guy who plays Henry Tilney (my favorite Jane Austen hero, incidentally, by a lot, and please don't shoot me, Laura, this only means more Mr. Darcy for you) looks like Lee Pace, whom I adore, and announces his smirks in advance. I love it. Marry me, Henry Tilney.