As I write this journal entry when I should be making breakfast and getting ready for school, it brings to mind the irony of my owner's smoking habit. She knows it kills her, knows it kills me, and yet has to smoke because of the terrible addictive properties of tobbacco. May Philip Morris rot in Hell etc etc, but there are consequently some very odd rituals she insists on performing, as if it will somehow help the situation. Odd rituals because they don't help at all, but anything that would help would force her to smoke less, and she can't even consider that. Yes, "can't."
One ritual is the use of filtered cigarettes. Now, it's pretty common knowledge that the most poisonous secondhand cigarette smoke is released from its burning tip when it sits in the ashtray unsmoked. Filters in fact have strange artificial chemicals of their own, so being around a filtered cigarette is worse than being around an unfiltered one. She thinks filtered ones are safer though, despite my suggestions to the contrary, and won't smoke anything else around me. But give her a filter, and oh boy will she smoke as if it were bubble gum!
Another ritual is her choice of placement in the house. She thinks that sitting on the couch prevents me from experiencing the horror of her smoke in the kitchen. What we both know though is that every draft in the house flows straight to the kitchen. She also sits beside a cracked open door at the dining room table, which the smoke wafts right past into the kitchen. She would be less rude if she smoked in the kitchen itself, where the smoke goes up the fan duct, but she thinks it's somehow healthier a belching cloud of smoke across me while I try, for instance, to make my breakfast and get ready for school.
On the issue of the fan, she resents it palpably when I turn on the fan to clear the room. Her mood darkens, her eyes lower, her coughing increases (in between pulls of the cigarette.) I haven't teased her about it or anything; I'm mostly fine with her smoking as long as I can avoid it myself. It's just an instant suspicion that I'm going to sneer at her and suggest she take out that cigarette if she knows what's good for her. I mean, I really don't feel that way, just seems like this unavoidable vibe that happens. Do I get along with her, or do I save my lungs? Why is that even an either/or choice?
My math teacher was being particularly odious today. She loves using the royal "we" and since most people have not done their assignments just right, instead of helping us out, she's lording it over us and crowing about how difficult it will be for us in the university if we don't obey her. I'm trying my best not to scream in frustration and just walk out of class. Our teacher--she's just got that same sort of curly hair permed personality that my senior English teacher and my 6th and 8th grade science teacher has: a personality that somehow arouses the darkest of emotions inside me. I really don't know why she bothers me so much; I'm usually very tolerant even of such crass tactics as trying to motivate students by telling them how hard their future is going to be, or claiming that they can succeed by getting a better grade on the next test without actually explaining how to get a better grade in the first place.
Been a long day... got Ghost in the Shell music running through me right now. I dunno about this whole Computer Science thing; I'm really not cut out for rigorous mathematical thought. It takes a keen sense of order and organization, and that doesn't come easy to a borderline schizo. So I'll endure it for now, but I just wish there was something more productive I could do with my time than prove how if a divides b*c then a divides b and a divides c evenly. I always liked the way the word schizo sounds--because it's horribly unphonetic, but sounds neat. Shkitzo! Hee, and we were also talking in the cafeteria about how abbreviation is a very long word, phonetic is not phonetic, and who was the bastard who decided it would be a good idea to put an 's' in lisp?
Fun skit: A: Tho I thaid to him... B: Why are you talking funny? A: I have a lithp. B: A what? A: A lithp! B: A lithp? A: No a lithp. B: You said a lithp. A: I thaid a lithp with an eth! B: What's an eth? A: It'th a letter! B: Which letter? A: The nineteenth. B: You mean ess? A: Yeth! B: Oh, lithp with an ess! A: Yeth! B: You have a lithp? A: Yeth, a lithp! B: Thank goodneth. I thought it wath catching.
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