I was born two weeks too late, is that why I hesitate?

Thursdays are good. It's archaeology day and every lecture begins with the Indiana Jones theme (in my head only). Mouse Face makes a reappearance sitting next to me and doing his "oh I'm going to speak oh crap she smiled at me I'll just look down quickly" and I'm too sleepy to be bothered. I do my best to look I dunno approachable or something but he scurries away. He tries again later after Classics but again the minute I smile he scurries. Poor boy, I wish he'd stop doing this.

Anyway, Thursdays mean lunchtime with lovely, lovely Helen although today they forgot to make my toastie and I had to point it out to them. By the time it was ready both the cafes were full and Helen got a bit worried when I suggested sitting in the bar. I pointed out that everybody sat in Jim's bar with food smuggled from elsewhere and if anybody complained (which they wouldn't) I'd sacrifice my liver for a table. We sat in there too long and I scurried across the road with her as she panicked that she'd get into trouble for forgetting her goggles. That science faculty is way too high strung. I keep telling her she should have picked an Arts degree. They just assume you're not doing any work.

Helen leaves me with an hour to kill in the library so I read some more Rousseau. He's pretty spot on with some of his observations about women despite writing some 300 years ago. Have some quotes because I wrote down like 3 pages and I have no real use for any of this stuff:

A man of feeling would rather be singled out for ill-treatment than be caressed with the crowd, and the worst that can happen to him is to be treated like everyone else.

If you want to see a man in a quandary [what a great word!], place him between two women with each of whom he has a secret understanding, and see what a fool he looks. But put a woman in similar circumstances between two men, and the results will be even more remarkable. You will be astonished at the skill with which she cheats them both and makes them laugh at each other...If she treated them alike, would she not show that they both had the same claims upon her? Oh, she is far too clever for that! So far from treating them just alike, she makes a marked difference between them and she does it so skillfully that the man she flatters thinks it is affection, and the man she ill uses think it is spite. So that each of them believes she is thinking of him, when she is thinking of no one but herself.

The lips always say "No," and rightly so; but the tone is not always the same, and that cannot lie. Has not a woman the same needs as a man, but without the same right to make them known?

With the facility women have of arousing men's senses and of awakening in the depths of their hearts feelings that were thought to have died, if there were some unlucky country where philosophy had introduced this custom [of women being the bold sex] the men would be tyrannized over by the women. They would eventually become their victims and would find themselves dragged to their death without ever being able to defend themselves...Samson the Strong was never as strong as Delilah.

The more women resemble men, the less influence they will have over them, and then the men will truly be the masters.

[on female friendships] it is certain that they kiss each other more affectionately and caress each other more gracefully in the presence of men, for they are proud to be able to arouse their envy without danger to themselves by the sight of favours which they know will arouse that envy.


Goddamn I miss philosophy. Gives me the most delicious thrills...