Regarding that damn rape false alarm: the girl decided to write to the Aggie saying that she made it up because her boyfriend dumped her, she tried to commit suicide and failed, and then had to come up with something to explain er, the results. Or something. It's not all that clear. (And as one of the future-in-laws put it this weekend, "she fled to San Diego so they couldn't prosecute her anyway.")

Okay, so she's screwed up. Fine. But why on earth would you pick THAT as a thing to explain why you're in distress?

I'm still not hearing the end of it. Dave forced pepper spray upon me this weekend, and Mom is incredibly pissed off at me now for not coming home during daylight hours on Sunday this weekend because of the NONEXISTENT rapist that's going to come after me. Not to mention that she's of course also pissed that I won't promise to come home on either of the next two weekends because I need to sew, and was all bitchily jealous of Dave (even though I have no idea if I'll even see him again for a few weekends- if he ends up employed by anyone (no news yet) I definitely won't), and said she won't put up a tree this year because "it's just not Christmas if you're not going to be home." Conveniently forgetting that I was home for like 3 weeks last year at Christmas and she still didn't put up a tree, mind you...

And speaking of the dress, Hill is now all "The dress has to be done next week." That BETTER mean "the dress has to be done by the 23rd" and not "Next Monday" or I will scream.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Okay, okay, I'm going to try to write a fairly cheerful entry for once in my chaos-ridden life.

The weekend was lovely, actually. Spent Friday night over at S&D's watching Lilo and Stitch with most of the gang and saw Emily (J&N's baby, surprisingly quiet). Dave does a dead-on Stitch voice ("PUNCHBUGGY!"), which is quite amusing.

Oh, and I found out that I will be in "the wedding party" at S&D's wedding. Doing what, I have no idea, but apparently sword-holding is involved. Eeep. Like I can pick up a sword?!?

Saturday I got to go to the mall, which always gives me a big happy. I bought Dave a few more gifts- I am getting addicted to all those little $5 gift kits in the novelty stores, and got him/me a Zen garden (we both want one) and a fondue kit. The fondue kit is so little and so cute, I'm about ready to use it now. Hell, I'm about ready to break open half his presents. As for Jackie, I found her a glittery Happy Bunny T-shirt saying "Hi, moron" and a "You suck and that's sad" matching pen. Whee! My shopping is done!

Taking me to the mall makes me so damn happy, I swear. Stores! Atmosphere! Party on! Weird things to look at! Spending money! Yay! I actually got kinda cranky and resentful when J&N called wanting us to meet them downtown while we were at the mall, mainly because I figured it just wouldn't be that fun. And it turned out that I was right- we met them at this gaming place where you rent a computer/games/controls for $5/hour, and Jeremy was hard to drag off of the computer. So the rest of us sat around a lot, missing the movie matinee time we were supposedly going to. We ended up going out to eat, then I convinced Dave to not go back to the computer place with them since we'd been bored already.

On Sunday, we saw Treasure Planet, which is a damn cool movie. I'm still wondering how people manage to sail around space in sailing ships and what wind they're using, mind you, but a cool flick. And I want a Morph (a little pink blob that can turn into anything it wants). We also got some tiny picture stickers made of the two of us, so that solves my problem as to finding a picture to stick in the tiny glitter picture keychain I got Dave. Yay to that.

This was an interesting link for me to muse on.

"To be absolutely clear on what I mean by words like 'argue' and 'argument', allow me to repeat myself. By 'argue' I mean a verbal exchange between two or more people which involves a disagreement. An 'argument' is a purposeful intellectual exchange between people who disagree and base their disagreement on evidence. The purpose of a good argument is to resolve whatever conflict exists or, at least, to reach an understanding of where the irresolvable difference lies.

The ideal argument is a co-operative venture, in which both people attempt to arrive at the truth. This is far from the view of arguments many of us have, or of the view of arguing upheld by our society. For most of us, arguments are loud shrill exchanges, in which there are winners and losers. As in physical contests, the winner of such an argument is assumed to be the intellectual victor when, actually, nothing much intellectual has occurred.

To a large extent, we live in an anti-intellectual culture which places a low value on reasoning. Yet we also live in a culture where, to use Henry David Thoreau's phrase, most of us are living lives of quiet desperation. We are cut off from what most philosophers throughout the ages have considered to be our defining characteristic as human beings: the ability to reason. No wonder the art of arguing has been reduced to a slugfest in which you pummel an opponent into defeat."

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