Etiquette: You are not exempt from it.

I suspect I am not the only person this has happened to. Tell me when this starts sounding familiar: You spend the first decade or so under the careful tutelage of your parents, who do their absolute damnedest to instill good manners and etiquette in you, their offspring. If your upbringing was similar to mine, this also involved being taken to various formal events where it was an unspoken fact that bad behavior would be eliminated with extreme prejudice, further cementing the behavior. You may not think of yourself as egregiously polite or well mannered, but that’s primarily because you spend most of your time in contact with those who hold themselves to a similar standard, whether any of you know it or not. Everything is dandy.
Then one day you find yourself in an environment where none of this holds true. This may or may not occur when one is in any level of grade school. For myself, I certainly experienced less than pleasant exchanges with many of my fellow students in high school, but I usually chalked that up to their dislike of me, rather than their having been raised in a barn. My big awakening occurred at Miskatonic. ANYWAY, you have been dropped on your ass amongst a bunch of cretins who don’t say please, thank you, or bother with utensils. Usually, I find, this inspires rage and frustration in the subject, and, if you’re Hannibal Lecter, psychopathic behavior. For me, it certainly entrenched my misanthropic view of humanity even deeper.

So let’s get something straight here: MANNERS ARE NOT OPTIONAL, FOR ANYONE. They provide orchestration and direction that prevents idiotic mishaps. Perfect example: Last week I was going down a narrow, crowded stair case. I kept to the right, AS YOU SHOULD, and so did most people. A few jackasses, however, decided that the line wasn’t moving fast enough, went into the ‘oncoming’ lane, and tried to make a break for it…only to have people need to get past them on their way up. Cue massive pile-up and delay. And for those who say that manners are sexist, I have this reply: They shouldn’t be. Just as an example, everyone should hold doors for everyone else, gender being utterly besides the point, and those having doors held for them should thank the holder. (As a side note, I find most women to be far ruder than men. They don’t bother to hold doors, smack people with their purses, and act infuriatingly entitled in every damn way you can imagine. NOT ACCEPTABLE, FELLOW FEMALES.)
Finally, there comes a point where things just go to far and, in my opinion, the only correct response to such blatant rudeness is to throw it back in the face of its progenitor. To illustrate: The Miskatonic café has limited seating. Around lunch time, when I am usually there, the seating becomes even more limited when scores of troglodytes troupe in, drop their bags and coats on every table in sight, and then go to lunch, leaving their things, supposedly secure in the knowledge that the table in question is ‘saved’ for them and rendering people like me, who can’t get there till class lets out, SOL if they want to sit down to eat a meal like a civilized human being. After a few weeks of this, I lost my temper and decided to play their game. So if there is nowhere to sit in the café I MAKE a place, shoving people’s stuff to the side or transferring them to another table and taking what wasn’t theirs to begin with. Obviously I’ve received blowback for doing so, but in every case I’ve been able to use a combination of good manners and a pointedly worded explanation that should make the idiot brigade in question think twice before usurping a table they won’t even be using. 
As an added bonus, manners are far more productive than *eating* someone, fava beans or no. 

In which I am deported back to Miskatonic

Well, after yet another long absence, I'm back. Back to writing (hopefully), back to studying (reluctantly), and back to school (unwillingly). After four weeks of rest and recuperation with my family, being dropped back at Miskatonic is like being dragged out of the Ritz Carlton and thrown in a dumpster more generally used by a hospital, a lab for the study of nuclear isotopes, and a Chinese restaurant. The temperature is miserable out here, as is to be expected, and I am in so many ways not enjoying my sans-boxsprings bed, which makes my lower spine want to pack its bags and leave me for a more caring human being. Feelings on the subject: Annoyed
The social scene is also far from enthralling at this juncture. There was a point for me where partying seemed like the be-all and end-all of social life at Miskatonic, but after attending a Ke$ha themed party at a friend's house yesterday I was left thoroughly disenchanted with the whole process. The only way to enjoy oneself was to get falling-down drunk, something that has ceased to appeal to me in the slightest. After watching the mess of people in the living room attempt to dance (those who were still sober or only slightly buzzed wobbling back and forth uncertainly, while the thoroughly smashed specimens often just gave up their hold on being vertical and let gravity do the work), I opted to head outside to converse with the would-be intellectuals standing on the stoop smoking their pipes and cigarettes and arguing about Nietzsche. This, however, proved detrimental on two fronts: For one, it became abundantly clear that all anyone wanted to do was impress each other rather than discuss anything (and my being one of the few if not the only female there at any given time, this meant that all the straight men just HAD to do their damnedest to impress me above all else. Victoria was decidely less than awed by their supposed epiphanies and infallible arguments.) For two, the smoke got in my eyes and mouth and just generally made me feel gross. So it was back inside, where I got cornered by an old aquaintance who attempted to give me profound life advice that might have been relevant to him but when applied to me was like trying to convince a shark to become a vegetarian for the good of its soul. At this point I vacated the party as fast as I could and walked home. Or attempted to walk. While I had been trying to enjoy myself while wearing too much eye makeup, the heavens had opened and unleashed freezing rain, which coated everything and led me to slip and slide most of the way home. Feelings on the subject: Disgusted

So now I'm sitting in my dorm room, suffering withdrawal from functional civilization. I'm also a tad depressed on account of the fact that the awesome book I was reading - Snow Crash - finally came to an end, and though I absolutely adored it start to finish I now cannot find anything else that I want to read. I JUST WANT MORE SNOW CRASH, DAMMIT. Feelings on the subject: Morose

And I have to do my laundry. Feelings on the subject: !@#QR(*U*(#T&*(QA#RPU ARGH

Today's forecast: Fair travel, foul weather, crops-blightingly-bad temper

Well I'm back from a lovely trip to Chicago to see the opera Macbeth at the Lyric Opera. Said trip began with me boarding a train and spending upwards of five hours on the thing, contemplating my life and going on a sort of vision quest to regain some of my lost vim and vigor. After a multitude of stops, starts, slow patches, and rattling rails, I was disgorged in the belly of Union station where I met up with my aunt and uncle, whose home I occupied during my stay. The next day we attended the opera (I wore full kimono because I bloody well could and because kimonos are easily packable, as opposed to full bustled Victorian gowns. One must
make allotment for small luggage), which proved to be decent but unremarkable, leading me to doze off as Lady Macbeth ranted about her unclean hands and I mentally suggested she just buy some damn Oxiclean already. Then it was off to dinner at an absolutely SPECTACULAR restaurant where I enjoyed the best meal I've had in months, all the while gazing on the Chicago water tower. Said tower is a portion of the cityscape that has been engrained in my mind ever since, while on vacation with my family at a young age, I turned a corner and was greeted with the sight of that gorgeous, gothic structure jutting defiantly out of the modern surroundings. My father then told me the story of the Chicago fire, relating how the town of my birth had been burnt to the ground, which lodged firmly in my imagination and has never left.

The next day, however, I was once again on the train and jouncing and vibrating my way back to Miskatonic. I was reluctant to leave, as you might imagine, but I took it all with good grace, unpacking cheerfully and savoring my memories of my time. These overall good spirits lasted till the next morning when a tornado alert led to my being yanked out of bed at an ungodly hour and having to throw on a robe over the gigantic t-shirt that serves as my nightwear. My compatriots and I were then bundled into the basement lounge where we spent an hour and half, doing absolutely nothing, all the while waiting for a tornado that never came. The most exciting thing that occurred during the time was when we were informed via walky talky that a group of students, deciding that up with this they would not put, escaped the confines of whatever bunker they'd been herded into and were triumphantly marching across campus.

And now, bringing us up to date, I am in a foul mood. After taking an art history exam that I'd studied hard for I treated myself to a meal at the school cafe. There was a bit of a line, so I queued up dutifully and waited, trying to ignore the stifling heat of the student union, which made me itch and perspire in my ornate clothing. Finally I was next to be served, a fact for which I was rewarded when the bimbo at the head of the queue slammed me with her enormous blue-patent-leather-hobo-bag-monstrosity that probably cost more than the whole of my outfit (and allow me to say that the money could have been put to better use buying her some clothes that weren't made out of sweatshirt material). She also did not bother to apologize or even acknowledge that it had happened, adding insult to injury while I suffered silently after having what felt like a text book or laptop slammed into my sternum. So, dear readers, I'm in a snarlingly bad mood, the sort that leads me to want to run home, turn out all the lights, curse humanity up one side and down the other, and then throw myself melodramatically on my bed with a hot compress over my eyes.