Emerging from the depths of Systems ...

It seems crazy but I don't think I've had the chance to sit in front of my computer without a couple of coldcalls (the summaries we've been expected to write for everything we read in systems, our crazy introductory course on the history of Western social theory from Saint Augustine through Montaigne, Hobbes, Kant and Nietsche all the way to Kierkegaard and Boas) and two or three dead philosophers breathing down my back since i got back to Chicago. Hence, the absolute silence. My apologies. I haven't forgotten you, even though my life seems to have shrunk both physically and socially to comprise only the minuscule part of the world that orbits Haskell Hall and the Regenstein library. But I'm not complaining, it's been tough, but then again I have thoroughly enjoyed it, and am actually feeling sad that this first stretch is now coming to an end.
Yesterday I learned (from Freud) that the first cultural act was when man learned not to put fires out by urinating in them. Apparently Freud thought that fire was the absolute symbol of masculine sexuality for primitive man against which he felt a need to compete. Strange, eh. Freud also took Jesus to be the model for the superego of Western civilization. Am I going crazy if chuckling at these absurdities constitute the highpoints of my day?