Why Why Why?

I went to the unoffical graduate pub on campus called "Cafe Nostalgica." I'd been there once before: they serve a great Quebecois beer called "Blanche du Chamblais" which tastes an awful lot like Hoegaarden (in other words, not like beer at all). If you haven't tried it, give it a taste.

I only realized last night that every last friday of the month at this venue, pitchers are 7, yep, 7 dollars CDN (I can see J is lining up to buy the next train ticket up here). During the evening I was conversing with some pretty friendly and animated folk (mostly guys, but I'll get to that in a moment), when something funny occured (I mean funny in the existential, Samuel Beckett sense, which isn't really funny at all). One of them, who looked like a mix between Conan O'Brien and Doogie Howser, complimented me on my look (I was looking slightly sharp and neat). As far as I can tell, this gentleman did not "swing that way," but it's not the first time it has happened: every now and then a perfectly straight male will come up to me and compliment me on my look (not to be confused with lookS). My question is, why is it always guys? Can I just once have a sane woman come up to me with the same utterance? Is that too much to ask? Reminds me of when I had my semi-legendary beard: guys would compliment me on it all the time, but the ladies didn't like it. Boy, if I were gay, I wouldn't have any trouble... :)

I must return to my work: for my Foucault class (which I'm enjoying, by the way), I am presenting on Ferdinand de Saussure's notion of the linguistic sign on Monday. One a side note, I've been doing a lot of reading on the side, which probably isn't wise during school, especially considering that my "pleasure" reading is pretty heavy stuff: Derrida, Paul de Man, and most recently, Emile Benveniste, whose critique of Saussure is never mentioned. Maybe this is why I have trouble sleeping...

I sometimes wonder whether I should have gone into linguistics instead of English. At the same time, I often hover somewhere in between as too much of one makes me repine for the other. If only i could succesfully synthesize the two...