big waste of time

Don't let the crazies out.

Many addictions have recently sucked away my life (e.g. solitaire, crossword puzzles, anagrams, television, smoking, going to Sarah and Steve's house and smoking, researching scientology on the internet, etc.)

But I have a new favorite!:

The DSM-IV (this is actually for school so it's not technically "wasting time"... but).

Before I really started diving into this dangerous and highly entertaining Diagnostic Manual for mental disorders, the professor warned that the age of my innocence would officially end.

So true.

I've been ravaging through the pages for a mere week and I already have a grasp of folie a deux (shared psychotic disorder), frotteurism (haha! look it up!), Creutzfeldt-Jakob Syndrome (mad cow disease), and some other less dramatic disorders like rock-star-fried-cocaine-brain (substance-induced dementia), crazy-homeless-bag-lady (schizophrenia), and brain-fag (exam-week burnout?). I have been naughty and irresponsible enough to try and diagnose friends, their mothers, their imaginary friends, and a variety of dead celebrities and patriarchs with fairly serious disorders, though I am still highly unqualified and am not cleared to bill anyone's insurance company for my services.

But this is all just fun and games... In ten years or so I might actually know what I'm doing and someone might actually take me seriously. But for now... I play, I play, I play so that the state of the sick world does not sadden me so.