netless - part i

[post divided retroactively]

it's been a long week, and now that i'm living without internet at home it's harder to keep this blog updated. that means that some amusing sidetracks are going to go missing, because... because i've already forgotten what caused me to scribble to myself in the first place. as this blog is meant as a personal journal, and not to please an audience*, this is not a particularly good development.

* not please, but edify if possible. and hopefully not bore.

---overall threads of thought:

1. living with pg is a completely new experience, but is comfortable nonetheless. i'm fascinated by how smooth the transition has been. so far - it's only been a week or so...

2. the seminar's *still* hanging over me. at least i've crossed the halfway mark, and actually begun to write about my topic.

3. the new job's a little weird at the moment, where the first explicit instruction i received was "chill for the moment". i've just received a communication that there's stuff for me to do, and i'm quite excited about doing it!

4. things are calming down with the old work, which is good because i'm not planning on paying too much attention to it.

---wednesday evening:

i found sound cables i thought would be tougher to get hold of, and was incensed by bad queue handling at the supermarket. they never cease to disappoint me. i'm also irked by the fact that i've had a membership account with them since 2005 and i never get my points or coupons, and every time i complain i receive an incredible excuse followed by a guarantee that they'll begin to treat me like everyone else.

i'd been getting worried that something terrible had happened to wr, as he didn't respond to messages or answer his phone for about a week... and then he called me. i wonder at people who consistently can't keep it together.

pg and i spent the evening on the roof with a hookah pipe and great 60s music.

---thursday:

a sunny, beautiful morning. spent discussing whitman. some of the criticism he received, such as that his work proves metapsychosis because only a reincarnated ass could have produced such filth, made the class entertaining.

i don't remember what "lunch fight over policy" was supposed to mean.

hamlet's "to be or not to be" now holds new meaning for me. studying these works from a philosophical point of view is astoundingly educational.

we had a no-go on the screening, another problem with room booking. this is like a bad joke, one that goes into negative funny.

i was exhausted, as usual, and napped in the sun for a while before heading into the labs to catch up on rss feeds* and work my seminar a bit, then chatted with yogi over the phone before churning out my first villanelle.

* i've never seen the entire casey heynes video before. without the whole clip, it kinda seemed like i should feel sorry for the little kid. not any more.
also: further evidence that we should fear AIs... i've always maintained that some things just shouldn't be connected to the internet. nor given access to robotic arms.

the forum for master's students on thursday night: i walked in to a full room wherein i was the only male, wearing my (now mostly faded) pink "real men DON'T wear pink" shirt. the comments flew on entry, and i just grinned and responded that i'd faded my shirt with the sheer force of my personality. and from that point on, i was one of the girls.

all we did was go around the table introducing ourselves, which turned out to be fascinating and educational. two of us finished with a debate about god.

---friday:

waking up super-early to participate in the half-marathon. my girlfriend telling me "my mother's faster than you" was particularly amusing because she really is. her mother beat us by about twenty minutes (although, to be fair, it was a choice to stay with pg and i even pushed her - physically - for some of the tougher segments). i feel like an idiot for not finishing with her because i ran the last hundred metres... i didn't think that through.

i had a fight with a security guard because he wasn't willing to let me out of the end area to use the toilet and then come back. when his friend shouted at me "it's not him! it's the rule that's stupid" i got even angrier: in hebrew, if the sentence had had a comma it would've been "that's the rule, stupid!" (זה לא הוא! זה הנוהל מטוטמטם!). i eventually just shoved him out the way and went through.

pg's feet were hurting because she'd worn her old blades in case it rained... it did rain, but not enough to justify twenty kilometres of discomfort :/

we stretched out for a while, then went upstairs to clean and switch wheels in the sun with good music, after which i put them on again and headed to the wall.

and waited. at least i had angry birds to keep me company. i'm playing that a lot.

we had a great session, and i had really sore fingers and arms afterwards. a couple of us sat over ice-cream and beer for a while chatting, then i returned - remembering to shop on the way.

---i was the fourth in the line, and fairly certain that the girl at the check-out counter was calling for security to kick me out. i was wrong, though - she was looking for someone to man the other counter. when he arrived on the scene, the woman behind me asked if he was opening the counter, and as soon as he responded in the affirmative she was there. a couple of us started moving across, not willing to get into an argument with her about cutting ahead like that (it's the norm), when her friend asked her what she thought she was doing...

"what? nobody else moved!"
i got in on that one: "because you didn't give us a chance to!"
"oh, alright then. go ahead"

i was pleasantly surprised at how easy that was. we even had a neighbourly discussion about it because she had the decency to apologize. freaky. in contrast to that, the next night pg and i went to the supermarket to do serious shopping, and i was absolutely appalled to witness two elderly "ladies" actually come to blows over a place in the express queue.

that's just pitiful. i've just had a long conversation with one of our managers about the cause of that behaviour: it's holocaust mentality manifesting itself as an innate (and extreme) fear of being taken advantage of; coupled with a complete lack of consideration for anyone but oneself. this is, in my opinion, the cause of half of our country's problems.

the other half is caused by "honour", the sense of which we seem to have acquired from our rather barbaric neighbours.

that shit's gotta go. all of it.

---i've never worn an apron while cooking before. we made cottage pie. we made it well.

---saturday:

i went out to cafesito early to use the internet, prematurely buying coffee before discovering that they've given up serving wireless because there are so many open networks about. not are. were. it would appear that everyone in the neighbourhood has been learning about securing their systems. there's me, having paid eleven - no - FOURTEEN shekels for a cup of coffee, sitting on the farthest corner so as to use cafeneto's wifi instead.

coffee - a most profitable enterprise. considering the mark-up on a cup of coffee, no matter how fancy you get with it, it's bloody rude to take money for using soya instead of dairy milk. it's rude to take at all, even ruder to take no less than a third of the cost of a litre.

i won't be buying there anymore. you're not getting me twice.

---i had an interesting chat with a woman who laughed at me when i responded (as i almost always do) to someone hooting next to the coffee shop. it's pathetic that the city council gets rich on parking tickets without providing any legal solutions, but they don't take a cent for something as offensive as hooting. if they were to implement a NIS 100 fine - approximately one tenth of the penalty in new york - they'd make a fortune and people would stop being such complete jerks.

---thought for the day: someone asked me what album i would want to listen to if humanity was about to be wiped out and i only had time for one. des'ree - supernatural, because it's too hard to choose from so many good ones, and that's an album that would make me comfortable with the fact that it's all over. it's proof that's lots of our species just don't deserve to survive.

"Mom's ISP" saved the day. after doing some work at pg's mom's place, she invited us out to lunch. the food was great, and everything was fine until pg and i had an argument (over something stupid) that made us all uncomfortable :(
it was resolved soon afterwards, but not cool.

i spent the afternoon on the roof working, fighting with a mosquito and munching shalva: i don't know why that stuff's so addictive.

seminar: i managed to stretch out my piece on the oval portrait to almost as long as the house of the seven gables. rock on!

[continued...]