kissing the gunner's daughter

arrrrrrrrr! happy talk-like-a-pirate day, me hearties!

i should be swabbing me quarterdeck - i've had to weigh anchor on account of me bad back.

back to thursday morning:

breakfast took place in the mess with nystire and a couple of random kids. there's nothing more awkward than advising someone to become an officer and sign on a couple of years, even if it is in their best interests, when i myself am hating being in the military. it's unnerving to hold so many contradicting attitudes.

my pc's still giving me trouble, but we had an inspection so it didn't really matter. once that was over, i did anything but work anyway - it was the beginning of a strange day, spent with one foot outside myself.

lunch communication: aside from a couple of misunderstandings concerning who was eating with whom and when, we had a long argument about cultural communication. israelis and americans (in general) need jokes to be explained, no missing steps allowed - for british and south africans, if there's no thinking that needs to be done it's probably not funny.

the argument began with an attempt at a pun in hebrew: i used an obscure meaning of a word and then elaborated, and was told it couldn't be funny because nobody uses the word in that way... that was the point.

in a meeting with our system engineer, i was trying to understand what difference sitting on his left could possibly make.
se: what hand do you scratch your balls with?
me: i don't, usually. i've never understood the need to scratch
se: because it's fun! okay, so what hand do you pick your nose with?
me: i don't do that either
se: what? wow! your life is really pathetic!

gods help me.

we had drinks in honour of the jewish new year: lotsa cake. i made a pig of myself.

i reached a very important (and good-looking) milestone in the fun project, but something wasn't working right. it took the rest of the workday to discover that my code is fine, and that c#'s textfile loading has a problem with spaces... as in, it sometimes drops them. i'm not sure when, but at least the fault is consistent so there has to be a solution.

right?

we were "invited" to the other side of the base for more cake before going home. fortunately, the second cake didn't taste very good so i wasn't compelled to make matters worse :P

while waiting for the bus to ra'anana, i took a call from lipgirl - seems she's moving back to the big city :)

training
after a lot of frustration i think i finally understand what our teacher's problem is. if we had a group like we had six years ago, large and interested, she'd be able to do things the way they need to be done. because we're few in number, arranging facilities has become a very expensive enterprise and keeping the students she has requires putting up with a large proportion of bad attitudes.

my personal solution? training in the park. i don't know why she's unwilling to do that.

i have a new body protector - my very own! it's amazing how much it softens the blows compared to the slightly aged ones. speaking of soft blows: i worked with a kid who "didn't want to hurt me" while we were padded up. when it was my turn, i tapped him (not hard for me, but enough that he'd feel it) because if you don't learn how to take kicks in training then the first one that lands in a fight will drop you.

this kid is a black belt - he made faces, bitched, moaned, and then tried to explain to me that knowing how to take a hit wouldn't help. a few weeks ago another of the old crew trained with us, and one of our older black belts (and bigger than me) ended up in tears because he'd never worked properly before.

i'm not impressed.

i needed to cough when i left... the swine-flu panic seems to be affecting me a little, too. i heard a terrible story of a soldier who coughed when he got onto a bus in the desert, and they threw him off...

the reason i went to training on thursday night was because i couldn't on friday, my ex-neighbour was set to perform at the same time. i discovered when i got home that the heads-up was mistaken, and he's only performing next week...

thinking "sod it", i went out to the rock party - it was a very nostalgic set. my back and neck were a bit sore after the training, but nystire's sister was obliging with massages. she still doesn't get that nothing's going to come of them. i danced with her and her big-boned but pretty friend most of the night, and the mystery woman was there too and also competing for my space on the dancefloor...
the one girl who *did* interest me gave me a smile and a clink of her glass, but i didn't manage to get more out of her... oh, well.

i got home around 5am, and slept for 5.
i began my friday painting (i've already posted the results), then took my copy of milton's works to breakfast. breakfast was excellent, and i read through a bit before someone took an interest and we all got caught up in a very interesting discussion on the definitions of heaven and hell.

this conversation included sentiments that were floating around my head on the bus back thursday night:
since nixon we have stigmatized an inherent and irreplaceable part of our species' advancement, and in doing so condemned our near-future generations to become less and less sophisticated and socially aware

prior to partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, man was blind and believed himself to be in the garden of eden - ignorance is bliss. upon enlightenment, he was forcibly ejected from his delusion, and realized that not only had he never been in such a place, but that he didn't deserve to be. the act of disobedience itself was, in fact, necessary to become what we consider to be "complete" - the opening of the eyes is what makes life worth living.

to paraphrase milton: god doesn't want subservience without question.

... training? again? it was during the warm-up that i hit the hangover from the night before :P
it was a good training, and not too extreme... only because i'd damaged my back and neck the night before, and then made it worse with head-banging, it took me out completely. and none of the exercises i've learned over the past five weeks of physiotherapy seem to be helping.

i went straight home, showered, dressed, and walked to her place. it was a fine walk until i got about halfway, when i felt the temperature rise a couple of notches to "sweaty" :/
i almost made it on time [i was a couple of minutes (three or four) and phone-calls late] and we were all off to dinner.

dinner with the jerusalem cousins was brilliant. a very pleasant evening with lots of people and exquisite food. i felt a bit awkward at the end, a couple of my cousin's friends from cape town invited me to their place on clifton 4th and i'm awful with accepting/refusing invitations. i just never know the protocol for non-committal gratitude.

lipgirl invited me out last night, but my neck wasn't willing - shite. that's really bad timing :(

i've slept badly, i'm still hurting, and now that i've made noise here i'm going to continue in meatspace with my guitar... i think i've managed to piece together a new sound ^_^

i've just acquired a copy of terence mckenna - food of the gods - i don't know when i'm going to find time to read it :S

yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum! here's wishing all jewish buccaneers a good new year, and all me hearties a rum weekend of booty, chantey's, saucy wenches and visits to the briny deep :)