excessive force and hallucinations

i just woke up with nagual - transmission in my head, it makes good accompaniment to this post :)

tuesday night i received a good news / bad news bundle. i was horrified to hear my sister's boyfriend's heavy news, and my old hebrew teacher is on his last legs, and my cousin who i've been trying to help with academia is apparently quite unhappy. my mum then shared the ridiculous to get the bad taste out of my mouth: my brother and his ex are dating. without going into too much detail, that's just absurd - and our respect for his ex just went south :P

i started off wednesday with a quick and dirty response to a query on my scribblings [which i'm glad to say appears to have been received in good faith]. it's rough for me to type higher level arguments in hebrew.
[some of hillman's comments got me reviewing what i wrote]

i left later than i'd intended, but arrived shockingly quickly - i'd forgotten that there are plenty of places in the country that it's not difficult to get to, and that my base is a middle-of-nowhere exception, not a rule. i was inspired on the way to try to organize another paintball session [i've already had a few positive responses, and even those who aren't coming have expressed amusement at the mail i sent out :)].

i arrived a bit early, waited a short while, then was taken to a dressing room and left with instructions to remove my shoes and socks and leave everything there. i was then told something unintelligible and abandoned. after waiting a minute, unable to decide which of the two doors to knock on, i walked back barefoot to the receptionist to ask what was going on. she was busy, so i stood waiting... one minute... two minutes... about three in total, before i heard someone from the direction of the dressing room say "how odd, nobody here". i just caught which door closed, so i went back and entered.

the doctor's response: "you're in the army, don't you know to do what you're told without thinking?"
mine: "we're obviously not serving in the same army"

the good news is that the growth isn't dangerous, the bad is that that means i'm going to have to work to convince the army doctors to get it surgically removed. as i'm into extreme sports, and this thing hurts, i can't let it slide.

i returned to base in time for lunch*, and nystire and i passed it arguing about prohibition. people have the strangest ideas - if it's not legal, then you can't do it privately and in your own home without breaking the law. you also don't have clean channels of distribution (i'm sure big pharma wouldn't strain too much to do it right), fair pricing and tax, and you waste a stupid amount of resources on something you can't control instead of cleaning up a small mess every now and then.

i want everybody to close their eyes, and imagine a world where people go to pubs and clubs without alcohol.
yeah, that would so totally work.
we need social lubricant, especially in an age of extreme conservatism, nanny states and a culture of repression, and at present the only legitimate lubricants are two of the worst available.
how can so many people be completely ignorant of all this?!?!

* i saw a weird bug coming straight for me from about ten metres away scarily fast, and it hit me in the mouth. when i got in to the office, one of my team-mates pointed out another one that had found it's mark on my neck... everyone had had similar experiences. the nerve of those little beasts!

something reminded me that rum and bitter lemon are not a good combination, because the rum is overpowered.

i struggled with c#'s event order. i'm in an event, so any raising of that same event will be deferred until i exit the block. any other events will be raised immediately (same conditions apply for them), and i couldn't figure out how to block the repeat call. hell, i couldn't figure out how that recursive event call was occurring in the first place. i managed to solve the problem, but more through code-voodoo than real logic :/

i discussed the group ski / snowboard trip with one of the other snowboarders, and it became a much more real option for next year. yesterday i had a repeat conversation with another one, and i think that's where i'll be happiest... i've got a few days left to keep an open mind, though.

i've been making a habit of arbitrarily and with much exaggeration complimenting my commanders. neither of them have the ability to detect sarcasm, and the results are increasingly amusing.

our conditions on base yesterday were worse than prison. the food wasn't as good, we work harder... and at least prisoners have access to phones (our lines went on wednesday) and running water (thursday, and it was planned).
it's unbelievable, we received an instruction from up above that if it continues we can all go home... but our commanders are smart enough to have us all bring water to base and practise "holding it in". you know something's wrong when you have to organize lift-schemes to drive off base for group toilet-runs.

a girl i've had issues with since last winter got in touch with me over something work-related. my automatic response was "oh, shit". she asked me when i'd be available on wednesday, so i told her. then she informed me that she wouldn't be available on wednesday, so we'd need to meet on thursday. i tried to understand why she would ask about wednesday, but that stumped everyone around me as well.

for what feels like the first time in years, i walked into the lab for something that didn't need to take more than five minutes, and it didn't take more than five minutes. nothing crashed on me, nothing surprised me... i walked out strangely elated :P

section argument: i've definitely mentioned this before. israeli's have developed a habit of ignoring the question "how are you?" by asking it right back. "but i don't want to lie, and i don't want to tell you all my problems" was the answer, but it's completely antisocial and sometimes an expected lie of "fine, thanks, and you?" is not only alright, but ideal.

one of my team-mates was having a moment - i walked past him, and it took me a second to register that he was sitting with a huge pile of used train tickets (his walls are covered in them) flipping them one by one into a tall, cylindrical container. one by one, over and over. "i think this foal's been broken", i thought.

i passed out on the way home, stopped by the hardware dude to pick up the lighting dude's number, and came home buzzing with confusion. i had a whole bunch of "todo" notes, and people to call about various things, and i was feeling pressured due to the combination of sleep deprivation and time pressure: carusella were supposedly performing an hour later and i wasn't ready to go.

item by item i got things under control, or figured out how to postpone them, made myself a cup of coffee and went to the bus. if i hadn't made the coffee, and i hadn't had to stop to draw cash, i wouldn't have missed my bus. if that hadn't happened, i wouldn't have tried calling the barby, wouldn't have been redirected to their website, wouldn't have discovered that the performance was only due to begin at 10pm instead of 8pm. bear in mind, please, that 10pm on the listing means 11pm at the earliest, and that's just for the warm-up band.

so i had time to call ru55, and joined him for a quick bite before visiting grootbek. i'm always glad for the opportunity to see friends [which, sadly, is very rare].

i still got to the barby early, and spent about half an hour trying to watch an episode of battlestar galactica in peace. it's south tel aviv, that's a bit tricky.

i don't know who warmed up for carusella, but they sounded a bit like tool in their opiate days. the drummer was awesome, using a rusty old metal trash can and really hammering everything out. i was convinced that the guitarist from carusella, tamar aphek, was the warm-up band's groupie, right until she removed her guitar and she and her drummer began setting up. they're unbelievable, progressive metal, great vocals (and both of them can sing), and there's magic in a slight girl rocking out with incredible technical skill and giving a solid, emotional performance.

completely surreal, and totally intense.

i had a laugh when the taxi driver told me how much he wanted to take me home. i walked a bit of the way, eventually catching one for a fair price and having enjoyed the amble. it wasn't a good time for ambling, but it was nice anyway. after posting, i showered and crashed... three hours wasn't enough.

in all my confusion i left late yesterday morning, and had to run a bit to make my bus. the adrenaline prevented me from napping on the shuttle, which sucked. i was completely dead, and we were waterless... not a good day. we went out for lunch (more as an excuse to find decent facilities), and i think my medium burger was a bit shy of medium. it was good food, but digesting took whatever was left of my meagre energy reserves and i became temporarily narcoleptic once we got in the car [carcolepsy], and then again as i hit my office chair :S

someone had joked about a non-existent swimming pool being redirected to provide our neighbouring base with water, and when our SC asked about them i repeated it completely dead-pan. he immediately asked, surprised, when they'd gotten a swimming pool installed, but after a few seconds he realized he'd been had and angrily went to our unit commander to ask him instead :D

in spite of my state, i made a good breakthrough with my project just before the day was up ^_^

the ride with nystire and one other to the forms competition was a mixture of childish school-trip behaviour and passing out in awkward positions. i arrived a bit late to the competition because i had to stop for an energy drink and chocolate. i discovered later that the chocolate wasn't such a good idea - my pulse raced explosively during my forms and i was certain that i was going to have a heart attack :(

how sad it is (for me) that the beautiful girl from the tel aviv group (who really is beautiful, and she's a physicist, and she's improving rapidly in taekwondo) is married.

for my category, i was in third place (of four) until the very last round, and just before my final turn i began convincing myself that i was going to give the last round my all, even if it meant passing out. i didn't pass out, and i managed to overtake one position for second place :)

i realized, however, that it's possible that i'm ill (i haven't been feeling good for over a week), and in addition to not going out last night, i've promised myself that if by tomorrow morning i'm not fighting fit then i'm not going to blade the 60km around the kinneret.

i received two certificates from fights that took place in 2004 - one of which was for third place in the nationals. there were only three of us in the category, and i got my ass handed to me. it was actually a traumatic experience, and having a certificate for it is very strange.

the bus ride back with the kids was quite amusing. some of them were convinced that i'm a policeman, with hilarious results. the rest of the trip was covered by deep debates about pokemon and tekken.

a few minutes after i got home the electrician arrived, and he seems like a really nice guy. we went through the apartment, discussing and apparently agreeing on most points, and he'll be getting back to me with a quote soon. i think i covered all the bases in my explanations of budget and time constraints.

i blew off songbird (i really didn't have the energy), and went to bed. i woke up this morning to do laundry, went back to sleep for a bit, woke up to hang it up, eat breakfast, write this, and now rush off to go north to visit my cousin :)