the weekend flits by

holy bat, crapman!
seriously, i didn't have a chance to post since thursday. ridiculous! i'll try and keep it short - i have (more) studying to do for tomorrow's exams.

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thursday:

thursday morning was a groovy morning, i like having solid psy beats on my iphone. i also like starting the day with milton, because he was an absolute genius and knew how to drive all the right things home. the devil's advocate's homage to him was not out of place.

the university has a degree in scriptwriting that doesn't include literature? weird :S

i paid the student union another visit, and was pleased to hear that arranging an anime night shouldn't be too difficult. we'll see.

i had lunch with a couple of the girls from our class - the conversation jumped all over the place. it has been suggested that we make "free hugs" signs for campus :P

i found myself a quiet class to prep for the next lesson, not realizing that i had way more to read than i'd thought :(
two girls and an older guy in a wheelchair came in early (like, 45 minutes early) for their next class, so i soon had to escape the distraction. i *had* to respond to the last thing i heard them say:
"are you two talking about 'healthy lifestyles' in relation to food?"
"yes?"
"just remember that sometimes it's healthier for the soul to be less cautious with the stomache"

the chatter game: even the guys who weren't in on it made a lot of noise... the philosophy student was supposed to present and he hadn't read any of the book, so we all talked loads of rubbish until the end of the session.
i couldn't stop thinking of jefferson airplane's triad vs pierre and his kinda-sister and lover all living together in a 19th century version of a commune...

our italian lecturer has learned to speak hebrew! in less than a couple of months! that's kinda creepy - it must be his experience with classical languages :P

i managed to bring freud to bear on melville. i've been tainted :S

i was shocked, and pleasantly so. the ars from the poetry class? he came up to me before the lesson and apologized for his behaviour. that's so far out that i don't know what to make of it!

studying langston hughes put a bee in my bonnet... i'll post it later when it's a bit more done.

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one of the girls in the class advised me to sit in on a political talk - i'm shocked. there's a left-wing zionist movement? that's nuts! it sounds like they've got the right idea... combining humanist morality with self-respect and self-preservation is a solid way to go. so far, it looks like the first party whose foreign policy makes sense... we'll see how this progresses.

of course, i had to say something. i agreed with everything the guy proposed, but took umbrance with "none of this is at all racist". of *course* it's racist! this country was founded on the basis of racism, that we need a place to go where we can escape persecution as a race. there's no need for wordplay, and no need to be ashamed about it - we do have obligations to our neighbours, though.

if they're being friendly / non-threatening then we have to treat them with dignity and respect. if not, then we have to fight fire with fire. what's important is that we - as we've been trying to do since 1928 - separate the country into two states so that we have recourse if attacked.

...

speaking of which - i was just accosted by a self-hating jew involved in the hardcore left-wing project to show how cruel israelis in hebron can be... i agree 100% that we shouldn't be unnecessarily violent, but i think that anyone who sends out only half the story and sends that half a story outside of our borders is a traitor. what they say must be said, but only to people who understand the (unfortunate) context of the actions.

and those people they say it to must be forced to do something about it. our political situation is too tender to be inviting trouble from people who are looking for any excuse to cause it.

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i spoke to her grandparents to arrange a meeting (i haven't seen them since before i left for the states) and my kibbutz cousin - from her daughter's profile pics on facebook she's looking really good, and i'm really glad for her!

suffering a bellyache i left for work. the ride was uncomfortable, also due to a couple of kids punching each other repeatedly... i don't care if it's in fun, it sends out warning signals to the other passengers :/

at work: i have a new desk. i don't know why. i made a bit of headway with the java/xml, argued atheism with a co-worker who turns out to be fairly well-balanced, then decided i'd had enough and went home, painting a portrait in my mind's eye of an old-school god pulling the strings of an industrial world, holding the reins, holding a cage of humanity, and then that same god freeing us from his own yoke.

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friday:

after a long sleep and a slow wake-up, i went searching for masks and toys for my masquerade. i joined a couple of classmates for a quick study session at a coffee shop, then sped off to the wall.

my arms hurt. my fingers hurt. these finger push-ups aren't as quick-fix as we'd hoped, apparently.

even the wall's going to the dogs? some kid brought an ars friend, who didn't stop talking shit and being abusive. i hope he doesn't return (when we're there, at least).

the phrase for the day: green is the new orange.
good thing i'm into both of them.

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the evening blade was tough! really tough, and long, and good. the only thing i wasn't happy with was the bit where we stopped for a lecture (that happens on fridays), and the professor made a statement about the english being lucky in their battle against the spanish armada.
they were lucky - but not in the battle itself. they were lucky that they had queen elizabeth in charge, because she was cool enough to put someone like francis drake in command. and francis drake was a pirate.

the professor wasn't happy to be corrected.

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pg'd been weird on the phone - i'd spoken to her a couple of times during the day. once we met up on the way to dinner, things were cool again. i'm fascinated by how easily we get along :)

dinner at her sister's was great, and included southern comfort and hoodwinked! - very, very cool!

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saturday:

another long sleep later, and i woke up to study with the group. it was a morning of cake, brownies, coffee and derision. while there i was distracted by facebook - all of the notes for the big mid-term have been published on the group's page along with discussions and useful links, and it is without any doubt the most persuasive use of facebook that i've come across.

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who doesn't like free lunches? it's not really free if the prices is irritation. my roast-beef salad took so long to prepare at nona's that i had time to observe everyone else's dissatisfaction and have them share in my incredulity (i'd been the first to order)... they eventually brought it on the house, but their attitude was shit and it was too little, too late.

i returned home with barely enough time to prepare for my own party... i sprayed my tinfoil bug hat bug-colour but then realized that i didn't have anything to go with it... so i suited up. that's a really strange thing for *me* to do.

doing finger pushups with the guys in the middle of rabin square while wearing a suit was amusing. playing frisbeer in a suit - also. and pg played too, and isn't bad at all - nice!

i consumed beer and wine and cake* and sugar the entire evening. not too many people came, but it was an enjoyable get-together and that's what mattered. i hadn't been planning on celebrating anyway...

* what a cake! pg baked it herself, it's absolutely brilliant and i'm still going through the leftovers ^_^

negatives: a drunkard / very high ethiopean dude came stolling by, and stopped when he saw that something was happening. i tried to civilly get rid of him, but that wasn't working. pg responded surprisingly aggressively, and our differing opinions on dealing with him put a bit of a wedge between us (momentarily, at least).

i wasn't impressed with him palming something out of his pocket and stepping towards me - everyone around me said afterwards that they sensed me go into battle mode. one of the guys called the police*, at least, and we managed to get rid of him without incident. aside from me having been "activated". i have a lot more potential for violence in me than i'd like, and i *hate* having people opening that door.

i don't understand unnecessary aggression.

* they stopped him a short while later - at least nobody else had to deal with him

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one of the guys from the rollerblading group rocked up and, as usual, was full of beans. we spent the rest of the evening arguing up and down - sometimes friendly, sometimes really not, and i hope that by the end we were both under the impression that things were cool and that it wasn't just me...

pg provided some interesting insight into my side of the argument... i'll try to keep it in mind for next time...

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we had a loooooooooong talk goodnight that involved a lot of very positive notes.

*happy sigh*

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today:

thought for the day:
a man willing to burn everything to achieve his goals will only succeed if his goal requires a wasteland

once pg and i were on a bus this morning, i called dan to complain that their planning committee is rubbish. the bus that's always empty and that was set up to alleviate stress from the always-full campus line was a double, and the full one was a single that was so overloaded that it didn't even stop for us. i was told my message would be passed along. if the woman i'd spoken to had taken my number, maybe i'd have believed her.

more cake for breakfast, a class on british history, a simple and almost tasty lunch, giving a lecture on freud and narrative* on the grass... that was my day.

exhausted, i took the bus home, stopping to have coffee with the hardware dude and talk politics after the leftist wanker had walked out. i've been applying for jobs and posting this since i got home, and now i'm uncertain as to whether i need to sleep first or continue studying first.