the tortoise

yesterday:

i bladed to the dry-cleaner's to pick up my un-gummed trousers, which may or may not have been a mistake: it was *hot*. the fact that i took it really slowly didn't make any difference, and until the evening, being outside meant struggling. it's inferno time. hullo, summer, i hadn't missed you.

on the way to work i ran into one of my classmates, from whom i got the sense that my exam went alright and that i've been pronouncing du bois incorrectly :$

the workday was pretty straightforward, the most interesting things being over lunch. after a horrifying discussion over israeli water birth laws, the waitress forced a tip in a really ugly way.

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water birth: after reading survival of the sickest, i have a new-found appreciation for our species' birthing habits. there is nothing that us humans do that doesn't carry risk; everything causes cancer, food is bad for you, and stepping outside your front door puts you in great danger just as locking yourself inside does.

so it comes down to risk management. you might choose to do something that's really exotic and fun, because although it carries a high risk the reward will justify it. that's how we operate, and that's the way things should be. personal freedom is the right to assess those risks and make those choices accordingly without interfering with others' rights to do so.

back to water births: it has been demonstrated that giving birth in water is the most natural method for us, and that it carries considerably less risk than what we have come to consider "regular" birth. however, our bureaucrats have decided, in their infinite lack of wisdom, that because it carries *some* risk that it needs to be banned. so now we have a situation in which woman in labour are placed in a water tank, but removed at the final stage of the process.

that's just stupid.

...

what else is just as stupid? sumptuary laws. the war on drugs, to be specific. i went to the legalization protest, and there must have been about twenty people there. perhaps the number of people who appreciate personal freedom really are a minority.

these are attitudes, both public and private, that cause me to question my decision to live in this country.

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i tried to donate blood yesterday. i went through the whole ordeal of filling out forms with information that really, really should be stored online. if i've given blood once before, i should be able to type in my id number, update my personal details only if necessary, and click a few checkboxes for any changes in my status.
instead, i sat for ten minutes harassing the medics to explain things that i'm sure have been explained to me before, arguing the relevance of undergoing surgery at age five, only to finally be pushed into the room with the sister who would go over all the data and inform me regretfully that i wouldn't be able to donate blood because i was in india less than a year ago.

thank you. thank you so much.

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i came home. i played abe's exoddus. a lot. i died a lot. it was frustrating. pg said, after suffering my outraged cursing and horrified squeals for a while, that that's why she doesn't play these kinds of games. a bit later, though, i finished the damn level - and i finished it well. and i felt *good*. there's such catharsis in the experience, from beginning to end... i cannot help but identify with abe as i miscalculate a jump and see him caught by the slicer and chopped up into little chunks.

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i finally got the sexyselect working: after much fiddling and searching, i came across a forum post (not on their forum, of course - that one's broken) with two examples. neither of which worked. i have no idea what made me try both of them together...

... so it's now working. i don't know why, but that's good enough for me.

pg and i took a slow meander to buy shuwarma, and i ate an entire laffa and found myself looking for dessert. quite shocking :$
we found dessert in the form of sample yoghurt at the book fair, but that was all we found there. the selections were repetitive and mostly quite boring. we returned to watch limitless, which was a fun movie, and then put ourselves to bed.

...

i woke up late this morning, had breakfast, considered tidying things, decided to study, and instead put together a page of decals to be printed and posted this. now i gotta run.

this is going to be a looooong weekend.